Sweet Dream Baby (24 page)

When we get home from the river, Grandpa comes out of the bedroom and watches us climb the stairs. We're halfway up when he says, “Are you all right, Delia?”

Delia turns and smiles. “I'm fine, Daddy. It's just so hot. I can't wait for the fall to come.”

Grandpa Hollister looks at me and says, “Travis, your dad called while you were out. He's got you booked on a flight next Monday.”

I know I'm supposed to smile and say I'm glad. Say I miss my dad and mom, and I'm happy to be going home. But all I can think is: Thursday. Today's Thursday. That means only four more days with Delia. I'm thinking too many things at once: about finding a way to stay here, about what I'll do for my mom when I get home, about what Delia might do here without me.

Grandpa Hollister says, “Travis, I'm talking to you.”

I say, “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” I don't know what else to say. I turn and look at Delia standing a few risers above me on the stairs.

She says, “Daddy, he doesn't know what to say. A summer's a long time when you're his age, and this is home to him now.”

She looks at Grandpa Hollister like no one else in the world can look at him, and he looks back the same way. The first day I came here, Delia drove the white Chevy into the garage too fast. Then she jumped out and kissed Grandpa Hollister, and his eyes said she could burn down the house and he wouldn't care. He'd do anything for another kiss like that.

My Grandpa Hollister takes off his steel wire glasses and rubs them on the front of his white shirt. He puts them back on and looks at me. “His home is with his mother and father, Delia. You know that, and so does he.”

• • •

That night I go to Delia's room. It's late, and everything's quiet downstairs. I stand by her bed and wait. I can tell by her breathing she's awake. I wait, but she doesn't speak. I reach out and hover my hand over her face, feeling the heat of her skin rise through the still air, feeling her breath. Finally, she lifts her arm to her eyes, and her hand falls on her neck, and I know she's turning the gold cross in her fingers. She says, “I can't tonight, Travis. I just can't.”

I say, “Please.”

I'm thinking: Four days. Four days with Delia.

She lets go of the cross and turns away from me to the window, and I hear her whisper, “I can't. I'm sorry.”

I stand there for a while looking at the dark pool of her hair on the white pillow, the curve of her shoulder in the moonlight from the window. I can smell her perfume and her shampoo and her secret skin, and I think this is the place on Earth I want to be when the Russians drop the big bomb. I'd die happy here.

I walk out into the hallway and see dark motion to my right, something rising from the black well of the stairs. I turn toward the bathroom, walking quietly, slowly. I open the bathroom door and go in and turn on the light. I count ten, then flush the toilet, turn off the light, and walk out into the hallway. My heart booms in my ears like the bass drum in a circus band. I see it at the top of the stairs, the narrow comb of black hair, the shaved rails of white along the sides. It's my Grandpa Hollister standing there with his eyes at floor level, skimming them at my feet as I step into my room.

• • •

The next night in my sleep I hear it, a whine and a Pop-Pop-Pop. It's coming from the corner down by the Hatcher's house, and that means he'll be passing my window soon. I swim to the surface where asleep and awake meet like water and air, and I push out of bed and start for the window. When my feet hit the floor, I stop.

Delia's in my room. She's standing at my window looking out. She's in her bra and underpants, and she's looking through the open window so hard she doesn't hear me come up behind her. When I put my hand on her shoulder, she shivers, but she doesn't look at me. I look over her shoulder at midnight-blue metal and red flames and a white T-shirt and a glowing red cigarette. I see his white face looking up at our window. When he hits the corner at the far end of our street, the rod's engine backs down again, Pop-Pop-Pop.

Delia turns to me, and her eyes are tired in the moonlight. She's lost more weight. All her jeans are loose on her. I say, “He'll never leave you alone now.”

She nods. “I know.”

• • •

Beulah and Caroline come over to talk about Bick. Caroline says she never knew what death was until she saw Bick's coffin. She says she's sure gonna slow down and not drive so fast.

Beulah says, “You better slow down a lot of things, Girl.”

Caroline says for a week after the funeral her mother snuck into her room late at night to see if she was still breathing.

Beulah says her father read in the
Atlanta Constitution
about a high school boy who went up into the north Georgia mountains and jumped from a cliff into the Chattooga River. He kept his clothes on, though.

They both watch Delia. They want her to tell them what Bick's death means, to make it as true as the radio. Delia looks at them, and her eyes go a little crazy, and she shakes her head slow. They think she's too sad about Bick to say anything. I know she's thinking how stupid they are, and how they don't learn anything from what happens to them.

Delia gets up and turns on the radio. It's playing, “Dream Baby.” I remember asking Delia if Bick was a dreamboat, and her saying I'm one, too. Delia stands in the middle of her room with her eyes closed and Caroline and Beulah watching, and she starts to sway. She sways to the music for a while, and then she reaches out her arms like she's dancing with someone. The radio says, “Sweet dreams baby, got me dreaming sweet dreams, the whole night through. Sweet dreams baby, got me dreaming sweet dreams, in the daytime too. How long must I dream?” She holds her arms out like that, swaying until even her fingers move like she's holding someone. Some dance partner in a dream. I look over at Caroline and Beulah, and they've both got tears in their eyes.

• • •

Delia and I walk downtown to pick up some things for Marvadell at the mercantile. Walking back with our packages, we pass Tolbert's. We go in for a Coke. Mrs. Sifford's there. I know Delia wants to leave as soon as we see her, but it wouldn't look right to turn and go. So we go to the fountain and ask Mr. Tolbert for Cokes and sit with our legs dangling into the room.

Mrs. Sifford sits in the same booth Bick and Ronny used the first day I met them. She doesn't touch the cup of coffee in front of her. She's dressed up like she's going to Panama City, or even Tallahassee, but she isn't. The town talks about how she's been acting since Bick died. Always dressing up in her best clothes but never going anywhere. Beulah and Caroline say she thinks nice clothes will keep bad things from happening to her. She's wearing a pink suit with big covered buttons down the front, and pink shoes made of shiny cloth, and a pink hat that looks to me like a puff pastry. She's got on a lot of makeup, but her face still looks like it's coming apart.

I'm hoping we can drink our Cokes and go before she sees us. It doesn't look like she's seeing anything but the black pool in her coffee cup. Delia hasn't looked at her since we first came in. She's drawing Coke through her straw, trying to finish fast.

When Mrs. Sifford finally looks over at Delia, there's no mistaking what's in her eyes. It's recognition. She sees in Delia something she knows well. I sit there hoping it's just sadness she's seeing. Delia hasn't looked at her yet, or isn't going to show she has. I wait. Mrs. Sifford says, “Delia Hollister, I haven't seen you since the dance at our house. I know you were at Bick's funeral, but I…I wasn't seeing very well that day. I couldn't name ten people I saw there.” Her voice is so cheery and crisp, it gives me the creeps.

Delia looks over at her, and the smile she drags to her face makes them look like mother and daughter. She says, “How are you, Mrs. Sifford?”

Mrs. Sifford's brittle smile gets bigger. Her eyelids flutter, and she says, “Oh, I've been…Well, you know, I…” Her hands shake as she picks up her purse and gets to her feet. She wobbles on her high heels, steadies, and starts toward us. Behind us, Mr. Tolbert backs away. The sink where he washes glasses with his back to the counter is his usual post when people need privacy. But there's a little store room behind the fountain, and now I hear his feet sliding through the door and it closing behind him.

Mrs. Sifford stands in front of Delia and me. “Delia, you knew Bick.”

Delia nods looking into the Coke glass in her lap.

Mrs. Sifford says, “For a while, I thought maybe you and he were…. Well, never mind that. But you knew him, and I wonder if there's anything you can tell me. Anything you noticed about him. Anything he said that…?”

It's all coming apart. It's still holding—eyes, voice, hair, hat, and suit—but not for long. Delia's got to speak, but she can't. I look over at her, and her face is coming apart like Mrs. Sifford's. I'm going to have to do something, say something. I decide to wait a few more heartbeats before I do, but Delia pushes off the stool and runs for the door.

I get up, dig in my pocket for some money, drop it on the counter without counting, and say to Mrs. Sifford, “I'm sorry, ma'am, but I've got to go.” Then, for some reason, I stop straining toward the door, the sidewalk where I see Delia's long legs in faded blue jeans walking fast, and I say, “I'm just…sorry.”

I have to pull myself out of her eyes before I drown. It's so deep and far and sad in there, I hope I never have to see anything like it again. She starts to say something back, but I'm running, and I'm halfway caught up with Delia before I realize what I said to Mrs. Sifford.
I said, I'm sorry.

• • •

That night I wake up late with the words,
two more days
, singing in my head. It's a mad, sad song, and I can't stand any more of it. I've been thinking maybe she won't let me come to her again, and that will kill me. It's like being born and then told you have to go back to what was before, back to not born, back to alive but not in life. That night we did it together was the beginning of my life. I go to Delia's room for the thing I have to have.

It's a still, clear night with a big white moon, but I wish it was raining. I wish there was a storm, another big blue howler pounding up out of the Gulf of Mexico. I walk soft-soled to the head of the stairs and look down. The house is quiet. I don't know if Grandpa is home or out patrolling. He makes it hard to know on purpose. He's been coming upstairs a lot lately. Last night I heard his soft walking out in the hall, heard him go to Delia's door and stop and listen, heard him at my door listening, then going back downstairs.

At Delia's door, I listen. The radio's playing low: “When I want you, in the night. When I want you, to hold me tight. Whenever I want you, all I have to do is dream.” I go in and walk to her bed. She's lying with her back to me. But she's like a radio, and I know my song is coming through. I put my hand on her shoulder, and she turns. Moonlight falling through the oak branches shows me her face. I think I see a smile, but it's hard to tell. I know now that a smile can say anything from hate to love. I whisper, “Can we tonight?”

She looks at me for a long time. Her eyes are wide, and her cheeks are hollow, and her face in the moonlight might be made of bone. She says, “Travis, what we did wasn't good for you. Don't you know that yet?”

I know she's right and wrong. I know that growing and knowing are good and bad. I know what the preacher meant now when he said, “The end of man is knowledge.” I say, “I love you, Delia, and it can't be bad.”

She shakes her head on the pillow. Black hair thrashes around her face. She says, “I love you, too, and I wish more than anything in the world that we could have been your age together or my age together. You'd be my dreamboat then, but look at us now. We can't keep doing this.”

I know I have to go back to Omaha. I have to go back and take care of my mother, but I'm coming back to Widow Rock. I'm coming back for Delia. I say, “We can. We have to. I'm leaving on Monday.”

She reaches out and touches my forehead. Her fingers are cool and light, and they burn the name of what we've done into my skin. She says, “I want you to leave with some good memories of me, Travis. If we…stay apart tonight, that'll be a good memory, don't you think?”

I shake my head until her fingers fall from me. I take her hand and put her fingers to my mouth and kiss them. “No,” is all I say. I want her so bad I'll die. I stand there holding her hand, sending her the message of my love. Finally, she sighs and moves over and says, “All right, Travis, my dreamboat. Just once more. Once more before you leave.”

• • •

I wake up in Delia's bed. I don't know how long I've slept, or what time it is, but I know what I have to do. I lift a handful of her fragrant black hair to my face and then kiss her once on the temple. She doesn't wake. I slip out of bed and go to her vanity table and find her purse, then I go to my room and dress.

Downstairs, I stand among the familiar shapes of the dark living room listening for any sound from Grandpa and Grandma Hollister's bedroom. When I hear Grandma Hollister say, “What? What?” and hear her roll over heavy and unrested in their bed, I soft-sole through the dining room into the kitchen. The screen door groans like a man with a toothache, but I don't care. Outside, the wind is rising, and the oak branches are singing about big weather coming.

I push the white Chevy down the driveway and jump in. I back all the way down the hill to the Hatcher's house before I start the engine.

I kill the headlights and let the Chevy roll to a stop a hundred yards from Griner's old, tin-roofed farm house. Griner's street rod is parked beside the house, but the other car is gone, the blue Plymouth that belongs to the blond boy, Randle. The house is dark, but there's a light on in the barn. I slip out of the Chevy and walk past the house with the tattered window screens hanging down its sides. I stop beside the street rod and look inside at the fuzzy white dice that hang from the mirror and the knob attached to the steering wheel so you can steer with one hand and the white skull for a gearshift handle. There are some paperback books on the passenger seat, and I think, “His friends. He rides with these books, so he's not alone.”

From here on, I have to be careful. I walk along the two-rut track to the old barn and stop under the block and tackle. An engine hangs from it dead heavy in the night, even though the rising wind is moving the limbs of the big oak that supports it. I look up at the eight empty cylinders, then down at the puddle of oil on the ground. A few steps closer and I can hear the radio playing through the two big, swung-open barn doors. I can't make out the song, but it's something slow and dreamy. The kind of song Delia says you dance to late at night, just before they turn out the lights in the gym and send everyone home.

I turn to my right, away from the music and the light that falls from the doors. In the moon shadows, I step slowly into a farmer's field until my feet hit an old, rusted-down fence. There I turn again toward the barn. I crouch and crab-walk to a side window. I squat and then slowly rise to the windowsill. Through the dusty pane, I see a lightbulb hanging from a wire above the raised hood of an old black Ford. I think it's a '52, but I'm not sure. There are benches along three walls covered with tools, parts, batteries, rags, stacks of oil cans, and old tires. Another wire runs from a socket above the bench to a light that hangs by a hook from the open hood, shining down on the car engine.

The radio is loud enough to hear through the window: “When the night has come, and the land is dark, and the moon is the only light we'll see. No I won't be afraid, no I won't shed a tear, just as long as you stand by me.” I squat at the window with the light cutting across the sill into my eyes, wondering what to do now. I can't see Griner. Maybe he's not even here. Maybe he left the light on and the radio playing and went off somewhere. Maybe it's somebody else in there, the blond boy, Randle, or one of their friends.

With my back pressed to the barn wall, I side-step to the front, turn the corner, and peek through the inch of light where one of the big doors hinges. I can see the rear end of the car and something on the floor beyond it, a boot maybe, but I can't really tell. I come out around the door and side-step into the light that falls from the front of the barn. I'm sweating now. The wind from the storm that's coming cools me, but the light on my skin feels even colder.

Someone in the house could see me now. Someone driving by on the road two hundred yards away might even see me. Crouching, I move into the barn and stop. I see the radio on the bench across from the little window. Griner's cigarettes, lighter, and a half-empty bottle of Coke sit beside it. I creep soft another two feet, and I see his legs sticking out from under the car. He's lying on a piece of greasy canvas with tools and parts spread out around him, and I can see his stomach in the white T-shirt moving up and down with his effort as he fixes the Ford.

Three more steps, and I can hear him humming with the radio: “If the sky we look upon should tumble and fall, and the mountains should crumble to the sea. I won't cry, I won't cry, no I won't shed a tear, just as long as you stand by me.” I move quietly to the bench where the radio rests, and I listen for its message.

I have to protect Delia. My mind spins with pictures: me and Delia in the white Chevy cruising the night roads with the wind full of a music only we understand, me and Delia in the river, our wet mouths passing hot breath across the cold water, our hands touching secrets under the water, Delia and Bick lying like one wedded thing on the white rock in the moonlight, their bodies moving like the storm trees move outside my window, Bick dancing silent on the edge of the rock and falling the same way, the blood prints my feet made on the limestone as I ran at him, me and Delia in her bed, falling together into the wild dream of boy and girl.

Griner's Zippo lighter is in my hand before the idea is clear in my head.

I pick up a red, two-gallon gas can. It's heavy, and as I twist the cap, metal scrapes on metal. I stop when the radio stops, and the disk jockey talks. I twist the cap again when another song starts: “Hello, Mary Lou, good-bye heart. Sweet Mary Lou I swore we'd never part.” I pour the gas along the dirt floor under the bench. The smell rises strong to my nostrils, and I look over quick at Griner's legs, but they don't move. He's still humming. He grunts, and his stomach muscles swell when he pushes hard on a wrench under there.

I pour the first two gallons along the wall under the bench. I pick up the second can, wait for the music, and open it. I pour it along the front of the barn and up the far side until it runs out. The third can is only half full, so I just tip it over under the window where I first looked in.

The smell is so powerful now mixed with the fear and the music, the skin on my forehead starts to throb, and my feet don't touch ground as I move quietly back to the door. I look at Griner's legs, his greasy engineer boots, the cuffs of his jeans full of holes from putting out cigarettes. I wait. I don't know what I'm waiting for. I only came here to talk to him, at least that's what I told myself driving out here through the night fields, passing the white, astonished faces of the cattle, watching the white moon rise out of the dark land.

I open the Zippo lighter, and another song begins. “Every night, I hope and pray, a dream lover will come my way. A girl to hold in my arms, to know the magic of her charms. 'Cause I want a girl to call my own. I want a dream lover, so I don't have to dream alone. Dream lover where are you, with a love oh so true, and a hand that I can hold, through the years as I grow old.”

I'd talk to him, I told myself, and I'd know what to say when the time came. But the time came, and I had no idea what to say. The time came, and the music told me love never ends, and we dream awake and asleep, and nothing can stop his wanting her. Nothing can keep him away from her.

Griner's Zippo shines in the light, and I step outside the wet, three-sided figure made of gasoline. I strike the lighter at the wrong moment. There's no music, no disk jockey talking. It's all quiet, dead air. Griner stops humming. I hear him say, “Hey? That you, Randle? Don't you be bumming my cigarettes, now.”

I kneel and hold the small blue flame above the wet place in the earth. My hand is shaking. It shakes the flame up and down, and the gas awakes with a ripping sound, and it rushes right and left in front of me like something terrified, something escaping into the night. When it hits the place where the third can lies overturned, there's a boom and a rush of air, and I'm lying on my back in the dust with the shock of a fist in my chest watching the red gas can fall from the rafters onto the roof of the Ford.

I get to my feet in the dust and run to the first door and swing it shut. I run to the second and swing it shut, and my last glimpse of Griner is of a white face wide open with a scream I can't hear and blue flame feathering along his arms as he tries to fan them, tries to fly. I shut the second door and lean all my weight to it just as Griner slams his body against the other side. I can hear him screaming now. Wordless words, things without names, places in hell.

I push back at him as hard as I can, but he's winning.

There's a hand on my shoulder.

The hand throws me back, and I roll in the dust looking up at long legs in black trousers, a white shirt. Grandpa Hollister has an ax in his hands. He raises it over his head, and I know he's going to chop the door open, but then he tilts it parallel to the earth and shoves it between the two handles of the barn door.

Griner screams and pushes, and the door buckles and rumbles, but he can't fight the ax holding the two door handles together. Grandpa Hollister walks to his right, toward the little window, and I get up and follow him. I stand there beside him watching the storm of flame.

Things too heavy to float in water—cans and bottles and tools—rise on the power of the fire. I want to run away, but I can't. I know we have to get out of here. This light can be seen for miles. I know I'll be lucky if I get the white Chevy two miles away from here before somebody comes. But I can't leave. I can't believe how fast it all goes up. The old pitch-pine boards of the barn, the greasy rags, the cans of oil erupting and exploding, the hot air driving straight up with the pounding sound of a locomotive engine.

The hand's on my shoulder again. I know it's God reaching down to take me to the place where I'm told what happens to people like me. But when I look up, it's only Grandpa Hollister. And he's not looking at me. He's looking into the fire. We stand there together, and his grip is hard on my shoulder like the first day I met him, and he stood me in front of him and told me to call him sir and said he'd treat me like my father did: like a boy who took responsibility for his actions.

It's getting hot where we are. The fire is eating up the sides of the barn in front of us now. I put out my hand, and the boards are too hot to touch. Black snakes of smoke hiss and crawl out between the slats. I look up at Grandpa Hollister, and I see him reach into the pocket of his black coat. He takes out a piece of paper. He unfolds it and holds it out in front of me. I try to take it, but he won't let go.

“Read it,” he says.

I read it.

Delia,

Meet me tonight behind the gas station, 9:00. I'll be waiting in my car. Don't bring the little boy you like so much. Come or the whole town will know how you like to swim.

When I finish, Grandpa Hollister says, “Do you understand, Travis?”

I look up at him. I nod.

She took it with her when she went to meet Bick behind the ESSO station. She left it in the red Oldsmobile. And that's where my Grandpa Hollister found it when he went out to Widow Rock and brought the car back.

My Grandpa Hollister holds the paper in his right hand, he reaches into his pants pocket with his left and takes out the thing Griner called his knuckle-duster. It's the leather-covered club with the long, braided lanyard. He punches the club at the window in front of us, and the hot pane snaps like a pistol shot, and the broken glass is sucked inside, and we stand there in the wild breath of the fire. The fire tries to suck the whole windy night into the garage where Griner is trying to fly.

My Grandpa Hollister holds the paper out to the broken pane and lets it flutter there in the firebreath, then he lets it go, and we both watch it explode and rise as nothing but fine black dust in all that flame.

Grandpa Hollister puts away his knuckle-duster, and the hand comes back to my shoulder. He pulls me back from the fiery window. We walk out into the old field. When we get to the rusted-down fence, he squats in front of me and looks into my eyes. “We have to get out of here right now. Can you drive back to town?”

Of course I can drive. I got here, didn't I?

I just say, “Yes, sir.”

“All right, follow me.”

He gets up and starts loping his long stiff frame toward the Buick parked next to Delia's white Chevy. I run a few steps and stop. I run back to the barn doors and pull the ax from the two handles. I throw the ax out into the yard and take off running after my Grandpa Hollister's long, black legs.

We don't go home the way I came. He takes me out to the county hardroad, and we turn away from town. I follow his red taillights through a tangle of country roads only he knows, and the storm is boiling black on the horizon to the south, and the trees along the narrow roads bend and groan, and the air at my window is cold from miles high in the sky. We circle out and come back to town just as morning comes on the same road we took my first day here. The one that crosses the bridge over the Hiawassee River where the sign says, Welcome to Widow Rock.

We get home before anybody's up, and we sneak into the house together. The last I see of him that early morning, he's standing at his bedroom door looking back at me. His eyes tell me we have a secret, and it will lie in our hearts untold on the days we die.

I'm in the kitchen washing the soot from my arms and face when Marvadell comes in the back door singing one of her over Jordan songs. She stops short, scared when she sees me. “Chile, what you doin' in my kitchen this time of the moanin?”

I say, “I got up early and I went outside and got dirty, and I'm washing up down here so Grandpa won't know.” It's the voice of a boy who isn't anymore, and it sounds strange to me. But not to her.

She looks at me from way up high in the air over Jordan, and then she remembers our conspiracy against Grandpa Hollister, and she smiles and says, “All right, Travis, Honey. You get along now. I'll clean up down here.”

Upstairs, I go to Delia's door. I listen. I raise my hand to knock, but I don't. My hand still smells of smoke. I think: Let her dream.

When I crawl into bed, I know I'll be getting up in an hour, and I know I won't be able to sleep. My eyes are too full of fire for that. But I close them and try anyway, and the storm breaks over our house, and over all of Widow Rock. I lie there with my eyes closed, seeing the rain roll on over the town, roll on over the farms and fields until it puts out Griner's fire. I see it wash away the footprints and the tire tracks, too, until all that's left is an accident. Something that happened to a poor boy nobody cared much about.