Sweet Dream Baby

by Sterling Watson

  “Don’t worry. It’s gonna be all right.” I want to say I won’t let him hurt her, but I can’t stop anybody from talking.

  My Aunt Delia doesn’t look over at me again. She just watches the light in Mrs. Cohen’s kitchen window and listens to the radio. Jerry Lee, the Killer, comes on. It’s “Breathless.” I listen close because it’s my name. Maybe he’ll tell me what to do now. He sings it like he’s whispering to someone in the dark. “My heart goes round and round, my love comes a tumbling down. You leave me breathless. I shake all over, and you know why. I’m sure it’s love, Honey, that’s no lie. ’Cause when you call my name, you know I burn like wood in flame. You leave me breathless. Come on baby now don’t be shy, this love was meant for you and I. Wind, rain, sleet, or snow. I’m gonna be wherever you go. You leave me breathless.”

  My Aunt Delia always closes her eyes and swings her shoulders to the Killer, but now she doesn’t. So I say, “We’ll just stay away from them. We don’t have to see Bick and Ronny.”

  My Aunt Delia laughs, but there’s no fun in it. She says, “We have to see them. That’s what you do in Widow Rock. You go see who’s there.”

  • • •

  One day after supper, I’m in my room reading John R. Tunis. My Aunt Delia’s in the bathroom getting ready to go out with Beulah. I hear the phone ring, and then my Grandma Hollister comes to the bottom of the stairs and calls up, “Travis, come on down, Honey. It’s your dad on the phone.”

  I just keep reading. I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t know why. She calls me again, and I don’t answer. She says, “Just a minute, John. I’ll go up and get him.” I hear her coming up the stairs, and I hide behind the book. I’d go out the window, but there’s no way down. I’d go out the window in my Aunt Delia’s room, but my Grandma Hollister would see me. I hear her footsteps out in the hall.

  “Travis, did you hear me call you? Are you asleep already?”

  She opens my door, and I hide behind the book. She says, “Travis?”

  “I don’t want to talk to him.”

  I hear her breathing. The words in front of my face run down the page and spill their ink. She comes into the room and sits on the bed. She reaches out and pushes my book down. She wipes my face with her fingers. “Honey, your daddy loves you. I know he does. He loves you very much. He didn’t call before because it’s hard for him.”

  “It’s hard for me, too.”

  “I know that, Honey. He should have called before now, but I want you to go down and talk to him, and I want you to be a big boy and not upset him. Will you try, Travis?” Her face looks tired. She looks like she’s gonna cry. She’s squinting like she’s got a headache. She loves my dad and me, too.

  “What’s the matter, Mother?”

  My Aunt Delia stands at the door. She’s in her bathrobe, and her hair is wet, and she doesn’t have any makeup on. She’s beautiful, and I want to run away with her. My Grandma Hollister says, “Lloyd’s on the phone, and Travis won’t go down and talk to him.”

  My Aunt Delia comes in and sits on the other side of my bed. “Why, Travis, you’re crying.”

  “I didn’t want to,” I say. I promised myself I wouldn’t cry anymore. I just didn’t think my dad would call.

  My Aunt Delia hugs me. “I know, Honey. I know. But you have to talk to your daddy. Think how he’ll feel if you don’t.”

  “I don’t care how he feels. He doesn’t care how I feel.”

  My Grandma Hollister says, “That’s not true, Travis. You know it isn’t.” She sighs, and I know she’s gonna tell me something she doesn’t want to. I hope it’s not about my mom. She says, “Your daddy’s just…he’s just one of those men who can’t admit it when things hurt them. And it hurt him to have to send you here, and right now things with your mother are very hard for him. The important thing is that he wants to talk to you. Can’t you go down and talk to him?”

  I look at my Aunt Delia. She nods. She smiles. I’d do anything for her.

  • • •

  “Hello, Dad.”

  “Hello there, Marine. How are you doing?”

  “Fine, sir.”

  “Are they taking good care of you? Are you eating plenty of Marvadell’s good cooking?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Grandma says you and Aunt Delia are big friends. I’m glad to hear that, Son. I always wanted you to get to know my family.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I hear my dad sigh, or maybe he’s taking a puff on a cigarette. If he is, it’s a big one, and he draws the smoke way down into his chest and blows it out hard. He says, “I went to see your mom today, Travis. She’s fine. She’s getting better. She wanted me to tell you how much she loves you and how much she misses you.”

  I want to tear the phone out of the wall. I want to take the black cord that connects the part you hold to your ear to the part you dial and wrap it around my neck. I want to run away with my Aunt Delia. I want my mom.

  “I miss her too, sir.”

  “Well, they’ve sure got you sirring down there in Widow Rock, don’t they, Travis?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right, Son. You take care, and try not to worry about things. We’re gonna be all right.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Put Grandpa Hollister back on, will you, Son?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  AUGUST

  Got to get to dancin’, get my hat off the rack.

  I got the boogie-woogie like a knife in the back.

  Come on baby, got nothin’ to lose.

  Won’t you let me take you on a sea cruise.

  SEA CRUISE

  —Music and lyrics by Huey Smith

  —Recorded by Frankie Ford

  Twenty-four

  Bick Sifford’s been calling every day.

  He calls in the morning after my Aunt Delia wakes up and at night when he knows she’ll be home. At first my Aunt Delia told Grandma Hollister she didn’t want to talk to him. Grandma Hollister got her headache look and went back to the phone and told Bick my Aunt Delia was indisposed. Then she came up to my Aunt Delia’s room and said, “But why, Honey? I thought you liked Bick.”

  My Aunt Delia just said she didn’t know why. She said maybe she was bored with him. Maybe she just thought Bick Sifford was a drip. When she said that, Grandma Hollister got even more worried and went to her room to lie down in the dark. After that, my Aunt Delia had to talk to Bick. I’d hear her say, Yes, and, No, and, Yes, I know, and, Sorry, but I can’t do that, and then she’d get off real fast. She never laughed when she talked to him.

  About a week after the night Ronny let me shoot his pistol and I hit Bick with a rock, a big box of flowers came to the house. There’s no flower shop in Widow Rock or Warrington. They came all the way from Panama City, and they were as big as our dining-room table, and that’s where my Aunt Delia left them. She wouldn’t take them up to her room. A card came with the flowers. It was made of pink parchment paper, and the gold lettering on it said, “Sorry, Friend, if I’ve offended you.” My Grandma Hollister got to it first, and after that, she took my Aunt Delia for a walk to the park, and they talked. When they came back, my Aunt Delia went up to her room and turned on the radio low, and I knocked on the door.

  “What did she say?” I asked her.

  She was sitting at her vanity table looking at herself in the mirror. The radio was playing, “Dream Lover.” My Aunt Delia said, “She wanted to know why Bick sent the flowers.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I lied, of course. I told her Bick said I was fat and I should dye my hair blonde like Sandra Dee and quit playing so much tennis like a tomboy. I told her I think Bick’s a stuck-up poothead, and I can’t wait ’til he goes to Princeton.”

  “Did she believe you?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Wha
t are you gonna do now?”

  She peered into the mirror like she was looking through a window at some other girl. She reached up and pulled the corners of her eyes to the side until they looked like my mother’s eyes. She gathered her black hair on top of her head with both hands and tilted her head to the side. She let her hair fall and picked up a brush and held it out to me. I walked over and started to brush. I like the way her hair smells when I brush it. I like the way it shines. I like the way it flows through my fingers like black water.

  She said, “I’m gonna stay away from him ’til he leaves, and then I’m gonna forget about him. And you’re gonna help me stay away from him, Killer.”

  I brushed her hair. I said, “Okay.”

  • • •

  When we go out, we go with Beulah if we can. We can’t wait for Caroline to get home from Yellowstone. We go to the youth group in Warrington, and all the girls like me. Mr. and Mrs. Dagel think I’m too young to be talking about growing up too fast, but my Aunt Delia asked them if I could stay, and they said yes. At the meetings, I sit between Beulah and my Aunt Delia, and we listen to Mr. Dagle talk about how a man has to master his impulses so that he can have a deeper and more fulfilling relationship later on with the woman he loves. Mrs. Dagle smiles and looks at him like she wants to put vanilla frosting on him and eat him up. So do most of the girls. My Aunt Delia looks over at Beulah and sticks her finger down her throat, and Beulah looks at the ceiling to keep from laughing.

  All of the girls at the youth group think I’m cute. When we take a break and drink red punch and eat cookies Mrs. Dagle baked, they run their hands through my hair and feel the muscle in my arm and even kiss me on the cheek and whisper, “Travis, you’re growing up way too fast.” I like it, but I don’t like it as much as I like being with my Aunt Delia.

  Bick and Ronny come to the youth group, too. They sit in the back, and Bick looks quiet and sad, and when he thinks my Aunt Delia is looking at him, he makes big sad cow eyes and shapes the words, “I’m sorry,” with his mouth.

  When he looks at me, his eyes say he’d kill me if he thought he could get away with it. I’d do the same to him, and he knows it.

  We don’t stay out as late as we used to. If we go somewhere and Ronny and Bick show up, we leave. A couple of times we’re driving, and we see headlights behind us, and we know it’s Ronny and Bick. We stop, and they stop behind us. We start, and they start again. They don’t get too close. They don’t blink their lights. They don’t do anything bad. They just follow us.

  Last night I was up late reading, and I heard a car pull into the driveway. I thought it was Grandpa Hollister, but I went to the window anyway. It was Bick Sifford’s red Oldsmobile. I looked at the clock. It was one in the morning. I went down the hall to my Aunt Delia’s room. She had the radio on low, but it was dark, and I knew by her breathing she was asleep.

  I went back to my bedroom window and watched Bick sit in the car with the radio playing low. Cigarette smoke drifted out the open widow and into the oak tree above the driveway. Sometimes he put his hand out the window and flicked the ash, and I could see the sparks fall. It was two-thirty when he started the Oldsmobile and drove away. I was as tired as the night I stayed up waiting to catch Santa Claus.

  • • •

  Me and my Aunt Delia go down to the ESSO station to get the white Chevy’s oil changed. The station’s on the main drag across from Dr. Cohen’s office. It’s really just a white shack with a tar-paper roof. On one side, a shed supported by four cypress poles covers the grease rack. There’s a big red soda machine in front of the station. We stop there for Cokes when Tolbert’s Rexall is closed. Old Mr. Dameron runs the station. He’s got three fingers gone from his left hand, and he wears bib overalls and thick, steel-toed shoes, and the grease is worked so hard into the creases in his skin it won’t ever come out.

  My Aunt Delia says she wonders what it’s like for his wife lying in bed with a man who smells like a lube job. She says she wonders if everything in Mr. Dameron’s house has grease on it. I say, “The salt shaker,” and she laughs. I say, “His tooth brush,” and she laughs. I say, “The toilet seat,” and she really laughs. She says, “The Holy Bible,” and I laugh. Then she says, “Especially the Last Supper,” and we both laugh like crazy.

  We pull in under the shade of the shed roof, and Mr. Dameron comes out of the little office dragging a red rag from his hip pocket. He leans down to my Aunt Delia’s window scrubbing his hands on the rag. “Aft’noon, Miss Delia. What can I do for you?”

  My Aunt Delia says, “Hey, Mr. Dameron. Daddy says it’s time to change the oil in this old wreck.”

  Mr. Dameron leans back and looks at the Chevy like he can see right through the hood to the oil. He nods. Yes, we need a change. He wipes his forehead with the greasy red rag and says, “All right, Miss Delia. Pull her in there.”

  We pull into the cool shade of the grease rack, and Mr. Dameron’s giving my Aunt Delia hand signals to go right and left and stop. We get out and stand beside the car, and Mr. Dameron call outs, “Hey you, Kenny. Come in here, will you?”

  I look through the back door of the shed into the alley, and there’s red flame on midnight-blue metal and a slice of chrome moon disc. Kenny Griner comes through the door. He’s wiping his hands on a rag and saying, “Mr. Dameron, I…” He sees my Aunt Delia. He stops and squints in the shade. My Aunt Delia says, “Hey, Kenny. How are you?”

  Griner doesn’t say anything. He just pulls his mouth to one side and hoods his eyes and looks up at the ceiling where a bunch of fan belts and hoses hang in the dusty dark. My Aunt Delia walks over and stands in front of him and looks at his forehead. The stitches are out now, but you can see the six little puckers where the skin is cinched together like the mouth of a change purse. It’s not blue and red anymore, it’s just red. When Griner sees her looking, he lifts his hand to touch the scar, then lets it drop to his side. My Aunt Delia says, “Looks like you won the badge of honor for bad driving, Kenny.”

  We all know Grandpa Hollister hit him.

  Griner looks at her and shakes his head. He looks over at Mr. Dameron who says, “Kenny, can you change Miss Delia’s oil. She takes the thirty-weight, I bleeve.”

  Griner’s wearing a blue denim jumpsuit with an AC Spark Plugs badge sewed over his heart. “Kenny” is stitched in red on the other side. He’s not covered with grease, just a few smudges here and there. His hair gleams with Brylcream. He looks at my Aunt Delia, then at me, then at the Chevy, and says, “Yeah, I guess I got time.”

  “All right then, Miss Delia, we’ll get her done for you.” Mr. Dameron walks out of the dark shed toward the office.

  We’re alone with Griner. He turns his back to us and pretends to look for something in a greasy old cabinet covered with broken parts and tools. He doesn’t find what he isn’t looking for, and I hear him give a big breath and mutter, “Damn.” He turns back, red-faced, and kneels and pulls the big forks of the grease rack out and positions them under the car. I squat and watch. He goes over to the wall and flips a switch. Out in the alley, a small engine starts. He looks at me and says, “You got to build up the pressure in the tank before the rack’ll lift the car.”

  I nod.

  Griner goes to some shelves and pulls down a blue oil filter and shows it to me. He doesn’t say anything, so I don’t either. My Aunt Delia stands very straight in the space between the Chevy and the wall. Her purse is crushed under her folded arms, and she watches us with her I’m-not-falling-for-this smile.

  Griner shows me a tool with a handle at one end and a wide metal band at the other. “You wrap this around the filter, and it locks tight, and then you twist and the filter comes off.” I nod. The little motor is chuff-chuffing outside, and pressure hisses into the tank by the grease rack. Kenny Griner squats and looks at the glass face of the gauge. “You got to check the pressure,” he says to me.

  I nod. I say,
“How high does it have to go?”

  “Sixty pounds ought to do it,” he says.

  My Aunt Delia steps up behind him and bends and does something quick. I can’t see what.

  Griner jumps and reaches behind him. He stands up and looks at her, and his face is even redder. She opens the book she snatched from his back pocket. It’s a paperback, The Subterraneans. She flips some pages, reads what’s on the back. “Wowie-Zowie!” she says. “Kenny, you’re Widow Rock’s very own beatnik?”

  Kenny Griner holds out his hand for the book. He says, “I might be. You don’t know what I am.”

  She holds the book out to him, and her face changes. She’s not kidding him anymore. “I might know,” she says. It’s almost a whisper.

  He takes the book, and she turns and walks to the mouth of the shed and lifts her face to the sun. Griner stuffs the book back into his hip pocket.

  With her back to us, hugging herself, my Aunt Delia says, “I don’t see why we can’t be friends, Kenny. I didn’t hit you in the head.”

  Griner doesn’t say anything. He just pulls the lever that lifts the grease rack. There’s a lot of hissing and groaning, and it’s neat to see the Chevy rise off the concrete and see what’s underneath a car. When it’s up all the way, and it’s quiet again, my Aunt Delia says, “Kenny, did you hear me?”

  Griner says, “I heard you.” He walks under the car, and I go with him. He says, “Travis, you got to be careful under here. You don’t want anything falling on you or dripping in your eye, okay?”

  I nod. Under here, in the heat from the engine, he has to bend his head a little not to bump it, and I can smell his aftershave, and he doesn’t seem so tough. I think we could just be two guys.