Dream Boy (18 page)

The
house has become silent again. Burke looks down at Nathan, at Nathan's mouth,
at his own hand around his cock. He runs his free hand roughly through

 Nathan's
hair, then cups the back of Nathan's head. “You better do it.”

Weariness.
The hollow place in Nathan is echoing now, the inner wind is ripping him to
rags, entering through the place where Dad tore him, the opening that Burke
sees now, the wound that does not close. The dark attic fills with the sound
that only Nathan can hear, the one note of the one song. He has knelt in this
way before, there is nothing to do but let go again, with his head throbbing.
It is as if he deserves it, as if both he and Burke understand that he is made
for this use. There is a hole in Nathan, and Burke can see it; Dad opened a
hole in Nathan, and now anyone can use it. He opens his mouth, he makes a
circle. Burke pushes inside.

Burke
is rough and clumsy. Worse, an urgency, a need to burn, fills him, and he
batters Nathan. Nathan gags and can hardly get air, but Burke's band at the
back of his head forces him to remain. Burke is very excited and breathes like
a bellows. His body stiffens and presses spasmodically against Nathan. The skin
smells of alcohol and sweat. Nathan focuses, as he learned to do with his
father, on the small details, on the curling of a particular hair or the slight
ridge of a vein. With Dad he learned not to close his eyes, it made Dad mad.
But Dad could make a lot of noise, Burke is silent. He squeezes Nathan's head
and there is something fierce in the pressure, added to the sudden thrust of
Burke's groin, and the thing in Nathan's mouth swells up. Burke thrashes and
gasps, shoving himself against Nathan's face. The hand hurts. Burke pushes him
back to the floor and pounds himself against Nathan, banging his head on the
floorboards, till Nathan is nearly unconscious.

But
then he is thrown again, across something, roughly. He is reminded of Burke's
strength, of the feeling of uncontrollable fury in him. When Nathan is still
again, he kneels against a wooden beam. Burke comes behind him, jerking
Nathan's shirt up his shoulders. Nathan's pants are already around his knees.
Burke fumbles with Nathan's undershorts, ripping them before he slides the
elastic across Nathan's buttocks. The sense of nakedness is keen. With his hand
he is guiding himself into Nathan from behind, spitting into his palm and
rubbing the spit on his cock. Nathan recognizes the sound, the motion. He tries
to go away. There is no reason to run, it will end, it always does. But Burke
is rougher than Dad, and when he enters it is as if he wants to make Nathan
hurt, everything is tearing. Nathan whimpers a little and tries to push Burke
off; but Burke wraps Nathan with both arms and slams into him. He is making
harsh sounds and moving furiously, saying words Nathan can hardly hear. The
feeling of violence swells, and Burke shoves his face to the floor, begins to
pound it with his fist from behind, slamming hard, over and over again. He
releases Nathan as he comes. Nathan lies perfectly still on the floor. His face
is bloody, and he cannot open one eye. Burke whimpers as he pulls free of
Nathan. He stares down at himself. His body is rigid, every muscle corded. His
face is one wash of misery as he stares down, at nothing. He groans. His fist
crashes down once, onto Nathan's gut; Nathan doubles over, chokes and gasps.
Then something else flashes. Burke lifts the chair leg like a club. He tests
the weight in his hand. He swings. He swings again.

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.

This is
the place where he will meet Burke. Never in the attic, only here. Confused,
pacing up and down the bank of the dark creek, Burke will be watching the road.
It will be his image, it will always linger. It will wait for Nathan, it will
wish for Roy. It will take off its shirt, it will be a man.

At the
place where the boys camped for the night during the storm, Nathan sits under
the tree at the edge of the clearing where they cooked and told stories. The
rock circle at the center of the clearing holds the ghost of the fire. The blue
of the sky has begun to deepen with clouds, as if a storm is coming. In the
tremulous wind he kneels at the creek to bathe again. With careful motion he
cleans his swollen lips, his bruised face. His hair feels soft and supple in
his fingertips.