Beautiful Dreamer

 

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Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Begin Reading

Also by Christopher Bigsby

Copyright

 

To my wife Pam, with much love

 

He was awake. A moment before and he had been running in his dream, knowing it for a dream but helpless to allow that knowledge to still his terror. Now, though, he was awake, tense, ready for flight, but staring up at the ceiling, not knowing it for what it was, at first, not knowing where he was until he calmed enough and knew for sure what he should have known right away. The room was dark, moon and starlight pinched out by the clouds of a summer storm. His dream had been lit by lightning, pulled into the dream to make the invisible visible, but now there was no more than a smother of darkness and an unfamiliar smell. It was burning flesh, he told himself, feeling the sharp pain. And yet that was not the smell. It was something other, something musty, familiar yet out of place. It was a human smell, dank, sharp-edged.

Then he heard the soft slide of wood on wood and a dull punctuation to that slide, a window closing, eased down and closed. Had they followed him here, then, come to finish the business they had begun with clubs and a whip and a tyre brace heated in the fire until it was white at the heart and red at the tip, sparks flying off it like a Fourth of July sparkler? They were interrupted then, though not before they had started to spell out their message on his chest, him screaming so that he could hear nothing else, except that he did, he had, as the metal burnt a letter, a letter whose shape he could not tell even though it was being inscribed in flame on his own skin. He heard the sizzle like meat in a skillet, and smelt the smell of that meat. Yet he was detached, even in his agony, trying to fix that smell when you would think there was no space for such thoughts. Until then, pain had been a word like any other. This was pain like he had never known it, so that the word ‘pain' flew away, language flew away in the scream that seemed as strange to him as to those who looked on, eyes gone soft and crazy, jaws slack. This was some mystery they were witnessing. Well, to hell with them, he thought now, though, not then. Then there was no space for such thoughts.

If it hadn't been for the lights, twin beams slashing through the trees, not lightning though, that had flickered and flashed like in a stage play, like the only stage play he had ever seen,
Uncle Tom's Cabin,
with the girl escaping over the ice floes, if it hadn't been for the lights, like shining daggers from the eyes of a devil, who knows how it would have ended, if it was ended, as the slithering slide of a window closing suggested it was not. Would they have stopped at spelling out what they wanted to say, turning him into a writing slate, a school lesson for all those foolish enough to do what he had done? Or would they have used the rope that one of them got out of the trunk of the Dodge along with the wheel brace, as though trying to make up his mind which way to go, except what other direction could they have had but hell?

They were people he knew. Not people he liked or had much to do with, having as little to do with people as he could, people being the source of trouble. But they would give him the time of day and he would nod to them and say ‘Fine day', or ‘How much is them beans?' But they were not people he knew any more. Something had gotten into them and changed the way they looked and talked. It was like they had been hoodooed or whatever it is that happens when your soul is taken out of your body and replaced with something else. They weren't neighbours any more, nor people either. And how they got that way was beyond him and needless to know. They were freaks of nature, he said to himself, though not to himself because he heard the words spoken in the darkness and, though the voice sounded strange from the rope they had tightened round his neck before they decided on fire, he knew it for his though he had not meant to speak aloud, what with his knowing that someone was there or had been there, depending on whether he heard them coming in or going out, that sliding sound of wood on wood.

He reached for the gun he had propped by the bed, leaning on the orange crate where he put his fob watch each night, the one left him by his father and to his father by his father. It had taken him some effort to fetch it from the kitchen when all he wanted was to lie down and sleep and maybe die, but not at the hands of those who had chased and then treed him at last when the lightning stilled everything like a photographer's snap. So he had found it, resting where it should be, and opened a box of shells, the cardboard damp from the air but the shells clean and sharp and smelling like they should. And he had loaded both barrels, though his hands were burnt where he had tried to push the brace away, burnt and cracked so that one at least was already a claw, wouldn't do what it should, especially since it was shaking, since he was shaking and feeling so sick and faint that he knew he could pass out any time now. But the need to load it, to slide and click those shells into the smooth, oiled metal, kept him going until they were in and he was staggering, like a drunk, to his bed and leaning the gun against the crate before falling into a dream in which he was chased again through the same woods, knowing, again, that it was a dream, but knowing, too, that he could never get away, as you know such things in dreams and still manage to behave as if it isn't true. At the same time, part of his mind knew that he was lying beside a loaded shotgun and that if things got bad and they began to close in again, all he would have to do was reach across and there would be his gun, its red-orange shells lying ready so that he could end the hunt, and the pain, in an instant, though when he put it there, he meant it only for those who might have followed him across the river and along the track to this cabin, or if not them, then their dogs, dogs that could seek you out in the middle of a storm and his soul in the middle of hell.

*   *   *

When he woke again, a flat grey light entered through a small window, one part of which was replaced by cardboard, fringed around with white where the rain had forced its way in. The walls, papered with newspapers and magazines, peeling here and there like leprous skin, were a patchwork of dull colour. Whatever he may have been dreaming disappeared the moment he opened his eyes. The pain of his chest drove out everything else and he let out a cry. ‘Shit!' Outside there was an answering call from a bird, which echoed through the woods. He glanced across at his shotgun. It was where he had left it. He reached for his watch, but there was nothing there. It was always there. It was how his day began. Then he recalled it all, recalled why there was no watch, why the gun was there, why his chest was afire, why the hand he held in front of his eyes was black-red with blood and seared white on the palm. He remembered, too, the sound of the window, unsure whether he had dreamed it or not, for already dream and reality had begun to braid. For the moment, though, the most pressing need was his aching bladder. A burnt chest and a burnt hand took second place to the need for a piss. He smiled at the irony, surprised he could smile at all. He sat up. ‘Shit.' Sitting up was not so easy. There was a scuttling beneath the bed. Scuttling sounds meant nothing. They were like the bird calls, more noticeable by their absence than their presence.

To reach the outhouse, he had to go through the kitchen, moving slowly and carrying the shotgun under his arm. The Negro boy sat at the table, a small bundle wrapped in a piece of red cloth clasped in both hands as though it were that which held him in place. He sat so still that the man did not see him at first. He was focused on moving with as little pain as possible. Then he did see him, and stopped, the two staring at each other. He had been ready for just about anything, but not for this. This was what had got him close to being dead and now here it was again. Maybe it was Death come to tap him on the shoulder. What did he care for black people? He hadn't cared for that other one and it had got him a rope round his neck and white iron on his chest from those who didn't listen, wouldn't listen, didn't want to hear in case it spoiled their fun. And now here was another of them, sitting in his house as if he had a perfect right, as if he had been invited, as if he didn't care that he brought death with him. On the other hand, he knew that if he didn't get to that outhouse soon, he would wet himself, and that suddenly seemed to matter. He couldn't do that in front of a nigger, even if to those who wanted him dead he belonged with them rather than his own. So he shifted the shotgun some but went right on by the boy as if he weren't there at all and out back where the outhouse, door half-open, was set just free of the trees and far enough from the cabin so that the smell wouldn't reach and the flies would stay where the shit was. He only just made it in time, fiddling, with his torn and burnt fingers, to free himself and even then getting some of the hot liquid over those fingers and into the cuts. And when he had finished at last, and the soft patter from below had ceased, he still felt he wanted to go some more, but after a moment or so the feeling eased. He didn't button up. There was no urgency now that would make him risk his fingers again. He wondered whether he needed something else but the shock or whatever had ended any need of that for a while.

He felt faint, having pissed, and almost sank on one knee, but, remembering where he was, stopped himself and instead lifted the door to open it again. The air was fresh from the storm and the sun had already begun to burn the water off. Wisps of steam lifted from the warm wood. He looked around. There was no sign of anyone. No doubt they were all still drunk. There had been plenty of jugs and bottles the night before, glinting in the flames of the fire. How had they lit a fire in that storm? They must have come prepared. Gasoline. Rags. Dry wood. And the rope if they couldn't get it hot enough. That left the nigger. What was he doing in the kitchen? What was he doing in the house at all? Got to get him out or the whole thing would start over again. Not that it would make any difference. Like a dog downing its first lamb, once they got a taste for it there would be no stopping them.

He walked along the path, slick from the rain. There were no other footprints than his own, and his smeared from where he had dragged himself rather than walked. So the boy had come the other way. He kicked the back door open, so as not to risk his hands. The boy sat where he had left him. He could have been dead except that his eyes were wide open and those eyes followed him as if he were the curiosity and not the other way about.

‘Well, boy, who the hell are you and what for you're in my house?'

The boy said nothing, but stared back at him. Dumb insolence, he thought, who had heard the phrase before when he spent two summers at school before his mother took him out to work the fields. He had heard it again, too. ‘They's either downright insulting, speaking straight to your face. Or they don't say a damn thing. Dumb insolence, that's what that is.' Harley had said that down in the store. He served niggers because they had money, not much but some. They had to go around back and they had to pay what he charged, but he served them and there were those who said he shouldn't. Then one chose the front door and look what that had brought.

‘Boy, I'm talking to you. What you doing here?'

And that was all he did say because a great wall of darkness rose up from the ground and swallowed him so that he knew he was falling but couldn't do a damn thing about it except worry what would happen when his gun hit the ground. But he didn't worry about that for long.

This time, when he woke, he was on the kitchen floor, but instead of lying crumpled where he had fallen, he had a blanket over him and the boy was holding out a cup of water, as if he had every right to be there in his house, in a white man's house. But he hadn't had a drink for more than a day, not since the rainwater dribbled through his lips as he ran through the waving trees, slimed with green. He took the cup, but his hand was shaking so that he spilled it, a snail smear on the blanket. The boy took the cup back and dipped it in the pail, holding it out again. He reached for it but the boy shook his head and pulled it back. Then he held it out again. This time he raised himself on one elbow and let the boy put the cup to his lips. He swallowed that cup and two more besides before lying back and staring at the ceiling where a fly paper, black and crusted, curled up on itself.