The Dream Peddler

by Martine Fournier Watson

  “Isaiah, chapter twenty-nine, verse eight: ‘It shall be even as when an hungry man dreameth, and, behold, he eateth; but he awaketh, and his soul is empty: or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh; but he awaketh, and, behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite.’ I know you know these things to be true. The temporary satisfaction of a dream can never be brought over into your real life or the life of your souls. Only through worship and good works can we truly satisfy ourselves. . . .”

  The old wood of Robert’s pew cracked as he lifted his weight from it. He gazed around at the people as they turned to realize he was standing in their midst. There was a long hollow of silence while they waited for him to exit. Instead he spoke.

  “It is my understanding that God sealed his covenant with Abraham’s descendants by sending Jacob’s ladder down to him in a dream. That Joseph married the Holy Mother because the angel Gabriel visited him in a dream.”

  The faces turned away from him and back to the front of the church, waiting for more of Mr. Arnold’s fine words to rain on them. They remained dry. Robert went on.

  “Joseph was able to save our Lord Jesus Christ, wasn’t he, because he was warned of Herod in a dream? I leave it to you all to work out these questions for yourselves. Perhaps God has spoken to some of you in your dreams, perhaps not. I don’t claim to be a prophet. I don’t sell miracles. But I think if we’re going to call on the Holy Book for our condemnation, we’d better be sure of it, hadn’t we?”

  He made his way out into the aisle and stood face-to-face with Mr. Arnold, and the long planks of wood floor sank between them, worn away by the history of footsteps. Mr. Arnold, not to be daunted, was glaring down at him from the pulpit as if contemplating one of God’s insects.

  “Job, chapter thirty-three, verses fourteen to eighteen,” Robert went on. “‘For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon man, in slumberings upon the bed; Then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction, That he may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from man. He keepeth back his soul from the pit, and his life from perishing by the sword.’”

  The dream peddler turned away from his accuser and walked to the front of the church and out the door. After watching him leave, the parishioners turned back to Mr. Arnold. Without his dismissal they were unsure if this event had ended the prayer meeting. It was clear that Robert Owens had won the day, but Robert Owens was only a drifter, while Mr. Arnold was their spiritual leader. He married them, baptized the children of their unions, and buried them, too. They blinked up at him.

  Clearing his throat, Mr. Arnold bent his head in a manner that seemed intended to erase the memory of any unpleasant disruption and carried on, saying, “Friends, let us pray.” He led them in the Lord’s Prayer because it was solid and gathered the voices of all the congregation beneath his own. Like water under a boat, they bobbed him up, while the familiar ancient words brought him back his composure.

  * * *

  * * *

  Robert leaned against the church while the drone of prayer lapped gently on the other side of the wall. With it he was sending his own whiffs of smoke up toward the heavens. He was waiting for Violet, to walk her home as he always did.

  Inside the church Cora Jenkins was listening to the reading of the announcements when she suddenly thought she would stifle if she couldn’t get outside. The summer church was warm, but to Cora’s skin it seemed as if the air had somehow turned to a different substance. Its molecules had swollen large as baseballs, crowding around her head and chest in a plea for entry she was now powerless to grant.

  “May I wait for you outside?” she asked her mother, trying not to look sick. Mrs. Jenkins gave her a concerned look. “It’s so hot in here,” Cora said, waving her hand a little in front of her chest to show she was not getting enough air.

  “It won’t be long,” her mother whispered. “Do you want your father to take you home?”

  Cora shook her head. She slipped out of the pew and down the side aisle, stepped out into the humid twilight that rolled down over her dress. The light buffeting of the breeze was like a soft bedsheet taken off the line and drawn across her skin. She walked down to the street and around the side of the building, where she saw the starry end of Robert’s cigarette floating near the wall. The back of his silhouette was hoary with light from the window. He saw her approach through the blue darkness and stubbed the cigarette on the wall behind him and dropped its ember into the dirt. When he turned toward her, only one side of his face showed the light, like a moon.

  “You’re still here,” she said to him.

  “I am. Waiting for Violet.”

  Robert looked at Cora without smiling. He was not in the mood for her flirting, though he was not very hopeful she would just go away.

  “You were quite brilliant in there, you know,” she told him.

  “Nothing brilliant about it. I know the Bible very well. You can back up just about anything if you know the Bible well enough.”

  “Anyway, I was impressed. I think everyone else was, too. I don’t think anyone had any idea Mr. Arnold was going to attack you like that tonight. How lucky you happened to be there.”

  He folded his arms. “I wasn’t taken completely by surprise. Mr. Arnold made it clear to me some time ago that he looks forward to my departure. I guess he decided to see if he could hasten it.”

  “Hasten?”

  “Speed things up. He’s taking action.”

  Cora looked at him. “I can understand that.” She moved closer to him and turned to share his attitude so she could follow his gaze, out into the field behind the church, where the fireflies hailed one another with their mysterious signals.

  “Do you think you’ll be leaving pretty soon, then?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “Because . . .” She gestured behind her, meaning the people behind the wall.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t let a little incident like that chase me off. Not if people still want me around. When it’s really time to leave, I’ll know it. Always do.”

  “But it won’t be much longer, will it? With the summer ending . . .”

  “I don’t know,” he said again.

  Cora was silent, looking down to where their feet lined up in a track, as if stitching the ground.

  “Why do you know the Bible so well?”

  “I used to be a minister myself. A long time ago. Another lifetime.”

  Cora moved away from the clapboards and turned back to him. Her face was ghostly in the fading light, and her eyes glimmered.

  “Well, you see? You couldn’t be bad, then. I knew you couldn’t be a bad man, not really, and you can be with me. There isn’t a thing wrong with it. Older men marry much younger women all the time. All the time.” She gulped the air. “You can marry me and teach me everything you know, and I will love you so much, more than anyone else ever could, and when you’re old and sick, I’ll still be sort of young, and I can take care of you.”

  The more he seemed to shake his head, the more insistent she was, talking faster as if convincing him were less about the argument itself than about its momentum.

  “You just have to make up your mind to it, as I have. You just have to be willing to take me with you. Don’t say no because you think it isn’t right. Just do what you want to do. When summer ends, you can take me with you—it won’t be too late.”

  Robert smiled sadly. “You’re so sure I’m a good man, Cora. But you haven’t asked me if I was a good, kind minister, why did I leave?”

  “It doesn’t matter. You were, because there is love in your heart. All you have to do is turn it toward me, Mr. Owens. Robert. Just turn it toward me.”

  Her voice was rising now, and he was aware of a shuffling beyond the wall, and the steady light from the windows began to b
uckle and flicker with movement. Cora put her arms out and clasped her hands behind his neck, then pressed her lips to his. She did not know how to kiss him, and she kept them perfectly still, like a child, but pushed them into him so forcefully that his own lips were crushed back against his teeth.

  He took her by the shoulders to gently remove her from him. His mouth felt numb from her, as if she’d injected him with a poison.

  “Why can’t you understand?” she cried. “Why can’t you love me?”

  The sobs jerked out of her chest while she turned and ran, toward the crowd now milling into the road. She ran past Violet Burnley and Mrs. Jenkins as they came around the corner of the church and found him standing there, arms hanging helplessly down at his sides.

  * * *

  * * *

  It might have been only his imagination. One or two regular customers failed to come to him that week at their usual time. But summer was busy, the long growing days, and anyone might miss an appointment. Business was still steady; he would put it out of his mind.

  After all, Evie needed him to stay. As long as she wanted his medicine, he wouldn’t fail her. Had a few people looked deliberately away from him just now, when he smiled at them in the street? He was usually braced for this, and he chided himself for feeling one way or another about it. It wasn’t up to him.

  The prayer meeting had prepared him. No matter how clever his answers to the Reverend Arnold, his witty words wouldn’t win in the battle with fear. Yet he couldn’t shake the sense that it wasn’t yet time. He went home and counted his vials. He waited for dreamers.

  Chapter 23

  “Miss Blackwell. It’s nice to see you again.”

  “Hello!” Christina heard herself chirp, and then she went silent, like Violet’s bird.

  Robert Owens was alone today on the bench outside the store. Usually Christina could nod silently and politely at the usual collection of curved old men and walk by, but now she was caught in the web of his greeting like a fly.

  “I’m here to meet Cora,” she said. “We’re taking a walk down to Mrs. Schumann’s, who hasn’t been well, to bring her some things.”

  “That’s kind of you. I remember Mrs. Schumann was the first person I met when I came into town.”

  “Really?” It’s a wonder you stayed, she thought. She did not dare say it out loud.

  “Yep. She sent me on to Miss Burnley’s. And Miss Burnley pointed me here, to the store.”

  “And you must have met Cora.” She looked down at him.

  He took a breath. “I always meant to ask, if we happened to meet, if the dream you bought from me worked out for you.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. She glanced at the door to the store, hoping someone might step out and interrupt them.

  He smiled. “You don’t know?”

  She pulled a handkerchief out of her skirt pocket and played with it.

  He patted the seat beside him. “Come have a sit for a while. Don’t be shy.”

  Christina did not know how to refuse without being rude, so she walked closer and sat on the other end of the bench, wringing the dry handkerchief in her hands.

  “I wasn’t sure what to think,” said Christina. “I did dream of my wedding, and a young man. . . . He just wasn’t the one I was hoping for.”

  “I see.” Robert was thoughtful. “But he was someone you know?”

  “Oh, yes, it was . . . someone from town.”

  “How interesting.” He pulled an almost empty sack of sugar-heart candy from inside his vest and offered it to her apologetically. She put out her hand, and he shook some treats into it.

  “What do you think your dream meant?” he asked her.

  She traced her finger through the candies in her palm, rolling them and reading the sweet red messages printed on them.

  “I haven’t been able to decide. This is a person who seems to like me.” She colored. “I thought maybe, if no one else ever does, he might be my only future.”

  “Never, dear. I think I told you before, but I’ll say it again. There isn’t any one future. Who is to say you will even be married? Maybe you will do something else.”

  Christina looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “I hope that’s not possible!”

  At that moment Jackson Banks rounded the corner of the building. He came to the bottom of the steps, took in the two of them sitting on the bench together, and paused only a heartbeat before bounding up the stairs and past them. He pulled the door open, winked at Christina, and went in.

  When they were alone again, Robert spoke. “It would be better to remain unmarried than to spend your life married to the wrong person.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Most certainly.” Robert was watching Christina’s face carefully. “You needn’t follow a dream you bought to find happiness,” he told her gently. “Just follow your heart.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not pointing a clear direction for me.” She bit down on a candy version.

  “Ah. Well. That can be a nuisance.”

  He rolled the top of the paper bag closed and set it on the bench beside him.

  “Is that why you never married?” she asked him, before she could lose her nerve. “You thought you might make the wrong choice?”

  A man opened the door from within, then stepped in front of it to hold it open for two women to pass him before following them down into the street. Robert waited until they had left before speaking.

  “I would say I chose a different sort of life. That kind of love isn’t a part of the life I’ve made.”

  Christina was thoughtful, looking into her lap. “What if someone wanted to marry you now?”

  “I don’t think that would change anything.”

  “What will you do if you ever fall in love?” She was surprised to hear herself asking him all these bold questions, she who was usually so shy. But there was something about Robert Owens that put her at ease with him.

  He leaned back. They both turned their heads as Jackson exited the store with a paper bag under one arm. He whistled his way down the street.

  “People don’t just fall in love by accident, like you’d fall down a set of stairs. They have to be willing.”

  Christina wondered if that were true. Across the street she noticed Mrs. Jones drift in with the two women who’d just left the store, and they stopped together, talking. Except they all seemed to turn and face Jenkins’s sign, taking in Mr. Owens and herself sitting there. Their words were lost to her in the dust, but their expressions had gone hard and seemed disapproving.

  “I should go in now,” she said, standing up. “Cora’s expecting me.”

  “I wonder if you might want to give it another try sometime? Your dream? I could make you another one. You never know, it might come out different.”

  Christina hesitated. “I don’t think so, thank you. I’m not sure I want to know what would happen if I dreamed it again.”

  Robert nodded, reaching an arm across the empty back of the bench. “Suit yourself,” he said.

  * * *

  * * *

  Evie knew she should start the supper, but her body dragged. The deep sleep she’d been avoiding hounded her always, trailing after her on soft paws and waiting for her to lie down. She went to her book, the one Robert had given her, and took it off the shelf. She wasn’t sure how he had guessed, but poetry was the only thing she could read now. When she tried to pick up a longer book, she couldn’t sustain the story in her mind. The characters and events bled through one another, and she would read and reread a page without taking in what was going on.

  Over the summer she’d been reading one poem at a time from The Wind Among the Reeds, whenever she had an idle moment, although she hadn’t decided if she liked it. It seemed to her there was an awful lot of sighing and a lot of nonsense about women’s hair. There was frequent
wandering into the afterlife and other places Evie did not want to go. When she read in “A Cradle Song” about “the narrow graves calling my child and me,” she shut the book and decided she wouldn’t go on with it. But then she found herself still picking it up from time to time, and now she saw she had come almost to the end.

  “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven,” she read. Aedh was the one always moaning about love. It seemed to Evie he knew very little about real love. He was so busy flying among the stars and sunsets that he never came down to the work of it, to eating the hard, dry, overcooked supper you didn’t want, digging out the needed smile no matter how deep it burrowed within you, the living with snoring and nagging and the just plain exhausting effort of it all. Her cobwebby mind was trying to clear as she fingered the paper. She noticed a crease at the top right corner of the page, as if someone had once folded it down.

  Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

  Enwrought with golden and silver light,

  The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

  Of night and light and the half light,

  I would spread the cloths under your feet:

  But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

  I have spread my dreams under your feet;

  Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

  Evie looked up, and her gray eyes went dark. Her daytime fog was torn away like a garment. She could not know if Robert had given her this book for a reason, but her tightening heart seemed certain that he had.

  While she sat, with the outside greenery fluttering away at her through the window, she heard a knock. Visitors had fallen off over the summer, since that initial flurry of comforting and shoulder patting and baking things had subsided. The handkerchiefs had been tucked back into the pockets and the tilted heads straightened up; the stiff shoes had shuffled the friends away. Evie was alone again, and knocks were rare out here on the farm. When she heard it a second time, she realized she must put the book down and go to the door.