Keeper of Dreams (69 page)

She spent so much time choosing what to wear that she put off buying any refreshments until it was almost too late. As it was, all she had time to do was rush to the corner grocery and buy the first thing that she saw that looked suitable—a giant bag of peanut M&Ms.

“I hear you’re going to feed the baby,” said the zit-faced fat thirty-year-old checkout girl, who’d never given her the time of day before.

“How do these stories get started?” said Rainie. “I don’t even
have
a baby.”

She got back to her apartment just as Tom pulled up in a brand-new but thoroughly mud-spattered pickup truck. “Hop in before you let all the heat out!” he shouted. He was rolling before she had the door shut.

Douglas Spaulding’s house was just what she expected, right down to the white picket fence and the veranda wrapped around the white clapboard walls. Simple, clean lines, the walls and trim freshly painted, with dark blue shutters at the windows and lights shining between the pulled-back curtains. A house that said Good plain folks live here, and the doors aren’t locked, and if you’re hungry we’ve got a bite to eat, and if you’re lonely we’ve got a few minutes to chat, anytime you feel like dropping by. It was an island of light in the dark night. When she opened the door of Tom’s pickup truck, she could hear laughter from the parlor, and as she picked her way through the paths in the snow to get to the front porch, she could look up and see people moving around inside the house, eating and drinking and talking, all so at ease with each other that it woke the sweetest flavors in her memory and made her hungry to get inside.

They were laying the game out on the dining room table—a large homemade board, meadow green with tiny flowers and a path of white squares drawn around the outside of it. Most squares had either a red heart or a black teardrop, with a number. In the middle of the board was a dark
area shaped like a giant kidney bean with black dotted lines radiating out from it toward the squares. And in the middle of the “bean” were a half-dozen little pigs that Rainie recognized as being from the old Pig Out game, plus a larger pig from some child’s set of plastic barnyard animals.

“That’s the pigpen,” said the mechanic, who was counting beans into piles of ten. Only he wasn’t dressed like a mechanic anymore—he was wearing a white shirt and white pants with fire-engine-red suspenders. He was also wearing a visor, like the brim of a baseball cap. Rainie remembered seeing people wear visors like that on TV. In old Westerns or something. Who wore them? Bank tellers? Bookies? She couldn’t remember.

“What’s your name?” asked Rainie. “I’ve been thinking of you as the guy in overalls cause I never caught your name.”

“If I’d’a knowed you was a-thinkin’ of me, Miss Ida, I’d’a wore my overalls again tonight, just to please you.” He grinned at her.

“Three
Ida
s in the same sentence,” said Rainie. “Not bad.”

“It’s a good thing she didn’t think of you as ‘that butt-ugly guy,’ ” said Tom. “You’re a lot better-looking when you keep
that
particular feature covered up.”

“Look what Miss Ida brung us,” said the mechanic. “
M
’s.”

Immediately all the men in the vicinity of the table hummed in unison. “Mmmmm. Mmmmm.”

“Not just
M
’s, but
peanut M
’s.”

Again, only twice as loud: “MMMMMM! MMMMMM!”

Either M&Ms were part of the ritual, or they were making fun of her. Suddenly Rainie felt unsure of herself. She held up the bag. “Isn’t this OK?”

“Sure,” said Douglas. “And I get the brown ones.” He had a large bowl in his hand; he took the bag of M&Ms from her, pulled it open, and poured it into the bowl.

“Dougie has a thing for brown M&Ms,” said the mechanic.

“I eat them as a public service,” said Douglas. “They’re the ugly ones, so when I eat them all the bowl is full of nothing but bright colors for everyone else.”

“He eats the brown ones because they make up forty percent of the package,” said Tom.

“Tom spends most of his weekends opening bags of M&Ms and counting them, just to get the percentages,” said an old man that hadn’t been at the café.

“Hi, Dad,” said Douglas. He turned and offered the old man the bowl of M&Ms.

The old man took a green one and popped it in his mouth. Then he stuck out his right hand to Rainie. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Douglas Spaulding. Since he and his son are also Douglas Spaulding, everybody calls me Grandpa. I’m old but I still have all my own teeth.”

“Yeah, in an old baby-food jar on his dresser,” said Tom.

“In fact, he has several of
my
teeth, too,” said the mechanic.

Rainie shook Grandpa’s hand. “Pleased to meet you. I’m . . .” Rainie paused. For one crazy moment she had been about to say, I’m Rainie Pinyon. “I’m Ida Johnson.”

“You sure about that?” asked Grandpa. He didn’t let go of her hand.

“Yes, I am,” she said. Rather sharply.

Grandpa raised his eyebrows and released her hand. “Welcome to the madhouse.”

Suddenly there was a thunderous pounding on the stairs and Rose and Dougie burst into the room. “Release the pigs!” they both shouted. “Pig attack! Pig attack!”

Douglas just stood there laughing as his kids ran around the table, grunting and snorting like hogs as they reached into every bowl for chips and M&Ms and anything else that looked vaguely edible, stuffing it all into their mouths. The men all laughed as the kids ran back out of the room. Except Grandpa, who never cracked a smile. “What is the younger generation coming to?” he murmured. Then he winked at Rainie.

“Where should I sit?” she asked.

“Anyplace,” said Tom.

She took the chair at the corner. It seemed the best place—the spot where she’d have to sit back away from the table because the table leg was in the way. It felt just a little safer to her, to be able to sit a little bit outside of the circle of the players.

The mechanic leaned over to her and said, “Cecil.”

“What?” Rainie asked.

“My name,” he said. “Don’t tell anybody else.”

Tom, who was sitting next to her, said in a loud whisper, “We all pretend that we think his name is ‘Buck.’ It makes him feel more manly.”

“What do I
call
you?” asked Rainie. “If I’m supposed to keep Cecil a secret.”

“Now you’ve gone and told,” said Cecil.

“Call him Buck,” said Tom.

“Does anybody else really call him that?” asked Rainie.

“I will if you will,” said Tom.

“Time for a review of the rules!” said Douglas, as he took the last place at the table, which happened to be in the middle of the table on the side across from Rainie, so she’d be looking at him throughout the game.

“I hate to make you have to spend time going over everything for me,” said Rainie.

“They repeat the rules every time anyway,” said Grandpa.

“Cause Grandpa’s getting senile and forgets them every time,” said Tom.

“They repeat them because they’re so proud of having thought them up themselves,” said Grandpa.

The game was pretty complicated. They used plastic children’s toys—little robots or dinosaurs—as their playing pieces. The idea of the game was to roll three dice and get around the board. Each time they passed Start they were reborn as the next-higher life-form, from slime to newt to emu to human; the winner was the first human to reach Start and therefore become supreme god.

“Then the supreme god turns over his karma cards. If he’s got more good than bad karma, then whoever has the most good karma comes in second. But if the supreme god has more bad karma than good, then whoever has the most
bad
karma comes in second,” said Douglas.

“So bad karma can be good?” asked Rainie.

“Never,” said Tom. “What kind of person are you? No, if the supreme god turns out to have bad karma, it’s a terrible disaster for the known universe. We all sing a very sad song and cry on the way home.”

“The last time bad karma triumphed, Meryl Streep and Roseanne Barr released that movie
She-Devil
,” said Douglas.

“So you see, the consequences can be dire,” said Tom.

“She didn’t even get to do an accent,” said Cecil, his tone mournful and hushed.

“And . . . and
Ed Begley Junior
had to play Roseanne Barr’s husband,” said Raymond.

“Only John Goodman is man enough to do that and live,” said Cecil.

“So you see,” said Tom, “our game isn’t just a
game
. It has consequences in the real world.”

Douglas continued with the rules. Every time you landed on a teardrop or a heart, you had a chance to pray to either the Baby of Sorrows or the Baby of Love, depending. In order to pray, you had to make an offering of as many beans as the number shown on the square. “So beans are like money,” said Rainie.

“Ugly money,” said Raymond.

“Nasty money,” said Tom.

“Filthy lucre,” said Grandpa.

“We hate beans,” said Cecil. “Nobody wants beans. Only
greedy, nasty, selfish people
try to get a lot of beans.”

“Of course, you have no chance of winning unless you have a lot of beans,” said Douglas. “But if it ever looks like you are too interested in getting beans, then we hold a bean council and punish you.”

“I never did like beans,” said Rainie.

“Good thing,” said Cecil. “But watch out, because Tom is a miserable bean thief and he’ll steal your beans when you’re not looking.”

“
If
I actually cared for beans,” said Tom, “I’d be an excellent bean thief.”

“If your prayer is granted,” Douglas said, going on with the rules, “then you get a power card. There are evil powers and good powers, depending on which baby you pray to. When you use an evil power you get a bad karma card, and when you use a good power you get a good karma card. Good power cards are always played on other people—they never benefit the person who plays them. Evil power cards are always vicious and selfish and vindictive.”

“That’s not in the rules,” said Cecil.

“But it’s the truth,” said Douglas. “Good people never use evil power cards.”

“Dougie’s just sore because of the time we ganged up on him and killed him every time he stuck his nose out of hell,” explained Tom.

“I tried to reason with them.”

“He whined all night. It only goaded us to new depths of cruelty.”

“They had no pity.”

“We were nature red in tooth and claw,” said Tom. “You were unfit to survive.”

They went on with the rules but at the end Rainie could hardly remember half of them. “You just tell me what to do and I’ll get the hang of it.”

She started the game with five power cards. All of them were handwritten, the good powers in red ink, the evil powers in black. She had three evil cards and two good ones. One of the good ones said:

“BUTT-INSKI”

Allows you to

cause 2 other

players to swap

all power cards

Two of the evil power cards said:

“UP THE PIGGAGE”
ADD 2 PIGS TO THE PEN

and

“YOUR KARMA IS
MY KARMA”

ALLOWS YOU TO SWAP

KARMA CARDS WITH

ANOTHER PLAYER

The last two cards, one good, one evil, made Rainie laugh out loud. The evil one said:

RELEASE
THE
PIGS!!

The good one, on the other hand, said:

RELEASE
THE
PIGS!!

For the good of the
whole.

“What’s funny?” asked Tom.

“Is there any difference between releasing the pigs on somebody from a good power card as opposed to an evil power card?” she asked.

“All the difference in the world!” cried Raymond.

“When you release the pigs for the good of the whole,” said Cecil, “it’s a noble act, a kind and generous sacrifice for the benefit of the entire community, without a single thought of personal benefit.”

“Whereas,” said Tom, “releasing the pigs from an evil power card is the act of a soulless, cruel, despicable human being.”

“But I mean, is the actual pig attack any different?”

“Not a whit,” said Douglas.

“Absolutely identical,” said Tom.

“I’m betting that Ida has her a couple of Release-the-Pigs cards,” said Raymond.

“How many beans are you betting?” asked Tom.

“Five beans says she does.”

“Oh, yeah?” said Tom. “Well,
ten
beans says she
does
.”

“That’s what
I
said,” said Raymond.

“No, you said
five
beans,” said Tom.

“Roll the dice, Ida,” said Grandpa, “or we’ll never get started.”

“The fate of the world hangs in the balance,” said the quiet guy at the other end of the table—Rainie couldn’t remember his name. He looked very sad, even when he laughed.