“Those dreams of yours are for kids,” Reuben said. “I don’t want to hear them.”
Mr. Moses turned and looked up at Reuben, and they were just looking at each other, Reuben looking mad and Mr. Moses looking like he was trying to see what was in Reuben’s face.
“There was two mens, a stocky old boy named Ed Johnson and his best friend, Cammie Washington.” Mr. Moses continued with his story, speaking very softly. “Cammie spelled his last name just like the president did. Anyway, a white farmer who was a deacon at that church claimed he was in his bed when somebody broke in his house and beat him up and took the money from the church services. He said he didn’t rightly know who it was except it was a black man.
“The sheriff deputized some fellows and they got all of us, including Cammie and Ed Johnson, and lined us all up in the street so the farmer could take a good look at us. He went down the line and couldn’t pick out nobody for sure. Then the sheriff asked who it might have been even if he wasn’t sure, and he still couldn’t pick out anybody for sure but said the robber could have favored Cammie. That’s all that sheriff needed. He locked up Cammie and wasn’t listening to nothing that was going to turn him away. By the time the case came up before the judge two weeks later, the farmer was saying he was pretty sure it was Cammie.
“Now that didn’t mean nothing to us black folks, because we knew it didn’t matter if Cammie had done it or not. If they wanted to find you guilty, you was guilty.”
“Is this a dream or a story?” Reuben asked.
“I’m telling you the story, then I’m going to tell you the dream,” Mr. Moses said. “The story went on that Cammie got sentenced to serve three years, but that didn’t satisfy everybody in the town because there had been a lot of back-and-forth between the blacks and the whites. Then some folks decided they needed to teach us all a lesson by lynching Cammie.
“The night they took Cammie out the jail we was all scared. Cammie was calling out for mercy and saying the farmer knew it wasn’t him, that he was a Christian man. They rounded up about nine of us and made us come into the middle of town, Iris Street, where they were holding Cammie. They put him up on a Model T Ford, tied his legs together, and put a rope around his neck. There was a general store on the corner, and some of them was drinking soda from bottles they had bought.
“They all had guns—shotguns, pistols, rifles. There wasn’t nothing we could do about it but stand there and watch the whole thing. Cammie, he commenced to praying and calling out to his wife to take care of his kids. It was a pitiful sight, but not pitiful enough to move the cold hearts that was gathered there that night.
“After the hanging the white folks drifted off, and some of the black folks stayed to help take Cammie down. Then somebody said that Ed Johnson might have had a stroke because he couldn’t move. I went over to Ed and seen something that I will never forget all my life, and which I dream about all the time. All the time. Ed was naturally a coal-dark black man, but he had lost his color. He looked gray, and ashy. ‘Moses, help me, I can’t move.’ That’s what he said. You could see he was struggling to take a step, but nothing happened.”
I was hoping that Mr. Moses would stop his story, but he didn’t.
“We got Cammie down and took him to the Free Will Baptist Colored Church, and some of the sisters stayed there with Cammie’s wife through the night,” Mr. Moses said. “Then we had to take Ed Johnson home. We got him home and laid him down on his bed. He begged us to stay with him. Just tarry awhile, he asked. But we were all upset about Cammie dying and we had our own families to take care of. I looked back at Ed in that bed, and something told me to go back and see to him. He looked cold, like somebody fixing to pass the vale, and I thought that if I had a blanket, if I could have got him warm, maybe he would have got his strength back. Ed Johnson didn’t get out of that bed but one time for the next three months, and that was when he died and they carried him out. He had lost all his strength—he didn’t have no more nature in him than a dead man.”
“What you about, man? Scaring kids with your stupid stories?” The veins in Reuben’s neck were swelling. “Why don’t you just shut that mess up?”
“Man is scared by dreams and terrified by visions,” Mr. Moses’ voice rose and quivered as he spoke. “And when I dream this dream, of men in a great circle, watching death grinning in their midst, and their strength falling away like the leaves of autumn, I am scared.”
“Please, Mr. Moses, please stop!” I said. “Please stop!”
“Go on home with your father, David.” Mr. Moses spoke softly. “It’s getting dark.”
The dream Mr. Moses told us scared me. My hand was shaking when I stood up. Reuben started off and I started to say good-bye to Mr. Moses, but I could only wave.
I ran until I caught up with Reuben, and we walked home together. He began to say bad things about Mr. Moses. He said that he should die. I wanted to ask him if he was scared, because he sounded as scared as I was, but I didn’t. I knew it would have made him even madder.
We got home and Mama was sitting on the edge of the couch. She looked from me to Reuben and back at me, the way she always does. Then she asked me how my friend was.
“I think he’ll be okay,” I said.
“Tell your mother what that fool was saying,” Reuben said.
“He said he dreams about a man who saw his best friend lynched,” I said. “And then he lost all of his strength and couldn’t get out of bed.”
“If you don’t have a disease, you don’t lose your strength,” Reuben said. “That old man’s never read a science book. If he can read at all.”
“It sounds a little like your friend—What’s his name?”
“Mr. Moses.”
“It sounds like Mr. Moses might be worried about his own strength,” Mama said. “And you have to remember that old people sometimes get a little confused about what they’re thinking, especially if they’re a little sick. Your friend can be worried about dying, and that’s what he’s actually thinking about.”
I didn’t think he was talking about himself. I thought he was talking about his dreams, but I wasn’t sure what the difference was. It was like the dreams went along and became part of his life, and his life became part of his dreams. But the thing I thought about most, when I was in my room, lying on the bed, was that there was something real about the dream that I didn’t know how to explain but that I could feel. When I closed my eyes and thought about people tying the man up, and some of them drinking soda, I felt weak, too, as if I didn’t have any strength. I tried to move my legs, and I could. I was so glad I could.
I asked Loren who he thought he was to call a meeting.
“I just called it,” he said. “Somebody has to do something about Mr. Moses.”
“My mother thinks that the most important thing is that he gets enough to eat.” Sessi was sitting cross-legged against one of the chimneys. It was hot, and the smell of the tar roof was stronger than it usually was.
Loren started talking about how the most important thing was that Mr. Moses had a place to live. He said that if he was hungry it would be bad, but it would be worse if he didn’t have any place to go. Kimi said if Mr. Moses was sick, he needed medicine.
“My mom said he could have Alzheimer’s disease,” Loren said.
“He doesn’t forget,” I said, “he remembers. That’s what makes him so tired all the time. He told me another one of his dreams yesterday.”
“In Africa we look to the elders for wisdom,” Sessi said. “When an elder speaks, we listen, and even if we don’t agree, we show them respect.”
“What was this dream about?” Loren asked.
“It was about a man who was arrested for breaking into somebody’s house,” I said.
“Why did he do that?” Sessi asked. “Was he poor?”
“Mr. Moses said he was innocent,” I said. “But he was poor and black, and the jury found him guilty. Then some men took him from the jail and hung him. They lynched him and
made his friends and family watch while they did it.”
“What they did to black people in this country is terrible.” Sessi turned away. “It’s a terrible part of your history.”
“It’s the watching Mr. Moses dreams about. Watching something terrible like that and not being able to do anything about it. The people got weak and couldn’t move.”
“Some people in my family, the ones who haven’t lived a long time in the city, think that you can take a person’s strength from them if you get some of their hair and boil it,” Sessi said. “We were taught not to believe that, but a lot of people talk about it.”
“Mr. Moses don’t fool around!” Loren said. “He’s got some dreams that will blow your mind. He dreams stuff on slavery, and on Africa, and all kinds of stuff you read in books.”
“Could he be making them up?” Kimi leaned forward.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “When he tells his dreams, they don’t sound like something made up. They seem to come from someplace deep inside of him.”
“My grandmother said she once knew a woman who died of grief two days after her husband,” Sessi said.
“Was she old?” Loren asked.
“The woman who died?”
“Your grandmother,” Loren said.
“She is really old.” Sessi wiped at the tip of her nose with her finger. “I know she was seventy-two last year, because we received a card from her family.”
“Seventy-two isn’t old,” Loren said. “Mr. Moses said he’s about three hundred years old.”
“Nobody is that old,” Sessi said.
“Did the woman get weak before she died?” I asked.
“My grandmother didn’t say,” Sessi said. “And I don’t want to talk about it anymore. You know, it’s bad to talk about the dead.”
“That sounds like more African stuff.” Loren gave me a look. He seemed uncomfortable. “You want to come to my house and watch television?”
“Do you have people in Africa who keep dreams?” I asked Sessi. “Mr. Moses said that it’s his responsibility to remember all these dreams.”
“How is it his responsibility?” Sessi asked. “Nobody should have to dream if they don’t want to. If I had to dream when I didn’t want to, I wouldn’t want to go to sleep.”
“He calls them dreams, but when I think about them, the way he tells them, they’re like a way of seeing into people, a way of knowing what their visions are all about,” I answered.
“I don’t want to dream anything bad.” Kimi was getting nervous. “When I go to bed, I don’t want to dream at all. All I want to do is sleep.”
“Some people believe in magic.” Sessi leaned forward. “In Africa there are people who say they can see the future in their dreams.”
“I’ve never heard of that.” Loren was shaking his head.
“It’s not something you put into the papers, silly,” Sessi said. “Especially in the United States, because nobody believes anything in this country.”
“We could take a collection for him,” Kimi said.
“My father says that people have to make their own way in the world, and you shouldn’t help everybody just because they look sad,” Loren said. “He doesn’t like people begging.”
“He gets mad at them?” Kimi asked.
“He doesn’t go off like David’s father,” Loren said.
As soon as the words came out of his mouth, Loren knew they were wrong. They made me feel terrible. The tears came to my eyes and they were burning, and I wanted to hit Loren for saying what he did. Sessi looked at me and saw how I felt and tried to put her arm around me. I pushed her away and then I got up and started downstairs.
Loren is my best friend and I like him so much, and he knows everything about me and I know everything about him, but sometimes there are things we don’t talk about. One of those things is Reuben.
I didn’t like Loren talking about Reuben, but by the time I got downstairs, I wasn’t upset about it. Just thinking about what Reuben might do, and never knowing at any moment just how he would act, kept me a little nervous. I had some milk and a banana and then checked my e-mail and found a message from Loren. It said, “I’m sorry.” There was a sad-face symbol next to it.
Mom had folded my pajamas and put them on the end of the bed. I put them on and lay across the bed. I was thinking about what Sessi had said, that no one should have to dream if they didn’t want to, including Mr. Moses.
The dreams were important to Mr. Moses, but they were things he had seen and done, or at least things that he knew about. They were his dreams. He said he was tired of having them, that he had been a dream bearer for hundreds of years and wanted to pass them on. But if they were his dreams, how could he pass them on? I knew he was telling them to me for a reason. I didn’t want to have bad dreams, or to get stuck with something that I would dream over and over. But the more dreams he told me, the more I could feel them—not explain them or even talk about them the way Mr. Moses did, but feel them. And even though they were new, I felt as if maybe I had heard them before, or knew something about them.
There were things I knew. I knew that Loren felt bad about dissing Reuben. He didn’t have to send the sad face in his message. I knew that Ty was struggling with how he was living. I knew that Mom was trying to be strong enough for all of us.
Reuben. He protected his dreams, kept them hidden inside himself, but I knew they were there. Maybe Reuben’s dreams were waiting for someone to feel them, to understand them.
If something bad happened to Loren, I might dream about that, but not about some man I didn’t know who had died a long time ago.
Mom came home and looked in my room.
“David, are you asleep?” she asked softly.
“Yes, I am,” I said.
“Stinker! How did your day go?”
“Okay. Maybe even pretty good.”
She came to the bed and kissed me on the forehead. “Good night, and thanks for being wonderful,” she said.
Her saying that made me feel good.
I was almost asleep when I thought of something else. If I could dream what Reuben dreamed, what he was dreaming when he made noises in his sleep and swung his arms around, maybe I would know him better.
Ty started getting into a gangster strut. On 145th Street they call people like Ty—straight dudes who want to act as if they’re really rough—WGs. I didn’t mind him being a wanna-be gangster, but it bugged me that he laid it on Mom.
“I don’t want Mom to have to deal with it and I don’t want to deal with it,” I said.
“Who died and made you Punk of the Year?” Ty was looking at me in the mirror. “You ain’t running my show.”
“Are you running it?” I asked him. “Are you running your show? You look like you’re doing more slipping and sliding than running anything.”
“You still living in that fantasy land of yours? What do you call it? I Hope Everything Comes Out All Rightville?”
“You give up hope for yourself and you messing with Mom and—everything,” I said.
“What were you going to say? Mom and Reuben? He’s probably going to nut out and then we’ll be calling him Little Red Riding Hood or something,” Ty said. “Maybe if he dies, you’ll get a chance to go to college on his insurance money.”
“He’s okay,” I said.
“Okay? How’s he going to be okay when you’re the man of the house?” Ty asked. “Mom got to take care of his sorry butt more than she got to take care of you.”
Mom came into the room in a huff. I knew she had heard what Ty was saying.
“There was a time, young man, when you couldn’t take care of yourself,” Mom said. “You were crawling around on the floor and peeing in your diapers, and your father took enough care of you so that you weren’t hungry and you weren’t cold. And don’t forget you’re living in his house—he’s not living in yours!” she said. “I hope that’s clear to you.”
“Yeah, it’s clear,” Ty said, picking up the
sports section of the paper.
The phone rang and Mom answered it. She nodded a few times and looked at me and Ty, then told whoever it was to wait a minute and put her hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s Sessi’s mother,” she said. “She just got her permanent status and wants us to come over for tea. I would like both of you to come with me.”
“Yeah, sure.” Ty closed his paper.
We went over the roof to Sessi’s house, and Mom saw the little building that Sessi had built. Ty said it looked like a doghouse. Even the WG knew how weak that comment was.
Mrs. Mutu had made hot tea and iced tea and had a huge plate of cookies. Loren and his mom were there, and naturally she was going on about how wonderful it was that such lovely people were going to become Americans.
Loren was looking at me but I wouldn’t look at him. I wasn’t mad at him, but I wanted him to know I wasn’t that glad about what he had said either.
“If Sessi married an American, she would automatically be an American, right?” I asked.
“Are you proposing marriage to my daughter, young man?” Mr. Mutu was short and wore dark horn-rimmed glasses.
“No,” I said. “I just asked.”
“That used to be the law,” Mr. Mutu said. “It’s been changed quite a bit since then.”
They started talking about what America meant to everybody, and I thought about what Reuben had said—that it was easier for somebody from another country to become an American than it was for him. I wanted to say something about that, but I didn’t. I didn’t because I knew they wouldn’t understand me. And if I mentioned Reuben, I knew, they wouldn’t understand him, either. I said I had to go. Loren asked his mother if he could go with me. She said yes without even asking me if I wanted him to go with me.
Ty went downstairs, and me and Loren went up to the roof.
“I’m sorry about what I said about your father,” he said. “He doesn’t get that mad.”
“Yes he does,” I said.
“Then why did you get mad?”
“Just because something is true doesn’t mean you have to say it,” I said.
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