Yes, alone. Alone with your thoughts.
“I had a bad dream,” Beaver says. He seems to be explaining this to himself rather than to the rest of them. Slowly, as if he were still dreaming, he unzips one of his jacket pockets, rummages around inside, and comes out with a Tootsie Pop. Instead of unwrapping it, Beaver puts the stick end in his mouth and be ins to roll it back and forth, nipping and gnawing lightly. “I dreamed that-”
“Never mind,” Henry says, and pushes his glasses up on his nose. “We all know what you dreamed.” We ought to, we were there trembles on his lips, but he keeps it inside. He’s only fourteen, but wise enough to know that what is said cannot be unsaid. When it’s laid, it’s played they say when they’re playing rummy or Crazy Eights and someone makes a goofy-ass discard. If he says it, they’ll have to deal with it. If he doesn’t, then maybe… just maybe it’ll go away.
“I don’t think it was your dream, anyhow,” Pete says. “I think it was Duddits’s dream and we all-”
“I don’t give a shit what you think,” Jonesy says, his voice so harsh that it startles them all. “It was a dream, and I’m going to forget it. We’re all going to forget it, aren’t we, Henry?”
Henry nods at once.
“Let’s go back in,” Pete says. He looks vastly relieved. “My feet’re fre-
“One thing, though,” Henry says, and they all look at him nervously. Because when they need a leader, Henry is it. And if you don’t like the way I do it, he thinks resentfully, someone else can do it. Because this is no tit job, believe me.
“What?” Beaver asks, meaning What now?
“When we go into Gosselin’s later on, someone’s got to call Duds. In case he’s upset.”
No one replies to this, all of them awed to silence by the idea of calling their new retardo friend on the phone. It occurs to Henry that Duddits has likely never received a phone call in his life; this will be his first. “You know, that’s probably right,” Pete agrees and then slaps his hand over his mouth like someone who has said something incriminating.Beaver, naked except for his dopey boxers and his even dopier jacket, is now shivering violently. The Tootsie Pop jitters at the end of its gnawed stick. “Someday you’ll choke on one of those things,” Henry tells him. “Yeah, that’s what my Mom says. Can we go in? I’m freezing.” They start back toward Hole in the Wall, where their friendship will end twenty-three years from this very day. “Is Richie Grenadeau really dead, do you think?” Beaver asks. “I don’t know and I don’t care,” Jonesy says. He looks at Henry. “We’ll call Duddits, okay-
I’ve got a phone and we can bill the charges to my number.”
“Your own phone,” Pete says. “You lucky duck. Your folks spoil you fuckin rotten, Gary.”
Calling him Gary usually gets under his skin, but not this morning-Jonesy is too preoccupied. “It was for my birthday and I have to pay the long-distance out of my allowance, so let’s keep it short. And after that, this never happened-never happened, you got that?”
And they all nod. Never happened. Never fucking hap-
3
A gust of wind pushed Henry forward, almost into the electrified compound fence. He came back to himself, shaking off the memory like a heavy coat. It couldn’t have come at a more inconvenient time (of course, the time for some memories was never convenient). He had been waiting for Underhill, freezing his katookis off and waiting for his only chance to get out of here, and Underhill could have walked right by him while he stood daydreaming, leaving him up shit creek without a paddle.
Only Underhill hadn’t gone past. He was standing on the other side of the fence, hands in his pockets, looking at Henry. Snowflakes landed on the transparent, buglike bulb of the mask he wore, were melted by the warmth of his breath, and ran down its surface like…
Like Beaver’s tears that day, Henry thought. “You ought to go in the barn with the rest of them,” Underhill said. “You’ll turn into a snowman out here.”
Henry’s tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. His life quite literally depended on what he said to this man, and he could think of no way to get started. Couldn’t even loosen his tongue. And why bother? the voice inside inquired-the voice of darkness, his old friend. Really and truly, why bother? Why not just let them do what you were going to do to yourself, anyway?
Because it wasn’t just him anymore. Yet he still couldn’t speak.
Underhill stood where he was a moment longer, looking at him. Hands in pockets. Hood thrown back to expose his short dark-blond hair. Snow melting on the mask the soldiers wore and the detainees did not, because the detainees would not be needing them; for the detainees, as for the grayboys, there was a final solution.
Henry struggled to speak and could not, could not. Ah God, it should have been Jonesy here, not him; Jonesy had always been better with his mouth. Underhill was going to walk away, leaving him with a lot of could-have-beens and might-have-beens.
But Underhill stayed a moment longer.
“I’m not surprised you knew my name, Mr… Henreld? Is your name Henreid?”
“Devlin. It’s my first name you’re picking up. I’m Henry Devlin.” Moving very carefully, Henry thrust his hand through the gap between a strand of barbed wire and one of electrified smoothwire. After Underhill did nothing but look at it expressionlessly for five seconds or so, Henry pulled his hand back to his part of the newly drawn world, feeling foolish and telling himself not to be such an idiot, it wasn’t as if he’d been snubbed at a cocktail party.
Once that was done, Underhill nodded pleasantly, as if they were at a cocktail party instead of out here in a shrieking storm, illuminated by the newly installed security lights.
“You knew my name because the alien presence in Jefferson Tract has caused a low-level telepathic effect.” Underhill smiled. “Sounds silly when you say it right out, doesn’t it? But it’s true. The effect is transient, harmless, and too shallow to be good for much except party games, and we’re a little too busy tonight for those.”
Henry’s tongue came finally, blessedly, unstuck. “You didn’t come over here in a snowstorm because I knew your name,” Henry said. “You came over because I knew your wife’s name. And your daughter’s.”
Underhill’s smile didn’t falter. “Maybe I did,” he said. “In any case, I think it’s time we both got under cover and got some rest-it’s been a long day.”
Underhill began walking, but his way took him alongside the fence, toward the other parked trailers and campers. Henry kept pace, although he had to work in order to do it; there was nearly a foot of snow on the ground now, it was drifting, and no one had tramped it down over here on the dead man’s side.
“Mr Underhill. Owen. Stop a minute and listen to me. I’ve got something important to tell you.”
Underhill kept walking along the path on his side of the fence (which was also the dead man’s side; did Underhill not know that?), head down against the wind, still wearing that faintly pleasant smile. And the awful thing, Henry knew, was that Underhill wanted to stop. It was just that Henry had not, so far, given him a reason to do so.
“Kurtz is crazy,” Henry said. He was still keeping pace but he was panting audibly now, his exhausted legs screaming. “But he’s crazy like a fox.”
Underhill kept walking, head down and little smile in place under the idiotic mask. If anything, he walked faster. Soon Henry would have to run in order to keep up on his side of the fence. If running was still possible for him.
“You’ll turn the machine-guns on us,” Henry panted. “Bodies go in the barn… barn gets doused with gasoline… probably from Old Man Gosselin’s own pump, why waste government issue… and then ploof, up in smoke… two hundred… four hundred… it’ll smell like a VFW pig-roast in hell…”
Underhill’s smile was gone and he walked faster still. Henry somehow found the strength to trot, gasping for air and fighting his way through knee-high snowdunes. The wind was keen against his throbbing face. Like a blade.
“But Owen… that’s you, right?… Owen?… you remember that old rhyme… the one that goes “Big fleas… got little fleas… to bite em… and so on and so on… and so on ad infinitum?” that’s here and that’s you… because Kurtz has got his own cadre the man under him, I think his name is Johnson…”
Underhill gave him a single sharp look, then walked faster than ever. Henry somehow managed to keep up, but he didn’t think he would be able to much longer. He had a stitch in his side. It was hot and getting hotter. “That was supposed… to be your job the second part of the clean-up… Imperial Valley, that’s the code name… mean anything to you?”