Thief of Dreams

by John Yount

  EDWARD:

  But when he told the warden the circumstances, what he’d found, his dealings with the sheriff, how long James had been gone, and his fears about the weather, Bill Rafer seemed to listen. How old was this boy? he wanted to know. What was Edward’s relationship to him? Where had the boy disappeared from, and what direction was he headed in again? Each time Edward answered, the warden went silent, as though to ponder. “Well,” he said and sighed, “that will put him in Pisga National Forest pretty damn quick, and I’ve lost one or two in there.” He paused again as though thinking it over. “I’ll see that you get your dogs, Mr. Tally,” he said, “but I fear it will take the better part of an hour.” Once more the warden asked him where he was calling from, and when Edward told him, he said all right, he had the Marshall place under his finger on the map, he just wanted to be certain there was no mistake.

  MADELINE:

  Much of what went on around her, she was too exhausted to acknowledge. People had begun to come and go about her like figures appearing and disappearing in a dream, and even when they spoke to her about James or tried to offer comfort, the person they thought they were speaking to, this James they spoke about, seemed curiously and strangely removed and separate. Even the guilt she felt seemed thin, although she affirmed her culpability. One of the deputies stayed to help in the search and two men from the forestry service came to help, although she wasn’t clear how they knew about it. Somehow she learned her father was also going to join the search party. And Edward seemed to be everywhere she looked. But for a long time only her mother seemed to come vivid and clear in her vision, as if everyone else were a bit out of focus; but even her mother seemed somehow dreamlike, as though she had been drawn across many years from Madeline’s childhood memory of her.

  “I want you to sit down and eat something before you fall,” her mother said, so bright and clear there seemed to be light around her. She led Madeline to the table and set a plate in front of her. Oh Momma, she wanted to say, doesn’t anyone ever own themselves? Do we always give ourselves away? And does it always cause such injury when one of us tries to get ourselves back again? Only she didn’t say anything at all. Her mother had gone away to try and make Edward come and eat something. And just as her mother said, she realized she was close to fainting because even her plate had a halo around it. Still, she poked at her food listlessly, not even quite sure what it was; and she managed a few bites only after Edward was made to sit down and eat.

  When they could get away, Edward led her off to the trailer, where, numb and wordless, they looked at each other for a long time.

  “We’ll find him now,” Edward told her at last. “I’m pretty sure I got hold of which way he went.” He took her hands in his and gave them both a squeeze. “I’m satisfied I did,” he told her, “and we’ll get him back.”

  Tears spilled over her eyelids without warning, broke in her throat, and she began to sob. There were so many things to say, but they were so tangled in disillusion and sadness, in vain hope and regret, they couldn’t come out. He held her while she sobbed. “I promise I’ll find him,” he told her and held her and laid his cheek against the top of her head.

  “Do you love me?” she asked him at last.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “Do you love me?” she insisted.

  “I love you,” he told her.

  She sat up and looked him in the eyes. “But do you love me?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  It wasn’t any of the things she’d wanted to say; it had nothing to do with what was so tangled up inside her. She considered his face while he looked back steadily, but outside someone was calling, “Mr. Tally? Mr. Tally?” and in the next minute began knocking on the door.

  Men were standing about the pasture, their breath steaming in the damp cold, the tall, stooped figure of her father among them. Two more men were trying to get dogs on long leads through the fence by the stile. “Do you have some dirty clothes your boy has worn recently, missus?” the man who had knocked on the door was asking her. In the hamper back at the house, she started to say, but then she thought of James’s blanket and tilted up the couch, only to see that it was gone.

  Edward saw it too, and deep, deep in his eyes, almost too faint to notice, the missing blanket seemed to light a spark, as though of confirmation. “Get the sheet,” he told her; “the dogs can take a scent from that.”

  Two of the dogs, although large, had slithered under the bottom strand of wire, and their handler, wiry, bow-legged, and not young, had managed to slip through the fence and pass their leashes from hand to hand under the bottom strand, so that man and dogs were free. But one of the other two dogs had gone through the fence while the second went under, and one of them had hurt itself or was tangled because she heard impatient yelps and some of the other men had gone off to help.

  The dogs were big and rawboned and clumsy looking and didn’t seem to pay as much attention to the sheet she offered them as they might have, except to smear it with their muddy noses, but then Edward was beside her with James’s Sunday jacket, which he’d turned wrong side out to offer them too, and then the second pair of dogs was there, the four of them filling each other with excitement and impatience, going from sheet to jacket, inquiring of each other’s presence and the presence of the gathered men, tangling their leads, plodding about. And then Edward had handed her James’s wrong-side-out jacket, given her a long, fierce, wordless hug, with his cheek pressed hard against the top of her head and her arms crushed awkwardly against her. And the next thing she knew, she was watching men and dogs negotiate the fence at the end of the pasture; and some indeterminable time after that, she was all alone and very cold, stooping to gather up her son’s good Sunday jacket, lying wrong side out on the trodden earth, where she didn’t know she had dropped it.

  EDWARD:

  Seeing that his son’s blanket was missing allowed him to know absolutely what he knew already, and he didn’t need the firm tracking of the dogs for further proof. But he feared the weather, and he wanted the handlers to turn them loose. The old one, Miles, had told him that it was raining already to the northeast at the penitentiary; but he wouldn’t let the dogs off their leashes. They were ordinarily gentle creatures, these half Plott, half bloodhounds of his; but prisoners didn’t like being run down by dogs and often tried to kill them, had killed some; and the best dog of the four, an eight-year-old bitch, had turned right vicious. So the dogs scrambled up the gully on their leads, occasionally talking James over among themselves in their baying, croupy voices, while the men, seven of them in all, labored behind. But just as they came up on the highway, a cold rain started to fall.

  “Shit,” Miles said, “hit don’t never fail.” He turned up the collar of his jacket and zipped it shut. “But don’t you worry,” he said to Edward. “Trust ole Sal. It’ll take more than this here to wash a trail so clean, she can’t follow.”

  At first he thought it was squirrels cutting something high up in the trees and letting the debris fall, pattering, through the leaves. He was only partly awake, and he could almost see the squirrels rolling hickory nuts between their nimble claws while tiny pieces of the outer green hull rained down. Perhaps in a little while, when he’d rested more, he’d take up his slingshot and try for one. His stomach was an empty space, and its lining was spiced with hunger. But he was tired and quite stiff and cold, and he didn’t wish to stir from his blanket just then.

  Yet after a while, when the pattering had reached such a volume it pressed against his ears, he raised his head and looked dumbly about, but he didn’t see anything that would account for it. The only strange thing in sight was a hemlock off to his left and not as tall as he, which was jittering. There wasn’t any wind, but the little tree trembled and danced as though a hand had taken hold of its roots beneath the ground and was shaking it. He watched, fascinated.

  Even after he smelled rain, it took him another moment to connect the small, dancing tree and the din of pa
ttering with what he smelled. Of course, it was raining. He was lucky to have built his lean-to under a wonderfully big, thick hemlock, and he was smart to have covered his roof well. The woods were so dim, he still couldn’t see the rain fall, but it pleased him somehow that squirrels weren’t making all that racket, because there was no need now to take up his slingshot and try to kill one for food. He could worry about food later, and he could worry about gathering firewood later too. It would be a silly thing to try and do in the rain, and he’d been bothering himself on and off about it. He could go back to his dreams, which seemed pleasant, if he could remember where he’d put them.

  But while he was searching around for his dreams, he came across Earl Carpenter, who was trying to look as goofy and sad as Lester. He’d got himself one of Lester’s ridiculous haircuts, and his shirt was too small and out at the elbow, like some of Lester’s. Also the smirking cruelty was gone from his face, as though he were no longer the heartless bully James knew. “You’re not fooling me any,” James told him. But he could tell Earl was trying to be invisible and watching his chance to jump out the schoolroom window and make his escape. It was just an evil trick, this transformation, and James resented it. Who would have thought that Earl was clever enough to imitate someone who was better than he himself could ever be?

  But then, wrapped in his blanket with something cold crawling through the roots of his hair, he saw the matter inside out and was even more astonished to realize that Lester and Earl were built of exactly the same stuff. Fear and failure and trouble. The only difference was that Lester kept all the bad things he’d been given to himself, while Earl gave them a cruel twist and tried to pass them on to everyone else.

  Earl must have spit on him while he was considering this. The spit was icy, but weak, since he didn’t fear Earl quite so much anymore.

  No, he’d walked out in the rain after all to pick up firewood, never mind that he’d already decided he wouldn’t bother.

  No, the rain had worked its way through the tree and his roof and found him even though he hadn’t gotten up. He knew he hadn’t because his hip and back were still aching and stiff, and the cold had tightened its vices on his feet again. He could feel the rain, broken and tiny, on his face and in his hair, and he pulled the blanket up to cover his head. He would wait for it to go away. Also he needed to remember where he’d mislaid those good dreams he’d had so he could remember what they were. He didn’t want any more silly things to bother him.

  EDWARD:

  “Well,” Miles said when they crossed the wood’s road, “we’re in by God Pisga.” He waited until everyone caught up. “We’re gonna hafta hump,” he said. “We got forty-five minutes or less of daylight, and the trail’s beginning to wash, so them that can’t keep up will get left. Stay where you’re at if I lose you, so we can pick you up on the way back. If I have to give up and come hunt this boy tomorrow, I don’t want to be huntin nobody else too.” He brought a small round tin out of his hip pocket and tucked a pinch of snuff behind his lower lip. “Sal!” he said. “Sally girl!” And he gave the bitch’s leash a jerk and started off behind her and the other dog in a bow-legged trot.

  Up the steep ridge they went. Miles and his dogs in the lead. Edward second with his breathing ragged and husky and his knees burning. The other brace of dogs and their handler trotting behind him. One of the forest rangers came next. Then Harley Marshall with his steady long stride. The second forest ranger. The deputy.

  By the time they went over the crest, they were all soaked, and the rain was beginning to freeze on the ground, and still the old man’s bitch seemed pretty sure of herself, although she didn’t strain against her leash as much and seemed to work closer to the ground and move her head from side to side much more than she had been. The hound next to her seemed content merely to imitate her from time to time, but the second brace of dogs seldom bothered to put their noses to the ground.

  Going down the steep far side, even the bitch got confused and stopped and tried to back up in order to smell under her own forepaws. She tangled herself for a moment with the other dog, whom she tried, without seeming to notice him, to shoulder out of the way or root under or climb over. After a moment Miles passed the leash of the second dog to Edward and, against her will, dragged the bitch around an outcropping and down the slope. “Come on. Come on. Sal! Come on,” he told her. At the foot of the drop he said, “All right, she’s got him again. He musta jumped or fell, I reckon.”

  By the time Edward got around and down, Miles was out of sight in the thick woods below. Edward let his dog lead him, more on the trail of the bitch and Miles, he figured, than James. He was soaked as much with sweat as rain, the woods were growing darker each moment, and a panic was building in him that they were going to be too late. It afflicted his stomach and made his heart ache in some far-off way, as though he might be yearning for something as unapproachable as a star.

  By the time he struck the river, it wasn’t raining anymore or even snowing exactly. Slender needles of ice were falling and hissing against the trees and the dead leaves on the ground, and Miles and the bitch were coming back down the riverbank. He had a flashlight on.

  Miles spat out his snuff when he stopped in front of Edward, spat two or three times extra and shook his head. “I’m sorry, son,” he said. “I was hopin we’d catch up to him before now.” He gazed through the driving needles of ice across the river. “If I had to guess, I’d say he crossed over, but even this old bitch can’t track him now. The scent was already gettin froze down and sealed up before this shit started comin. Sal can run it till it’s gone, but hell, she started casting around up river, didn’t even have enough scent left to backtrack herself.”

  “I’m not going to quit,” Edward said.

  “If it thaws, the chances are good she can pick him up tomorrow. Sal’s the best I ever followed, and anyhow, we’ll be able to see. You could walk right by him tonight and not know it.”

  “He’s my son,” Edward said, “and it might not thaw.”

  “Well then, if he moves and we cut his trail, we’ll find him. With or without the dogs, we’ll find him then.”

  “He may not move either, goddamn it!” Edward said.

  Miles looked away across the river. “I been doin this all my life,” he said almost apologetically. “You’re gonna tromp around and mess everything up over there, and chances are we’ll be lookin for you.”

  “I’d like to borrow your flashlight,” Edward said.

  The second handler and his dogs came up then and, a moment later, Harley Marshall and one of the forest rangers. The second handler had produced a poncho from somewhere, which he was wearing, and all three men had flashlights. For a moment no one spoke, and the whole tired company merely gazed at the ice passing like slivers of broken glass through the beams of their flashlights and listened to it hissing around them and rattling against the young man’s poncho.

  “Well,” Miles said, “looks like we lost a couple.”

  “Your partner took a little fall a ways back,” Harley Marshall told the forester; “put his back out someway, so I don’t expect him. I can’t say as to the deputy,” he told the rest of them. “Haven’t seen him since we topped the ridge.”

  “Clarke,” Miles said to the young handler, “you take Sally home, dry her good, use some of that salve under my bunk on her off front foot, and give her a good feed. Use a boot on her tomorrow if she needs it. I want her back here in the mornin ready to go. And I want your flashlight and that goddamned tarp you’re a-wearin. Me and Mr. Tally are gonna stay with it awhile.”

  MADELINE:

  She couldn’t wait in the house, even though that was where the phone was. She felt in exile somehow, even if she was too tired and afraid to consider if it was through fault or circumstances. Her mother would come and get her if there was a call, just as she had automatically taken over Harley’s duties at the post office. No one was accusatory any longer, not even her nieces. This wretchedness was hers alone, an
d she understood that, and so, at last, did everyone else. Only Lily presumed to come to the trailer and wait with her; but even Lily had the good manners not to speak. Without a word she made coffee for herself and Madeline and sat across the little fold-down table, while Madeline, rigid and scarcely breathing, found herself consecrated to something so awful and pitiless, she would never have guessed it. How could she have known that her own feelings could be so treacherous and that there was no end to wretchedness, no bottom to it? She would never have guessed she’d want to bargain away everything she’d wished and hoped for, if only things could be back the way they were, if her sweet son could be brought back to her alive and well, if her family could be restored in just the way that, not so many months before, she had found intolerable.

  EDWARD:

  He was grateful the older dog handler had understood him. He couldn’t say aloud or even think what he dreaded most. And so the young handler, the forester, and three dogs had been sent back to collect the other two men; and Harley had been persuaded to search the near side of the river.

  The nice thing about the dogs, Miles told them, was they followed their noses and didn’t think; he did all the thinking and guessing and therefore made ninety percent of the mistakes. He was guessing that James had crossed over because Sal had hesitated for a beat or two at the edge of the water before she went on up the bank and then lost the trail altogether. He unzipped his jacket, reached around toward the small of his back, and gave Harley his pistol.

  “Turns out I’m wrong and you find that boy,” he told Harley, “point the muzzle in our direction and fire a shot. Fire another every twenty minutes till we find you.”

  When they had stripped to the waist, waded the river, and re-dressed, they separated and began to climb, Miles with the remaining dog, which he claimed was only a little bit better than no dog at all, and Edward with a borrowed light and poncho, since he hadn’t given a thought to how he was dressed or what he might need. “James!” he called every fifty yards or so; “James!” although it didn’t help tame the fear that had hollowed out his chest whether he chose to acknowledge it or not.