Beautiful Dreamer (4 page)

The lamp was losing power but he didn't have the strength to pump it, could feel sleep waiting anyway. For the moment, though, he looked down at the sheet, streaked red and black, and saw the shoebox still there and around it the things he had taken out in looking for the cream.

There was a small brooch, with a purple stone. She had worn it once, the day they married. It was all she had been given by her mother who had tried to stop her marrying, ‘throwing her life away' as she said. There was no particular shape to the brooch, not a flower or an animal. He held it up to the fading light. It had a glow at its heart. The gold metal had begun to flake but, as he turned it, it seemed to him that he did remember something from that time, not the day, not the night even, just a feeling he hadn't known since, had forgotten he had ever had. He put it down and looked to see what else he had swept into the box the day she died, when he wanted to get rid of everything that reminded him not of her, not that, but of all that had happened. For as long as he could recall, he had had nothing. Then he had had something, something that seemed more than he could ever have hoped for. Then suddenly there was nothing again, only this time a hundred times worse. The baby was nothing. It had meant something to her and therefore to him, but the loss of the child was supportable. Everyone lost a child or two, or, if not that, then whatever they were carrying when hard work, or hunger, or desperation made it or her give up on it. This one was born, even if it did no more than open its eyes and decide against it. But it meant worse than nothing for in opening its eyes it closed hers and he was back in the dark again, each day offering nothing but something to be got through.

There was a book. That was hers, too. He couldn't read more than a few words and neither could she, really, except that this was a gospel. He could make out the name: John. He never saw her read it, but she held it sometimes, would sit out front in the dappled shade and smile as if she knew something he didn't. And lastly there was a piece of cloth, blue, a piece of cloth she had kept for the child and never got to use. And that was her life, all contained in a shoebox that had never held shoes, at least not for him, since he had picked it up from the rear of the store where it had been thrown by those who didn't realize that everything had its use.

He put the things back in the box, everything except the cream, which he put on top of the orange box. And when it was all in, he pressed the lid back on and reached down and slid it under the bed where he could reach it if he should need it, though why he should need it he didn't know. He looked across then at the only other thing that had come into his life with her: a piano. They had argued about it, but it cost them nothing, coming from her home when her mother died at last, bitter to the end. She could pick out a tune with two fingers so you could recognize it most of the time. She could play half a dozen hymns and ‘Beautiful Dreamer'. Two of the notes didn't play, more, now, for all he knew, and it sounded tinny from not being tuned. He had thought to throw it out, set fire to it outside and listen to the wires stretch and break, but he had no more been able to do that than he had been able to throw out the shoebox. He couldn't play himself, never even ran his fingers along the yellowed keys, though he would brush the dust off the lid from time to time just to see the shine. He glanced across at it now, hearing, as it seemed to him, as he had not heard for so many years, the sound of a tune picked out by two fingers at day's end. Then he turned the knurled wheel on the lamp and the dark swallowed him, the hiss of the lamp stilled so that those other noises could fill the room. He lay back, feeling already that the pain was not as great, that healing had begun. There was a time when he would have said the Lord's Prayer. He didn't do that any more, not since she died and he had put her life in a shoebox. Instead he formed her name with his lips but didn't speak it aloud, was unaware, even, that he did so, and within a minute slipped off to sleep with the smell of another time filling the room.

For all that he had slept so much, he was sleeping again now as if his body knew better than him that rest was the medicine he needed. And since he could afford no other, it was just as well. So he floated down and since his wife was on his mind as the heaviness descended on him, it was of her that he dreamed. He was meeting her again at the dance. He remembered the smell of pine planks from the barn, so new you could see the curled roses of wood where they had been shaved by the plane, lying around as if someone had just got married and these were the cast-offs from the bouquet. She looked all angles, arms and legs sticking out from her cotton dress, but there was something else besides. She had a smile on her, not the blank face of the others, and you could see the way her body shifted under the dress as if she'd as soon tear it off and run through the grass under the moon as go dancing in a barn that smelt of fresh pine. Then he was walking with her as though the time in between had gone, walking with her and looking up at the trees. She had wanted to leave, wanted him to come with her. Talked of Birmingham one way and New Orleans the other, and he knew it was all a dream but he liked to hear her talk, knowing that neither of them was going anywhere but where folks had always gone.

She was young, always young, and young again now as the sun edged up across his blackened chest and touched his lips and moved on, night having turned to day, flowing orange-yellow over his crooked nose. She smiled, and he forgot all that followed, since it hadn't happened yet, forgot the sickness, the coming time, the tearing that left her more like a rag doll than a person, and though he was sleeping and the years had taken the pain and turned it into something else, or so he thought, even so, tears trailed down his ruined face and started him into wakefulness again at the very moment the sun laid a golden bar across his eyes. Doubtless it was that that woke him, and when he opened his eyes he had to close them again right away and assumed it was the glare that had made his eyes water and not feelings he thought he had buried along with her body where the pines rose up from the sandy soil and seeded themselves, where he gave her to them that seemed to need her strength and beauty to lend to their own.

*   *   *

They came as he knew they would, as he had assumed they must. He was stepping out of the outhouse when he saw them on the other side of the clearing, one with a rifle under his arm, the other with one trailing down. They saw him the moment he saw them. It was the Steadman brothers, or two of them, the twins, faces seemingly squashed, known for their meanness, not caring who you were if you were in their way. His first thought was for his shotgun, left behind in the bedroom. It might as well have been in a different county.

They stood still at first, looking around, making sure they were alone and that nobody was going to interfere. They stood and watched him as if he were no more than an animal they had surprised, as if they might be on their way once their curiosity was satisfied. Except that he knew they were here for a purpose. There were no dogs. Guns but no dogs. They were hunting, all right, but not anything that needed dogs to run them to ground. Then they started across the clearing. If he had not been broken and in pain, he might have made a run for the house, which was no more than forty feet away, but, the way he was, he had no hope of reaching it. Besides, they had maybe only come to gloat, there being no one to watch what they did, to urge them on, give them the courage they didn't have. They preferred the odds in their favour, as they had been before. Neither was the one had held him when the iron was put to his chest, but their brothers had done it and their faces weren't so different, after all. They had been there, faces lit by the fire, long, broken faces, as if something had pushed them out of shape. They swung around to put themselves between him and the house, knowing, no doubt, what was in his mind. Everything seemed to stand out with sudden clarity. It was as if a photographer had brought the scene suddenly into focus so that it seemed unreal in its precision. The two men stood out like characters on a stage. Everything else seemed to fade away.

‘Morning,' said one of them, he didn't know which, having never been able to tell them apart and not caring for the most part, either.

He nodded.

‘Got banged up a deal?'

He stood his ground, mind racing but getting nowhere.

‘Seen any squirrel?'

‘No,' he said, knowing they weren't hunting, except for him. ‘They're about somewhere.'

‘So?'

There was a pause. The boys looked about again, checking they were alone.

‘How're things … nigger lover?'

They had come right round now so that they stood between him and the door. They had moved around slowly as if out on a stroll. The one with the rifle over his shoulder brought it down, slowly, casually, as if he might not know what he was doing. The other spat brown liquid into the dust and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve where a strand of saliva was hanging down.

‘That's what you are, ain't it? Nigger lover.'

‘You boys want something?' He knew what they wanted and couldn't see how they wouldn't get it.

They looked at each other as if sharing a joke. ‘Hear some nigger got hisself strung up. You hear that? One of your relatives?'

They were building the rhythm so that what would follow would seem natural when it came. They shifted nervously, awkwardly, like young boys at their first dance, half serious, half not.

‘Got some nigger woman of your own, I s'pose. Got her in there, maybe.'

He jerked his head toward the house where the boy was, where the boy would stay if he had any sense, though who knew whether he did or not. Coming here hadn't suggested such, but who was he to talk who had got himself into this by not minding his own business as he should?

A soft patter of rain began to fall, making the leaves nod and dance. The men showed no sign of noticing. They stood side by side, their bodies looking dislocated, the rain picking at the ground around them.

‘We got some business, you and us. Never finished what we was doing the other night. Wouldn't you say? That right, ain't it?'

‘I don't want no trouble.'

‘Oh, hear that? He don't want no trouble. Is that right? Why, then, we just be going, won't we? Got a knife, brother? Seems now might be a good time to finish.'

He looked at his brother and smiled, not moving, looking back now at the man who could feel his legs begin to shake, begin to go, a weakness flow through him as though his body were getting ready to surrender.

‘Seems we ain't. Going. Seems we stopping some. How you like that? Them apples? Seems we ain't going, after all. Stay around some. Have us some fun. What you say?'

One of the two, face lop-sided, a grin fixed on it since birth, reached behind him, his hand reappearing with a Bowie.

‘Got a sharpening stone? Seems to me this's a mite dull on the edges. Point's all right, though. Nothing wrong with that.'

They took a step toward him. He took an involuntary step back.

‘Hey, hold on there. Ain't time for you to be going. We got us some business.'

‘Yes,' said the other. ‘I got a question for you, nigger lover. Which is it to be, the knife or the gun?'

And suddenly he found himself welcoming the question, welcoming the chance to end it all right there. What lay ahead for him? Here was a way to put a stop to it. But not like this, not from them.

They were no more than twenty feet away from him now, slightly to the side as if inviting him to make a run for it, though there was no possibility of that.

‘Hell, Mikey, I think he wants the gun.'

At that, they both swung their rifles up, not lazy now but meaning business, side by side like gunmen in some western.

‘You looking at the end. Just should've known better, wouldn't you say? Man gets to be as old as you. Think you'd get a parcel of sense. You ain't got no sense, though. Went against a white man, a woman, too, white woman. Don't matter she dried up and stupid. She white. One'n us.'

They both eased the weapons in their hands, looking around like hawks, searching for movement in the trees, looking everywhere but where they should. Then they tensed.

‘Got any prayers, nigger lover? No? Guess not. Well then, go to hell.'

The shot was a surprise, though he had been waiting for it, bracing himself, his mind a whirl of images he couldn't hold they went through his brain so fast. It seemed to explode from nowhere. But instead of him falling, one of the brothers seemed to rush forward as though to embrace him and then fell just a few yards short. The rain came down as if the shot had opened the gates of a dam. The other brother, unbelieving, took half a step forward, looking down at his own gun as if he had done it himself, and then, realizing, swung around just in time to take the second barrel full in the chest and stagger back, turning as he did so, so that the man could see his chest a mess of black and red, with a wisp of smoke.

And that was it, or almost it. The black boy stood still, the rain coming down like knives around him, the gun still pointed straight ahead, though there was nothing in it now, both barrels being fired. Then the rain stopped, as if someone had given an order, but still they stood as if neither of them could think what to do next. There was a groan and the first brother moved an arm like something that had been run over on the road.

The man walked past him and stood in front of the boy who hadn't moved since that last shot had been fired. He took hold of the gun, easing the boy's fingers from the trigger. Neither spoke. He looked back for a second at the two men lying in the mud, one dead, as it seemed, the other, perhaps, not. Then he went inside. He went across to where the shells were stored in their cardboard box and took one out. He smoothed the water away from his eyes where it was dripping down from his hair and, flipping the two empty cases with finger and thumb, slid the shell into one of the chambers. Then he closed the gun, clicked it back into shape and swung around to face the open door. He looked at the kitchen, as if bidding it farewell, and then strode outside where the sun had suddenly lit everything golden bright. He walked past the dead brother, seeing he was dead from the way he lay and not needing to check on him. He stood over the other one, face down, hand moving. There was a strange noise coming from him, nothing you would have called human if you had been asked to identify it, but a noise that showed he wasn't dead. He hooked a foot underneath him and flipped him over. There was a groan.