Jim Grimsley - Dream Boy

Once, in the afternoon, Nathan returns to the house, tiptoeing across the back porch and through the open door. Mom lurks in the kitchen like a shadow. Dad's cigarette smoke curls in the motionless air, drifting from the direction of the living room. The weight of his presence drags Nathan as if toward orbit. Mom asks, silently, Where have you been? Will you come home? Nathan eats the lunch of soup and crackers, answers, silently, I won't tell you where I am because you might tell him. The softness at the center of her face houses her pain. But she accepts the silence and turns away, and Nathan, hearing the heavy footfall of his father, hurries to the yard again.

"Is that Nate?" Dad's voice echoes behind, but diminished. In the yard, where October is draining the leaves from green to brown, Nathan sidles along the hedge, out of sight of the windows.

Roy appears suddenly near the barn. He carries a pail in each hand. His flannel shirt is buttoned to the neck, the sleeves rolled to the elbow. He marches from the barn door to the chicken house, boots crunching the gravel. Nathan's heart beats fast at the sight. But Roy retreats into the murk of the chicken house without a word. Stung, Nathan hurries to the pond.

In the afternoon he tries to sleep for a while, making a bed of the blanket and wrapping it around his shoulders. He has not thought far ahead. He stretches out on the blanket and uses his schoolbooks for a pillow. Lying in such a way that he can still survey the pond, he has only to lift his head. He closes his eyes. Sounds follow, and he jerks his eyes open and scans his part of the world. One after another sounds intrude: a broken branch as if a foot were stepping on it, the similarity of something to a cough, the shrill cry of a bird, or the wail of distant wildcat. His eyes come open for each sound no matter how tired or near sleep he is. He scans the edge of the pond for his father. He cannot feel safe.

Twilight finds him curled against a tree, hoping he will not get redbugs this late in the year. He has begun, dully, to consider how he will pass the night.

Night descends like a sharpened blade. Leaving the graves for the first time since afternoon, Nathan waits near the cluster of farm buildings. Early autumn brings a chill to the evening, and Nathan's thin shirt retains sparse heat. But the sensation of cold reaches him as if from far away. The facts of dusk surround him. Lights burn in the kitchens of his house and of Roy's. Roy's father ambles idly in the driveway, under western ranges of rose stained clouds. Roy's mother hovers in the square of light over the kitchen sink, dismantling the remains of the family supper. The rolls of fat over her elbows shiver back and forth.

Later, Roy lopes out of the house and drives away in the truck. A baseball cap obscures his face.

Mom appears on Nathan's porch, wringing her hands anxiously in a dishtowel. She scans the distant fields. She is afraid to call for Nathan, because of Dad. But Nathan's supper is cooling minute by minute, and soon she opens the screen door and leans out. The plaintive sound flies across the farm. Nathan relents.

When he enters the kitchen, she moves without speaking to serve him food. Even the backs of her hands seem pale and drawn. She is cautious to meet his eye. Dad reads the Bible in the living room. His rhythmic mumbling cannot be mistaken. Now and then the sound stops, the page turns. Once, while Nathan eats, Dad steps into the doorway. The tug of his watching pulls fiercely, and Nathan shivers. Mother stands between the two, uncertain.

"Nathan is home," Dad says. "I'm glad." Then he returns to the living room with his back bowed. His mumbling ecstasy resumes. Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and holdfast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.

Nathan eats, hardly tasting. Mother turns her back.

After supper, Nathan steps onto the porch, studying the darkness that has settled over the world. The wind sharpens. Cold stars wheel in the sky. Nathan advances to the screen door, tests the air. The cold change of wind soaks him. He had thought about sleeping outside, but the chill of the wind decides the issue for him. He will face the house for the night.

In the kitchen he finds a ball of twine in his mother's drawer of odds and ends. Climbing softly upstairs, he takes a deep breath, bouncing the twine in his hand.

He ties one cord across the doorway, using the hinge and a low nail in the wall. He ties another cord from the bedpost to the same nail. About the height of a man's midcult. It is as if he has already prepared the plan. But even with the trip cord set, he will not dare the bed, which has been a trap in the past. He makes himself a pallet in the darkest corner of the room and sleeps there.

He adjusts to the hardness of the floor beneath the quilt. The odd perspective of the room requires study. The floor under the bed needs sweeping. Cobwebs under his desk catch light. He fluffs his pillow, closes his eyes.

It is difficult to keep his eyes closed. Like in the graveyard that afternoon, every sound jerks him awake again. Every creaking of the house is a footstep, every murmur of wood a voice. But he hardly slept the night before, and soon the need for rest overtakes him, even on the hard floor, even keeping watch.

At first, deep sleep. Then a new sense, a presence. At first the presence seems dreamy, unreal, and then there is a change. The surface of the dream becomes the room in which he sleeps. Nathan needs to take a deep breath but there is a weight on his chest. A sound, a door that creaks when it opens. He wakens to a crash as Dad, at some wee hour of morning, falls face forward into the room, feet bundled in twine. Dad cries in fear and rage. The sudden image reverberates, the shadow of the father falling, the loud slamming of his body onto floorboards, followed by harsh groans of surprise and pain. The image replays again and again as Nathan flees through the door, slipping down the stairs and nearly slamming into the white gowned figure of Mother, emerging from her bedroom.

She asks something, but Nathan hurls himself through the house without answering. Did he touch you?

He bursts through the screen door into the wet grass. Burning stars herald the stranger part of morning. He runs along the hedge in the shadow. He sees the light in his own bedroom window. By the time the images clarify in his mind, he has passed the bam and runs, out of sight of both houses, toward the lake and the familiar path to the cemetery.

He finds his blanket and sits against the trunk of the water oak. He is shivering, his teeth chattering, he cannot get warm. He huddles with the quilt drawn up to his nose and his knees tucked under his chin, in the shadow of the tree with the view of the whole pond. For a while he thinks his father is searching for him but Nathan, patient, remains perfectly motionless. He can see the stars over the trees and notes the changes as the hours pass. Soon, whatever search was undertaken is abandoned. Nathan is alone, waiting.

At dawn he rouses with no awareness of having rested. Light rainbows along the horizon. Along the shore of the pond, heavy feet are walking. Distant, Dad clears his throat. The sound strikes Nathan with a cold hand. He remains motionless, partially sheltered by a tombstone. Feet are treading on dry leaves, in tangled grass. Across the pond Dad's dark figure flows along the water, walking with a bewildered slope to his shoulders.

For safety there is the whole width of the pond and the fact of black water. Dad's search already falters. He steps along the lake shore brushing aside low hanging branches. Nathan flattens on the ground. Dad steps forward and stops. He studies the forest. He heads back to the house but stops again, straightens, as if he has taken a breath of youth. It's almost as if he knows where Nathan hides, as if by scent or sixth sense he can feel his son's presence across the water. For Nathan, the fear becomes vivid. But the cemetery neither beckons nor sways him. He stands like an intruder, the lowering shadows of branches across his face, his arms. His stance weakens, his back bends, he returns to the house. Where he will, no doubt, drink a little, then dress for church.

Nathan steps into the kitchen and closes the door.

The fact that the curtains have been drawn carefully across the windows changes the room. Something about the light reminds him of water, pools of water. There is even the sound of water, the faucet dripping, added to the almost inaudible murmuring of the television in the nearby room. But the house radiates a peace only possible when it is empty. This is Sunday morning, and Dad and Mom have gone to take their places on pews at the Piney Grove Baptist Church, Dad to nod, entranced, while Mr. John Roberts speaks the gospel.

Since he is alone, he dares to go to the room he usually avoids. In the living room the curtains have also been drawn, not quite closed all the way, and gashes of sunlight fall through, slanting across the couch, across the coffee table and the open family Bible. Dad has left the television to play for the empty room, volume low, pale images flickering.

In the bedroom that opens onto the kitchen, his parents' bed is neatly made. The remnants of perfume and aftershave mingle and drift. Mom has let open her round box of talcum powder on the dresser, and a brooch lies near it, reflecting a moment of light. The room comprises its shadows, surfaces, scents; nothing here can be touched. They have slept on the bed but all evidence has been concealed between the neatly squared chenille spread, the high fluffed pillows. He pictures them lying side by side on their backs, eyes closed, hands folded across their chests.