Sweet Dream Baby

by Sterling Watson

  Copyright © 2002 by Sterling Watson

  Cover and internal design © 2002 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover images © 2002 by The Image Bank and Nonstock

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Music copyright notification at back

  Published by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  FAX: (630) 961-2168

  www.sourcebooks.com

  Watson, Sterling.

  Sweet dream baby / by Sterling Watson.

  p. cm.

  1. Grandparent and child—Fiction. 2. Southern States—Fiction. 3. Teenage girls—Fiction. 4. Aunts—Fiction. 5. Boys—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3573.A858 S94 2002

  813’.54—dc21

  2002003852

  For Kath, again

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  June

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  July

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  August

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  September

  Thirty-eight

  About the Author

  Credits

  Back Cover

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks to Jamie W. Gill, Melisandre Hilliker, and David Henderson for patient and resourceful help with research; Dr. Karl Sohlberg, M.D., for advice about pathology; Suzan Harrison, Bill Miles, and Dennis Lehane for insightful and generous criticism; and editor Jennifer Fusco for her intelligent, sensitive, and artful alchemy in transmuting a manuscript into a book. It is almost certainly true that this book would never have seen the light of day had it not been for the energy, insight, and belief given it by Ann Rittenberg, a literary agent of unparalleled gifts who loves stories, knows business, and is good to writers. This book and its author owe her a debt that can never be fully repaid.

  I think about telling her I love the warm air blowing through the windows when we drive together, and the smells of things alive and scary and waiting for me out there. I think about telling her I love the Chevy’s red upholstery, and the scratchy, far away music coming from the radio, and the shiny chrome on the front of the radio, and the way her black hair whips around her face in the wind. I think about asking her a lot of questions. Why does Grandma Hollister have headaches, and when is Grandpa Hollister going to smile, and will he ever let me shoot his gun, and what does he do when he goes to work, and are we going to talk about last night? I just say, “I like it here. It’s exciting.”

  My Aunt Delia laughs, and her laugh sounds like I know the water will sound running over those flat stones I saw from the bridge. She says, “You’re sweet, Travis. It’s sweet of you to say that.”

  Dream lover, where are you,

  With a love oh so true,

  And a hand that I can hold,

  Through the years as I grow old.

  I want a girl to call my own,

  I want a dream lover,

  So I don’t have to dream alone.

  Some day, I don’t know how,

  I hope she’ll hear my plea.

  Some way, I don’t know how,

  She’ll bring her love to me.

  Dream lover, until then,

  I’ll go to sleep and dream again,

  That’s the only thing to do,

  ’Til all my lover’s dreams come true.

  DREAM LOVER

  —Music and Lyrics by Bobby Darin

  —Recorded by Bobby Darin

  JUNE

  I love you darling, baby you know I do,

  But I’ve got to read this book of love,

  To find out why it’s true.

  Chapter one says you love her,

  You love her with all your heart,

  Chapter two you tell her, you’re never,

  Never, never, never ever gonna part,

  Chapter three remember,

  The meaning of romance,

  Chapter four you break up,

  But you give her just one more chance.

  I wonder, wonder, um-be-do-oo-who,

  Who wrote the book of love.

  BOOK OF LOVE

  —Music and Lyrics by Charles Patrick, Warren Davis, and George Malone

  —Recorded by The Monotones

  One

  I look out through the back door screen to see if the Pultneys are there. One of them is, Jimmy. I’m scared of the Pultneys, but I don’t say so. Dad says never say you’re scared and you won’t be. Jimmy Pultney has a chicken in one hand and a hatchet in the other. He holds the chicken by the neck, and the neck stretches long. The chicken doesn’t try to get away. It hangs quiet, knowing it can’t. The chopping block is an old hickory stump. My dad says the Pultneys probably dragged it with them from some holler in the Ozarks. He calls them Okie trash.

  I can hear him in the bathroom getting ready. He’s humming, and that means he’s shaving. I like to watch him shave, but not this morning. I like the scratchy sound and the blue color of his jaw coming out of the white soap. I like the smell of Barbasol. I’m watching Jimmy Pultney, and I’m scared, and I wish I had a way to kill him.

  Yesterday, Jimmy tried to kill me. He had the bow and arrow he got for Christmas. It’s a nice one with real feathers and steel-tipped arrows. I went over to the fence and said, “Hey, Jimmy, let me see that bow you got.”

  He was standing over by the back porch. He had an arrow across the string. He turned and said, “See it?” He shot the arrow at my head. I don’t think he can shoot a bow. I think he was just lucky. I could see the steel tip coming at my face and the feathers turning slowly, getting larger. The voice in my head said, “Down.”

  The steel tip went through my hair. It left a hot scratch across the top of my head. Dad won’t see it because it’s under the thick black hair, and I won’t tell him. When I reached up and touched, there was blood and a piece of feather in my hair. I wasn’t scared until the arrow was behind me, sticking in the ground. I went to get it, and my knees start
ed to sink. I had to make my feet push them back up. I pulled the arrow out and turned to tell Jimmy I was going to break it.

  He was standing at the fence. “Kid, you better gimme that arrow back.”

  I said, “No, I’m keeping it.” I raised it up to break it over my knee. Jimmy’s eyes got that way they get. The way all of the Pultneys’ eyes can get. Small and cold and don’t care. I held the arrow over my knee.

  Jimmy said, “Kid, don’t make me climb over this fence.”

  There’s a fence between our yards to keep out the Pultneys and their animals. My dad hired a man to build it. Mr. Pultney came out of his back door and stood watching the man work. Mr. Pultney was wearing raggedy blue bib overalls. Jimmy calls them overhauls, and he isn’t kidding. Mr. Pultney took out a hawk-billed linoleum knife and cut a piece of chewing tobacco from the plug in his hand. He said to the man, “You cain’t put no fence thar.”

  The man started talking about set-back lines and easements or something, and pretty soon Mr. Pultney backed off to his own porch like he was getting away from the words he didn’t understand. I came out on our back porch to watch the man dig holes with his post-hole digger, and Mr. Pultney called into his house to someone, maybe Jimmy, “There’s that damn sissy kid. His daddy cain’t even build his own fence.” Somebody inside the house laughed, maybe Jimmy.

  Jimmy said to me, “You better bring me that arrow, kid. You don’t, I’m climbing over there and stomp your ass.”

  I don’t talk like Jimmy. I don’t say ass or shit or damn. Sometimes I wish I could, but I don’t. If I did, and my dad heard it, he’d spank me with his belt and wash out my mouth with soap. That’s what he said he’d do.

  I told Jimmy I was going to break his arrow, but I already knew I wasn’t. His eyes knew I wasn’t going to either. And pretty soon, his smile knew. I went as close to the fence as I could and threw the arrow over. Jimmy waited ’til I was inside my house and then walked over and picked it up. For an hour, I listened to him shooting it into the door of his father’s shed. Thunk, thunk, thunk it goes into that door. And I know his father is going to beat him when he comes home, and I know Jimmy’s not going to cry when his father stripes him with that big greasy razor strop he uses, and I know Jimmy’s eyes aren’t going to change.

  I can’t go outside because I’m wearing my church clothes. My pants are gray wool, and they itch. Through the backdoor screen, I can see Jimmy squatting in front of the chopping block. He’s got the chicken’s neck between his thumb and forefinger, and he’s moving his hand up and down, making the neck longer. There are ten, maybe fifteen chicken heads lying around that block with their eyes crossed out, and they stink. And that’s not all that stinks about the Pultneys. They keep a goat. Mr. Pultney calls her his lawn mower. I’ve seen him milk her, pressing his stubbledy cheek against her side and whispering to her. He spreads goat doo on the sorry patch where he grows collard greens.

  My dad says the Pultneys are worse than Okie trash. He says they didn’t even have the gumption to get two states away from some pig-filthy holler before they squatted again. Them and their goat and that tired old woman Jimmy calls Mommer and Jimmy’s nine brothers and sisters. Dad says at least the rest of the Okies made it to California before they wallowed in again. I don’t want to watch Jimmy Pultney cut the chicken’s head off, but I know I will. I’ve watched before.

  I’m trying to understand how he can do it. Swing the hatchet down on that neck he makes as long as his own, then squat there holding the chicken by its hind legs. Its wings fly, and its long neck swings and sprays blood all over Jimmy and the chopping block and what little grass the goat left behind.

  I hear my dad leave the bathroom. He stops humming and goes into the bedroom to put on his white shirt and his tie. I lift my eyes to the end of our yard, where our grass stops and the wheat field starts. I look on across the wheat field to the silo. It’s a mile. I’ve walked it. We live in a subdivision. At night we can see the lights of Omaha. They remind me of a storm coming. I don’t know why. My dad works in the city, in a lawyer’s office. This all used to be a farm, but the farmer died and his wife, Mrs. Boatwright, sold the land to the man who built our house, our whole street. The builder went broke, my dad says, after he built our street, and so here we are, my dad says, stuck in the middle of all this wheat like a string of wagons that never made it West. Our wheels fell off, and we’re stuck here with the Pultneys.

  The hatchet comes down hard and straight, and the chicken’s head bounces once on the block, and the white wings beat, and then Jimmy’s holding the big white bird out in front of him like he just caught it taking off. The wings beat and the blood pumps. The neck with no head whips like the mouth of a garden hose when you drop it in the grass. The blood pours, then it’s a red mist. I can’t see Jimmy’s eyes, but I know they didn’t change. Small and cold and don’t care. I don’t know how to kill Jimmy. There’s no way to do it and not get my dad’s belt. There’s no way Jimmy wouldn’t kill me if I messed it up.

  Jimmy walks to the house swinging the chicken like a bell, and I turn back into my kitchen. Dad fixed me breakfast this morning, and it was bad. He fries the bacon ’til it’s black, then he puts my eggs in about two inches of grease, and they come out with hard, brown edges. Sometimes he breaks them. I don’t complain about it. Once when I complained, he looked at me for a long time and said, “Son, when I was on Guadalcanal and we got separated from our unit, we ate land crabs. A Jap patrol passed only ten yards from where we were hiding. We could smell the rice and saki on their breath. We had to stick the crabs with our trench knives and pry off their shells and eat them raw. You don’t know how lucky you are to have those eggs. Even the way I cook them.” And he looked at the far away like he does a lot now, and he said, “And you don’t know what those crabs were eating before we ate them.”

  I stop at the table and pick up half a piece of cold toast and eat it. I drink the rest of my orange juice. My dad’s not looking, so I drink the rest of his coffee. It’s cold, but it’s good to me. It tastes like walnuts and brown sugar, and it makes me feel grown-up. The morning paper is open on my dad’s side of the table. The headline says, NIXON ATTACKED IN CARACAS. My dad reads the paper every morning. He holds it up so I can’t see his face, and I wait, and after a while he puts it down and tells me something about the news. He says it’s educational for us to talk about world affairs. My dad doesn’t like Nixon, but he likes Eisenhower. “Son,” he tells me, “the president was a great general, and a better one was Doug MacArthur. There never was a general that sold a man’s life for more than MacArthur. He made them pay ten times for every dead G.I. You know what I mean?”

  I say yes, but I don’t. I like to hear my dad talk about the war. He talks about it to me, but he won’t to other people. I’ve heard them ask him. I’ve heard him say, “Oh, hell, we’ve all heard the same stories a hundred times. Let’s talk about that new kid the Yankees got to replace the Clipper. What’s his name? Mantle?”

  I go into my dad’s bedroom to watch him finish dressing. He smiles and winks at me and says, “Hey, Slugger.” He’s wearing his gray suit pants and a tie with blue stripes. He sits on the bed and puts on his black Oxfords. He keeps them shiny, like a good Marine. He gets up and touches my head where it still burns from Jimmy Pultney’s arrow and walks around to the little table beside the bed where the radio is. He picks up his watch and his wedding ring and puts them on. It’s the same watch he had in the war, with a radium dial.

  Sometimes when I was little and it rained and hail hit the roof and the radio said tornado warnings, I’d get scared and I’d go into my parents’ bedroom and I’d find my dad by his watch glowing in the dark. I’d know his arm was around my mother, and her head was on his chest. I’d come in and stand by the bed, and my dad would be awake, and I’d know he was waiting for me, and he’d say, “What’s the matter, Marine? The lightning got you spooked?” I’d try not to cry standing there. And
he’d say, “All right, Buddy. Why don’t you hop up here? There’s always room for one more in this bivouac.”

  Dad looks at his wedding ring. He turns it on his finger and then looks at the picture of Mom in her kimono on the dresser. Then he looks at the shrine Mom keeps in the corner. It’s her household god, she told me. Dad doesn’t like it. He says we’re Presbyterians, but he lets her keep it. She burns incense on it, and it fills the house with a spicy smell I like. Sometimes she leaves a slice of apple or peach in a little blue dish on the altar. She tells me it makes the god happy. It makes the house a happy place. It gives her and dad a good bedroom. I don’t know what she means.

  I hear Dad’s dreams at night. Sometimes he screams at the Japanese in his dreams. Sometimes he calls out orders and says things aren’t going well for the Marines. He sleeps with a bayonet under the pillow, and sometimes he gets up at night and walks around the house holding it in his hand, talking to people who aren’t there. I’ve heard him and Mom arguing some nights after his dreams. Once I came into the bedroom when Dad was at work and Mom was making the bed, and I saw her pick up the bayonet with two fingers like you’d hold a dead snake. She turned to me and said, “This is bad, Travis, kitanai. It’s got the blood of my people on it. Don’t you ever touch it.”

  My mother is beautiful. She’s the most beautiful mother on the block. She looks like the ladies in the magazines, the ladies at church and PTA. Except her face is light brown, and her hair is coal black, and her eyes are turned up at the edges. Once I came into the kitchen after school, and she was drinking something from a white bottle that looked like it might have perfume in it. She told me it was saki. She said, “I love you Travis, and I love you don’t look like me.”

  It made me cry, and then it made my mother cry. I don’t know why I cried. I wish I knew. I look mostly like my dad, and he never told me he was glad. My skin is darker than his, but not like Mom’s, and I have black hair, and my eyes are brown. They aren’t turned up at the edges.