Sweet Dream Baby

by Sterling Watson

  The man in front of me asks her for a book of matches, and she winks at me and says, “Right away, sir,” and goes on up the aisle, and I pull aside the curtain and look out.

  I see the ocean for the first time. The land curves down there where it meets the sea, and there’s a wide beach the color of wheat, and I can see white waves breaking, and there’s even a car on the beach, and I can see people walking near the car, and they look like little bugs. I look back behind us and see how the land curves, and I know from geography class that’s what they call the Panhandle, and maybe I can see as far back as where Florida meets Alabama.

  I’m not so drowsy anymore. I’m getting excited about my new life. I’m going to live with my grandparents and my Aunt Delia for three months in Florida, and I’m going to get me a boat and go fishing out there in all that blue water and catch marlins and sharks, and maybe a creature. When I come back to the dock, I’m going to hang my big marlin up by his tail and stand next to him with my fishing rod and let people take pictures of me and put them in the newspaper, and I’m going to cut one out and send it to my dad, and he’ll be proud.

  When we land, it’s like my stomach tries to get out through my throat, but I’m ready for it now, and it’s kind of fun. We stop at the terminal, and I wait like Wendy told me and watch the passengers go up the aisle. I’m the only kid, and the women look at me, and some of them think it’s sad I’m traveling alone, so I look back and let my eyes say, “It’s only flying, for criminy sake. What’s the big deal?”

  When the plane is empty, the captain and the copilot come out of the cockpit door and stretch and smile and look around. Wendy comes back and says, “Time to go, Mr. Mantle.”

  She takes my hand, and I almost tell her I’m too big for that, but I like her hand. It’s soft and cool, and it smells good. We go up the aisle, and the captain bends down and says, “So, what did you think of your first flight, kid?”

  And I say, “Neato!” It’s all I can think of. I’m looking at the wings on his chest. They’re bigger than Wendy’s, and they’re gold. I can smell cigarettes on his breath, and he uses Mennen’s aftershave like my dad. My face is getting red. Wendy says, “What the heck, Bernie, I think ‘neato’ just about covers it.”

  The captain smiles and ruffles my hair, and it hurts where Jimmy Pultney’s arrow cut me. The captain says, “Yup, ‘neato’ does it for me, too.”

  Wendy walks me through the terminal, and we pick up my suitcase, and she takes me to the place where people meet people, and I don’t see my Grandma and Grandpa Hollister. I’ve only seen them once before, when I was a baby. It’s a long way from Florida to Omaha, and Dad says Mom and my grandparents didn’t get along all that well, but I know what they look like from the pictures Dad keeps on the bureau in the big bedroom.

  Wendy lets go of my hand and looks at her watch. “Gee, Mick, didn’t your mom and dad tell them when to meet you?”

  She looks around the terminal. It’s not as big as the one in Omaha, and there aren’t many people now. Through the windows, I can see palm trees. Honest to God palm trees, just like on Arthur Godfrey. It’s hot in the terminal, hotter than in Omaha, and I know it’s going to be hot outside. And the people sound different. They talk slower, like the farm kids at home, only different. It’s more like music. Rock ’n’ roll music. Like that Elvis my dad says is a subversive, whatever that means.

  Wendy puts her hands on her hips and says, “I got to meet Lucille at 2:30.” She looks at me, and I’m not Mick or gorgeous anymore. I’m the kid that’s holding things up here. I know the feeling.

  Wendy takes me outside, and we look up and down the sidewalk in front of the terminal. It’s hotter than I ever felt in Omaha, and the air is full of smells I never smelled before, and I can tell, I don’t know how, that I’m smelling the ocean. It’s salty and fishy and some other things I can’t name. It’s exciting, and I’m going to have a boat.

  Cars pull up and people get out and hug other people and take their bags, and there’s laughing and crying, but there’s no Grandma and Grandpa Hollister.

  There’s sweat on Wendy’s forehead, and her eyes look tired red behind the dark makeup. She reaches up and pushes some hair out of her eyes. I pull my hand from hers. I say, “I can wait here by myself. It’s okay. I mean, I won’t do anything wrong or anything.”

  She smiles at me and looks up and down the sidewalk again. “Well…,” she says.

  I smile at her. I’ve got to stop being such a kid. I’ve got to grow up and face things and tough it out like my dad says. I say, “You got to meet Lucille, right?”

  She looks at her watch again. “You’re such a sweetie, Mick.” She kneels and kisses me on the cheek. “Don’t talk to any strangers, okay?”

  “Sure,” I say. Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Delia are strangers.

  Wendy walks a few steps, then turns and looks back at me. She’s pretty, and she was my friend, and she said I was gorgeous and a heartbreaker. She waves, and I wave. I’m going to remember the way she smelled and the feel of her lips on my cheek. I watch until she’s gone back inside the terminal, then I move my suitcase back into the shade and sit on it and start counting planes that land and take off. A DC-3 takes off, and a Beechcraft Bonanza with a V tail makes a perfect three-point landing.

  A man comes by and says, “You okay, Kid?” He’s a stranger, but his eyes are all right, so I say, “Yeah, I’m okay. My mom went to make a phone call. I’m waiting out here for my Uncle Fred.”

  He looks at me a minute, shakes his head, and walks on. I think he knows I’m lying, but maybe not. Maybe I’m good at it.

  I count more planes, and a black man comes by in a blue jumpsuit with “Buster” stitched on it in red letters. He stops next to me to light a Camel, and some of the good-smelling smoke drifts across my face. He says, “Hey, Little Guy. Didn’ yo folks come for you?” He seems nice, but he’s a stranger, and he’s black, and I don’t know what to say. We don’t have black people in Omaha. We’ve got a few Indians. I’ve seen them downtown when I go to the YMCA. They drink from a paper bag, and sometimes they stop people and ask for money. Uncle Fred doesn’t occur to me this time, so I say, “They’re just late. They’ll get here, I guess.”

  I try to look like it’s fun sitting on my suitcase in the shade counting planes that land in Panama City. But it’s not fun anymore. What if they don’t come? What do I do? Where do I stay? In a movie I saw, a stranger rode into town on a horse in a sandstorm, and he broke into the cellar of a house and cut open a can of peaches and ate them and slept on a pile of old saddles and harnesses. I look around and don’t see any houses. The airport’s out in the country, and the land is hot and green and looks like jungle. There are bare patches of white sand. In a pine tree way off, a big bird, maybe an eagle, sits hunched in the sun.

  The black man says to me, “Kid, you go on back inside and ax for the security man. Ax at any them counters. They give you the security man. He call yo folks for you.”

  I wonder if there will be black people where I’m going. I wonder if I’ll get to know any. I wonder if they’ll like me. I smile. I don’t know what to say. The black man waits a minute. He takes another puff on his Camel, blows on the ash, smiles at me, and walks on down the sidewalk.

  That’s when I get scared.

  Four

  I go inside, but I don’t see the security man. There’s nobody at the airline counter. Down the way, there’s an old black man with a mop and a bucket, but I can’t ask him to call my Grandpa Hollister. I don’t know their number. They live in a town called Widow Rock, but I don’t know where it is. All I’ve got is the wallet Mom gave me with Roy Rogers and Trigger on it and the rest of my plane ticket, and a five-dollar bill Dad gave me. Maybe I should walk down the terminal until I find a plane that’s leaving and give them my ticket and go back home to Omaha and tell Dad I decided to stay with him. Tell him I’ll learn how to cook and stay o
ut of trouble and look after the house when he goes to visit Mom, and I won’t kill Jimmy Pultney.

  I take out my ticket and look at it, but what if they won’t take my ticket now. I’ve got money. Maybe I should wave at a cab like they do in the movies and stay in a hotel and call Dad and tell him Grandma and Grandpa Hollister don’t want me.

  I go outside again and look up and down the sidewalk, and I see a big white car coming. It’s a Buick Roadmaster, the kind of car Dad wants to buy when he’s through clerking and gets to be a real lawyer. There’s sun on the windshield, and I can’t see who’s in the car, but I stand by the curb with my suitcase anyway. The car stops, and the window rolls down, and a big round face looks out. There’s a pink handkerchief next to the face, and it’s Grandma Hollister. She’s crying.

  She opens the car door and rushes out at me. She’s a big woman, and I know she’s going to hug me, and I brace myself. She’s got on a black dress with little white dots, and she’s got a big chest, and she stoops down and scoops me into her and says, “Oh, child, I was so worried. Your grandpa had an emergency, and then we ran into some road construction, and I just knew you were gonna get snatched by white slavers.”

  My face is buried between her big old soft chests (Jimmy Pultney calls them titties, but I don’t say that word), and she smells like mothballs and the kind of perfume Mrs. Deitz tries to sell my mom, and I’m fighting for air. I know she’s got to let me go, but I don’t know when. I’m about to put both hands on her and push when she grabs my arms and holds me away from her. “Let me look at you, Child. My Lord, how you’ve grown!”

  I see two legs in black pants and shiny black boots, the kind that go ankle high and zip up the sides, and a voice says, “That’s what boys do, Lilah. He was under two years old the last time you saw him. Did you think he wouldn’t grow?”

  The man laughs, and it’s deep and rough like a saw blade getting caught in a board, then breaking free again, and I look up, and it’s Grandpa Hollister. He’s tall, like my dad, and he looks like my dad, or, I guess like my dad is going to look when I grow up. His black hair is cut so short you can see the white skin on the sides of his head, and his eyes are blue like the ocean when I was way up in the air, and his nose is long and thin, and he’s smiling at me, but it’s not a smile that says things are funny. It says they’re just like he expected them to be.

  Grandma Hollister stands up and wipes her wet, red eyes with the pink hanky. I look at the big gold shield painted on the white door of the Buick. It says, Choctawhatchee County Sheriff. There’s an Indian on the shield, and he’s holding a book in one hand and one of those scales in the other, the kind you use to weigh things. Grandpa Hollister leans down to take my suitcase, and his black suit coat comes open, and I see the gold badge on his white shirt. I remember what Dad told me about him. “Your grandpa runs that county, Travis. Sure, there are mayors and county commissions and all that, but in those little counties, the sheriff runs things, and if he’s a good one, he keeps the lid on things, and if people know what’s good for them, they don’t cross him. Your grandpa’s hard, but he’s fair, Travis. He raised me that way, and that’s how I’m raising you.”

  I wonder if Grandpa Hollister is carrying a gun, and if he’ll let me shoot it someday. I don’t see any gun. He puts my suitcase in the trunk, and I start to get in the back seat, but Grandma Hollister grabs my hand. “Oh no you don’t, Little Man. You’re sitting right up front between your grandparents. I don’t even want you that far away from me. You gave me such a fright.”

  I’m thinking I didn’t give anybody a fright. I’m the one left standing around an empty airport, but I’m not mad. I like Grandma Hollister. She’s big and soft, and she likes me. She guides me to the front seat, and Grandpa Hollister says, “Just a minute, Lilah. Didn’t the boy forget something?”

  “Forget what?” Grandma says.

  “His manners.”

  Grandpa Hollister looks at me out of cold blue eyes and says, “Come around here, Son, and give me a man’s handshake and introduce yourself.”

  So I get loose from Grandma Hollister, and I walk around to his side of the car, and I stand in front of him. I give him my hand, and I squeeze his as hard as I can like my dad taught me, but it’s no contest. My hand is getting crushed, and it hurts enough to make my eyes water, but I say, “Hello, sir. I’m Travis Hollister, your grandson. I’m pleased to meet you, and I hope we’re going to get along.”

  I’m doing real good until I hit the get along part. He doesn’t like it, and he gets that look in his eyes my teacher, Mr. Frawley, gets when he says I’m too smart for my own good. (Mr. Frawley’s the one who sent me down to get paddled for throwing the chalk into the ceiling fan.) My Grandpa Hollister’s eyes get that way, cold and small, and he bends and takes my shoulders in both his hands. He pinches, and it hurts. He says, “You’re a good boy, Travis, or so I hear, and you’ve been raised right by a good man. But you’ve been raised in the wrong part of the country. We have manners here in the South. Little boys respect their elders. Your grandma and I are going to show you how to do that. Do you understand me?”

  He isn’t kidding. This isn’t funny. His long fingers dig like knives into my shoulders. I nod and say, “Yes, sir, I understand,” but I can barely get the words out. He holds me for a while, still looking into my eyes, and I’m thinking about wanting to kill Jimmy Pultney and getting caught by a policeman with eyes like my grandpa’s. They see into you. They know what you’re thinking. They don’t like what you’re thinking most of the time. Maybe I’d like to have eyes like that someday.

  Grandpa Hollister lets me go, and I get in the front seat, and Grandma Hollister slides in beside me and pushes me up against Grandpa Hollister’s leg. She’s soft, and he’s hard. He’s thin and straight, and she’s rolly and round. I like her better, but I don’t want to look like her.

  We pull out of the airport onto a country road, and the tires hum on the asphalt, and the hot air pours in through the windows, and it’s got that ocean smell. I look past Grandma Hollister at the tall pines going by and other trees we don’t have in Omaha. I can already tell different kinds of palm trees. Tall ones with just a blossom of green at the top, and short, squatty ones with spikes going up their trunks. I want to learn what to call them. I want to know what I’m smelling and seeing, and I look at Grandma Hollister and say, “Am I going to live by the ocean?”

  If she says yes, I’m going to ask if I can have a boat, but she just laughs and ripples go through her chest, and she puts her soft hand on my knee and says, “My goodness, Travis, where did you get that idea? Widow Rock isn’t on the water.” She looks across at Grandpa Hollister.

  He’s driving with a squint in his eyes and his hands hard on the steering wheel. Grandma Hollister says, “John, how far are we from the water? Tell Travis.”

  Grandpa Hollister doesn’t look at me. He’s calculating. We pass a wagon pulled by a horse. The wagon has big wobbly wheels with wooden spokes. A black man stands on the front of the wagon holding the reins in one hand and an RC Cola in the other. When we pass, he lifts the bottle to his mouth and drains it and tosses it into the ditch, and I’m thirsty. Grandpa pulls the Buick back into our lane and says, “We’re fifty-two point seven miles from the Panama City limit, I reckon.”

  I’m disappointed, but I won’t show it. I say, “I didn’t know they still had horses and wagons like that. Are we gonna see a lot of them?”

  My grandpa smiles. It’s that smile again. The one that says he knows what you’re going to say before you say it. He says, “Boy, didn’t your daddy explain to you the difference between a horse and a mule?”

  All I can say is no, he didn’t.

  Quietly, Grandpa Hollister says, “No what?”

  I say, “No, sir. Sorry.”

  Grandma Hollister puts her hand on my knee again. “Don’t worry about the ocean, Travis. We’ll drive down to see it before you go
back home. We’ll take a picnic lunch and make a day of it. And we’ve got a river not three miles from our house. That’s where the young people swim. I’ll bet your Aunt Delia will take you there if you ask her nicely.”

  She looks at me, and I smile, and I’m thinking a boat and a river won’t be as good as the ocean, but it’ll be pretty good. Grandma Hollister says, “Travis, did you know your daddy was quite the hero around these parts?”

  She’s nice. I’m sure of that now. She’s my grandmother, and I’m supposed to love her, and I’m going to try. I say, “You mean in the war, ma’am?”

  “Yes, Travis, that, and other things, too. Your daddy was a fine athlete. He still holds the county record for the hundred-yard dash. And he was a very good student. He won the Sons of the Confederacy Award for Citizenship and Scholarship. People around here still remember him as a fine example of young manhood. Small towns don’t forget, Travis.”

  She looks over at Grandpa Hollister. I look, too. It’s like looking straight into the sun. “Why, imagine,” my Grandma Hollister says, “Lloyd didn’t tell the boy about his records and honors.”

  Grandpa Hollister looks at her, and it’s the way my dad looks at the Pultneys’ backyard. He says, “Lloyd is modest, Lilah.” He looks at me for the first time since we got in the car. “Hollisters don’t crow about their accomplishments, Travis. We let our deeds speak for us. I’m sure you know that from the way your father behaves.”

  I want to say I know it from my mom, too. I want to tell him I love her, too, and someday I’m going to Japan, and I’m going to meet my Grandpa and Grandma Kobayashi. I want to tell him he should ask me how my mom is doing. I want to tell him my dad never looks at my mom the way he just looked at Grandma Hollister. But I don’t. Maybe I will, some of it, later, but not now. I want to get along and make a good impression like my dad told me to. I just say, “Yes, sir.”

  We ride along, and I watch the speedometer. Grandpa Hollister holds it dead on fifty. It’s hot, and the sun makes silver pools on the asphalt road, but we never reach the water. My dad told me it’s called a mirage. I like to watch it, but it makes me thirsty. We pass farms, and there are cows and horses, but they’re not like the ones in Omaha. They look sick and tired, and they stay in the shade of the trees and stretch their necks and eat the leaves as far up as they can reach.