Dreamcatcher

He wishes he had his rifle, the one Pete’s Dad loaned him, but that rifle is gone, left behind, buried in the years along with Jonesy’s phone with the Star Wars sticker on it (how they had all envied that phone), and Beaver’s jacket of many zippers, and Pete’s sweater with the NASA logo on the breast. Buried in the years. Some dreams die and fall free, that is another of the world’s bitter truths. How many bitter truths there are

Dreamcatcher, he thought, and once more his head filled up with Henry’s past, almost drowning him in the sights and sounds and smells of that day on the edge of summer

Hyped as he was, everything stood out with brilliant, exclamatory clarity. All the orange jackets and hats! he thought. Man! It’s Halloween in hell!

“Bite shit and die,” Henry said—one of the Beav’s better efforts—and picked up the package. He held it out to the armed and masked men in front of him, smiling. “I come in peace for all mankind,” he said. “Who wants a hot dog?”

all the world a dead socket, his own mind a dead socket and oh baby it was a thousand years till dawn and all lullabys had been cancelled.

Change will come upon them sudden and unannounced, as it always does with children

“I’m fine both days this weekend,” he says. “If I was to come by Saturday? At ten?”