The Dream Peddler

by Martine Fournier Watson

  In his head Sam tried to calculate the distance of the roads between the Thomson farm and the Dawsons’. He thought he might be able to check on the baby and the health of the mother and still arrive before dark. If the birth had been uneventful. If everyone was well.

  * * *

  * * *

  The next morning the Dawson house’s occupants rose heavy and slow from their beds. There was an unfamiliar weight now to their limbs and hanging hands. The beds themselves were swirled like eddies from the roll of sleepless bodies. Evie mechanically made the coffee in the kitchen. Rose came down looking rumpled, having lain in her clothes. She had forgotten to brush her hair.

  “You didn’t need to stay the night,” Evie told her tiredly.

  “Evie, I am not leaving this house again until we find that boy.”

  Evie pressed her lips together. “I hope you didn’t find his bed too small. I know it’s quite small.”

  “I am also small. It was just fine.” She went to the window and looked out. “Your father still on the sofa?”

  “I think so. It was late when he came in.”

  “I’ll go wake him. He’ll want to be ready when George is.”

  They ate their breakfast in silence.

  * * *

  * * *

  Robert Owens awoke to the smell of frying bacon. He splashed his face at the washbasin and looked in the spotted mirror hanging over it. His beard was starting to come in again. Tomorrow he would shave it.

  Knowing better now than to poke his head into Violet’s kitchen to say good morning, he waited for her instead in the stiff pink dining room. When she came in, they smiled uneasily at each other.

  “I made extra of the corn bread the other day,” she said. “Mind you take a big slice, and plenty of bacon. You’ll need a good breakfast if you are going out with the men this morning.”

  “I hope to, but I still have no idea how to go about it.”

  “I told Evie about you yesterday.” She reached for the butter dish. “I expect they’ll find you somehow.”

  “How did she seem?”

  Vi forked a pile of bacon onto his plate. “Just about as you’d expect. She looks like a ghost, pretty much. No color left in her.”

  “I’m very sorry for her. I can’t imagine anything worse than losing a child.”

  “Well, I guess that’s one thing you and me won’t ever have to worry about. Maybe we are lucky in a way.”

  Robert spent some time pulling his corn bread apart. “Maybe we are,” he agreed.

  As they were finishing, they heard a pounding at the door. Molly squawked a greeting while Robert followed Vi into the hallway. A big, bearded man stood on the doorstep, peering in, shuffling one uncertain foot.

  “I’m heading to the store to meet the men,” he said. “I’ve come to collect him.”

  Violet turned over her shoulder, and they both looked at Robert.

  * * *

  * * *

  Up at the general store, there was a small knot of men, steadily growing. Men dark against the snow rode their cutters in from the farms or they walked from the houses nearby and the damp snow clung to their boots. Robert was aware of seeing the same thing he had the other day but in reverse, and instead of breaking apart they were drawing together. It gave him a strange sense of moving backward in time.

  Two men arrived on horseback and dismounted. While the older one began tethering their horses to the rail outside the store, the younger one climbed the steps and faced the crowd. All the men twisted toward him like army privates awaiting their orders. This must be George Dawson. Robert studied him, figuring him to be quite a bit younger than himself, maybe as much as ten years. Only the burden he carried had stooped him a little, and sleeplessness hollowed his eyes, making it hard to tell. George surveyed the group, and when his gaze fell on the dream peddler, he seemed to know him as the only stranger among them. He came down the wooden steps toward him and held out his hand, and Robert took it.

  “You must be our newcomer,” he said quietly. His voice had a hoarseness, and Robert wondered if it was always there.

  “Robert Owens.”

  George gave him a look he did not know how to interpret, then turned away sharply.

  “All right,” he called out, facing the group of men he had known since childhood. Most of them were shifting their weight from foot to foot in an effort to keep warm, but no one wanted to make any noise. It was as though they were already in attendance at the boy’s funeral. Robert noticed young Toby among them, holding his hands tightly in his own pockets and whistling slightly through his nose as he breathed. When Toby saw Robert looking at him, he glanced away, embarrassed.

  “As you know, we have gone through the woods around my property and my closest neighbors’ and up behind the schoolhouse and the skating pond where Benny would go to play.” He took a breath, and Robert felt it, too, the morning air entering his chest, sharp as pain. “We will go farther today, up by the Jameson and Lowell farms and Black Ridge, where the children like to go sledding.” He paused. “Thank you all again for your help. May God be in our eyes today, because he sees everything.”

  The men all nodded soberly. Robert remembered a time when he would have said something similar. And maybe even would have believed it. George began the business of dividing them into groups and sending them out to the different areas he had named. Robert he ignored until he was done, and then he motioned to him. “Come with me,” he said.

  The two men walked along the road, heading eastward into the struggle of a rising sun.

  After what seemed about a half mile of walking with no sound but the bite of their boots in the snow, Robert could stand it no longer.

  “I was very sorry to hear about your boy,” he told George. “Very sorry indeed.”

  George was looking straight ahead. “Yes, of course,” he said. “Everyone is very sorry for us. And everyone is very glad it is not their own child. This is how I would feel, in their shoes.”

  Robert imagined the fathers in the search party going home in the evening to their warm homes. Would they feel their own good fortune? Would they grab their children and rasp the young soft faces with their beards?

  They walked on a little longer, and George without warning turned off the road onto a narrow path heading into the woods.

  “I’m pretty sure at this point that what we are all looking for . . . is no longer my son.”

  Robert was silent, not knowing what to say. Agreeing didn’t feel like the right thing to do. The boy’s body came into his mind, a lump as cold as the ground, then gradually warming, a sunrise of pink coming into the cheeks as if the days could somehow be wheeled backward. He sighed the useless wish into the wool of his scarf.

  “Surely there must still be some hope? If he were injured and took shelter somewhere out of the cold but was unable to come home . . . we may yet find him.”

  George nodded. “That’s what I said to my wife. But I don’t really believe it.”

  As soon as they came into the shelter of trees, George stopped and spun so quickly that Robert wondered for a shocked second if George were going to strike him. But Ben’s father only looked out over Robert’s shoulder.

  “Now, see here,” said George. He humphed. “I went into Jenkins’s store yesterday. I had to phone down to Evie’s father.” He frowned down into the shadowed snow, drawing a ridge through it with his boot. He swallowed and forced himself to look Robert in the eye. “Cora tells me you have something to sell. Something to do with dreams, she says.”

  “Yes, that’s right. If you tell me what you want to dream, I mix a drink for you to give you that dream.”

  “And this really works?”

  The sun burned beyond the forest. It had escaped the clouds and tossed down the pick-up-sticks shadows of hundreds of trees.

  “Most of the time. Not eve
ry single time. If you are not satisfied after taking the mixture, I refund your money.”

  George appeared to be thinking this over. The doubles of the trees on the ground were such a tangle it was as if the two men stood snared in an endless blue web upon the snow.

  “Was there something I could do for you, Mr. Dawson? Is there a dream you’d like to have?”

  “My wife is not doing too well. We need to find our boy, whether it’s for good or . . . the other. Have you ever heard of those people, you know, who sometimes . . . they can dream the future and things like this?”

  “You mean a clairvoyant?”

  “Well, I guess. I don’t know the word for it.”

  “Mr. Dawson—”

  George stood up straighter. “Look, you don’t need to tell me what a ridiculous idea that is. I think the whole notion of selling dreams is nonsense, and normally I wouldn’t have any part of it. But this is a chance, something I can do, and I am running out of things to do. I’ve prayed two nights, I’ve racked my brain. And I have nothing. We wake in the morning, and we are in the same place.” He took a deep breath. “I don’t have much hope, but if you would just try. Maybe you could mix me up a dream of where he is, or where he might be, someplace more where I could look.”

  Robert watched a deer come into view, swivel its head to their breathing, and stare at them, terrified. “It is not possible,” he said finally. “I can’t make a dream tell you anything you don’t already know.”

  George didn’t even look especially discouraged. He sighed and began to trudge again through the woods. Trees came into his path, and he stepped around them slowly, sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right, weaving through the motionless crowd. Robert followed along until they came to a clearing, and there before them was the ridge, crisscrossed with the sled marks of the children’s fun and then abandoned.

  “I wish I could be more help to you.”

  George was beginning to circle the bottom of the hill, peering into the scrubby trees where the forest began. There was something in his figure, something that reminded Robert of childhood. As if George were the unwanted playmate who’d been deemed seeker in an elaborate game of hide-and-seek, and while he’d been counting to one hundred, the other children had all gone home. Robert ran after him, lifting his boots heavily out and out again of the deep snow. He reached George’s side with little breath left.

  “I will try to make you a dream,” he gasped. “After all. Maybe there is something you do know, deep down, but just can’t remember. I suppose it can’t hurt to try.”

  Robert went back to Vi’s for his midday meal, and while she was busy with her clearing away, he slipped up to his room. He pulled the drawer open gently, but the bottles still trembled. He ran his fingertips uncertainly over the corks, then plucked a few out. With a dropper he drew precise amounts from each one and mixed them in a new vial, stoppering it and then shaking it slightly. Then he waited, until the sun began to go down on its day and he thought the searchers would be heading home.

  * * *

  * * *

  This time it was not Cora but Toby Jenkins behind the counter. No one else was in the store when Robert entered, and Toby smiled at him shyly. He leaned over the counter.

  “I just wanted to say thank you,” he said quietly, “for the dream.” He turned his face slightly away as he spoke, as if he were really addressing some invisible person off to the side. “It was just what I asked for, I couldn’t believe it. Anyone who wants to know, I can vouch for ’em your product really works, it really does.”

  Robert smiled slightly. “That’s fine, Toby. I’m glad to hear it was to your satisfaction.”

  “I’d love to have another one, you know, whenever you have the time. . . . If you just mix me up one, I can come out and pay you, or you can bring it here with you next time you come.”

  Robert nodded, looking back toward the door. “That’s fine, Toby,” he said again.

  “I expect the rest of the men will be quitting soon, won’t they? For today, I mean. As it’s getting dark out and all.”

  “Yes, I think they will.”

  A sigh of cold came over the two of them as the door opened, reproaching first Robert and then the boy. George Dawson stood there stamping his boots in the doorway. He wafted in the silver smell of snows and pine, the distant smoke of burning leaves. He stood and let himself soften in the warmth of the stove.

  “Evening, Mr. Dawson,” said Toby. Robert turned to face George and removed a small bottle from his coat. With his back turned to Toby, he blocked the silent transaction from view as he held the bottle out to George, who pocketed it in turn, saying, “Evening, Toby. Thanks for all your help this morning.”

  Robert left the store like any other puff of warmth escaping and walked back to Violet’s house, and as he entered, she was still humming and clinking in the kitchen. He was satisfied she had not even known of his absence.

  Chapter 6

  When George and Sam returned once again without Ben, George noticed a difference in Evie’s eyes. Now the hope that flickered out from under her lids retreated just as quickly into the depths. As the women went to the kitchen to get supper onto the table, he and Sam stood in the parlor in front of the fire.

  “I was surprised we didn’t have some luck today,” Sam said. “I tell you I really thought, when we were heading out . . . that group you put me with, they were determined. I really did think we would find him.” Sam was pacing the room, stopping now and then at the fire, rubbing his hands together, not looking George in the eye.

  George watched his blustering and mimicked Sam’s big hairy head with his own submissive nods. He understood this enthusiasm, almost felt it himself at times, dragging under his watery fatigue like the tide. This was what it was to be men, putting shoulders to the problem and shoving, waiting for it to collapse. It was how they farmed, it was how they lived: they did not know any other ways.

  The four sat down to their supper at the long oak table and passed the dishes of vegetables and rolls around in a circle. They all took heaps of food they did not intend to eat. The silence gathered itself in tight around them. It grew so thick they hesitated to speak, as if poking at it with a voice might hurt, like punching a wall. Only Evie didn’t notice the density of it, couldn’t gauge the tastes and touch outside herself.

  “Did you meet our newcomer this morning?” she asked her father.

  “Can’t say as I did.”

  George shot Evie a look she did not see.

  “We have a traveling salesman staying at Violet Burnley’s place.”

  She was tearing her roll into little pieces and dropping them on her supper plate. None of them made it into her mouth, but they formed a crusty little snowfall over her meat and carrots. “He was out this morning, too, to volunteer, to . . .”

  Sam took a bite and chewed viciously. He was determined to eat, no matter what the situation. “Well, that sounds all right to me,” he said thoughtfully. “Sounds like he must be an all right sort of fellow. What kinds of things is he selling?”

  This time Evie’s gray eyes met George’s blue ones, and he thought for one second that maybe she knew what he had done, but all she did was look down at her plate and talk to her food.

  “I don’t even know. Hocus-pocus, I imagine.”

  Rose was watching George all through the evening. Her dark eyes reflected him picking up a book and setting it down again, staring at the window while it flickered the room’s lamplit interior, turning and taking a cup of hot tea from his wife. She almost followed him when he pulled on his coat and boots to tramp through the snow to the outhouse. Sam, uneasy in the quiet, went to the Victrola to turn some music. When Rose saw George come back into the house and head upstairs, she left her chair and went after him.

  Rose stood on the landing outside the door of George and Evie’s bedroom and listened to the quiet. Ther
e were no sounds of George puttering around the room or getting himself ready for bed, only this waxy stillness. As carefully as she could, Rose turned the doorknob. As if it understood her, it made just a whisper of noise, and then she was nudging the door open and exposing George as he uncorked a small vial and threw its contents down his throat. He had a grimace on as though he were taking some bitter medicine.

  “George,” she hissed, “George!” and she came into the room and closed the door firmly behind her. “What is the matter with you?”

  He merely looked at her, like a child who’d been caught at something he never realized was wrong, the questioning bright in his eyes.

  “I know this is a bad time,” she began, then shook her head. “Not a bad time—what am I saying? unimaginable—but this—” She gestured at the glass still clutched in his hand. “This is not going to happen. I am not going to allow it, do you understand? I will not stand by and watch you let down my girl. Evie has been let down by the universe, don’t you see? You can’t fall apart, George. You have to hold her up for me.”

  George’s shoulders rounded under her words as he pushed the cork back gently into the mouth of the empty vial and laid it down on a bedside table.

  “I’m sorry,” he told her.

  “Don’t be sorry, just don’t fall apart. I won’t have you drinking and . . . going down that road. I will not have it.”

  For a moment they stood facing each other in their different attitudes, Rose with her feet planted wide and her fists denting her skirts, George with his hands held loose and defenseless, head dipping downward.

  “Rose,” George whispered, “now, Rose, it’s not what you think.”

  * * *

  * * *

  “You said you knew about this visitor, this Robert Owens?”

  Sam and Evie were startled out of their silent stone positions, Evie looking up at Rose with her eyes like gray dawn snow.