Sweet Dream Baby

by Sterling Watson

  I know I can’t talk to my Aunt Delia about it. It’s the one thing I can’t tell her. That I love her now not as my aunt but like they love in the songs. I wonder if she understands love. Maybe nobody does. Maybe you just have to listen to the radio until the right song comes on, the one that tells you what to do.

  I watch my Aunt Delia’s back for a while, and her white legs float on the white bedspread, and her black hair fans across the pillow, over the gray place where her tears landed. I can’t hear her breathing now, but I know she’s almost asleep. I know if she talked to me now, her voice would be all sleepy-dreamy. And I know I can’t wait any longer. I have to tell her. “Delia,” I say, “what Kenny Griner said is true.”

  She whispers, “What do you mean, Killer? Said about what?”

  “About Grandpa hitting him and cutting his eye.”

  She’s quiet for a while, thinking, I guess. Then she says, “I know, Killer.”

  “You knew it that night, didn’t you? When Grandpa said Kenny had an accident.”

  “Yes, Killer, I knew it. How did you know it?”

  “I saw the thing he did it with. The thing Kenny Griner called his knuckle-duster. It has a long leather thong on it, and it was sticking out of his pocket, and last night I was downstairs when Grandpa came in, and I saw him take it out of his pocket and lock it in the secretary by the front door.”

  “What were you doing downstairs when Daddy came in?”

  I don’t know if I should tell her. I don’t know what she’ll think about it. I have to tell her because she tells me her secrets. “Promise not to tell anyone?”

  My Aunt Delia says, “Yes. I promise.”

  “Grandma was asleep. It was earlier in Omaha. I was gonna call my dad, but I didn’t know how. Some lady came on the line and asked if I was the sheriff.”

  My Aunt Delia sighs, and her voice is sleepy-dreamy. “That’s right. Your daddy hasn’t called you. My perfect brother Lloyd hasn’t called his son, and you’ve been here six weeks. We’ll have to see about that, won’t we.”

  I say, “Don’t see about it. I didn’t tell you so you’d see about it. It’s a secret.”

  She says, “All right, Killer. If that’s what you want, I won’t see about it.”

  I go over and touch her hair. It feels soft, and it smells like shampoo and like the wind that blows up from the river. I say, “See you in a little while, okay?”

  She says, “Okay, Killer.” I can barely hear the words.

  I go to my room and lie on the bed and leave the door open so the radio can get in. I listen because I want to know. I want to be awake when the right song comes. The one that tells the truth about love.

  Twenty

  In the late afternoon, my Aunt Delia comes downstairs and says, “Come on, Killer. Let’s go for a ride.”

  We drive around town some, and then go to the tennis court. There’s nobody there, and we don’t feel like playing. It’s too hot. We drive by Tolbert’s, and the Cool Air sign is dripping with ice, but Mr. Tolbert’s a Baptist, and he doesn’t open on Sunday afternoon. We drive to Warrington and get Cokes and french fries at the Dairy Queen. We pass some kids from Warrington who know my Aunt Delia. She waves, and they wave. We drive back toward Widow Rock, past Luby’s Roadhouse, and past the place where Grandpa Hollister pulled Kenny Griner over and busted his eye.

  “Where is everybody?” I say.

  My Aunt Delia says, “They’re all inside being very still so they don’t melt in this heat. The country people are reading the Bible and hoping the animals don’t kick up any dust and make them do something about it, and the town people are all lying down in dark rooms.”

  “What are the kids doing?”

  “Now that’s an interesting question, Killer. Ronny Bishop lives out on a cattle ranch, and his mama and daddy aren’t all that churchy, so they might be sitting out under the oak trees sipping iced tea and talking about rainfall and summer forage for the cattle. Ronny might be doing it with them, practicing to be his daddy, or he might be out riding his horse. He’s got a pretty Appaloosa gelding, and he goes out riding in the woods. Sometimes he takes a shotgun with him and shoots quail from the saddle.

  “Bick Sifford will be sitting out by the pool with his mother, flexing his muscles and talking about going to Princeton. She’ll be drinking a Manhattan and making a list of the things he’s gonna need. She’ll have the Manhattan in a tall iced tea glass with a lemon peel in it, and the only way you’ll know it’s not tea is her nose runs when she drinks. She’ll be writing down all the shirts and sweaters and shoes Bick’s gonna need to look as cool as all the other factory owners’ sons at Princeton, and she won’t forget the Harris Tweed overcoats, and the leather-bound, gold-edged stationary set so he can write to his mama once a week.

  “Bick’s daddy will be inside working on some reports from the factory, and he’ll have a glass of bourbon on a coaster on the desk beside the papers, and every once in a while he’ll lift his head and take a sip and look out the window at Bick and his mother, and he’ll think how proud he is of young Bickie boy for getting into Princeton, and how, one day, his boy’s gonna take over the business.

  “Caroline Huff’s sitting with her mama beside their pool. And it’s a lot smaller than Bick’s pool, because a box- factory vice president is not allowed to have a pool as big as the owner’s. Caroline’s mama’s a country girl, and she has to drink at company functions, but she doesn’t really like the taste. She puckers up and squints every time she takes a sip of her scotch sour, so today, she’s drinking a Coke and doing needlepoint, and poor Caroline is out there in her bathing suit scratching her arms and drinking Coke, too, and worrying about the Coke giving her pimples, and she’s studying biology or algebra so she won’t flunk and have to repeat a year and never get into Sophie Newcomb.

  “And then there’s Beulah Laidlaw. Poor Beulah, she’s got it worst of all. She’s the preacher’s daughter, so she has to do church all day Sunday, and Wednesday nights, too. She’s like me—social position and no money. Sometimes she even has to eat lunch with her mama and daddy at the homes of the deacons and elders of the church. Her mother calls it ‘eating the crust of humility,’ and Beulah says it’s a colossal bore sitting there in your white dress and pinchy patent leather pumps eating greasy fried chicken and talking about the sorry state of Christendom when you know Caroline Huff’s sitting by her smaller-than-the-owner’s pool, and Delia Hollister is out riding around in her souped-up Chevy with her handsome nephew, Travis.”

  “Does she really say that about me being handsome?”

  “No, Killer. That’s what they call poetic license. I was telling a story and I used some poetic license on you.”

  “You’re a good storyteller.”

  “Why, thank you, Killer. It’s a southern trait, like eating grits and shouting, ‘Fawther, I who was lost now am found.’”

  “Did you get it from Grandpa and Grandma Hollister?”

  “No, Honey. I got it from the atmosphere. It’s just in the air.”

  “Is the car really souped up?”

  “No, but it runs good, and it’s pretty, don’t you think?

  We come to the crossroads, the decision place, and my Aunt Delia stops and looks up at the white, hot sky, at the stunned-looking horses in the farmer’s field, at the road that goes back to Widow Rock, and the road that goes to the river.

  She says, “Come on, Killer, we don’t have a pool, but we’re going swimming.”

  We drive to the river, but we don’t go the way we did before. We cross over a bridge and take a road that leads to the riverbank below the gorge. My Aunt Delia says there’s a place where you can climb down to the bank, and it’s sandy, not rocky, and you can swim. We leave the white Chevy in the woods and walk along a path to the river. It’s hot under the pines and oaks, and the land slopes toward the rushing sound of the water, and there’s th
at smell again, that spicy smell I like. Along the sandy riverbank you can see where the river tears into the roots of big trees and the roots stick out into the air like arms of bone reaching for the water.

  The water is dark, and it runs over a sandbar that catches the sunlight like the back of a big white fish resting in the shallows. I take off my sandals and wade out, and it’s cold, and I look back upriver. I can see the gorge and the white shelf of Widow Rock where we went this morning for religious freedom.

  “What do you think, Killer?”

  I look back at my Aunt Delia. She looks happy. She doesn’t look mad or scared like she did up on Widow Rock when Quig Knowles said that about baseball and Morgan Conway. We can’t hear anything but the river running over the sandbar and out in the middle, dividing itself around some big rocks, and it sounds like I knew it would. Like my Aunt Delia’s voice. All of her voices. I can hear her laughing, and crying, too, and I can hear her sharp voice when she’s telling Carolyn and Beulah not to be so stupid, and even the voice she uses singing with the radio.

  I like it here, and I tell her that. We don’t have a smell like this in Omaha. The closest we get is after the rain beats down the wheat, and the sun comes out and steam rises from the wheat. It’s kind of the same smell, but it’s not the same. The river looks dirty, but I know it’s not, because it smells clean. “How come it’s brown?” I ask my Aunt Delia.

  She looks out at the river and squints. The sunlight hits her face like it did up on Widow Rock, and it makes her look like a statue, a girl made of white stone, perfectly still in the light. She says, “They say it’s because of tannic acid, Killer. You know, from the cypress bark and the leaves and branches that fall into the river. Don’t worry, it’s clean.”

  I scoop up a handful, and it’s not brown in my hand. It’s clear. I’m not worried. I’m happy here. I don’t think about sad things here, not even my mom in that hospital and my dad not calling. I say, “Are there any fish?”

  “Oh, yeah,” my Aunt Delia says. “Sunfish and crappie and warmouth and large mouth bass and mud fish, and even alligator gar. They’re the ones with the long bodies like a cigar and the long snouts with all the ugly teeth. But they don’t hurt anybody. They just look like they would.”

  I roll up my jeans and wade in deeper, and my Aunt Delia says, “Can you swim, Travis?”

  I say, “Sure.” I learned at the YMCA.

  My Aunt Delia smiles. “I just wanted to make sure.”

  I don’t see how we’re gonna swim. We don’t have bathing suits. I say, “Are we gonna go back and get our suits?”

  My Aunt Delia smiles and winks. “Nope, we already got them. We’re gonna swim in our birthday suits.”

  She watches me. I watch her. I don’t know if she’s kidding. Finally, she says, “Are you shocked, Killer?”

  I say, “Nope. I’m not shocked. I just never…”

  She says, “You just never a lot of things you’re gonna do this summer, and one of them is the fine old southern art of skinny-dipping.”

  She turns and starts walking downstream. Over her shoulder she says, “I’m going down there to that clump of driftwood and shuck my duds. You take off yours and jump in. When I call, ‘Yoo-hoo, Killer!’ you turn and look upstream at Widow Rock, and I’ll come and jump in. Okay?”

  I say, “Okay,” and my throat is thick, and the thing, the hot heavy thing in my chest is starting. My Aunt Delia turns to look back at me. She smiles, and her smile is careful, and she says, “Is it okay, Killer? Really?”

  I say, “Sure.” I smile. I’m trying to remember if I ever took off my clothes outside before. We’ve got pictures of my bare butt at a picnic, and my mom putting a diaper on me, but that was when I was little. I think about what it’ll be like to feel the sun on my thing, and to feel the cool water running between my legs without any bathing suit there.

  When my Aunt Delia is out of sight behind the driftwood, I stand watching for a while. I see her hand come up and hang her white blouse on a limb. I wait, and her hand comes up again and hangs her jeans. I think of going down there. Of seeing her. I wonder what she’d do. I wonder if she’d be mad. I wonder what she’d look like. Then I think I’d better get naked and get in the water before she comes back.

  I take off my clothes and pile them on a bed of pine needles on the bank, and then I wade into the river. I stop when the water is up to my knees, and I turn toward the hot sun, and it feels good on my bare skin, and it feels good on my thing, and I know the thing is going to happen if I don’t get into the water, so I jump in the rest of the way, and it’s so cold it stops my breathing, and I sink down until my feet hit the sandy bottom, and I can feel the river pick me up and carry me slowly down toward my Aunt Delia. I kick off the bottom and swim two strokes back to the sandbar and crouch there with the river flowing between my legs. I look across the river, up at Widow Rock. From down here, it’s just a thin line of white stone, but it looks warm, and it’s so high up. The tops of the trees sway in the wind. “Yoo-hoo, Killer? Are you in the water?”

  “I’m in,” I call, but I don’t know if she hears me.

  She doesn’t say anything, but I know she’s coming. I could turn and see her, but I won’t. She wouldn’t like that. I hear her bare feet slapping the sand, and it reminds me of her feet slapping the old pine boards of the hallway between our rooms, and then I hear a splash and a gasp, “My Gawwd, it’s cold,” and then I feel her arm brush mine, and she says, “So, Killer, how do you like our old river?”

  We’re shy and don’t say anything for a while. She moves her arm away from mine, and I can feel her crouching there beside me on the sandbar. After a space, she says, “When you get used to the cold, it feels so good.”

  I say, “I wish we could stay here all day.”

  My Aunt Delia says, “Come on, let’s see who can swim fastest.”

  She pushes off downstream, and her white shoulders plow the brown water, and her arms churn, and her black hair twists and flows behind her. It’s so pretty I forget to swim, and then I remember and take off. I bury my face in the cold and churn my arms, and after a while I can see her feet rippling and kicking in front of me. I don’t have to let her win. She’d win anyway.

  She stops swimming and stands in the neck-deep river, and I come up beside her and stand, too. We’re breathing hard, and leaning back against the current, and on the bank near us is the white tangle of bony driftwood where my Aunt Delia’s clothes hang white and blue in the sun. I see her tennis shoes with the pink laces—she calls them tenny pumps—resting on a tree root reaching out from the bank. I’m breathing hard, but I say, “I love it. I love your old river.”

  My Aunt Delia laughs. “Good ole Killer. You got a natural aptitude for the good life in Widow Rock. You like tennis, you like to drive around at night…”

  “And see who’s there,” I say.

  She laughs, “…and you like to swim, and you can even put up with Beulah and Caroline.”

  I want to say I don’t like Bick Sifford, but I don’t. I want to say I don’t like Kenny Griner, and I hate Quig Knowles, but I don’t. I don’t want to spoil things.

  My Aunt Delia says, “Come on, Killer, let’s push our way back to the sandbar and bask a while.”

  I don’t know what bask means, but I’m gonna find out. We walk upstream against the current. It’s harder than it looks when you’re standing on the bank. The river is cold heavy against your chest and legs, but if you lean forward, you can push through it. It takes us a while to get back to the sandbar. It’s white in the sun, and the brown water breaks over the bar in a little wave. We stop, and my Aunt Delia kneels on the sand. Then she turns her back to the current and sits down, and I do, too. The water covers everything but our heads, and we sit there with our feet digging into the sand and pushing back into the body of the river. My Aunt Delia reaches down and digs up a handful of sand and lets it go, and it rip
ples between her fingers like milk going into a cup of coffee. She says, “I love it here. It’s so peaceful. And when you think the summer’s never gonna be over and the heat’s never gonna stop, you can come here and get cool for a while.”

  “Have you been here…like this before?”

  She knows what I mean. Naked. She raises her head and looks off where the river curves and disappears into a valley of cypress trees. My Aunt Delia says, “Of course I have, Killer. I told you it’s the fine old southern art of skinny-dipping. You don’t perfect an art without lots of practice.”

  “Who did you come here with?”

  “Beulah, of course, and Caroline, but she just sat on the bank watching and telling us someone was gonna come along in a johnboat any minute, some redneck out setting a trotline for catfish, and we were gonna get caught with our…” She looks over at me. “Well, you know what I mean.”

  “Did you come here with anybody else?”

  “My goodness, Killer, aren’t you curious.”

  She leans back and closes her eyes and lets her hair down into the river, and when she does, her chests come up, and I look over and see them. They’re white, and the nipples are the same color as the pebbles in the river bed below Widow Rock. I’ve never seen anything like them before, and it seems right for me to see them now. It’s the time. My Aunt Delia pulls her hair out of the water and swings it over her shoulder, and it touches my face like a paintbrush dipped in cold water. She says, “Since we tell each other our secrets, I’ll confess. I’ve been here a couple of times at night with Beulah and Ronny and Bick. The boys took off their clothes right here where you did, and Beulah and me went down the bank like I just did.”

  “Was it fun?”

  “Sure it was fun. We romped around and splashed each other, and there was no moon that night, and then we got out and drove over to Warrington for Cokes and fries at the Dairy Queen.”