Thief of Dreams

by John Yount

  Promptly at five minutes after twelve she knocked on his door carrying a tray with two drinks for him and two for herself. And except for the conversation, it was all very proper. Maybe it was her special manner, or what he thought he saw in her eyes, the late hour, the bourbon, the fact that he had been sound asleep when she called, but talking to her was as effortless as talking to a man. No, it was easier than that, and he found himself saying things he never expected to say.

  When he’d told his story, she said she thought it was just very strange how someone could be attracted by what you were, and then when they had you, set about trying to make you over into someone else. Anyway that’s the way it had been with her husband. He had been a history professor who taught at Pitt, she told Edward, only he hadn’t gotten his tenure, so he’d moved to some college in California.

  Why hadn’t she gone with him? Edward wanted to know.

  She laughed at that and took a swallow of her drink. Well, she guessed she just hadn’t got her tenure either, she explained.

  He’d asked what in the devil “tenure” was, and she told him it meant the bastards couldn’t get rid of you until you died, and while he pondered the sad drift of that remark, she went on about her husband. Oh sure, he was brilliant, she supposed—anyway she never understood half of what he said. But looking back on it, as far as she was concerned, he was pretty damned useless too. He never wanted to do anything except argue some point with somebody or read. Either that or screw like a billy goat—probably because he didn’t know how to do anything else. If you asked him to change a light bulb, he was in trouble. Hell, he was forty years old and he didn’t even know how to drive a car and couldn’t begin to balance a checkbook. People were forever calling him on the telephone, threatening to sue him if he didn’t pay his bills. And boy how that would put him on his high horse, she said and laughed. Every time he’d wind up insulting them as though the whole thing was their fault. Oh but she knew all about that, she told Edward, since he’d even tried to blame not getting his tenure on her. On the way she’d acted at two or three of the silly little faculty parties he’d taken her to.

  Edward laughed with her. Well how had she acted? he’d asked.

  Hell, she told him, she didn’t act. She never acted. She tried to have a good time like always. She said what she thought and did what she felt like doing. She cocked her head and peered at the ceiling above his head. What was wrong with that, she wanted to know.

  Nothing, he told her, nothing at all. So, he said, what did she hear from Professor Pergola these days?

  She didn’t hear from him. Hoped never to hear from him. Anyway his name was Whitney, but she’d stopped using that the moment they’d parted company.

  So then, they were divorced?

  She had divorced him in her heart and said good-bye and good riddance in the bargain, but she didn’t see any good reason to pay some lawyer a lot of money to shuffle papers and fart around over it. She knew it was a mistake, and Mr. Fancy Pants knew it was a mistake. A very bad joke that had lasted eight whole months. As for herself, she was back to being Paris Pergola, thank you very much, and if the great Professor Whitney wanted some little piece of paper to say, in writing, that the marriage was over, well fine; he could hire a lawyer and pay for it. But she didn’t need such nonsense because she was a free person in her heart, and that was what mattered. Anyway, she didn’t even know where he lived in California, or if he was still in California.

  Having said all that, she’d looked at him and smiled, although in the next moment the smile began to waver, and she tossed her head and took a sip of her drink in order to cover up the way her smile had begun to flicker toward something else, he guessed. But then, all at once, he realized she was crying, her face still bent over her lowered drink.

  Whoa, he’d told her, don’t do that; but she’d given up all pretense, and her shoulders were shaking, and he’d gotten up and gone to her to hold her awkwardly and try to shush her. After a while she managed to say that the drinks came to five dollars if he still meant to buy them, and they’d both laughed at her telling him that at such a moment. Then she’d said she wasn’t crying over any fancy-pants professor; she wouldn’t have him think she was. She was crying over love in general, or marriage in general, or some damned thing she wasn’t sure of herself. Then, laughing and crying at exactly the same time, she stood up and held out her hand to be paid, and he rummaged around in his pockets, remembered his billfold was on the bedside table, got the money, and paid her. Somewhere between laughing and crying, she gave him a long, fond look as though they had known each other for years, hugged him suddenly and fiercely, and was just as suddenly out the door and gone. As for him, he was not only bewildered but wide awake, and he stayed that way until it was time to pick up Womb Broom and Cox and drive across the Monongahela, where, in the hellish noise and heat of the steel mill, they put in a hard eight hours at regular pay and then four more at time and a half.

  And sitting across from her in the little French restaurant, her eyes gathering candlelight, he realized he was no better off and no less confused than that first night. He never had any idea what strange thought or confession might come out of her mouth. He had no idea whether, in the next moment, she would be angry, deliriously happy, or sad; or what sort of influence, if any, he had over these moods. He’d never seen anyone like her. For certain she could be the sexiest woman he’d ever met, but she could also be cold and hard or as defenseless, vulnerable, and shy as a child. For certain she kept him off balance, kept him guessing. Sometimes he told himself she was simply crazy, or he was, or both of them.

  What in hell was he doing in her company anyway? he wondered. What in hell was he doing in Pittsburgh to begin with? Away from his wife and son? What silly and unimportant thing had gone wrong? He’d thought Madeline was moody and hard to understand, but Jesus … Maybe the good Lord had looked down and said: Son, I think it’s time to show you some real, by God, moody. I’m going to dip you in the undiluted essence of mysterious womanhood, so you’ll know when you’ve got it good and when you’ve got a right to complain. Madeline, after all, was pretty steady, now that he thought back on her. She’d loved him because, well, since she was a normal, everyday sort of woman, she had to love some man or other; she just didn’t have to approve of them. And as long as he understood that and tried to behave himself and act more or less the way she wanted him to and took care to hide the side of himself that most aggravated her, well then, they could have a decent life. Anyway he could get used to it. Anyway he, by God, missed it and missed her.

  “So,” Paris said, “why so quiet?”

  JAMES TALLY

  If anyone knew how to be the new boy at school, he figured it ought to have been him, but he didn’t seem to be getting any better at it. Sitting in Mrs. Arents’s eighth-grade class at the end of the first week, waiting for the final bell to ring, he had the feeling that being new was like stepping on a nail or sticking your hand in the fire; it just didn’t get easier, no matter how many times you did it.

  This time, in fact, he’d gotten off to a worse start than usual. Good intentions aside, on the first day, before he’d had a chance to do anything to help or harm himself, Mrs. Arents had done him in. She was quite old and frail and seemed to live in a world that had nothing to do with the one he lived in. She taught a class of “young ladies” and “young gentlemen,” not the class that filled the room. And so, when she’d called his name on the roll and he’d answered, she’d made a little speech to that ghost class of hers. He was not only a stranger in their midst, she’d told them, but also the nephew of Miss Marshall, who had guided them through fourth grade, and therefore they should make a very special effort to make him feel welcome. By the time she’d finished, the entire surface of his body was full of the pinpricks of embarrassment, and he could hardly see. But he’d been aware of everyone looking at him; of a frozen, goofy expression on his face; and of one boy in particular leaning way back in his seat at the end of the
first row to stare at him contemptuously. “What a pissant!” the boy said at last, and a flutter of laughter ran through the class, but apparently Mrs. Arents heard none of it. No one in her ghost class would have said such a thing, so she merely finished calling the roll. Then, with her eyes focused somewhere over their heads and a dreamy expression on her withered face, she began to tell them about the virtues of an education and of keeping a tidy mind and a tidy body.

  James feared his father was right when he said that the only way to start in at a new school was to keep an eye on the biggest, toughest kid in the class until he said or did something James didn’t like, and then, right then, without wasting a second, James was to knock him on his ass. “It’ll be a lot easier than you think,” his father told him, “because he won’t be expecting it.” Good advice, no doubt, but James didn’t like to fight. It scared him. It was painful. And worst of all, it was embarrassing and deeply sad. But he couldn’t tell his father that; he could only say lamely that he wasn’t good at fighting. Edward Tally believed, however, that if James would only take his advice, there would be few, if any, fights to worry about. But what if he couldn’t knock the fellow down? James had wanted to know. Or what if he knocked him down, but then he got up again and beat the crap out of him? His father had laughed at the possibility and shaken his head wisely. If James hit him as hard as he could, the bastard would go down, his father declared. But even if he didn’t, James would have put so much surprise and fear into him, there wouldn’t be any fight; he’d bet on that. But say the little prick did get up and beat the crap out of James, all James had to do then was hit him again just as hard as he could the very next time he got out of line; and pretty soon, his father promised, the little son of a bitch would either be James’s friend, or he would at least decide trying to bully him just wasn’t worth all the trouble.

  Good advice, no doubt, James thought, even though his father seemed to offer him an easy victory one minute and then pull it back the next, like a carrot on a stick. It would have been a lot better to get a guarantee, but the principle of the thing seemed correct and a wonderfully simple philosophy to live by. Yet now, sitting at his desk and staring sadly out the window, the advice seemed sound only for somebody James was not.

  In all his life he’d never hit anyone as hard as he could. It was a serious failing, but there it was. Also, what was he supposed to do: get up when Earl Carpenter called him a pissant and knock him out of his seat right in the classroom? He wondered if that would get Mrs. Arents’s attention. Not much else seemed to.

  A sweet, sad husk of another age, Mrs. Arents sat behind her desk, looking pleased with herself for having given her phantom class of young ladies and gentlemen a poem to read. He had already read it twice, but surely to God there wouldn’t be enough time left to talk about it. Still, who could tell? If Mrs. Arents couldn’t stop the passage of time altogether, she could certainly make ten minutes seem like an hour and a day seem like a week. Yet he admitted he’d be happy to live in her world if he could, or even in his father’s, for that matter. But the sad fact was, he was trapped in his own.

  He hadn’t knocked Earl Carpenter out of his seat, and he hadn’t done the next best thing, which would have been to knock him down at the first recess and say with an icy stare and steely voice: “That’s for calling me a pissant, you pissant!” If he’d done that, his problems might be over now. Anyway they might be if he’d punched Earl every time he’d had a reason, all week long. But he hadn’t, and now Earl Carpenter had seen into his heart and wouldn’t be fooled by any temporary show of bravery. His best bet now was that Earl would simply forget about him, Earl and the ignorant twins, Tim and Tom Lanich, who followed the prick around like shadows. It was possible Earl would forget about him; besides, he mostly only called him names and punched him on the shoulders so they stayed bruised and sore. Once, the third day of school, Earl had shoved his head down on the drinking fountain and split his lip and chipped a front tooth, but he hadn’t done a whole lot more than that. It was usually the twins who were likely to trip or shove or otherwise torment him in order to amuse Earl. Still, no serious damage had been done, mostly, he figured, because he hadn’t ever fought back or even traded words with them. But he hadn’t cried either, though his eyes had filled once or twice because the situation was so unfair and somehow shameful. It embarrassed him just to look at Earl, who was fifteen and had already thickened up like a man and even had to shave; or anyway, on days when he didn’t, the blond stubble on his proud, cruel face glinted in the sun. He wasn’t sure why the sight of Earl Carpenter affected him so strongly. But something important and otherwise beautiful about the world seemed tarnished and disgraced by Earl’s presence in it. He appeared to be human, just like anybody else, but he had no pity, and only cruelty seemed to amuse him. By comparison the twins were just ordinary, everyday assholes.

  “Class,” Mrs. Arents said in her thin, cheerful voice, “I think you will have had time to read and consider Wilfred Owen’s touching poem by now. Would anyone like to read it aloud?” She cocked her head this way and that like a tiny bird. When her eyes met James’s, he looked down quickly at his textbook and frowned. “Well then,” she said with her usual jaunty resignation and cleared her throat importantly. “ ‘Futility,’ by Wilfred Owen.”

  Move him in the sun—

  Gently its touch awoke him once,

  At home, whispering of fields unsown.

  Always it woke him, even in France,

  Until this morning and this snow.

  If anything might rouse him now

  The kind old sun will know.

  Think how it wakes the seeds—

  Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.

  Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,

  Full-nerved—still warm—too hard to stir?

  Was it for this the clay grew tall?

  —O what made fatuous sunbeams toil

  To break earth’s sleep at all?

  Was the poem saying if there was such a thing as death, why bother living? Anyhow the earth was a planet and not a star, so that was wrong, James thought. He kept his eyes on the page, hoping she wouldn’t call on him, since he’d gotten in trouble with Earl once by answering a question on Aaron Burr. It was all right for girls to do their homework and answer questions, but not boys. Mrs. Arents had also made a little speech about how, since men carried on most of the business of the world, it was especially important that they apply themselves in school. Well he hadn’t applied himself. It was only that he’d been all alone in the trailer with nothing to do, so he’d read his history lesson. But he hadn’t studied it, and he hadn’t applied himself, although there was no way to tell Earl Carpenter that.

  On the day he’d answered the question, he was crossing the ballfield at lunchtime when Earl stepped in front of him. “You’re just what we need, ain’tcha?” he’d said, “a pissant bookworm,” and he’d put his hand over James’s face and pushed him back.

  But James had only walked around him toward where Lester was sitting under the huge sycamore by the creek; they always ate their lunches there as though on the most remote edge of the civilized world. “What are you anyway?” Earl had shouted at his back, “a pissant or a bookworm?”

  Halfway across the ballfield Tim Lanich had come running up behind him and flung himself sideways at the backs of James’s knees, spilling him hard and straining both his back and his knees and then leaping up and running back to where Earl and Tom Lanich stood laughing.

  “Lester?” Mrs. Arents said, ignoring the three or four girls who had raised their hands, “why do you suppose the speaker in the poem wants him moved into the sun, and who do you suppose him might be?”

  Through the fingers shading his brow, James watched Lester, who didn’t speak or even seem to breathe but merely stared down at his desk while a ferocious blush rose out of his ragged shirt collar into his tall, shy neck. Why did she have to pick on him? He wouldn’t say a word, and she must know it by this time,
since he hadn’t answered anything but the roll call all week. But Lester knew about death, James was certain of that, knew about it way down in his bones, even if he didn’t care to talk about it or understand the poem.

  “Timothy?” Mrs. Arents said.

  “What?” Tim Lanich said.

  “Why does the poet want him moved into the sun?”

  “Cause he won’t get up.”

  “And why won’t he get up, kind sir?” Mrs. Arents asked.

  Tim pulled the corners of his mouth down and raised his shoulders.

  “Probably drunk too much the night before,” Earl offered and got a few scattered snickers.

  “Probably drank too much,” Mrs. Arents corrected. “And who do you think this him might be, Earl?”

  “It don’t say,” Earl said. “Maybe his dick,” he added in a lower voice.

  “Yes, Earl?” Mrs. Arents said.

  “Nuthin,” Earl said.

  All at once James liked the poem and regretted his earlier attitude. It was the poet’s sentiment that counted after all, his care and sadness about the death of his friend, his unwillingness to believe that nothing could be done to change it.

  “James?” Mrs. Arents said, “will you enlighten us, please?”

  “Please, pissant, enlighten us,” Earl said from across the room.

  Was she stone deaf? Couldn’t she hear at all? Why wouldn’t she call on one of the girls who had their hands up and waving? James had heard his cousins say she was very partial to boys and, in spite of her age, was a terrible flirt and had been ever since her husband had died about a hundred years ago.

  “James?”

  “Well,” James said, “the poem doesn’t say who has died; maybe a friend or a father or a brother?” He scratched his head and frowned at the page. “But he was probably a farmer once, since he used to get up and sow his fields, and maybe later, he was a soldier in France, but it says the sun always woke him, and so the speaker wants him put gently out where the sun can touch him in hopes that the sun will bring him back to life.” He didn’t want to look up, not at her or anyone, so he kept staring down at the poem, hoping she would go on to someone else.