Sweet Dream Baby

by Sterling Watson

  My Aunt Delia says, “Kenny?”

  Griner keeps working. He doesn’t turn and look at her. He loosens a nut, and the oil pours out black and hot into a big bowl on a high stand. I like the smell, like burnt coffee. Griner waits with the wrench in one hand and the nut in the other. Oil from the nut runs down his first finger and drips onto the floor. He says, “I don’t want to be your friend, Delia. You know that.”

  My Aunt Delia doesn’t say anything.

  Griner says, “Don’t you, Delia?”

  My Aunt Delia still has her back to us. She doesn’t say anything.

  Griner says, “Delia?” His voice is soft and low, and the oil drips from his finger onto the floor. The last of the oil flows from the hole under the engine, and then it starts to drip.

  My Aunt Delia says, “Killer, I’m gonna get a Coke. You want one, too?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  When she’s gone, Griner turns and looks at the place where she was standing. His face is red, and his eyes are strange. He looks down at me and then looks away quick. He puts the nut back in the hole and loosens the old filter and spins it off.

  After a space, my Aunt Delia comes back with three Cokes. She hands me one and puts the other on the floor next to Griner’s foot. She stands close to us now and watches Griner work. She looks happy, and I don’t know why. I’m not sure what just happened, but something did. I drink my Coke and my Aunt Delia drinks hers. Griner just leaves his on the floor.

  When he turns to get the new filter, my Aunt Delia says, “I brought you a Coke, Kenny.”

  They look at each other for the first time.

  And it’s the first time.

  Twenty-five

  We hear tires chirp, and Bick Sifford’s red Oldsmobile stops behind my Aunt Delia’s white Chevy. Bick and Ronny get out and shade their eyes staring in at the three of us. They see Griner tightening the new oil filter and wiping the old oil from around the place where it fits. They see the Coke on the floor by his foot. Griner wipes his hands on the rag, reaches down, and picks up the Coke. He takes a sip, looks at my Aunt Delia, then turns to face Bick and Ronny.

  I watch Bick’s face. I remember his moony eyes from the back of the Baptist recreation room in Warrington. Bick looks at Delia, then at Griner, and his jaw tightens. His shoulders fall, and he shoves his hands into the pockets of his white slacks and looks down at his penny loafers.

  Bick and Ronny look at each other, and Ronny says, “Hey Bick, how ’bout a Coke?”

  Bick nods, and they walk over to the front of the station. We hear them put money in the machine, and it goes chunka-chunk. They come back carrying Cokes, Ronny leading, and walk right up to the grease rack. Ronny stands next to Kenny Griner. The white Chevy hangs above Ronny’s head, and he reaches up one hand and steadies on it. He looks underneath. “You get that filter on good and tight, Boxie?” he says to Griner.

  Griner doesn’t say anything, but his eyes go tight and his jaw seizes. Boxie’s what some people around here call the box-factory workers. Ronny goes under the car. He grabs the oil filter, and I see the muscles bunch in his forearm and his knuckles go white. The filter moves about a half turn. “Wut’n tight enough, Boxie.” Ronny turns to my Aunt Delia. “It’s all right now, Delia. I fixed it for you.”

  My Aunt Delia doesn’t say anything to Ronny. She just looks at Bick. Bick gives her a pleady look, shoves his hands farther down into his pockets, and shuffles his loafers on the greasy floor.

  Griner goes over to the bench, puts down the Coke, and picks up the tool he used on the filter. He goes under the Chevy and loosens the filter a half turn. “You get her too tight,” he says to Ronny, “and the seal’ll crimp, and she’ll leak.” Griner’s face is pale. His fists are rocks. Ronny says, “Don’t you smart mouth me, you duck’s ass trash.”

  Griner drops the tool and goes for him, but my Aunt Delia jumps between them. I’ve never seen her move so fast, not even on the tennis court. Her back’s against Ronny’s chest, and her chest is pressed to Griner’s. They feel her between them and stop. She squirms sideways between them and puts a hand on both their chests and pushes them apart.

  She turns to Ronny. “Don’t you talk that way to him. You’re not your daddy yet. And he’d whip your ass if he knew you were going around town calling people trash.”

  Ronny’s face is as red as the heart of a watermelon. His red hair seems alight with his anger. He says, “Nobody’s gone whip my ass.”

  Griner says, “We’ll see about that.”

  My Aunt Delia says, “Shut up, Kenny.”

  She looks at Bick. He’s got his hands out of his pockets, and they’re fists, but he doesn’t know what to do with them. She says, “Bick, do something useful and get Ronny out of here.”

  Bick looks at her. He’s got his trouble in his eyes. If he was a kid, I’d say he was about to cry. He says, “Come on, Ronny. Let’s get out of here.”

  My Aunt Delia gives Ronny another push, and he stops leaning into her hand. He steps back. Bick comes close and grabs Ronny’s shoulder. Ronny shrugs off his hand and says, “Let go of me, damn it.”

  Bick steps back and raises his hands. “Okay, okay.” He looks at the white sunlight at the front of the shed. He says, “Old man Dameron’s gonna come out here.”

  Ronny looks at him, and then over at Griner. “I’ll whup both their asses.”

  Griner laughs at him. He says, “An old man’s about your speed.”

  Bick says, “Ronny, come on.”

  I can see Ronny’s not gonna fight Griner. He’s just got to talk ’til he can leave.

  Ronny says, “You’re my speed, Boxie. Any time, any place.”

  My Aunt Delia says, “Thank you, Bick.”

  Bick Sifford looks at her. He doesn’t know what she’s doing. She steps out from between Ronny and Griner and goes over to Bick. She takes his arm and pulls him over toward the red Oldsmobile. She guides him to the car door, and I hear her say, “Thanks for the flowers. That was sweet.”

  Griner looks over at her. He watches her and Bick, and his eyes go sick and tired, and he looks up at the dark, cobwebby ceiling where the fan belts and the hoses hang, and he shakes his head. He goes over to the bench and tosses the Coke into a crate full of empty oil cans. It foams and spills. When he passes Ronny, their shoulders bump. Ronny’s fists whiten, but he doesn’t do anything. Griner walks out through the back door. The street rod starts up with a whine, and then backs down with a pop-pop-pop. Then I hear it spray gravel as Griner takes off.

  • • •

  When we get out of town, my Aunt Delia lets me drive, and I think we’re just going nowhere, but then she starts giving me directions. “Turn at that next rusty mailbox, Killer. Slow down to twenty and take that fork to the right.”

  I’ve learned to turn pretty well now, and I’ve got my speed up to fifty on a good flat straightaway. I asked my Aunt Delia if I could take the car out alone, but she said, “Not hardly, Killer. You might get the Widow Rock wanderlust and never come back.”

  I drive, and she gives me directions, and finally I ask, “Where are we going?”

  She just says, “Never mind.”

  We pass Ronny Bishop’s cattle ranch. Hundreds of white-faced Hereford cattle graze in the fields, and the fences are sturdy cypress, and the house is white with green shutters like ours, only bigger. It’s surrounded by sheds and pens, and I can see the new green paint of a John Deere tractor in one of the sheds. Ronny’s white Ford truck is parked in the yard near the back door, and there’s a new blue Cadillac and an old red Ford. There is a silo at the back of the big lot, but it’s not as big as the one I see from my backyard in Omaha. The cattle all face the same way, into the south wind, and some of them look up as we pass.

  We come to an old field with rusted-down fences and broken salt licks and toppled troughs, and my Aunt Delia says, “Turn right and
stop by that old house there.”

  From the road you’d think the old farm house was empty. The tin roof is rusted dark brown and twisted up by a big wind along one eave. Screens hang in tatters from the windows. The red-brick chimney has a big crack in it somebody tried to patch with fresh mortar. There’s an old barn out back with an oak tree in front of it. A beat-up blue Plymouth is parked under the tree. The engine is pulled out of the Plymouth, and it hangs in the air from a greasy block and tackle chained up in the oak.

  We stop in front of the house next to some fresh car tracks in the red dirt, and my Aunt Delia says, “Wait here, Killer. I won’t be long.”

  She gets out, and I get out, too. She says, “I want you to wait here for me.”

  I just shake my head. I’m not letting her go in there alone.

  We go up on the porch, and some of the boards are rotten, and they bow under our feet. My Aunt Delia knocks, and there’s nothing, and she knocks again, and we hear, “Hold on a minute.” I don’t recognize the voice.

  A boy comes to the door. He’s blond, and his eyes are milky blue, and he’s wearing dirty jeans and tucking in a brown work shirt with Sifford Container and Packing Co. stitched across the heart. He squints at us and yawns and says, “Yeah?” Then he says, “Oh, hey, Delia.”

  My Aunt Delia says, “Hey, Randle. Is Kenny here?”

  The blond boy scratches his face, and I hear the whiskers rasp in his hand, and I wish I had them. He says, “Naw, he went over to Warrington to get some parts for the rod.” The boy looks at me, and I smile at him, but not big. He says, “Hey.” And I say, “Hey.” My Aunt Delia says, “Randle this is Travis, my nephew.”

  Randle says, “Yeah, I heard about Travis.” Then he says, “You want to come in for a Coke or anything?”

  My Aunt Delia thinks about it. Her face is strange. She looks lost but happy. She looks like she’s been here before and never seen anything like this place. She looks like she might run away any second and might move in. She says, “Thank you, Randle, that would be nice.”

  We go in, and Randle walks barefoot to the kitchen and gets us Cokes. It’s not so bad inside. The floor is bare pine, but it’s rubbed with linseed oil, and there’s a clean hooked rug on it, and the fireplace is swept, and there’s a big picture of a racing car tacked on the wall over it. My Aunt Delia takes her Coke from Randle, and so do I. She sips and says, “Thanks. That’s good on a hot day.”

  I say, “Thanks.”

  Randle lifts his half-tucked-in shirttail and scratches his stomach. He says, “It’s been a long time since I seen you, Delia. You been okay?”

  “I been fine, Randle.” She shrugs. “You know.”

  We stand there. They don’t know what to say. Finally, Randle says, “I bleeve Kenny’ll be back in about a half hour if you want to wait.”

  My Aunt Delia says, “No, no we better not wait. Is that Kenny’s room?” She’s looking through the open door of a bedroom. Randle says, “Uh, yeah.” He sips his Coke and scratches with the other hand. He lifts the cold Coke and holds it to his forehead. My Aunt Delia goes into the bedroom, and I follow.

  The bed is narrow and neatly made. Car posters cover the walls. There’s a small bookcase with about thirty books in it, mostly paperbacks. Over on the dresser top, there’s some silver jewelry and a comb and a big bottle of Vitalis. There’s a mirror above the dresser. On the table beside the bed there’s an old windup alarm clock. Beside it, there’s a picture of my Aunt Delia in a cheap wooden frame. It’s a picture somebody cut out of a newspaper. There’s a line of print under it: “Widow Rock Teen Goes to Girls’ State.”

  My Aunt Delia goes over and picks it up. She looks at the picture, and her face goes soft, and a little smile comes to her lips, but it flies as quickly as it lit. She puts the picture down exactly where it was, and we walk back into the living room. She says, “Randle, you don’t need to tell Kenny I was here. It wasn’t anything important.”

  Randle looks confused. His face reddens, and a cluster of pimples on his right cheek comes on like a light. He says, “All right, Delia.”

  I know he’s going to tell Griner. So does my Aunt Delia.

  We walk to the door, and my Aunt Delia says, “Randle, it was good to see you again. And thanks for the Coke.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “thanks.” I finish mine and put it down on the table by the sofa. My Aunt Delia doesn’t finish hers.

  We go outside, and I know my Aunt Delia’s gonna drive. She pulls out slow, and we keep on going away from town, out into the country. She turns on the radio, and we listen for a while, then I reach over and turn it down and say, “How come we went there?”

  She doesn’t look at me. She looks off down the road and says, “I needed to see where he lives.”

  I say, “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I just needed to.”

  I say, “Are they poor?”

  She looks over at me and smiles. She says, “Yeah, but they don’t mind. They’re just boys. They work on their cars and drink beer when they can get it, and they don’t have anybody to nag them about cleaning up the place. They’re in heaven. They’ll care about it later, but they don’t now. They don’t see into the future too well, boys don’t.”

  “Not even Bick.”

  She looks off down the road. It’s hot and the asphalt is white and the mirages dance out there, and it’s water we’ll never reach. She says, “Bick’s different. He listens to his daddy, and his daddy tells him all about the future. You don’t go to Princeton unless you care a lot about the future.”

  Twenty-six

  It’s August and I’m bored. Beulah says it’s hotter than a whore’s dream. Caroline’s back from vacation, but the four of us don’t go out as much as we used to. My Aunt Delia’s staying away from Bick. When he calls, she’s not rude and she doesn’t hang up, but she doesn’t say much. Mostly she listens and looks at me and shakes her head or makes a smirk. She covers the phone and whispers, “What a dork.” Sometimes I ask her what he’s saying, but she won’t tell me. She just says, “He’s putting the moves on me, Killer. You know.”

  I don’t know, not really, but I don’t tell her that. I wish I could put the moves on. If I’m a dreamboat and a heartbreaker and a Killer, I should be able to do it, but I don’t know how. Sometimes I think the answer’s in the songs. It’s the crazy stuff you hear like, “A wigglin’ walk and a gigglin’ talk, make the world go round.” It’s, “I’m a lonely frog.” And it’s, “Be my guest, you got nothin to lose, won’t you let me take you on a sea cruise?”

  I listen to the radio playing low and watch my Aunt Delia’s face when she talks to Bick on the phone, and I know she likes him. Not all the way, but she likes him. He’s got something she wants. He’s in her mind, and she can’t get him out. It’s like that voice I heard moaning from behind the locked door in the hospital where my mom is. I still hear that voice. It lay down inside me and made a home. Bick’s voice is like that for my Aunt Delia. Or maybe I’m just going crazy with the heat.

  Sometimes Caroline and Beulah come over, and the four of us listen to the radio, and they do each other’s hair all different ways and try on my Aunt Delia’s clothes and makeup and talk about their friends. Some of them are kids I know from the youth group in Warrington. They drink Cokes and talk about what they’re gonna do when school starts. Caroline says she loves summer. She doesn’t want school to ever start. My Aunt Delia looks at her and then at me and then out at the oak trees so still in the heat. She says, “I can’t wait for summer to be over. Certain people will be gone then, and life’ll be a lot easier.”

  Caroline and Beulah look over at me quick. They think maybe she means me leaving. But I just look out the window at the oaks and remember how the limbs fussed and rubbed against each other in the storm. I know who she means.

  We haven’t seen Kenny Griner since that day at Mr. Dameron’s ESSO station, but
sometimes at night I hear his car go by. I know the sounds of his engine now even if it doesn’t back down with a pop-pop-pop. Sometimes I hear him in my sleep, and I get up and look out, and there’s midnight-blue metal and red flame and moon discs under the streetlight at the corner. Other times, I don’t make it to the window in time, and I go back to bed and lie there wondering what he’s thinking. I wonder if he thinks some night my Aunt Delia will be out there waiting for him, and she’ll get in the car, and they’ll run away together.

  • • •

  I’m gonna get my boat, sort of.

  I told my Aunt Delia I wanted one. I told her about flying over the ocean and looking down at sand like wheat and water as blue as the china my mom brought from Japan, and about how I decided I was going to have a boat and go out and catch marlin and big sharks and maybe a creature. I asked her how much a boat would cost. She said she didn’t know, but she thought it would be a lot. Then she said, “Come on, Killer, I got an idea,” and we went out and got into the Chevy.

  It’s called The Johnny Barnes Fish Camp. It’s on the river, about three miles down from Widow Rock. My Aunt Delia parks the Chevy against a white-painted cypress log, and we walk into a little shack with Bait painted on the front in white letters. Underneath, in smaller letters, it says, Night Crawlers, Worms, Crickets. The shack is right on the river bank, and there’s a dock, and I can see six dark green boats with outboard motors tied up in a row.

  It’s dark inside the shack, and every spot has something sitting on it or hanging from it. There are rods and reels, cane poles, bins of hooks and sinkers and bobbers and plugs. There are nets and blue lanterns and seat cushions and red gas tanks and straw hats and sandwiches and boiled peanuts. There’s a big red cooler full of iced drinks. In the back, there’s an old stone horse trough with two window screens on top of it. From inside it, I can hear crickets chirping. They’re bait.

  An old man sits behind the counter reading a gun magazine. He’s wearing a khaki shirt and a green eyeshade, and a bare light bulb hangs above his head. When we come in, he looks up and smiles. “Hey, Miss Delia. You goin’ fishin’?”