Jim Grimsley - Dream Boy

It surprises Nathan, that he can hear his own skull crack. The last motion he sees is the chair leg falling into the center of his face. A hole opens up in his head, and the wind touches his brain. He is never sure when Burke leaves, whether he dresses first or carries his clothes. The night lasts a long time. He cannot rest.

After daylight Roy and Randy find him. Sun enters through the same windows that admitted moonlight the night before, and a bar of sunlight falls straight across Nathan. But he is still cold. He wishes for a blanket. There might be something in the room, he remembers falling into cloth, but he is too sore to move.

Roy's shadow crosses the attic floorboards. He stands there looking at Nathan. There is something ridiculous about him, it is really funny that Roy can look so helpless like this. He simply stands there. Randy comes up behind him and looks down and says, "Jesus." He stares at Nathan too. Somehow this all seems natural, even the fact that Nathan cannot move, cannot find his mouth, cannot acknowledge them. Then Randy heaves and doubles up and turns. Roy kneels. Touching Nathan's arm as he has done many times. Perfectly blank and listless, staring at the air over Nathan's head, he shakes his head once, as if to clear it.

Randy says, "Jesus. He's dead, ain't he? Just like Burke said."

"His arm is cold." "Look at his face."

Roy swallows. Tears are sliding down his cheeks. "Find something to cover him up. I can't stand to see him lying here like this."

"I swear, I can't look at him."

"Get me that cloth over there. Hand it to me. You don't have to look at him."

He sits there. His eyes are glazed. He takes the cloth from behind. With careful gentleness he spreads the fabric over Nathan, tucking it around his feet, across his shoulders. "I don't want to cover your face."

"What?" Randy asks.

"Nothing." He stands. His voice cascades downward. "You better go ahead with Burke. You better go now and get a head start."

"You think it happened like Burke said?"

"I don't trust nothing Burke said. Go on. Now."

Randy slides away. A long time passes. Roy sits against one of the posts, tucked tight into a ball. After a while this is almost comfortable, and even this seems natural to Nathan, who is still cold, who still cannot move.

He has the sense of lines dividing once more, of himself as if he is sleeping, peaceful as if he is lying on a shore listening to the waves of a sea.

He has gotten confused. There are people in the house, more than he can count, passing beneath in the corridors and outside along the porches. Voices of people everywhere, on every side, black voices and white voices, echoing.

He cannot tell whether time is passing or whether he is lying in it perfectly still.

Roy is hovering above him. Nathan knows it is a memory and he should not open himself to that. But he lets himself see Roy, the clean sad face hanging like a cloud.

Then his father replaces Roy, who has disappeared. Dad jerks the cloth off Nathan. It is a cold day, Nathan is very cold now, he is not sure what day it is, and Dad is taking off the cloth that keeps him warm. Flashlights are trained on Nathan to augment afternoon light. Dad is not alone, there are other voices, other men, and the crackling of a radio. Dad is looking down at him. This is not a memory but something else. Can Dad see the hole? Surely he can.

For a moment fear returns, as vivid as in the house in Rose Hill. It is as if this is the father of that night, a long time ago, with that father's younger bones and smoother skin. He with his flat belly and strong hands leans over Nathan, and there is something tender and sorrowful in his expression. Nathan wonders how Dad got here. Nathan wonders what Dad will want to do this time. Will it make any difference that Nathan has a hole in his skull?

But instead, Dad places the cloth over him tenderly. It is like a vision from some time in the future, or like something out of a dream. Dad covers Nathan's face with the gauzy cloth and Nathan is grateful for the thought of the quiet whiteness that waits beneath it. Except, just at the moment the cloth settles over him forever, he sees Roy waiting behind Dad, his face emerging out of the shadow, drawn and gaunt. The sight fills Nathan with a longing he can hardly contain.

He will shake his head to free himself. He has practiced the gesture for most of his life, he will find it easy. When he does, he will be in the present again, and he will be awake, and Dad will be nowhere near. He will shake his head, and sit up in the attic, and find Roy.

His mouth is dry and his lips are caked with blood.

The soft glow of early morning fills the attic. Light outlines the angled roof, ceiling beams, old boxes, an open steamer trunk littered with rat shit.

He stands carefully. His joints are stiff and sore but the pain is not so much.

Kneeling slowly, he peers out a window that offers a view of the side yard facing the barn, the path leading to the slave houses.

His head aches. When he touches it the flesh is very sore and tender. Blood is caked in clumps in his hair.

The bottle of liquor stands on the floor, in the same place where Burke left it. There is still liquor in the bottle.

Where he was lying, by the support beam, more blood has dried, in the vague outline of himself.

Is he trapped here? At first he is afraid he will not be able to leave the attic. But he finds the exit easily. The doorknob, solid to his touch, turns, he opens the door and descends.

The attic stair leads him down to the second story. The adjacent service stair has been boarded shut, and he can descend no further in that direction. So he picks a path down the upstairs corridors. He finds rooms from the night before. He finds the doll's foot, clean and shining. He finds the chair facing the fireplace, the room flooded with fight, the stain on the fabric clearly outlined. Nathan descends in perfect silence along the grand staircase into the vaulted foyer with the water pooled at the bottom, the fallen floor sagging toward earth. The room seems very beautiful and sweetly perfumed. Nathan wanders along the walls, careful of where he steps. He slips through the parlor, the library, into the back of the house, the ballroom with its sealed windows, the adjacent service rooms. Daylight trickles through the shutters. Ivy crawls the inner walls.

He finds the place they must have hidden, he and Roy. The room is plain and ordinary, a bedroom or even a storeroom. Smaller than it seemed in the dark. Something about the place draws him to stay. He stands where he stood when Roy knelt in front of him.

He explores further, rooms they missed when they were wandering in the dark. The house is larger than it seems. He has the feeling he could wander here, for a long time, so he is very careful to keep his bearings. The empty house welcomes him, yields itself to him. He visits the service rooms in the rear, the wrecked dining room, rooms that seem to have no purpose at all. But the end of his wanderings find him where he meant to be, in the room on the second floor where the tree has fallen against the house.

He stands near the open window, taking deep breaths of fresh air. His head is clearing. There is only one way to find out if he can leave the house, he sticks his head through the window, pushes with his arms, crawls over the sill. Aside from the fact that his limbs are stiff and sore, he exits without hindrance. He stands on the porch breathing the brisk morning air, autumn in the woods.

He walks through the garden at the side of the house. Many more of the flowers are blooming in the yard than he remembers from the day before, the garden a mix of well tended and wild. There are evening primrose, senna, asters, verbena, elecampane, gay feather, spiderflower, goldenrod, cone flowers, bottle gentian, ironweed, queen of the meadow, boneset, yarrow, cornflowers, false foxglove, turtleheads, and sunflowers. Names learned from his mother, remembered vividly. For a time he wonders if he will find her wandering here, reciting these names to herself. This would be her place. But the garden is deserted. He meanders among the wild flowerbeds, searching for the gate.

Morning sun floods the front yard. Out there is the creek and the place where they camped.

He walks to the campsite. His progress is slow at first, his limbs resist every motion, as if cracking, breaking, with each step. But the sunlight helps, and so does the cool creek water, bathing his cracked lips. He soaks his hair but can only begin to get rid of the blood. The ache of cold water on the bone is unendurable. The campsite is deserted. It might have been used a hundred years ago. Yet the ashes in the circle are still warm.

He leaves the vicinity of the house. It is as if he has been walking for a century at least. Down the remnants of Poke's Road he passes the uprooted tree. Soon he leaves sight of the lane of sentinel oaks, retracing the path of the morning walk that seems so long ago.

He rests in the clearing where Burke took off his shirt and drank liquor. He walks near the creek there, haunting the place. He soaks more of the dried blood from his hair. Feeling almost presentable again.