Hunts in Dreams (6 page)

Joan took the flashlight and the dress into the barn. “No goats until you fix these doors,” she said.

“I don't know how.”

Joan came out, clapping her hands free of dust. “Maybe not,” she said, “but it won't get you out of helping.”

“That's fair,” said Micah.

Charles pushed the doors shut and secured them with a cement block. He was always rearranging the pieces that had worked loose from the foundation.

The light of the moon made a black shadow at the base of the hedge. You could hide there and no one would know until sunrise. Micah looked at the stained face of the moon. Men had gone up there years ago but found nothing worthwhile. It was all a pointless exercise, Charles had said. One of the things that he did best was to discover the pointlessness of exercises. He would scan the newspaper for useless behavior. Joan, however, would always try to see the reason behind what she read. She took everything to heart and would focus on stories of murder and abduction. Joan and Charles seemed like opposites, and Micah could not understand how they had ever got together. In fairy tales, the man and the woman were sometimes assigned to each other by cruel parents, but this did not happen anymore. Joan once told him how she had met Charles at a lecture on alcohol in a church. Later they lived in the church. Imagine living in a church! Alcohol was one of the four menaces lying in wait for the unsuspecting child: alcohol, drugs, television, and cigarettes. The cigarettes seemed worst to Micah, because your lungs turned black, and you died, and warts could grow out of your eyebrows, as had happened in the case of a worker at the grain elevator. Micah was glad that Charles and Joan did not smoke cigarettes or take drugs, although they did drink alcohol. And of course they all watched television, on which men and women smoked and drank and undercover policemen laid out on tables the drugs they had seized. The drugs came in packages of white paper, like pork chops.

As the three were walking back to the house, a shooting star crossed the sky. They stood looking at the nothing that was left of it. Micah wished that warts would not grow from his eyebrows if he ever took up smoking. What his parents wished for, he could not guess. Then, as if they had been waiting for it, they heard the sound of a window opening.

“Is someone there?” said Lyris.

She leaned out the window, with her hands on the shingles over the boot room.

“Hello?”

Why was no one answering? Micah wondered. It was true that they were all on the shy side in her presence. Charles would sometimes look at Lyris and set his jaw, as if trying to think of something to say. Then he would hurry off — past her or away from her. Joan spoke to Lyris as if she were hard of hearing or very young. And Micah called her sister, not only because Joan thought it would help reinforce their relationship but also as a way of papering over the fact that she was nearly a stranger to him.

“Just us, Lyris,” said Joan. “Mother and Dad and Micah. We came out to see about the barn doors.”

Lyris climbed out the window and stood on the roof.
We don't know her,
thought Micah,
and she doesn't know us
. She steadied her hand on the window frame and said she was sorry.

“I don't blame you,” said Charles. “Nobody wants to be locked inside something.”

“It's my fault,” said Micah.

“It's Micah's fault,” said Charles.

“But don't be coming out on the roof,” said Joan. “You could fall, Lyris. That's no place for a young woman.”

“Maybe we could meet up somewhere in the house and continue this discussion,” said Charles.

Lyris climbed back through the window and slid it closed. A police car rolled slowly by, spotlight angling this way and that, picking out fence posts and black trees and the silver mailbox before coming to rest on Charles, Joan, and Micah. The car backed up, wheeled into the driveway, and the big cop Earl Kellogg got out.

“You folks're up late. Everything all right?”

“You've got no work here,” said Charles. “Micah couldn't sleep, so we came out to look at the barn.”

“That always works when I'm feeling sleepless.”

“The kids broke the doors.”

“Well, I heard you had an extra one lately.”

“Lyris came this summer,” said Joan.

“Mind if I see her? Just for the sake of the thing.”

“Come on in,” said Charles.

Earl followed them into the house, holster flexing with a leathery sound.

“Lyris,” called Joan. “Oh, look at what time it's getting to be. I have to get up in five hours.”

Lyris came downstairs in a white robe with red threads.

“This is Earl,” said Joan. “He's with the sheriff's department. We've known him forever.”

“Seems like it, anyhow.” Earl smiled and shook Lyris's hand. “Welcome to Grouse County.”

“He happened by while we were all standing out in the yard like geese,” said Joan, “so he wanted to check in and say hello.”

“Hello,” said Lyris.

Earl turned to Charles. “You wouldn't have any beer, would you?”

“You came to our school and said not to drink and drive,” Micah said.

“And don't forget it. But somehow a glass of keg beer would go real well 'long about now. What do you say, Tiny?”

Joan looked from one man to the other and pointed out that everyone called her husband Charles now.

“What do you say about that, Charles?”

“We've got bottled beer, but I can't offer you a draw. Tell you what I will do, however. I'll ask you to get out of here and find your own beer.”

Earl laughed, but his heart was not in it. “So that's how you'd have it. The truth is, I haven't drunk a beer in ages. If anything, I might have a spot of vodka. But only after a meal and never behind the wheel, as they say.”

“I'm going to bed,” said Lyris.

“Me too,” said Joan. “Come on, Micah. Time for all good children to be dreaming in their beds.”

“I hope you like our part of the country, Lyris,” said Earl. “And if you ever want to stop by the sheriff's office and see the inner workings of justice, just give a holler.”

“Thank you, I might.”

Earl left, Joan turned off the lights, and they all went up to bed. Micah set himself the task of planning for the arrival of the goat. They would drive fence posts and rig a wire fence. Micah and Lyris could feed and brush it, shine its hooves with cloth, and show it at the fair. They would need buckets for the oats, or whatever it would eat, and buckets appealed to him. Metal ones. He fell asleep hearing the clanking of the handles.

Saturday

5
◆
Lyris

L
YRIS WOKE IN
THE MORNING
and found Follard's jack- knife under the pillow. She considered cutting Micah's shoestrings with it, but what kind of revenge would that be? He could just get new ones. She turned onto her back in the sagging bed. The mattress rested on what appeared from underneath to be a panel of hog fence. No matter which end she placed her head at, her feet were higher. When she slept on her side, the bed put such a twist in her spine that she felt old and bent the next day.

But wasn't that the way? she thought. The cracks in the ceiling reminded her of the Great Lakes.
Homes
was the word that helped you remember their names. Until you were on your own, you took the makeshift bed given you and dreamed of the strong beautiful bed you would have for yourself someday. She got dressed and went downstairs. Light filled the kitchen. She smelled pancakes and the dusty husks of the cornfield across the road. Soon the corn would be harvested and bound for the river in semitrailer trucks and hopper cars. Charles had explained this.

She stood in the doorway, waiting for her life to come back to her body. Saturdays here seemed aimless, windblown, whereas in the orphanage they had been days of cleaning. All the kids would walk around with mops in their hands and the sting of bleach in their noses.

Charles slid three pancakes from a spatula onto Lyris's plate. “What's this about someone with a metal detector in the yard last night?”

“He said his name was Follard and he was lost,” said Lyris. She uncapped a bottle of clear corn syrup, which looked like furniture polish.

Charles sat in a chair backward, the rounded rail under his arms. The sleeves of his blue sweatshirt were cut above the elbows. “Did you ask him over?”

Lyris cut her pancakes with knife and fork, wondering what Charles was trying to be. He was a mystery. A shadow moved across his eyes. “No sir. I've never seen him before. He just walked up out of the grove.” Charles's hair was thick and black — Micah said he dyed it — and a bit shaggy where it curled over his ears.

“He's no one you want to know,” said Charles. “The best you can do with a kid like that is stay away.”

Someone, she suspected, had said the same about Charles one time or another. She could see in his face that when talking about Follard, he was talking about himself as well. That's how he could be so sure.

“Did Mom leave already?”

“Yes, about three hours before she had to. But understand what I say about Follard. And if he comes around again when Joan and I aren't here, I want you to tell him whose place this is. I'll tell him if he doesn't get it. And we don't want any metal detecting on our land.”

“All right. I understand.”

“Maybe he's got the idea that whatever's under the ground is free for the taking. This is not how it works.”

“No.”

“I know this kind of kid. And I say it for your own good and believing full well that you can take care of yourself.”

“Which I will.”

The dead and seedless head of a sunflower moved across a windowpane. Charles's eyes met hers and did not look away. “Can I ask how you got your name?”

“Well, there was a garden at the orphanage, and the gardener, not the one they had when I was there but some other one before that, her name was Lyris.”

“And later, when you had foster parents —”

She ate a wedge of pancakes from the flat of her knife while waiting for him to go on.

“Which were the ones that made bombs?”

“Pete and Jackie. But I don't know if they really made them. They had the instructions and all.”

“And none of them ever wanted to change your name.”

Lyris thought for a moment. “Why? Do you think I should?”

“No. It's a nice name and it suits you. I just wanted to know how it works, with the foster parents and everything. Joan got Micah's name out of the Bible.”

“I thought she might have,” said Lyris. “What did this Follard ever do?”

“They say he
burned his parents' house. I don't know the whole story. I didn
't really follow it. It happened some years ago. He went to court, but they couldn't prove what hap
pened.”

“Did he really?”

“Who knows? They say he did.”

“I think he might have been lost, like he said.”

Charles got up from the chair. “This is not an easy place to get lost in.”

“All right.”

“Can I make you more pancakes?”

“No, thank you.”

“There's a special one you better have.”

He carried her plate to the stove and came back with a scrap of browned batter in the shape of a cursive L. “That's for Lyris,” he said.

After
breakfast they drove over to Charles's brother's place to
build new doors for the barn. Jerry had a table
saw and a lumber pile. In his faded blue postal clothes and
the white pith helmet that shaded his eyes, he sat on
the front steps by a silver keg, drinking a glass of beer.
Charles sorted through the lumber, measuring boards with
a tape. He dragged out the ones he wanted and put them
on the wet grass in the sun. The boards were
of different colors, but weathered and faded so that the same
grayness of grain showed through all of them.

Jerry came down the steps and stood by the wood. “Caught me on my break.”

“You know,” said Charles, “a policeman came by our place looking for a keg last night.”

“Same here.”

“What'd you say?”

“Not much I could say with the evidence so evident. But you know Earl. He's more curious to know what happened than he is eager to put himself out. He did say he would get my lights taken away if I misused them.”

“He must have come over here after being at our place.”

“I imagine, but he didn't say so.”

“Always one step ahead, isn't he?”

“Not hardly. What are you making?”

“Barn doors.”

Jerry got into his car and drove off to deliver the mail, leaving the three of them in the lonely blue light of his place down in the hollow. They worked all morning, and it never seemed to get any later. Lyris and Micah brought out sawhorses from a corrugated metal building. Charles tried to be patient with Jerry's warped lumber, but he swore and raked his fingers and misplaced his tools. Watching him trying to contain his unruly nature was like watching someone tie himself up with rope. Lyris and Micah liked it when he lost his tools, because then they could pick them up and hand them to him. Charles ran the circular saw while Micah and Lyris helped steady the boards on the sawhorses. Sawdust flew in furry arcs that coated their arms and necks. Charles went out of his way to show them the way that things should be done, demonstrating how the release of the thumb lock made the steel tape race back into its housing, and how when a frame was square, the measurements on the diagonal were exactly the same. When the measurements differed, though, he seemed uncertain what to do about it. Lyris chewed the skin on the side of a fingernail, thinking that big things they had no clue about were happening somewhere else in the world.

Eventually they got the planks sawed and laid out over backing frames with X-shaped crosspieces to keep them “on the square.” Then it was time to nail, which came as a relief, because they could all take equal part, slugging away, with little precision required. Planks gapped in places, and the ends were not always even, but Charles said they could caulk the gaps and saw the ends back at home, where he had a chalk line somewhere. Each door was too heavy for all three of them to lift, but somehow not too heavy for Charles alone to lift. He put them into the back of his pickup, and they rode home, where they tore down the old doors and set about hanging the new ones. Charles screwed the straps of the old hinges into place. The doors opened and closed better than Lyris expected, and looked all right, except that one door was green, the other blue and red. That could be fixed with the painting, which would wait for another day.

In the afternoon they went to an auction house called the Palace to find a goat for sale. This was a big square building of whitewashed brick flanked on either side by open-sided sheds and alleys of matted straw. Cows lowed in the sheds, and Micah ran toward the noise. He stopped short, however, before a large circle of dark and shining blood on the straw. When Lyris and Charles caught up, they discussed what might have occasioned the spilling of the blood and why it had happened right here, but none of them could get a mental picture of the violence.

“My uncle one time got a calf to raise and slaughter,” said Charles. “He was going to make himself into a gentleman farmer. He'd read all about it, but it wasn't in him, you know? The seasons passed, and the calf got bigger, and when it came time to kill the thing, he couldn't do it. They had that cow until it died of old age. It would follow my uncle around and come when called. When it died, they dug a big hole out back of the house and buried it there.”

“Appalling,” said Lyris.

They walked down the aisle between the pens. The cows moved slowly, as if embarrassed about their great size. The hogs lay splayed out on their sides, oblivious.

“They look hot,” said Lyris.

“A pig will look hot in any weather,” said Charles. “They're just hot-looking.”

“Where are the goats?” said Micah.

“I'm wondering the same.”

Flies buzzed the blinking eyes of a pink sow with black spots. “What if God is some kind of livestock?” said Lyris. “People will have a lot of explaining to do.”

“They have that no matter what God is,” said Charles.

“Or a lobster,” said Micah. “How would you like to be a lobster and get boiled alive in a big pot?”

“I wouldn't go for that,” said Charles.

“I seen it on TV.”

“Alive? Hard to believe.”

“Oh, it's true,” said Lyris.

“What do you eat of a lobster, anyway?” said Charles. “Doesn't seem like there'd be a lot of meat on them.”

“They're crustaceans,” said Micah.

“Well, I wouldn't eat a lobster if you paid me,” said Charles. “And I wouldn't eat rabbit, although many do.”

“There's a goat,” said Micah. He was looking into someone's yard, where an animal slept in the grass beneath a tree.

“Hell, that's a dog,” said Charles.

Lyris smiled as she followed Charles and Micah into the main building. There was something she liked about Charles, although he knew so little about lobsters.

The three of them walked up a set of wide and uneven stairs and came out at the top of an old wooden auditorium, semi-circular in design. The bleachers descended steeply, in ever tighter arcs, to a dirt pen two or three stories below.

“Imagine building this,” said Charles. “We had trouble with them simple doors.”

The bleachers were half full of farmers. Some talked, some smoked, some held radios to their ears. They wore wide-legged pinstriped overalls and cloth hats crushed down on their heads. The auctioneer stood at a raised platform at the back of the pen. The wall above his head had hand-painted signs for feed companies, well drillers, implement dealers, veterinarians, and banks. The biggest sign of all was a disclaimer:
ALL GUARANTIES ARE BETWEEN THE BUYER AND THE SELLER WITH NONE MADE BY THE AUCTIONEER
.
Lyris felt
she'd happened on some ancient place.

They walked down an aisle and took seats as the next sale was beginning. A door opened beside the auctioneer's stand and five hogs sauntered into the pen, ringed noses testing the air. They were followed by a man slapping a wooden slat against his thigh and calling, “Suh! Suh!” He wore knee-high boots of black rubber with terra-cotta soles. Lyris expected the auctioneer's speech to be hypnotic, nonstop, and indecipherable; she was ready for a torrent. Instead he said calmly, in a drawl more occupational than regional, that these were American Landrace barrows certified by the seller free of cholera and Bang's disease and mange.

After the hogs were sold, the man with the flat stick and high boots bowed to the bleachers and herded the animals back through the doorway in the wall. Charles asked a group of farmers sitting below them when the goats were expected to go on the block, or had they already gone?

The farmers laughed. An old man wearing round eyeglasses asked what Charles had said. When it was repeated to him, the old man craned his neck to see who had asked such a thing. “Why, the goddamned dummy,” he said.

“Saturdays are hogs and cattle only,” explained another farmer. Using a blunt-nosed pencil, he was writing figures on a scrap of brown paper.

Charles gave the old farmer a wary glance. “What day are the goats?”

“They don't get a day,” said the writing farmer. “It's not an auction animal. Not that I know of, anyway.” He turned away. “Skel! This fellow wants to know about goats.”

Skel stood up and looked around. “We haven't had a goat, geez, going on ten years.”

“Let's go, Daddy,” said Micah.

“There's no money in it,” said Skel. “I can tell you from sad experience, you're better off with cattle.”

“Let's go.”

“You're telling me they don't auction goats,” said Charles, hemmed in, it seemed, by everything they knew and he didn't. “That it isn't done.”

It wasn't really clear whom he was talking to, but the farmer with the scrap of paper folded it and put it in the pocket of his green down vest. “I wouldn't go that far,” he said. “I could believe it happens somewhere.”

“They don't auction goats in this county!” said the old man, as if the county's honor had been called into question.