Hunts in Dreams (5 page)

“Tiny,” he said. “It's tiny.”

No one but Colette knew what he meant. The whiskey had tasted like metal, like the tines of a fork.

“
Tiney,
he was saying, don't you see?”
Colette said. “Not
tiny. Anyway, that's the most I could make of it.”

“Poor little Charles,” said Joan.

“He was hammered,” said Colette. “But he wasn't little. Even then he was a good solid boy.”

Joan gulped coffee. “What do you think about the gun? Maybe if you talked to Farina Matthews.”

And say what? Colette wanted to know. She had never gone begging to her neighbors and was not about to begin at this late date.

Dr. Palomino wandered through the cool hallways of his house, drinking scotch from a glass. He stood for a long time in the attic. The air was a little smoky. His family was out of town, having gone to see a production of
Peter Pan
. The water made a full and steady sound as it ran in the eaves trough. The doctor wondered whether he had actually asked that risky closing question or only considered it. But Joan had looked back; he'd said it all right. A doctor could not keep quiet — giving opinions was the essence of medical practice. Still, there was no need to give opinions on whom to get it on with, especially these days, when one never knew when one would be hauled before some hastily assembled review board. But if anyone would understand his carelessness in time of crisis, it would be Joan. The house had been on fire and he had let down his guard. He absolved himself, decided to move on.

Expectation gathered in his chest, ascended, and expanded in the hollow of his head. He had a destination, and the place seemed to know he did. Bookhaven sent a homing signal from across town:
Come to me, Dr. Palomino
. Resistance was necessary, it was part of the fun. Like a mummy called from the tomb, he walked, dragging bandages. Actually, he drove. Bookhaven was a pornographic book store run by a married couple named Gus and Loretta. The windows were painted hospital green. The doctor wore sunglasses and enjoyed the pathetic disguise as he prowled along the gauntlet of bright skin magazines. Never heavy, the doctor felt lighter still in the shop of filthy publications. Gus set up the projector in the back room, thirty dollars for the half-hour. What was thirty dollars to a doctor? Once he saw a four-thousand-dollar telescope on television, picked up the phone, and took delivery the next day. He used it once, to look at a cardinal on the clothesline.

The film was called
Sandra's T
eeth
. He had seen it many times.

It is a silent
film. A woman wearing a sundress sits in the waiting room of a dentist
's office. This is Sandra. A receptionist looks up
and speaks. The screen fills with printed words, white on a black
background:
What's the problem, miss?
Sandra smiles, revealing teeth
so perfect they emit light. The receptionist's eyes widen
as she backs away from the desk, overturning her chair. It
is all a little overdone. It is supposed to be overdone. She edges
along the wall, disappears through a doorway. Sandra closes her mouth
without losing the smile. Her eyes are calm and lustrous, and
her hands settle in her lap.

Joan and Lyris were standing by the car in the dark when Micah came out to apologize for locking Lyris in the barn. He cried easily, so he would never be disturbed about anything for very long. Then it was Lyris's turn to confess: she had worn a dress from Joan's trunk and torn it, and she had broken the doors. Joan regarded her children fondly.
Subconscious
resentment,
she thought
. They are piling it on because
I'm leaving
. Yet she luxuriated in her capacity to forgive, to set their troubled minds to rest. Never does a person have so much power as when absolving children of their errors. Some parents, she knew, let the guilt of the children be, let it fester; how foolish they were to forfeit the chance. And children, of course, had very little capacity to release a parent's guilt. It was a weight they could not manage. She put her arms around their shoulders and shepherded them to the house. Micah slipped away to play El Mono. The green dress lay by the suitcase on the kitchen table.

“I wore this in a workshop production
of Into the Quagmire,
” Joan told Lyris. “‘But what about me? When does my time come? When, Mr. Johnson? Tomorrow? The day after? In a fortnight?' That was my big speech. Your father played the role of Mr. Johnson.”

“What was he like?”

“He had a graceful way of getting around the stage,” said Joan. “He would be in one place, and then he would be in another, just like that. He had false teeth, from a childhood injury. He was an idealist. He said he would never own property.”

“Did he know that I was born? Did he come and see me?”

Joan closed the tear in the sleeve so that the yellow backing could no longer be seen beneath the green. “He came to see you. But there was a documentary filming in Calgary and he had to go away.”

“What was it about?”

“I forget. Hydroelectric power or something like that.”

“Why didn't you keep me?”

Joan took Lyris's hands in her own. “‘Lo, I have sinned, and I have done wickedly: but these sheep, what have they done?'”

“Tell me in your words.”

“I'd rather not.” She released her daughter's hands. “I mean, there are things I could say, and they're probably even true, but they would sound false, saying them now. That I was young and alone, that I was mixed up — where do I get off saying such things? ‘Sinned' and ‘done wickedly' cover the subject pretty well.”

They sat for a long time without talking. Then Joan picked up her suitcase and carried it toward the door. “I'm sorry,” she said.

“A man came through the yard tonight,” said Lyris. “He had a metal detector and he'd been in the woods.”

Joan turned. “An old man?”

“No.”

“You be careful.”

“I didn't mean to ruin your dress.”

“We can fix it. Don't worry. Anything in that trunk is yours to wear.”

“Where'd you get it all?”

“When I left the theater, they told me to take whatever I wanted,” said Joan. “I guess it was their way of thanking me.”

Actually, she had taken the clothes without asking. But she couldn't in good conscience tell her daughter that.

The dentist wears a white coat and thick black glasses. He directs Sandra to stand on a scale while he takes pictures. She hesitates, covering her mouth with her hands, but then loses her shyness. The dentist clicks away with a box camera. He works urgently, as if on the brink of a finding. Then he puts the camera on a desk and a dialogue panel appears on the screen:
Ge
t
undressed!
She looks leery, but he points to the diplomas on the wall and she relents:
Oh well . . . if it's for
­
science
. She unbuttons the dress and steps out of it, revealing an undershirt, a short slip. The dentist takes more pictures. Then he brings a small black music box down from a cupboard. He winds the spring, opens the cover, and places the box on a desk. A small ballerina turns slowly. Sandra shakes her head
—
this dentist must be out of his mind!
— but even as she is thinking this, her body begins to move. The dentist t
akes his clothes off and joins her in an ardent dance. He lifts her over his head, lowers her lightly to the floor. She arches her long back and dashes around the examination room with her arms expressively behind her. This is Dr. Palomino's favor
ite part of the movie.

4
◆
Micah

W
HAT A BIKE
RIDER
he was in his dreams. The front wheel spun true, minding his hands, and his chin floated high above the smooth turning of the
pedals. Lyris appeared from nowhere, holding a jackknife with which to
reward his new ability, but he did not want to stop long enough to take the prize. On and on, down the road, into town. Everyone had gathered along the sidewalks, but he glided
past before they had time to cheer, and then
the town lay behind him and the terrain changed. Mossy rocks loomed from
the ditches, and the more they rose, the higher above
the road he seemed to ride, until the bicycle had changed
into an old-time model that had such a huge front wheel
it would have to be mounted and dismounted with a ladder. He
sped along, wondering how he would ever get down. A cold wind began to
blow cotton snow that collected on the sleeves of his coat and on
his eyelashes. Then the wheel began to shake, as it
did when he was not dreaming. He looked for a place
to bail out but was now riding over rough gray and green stones. The
headwind drove furry scraps of snow against him. Weather slowed the bicycle, slowed the turns of
the wheel, until finally, robbed of volition, the bicycle tilted
toward the rocks and
Micah fell and woke up on the floor of his bedroom.

He lay there breathing hard and listening to the night of the house. A familiar stream of sound came from downstairs. Every­one knew that television was a disruptive force that kept the mind from countless healthy activities such as reading and drawing, but still, how good it was to wake from a dream and hear a television playing. It meant his mother and father were still awake; sleep had not stolen them from him. Or, even if they were asleep, in front of the television screen, it was a still-dressed and slouching sleep, not nearly the dividing force presented by sleep in the bedroom. He was not allowed to enter their bedroom without knocking, and he assumed this rule had something to do with their dreams, which would be dramatic and complicated, and with “sexual intercourse,” which would be too.

Micah opened Lyris's door far enough to slide into her room.
The nightlight above the baseboard in the hallway cast a long thin
el of light on the ceiling. It looked like the
leg and foot of a thin man from the cartoons. Lyris
breathed deeply and with a delicate vibration of the throat.
An alarming gap fell between the completion of one breath and
the beginning of the next. It might have been enough to make
her faint if she had not already been unconscious. The
sound of her breathing seemed to wrap Micah in its web. Moving to her dresse
r, he stepped on a rough cylinder with pearly inset buttons and knew it instantly for a corncob. Still his foot slipped and landed with a soft
thud and he froze, waiting for her breath to resume. The
top of her dresser yielded bobby pins, matches, a sandal,
and a jewelry box. He wanted none of these things.
He drifted back to the bed, where the reed of light crossed the night table and
the sleeping Lyris. She was under the covers. One hand rimmed
the base of her throat as if to protect it from the
other, which lay on top of the blanket, upturned in a
fist. As he had seen in the movies, Micah raised her arm and let it
drop. He ran his fingernails lightly along the soft cords of her wrist; he pried open her fingers. He took the brushed-steel
jackknife with the pheasant painting from her hand and backed to the doorway
. Somewhere nearby a humidifier was running. Micah could just hear it beneath the
sound of Lyris. He opened the knife and looked at
the machined blade in the ray of light. He pressed the tip
of the blade into his palm until it hurt. The knife
closed soundlessly and tightly. It was an excellent knife. He
put it back in Lyris's hand and closed her fingers.

Earl the deputy stopped by the tavern a couple hours into his nightly rounds. A sign on the wall said that the maximum number of people allowed on the premises was ninety-five, but there were only seven in the tavern, counting the bartender. “How's the old shillelagh?” he asked Earl.

“No complaints,” said Earl. “Give me a Pepsi and a pickled egg.”

The bartender uncapped a jar of brine and reached in with tongs. “I'm thinking of discontinuing these. We hardly sell any of them.”

“Not like the old days,” said the deputy, “when the pickled egg was king.”

The bartender put the egg on a sheet of wax paper and handed it over. “Why, the sidewalks would be jammed with people, each with their own egg.”

“That was the heyday of the steam-powered adding machine.”

“Now everything's changed except the jokes.”

“Old jokes for old men.”

“All maintenance, here on out.”

“How true.”

Earl took the egg and the Pepsi to the back of the tavern and pressed coins into the metal sleeve of the pool table. The cast-resin balls rattled down the open shelf. He walked around the table, setting up trick shots. He ate the egg, which had the consistency of glue.

The young man named Follard came over and put quarters on the rail for a game of last-pocket. Follard shot from a crouch, peering over the edge of the table.

“You guys break up a party tonight?” he said.

“Not me.”

“Then who would it have been?”

Earl shrugged and sank a bank shot he had no business making.

“Well, I heard some kids got their keg taken from a party at the Elephant.”

“Entirely possible, but it's nothing I've heard of,” said Earl. “And these were cops that did it?”

“So it was told to me,” said Follard.

Earl took a five-dollar bill from his shirt pocket and folded it into a sleeve, which he slid down the cue, ferrule to joint. “What am I again?”

“Little ones.”

“I can't even remember what I am. That's where my head is at.”

“I got a knife off them.”

“Off who?”

“The ones who told me about the party.”

“They just offered it up. Out of generosity.”

“Out of something. They don't know where it went.”

“Well, Follard, what'd you take it for? You see, this is how you get in trouble.”

Follard reached under the table for the bridge. “The ladies' aid,” commented Earl.

Follard held the butt of the bridge in one hand and fitted the cue intently into the brass notch. “To tell you the truth, I don't even know why I did it.”

“Don't think I won't run you in.”

“For a little jackknife? Put it this way: it would surprise me.”

“Let me see it.”

“I gave it to a girl.”

Earl folded his arms with the cue against his badge. “I ought to rough you up or something.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don't know. It's just a feeling. Like it would be an ounce of prevention.”

“Well, she's more deserving than the one who lost it. In a sense, I did a good thing.”

“I highly doubt it,” said Earl.

Micah crept down the stairs. Because of how the house was built, you could get two thirds of the way without being seen. His father sat in the big chair, and his mother was on the davenport with her legs crossed beneath her. They were watching a movie on Channel 9. The commercials were bracketed with film footage of clouds passing eerily over the moon, followed by the words
Nightcap Theater,
written in letters that were drawn to look as if they were made of wooden planks, jagged from hasty breaking. Charles yawned and opened a bottle of beer, and Joan flipped through a stack of index cards on which she had written notes for the speech she would give over the weekend in the city. Micah scratched the center of his back with his thumb. His back always itched. When he observed his parents together and they were not aware of being watched, he thought of them by their names. Joan's talk was about giving more freedom to the dogs and cats in shelters. That way not only would the animals have a more interesting life, she said, but the visitors who might adopt them would get a stronger sense of their personalities than if they saw them in cages, where they could only slink.

“I
just thought of something,” said Joan. “What if they're already
doing these things? Maybe I'll be preaching to the converted.”

Charles shrugged. “I find that unlikely,” he said. “And even if you are telling them what they want to hear, so what? They still want to hear it.”

“It all sounds so obvious.”

“You've read it six times, that's why.”

“Maybe I should cut this part about scratching posts.”

“Dance with the one who brung you, I say.”

“I'd give anything just to stay home.”

“No, you wouldn't.”

“Yes, I would.”

“You can't wait.”

“I couldn't stay home if I wanted to. I've made commit- ments. You work alone. No one decides what you're going to do except you.”

“You can't wait to get in the water.”

“I must take direction,” said Joan. “What do you
mean by that?”

“Who directed you to pack a swimming suit?”

“I'm going to a hotel. There may be a pool. Therefore, I'm taking a swimming suit.”

“You meet someone, you have a nice swim, you towel off.”

Joan took a deep breath and squared up her index cards. “Why did your first marriage end?”

Charles held his beer bottle up to the light and looked at it. “Many reasons.”

“Jealousy.”

“That was one of them.”

“That was a big one of them. This feeling you have of, of, of
ownership
.”

“Oh, hell.”

Joan sighed. “But let's don't start.”

“Good.”

“Let's change the subject.” She looked around the living room. “There was a man in the yard tonight.”

“Who?”

“Someone with a metal detector, according to Lyris. I didn't like the sound of it.”

“Don't tell him,” said Micah, before he realized that he was not supposed to be there.

“Micah?” said Joan. “What are you doing up?”

“Don't tell me what?” Charles said.

“I can't sleep.”

“Come on down, honey,” said Joan.

“What shouldn't she tell me?”

Micah sat beside Joan on the davenport and told Charles how he had shut Lyris in the barn.

“What is with you?” said Charles. “Think what would hap- pen if you couldn't get it unlocked.”

“She would break the doors.”

“You hope she would.”

“No,” said Joan. “She did.”

“Lyris broke the doors of the barn?”

“With a shovel,” said Micah.

“No kidding. Lyris is a tough one. But don't ever try
that again.”

“Are you mad?”

“I don't want her locked in the barn. Everything is broken around here, and I don't expect the barn doors will make any difference.”

“Can we still get a goat?” said Micah.

“We'll see.”

The movie came on again. Charlie Chaplin was in a tavern with a pretty woman. They were dancing. Charlie had belted his pants with a rope, and the rope was tied to a dog. Then a cat showed up and the dog leaped after it, causing Charlie Chaplin to spill to the ground.

“Isn't Chaplin the greatest?” said Joan. “I'll bet he is the finest actor who ever lived.”

“What about Tommy Lee Jones and Sissy Spacek in that coal-mining movie?” said Charles.

“Apples and oranges,” said Joan.

“That was a damned good film.”

Joan returned to her index cards.

“I
like
that scratching post part,” said Micah.

Joan smiled, and her eyes flickered like the dark part of fire. “You hear everything, don't you?”

Charles sat forward in the big chair and tightened the laces of his boots with strong tugs. “I'm going to go see about the barn.”

The three got up and went out through the kitchen. Joan lifted the green dress and folded it over her arm. Micah slid his bare feet into sneakers. In the boot room, they took coats from pegs.

The clouds had gone. Micah looked for the hunter
in the constellation Orion, but all he could see was an enormous piece of bow-tie pasta.
He was hungry. Sometimes his mother read to him
from the Audubon book of the night sky. Once she told how
Artemis, huntress and moon goddess, had shot Orion with an arrow, thinking he
was someone else. To make amends, she placed his body
in the sky, with his dogs for company.
This is why the moon has been cold and
empty ever since,
said his mother, shaking her head.
This is
why
. She began to read again; Orion got his strength back by chasing the nymphs of Taurus. It
was unclear to Micah whether his mother regarded this as a suitable ending. But he wished all
these things were really happening in the sky.

Charles shined a flashlight on the broken wood and hanging hasp. “How do you expect to have a goat when this is what you do to a door?”

The comparison seemed wrong to Micah. “Nobody would hurt a goat.”

Charles sighed. “Oh, I don't suppose you would on
purpose.”