Sweet Dream Baby (7 page)

We drive through town, and it's quiet, and the heat wiggles over the asphalt, and all the people we pass wave to my Aunt Delia. She waves back, and sometimes she calls, “Hey there!” through the open window. We drive to a park, and there's a white church with a tall steeple at one end, and across the road from the church there's a statue of a sol-dier leaning on a long rifle. At the other end of the park there's a tennis court made of red clay with white chalk lines and a net that's kind of droopy. There are oak trees on both sides of the court and green benches under the oaks so you can rest after you play. Two girls are playing tennis when we drive up and stop in the red dirt parking lot. My Aunt Delia turns off the engine, but she leaves the radio on. It's Dion and the Belmonts again: “Why must I be a teenager in love?” One of the girls hits the ball into the net, and they both laugh. Then they turn and wave at my Aunt Delia.

“Hey, Delia!”

My Aunt Delia leans out the window and calls out, “Hey, Caroline! Hey, Beulah!” She pulls her head back in and says, “Aren't they a couple of toads, Killer?”

I can't help it. I laugh real hard.

We watch the two girls play for a while, and we listen to the radio. I'm waiting for Jerry Lee to come on, but he doesn't. Finally, the two girls finish. I can't tell who wins. I don't think they care. They walk over to Delia's window and lean in, and the blonde one says, “Hey, who's the good-looking guy?”

My Aunt Delia says, “This is my nephew, Travis, from Omaha. He's spending the summer with us so he can learn how the gracious life is lived.”

The two girls giggle. The brown-haired one leans in and says, “Don't let old Delia here get you in any trouble, Travis. She's known for that around here.” The two girls giggle again and they look at Delia, and she looks back at them, and it's like they all know something they're not telling. I don't know what to say, so I just smile. I'm glad my Aunt Delia doesn't giggle.

It's hot, and the two girls have sweat on their faces and dark wet patches on their white blouses. When they lean into the car, I can smell perfume and girl sweat mixed together, and it's better than either one by itself, and it goes with the song on the radio: “Tell Laura I love her. Tell Laura not to cry. My love for her will never die.”

Delia and the two girls talk for a while, and I listen to the radio and hold my new tennis racket on my lap and run my fingers over the strings and wonder what it's gonna be like when I hit a ball. Finally, the two girls push away from Delia's window and walk over to a brown Ford and drive away. Delia looks over at me and flutters her eyelashes in a funny way she has. “Beulah's a great big pain in the butt. Her daddy preaches in that church right over there, and she thinks she's got to be the baddest girl in town. Caroline's okay, I guess, but she only knows three words, and two of them are ‘boy.'”

Before we go out on the court, my Aunt Delia kneels in front of me and rolls up my jeans and looks at my shoes. I'm wearing the summer sandals my mom always gets for me. I hate them. I always ask my dad for combat boots, but he never lets me have them. My Aunt Delia says, “Killer, I don't think these are quite right for tennis. You'll have to play barefoot.” I take off my sandals and my white socks, and we go out on the court. “What do I do?” I say. I like the way my feet feel on the hot red clay.

My Aunt Delia says, “Just be a good shortstop. That's a start.”

We hit the ball back and forth, and she's good at it, and I'm not. Most of mine go into the net or out into the park or just into the back fence. Delia doesn't care if I'm any good. She laughs and runs after my bad balls and hits them back to me, and, once in a while, she gives me a tennis tip. “Keep your eye on it, Killer, just like it's a baseball and you're Mickey Mantle.” “Follow through there, Killer, don't hack at it. You're not chopping cotton.”

After a while I get the hang of it a little. I like playing, and I'm thinking maybe by the end of the summer I'll be as good as my Aunt Delia, and then after that I'll go on and beat Pancho Gonzales. I hit one out into the grass under the oak, and I'm waiting for Delia to go get it, and I hear loud music behind me, and I turn, and there's the red Oldsmobile, and there's Bick Sifford sitting in it watching me. The radio is loud: “Come on over baby, we got chicken in the barn. Ain't fakin'. Whole lot of shakin' going on.”

I turn back, and my Aunt Delia's standing beside me, and she puts the ball in my hand and says, “That's him, Killer. That's Jerry Lee Lewis, your namesake.”

The song is jumpy and silly and I like it. I can't figure out the words—they're goofy—but I like the sound. It makes me want to shake and jump. Jerry Lee sings some, and sometimes he just whoops and hollers. Sifford's arm rests on the windowsill of the red Oldsmobile, and he pats his hand along with the tune. “Shake, Baby, shake.”

Aunt Delia puts her tennis racket in my hand and says, “Travis, do me a favor and sit down for a minute while Aunt Delia talks to her friend.”

Before I say it's okay, she turns me and points over my shoulder at the green bench in the shade and gives me a little push. Then she's walking over to Sifford's car.

I don't want to go sit in the shade. All of a sudden I feel mad, crazy mad. It's like that song. I don't know what it means. I don't know how I really feel, but it's got me, and it won't let go. I want to turn around and shout, “No,” to my Aunt Delia. I want to go over and sink my teeth into Sifford's arm, but that would be a girl thing, so I think of myself going over there and telling him to get out of that car and I'm going to stomp his ass. I want to be in a fight. I want to be a teenager in love, but I know I'm not. I don't know what I am. Jerry Lee sings, “Easy now. Shake it one time for me,” and I sit on the bench and watch my Aunt Delia stand at Sifford's window and lean in.

They talk and their voices are quiet, but words blow over to me on the wind: “dance” and “summer” and “maybe later” and “why not?” I don't know. I don't get much. I match the two tennis rackets together and put them on my lap and lay the three balls on top of them and invent a game about making the balls sit still in the middle. Three balls touching, not moving. Then I try to move the rackets so that one ball goes to the edge and two stay in the middle. I look up at the hot high white sky. I look up into the oak tree—no squirrels or birds. I look at my feet. The red dust is all the way up my ankles to my jeans.

I wait three songs, and after a while I'm getting sleepy in the heat, and I see my Aunt Delia lean over and put her head almost in the window, and I like the way her long legs look in the sun, and how she goes up on one toe and swings her heel from side to side. I like the way her black hair fans down the back of her white blouse, and I like the dark wet spot in the middle of her back. I can see her brassiere through the wet spot, and I like that. I can see Sifford's arm close to her face, and see his lips moving and the way his eyes are when he talks to my Aunt Delia, and I know he's trying to get her to do something, but I don't know what.

Once, he stops patting his hand with the music, and he reaches up to where my Aunt Delia's arm rests on the roof of the car, and he touches her, and they stop talking. Then she steps back, and his hand falls back to the windowsill.

The radio keeps going: “I'm just a lonely boy.”

And: “Personality. Smile and personality.”

And: “Alley-oop, oop. Oop. Oop-oop.”

After Sifford touches my Aunt Delia's arm, I know she's going to stop talking to him. I don't know how I know, but I know. She looks over at me, smiles and waves, and takes another step back from the car. Sifford tries to open the door, but my Aunt Delia reaches out and pushes it shut, and he laughs. After a while, he starts the engine and drives away. My Aunt Delia watches the red Oldsmobile until it's out of sight around the corner by the church. Then she walks over to where I'm sitting on the green bench.

“Hey, Killer, you want to play some more tennis? You're getting pretty good at it.”

I look away at the church, the trees. Everything looks stooped and bent in the sun. I say, “No.”

My Aunt Delia sits down beside me. “Are you mad at old Delia?”

I don't say anything.

She says, “I'm sorry I left you alone, but it wasn't all that long, and Bick and I had some things to talk about.”

“What?” I ask her. I turn and look at her, and her eyes are sleepy and warm, and I know she's still thinking about Sifford.

She says, “Oh, secret things. Grown-up things.”

“You can tell me,” I say. I remember the storm and how the rain came in my window, and how I went to get the towel and heard my Aunt Delia crying and what we did then. I remember how I woke up that morning. I keep my eyes on hers, cool and quiet. Two little red spots start in her cheeks. She looks away.

“No, I can't.”

“You can,” I say.

She pushes at the grass with her white tennis shoe. There's red dust up the sides and on the pink laces. Her white legs are getting red from the sun. She says, “Maybe I can, someday. Maybe I will. Because I like you, Killer.” She puts her arm across my shoulders and squeezes me hard. “But not now. Not today.”

My Aunt Delia stands up. “Let's go on home and see what Marvadell's got cooking for lunch, what do you say, Killer?”

I stand up too. “Neato,” I say. Then I say, “Grandpa Hollister told me not to say ma'am to Marvadell. Is that right, Aunt Delia?”

My Aunt Delia thinks about it. She looks up at the sun, and over at the white church, and at the soldier leaning on the long rifle. She says, “That's right, honey, but not because you don't respect her. It would just…it would make Marvadell uncomfortable.”

I don't understand, but I say, “Okay, Aunt Delia.”

She smiles and says, “Killer, I told you to call me Delia. If you don't, I'm going to start calling you Nephew Travis. You wouldn't like that, would you?”

I say I guess not, and we walk to the car, and my Aunt Delia starts the Chevy and turns on the radio. She backs out of the red-dirt parking lot and turns toward the house on Bedford Street, and I look over to my right, into the dark shade under the trees, and I see red flames on midnight-blue metal. As we go around the corner, I see black leather through a gap in the branches and a puff of cigarette smoke, and I wonder how long he's been there. I wonder if he saw me playing tennis with my Aunt Delia, then her talking to Bick Sifford and me sitting alone on the bench.

It's night, and my Aunt Delia and me are sitting out on the porch. My Grandma Hollister calls the porch the gallery. She calls the one upstairs the upper gallery. My Aunt Delia says Grandma Hollister puts on airs and tries to keep up with the ladies in town who have money. She says a sheriff's wife has social position without money, and that's what gives my Grandma Hollister headaches. Marvadell made banana ice cream, and Aunt Delia and me are eating two big bowls. Grandpa Hollister is inside reading the paper from Panama City. We can see his head through the window screen. Grandma Hollister is down at the Presbyterian Church singing at choir practice. Sometimes when the wind blows this way, we can hear the choir.

I like sitting out here at night with my Aunt Delia. It's cooler than inside, and some nights the wind brings the smell of the ocean, and it makes me think of my boat. Some nights the stars are as bright as rock candy sprinkled on dark blue paper, and my Aunt Delia says that's one of the good things about living in the country. You can see the sky at night.

“When are we going to the ocean, Aunt Delia?”

“It's Delia, honey.”

I look at the window screen. Grandpa Hollister isn't listening. “Okay,” I say, “Delia. When are we going to the ocean?” It still feels funny calling her Delia, but it feels good, too.

She says, “I don't know, Travis. But don't you worry. We'll go some time. We've got the whole summer ahead of us.”

“Am I gonna get to swim and catch fish?” I don't dare ask about the boat. Not yet.

“You're gonna get to swim and
try
to catch fish. It's a matter of some skill, you know.”

I like the way my Aunt Delia talks to me. She doesn't make things simple because I'm a kid. I lower my voice and ask her, “Delia, why were you crying the other night?”

She looks at the window screen, sharp, then puts her finger across her lips and shakes her head. “Not now, Honey. I told you I can't talk about that.”

We sit for a while in the quiet. I hear a whippoorwill cry. “To-whit, to-whee, to-whit, to-whee.” I look at my Aunt Delia and she smiles at me, sorry, like we have a sad secret together. We hear a rumble and a radio playing far away, getting closer, then a pop-pop-pop, and I know who it is.

Griner's street rod comes around the corner and idles slowly up our street. I look over at my Aunt Delia. She puts down her bowl of ice cream, and her hand goes to her hair and then to the gold cross at her neck. I don't know what's in her eyes now. I don't know if Griner's gonna stop and talk to us. It's Bobby Darin coming from the radio: “Dream lover, where are you, with a love oh so true.”

My Aunt Delia whispers, “Don't stare, Killer. He's just a big showoff.”

The hotrod with the red flames coming out of the engine passes under the street light up the block, and I can see Griner's pale face and his slick black hair and his leather jacket.

“Delia, what's he doing here?”

My Aunt Delia jumps. I don't know how Grandpa Hollister moves so quiet. I don't know how he got out here through the screen door without me hearing him. He puts on his steel-rimmed glasses and watches as Griner's rod goes by. Griner looks over and sees him, and the look on Griner's face doesn't change. It's a smile my dad calls insolent.

Grandpa Hollister says, “Delia?”

My Aunt Delia twists the cross at her throat, and I remember what she said about this town. How it makes her want to jump out of her skin. She looks up at Grandpa Hollister and says, “He's driving, Daddy. It's a small town. He's bound to take our street some time.”

Griner's rod makes the corner and backs down, pop-pop-pop. Grandpa Hollister says to himself, not to me or my Aunt Delia, “Those pipes are illegal in this county. That boy's gone push me too far one of these days.”

My Aunt Delia looks up at him, and her eyes are scared. “Daddy, it's just a car for crying out loud. What's the big deal?”

Grandpa Hollister watches the place where Griner's rod disappeared into the dark. “To me, Delia,” he says, “the law is a big deal.” His voice is soft, but it's colder than the ice cream in my bowl.

• • •

My Aunt Delia and me are on an errand for Grandma Hollister. We get out of the white Chevy and walk down the main street of Widow Rock, and we pass an alley, and there's smelly water running down the alley, and halfway down there's a red neon sign that says, Whiskey, and a man is leaning up against the wall. He's got a greasy hat pulled down over his face, and he's holding a brown paper bag. My Aunt Delia reaches down and takes my hand and pulls me close. “Come on, Killer, walk a little faster.”

We get down the sidewalk some more and someone calls, “Hey, Delia. You there! Delia Hollister!” My Aunt Delia stops, and we turn around.

It's the man. He's got his hat pushed up now, and I can see his long, gray face and that he didn't shave. He takes a drink from the paper bag, and his eyes are all wrong. I know he's drunk, but it's not funny drunk like I've seen in the movies. This is mean whiskey. The man says, “Who's that with you there, Miss Delia?”

My Aunt Delia sighs and says, “You know very well who it is, Mr. Latimer.”

The man throws back his head and laughs, but it's a nasty laugh, and he says, “Oh, it's
Mr.
Latimer is it? Ain't that sweet. Sweet little Delia Hollister and her half-nigger nephew.” The man takes another drink from the paper bag. He's got greasy sweat on his face, and his pants are dirty around the pockets, and one of his shoes has been cut with a knife so his toe can stick out of it. He's not wearing any socks. My Aunt Delia squeezes my hand hard. She says, “Mr. Latimer, you better go on now and leave us alone.”

The man smiles mean again, and squats down. He rocks back and almost falls over. He leans against the hot brick wall and puts the bottle in the paper bag down beside his knee. He says, “Little half-nigger boy, come over here. Let me get a look at them eyes. I want to see if you got your mommer's Jap eyes. You shore got her brown skin, ain't you?” He holds out his hands to me, and his eyes tell me to come.

I don't. I look up at my Aunt Delia. If he tries to hurt her, I'll kill him. I'll kick that bottle against the wall and take up a piece of glass and cut his eyes.

My Aunt Delia pulls me away with her. She says over her shoulder, “Mr. Latimer, I'm not going to tell my father about this.”

The man shouts after us. “Boy, your daddy was Mr. God High Everything around here, an' he went off just like I did to fight them damn little Jap monkeys, an' damn if he didn't come back wiff a Jap wife and a half-Jap kid.” I look back, as we turn the corner. The man falls over into the alley and knocks over the bottle, and it spills under his leg. The last I see, he's trying to get up, and he can't, and his pants are covered with whiskey.

My Aunt Delia pulls me down the block to the Curl Up and Dye Beauty Parlor. We go in and get a bottle of rinse for Grandma Hollister, and then we get in the white Chevy and we drive. We go fast, out to the country, to the road where Delia said there's a decision to make, and this time we turn downhill into the dark pines. After a while, I can smell the river.

We turn onto a sand road, and then onto another one so narrow that tree branches brush the car. We stop in a wide place with tire tracks in the sand where people have come in cars. In front of us, a path leads into the woods. My Aunt Delia shuts off the engine and turns to me and pulls her legs up on the seat and hugs her knees. “Are you okay, Killer?”

“Sure,” I say. “How about you?”

She nods. I think I can see tears starting in her eyes, then I don't know. Maybe not. She doesn't say anything, so I say, “I wasn't going to let him hurt you.”

She smiles, sad, and says, “I know, Killer. I wasn't worried.”

I say, “How come he called me a…you know?”

“That's right,” my Aunt Delia says, “don't say it. If we say that word, we become like him. All the people like that.”

“Why?” I ask her. I want to know.

“Because he's ignorant, that's why.”

“It's because I'm half-Japanese, and he thinks that's the same as Negro?”

My Aunt Delia nods. She waits. I say, “Delia, do you know what's wrong with my mom?”

My Aunt Delia looks at me for a long time. She hugs her knees tight and closes her eyes, and when she opens them, she says, “Probably people like Mr. Latimer, Travis. That's probably what's wrong with her. That and she misses her family.”

I know she means my mom's family in Japan. My Grandma and Grandpa Kobayashi, but I still don't like it. “I'm her family,” I say. “Me and dad are.”

My Aunt Delia says, “Maybe she needs more than that. Like I needed you the other night in the storm, and you might need me some time.”

I just nod. I have to think about it. I say, “What's wrong with him, that Mr. Latimer? Why does he hate me?”

My Aunt Delia shakes her head and looks out the window at the trees. It's quiet and hot, and I can smell pine cones, and there's no wind. I can smell the river, too, and I know it's close, and I want to see it. She says, “He was in a place called Bataan, Travis. And the Japanese put him in a prison camp, and a lot of bad things happened to him there. He hasn't done much since he got back but drink whiskey and bother people.”

“Did he really know my dad?”

“Everybody knew your dad, Travis.”

“Were they friends?”

My Aunt Delia nods and hugs her knees. “They played football and baseball together. All the men around here did. Mr. Tolbert, too.”

I think about it. I don't like Mr. Latimer, but I'm not going to hate him like I thought I was. I don't want to hate anybody here. As long as he doesn't hurt my Aunt Delia, I won't do anything. I say, “Does he hate my dad now?”

My Aunt Delia says, “No, honey, I don't think so. I think he's just confused and drunk and full of what's hurting him.”

I ask my Aunt Delia if we can go to the river, but she says no, not today. We've got to get that bottle of rinse home to Grandma Hollister.

• • •

We're sitting in the third pew on the right in the white church across the park from the red-clay tennis court. Beulah Laidlaw's father is preaching about the parable of the prodigal son. He's a tall, fat man with gray hair and a red face, and he's wearing a black robe, and he's telling us about this boy who runs off and spends all of his dad's money and gets drunk. When he tell us that the boy “consorts with women of ill fame,” it gets quieter in the church, and some of the women reach up and touch the gold crosses at their necks. I don't know. Maybe it means women like the one who got kidnapped by the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Women who look at you like they know what you're thinking. The boy finally ends up eating with pigs, and he gets sick of it and comes home, and his dad hugs him and takes him back. His dad has a big dinner for him, and everybody celebrates but his other brother. The other brother is mad because he stayed home and worked hard and didn't get drunk or spend money or consort. The point of it all, according to the Reverend Laidlaw, is forgiveness. We have to care more and worry more about the ones that stumble and wander than about the ones that stay put and do things right.

I'm thinking about Mr. Latimer and what he said about me and about my mom and dad. I'm thinking about the Japanese and what they did to him, and I'm as confused as all get out.

I'm sitting between Grandpa Hollister and my Aunt Delia. Grandpa Hollister has on his same black suit and white shirt, and a blue and red bow tie. Only it's not the same suit. I know now he's got three of them, all the same. Grandma Hollister has on the black dress with the little white dots on it that she wore to pick me up at the airport in Panama City, but she's up in the choir loft, wearing a white robe, and I can see the sweat on her forehead and under her chin, and I know she's miserable, and it's gonna give her a headache. She's smiling her miserable-but-not-letting-on smile.

My Aunt Delia's got on her white Sunday dress. It's made of raw silk, she told me, and it has a crinkly feel to it, and I like the way she looks in it. She's got her black hair up on the back of her head with combs, and her neck is as long as my whole face. She doesn't look at the Reverend Laidlaw. She looks at the big wooden cross behind him and the stained glass window that says INRI. Or she looks at Beulah and Caroline Huff. They sing in the choir along with Grandma. Sometimes when the Reverend Laidlaw gets real worked up over the prodigal son, I can see Beulah roll her eyes, and I know my Aunt Delia's got that look on her face she gets when she and Beulah and Caroline Huff talk about how provincial Widow Rock is. And I know I better not look at my Aunt Delia, or I'll start laughing or something. Grandpa Hollister is watching. Sometimes I think he can see what's going on behind him.

The Reverend Laidlaw finishes his sermon, and the choir stands up to sing, “He Leadeth Me,” and we all stand up and sing with them. I hold the hymn book, and Grandpa and my Aunt Delia lean over me and sing with me, and I like their voices, and I like looking at the women in the choir loft. They look like angels. They're the same women I see on the streets of Widow Rock, and in the stores, and some of them are not very pretty, but in their white robes and singing like that, they're pretty, and their voices and ours out here in the pews are so loud I bet they can hear us all the way to Panama City.

But we're not as loud as the Baptists.

• • •

All afternoon it's cloudy, and then a big blue storm rolls up out of the Gulf of Mexico, and I'm sitting on the porch after dinner eating Marvadell's ice cream with my Aunt Delia. I know she's not happy. I ask her, and she says, “I'm just moody sometimes, Killer. It's the female prerogative. Don't you know that?”