Dream Boy (9 page)

“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.

His own
room lies exactly as he left it, pallet scattered in the corner. Mom has not
even folded the blankets. Nathan finds extra socks and takes his coat. He
steals— now he thinks of it as stealing—another quilt.

In the
kitchen again, in the moment before leaving, he waits. The silence and
stillness fill him with foreboding. For a moment, a thought of the future
intrudes, a moment of how long can I hide? But he locks the door behind him
and, hiding the key once again beneath the flowerpot, he escapes into the
autumn morning.

A warm
wind is rising from the south. Nathan should be in church, between the shadows
of Father and Mother, beneath the massed clouds of Preacher Roberts's voice, in
the presence of God. He finds that he misses the event. But he feels no need of
a change in hiding place. Even for a second day, the cemetery seems safe
enough. He remains among the dead Kennicutts and their married relations,
sheltered from October wind by quilts and tombstones.

From
there he can hear the cars return after church, can hear his mother calling his
name, exactly twice, when Sunday dinner is ready. Discreet, as if Nathan has
stepped into the yard to play.

Time
slows to a crawl. He has finished all his assigned homework and finds himself
idly reading ahead in the history text, penetrating the chapters on the
Hittite, Babylonian, and Assyrian Empires. The history takes on the quality of
fable or fairy tale, read outside time, among graves. The sun slowly arcs
overhead.

Once
during the afternoon Roy appears along the shore of the pond. His quiet ambling
could hardly be called unusual, but something in his walk, in the carriage of
his shoulders, broadcasts disquiet. He stops near the small dam on the opposite
shore and seems to be watching the vicinity of the graveyard. Nathan, for his
part, hides from Roy same as from Mom, same as from Dad. But when Roy's
mother's voice summons him back to home, the sadness that descends on Nathan is
all the more complete.

Lengthening
shadows indicate it is the time of Sunday when Dad naps, a time that can be
dangerous, when you can think you are safe, but are not. He is willing to
forego the nap, if he is restless. He might be anywhere out there, searching,
hidden in the woods on the other side of the pond. Dad might see any movement.
Nathan holds so still every joint is stiff. As before, every sound becomes
suspicious. The wild, tangled calls of birds rise in eerie echoes high in the
tree tops from the deep forest that surrounds the farm. Nathan takes the
blankets and books and searches out a more secluded place, behind a tree and a
large stone grave marker, tilted at a wild angle but broad enough to hide him.
He risks the movement even if Dad should be watching, his fear is suddenly so
great. In the new hiding place, he is completely concealed.

But better
concealment has its own price, that he himself can see nothing except banks of
willows and slices of pond. He sits in silence, listening. Every possible
footfall resounds. He is relieved when the sun sinks below the treetops, he is
grateful for the cloak of shadow that descends over the graves. He can be less
wary in the dark. He stretches, throws off the quilts.

With
dusk he returns to the houses. The kitchens are lit and interiors shine. He
slips through shadows, passing the ghostly windows of the parked school bus. He
crosses the empty farmyard and slides through the gap in the hedge, into the
yard where his mother can see him coming.

She
steps to the screen door. Nathan stops at the bottom of the steps.

“I
was worried sick.” They stand there. They sense each other. A cough echoes
from inside the house. “Do you want something to eat?”

Nathan
studies her shoes. Tattered boat shoes, grayed with mud and detergent.

“He's
watching the television,” she says.

Inside
the kitchen, Nathan sits with his back to the door. The smell and curl of
cigarette smoke locate Dad where Mom has promised. No liquor tonight. He is apt
not to drink on Sunday night if he is going to church. The absence changes the
smell. Nathan breathes and listens.

Mom
serves his supper silently. Dishes whisper onto the table. Silverware glides
across plates, meat and vegetables appear. She could be serving spies. Dad, for
his part, seems locked in an agreement not to hear. His coughs are regular,
dry, almost weak. Nathan eats his supper, sitting like quarry in the kitchen,
and Mom watches, mild eyed and numb.

He
eats, hands back the plate and stands.

“You
can't go back outside.”