Beautiful Dreamer (2 page)

How could he have got into this? What was the man to him? And who was this nigger boy?

Then he was asleep again and did not wake until the afternoon sun slanted down through the yellowed window. The boy sat where he had before. He looked up at the window. The burnt flesh had begun to tighten and the pain was suddenly more than he could bear. His hand was curled tight and when he tried to open it a knife seemed to slice through him. He knew he couldn't lie there and yet movement seemed impossible. The sunlight fell across his face and he drew on the energy it seemed to offer, gritting his teeth, grinding them together so hard that the ache began to balance the pain that flowed through him. The boy began to get up but then relaxed back into the seat, watching this burnt man try to rise from the flame of his agony, watching him as he rolled on his side like a dog, as he pressed down with his one good hand, the hand they had twisted behind his back and thus protected from the fire, and raised himself like a wounded bear. He watched as he knelt, one hand down, the other balled, his face twisted, eyes shut, and then, breathing deeply, raised himself up, towering over the boy but swaying like a tree cut through and ready to fall. He staggered without looking, eyes shut against that sun which none the less gave him hope to think he could make it, carry on, staggered to his bedroom and collapsed on his bed, head hitting the wall, orange box toppled.

It was some time later, how much he could not tell since his watch had been taken from him by those who were not so far gone as to forget to steal anything worthwhile even though they told themselves they were driven by something else, when he came to again. He could see it was later because the sun was slanting down on the coloured picture of a movie star half-peeled from the wall as if she wanted to climb in there with him. He remembered then what he had forgotten. He had forgotten his gun which was in the kitchen with the nigger boy, the nigger boy who had entered his house like a thief but taken it into his mind to stay. And who could he be but Johnson's boy, assuming Johnson to have had a boy, as how should he know who knew nothing of him until he was stupid enough to step in front of him when he should have let things lie, take the course they had always taken and always would? Who else of his kind would have sought him out? So here he was, to make sure that this time they would kill him for sure, who would have done before but for the lights coming through the woods and, since hardly none of them had automobiles, who could that be but authority? And you never knew about authority that has to watch its back and maybe do things it wouldn't do if there weren't those around to see. But how could he get rid of the kid when he couldn't take more than a step without collapsing?

Then all thoughts sank somewhere too deep for him to hold on to them as a wave of pain rolled over him, spun him round so that his back arched up. Then it was over and he was lying limp and sweating, even though the heat of the day had passed, was passing. And when at last he opened his eyes the boy was beside him, looking down without an expression in his eyes beyond interest, as you might look at a squirming snake run over by a truck, twisting itself inside out as if it could survive a broken spine. But then he saw that the boy had something in his hands. It was a jug. He hugged it to him instead of hooking his finger through the arched neck, as any man would have done, but it was a jug just the same and it was the one thing, he knew, that might help him through.

They had beaten him a while with a fence post while the fire heated up and he had heard a couple of his ribs crack as you would snap a twig for kindling, but he knew that nothing vital had been damaged. He wasn't dying, just broken here and there and marked so that he and others would never forget, would remember what they wanted people to remember. What he needed was to get through the next few hours, next days, so that his body could mend itself, because weren't no doctor would come on out and where was the money to pay him if he did? The jug was two-thirds full and the boy had sense enough, whatever else was on his mind, to know that whiskey could do what a doctor couldn't or wouldn't.

He beckoned him forwards with his good hand and when he stepped close reached out and took hold, letting the bed take the weight for a second and smelling that smell he had smelt before, not unpleasant, just different.

‘The cork, boy,' he said, nodding his head, unsure whether he could ease it out himself. The boy just stood and watched and did nothing.

‘What they call you?'

The boy stared back at him, dumb as before. After a moment, though, he turned around and went back through into the kitchen. So, no name.

He removed the cork without trouble and, curling his finger through the handle, lifted up the jug, using the back of his hand as a lever. His lips were bruised and swollen where he had been punched, cut where a ring had caught him, loosening a tooth. The whiskey stung, but it warmed him right away, flowed through him. He choked, spilling it on to his neck, and that gave him a thought. He rested the jug on the bed to get back his strength and then lifted it again, pouring it over his chest. He cried out and smelt his burnt flesh along with the whiskey, but poured a little more before setting the jug back on the bed again. He rocked with the pain, mumbling a jumble of words that meant nothing to the young boy who stood in the doorway and watched as, after a time, this deranged white man began to sing ‘Amazing Grace', every now and then dropping in an obscenity or raising the jug to his mouth to drink in the oblivion that was the only cure he knew.

*   *   *

When he woke, he knew that he had passed through something and out the other side. The sun was streaming in again, but it was another day because it lit up that part of the wall that meant morning, lit up another set of pictures, mostly of women but pictures of countryside, too, and the interiors of houses he would never see, gleaming white and clean and full of cookers and Frigidaires. His chest felt cool and he saw that a piece of cloth had been laid on it. And there was the boy still, ringing out another piece, not realizing he was awake and watching him. Why hadn't he just robbed him and run off while he could? Not that he had anything worth robbing, except his gun. And he was worried about the gun. The boy shook out the cloth and looked up. Their eyes met. For a second, neither moved. Then the man said, ‘That's real good. Put it on, son, but be careful how you do it.'

For a second or so, the boy stood, unmoving, and then he leaned forwards and gently lifted off the piece that had been lying on his blackened chest, dropping it into the bowl before putting the new piece on. It was cool and soothing and at last his head seemed clear. He knew he was through the worst, that he would be better, provided they didn't come looking for him, as he was afraid they must, having been interrupted in what they were doing, having been frustrated so.

‘What's your name, boy?'

The boy looked at him for a second and then shook his head.

‘Cat got your tongue?'

He nodded.

So, the cat had got his tongue. What was he supposed to make of that? He was maybe dumb? Anyway, what did it matter? He wasn't in need of conversation and wasn't anyone else going to come and see him, not one person he knew who would care to admit acquaintance, still less make their way out to his shack and lay cool cloth on him, as the boy did again now, lifting off the old and putting on the new as if he understood the cool it brought. And each time a smell renewed itself, the burnt flesh, the young boy, the whiskey, almost washed away now by the cloths but not quite gone.

‘You get me the gun,' he said, jerking his head in the direction of the kitchen as if the boy didn't know well enough where it was. The boy stood watching him. ‘In the kitchen. You reckon you can carry it? Don't play with it none. Just bring it through to me.'

Still he stood there as if trying to make up his mind whether to obey, or maybe not understanding, since he had no idea how bright this boy might be who didn't seem bright enough to be able to talk. He seemed to make up his mind and stepped through into a golden shaft of light so that it looked for a second as if this little black, insignificant thing were made of the purest metal. Then he was gone and the man listened, still not knowing who this boy was and whether he wanted him dead. Besides, all he had to do was walk away and why he hadn't he couldn't figure, any more than he could why he had done what he had and why everything had happened as it had, though at the time it had seemed as inevitable as the sun rising in the east. Maybe the boy would walk back in and lift the two blue-black barrels to his head and blow him past everything and into perdition. He could feel his pulse pick up and start to speed, like a mule sensing home.

The boy carried the gun with both hands. He gripped it around the barrels and carried it upright, stock just above the floor, as though it were something in church, something holy.

‘Hand it on here.'

The boy did as he was told. It was as he had left it, the shells still in place. All he had to do was pull the twin triggers and he could blow his troubles away, or more likely anyone who chose to come and finish what they figured, maybe, they had only just started. He leaned it against the wall where he could reach it, watching the boy as the boy watched him.

‘We got any food?' he asked, aware that he had put the two of them in the same sentence by using the ‘we' as if the boy had a perfect right to be where he was, sliding in through a window without being asked and dumber than the day he was born unless he were truly born that dumb.

‘Food. We got any?'

The boy shook his head. So he had been looking for it, when he himself was beyond all thoughts of food or anything else. Even so, it seemed to the man that he must be right because he had been meaning to take a turn about and get him a rabbit when it happened, that and what he had meant to buy at the store and hadn't in the end because of what happened. What he had really bought was a pitcher or two of trouble that poured right on out in the dust when that nigger started everything going, because, when it came down to it, it was that man, black as night, walking right on in the front door, who had started it. So there was no food and him hungry suddenly, who had thought such a short time before that he would never need food again, that the world consisted of pain and little else besides.

‘You find something,' he said. ‘Berries. Something. You know where you can find something to eat?'

The eyes stared back at him and he could see this boy wasn't going to go anywhere unless he scared him or talked him into it, and he sensed that scaring him wouldn't do it since he could just head on out and leave him on his own.

‘I'm OK now,' he said, as if the boy might feel an obligation, though why he should surely beat him, beat him all ends up, unless he were Johnson's pup, and, just thinking it, he could see how it must be true. But even if he were, why should he think this a place to come, a white man's house where he knew, if he wasn't dumb in his mind as well as his voice, that nothing good ever come from the white man as long as white and black had sweated together under a Tennessee sun which didn't give a shit what colour you was, no more than the mosquitoes and flies and bugs, which bit and burrowed and fretted their way in pulsing clouds. ‘I'm OK now. I'll be all right. Just find us some food or we'll starve. And where's the whiskey?' The boy looked down and the man followed where his eyes were looking. The jug was on its side, empty as could be, and the only others he had were buried or hidden and he wasn't about to tell him where, not yet at least, not until he had let the string out a mite further to see how far he would run. Then the boy was gone, so silently he never noticed it. Maybe he got Indian in him, he thought, Comanche or Pawnee or some such, though the Indians he had seen were a sorry sight, sorrier than him and he knew how bad he must look, how bad he had looked since his wife had died, his wife and his son, one hour apart, the pain of one caught up in the pain of the other, neither one saying anything at the last, or making a noise, neither one making a sound except her long last sigh as though she needed to breathe out all twenty-two years of her life in a single breath before she could move on, giving that life back to the wind that stirred in the trees without cooling the air. Well, that was long ago and a lot of nothing had filled the air since then.

On a sudden thought he broke the gun open and slid the shells out. Why leave a loaded gun where the boy could maybe pick it up and shoot him where he lay? He had not done it when he could but who was to know? And if it were Johnson's boy, then what had happened to his father? Well, he didn't have to be told to know what that might be, to know what it was. They weren't going to leave it at that. When they were hitting him with the fence post and pushing the tyre brace in his face, saying they were going to take his eyes out so he couldn't no more look at a woman than that nigger would ever be looking at another, he knew what they had done to him, to that black man who walked through the door, as should have known better, and talked back and touched a white woman. He knew what they had done but he didn't know it all. Was it just stringing up or was it something more? They were still hot with it when they caught up with him, so that he knew it must have been bad. Then they told him some things, and how was he to know if they were true, how was he to care, who had troubles of his own enough?

And now the boy. Had he seen it happen or had he just come upon it when it was all done? And why was he here, who should have been running already, running as fast as he could go, knowing even at his age, whatever age that was, that they would be after him and that they would never stop until they got him unless they just run out of will, decided they would rather torture a cat or poke the eyes out of a dog or do things to their sisters or mothers or whatever it was that had made them spawn, the way they did, people who were no more people than the mule he'd owned before that took sick and he couldn't earn a dollar for hauling wood no more or hire her out to the farmers. Question on question rolled into his head until the weight of them was more than he could take and he swam into a darkness that took him into it as if it were a memory wrapped in a dream and buried in the warm earth. So he was asleep again, which was the only way he could mend, though being asleep he could no more tell himself that than he could know that he was a man lying in a bed and waiting for someone to come and tell him it was time to die.