4 ◆ Micah

WHAT A BIKE RIDER he was in his dreams. The front wheel spun true, minding his hands, and his chin floated high above the smooth turning of the pedals. Lyris appeared from nowhere, holding a jackknife with which to reward his new ability, but he did not want to stop long enough to take the prize. On and on, down the road, into town. Everyone had gathered along the sidewalks, but he glided past before they had time to cheer, and then the town lay behind him and the terrain changed. Mossy rocks loomed from the ditches, and the more they rose, the higher above the road he seemed to ride, until the bicycle had changed into an old-time model that had such a huge front wheel it would have to be mounted and dismounted with a ladder. He sped along, wondering how he would ever get down. A cold wind began to blow cotton snow that collected on the sleeves of his coat and on his eyelashes. Then the wheel began to shake, as it did when he was not dreaming. He looked for a place to bail out but was now riding over rough gray and green stones. The headwind drove furry scraps of snow against him. Weather slowed the bicycle, slowed the turns of the wheel, until finally, robbed of volition, the bicycle tilted toward the rocks and Micah fell and woke up on the floor of his bedroom.

He lay there breathing hard and listening to the night of the house. A familiar stream of sound came from downstairs. Every­one knew that television was a disruptive force that kept the mind from countless healthy activities such as reading and drawing, but still, how good it was to wake from a dream and hear a television playing. It meant his mother and father were still awake; sleep had not stolen them from him. Or, even if they were asleep, in front of the television screen, it was a still-dressed and slouching sleep, not nearly the dividing force presented by sleep in the bedroom. He was not allowed to enter their bedroom without knocking, and he assumed this rule had something to do with their dreams, which would be dramatic and complicated, and with “sexual intercourse,” which would be too.

Micah opened Lyris’s door far enough to slide into her room. The nightlight above the baseboard in the hallway cast a long thin el of light on the ceiling. It looked like the leg and foot of a thin man from the cartoons. Lyris breathed deeply and with a delicate vibration of the throat. An alarming gap fell between the completion of one breath and the beginning of the next. It might have been enough to make her faint if she had not already been unconscious. The sound of her breathing seemed to wrap Micah in its web. Moving to her dresser, he stepped on a rough cylinder with pearly inset buttons and knew it instantly for a corncob. Still his foot slipped and landed with a soft thud and he froze, waiting for her breath to resume. The top of her dresser yielded bobby pins, matches, a sandal, and a jewelry box. He wanted none of these things. He drifted back to the bed, where the reed of light crossed the night table and the sleeping Lyris. She was under the covers. One hand rimmed the base of her throat as if to protect it from the other, which lay on top of the blanket, upturned in a fist. As he had seen in the movies, Micah raised her arm and let it drop. He ran his fingernails lightly along the soft cords of her wrist; he pried open her fingers. He took the brushed-steel jackknife with the pheasant painting from her hand and backed to the doorway. Somewhere nearby a humidifier was running. Micah could just hear it beneath the sound of Lyris. He opened the knife and looked at the machined blade in the ray of light. He pressed the tip of the blade into his palm until it hurt. The knife closed soundlessly and tightly. It was an excellent knife. He put it back in Lyris’s hand and closed her fingers.

Earl the deputy stopped by the tavern a couple hours into his nightly rounds. A sign on the wall said that the maximum number of people allowed on the premises was ninety-five, but there were only seven in the tavern, counting the bartender. “How’s the old shillelagh?” he asked Earl.

“No complaints,” said Earl. “Give me a Pepsi and a pickled egg.”

The bartender uncapped a jar of brine and reached in with tongs. “I’m thinking of discontinuing these. We hardly sell any of them.”

“Not like the old days,” said the deputy, “when the pickled egg was king.”

The bartender put the egg on a sheet of wax paper and handed it over. “Why, the sidewalks would be jammed with people, each with their own egg.”

“That was the heyday of the steam-powered adding machine.”

“Now everything’s changed except the jokes.”

“Old jokes for old men.”

“All maintenance, here on out.”

“How true.”

Earl took the egg and the Pepsi to the back of the tavern and pressed coins into the metal sleeve of the pool table. The cast-resin balls rattled down the open shelf. He walked around the table, setting up trick shots. He ate the egg, which had the consistency of glue.

The young man named Follard came over and put quarters on the rail for a game of last-pocket. Follard shot from a crouch, peering over the edge of the table.

“You guys break up a party tonight?” he said.

“Not me.”

“Then who would it have been?”

Earl shrugged and sank a bank shot he had no business making.

“Well, I heard some kids got their keg taken from a party at the Elephant.”

“Entirely possible, but it’s nothing I’ve heard of,” said Earl. “And these were cops that did it?”

“So it was told to me,” said Follard.

Earl took a five-dollar bill from his shirt pocket and folded it into a sleeve, which he slid down the cue, ferrule to joint. “What am I again?”

“Little ones.”

“I can’t even remember what I am. That’s where my head is at.”

“I got a knife off them.”

“Off who?”

“The ones who told me about the party.”

“They just offered it up. Out of generosity.”

“Out of something. They don’t know where it went.”

“Well, Follard, what’d you take it for? You see, this is how you get in trouble.”

Follard reached under the table for the bridge. “The ladies’ aid,” commented Earl.

Follard held the butt of the bridge in one hand and fitted the cue intently into the brass notch. “To tell you the truth, I don’t even know why I did it.”

“Don’t think I won’t run you in.”

“For a little jackknife? Put it this way: it would surprise me.”

“Let me see it.”

“I gave it to a girl.”

Earl folded his arms with the cue against his badge. “I ought to rough you up or something.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know. It’s just a feeling. Like it would be an ounce of prevention.”

“Well, she’s more deserving than the one who lost it. In a sense, I did a good thing.”

“I highly doubt it,” said Earl.

Micah crept down the stairs. Because of how the house was built, you could get two thirds of the way without being seen. His father sat in the big chair, and his mother was on the davenport with her legs crossed beneath her. They were watching a movie on Channel 9. The commercials were bracketed with film footage of clouds passing eerily over the moon, followed by the words Nightcap Theater, written in letters that were drawn to look as if they were made of wooden planks, jagged from hasty breaking. Charles yawned and opened a bottle of beer, and Joan flipped through a stack of index cards on which she had written notes for the speech she would give over the weekend in the city. Micah scratched the center of his back with his thumb. His back always itched. When he observed his parents together and they were not aware of being watched, he thought of them by their names. Joan’s talk was about giving more freedom to the dogs and cats in shelters. That way not only would the animals have a more interesting life, she said, but the visitors who might adopt them would get a stronger sense of their personalities than if they saw them in cages, where they could only slink.

“I just thought of something,” said Joan. “What if they’re already doing these things? Maybe I’ll be preaching to the converted.”

Charles shrugged. “I find that unlikely,” he said. “And even if you are telling them what they want to hear, so what? They still want to hear it.”

“It all sounds so obvious.”

“You’ve read it six times, that’s why.”

“Maybe I should cut this part about scratching posts.”

“Dance with the one who brung you, I say.”

“I’d give anything just to stay home.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“Yes, I would.”

“You can’t wait.”

“I couldn’t stay home if I wanted to. I’ve made commit- ments. You work alone. No one decides what you’re going to do except you.”

“You can’t wait to get in the water.”

“I must take direction,” said Joan. “What do you mean by that?”

“Who directed you to pack a swimming suit?”

“I’m going to a hotel. There may be a pool. Therefore, I’m taking a swimming suit.”

“You meet someone, you have a nice swim, you towel off.”

Joan took a deep breath and squared up her index cards. “Why did your first marriage end?”

Charles held his beer bottle up to the light and looked at it. “Many reasons.”

“Jealousy.”

“That was one of them.”

“That was a big one of them. This feeling you have of, of, of ownership.”

“Oh, hell.”

Joan sighed. “But let’s don’t start.”

“Good.”

“Let’s change the subject.” She looked around the living room. “There was a man in the yard tonight.”

“Who?”

“Someone with a metal detector, according to Lyris. I didn’t like the sound of it.”

“Don’t tell him,” said Micah, before he realized that he was not supposed to be there.

“Micah?” said Joan. “What are you doing up?”

“Don’t tell me what?” Charles said.

“I can’t sleep.”

“Come on down, honey,” said Joan.

“What shouldn’t she tell me?”

Micah sat beside Joan on the davenport and told Charles how he had shut Lyris in the barn.

“What is with you?” said Charles. “Think what would hap- pen if you couldn’t get it unlocked.”

“She would break the doors.”

“You hope she would.”

“No,” said Joan. “She did.”

“Lyris broke the doors of the barn?”

“With a shovel,” said Micah.

“No kidding. Lyris is a tough one. But don’t ever try that again.”

“Are you mad?”

“I don’t want her locked in the barn. Everything is broken around here, and I don’t expect the barn doors will make any difference.”

“Can we still get a goat?” said Micah.

“We’ll see.”

The movie came on again. Charlie Chaplin was in a tavern with a pretty woman. They were dancing. Charlie had belted his pants with a rope, and the rope was tied to a dog. Then a cat showed up and the dog leaped after it, causing Charlie Chaplin to spill to the ground.

“Isn’t Chaplin the greatest?” said Joan. “I’ll bet he is the finest actor who ever lived.”

“What about Tommy Lee Jones and Sissy Spacek in that coal-mining movie?” said Charles.

“Apples and oranges,” said Joan.

“That was a damned good film.”

Joan returned to her index cards.

“I like that scratching post part,” said Micah.

Joan smiled, and her eyes flickered like the dark part of fire. “You hear everything, don’t you?”

Charles sat forward in the big chair and tightened the laces of his boots with strong tugs. “I’m going to go see about the barn.”

The three got up and went out through the kitchen. Joan lifted the green dress and folded it over her arm. Micah slid his bare feet into sneakers. In the boot room, they took coats from pegs.

The clouds had gone. Micah looked for the hunter in the constellation Orion, but all he could see was an enormous piece of bow-tie pasta. He was hungry. Sometimes his mother read to him from the Audubon book of the night sky. Once she told how Artemis, huntress and moon goddess, had shot Orion with an arrow, thinking he was someone else. To make amends, she placed his body in the sky, with his dogs for company. This is why the moon has been cold and empty ever since, said his mother, shaking her head. This is why. She began to read again; Orion got his strength back by chasing the nymphs of Taurus. It was unclear to Micah whether his mother regarded this as a suitable ending. But he wished all these things were really happening in the sky.

Charles shined a flashlight on the broken wood and hanging hasp. “How do you expect to have a goat when this is what you do to a door?”

The comparison seemed wrong to Micah. “Nobody would hurt a goat.”

Charles sighed. “Oh, I don’t suppose you would on purpose.”

Joan took the flashlight and the dress into the barn. “No goats until you fix these doors,” she said.

“I don’t know how.”

Joan came out, clapping her hands free of dust. “Maybe not,” she said, “but it won’t get you out of helping.”

“That’s fair,” said Micah.

Charles pushed the doors shut and secured them with a cement block. He was always rearranging the pieces that had worked loose from the foundation.

The light of the moon made a black shadow at the base of the hedge. You could hide there and no one would know until sunrise. Micah looked at the stained face of the moon. Men had gone up there years ago but found nothing worthwhile. It was all a pointless exercise, Charles had said. One of the things that he did best was to discover the pointlessness of exercises. He would scan the newspaper for useless behavior. Joan, however, would always try to see the reason behind what she read. She took everything to heart and would focus on stories of murder and abduction. Joan and Charles seemed like opposites, and Micah could not understand how they had ever got together. In fairy tales, the man and the woman were sometimes assigned to each other by cruel parents, but this did not happen anymore. Joan once told him how she had met Charles at a lecture on alcohol in a church. Later they lived in the church. Imagine living in a church! Alcohol was one of the four menaces lying in wait for the unsuspecting child: alcohol, drugs, television, and cigarettes. The cigarettes seemed worst to Micah, because your lungs turned black, and you died, and warts could grow out of your eyebrows, as had happened in the case of a worker at the grain elevator. Micah was glad that Charles and Joan did not smoke cigarettes or take drugs, although they did drink alcohol. And of course they all watched television, on which men and women smoked and drank and undercover policemen laid out on tables the drugs they had seized. The drugs came in packages of white paper, like pork chops.

As the three were walking back to the house, a shooting star crossed the sky. They stood looking at the nothing that was left of it. Micah wished that warts would not grow from his eyebrows if he ever took up smoking. What his parents wished for, he could not guess. Then, as if they had been waiting for it, they heard the sound of a window opening.

“Is someone there?” said Lyris.

She leaned out the window, with her hands on the shingles over the boot room.

“Hello?”

Why was no one answering? Micah wondered. It was true that they were all on the shy side in her presence. Charles would sometimes look at Lyris and set his jaw, as if trying to think of something to say. Then he would hurry off — past her or away from her. Joan spoke to Lyris as if she were hard of hearing or very young. And Micah called her sister, not only because Joan thought it would help reinforce their relationship but also as a way of papering over the fact that she was nearly a stranger to him.

“Just us, Lyris,” said Joan. “Mother and Dad and Micah. We came out to see about the barn doors.”

Lyris climbed out the window and stood on the roof. We don’t know her, thought Micah, and she doesn’t know us. She steadied her hand on the window frame and said she was sorry.

“I don’t blame you,” said Charles. “Nobody wants to be locked inside something.”

“It’s my fault,” said Micah.

“It’s Micah’s fault,” said Charles.

“But don’t be coming out on the roof,” said Joan. “You could fall, Lyris. That’s no place for a young woman.”

“Maybe we could meet up somewhere in the house and continue this discussion,” said Charles.

Lyris climbed back through the window and slid it closed. A police car rolled slowly by, spotlight angling this way and that, picking out fence posts and black trees and the silver mailbox before coming to rest on Charles, Joan, and Micah. The car backed up, wheeled into the driveway, and the big cop Earl Kellogg got out.

“You folks’re up late. Everything all right?”

“You’ve got no work here,” said Charles. “Micah couldn’t sleep, so we came out to look at the barn.”

“That always works when I’m feeling sleepless.”

“The kids broke the doors.”

“Well, I heard you had an extra one lately.”

“Lyris came this summer,” said Joan.

“Mind if I see her? Just for the sake of the thing.”

“Come on in,” said Charles.

Earl followed them into the house, holster flexing with a leathery sound.

“Lyris,” called Joan. “Oh, look at what time it’s getting to be. I have to get up in five hours.”

Lyris came downstairs in a white robe with red threads.

“This is Earl,” said Joan. “He’s with the sheriff’s department. We’ve known him forever.”

“Seems like it, anyhow.” Earl smiled and shook Lyris’s hand. “Welcome to Grouse County.”

“He happened by while we were all standing out in the yard like geese,” said Joan, “so he wanted to check in and say hello.”

“Hello,” said Lyris.

Earl turned to Charles. “You wouldn’t have any beer, would you?”

“You came to our school and said not to drink and drive,” Micah said.

“And don’t forget it. But somehow a glass of keg beer would go real well ’long about now. What do you say, Tiny?”

Joan looked from one man to the other and pointed out that everyone called her husband Charles now.

“What do you say about that, Charles?”

“We’ve got bottled beer, but I can’t offer you a draw. Tell you what I will do, however. I’ll ask you to get out of here and find your own beer.”

Earl laughed, but his heart was not in it. “So that’s how you’d have it. The truth is, I haven’t drunk a beer in ages. If anything, I might have a spot of vodka. But only after a meal and never behind the wheel, as they say.”

“I’m going to bed,” said Lyris.

“Me too,” said Joan. “Come on, Micah. Time for all good children to be dreaming in their beds.”

“I hope you like our part of the country, Lyris,” said Earl. “And if you ever want to stop by the sheriff’s office and see the inner workings of justice, just give a holler.”

“Thank you, I might.”

Earl left, Joan turned off the lights, and they all went up to bed. Micah set himself the task of planning for the arrival of the goat. They would drive fence posts and rig a wire fence. Micah and Lyris could feed and brush it, shine its hooves with cloth, and show it at the fair. They would need buckets for the oats, or whatever it would eat, and buckets appealed to him. Metal ones. He fell asleep hearing the clanking of the handles.