“Come back,” she tells him from the ground. “Come back to me every day, and I will soon have another baby to love.”
He laughs, delighted to be able to help her. Then he woke, to the gauzy swell of the curtains at his window, and the smells of hay and jasmine beds and horse rose into him. He found himself returning to her many other times, at night when the blankets snaked tight around him and then slackened again. He never tired of her.
* * *
* * *
The days of summer dragged long and hot, and the orchard clicked and buzzed with insects. Evie had paid Robert his fee and was now pushing her vial of medicine into her pocket, watching that the tip of it did not stick out.
“Is it so important, to keep it a secret?”
Evie looked at Robert as if the question were absurd.
“But why?”
“It’s just easier this way,” she said.
“For you.”
“For everyone. I’m tired of being watched and worried over. Mother has a crazy idea that if I buy dreams from you, I’ll . . . I’ll disappear into dreamland or something. She really seems to hate you. I don’t know why.”
“And your husband? George? I shouldn’t give advice about marriage, I guess. But it seems to me that keeping such a secret from him . . . Are you so sure he won’t understand?”
Evie watched a butterfly come close to landing on Robert’s shoulder, then veer away into the deeper cavern of leaves. “He told me I should come to you. He told me I should buy a dream. But I don’t want him to know.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He thinks it’s over and done with. He thinks . . . he thought it was just a matter of one dream, that I could buy it and dream it and move on. He has no idea what I’m doing. And I don’t want to try to explain. How it feels . . . to wake up every morning and realize again, to be smothered with that. I can’t stand any more dreams that Ben is alive. But George, he shouldn’t have to know.”
“Why?” he asked gently. “Wouldn’t he want to know? Do you not worry if you keep all this hidden . . . it could drive him away from you?”
“I don’t know. Without Benny . . . I can’t feel. I don’t know what hurts. Everything hurts. And all I can do about George is carry on what we’ve always done, but the feeling is blotted out. I’m sure I must still love him, because I always have. But I don’t feel anything. There’s no difference, in distance or closeness anymore. We are both alone.” She sighed. “All I can do is protect him.”
Robert would have liked to reach out and touch her, but instead he played with his pack of cigarettes. He tamped it down in one palm, studying it closely. “I don’t normally snitch on my customers.”
“I’m sure you don’t.”
“I’m going to make an exception in this case.”
Evie looked at him, her eyes dark.
“Your husband already took a dream from me. Many weeks ago, before—”
“He did?”
“He must have heard through the store. Toby or Cora. And the day I went out with him and the search party, he asked me.”
“He talks like my mother,” she said sharply. “He talks about you like only a fool would give you good money.”
“Yes, well. I don’t suppose he dreamed what he was hoping. Although I tried to warn him. . . . I didn’t really think it would work.”
“Warned him what?”
“He thought maybe a dream could help him find your son.”
“I see.” She smiled slightly, as if embarrassed. “We never used to keep secrets from each other.”
“I’m sure you didn’t.”
She put her face in her hands. “And it didn’t work.”
“I guess he didn’t tell you because he didn’t want to raise your hopes.”
She lifted her head and looked at him. “People always say that, don’t they? People think hope can be raised or lowered like a flag, and it’s not like that at all. It’s in your chest no matter what. I couldn’t have pushed it off if I tried. I’d been stabbed at the heart, but the hope . . . No, it was just like a rock.”
Chapter 18
It was after church one Sunday, and the townspeople were busy taking leave of one another, unhitching their horses and driving away from Violet’s reproachful postlude. As the crowd’s edge began to thin, Cora Jenkins surprised the dream peddler by squeezing herself in beside him and asking if he’d walk her back to the store.
Her parents had already begun to make their own way down the street while Cora said good-bye to her friends. There was no one with the authority to pull her aside or hiss at her under their breath. The mouths of the young girls fell open, wet with listening.
Robert touched the brim of his hat.
“Of course, Miss Cora. If you’ve no one to see you home, I’d be glad to.”
He held his arm out for her, as he usually did about this time for Violet, and Cora took it, as demurely as if she had not just asked for it herself. Over his shoulder she winked back at Christina, whose hanging lower lip clamped back up over her surprise.
The walk would not be long, and Robert was glad for it. She pressed his arm lightly with her fingertips. The green leaves wiggled at them, and the midday sun was broiling the tops of their hats.
“This is a pleasure, Cora,” he told her. “But I’m a little surprised you would not rather walk with some of your friends. Or perhaps a young man your own age.”
She tossed her head. “Of course I wouldn’t. They’re all silly. The boys and girls alike.”
“Oh, I see.”
“And besides, I’d like to ask you a question, and I want to be in private.”
“All right, then. Now you have me.”
She smiled. Her pace slowed, as if she feared they’d reach the store too soon. “I was just wondering. I’ve heard all about your dreams, of course. And I wanted to know. . . . Everyone is always asking for dreams for themselves, but what if you wanted a dream for someone else?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“What if, for instance, I had a friend and she was in love with a boy but he didn’t like her. But he could like her, he’s just too busy being a stupid boy to pay any attention to her. I’ve been wondering what if, say, he was given a dream about her, a dream where he loved her and maybe they were happily married or something—that might put the idea in his head, wouldn’t it? I mean, it might make him notice her when he was awake, if you could make him dream about her when he was asleep.”
Robert was thoughtful.
Finally he said, “Well, a dream can certainly have that effect. A dream like that, about someone you didn’t realize you liked, is usually just your mind’s way of letting you know how you really feel. But the way my dreams work . . . well, it’s partly about the relationship between me and the dreamer. I’ve never tried to give someone a dream he didn’t ask for, see. He’s supposed to be expecting it.”
He considered her disappointment.
“I’m not saying it couldn’t work. But I’ve never tried. If you wanted one . . . I’d make it, but I wouldn’t be able to offer my money-back guarantee. You’d be on your own with that one. Probably shouldn’t be trying to give dreams to someone who doesn’t know what you’re up to anyhow.”
Cora tilted her head. “It’s not like we’d be poisoning him, you know.”
By now they had reached the front of the store and stopped. She let go of his arm and stepped onto the first stair, so she might look down on him just a little.
“I’ll think about it,” she told him. He began to turn away, so she said quickly, “Before, you know, when I told you I wouldn’t rather walk with someone else.”
She was waiting for him to say something. “Yes.”
“You’ve missed my meaning, I think.” There was a set to her mouth. She put him in mind of a schoolteacher whose fo
rbearance might be wearing thin, who would at any moment now rap his knuckles with her ruler to drive out the stupidity.
“I didn’t realize there was any meaning to this.”
“I danced with you,” she told him. “At the dance.” As if the word needed repeating in order to be absolutely clear.
“I remember. You are light on your feet.”
“And now you’ve finished walking me home.”
“So it seems.”
“I think you should court me,” she said, turning her shoulders slightly away from him so she was almost in profile. He realized it was not embarrassment. She was showing herself to him.
“I’m much too old for that, my dear. Your father would not like it at all. And I must admit I’m not really looking for a wife.”
“Well, maybe you just don’t know what you want,” she tried. “I could go with you, you know. I wouldn’t mind, I’d love to travel all over. I could help you sell your dreams, you know I could.”
“My business is fine.”
“But it could be better.”
“It doesn’t need to be better. I make a living. There isn’t anything I want for that I don’t have.”
Cora sighed impatiently and sat down suddenly on her step, tucked her chin into her hands, resting her elbows on her knees. Her childish pose of frustration made him smile.
“Don’t you just ever get lonely, though?”
Robert pulled his cigarettes from his shirt pocket and searched for his matches.
“Sure, I feel lonely plenty of times. But it doesn’t mean I want to marry someone I don’t love.”
Cora brightened, lifted her changed face up to him. “You could learn to love me, I’m sure you could. Everyone says I’m very lovable.”
“Everyone says you’re lovable because you’re beautiful and they want to make a beautiful girl like you smile. But the two things are not the same.”
He lit a cigarette and waited for her to rise and go inside the store. She looked up at the smoke he blew over her head.
“Well, thank you for walking me home, at least,” she said as she stood up.
“It’s my pleasure,” he answered, but he didn’t sound like he meant it. By the time Cora opened the door, he was walking away from her, and she turned around in the shadowy doorway and watched him shrinking down the road.
All she heard was that he had called her beautiful.
* * *
* * *
Strolling back slowly the way he had come, Robert smoked. As he passed by the manse, Pastor Arnold popped out, rushing down the steps as if he’d taken the puffs for a signal of distress and crossing the short lawn just in time to block the dream peddler’s path.
“Mr. Owens, excuse me, but I feel I must speak to you about something.”
He’d used up so much breath in his dash that the words sputtered unevenly. Yet he pulled his chest up and out in a gesture of dignity, thrusting all his authority of church and holiness in Robert Owens’s bemused face.
“It is not the usual thing, in our town, for gentlemen who have no ties here to walk the young women home from church. Or any event. Certainly not gentlemen who are a good deal older than the young women are and when their families have not consented.”
He tugged his collar. Robert smiled at him.
“I think ‘gentleman’ may be an undeserved compliment in my case. Don’t you?”
The pastor blinked at him.
“I apologize for walking Miss Cora home, but I assure you it was an innocent act. She asked for my company, you see, and I make it a point never to refuse a lady’s request.”
“Be that as it may, and I might argue that she is not a lady because she is still only a girl, I admit I’m glad to have this opportunity to speak with you, not only about the relationship with the young girl, of course, though—of course that is important—and I’m glad to see at least that you seem to understand it was not something that should have been done and is not something that should ever be repeated—”
“Oh, I don’t say I think I should not have done it. But I realize other people will view it that way. It’s the appearance of things, I see. I understand that completely.” He drew on his cigarette, then angled his mouth slightly to avoid blowing smoke in the minister’s face. “I’m sorry for making the wrong impression, but really, you know, it’s otherwise out of my hands.” And he spread them wide apart as if he had dropped the matter at the pastor’s feet.
“Humph. Be that as it may,” Mr. Arnold continued, uncertain now exactly when he’d been interrupted or how the impudent dream peddler had somehow retracted a most necessary apology. “Be that as it may, it is not all we need to discuss. I feel it is my duty to inform you, since most of our responsible citizens seem unwilling to, or, heaven forbid, have actually purchased what you are selling, that you are in fact not welcome here. Not welcome by me, among my flock.”
Robert rocked back and forth on his heels. “I’m sorry to hear this,” was all he said.
“Times can be hard, I know that. And I have tolerated drifters before who came through this town, selling tonics and elixirs of all kinds, that might have been genuine medicine and might have been syrup, for all I know.”
Robert smiled into his chest.
“And if I felt I needed to speak to them, you can be sure I did. It’s not as if you are the only one, you know. But, sir”—in spite of himself he lifted his forefinger here, and it waggled in Robert’s face, as if it could not remain still when perched on the end of such indignant rage—“you are a cat of a new color altogether. Dreams, my boy, dreams, these are a private matter between a man and his soul, a man and God. If you truly are selling them, then it can only be Satan’s work. I can imagine no other way. And if you are not, you are a typical charlatan. Maybe the rest of them can’t see it, I understand that. They are good Christians and believe the same of others. They are trusting. They trust you. But I don’t.”
“There’s nothing sinister in my magic. It is a partnership between myself and the dreamer, nothing more.”
“Whatever it may be, I think it’s about time you took it elsewhere. I don’t know if you are familiar with the words of Zechariah.”
Robert looked at him blankly.
“Chapter ten, verse two. ‘For the idols have spoken vanity, and the diviners have seen a lie, and have told false dreams; they comfort in vain: therefore they went their way as a flock, they were troubled, because there was no shepherd.’”
When Robert made no response, the young minister did not stoop to explain it to him.
“I have my eye on you,” Arnold told him. “And you must keep away from the young women especially. Any misstep there, my man, and I will not be the only one in town to take notice, I can assure you.”
Robert tipped his hat, much as he had to Cora.
“I thank you for the warning. Good day to you.”
And he held his face steady while Mr. Arnold scuttled back to the manse, and then he let go and chuckled to himself and patted his belly, thinking about dinner.
* * *
* * *
Cora ran her oiled rag over the bedroom furnishings. She moved slowly, gazing at the ghostly smear of her own face in the top of her dresser and rubbing the knobs at the head of her bed until they shone like gazing balls. There wasn’t much furniture to fuss with, but she wanted the chore to last and to be alone with herself, with her new thoughts. It was a sign she was becoming more womanly, she believed, this need to be alone in the quiet instead of surrounding herself with laughter and the smitten stares of boys. She studied the well of her heart while she worked, but it was like churning her feet around the edge of a tide pool, and the more she dug in, the cloudier the waters became.
Her mother was resting, and Father was making Toby help him with the inventory down in the store. Cora would have been quicker at it, but Toby was
the boy and Toby must learn the business, no matter how slowly he might. It was like moving the heaviest furniture every spring to clean underneath, the business of dragging Toby’s mulish mind into the light.
She went to the neglected windowsill and worked there, where she might look out. People passed down below on the street, always nodding, touching hats to each other, never a stranger among them. She flicked the rag at the window, folded it to a clean spot. She had rubbed all the dust away and was now just massaging the newly oiled wood, wondering if anyone would chance to look up and see the red hair haloing her pale face in the window. She was prepared to lift the rag and wave.
Robert Owens came into view, arm crooked through Violet Burnley’s as if he’d brought her to town for shopping. They disappeared from sight, and Cora waited to hear the store bell jangle, but it didn’t, and presently the pair emerged again from the other side of the porch roof. She’d been mistaken; they were only enjoying the day after all. She dropped her rag and gripped the inside of her elbow with her hand, pressing down where she imagined his fingers touched Miss Burnley. She pushed hard, wondering what it would feel like if he grabbed her in a moment of passion. When boys danced with her, they always held her too lightly, as if they thought girls bruised easy, like fruit. And Robert when he had seen her home had kept a slight distance between them, instead of taking her arm. Even so she had felt the heat build in the space between their hips as they walked. The one side of her had flushed with it, as if she’d stood too long by a fire without turning.
The Dream Peddler Page 17
