Thief of Dreams (30 page)

As for James, he left the hospital diminished by three toes and part of his left heel but enhanced by the profound and pleasant aftermath of a dream he couldn't quite recall. Still, he could not be made to add anything to the cryptic note he'd left. He'd merely grow uncomfortable and inward and say he was very sorry and would never do it again. And that was partly true. He wasn't sorry, but he would never do it again because he'd lost all superstition, never mind that he'd gotten nearly everything he'd wished for.

Even to Lester—who had turned handsome in the hospital although his perfect white teeth made him look a little as if he might bite—James kept his peace.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

In all its larger movements and many of its smaller ones,
Thief of Dreams
is an act of imagination. But somehow this document seems to me, years after its first publication, almost shamefully autobiographical. Maybe I feel this way because I described my neck of the Appalachian mountains and so many people—my grandmother and grandfather, my closest childhood friend and his parents, my father, and many others (no matter what names I assigned them in these pages) as scrupulously as memory and craft allow. In most cases I did not try to record what actually happened, but what might have happened and how we would have felt and behaved if we'd had to suffer the fictional world here imposed. My mother and I didn't truly bring that godawful trailer home to my grandparents' pasture; I would have loved it if we had. Instead we lived in it for some years in one dreary place after another, with and without my father. And my mother never truly left my father as she often threatened, at least not for more than a few hours; although my father, I'm sure, would admit she had good and sufficient reason, many times, to do so. Nor was she ever unfaithful to him; knowing her as I do, I don't feel in the least presumptuous in saying that. So I admit I've pushed the characters in this novel far beyond where the heartfelt responsibilities, culture, morality, et cetera of their real-life counterparts would have allowed them to go—their desires, their disappointments, and the longings of their spirits to the contrary. Even so, in this tale, as in fact, most of what was lost was restored—at least for man and boy—and perhaps only one character's dreams were truly stolen, if only because they couldn't even be properly formulated. In any case I suspect this is why the first paragraph of the epilogue has always seemed such a sad rationalization to me; it is the sort of peace we make, if not with the lives we've chosen, at least with the ones we could not escape.

About the Author

John Yount is the author of five critically acclaimed novels:
Wolf at the Door, The Trapper's Last Shot, Hardcastle, Toots in Solitude
, and
Thief of Dreams
. A longtime professor at the University of New Hampshire, he has been the recipient of grants from the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts. According to John Irving, Yount is “a completely original voice in contemporary American fiction.”

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint “Futility” from
Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen
. Copyright © 1963 by Chatto&Windus, Ltd. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
The Poems of Wilfred Owen
is published in Great Britain by Chatto&Windus.

Copyright © 1991 by John Yount

Cover design by Kat Lee

ISBN: 978-1-4976-6979-6

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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