If one did not attend church regularly, one was not to be trusted. So every Sunday Robert Owens would put on his cleanest shirt, brush his coat and pants, and head down the street like everyone else. His first Sunday there, the Reverend Arnold had made a point to welcome him and shake his hand, but while he pumped, Robert had had the distinct impression he was being sized up. As if a dream peddler’s wares, being intangible, were just a bit too much like his own.
Robert walked alone because Violet went over early to warm up her organ. As he joined the crowd outside, the organ’s heavy breath would blanket them, and it seemed to bend their bodies toward their worship as the wind would bow the tall grass. Sometimes he would fall in with a family on the steps. The father would ask him how business went, his daughter giggling and his wife digging him hard in the ribs.
“Can’t complain, can’t complain,” Robert would always say, and compliment the ladies on their attire.
This week, though, he entered alone, and there, not steps away from him in the vestibule, was Evelyn Dawson. He stood aside, hoping she might not notice, and watched her back as it went up the aisle beside her husband’s. He continued to stare at her as he made his way into the sanctuary, and he walked right into the side of a pew and stumbled, hat tumbling onto the floor. As he picked it up and tried to sneak quietly into the pew he had assaulted, the heads turned anyway, lighter faces after darker hair like the undersides of leaves. He fumbled with the hat still in his hand as he tried to open his hymnal to the first hymn. He could not find the page and keep hold of the hat at the same time. Finally he set the hat down on the pew beside him. He tried to still his fluster.
All around, the church was dotted with his customers, their dreams of the night before unfolding silently and secretly inside them. Young Jenna Coldbrook had finally won the blue ribbon for quilting at the county fair, and Ansen Smith had worked up the courage to ask if he might see her home. Arthur Jones had climbed to the peak of Mount Everest and looked out over the blue-white world. And Elsbeth Maynard had spent one more perfect golden childhood day with her long dead grandmother. Pastor Arnold, looking gravely down at this flock, had the distinct impression their hearts were not beating entirely in rhythm with the solemnity of his church service. And some of them, he suspected, might not even have been listening to him at all.
There were Billy and Mary Thomson taking turns jiggling their new baby, who appeared to have arrived in the world in the form of a big bundle of crocheted yarn. Every so often the voice of the bundle would shudder out, that goatlike bleating of the uncomfortable newborn. Evie Dawson stared ahead as if she took no notice, but George Dawson watched them intently. He watched the couple whisper an argument during the hymn over whether the blanket was necessary in the warmer air of the church, and he watched while the baby was worked out of it and the bobbling head appeared over her mother’s shoulder. He was remembering the feel of that strange spot on a baby’s skull, where the bones did not quite meet and the pulse showed through.
Christina Blackwell sat with her parents, and Cora Jenkins across the aisle from them. Toby sat next to Cora with an unwitting grin on his face, staring up at the front of the church. He was so light of step he had almost developed a swagger. Several pews behind Christina was the freckle-faced Rolf, watching how the coils of her dark hair ribboned the light, how they rolled it back and forth when she moved her head. He was wishing he could put his finger on the curve of her cheek, the line of her jaw. While he watched, a darkness of flush moved up her skin, because Jackson Banks had just snuck in late to join his family. Christina made an effort not to look at him—let his winks waste themselves on someone else, she thought.
Robert followed along, standing when everyone stood to sing and then sitting back down again and standing once more. As if they could not make up their minds. Evelyn Dawson was not far enough from him for his comfort, and he felt her turning toward him every so often as the service went on. He kept his eyes on his hymnal. He tried hard not to see her there, and because of that she was the only thing he could see, inside his mind.
The entire service he was only wondering when he might slip out unnoticed. If he didn’t get away before the others, he risked being cornered by her, so when they took up the offering, he did it. He dropped his coins into the brass plate and passed it to the man next to him, excused himself under his breath, and squeezed out to the aisle. No one paid any attention to him, as they were all occupied finding their money in pockets and purses, and he escaped into the street and the buzzing spring air.
He wandered down the road to wait for Violet, leaning against a cherry tree about to bloom. He remembered standing just like this when the funeral darkness had washed across the road, and still it felt like the right place to be, away from grieving eyes and out where he could breathe. As Vi went past his tree, Robert came out and stepped into stride beside her, and she gasped at him, then laughed. She pulled up the hat he’d left behind and slanted it over his head.
“I thought you’d gone home,” she said.
“Didn’t go home yet. You know I walk you back every week. I just decided to leave early.”
“I see,” said Violet, and pressed her lips together. She’d noticed Evie Dawson back beside George today, but she wouldn’t comment. “You missed the community announcements,” she told him.
“Really? Anything important?”
“Not much. There’s to be a dance next weekend. The young people are quite excited. They’ll have it in the schoolhouse on Saturday night. We have some first-rate fiddlers in this town, you know, and I am to play piano for them, too.”
“Splendid.” Robert tucked his free hand into his pocket.
“Do you enjoy dancing?”
“I’ve done my bit of dancing, I guess, in my day.”
“Well, you must come, too, then. With the summer work beginning, this might be our last for a while. The men will all be too tired of an evening.”
Robert smiled. “Come now. There’s never a young man too tired to come out and dance with the pretty ladies, is there? And you have some beauties in this town. The boys must show them the good times they deserve.”
“Or what? They’ll depart for lands unknown?”
“You never know. I may squirrel one away with me yet, when I leave.”
Violet looked down at her shoes. “When will that be, do you think?”
“I’m just teasing.”
“But when do you think you’ll be leaving? For good?”
Robert lifted his chin to the idea. “I can’t really say. I’ve only just begun to sell here. It was unusual circumstances when I arrived. Some places never really take off for me, and I’m only there a few weeks. Other places I’ll spend as long as a year. So I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”
“But you are coming to the dance.”
“Of course I’m coming.”
“And how do you plan to keep your distance from Evelyn Dawson the whole evening?”
“I hardly think Mrs. Dawson is in the mood to go to a dance, do you?”
“No, I suppose not,” said Violet.
“You really want to go?” George blew on his tea and put his mouth to it even though it was still too hot. He slurped, and Evie frowned at him.
“Yes, I think I will. Not for the dancing, just to help put out the food. Or serve lemonade. I can bring some of my raisin squares.”
George smiled at her. “Well, I must go, too, if your raisin squares will be there.”
“Of course you’ll go, too. It will be a nice time. I like to see all the young people, all the little love affairs breaking out.”
“It’s nice you can still enjoy their fun in your old age.”
Evie snapped her napkin at him. They drank their tea while a silence rolled itself between them like a lazy cat. It was startled away by a knock at the door. Without waiting to be let in, Rose Whiting opened it for herself and stepped into the hall. Evie stood and went to be embraced by way of welcome.
“Hello! I see I’m just in time for tea, perfect.”
“Yes, you are. Let me get your coat. We have a huge tin of cookies from Mrs. Blackwell. And a cake from Irma Jones. And scones from Mrs. Bachmeier.”
“My goodness, such a feast,” said Rose, rubbing her hands together as she came into the kitchen. George stood to hug her, too, and pulled out a chair. Its feet scraped the floor between them.
“We don’t need to worry about going hungry, do we?” said George.
“Kindness needs an outlet, doesn’t it? All wishing they could help you in some way.”
“Oh, yes. I hope they don’t mind letting out my pants for me as well, when the time comes.”
Rose studied her daughter. “Evie, my dear, you don’t look as if you are suffering from too many sweets.”
Evie raised her eyes. “Well, Mother, I haven’t really had a big appetite lately.”
“But you must still keep up your strength.”
“I have plenty of strength. Plenty of it. I never was a big one for sweets, you remember.”
“Well, I’m going to stay and make you my fried chicken for supper. You never could say no to it.”
“What about Father? Where has he got to?”
Her mother waved an arm. “He has so many cases right now I hardly see him. Flu’s coming and going everywhere, making a circle through town and starting over again, seems like. Poor Jenny Simms has come down with it, and half the Jones and Cartwright children—it’s just that time of year.” She plunked herself down in a chair. “There’s nothing much to be done for them except lots of rest and fluids, but your father wants to lay eyes on each and every one of them once a day, listening for pneumonia, you know how it is. He’s a good doctor.”
“Yes, he is.”
“So I’ve come here to check on you.”
“All right.”
Evie poured her mother’s tea and refilled her own and George’s cups.
The silence returned, curling at their feet and bedding down.
“Well, I wouldn’t say no to a fried-chicken dinner, that’s what,” said George.
As Rose cut up the chicken and Evie peeled potatoes, Rose watched her daughter. The chicken skin was slippery bumps under her fingers, and the knife was sharp. She peeked sidelong at Evie while trying not to butterfly her own hand. Evie seemed to be having a good day, going about her business and even humming to herself here and there. They stood side by side and listened to the crunch of stubborn bird bones separating.
“It’s a strange feeling, you know,” Evie said.
“What is?”
“These days . . . there are these days when it loses its hold on me. When he seems to lose his hold. It’s as if he is the one who has to let me go and not the other way around. Like I don’t get any say in it myself.”
Her mother stared down at the chicken. “I guess that’s how it feels to grieve, isn’t it? The mind, well, it just doesn’t want to wallow, not forever. Sadness is like an ocean. It must move in and out.”
Evie nodded.
“And you don’t have to let him go.”
“You know what I mean. I have to let go the wanting to see him. I was lucky to have him, yes. But I wanted to see him grow up.”
“Are you sleeping?”
Evie’s look was quick both ways. “When I do, I . . . have dreams.”
“It’s normal for sadness to make us tired. It will pass.”
They worked in silence for a while.
“I don’t suppose you’ve run into that man, that . . . dream peddler.”
Evie looked up. “No, not really. I’ve seen him at a distance, that’s all. I think George knows him, but I’ve never spoken to him.”
“Good. I can’t imagine what Violet Burnley thinks she’s doing, letting a man like that live in her house, cooking for him, doing his washing.”
“What kind of a man?”
“A charlatan. The kind who comes to small towns thinking the size of our brains is in direct proportion to our population and tries to take advantage. Takes money from people who work hard for it and don’t know any better.”
“I don’t know about that, but I haven’t heard of anyone being disappointed. There might be something to it.”
Her mother snorted. “There is no such thing as giving someone a dream. The only thing with the power to do that is your own mind.”
Evie shrugged. “I guess there’s no harm in it. If whatever he gives people affects their minds, they’re still getting what they want, what they didn’t have without him, so he’s not really cheating them.”
“Yes, it is cheating,” her mother said sharply. “It most certainly is. I don’t like his business. And I hope you never get so desperate as to try and buy a dream from the likes of him. He should let people’s minds alone.”
Evie hunched over her potatoes. She was slicing them now and setting the damp, milky rounds into a pot of cold water to take out the starch.
“No, I’d never do that,” she said.
Christina Blackwell was sitting in Cora Jenkins’s bedroom, letting her friend test a series of limp ribbons next to her hair, one at a time.
“Honestly, Cora, do you really think it will make a difference?”
“We should not take any chances,” insisted Cora, already wearing in her own hair the green she had chosen to match her dress. “This is all up to us, remember. We need to change the course of a dream. We are altering fate. Very hard to guess what small details may end up being of vital importance.”
“Like a hair ribbon,” said Christina sarcastically.
“Exactly like a hair ribbon. Let’s see this one.”
She held up a twist of periwinkle blue next to Christina’s head. They looked in the glass together, through its pale spores of age. The ovals of their faces blurred out of its silver like surfacing mermaids.
“I approve,” Christina said, because as long as Cora liked it, she was happy they could stop looking. She was no longer really seeing the colors of the ribbons. She was seeing in grays like a photograph of themselves. Worrying about Jackson was having the opposite effect on her than she thought it would. She had expected everything to be heightened. As her pulse bounced through her wrists and her temperature rose, she thought she would find herself in a confusion of sounds and lights, like a carousel. Instead the world was fading and the color of things bleeding outward, away from her. Her senses had all been muffled, like they were wintering under a gray fall of snow.
She felt a tug as Cora pulled the silk through the back of her hair and it whispered in. Her scalp tingled with the memory of girlfriends in the school yard plaiting each other’s hair, all in a circle working at one another’s back, fingers weaving while the pleasure crept along their necks and over the tops of their ears. She closed her eyes to feel it better. Never mind that Cora was grooming her like a purebred dog for a show.
Cora tied a bow and smoothed the hair toward it like a mother would.
“This blue is heaven with your new red dress,” she said.
Christina opened her eyes to look. Of course she could not see the ribbon now, at the back of her head; she had to take Cora’s word for it. Even the scarlet dress was faded by the murky glass of the mirror. Christina had been surprised when her mother agreed to such rich, vivid fabric at the store. “I gave it to her on discount,” Cora confided, nudging her, “and she did give in. She couldn’t resist the price for such good lawn, of course. Don’t tell Father,” and she winked. Christina thought Cora was a good friend, making sure she had the brightest dress to give her the best chance of attracting Jackson.
Cora’s mouth fell open a little over her white teeth as she fussed around Christina, who had stood up, suddenly impatient. Cora smoothed the back of her dress and fastened a button they had missed.
“Is it too soon to go yet?”
Cora glanced at the clock. “Just a little bit. We don’t want to get there and stand around while they warm up the fiddles.”
“Tell me, Cora, who are you hoping to dance with?”
Now Cora checked her own figure in the mirror. She smiled at herself, and the points of her eye teeth came out.
“Robert Owens, I think.”
“Robert Owens! He’s old enough to be your father.”
Cora smiled. “He’s probably not quite that old.”
“Even so. What would people think?”
“Oh, who gives a damn what people think!”
Christina was shocked that Cora would curse. But with no one else in the room to hear her, the word wafted harmlessly up like a curious moth.
“Why would you want to take up with a man like that?” she asked.
“A man like what?”
“Well, that nobody knows. Someone who travels from town to town selling things, living off of luck with no steady job. He doesn’t even have an automobile. Or a horse of his own.”
“I don’t expect him to whisk me away to a castle. I just thought he might dance with me, is all.” She patted her hair and watched her reflection do the same.
“But what’s the point of it?”
“I would enjoy it. That’s the point.”
Christina looked at Cora in her pale green dress and thought how easily she would turn the men her way when she went through the room. Even if Christina’s dress was brighter, she would never turn heads like Cora. She shrugged. “Well, have fun dancing with him, then.”
Cora pointed at her. “And you will be dancing with Jackson Banks.”
Christina tilted her head. “What makes you think that? He doesn’t pay any more attention to me than he used to. And since I started ignoring him, he can just go ahead and forget I exist. I think this plan isn’t working.”
“Nonsense. I told you. Jackson hasn’t made up his mind yet who he wants. He doesn’t have the first clue what he’s about. All we have to do is spin him around and point him in the right direction.”
“We might as well be spinning him and pointing him at Pin the Tail on the Donkey. He could so easily blunder off to the side, and miss the mark.”
“Of course he won’t. I won’t let him. You just have to trust me.”
Christina sighed. She had never really gotten anything she wanted badly by trusting Cora Jenkins, but that was not for Cora’s lack of effort. She remembered when they were little girls and Christina had her heart set on playing Mary, for once, in the Christmas pageant. Every year she was an angel or a shepherd, something that could be easily herded about unnoticed within the larger assemblage. Cora knew how much, despite her shyness, Christina secretly coveted that role. Wearing the old blue velvet robe, that chosen girl would come silently down the aisle with Joseph (sometimes riding the back of a papier-mâché donkey head stuck on the end of a broom, for effect) and sit gleaming in the candlelight as she gazed solemnly down at her newborn babe, magically produced when the time came from behind some bales of hay at the altar and sailed into her lap.
Cora was not afflicted with Christina’s shyness and put up her hand when the question of Mary’s role came up at Sunday school in early December. “I know who would make a beautiful Mary, Mrs. Heebner,” she called out, and before she could say another word, Mrs. Heebner, glancing up from her clipboard, said briskly, “Cora Jenkins, that’s just fine. Why don’t you be Mary this year,” and dismissed them all. Christina knew that her friend had not acted out of malice, and she let Cora drape a sympathetic arm across her slumped shoulders as they walked homeward together. But alone in her room, she cried her hot tears and wondered why, why she did not have the same courage, why she could not speak up and take things as other girls did.
The spring night was chilly, so they pulled their shadowy coats on over their dresses, like smothering fires with blankets. All around them others were heading to the schoolhouse as well, and the sun hung low and haunted them from within the trees. Horses made their way among the crowd, and even occasional motorcars honked their way through.
Robert Owens came up alongside the girls, as always with Violet Burnley on his arm.
“I think she’s hoping he might save her from old-maidhood after all,” Cora whispered to her friend. In spite of herself, Christina tittered. She wouldn’t have hurt Miss Burnley’s feelings for the world, but she was too nervous to help it. Robert turned coolly toward them and tipped his hat. “Ladies.”
“Good evening, Mr. Owens. Miss Burnley,” called Cora.
“Hello, girls. Beautiful night for a dance, isn’t it?”
“It is. I hope you are coming to play the piano for us?”
“She might,” said Robert. “If I leave her any free time between all the dances we intend to have.”
The two of them laughed and left the girls dawdling behind them.
“It’s looking like you’ll have some competition for your favorite tonight, Cora,” Christina teased.
Cora sniffed. “I always felt a bit sorry for old Violet Burnley before, but now I feel it even more. She finally has this friend—you can see how much she likes him—and why wouldn’t she? But eventually he’ll be gone, and then she’ll be even more lonely.”
“Well, her life is like that, I suppose. She’ll get another boarder eventually.”
“Sometimes I’m afraid of that, you know, for myself. Of ending up somewhere alone.”
“That could never happen to you in a thousand years! You’ll be married and probably have heaps of children.”
“I plan to be married, of course. But what if I don’t have any children? What if I end up like Evelyn Dawson? I could grow to be an old lady and have my husband die and be all by myself.”
Christina looked at her. It was not like Cora to ponder and brood. “When your husband dies and you’re an old lady by yourself, you can come and live with me.” She slipped her arm around Cora’s waist. “Now, cheer up! Forget Violet Burnley and all the old biddies. We’re going to have a marvelous time.”
“Marvelous . . .” Cora murmured to herself as they lifted their delicate shoes on the wooden steps and entered the busy hive of the dance.
Lantern light seemed to deepen the cracks in the walls, as if they were only photographs forgotten in trays of developer. Paper streamers buckled over the window frames, swinging with every breath of the opening door. Greetings called across the room were caught in them like flies. Cora and Christina were taken into the crowd and eddied around the room. Violet sat at the piano, waiting while the fiddlers drew their bows across the strings, tuning, tightening their voices to each other. There was Evie Dawson behind the punch table filling cups and trying to smile. Robert Owens leaned at ease against a wall, talking to some of the men; he hadn’t noticed her there.
Christina tried to scan the room but was hemmed in by all the taller, jostling shoulders; she could see no sign of Jackson Banks or his group. Maybe they wouldn’t bother to show until later on, she guessed, didn’t want to seem too eager. And always Rolf Baer’s eyes tracked her from wherever he stood. Once in a while, he stopped to look down, shifted his feet, looked up, and found her again. Christina stared back at him now, feeling bold, taking stock of him as she had never done before. Yes, his face was strange, she thought; she had not been mistaken in that. But his eyes within the face were clear and steadfast. The freckles were interesting. Something about their pepper of darkness on the white skin made her want to go over and trace them with her finger, feeling if there was any design there or drawing one of her own. It was not attraction she felt, but a curiosity was born in her. Why did he find her so fascinating? He was the only one in town who did.
Behind her a commotion broke out as Jackson Banks and his friends arrived, making a lot of noise getting themselves some food and crowding the punch bowl. Jackson, she noticed, was not above winking at Mrs. Dawson when she handed him a glass. He turned in Christina’s direction, saw her, raised his punch to her by way of hello. She forced the corners of her mouth to go upward.
Cora was busy fielding many offers to fill up her dance card. She stood like a twisting forest vine in her green dress, with the dark trunk lines of the men closing in around her. Her first partner led her into the reel, and the edges of the room blurred to a ring of clapping hands. Men and women at the center jumped with her, with the sweat beginning to polish them. The windows were open to draw in cold air, but the heat of the bodies stamped any freshness down and killed it underfoot.
Evie watched the dancers while George wrapped his arms around her from behind. “Maybe you’ll have a dance with me?” he asked her hair.
“I might,” she said. From the cuff of his arms, she saw the crowd part briefly in a wavering line that gave her a view of Robert Owens across the room. He was smiling and clapping along with everyone else. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, and she saw the round bone of his wrists and the hair curling over them. Was it her imagination, or did he nod in recognition at some of the people? She looked around, and it seemed to her so many of them must have dreamed his dreams by now. And were they different as well, happier? She watched Violet at the piano and wondered what she might have bought for herself. Did she sail away into an oozing sunset on the prow of her brother’s sunken ship? Evie watched the couples dancing, then the wallflowers, edging the room with their hope like a fine ring of salt, and tried to guess what each of them might most desire. She wondered if any of them wanted the same thing she did.
As the dance ended, Cora Jenkins appeared by the dream peddler’s side. She said a few things that Robert answered, but in between his responses he looked around until his eyes found Evie standing behind the punch. His happy smile fell back, as if Evie had somehow hurt him. He touched Cora’s arm lightly without looking at her and left her there while he nudged through the moving crowd. Couples were splitting apart and re-forming for the next song. Evie could hardly see them; she saw only Robert dividing them like so many stalks of wheat. George had gone across the room for some talk; with his arms no longer around her, she felt the cool blue dark of the open window.
When the dream peddler reached her, he fitted his smile back on and nodded. “Could I have two cups of that, please?”
“Yes, of course,” she said, filling the glasses with her ladle, dripping a little down the sides. “Let me get that.” She stopped his hand before he could take them and picked each one up in turn and wiped it with a napkin. “Mr. Owens—” she began.
“Pleasure to meet you,” he said smoothly, and turned and crossed back to the other side of the room before she could say any more.
“Damn,” she said to herself.
She watched Robert busy himself with Cora, the two of them drinking their punch. She studied them so intently she did not even notice George smile at her from across the room or the way his smile faded when he could not get her attention. When he took in who she was watching.
Once Robert and Cora were done with their glasses, he set them on the nearest bench instead of returning them to Evie’s table, and that thoughtlessness annoyed her. He took Cora’s hand and entered the dance, but Evie hadn’t seen his mouth open to speak any invitation. Like it was understood between them. He couldn’t possibly be courting her, thought Evie. He was much too old for her. The townspeople wouldn’t like it. And whatever else he did, she knew, Robert Owens must please the town.
She watched the couples dancing, Cora’s beauty flashing like a lighthouse beacon as she spun. Robert held her loosely, as though cupping some feathery insect that must not be crushed. She was tossing her head back when she laughed and showing the long curve of her throat.
When the dance ended, Robert bowed slightly and moved away, while the space he had left beside Cora quickly filled with another hopeful young man. She danced with them all; she never stood still. George came back and took Evie’s hand, and he led her across the boards. With her body tucked into his, she could no longer see very well, and she couldn’t tell where the dream peddler had gone.
Christina was drinking her punch without enjoying it. It tasted too sweet; when you were this hot and thirsty, you did not want something so sweet. She had watched Jackson Banks dance with three different girls, and to each he had whispered something that made her smile. Maybe the same thing to each girl, she thought. Maybe he would do that to her? She wished he would ask her to dance, if only so she could find out what it was he said to them. From deep within her thoughts, she didn’t notice Rolf Baer sidling up beside her.
“Christina. Would you have a dance with me?”
He held his arm out to her, and she found herself taking it. There was that steadiness in his eyes. He did not know how to flirt; his gaze was too slow to move. He clutched her hand until he found a clear space for them, and then he shifted his grip slightly without letting go as he placed his other palm at her waist. She set her hand lightly on his shoulder the way she’d been taught.
“You can look away sometimes, you know,” she told him.
He smiled, something she suddenly realized was rare, and many of his freckles folded in on themselves or disappeared. “I don’t want to look anywhere else,” he said.
“Well, it can make a girl kind of nervous.”
Their feet circled a pattern around the floor. She felt the movement of his hips even through the space between them, their bodies touching only at their hands.
“How’s this?” he asked her, and he stared off into the distance, frowning.
“Are you making fun of me?” she asked.
“No. I want you to like me.”
He said this to the air over her shoulder. She had no answer for him, so she looked away, too, to the side, where Evie Dawson was holding tight to George, and Jackson was busy charming the ear whorl of another giggling girl. For some reason she felt glad to be there in Rolf’s arms. He wouldn’t tease her like Jackson. Now that she had seen his eyes up close, his staring didn’t seem so bad. His pupils were wide and black, and she could see herself reflected in them in perfect miniature, like a stereograph. She looked down at her own hand cupped in his large one, with freckles even there sprinkled across his knuckles. While he steered her in a slow ellipse, she found herself losing interest in what anyone else did around them. She stared at the middle of his chest and imagined she heard there the thump of his heart like footsteps.
Robert hid outside in the shadows. The moon raised her scythe of light over the fields behind him while he peered in through the yellow window, watching Evie. The ornery hair was escaping her pins as always, and she seemed happy, clapping her hands over her head, making a hot diamond space between her arms, and bringing them back down smartly to her hips. Taking George’s hand and whirling away into the corner. Robert turned his back to the dancing and lit a cigarette, folding his hands protectively over the match as if in prayer.
“Could I have one of those?”
A young man stepped out beside him, his back brightly furred by the schoolhouse light, snuffed out again as the door closed behind him. Robert couldn’t remember the name, but he knew the boy, the grinning one, the one the girls all criticized, whose careless compliments they craved.
“How are old are you?” Robert asked him.
“Old enough.” He winked.
Robert shrugged and handed him the pack. He was struck by how much that smile reminded him of Cora, charming to get what she wanted. It was almost flirtatious. He held out the box of matches, too, and watched as the boy dragged one into fire and held it to the brown tufted end of the cigarette he’d put between his lips. To cup one hand against the breeze, he dropped the box onto the ground and Robert stooped to pick it up. The boy’s lips trembled, and the tobacco, which was rolled as tight as the tiny center of a black-eyed Susan, jiggled up and down trying to take the flame.
Robert ignored him, tucking the matches and cigarettes back into his pockets and staring out at the drunken rectangles of light cast onto the grass from the schoolroom windows. At last the boy was successful, plucked the paper tube out of his mouth, and released a satisfied vapor into the air.
“Hot in there, ain’t it?”
Robert nodded. “Sure. Good to get some air.”
“Perfect night.”
Again Robert nodded, silently.
“You’re the dream peddler.”
“That I am.”
“I’m Jackson.”
They breathed in the smoke side by side, the hearts burning in their chests.
“What’s that mean, exactly, dream peddler? What’s that like?”
Robert blew out before answering. “It’s just a gift I have. Anyone wants to dream a particular thing, something they don’t usually dream, they come to me. I make a mixture, the customer drinks it before going to sleep. They have the dream.”
“Sounds like a good racket.”
“I assure you it’s not. Money-back guarantee.”
“Oh, really? Well, I might have to try it sometime.”
“Whenever you like.” Robert watched the mist of their talk dissolve over the edge of the steps. “What’s your pleasure?”
The boy tried tapping his cigarette out into the bushes down below, but it was too soon, and there was no ash. Eventually they found the same rhythm, of hand to the face and rise of the chest, then the downward arc of the orange stars while their breath escaped with the light.
“I’d just want to get out of here, plain and simple. I’d go to the city in my dreams, do something great, become really rich. Something grand like that.”
“Why don’t you just go on and do that in real life?”
“Maybe I will. But a dream would be all right, too, for now.”
“Sure.”
The young man looked out at the tarnished darkness, gnawed through here and there by a distant lantern. Robert smoked and pictured Evie twirling in the light behind him. He could almost feel her shadow slant through the glass and graze his neck.
“Do you ever dream anything you don’t understand? About yourself, I mean? Ever dream that you’re someone you don’t even recognize?”
Robert smiled at that. “Constantly.”
Jackson smoked quietly for a while, passing the cigarette from one hand to the other as if he didn’t know which one to favor.
“So you’re not married?”
“Well, I bring no wife with me, so it’s what people assume.”
“Oh.” He looked away. “So you are married, then.”
Robert sighed. “I was, once.”
“What happened?”
“It’s not something I talk about. It didn’t work. I was a bad husband to her. So I left.”
Jackson looked at Robert intently. “Yeah. Me, I don’t know if marriage would be for me. I don’t think I ever will do it, get married.” He held up the cigarette and stared into its burning eye. “I guess my parents would be awfully disappointed.” He leaned his head back against the boards of the schoolhouse, and his wide-open eyes picked up the moving light inside and shone as if he were crying, although he wasn’t.
“It’s a funny thing, you know,” Robert spoke eventually. “I’ve been to many towns like this one before and known many people who thought of leaving but never did. And maybe if they did leave, sure, their lives would be better, but then again maybe not. Life is a matter of routine, in a sense, no matter where you are. Big city, small town, it doesn’t make much difference.” He pulled thoughtfully on the cigarette. “There’s no adventure in leaving, when you come down to it. I’ve built a life on leaving, and I can tell you now, even that becomes routine.”
“So what are you saying? That there isn’t any point to it all? There’s nothing out there to find?” Jackson tossed his unfinished cigarette into the dirt, and its glow embered down to a single spark.
“Not exactly. Sure there are things and people out there to discover. But your life is the adventure. Your life. Whether you choose to stay or leave.” Robert reached over and placed his hand on Jackson’s chest. “It’s in here, son. The adventure is in here.”
He moved to take his hand back again, but Jackson quickly covered it with his own. Robert’s head jerked up in surprise, and then both hands dropped at the sound of a scuffle approaching the doorway, and a few more boys jostled out onto the steps.
“Come for a drive, Jack?” one of them called out, recognizing him.
“Yeah,” he said, without looking up. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and scuttled down the stairs with them into the school yard.
“I’m sorry,” Robert said to his back, but he did not think the boy heard.