Hannah's Dream (6 page)

Harriet looked through all these photos once and then started over, lingering on those that showed Maxine’s father. People thought that homeliness sought its own level, but it wasn’t true; sometimes her heart ached for a man like this one. Maybe she could be this girl, so she could stand beside this man. Even as the daughter and not the lover, she would be blessed. Her own
father hadn’t been able to stand the sight of her or her mother. When he had been killed in a car wreck two days before her seventh birthday—and before she knew what lay in store for her at Aunt Maude’s one day—she had considered his death a confirmation of God’s goodness.

Harriet put away the first set of pictures, reached into the next drawer, and found herself at the turn of the century. There were no more photographs of Maxine’s father; the cameras found Maxine herself grown into a tall, vigorous young woman with the same pale eyes, still amused, still youthful. These pictures were taken in jungles, in bazaars, and on plantations in Burma, India, Indonesia, and Thailand. Maxine was often riding or standing beside Asian elephants, or towering over dark-skinned men carrying short sticks with metal hooks on one end.

In several pictures Maxine led rather than rode an elephant, as though she had been allowed to work. In these she looked particularly strapping and contented. Though Harriet knew she had died more than thirty years ago, it wasn’t hard to imagine Maxine in the present day, haying a field or chopping wood, using her formidable energies in some hard physical labor. Harriet knew that restlessness, knew that so much energy was no gift unless it was matched with opportunity and circumstance. She had never been happier, more completely engaged, than on a grueling corporate five-day Outward Bound survival exercise in Montana, where she had welcomed the physical demands, greeted each day with vigor and keen attention. If she could have chosen an historical period in which to live, she would have homesteaded on the American frontier.

The next drawer of photographs had been taken during the first fifteen years of the new century, and for the first time they included cities—New York, London, Paris, Rome, Bombay. Even
in these, a middle-aged Maxine wore men’s tweeds. The camera often caught her scowling, as though she was in the cities by necessity rather than choice. In many there was a young woman, unidentified but exquisite, dressed in graceful Edwardian linen, high-collared lace blouses, and narrow pointed boots.

In the next several decades, the pictures often showed the zoo—still called Havenside—and the growing animal population, including the two old elephants to which Maxine had apparently been so devoted. In these photographs she was often pitching hay or hauling piles of dirt or building materials, as the property grew every which way into sheds and animal yards. Harriet recognized much of it, even in its current, rundown condition. For the first time, she understood the full extent of Maxine Biedelman’s accomplishment.

Harriet flipped through the pictures with growing excitement. Here was a life she could use.

In the very early hours
of Monday morning Truman dozed uncomfortably in an armchair in the den as Miles snuffled at his feet, ceaselessly rearranging his towels and an old sleeping bag of Winslow’s. Truman’s motivation for being there was somewhere between protecting his property and helping a child through its first night away from home. He recognized the absurdity of his situation, but he hadn’t been able to relax in bed, listening for sounds of crashing furniture or piggy bereavement. In the end it seemed more bearable to doze upright in a chair than to lie wide-awake in bed, contemplating loneliness beneath his roof. The
Guide to Love and Happiness
had been quite stern about not giving your pig more attention at the start than it would get later on: the pig would never understand what
had gone wrong. Truman had been a pig owner for less than twenty-four hours and he was already making bad choices. The only pet he’d had in his parents’ orderly home had been a turtle, which disappeared within twenty-four hours and who could blame it? Even Truman had found the little plastic desert island and single plastic palm tree depressing, and God only knew what kind of hell it looked like from the turtle’s point of view.

Truman’s mother Lavinia—ever regal in her signature pearls and twin sets, her elegant French twist—had been firm in enforcing the household rules that applied to him: no messes, no disorder, no tussling with other boys on the living room furniture. Not that Truman had been the sort of boy to tussle with friends or anyone else on the living room furniture; he had been a pale, bookish child whose boyhood energies went mostly into imagining himself as a pirate, an astronaut, a mountain climber, a spy. As an adult he was still leaving no messes or disorder, and abstaining from tussles on the living room furniture, but he was keenly aware that he had failed to mature into a dashing figure.

Truman sighed and switched on the nearest lamp. Its vibrant glass base had been made by a prominent glass artist, who’d given it to Rhonda in exchange for a bust of his young son. The lamp was a robust piece, the deep golden color of hope and joy, and he hoped she wouldn’t remember to ask for it back. He needed it more than she did. Rhonda had a sinewy character and edgy resilience, heavy-lidded eyes and long hard bones. Had he ever found her beautiful? It was hard to remember. He supposed he had, in the beginning, when they were in college and under the influence of the twin stimulants of sex and sleeplessness. She had been so decisive, so sure of what she wanted, when she wanted it, and with whom. If he met her again now,
for the first time, he would probably be just as vulnerable to her certainty, her supreme self-confidence. The road to Truman’s beliefs was more circuitous, traveling as it did through the dense woods and bogs of indecision and doubt.

Indefatigable, the pig was still working on the towels beneath his chair. Miles. Truman could see Rhonda rolling her eyes at the name he and Winslow had deliberated over for so long.
It’s a pig, not a banker. Why not name it Sir Francis Bacon, something clever?
But Truman and Winslow weren’t clever, not in the ways Rhonda had expected.

Truman reached down and touched the animal’s side. The pig instantly dropped to the floor in bliss. Absently, Truman scratched the sparsely haired belly while Miles subsided into soft piggy grunts and then snores. Outside it was still pitch dark, the domain of the abandoned and the loveless.

O
n Monday morning,
Sam found a note taped to his desk in the elephant barn:

As far as he was concerned, the woman could hold on until he got Hannah comfortable. That meant cutting produce, pulling down hay, sweeping the barn, attending to his sugar’s feet, and petting her a little bit before letting her out into the yard. The phone on the barn wall seemed like it rang every other minute, but Sam just let it go. Mama knew better than to call so early, especially on one of Neva’s days off, and Harriet Saul could just wait; big noisy woman with a gift for making people
feel small. In the end, it was ten-thirty by the time he made it up to the house. Poor place needed a new coat of paint for its trim in the worst way; that, and to have its drive re-graveled. Max Biedelman would have died, seeing it this way. She’d been proud of her house, showed him paintings and statues and furniture she’d brought home from all over the world. The place had looked just like a museum.

He and Corinna had been invited there to supper now and then. The first time wasn’t more than a few months after Hannah had been given to Sam to take care of. Miss Biedelman and Miss Effie had set that huge dark table with a fine white tablecloth, china and crystal and silver, looked just like some movie. They’d sat way up at one end, but you could have fed a baseball team at that table and still had room to spare.

Sam had been self-conscious of his manners but Corinna settled in like visiting royalty, and that was just how they’d treated her, too. Asked her all sorts of questions about her grandmother and grandfather coming out from Chicago and settling a claim out near Bladenham, so poor they’d had to make their clothes from hides one year just like the Indians. They’d been too embarrassed to be seen like that, so they lived off the land until Corinna’s grandmother had spun and woven enough cloth to make Corinna’s granddaddy a proper suit of clothes.

Corinna had talked on and on, sitting up so straight and fine, her face glowing just like a polished chestnut. She had a smooth, rich voice, and she could spin a story as well as anyone he’d ever heard. Sam had been so proud of her he’d hardly said a word the whole meal, just watched her sparkle. When Corinna teased him about it on the way home, he told her he could talk to Miss Biedelman any time he wanted, but it wasn’t every day he could see his wife doing herself so proud. Even now, so many years
later, it was a memory that sustained him sometimes when he was feeling low.

When he came up the walk to the house, he saw Harriet Saul standing at her window, watching for him; by the time he walked in the office door she was fumbling with a slew of keys on a plastic spiral bracelet which she pushed up an arm as meaty as a ham. She pulled her office door shut behind her and led him upstairs and down the hall. He’d never been in this part of the house before, felt embarrassed to be here now, even with Miss Biedelman long dead. It felt like trespassing. But Harriet was already halfway down the hall. She moved real quick for such a stumpy woman; reminded him of the way Hannah moved out sometimes when she caught the smell of a treat in the wind.

Harriet unlocked a door and went inside, beckoning for him to follow. “I want you to look at these and tell me anything you know about these people,” she said. She opened a big wooden drawer and pulled out a fistful of photographs which she handed to Sam. “Start with these.”

“I’ll be damned,” he said softly, because he was looking at pictures of Africa. “That’s Miss Biedelman. Wasn’t she a fine-looking girl, though! I never saw her except as an old lady. Wouldn’t have pictured her like this, but she sure does look like herself.”

“Maxine Biedelman,” Harriet said.

“No one else it could be, not with those eyes. She hated being called Maxine, though. Always had people call her Max, and she got real mad when they forgot.”

“I thought Max was her father.”

“No ma’am, his name was Arthur. Died of the fever when she was twenty-five. I guess it nearly broke her heart.”

Harriet took the pictures out of Sam’s hand and thrust another one at him. “Who’s this with her? Is she a sister, maybe, or a cousin?”

Sam broke into a wide smile, saying softly, “Well, I’ll be. Naw, there never was a sister. That’s little Miss Effie standing next to her. Doesn’t she look just like a picture in all those pearls. And so young and pretty, too.”

“Who was Effie?”

“Miss Biedelman always introduced her as her personal secretary, though I never saw her working. Of course, that was when they were old, too. Didn’t know Miss Effie knew Miss Biedelman when they were so young, though. Fine-looking women, both of them. Don’t they just beat all in their fancy clothes.”

Sam handed the pictures back to Harriet, frowning. “It doesn’t feel right going through their personal effects like this. Miss Biedelman was a real private woman. She wouldn’t like us pawing through her things.”

Harriet waved away his concern. “She left them to the City of Bladenham, just like she left the house. I’ll get hold of the historical society, so they can catalog everything.”

“Well, I thank you for letting me see them again. I still miss them sometimes, even after all these years.”

Halfway back to the elephant yard
Sam felt a tug on the back of his shirt. “Mister? Hey, mister.”

He turned around and saw Reginald Poole, the boy who’d come along for a walk with him and Hannah. “Well, hey, boy. You come back to see my elephant?”

“Yeah, I came back like you asked me to. You remember me?”

“Of course I do. You treating your aunt right?”

“Yeah, I’m treating her good.”

“Glad to hear it, son. Treating women right’s one of the most important jobs a man’s got, seeing as how they give birth to us and all. It’s the least we can do in return.”

“Yeah. So are you going to walk that elephant again sometime?” Reginald walked with a big-man, basketball walk, bouncing up on the balls of his feet.

“Guess we could. You got any fruit in your pockets, a banana or two, maybe, or a couple of apples? Apples are good right now—I’ve been picking them out of Miss Biedelman’s orchard.”

“Nah.”

“Then you’ll have to just come back to the elephant barn with me and cut some for us. Your aunt know you’re here?”

“Yeah, she knows. She’s going to come back for me later, maybe in a couple of hours.”

“Well, we’ve got some time, then. Tell you what. I’ve got some chores to do before we can go off with Hannah, but you can come along and give me a hand, as long as you don’t get in the way and don’t rile Hannah. Say that back to me.”

“Say what you said?”

“Yeah, what I just said.”

“I can come along if I don’t get in the way and don’t rile Hannah. That means don’t piss her off, right, mister?”

“Yeah, just a prettier way of saying it. Your aunt, does she know what you were going to do, coming to see me and all? I don’t want to do anything that might upset her.”

“Yeah, she knows.”

“Okay.” Sam opened the gate leading to the barn and ushered Reginald in ahead of him. It wouldn’t hurt to show him the
ropes a little bit. It would be best not to tell Harriet Saul about it, though.

“How come it’s so cold in here?” the boy asked as they went into the food prep room. “Feels like the damn North Pole.”

Sam shot him a look that said,
Your language, son,
and Reginald looked away. “It’s not that cold,” Sam said. “Course, I shouldn’t say that, seeing as how I’ve never been to the North Pole myself. You been there, a great traveler like you?”

“Naw. I just imagine it.”

“Imagining is good. You know some grownups go through their entire lives without using their imagination a single time? Now, I call that a waste.” Sam set apples and bananas and carrots on the counter. “All right, son, here’s what I want you to do. You take these apples and bananas, and you cut the apples in quarters, the bananas in halves, and the carrots you can leave alone because they’re just little ones anyway. Think you can do that? That knife’s real sharp, so you’ve got to be careful, got to keep your mind on your work.”

“Yeah, I can do that. That’s not hard.”

“Well you must be experienced, then. Me, I found it real hard at first—kept having to fetch my mind back every two minutes because it kept wanting to fly away like some big lazy bird. I nearly cut my finger off one time. See that scar?”

“Uh huh.”

“Happened when I was cutting a melon for my girl and forgot what I was doing for a minute. Next thing I know, I’ve got blood all over the place—took six stitches to get it to stop. Hannah wouldn’t eat that melon, either. It must have made her mad, me getting so careless like that and ruining a perfectly fine piece of fruit, especially because melons are her favorite thing besides Dunkin’ Donuts.”

“I got stitches once, in my head.”

“Is that right? You have a scar from it?”

“Right here.”

“Uh huh. I see that. You’re lucky your brains didn’t escape right out of there before you got it patched up. Brains like to go their own way sometimes. I had an uncle who got a cut no bigger than yours and next thing we knew, he couldn’t even talk right.”

“Aw, that’s just a story.”

“Nope. The poor man never did have a complete thought after that. He’d come out with a half-a-one sometimes, but he never could finish what he started. It was about the saddest thing I ever saw. Only thing he could do right after that was shuck corn. He was a champion corn-shucker, but where’s that going to get you?”

Reginald shrugged.

“See there?” Sam waggled the knife at him. “That’s why you’ve got to start out your life with all your wits protected. You never know when you might lose a few, and you want to always have extra if you can, especially since the good Lord doesn’t always start us out with an equal number. Now Hannah, she got extra wits right from the get-go, and not only because she’s bigger. She’s just plain smart and she always has been, as long as I’ve known her. You, now, I bet you’re pretty smart, too. But I’ve only just barely got enough, so I’ve got to protect what I’ve got extra carefully. My wife Corinna’s real smart. I bet your aunt is, too.”

“Naw. She’s good at yelling, though. She can yell real loud when she wants to get on you about something.”

“Well, yelling real loud, that’s an important skill to have, too. You never know when you might walk right in front of a train
and her yelling’s all that stands between you and eternity. But for that yell, you’d be flat, and there’s nothing worse than a flat boy, just kind of ruins the day for everyone.”

Reginald started giggling. “You tell a pretty good story, mister.”

“Me? Naw. I’m just an old man who’s seen a lot of things in my time. One day you’re going to be just like me, except better looking.”

Corinna didn’t use to open
the Beauty Spot on Mondays, but she’d started doing a half day to put a little extra money by for when Sam retired. She hadn’t told him yet, even though she’d been doing it for a couple of months now. If he knew, he’d fuss, so she just happened not to mention it, though she wasn’t used to keeping secrets.

The fact was, Corinna was worried almost to distraction. Sam was having those Hannah dreams three, four times a week now, and sometimes more. Before long Hannah was going to be getting donuts every single morning, and if they couldn’t figure out what to do, Sam would die a working man.

Corinna sighed and turned the coffee maker on, then opened the door for her first customer of the day. Debby Mitchell was a pretty thing, tall and slender like a model, except she taught high school, not even thirty yet. “Hey, sugar!” Corinna said. “How’re you this morning?”

“I’m okay now that I’m here. There was so much traffic I thought you might not see me until tomorrow.”

“Well, you’re here now, baby. Just relax and settle back.” Corinna put a smock over Debby and rubbed her shoulders and neck, something she did for her favorite customers. Debby had
been coming to the shop for nearly fifteen years now, since she was in high school herself. “So what are we doing today? You want to relax it again?”

“No, I won’t be doing that for a while.” Debby’s eyes were full of sparkle.

“Girl, you got a secret?”

“I do, but if you promise not to tell, I’ll tell you.”

“Honey, one thing I know how to do is keep my mouth shut. You should know that by now.”

Debby pressed her hands together, palm to palm. “Louis and I are going to have a baby.”

Corinna took the girl’s pretty head in both hands and gave her a kiss on the forehead. “Aw, congratulations, sugar. When are you due?”

“Not until late May. I don’t see how I’m going to last that long, though, I’m so excited to see her.”

“You pretty sure it’s a girl?”

“Pretty sure.”

“I thought so, too, and you know, I was right. Course, that was a long time ago.”

Debby turned in her chair to look at Corinna straight on, instead of through the mirror. “I didn’t know you and Sam had kids.”

“Just one. Things didn’t work out, though.” Corinna got her scissors and a fresh comb out of the cupboard. “So what are we doing, shug? Taking it down real close?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“That or we’re going to be braiding ’til the cows come home, honey, with all the hair you’ve got.”

Debby twisted around in her chair again. “Were you preoccupied when you were pregnant? I can’t concentrate for beans.”

“I don’t remember, hon,” Corinna lied. “It was an awful long time ago.”

“I’m all over the place like a bead of water on a hot skillet, and Louis is almost as bad as I am. We’ve been trying for a while.”

“I’m real happy for you both,” Corinna said. “If she looks even halfway like you, honey, she’s going to be beautiful.”

“What a nice thing to say!”

Corinna patted the girl’s cheek. “You ready for me to start?”

“Go ahead and work your magic.”

“I don’t know magic, sugar. I sure wish I did,” said Corinna, raising her scissors to begin. She had known the instant she became pregnant, had been so sure she’d never even had herself tested. She didn’t know how she knew; she just had. She and Sam were wild in love, and then a baby coming. Their cup had been full.