The Dream Peddler

by Martine Fournier Watson

  * * *

  Sam and George sat together in a comfortable puffing silence as they smoked and jiggled down the road to Mrs. Coldbrook’s.

  “You taking care of my girl, George Dawson?”

  “Always.”

  “This is worse for her than it is for you, you know,” said Sam. “I don’t mean to make light of your end of things. I know if anything happened to Evie, I’d be a changed man. So I can imagine how you feel, but women . . . well, that’s just how they’re made, I guess. They feel it worse, feel everything worse. Being a father is a wonderful thing, an important thing, too, but it’s not the same as being a mother. I’m sure you know that.”

  George nodded noncommittally, waiting for the doctor to continue. He could never know if it was really worse for Evie than for him. He didn’t think it mattered. They both braced their broken hearts inside their chests. Grief surged in their limbs and then soaked through them and inked everything they did. Every task on the farm for George was a punch in the gut. His dented heart hovered over the fence rails he mended and the fresh hay he pitched into the stalls he’d cleaned. It swung under the cows as he milked them, like his lantern. And Evie carried her heart over all she did inside the house, and every time she walked away from him to town, she walked that heart in with her and cradled it, like she’d hold two halves of a cracked eggshell so its contents didn’t spill out.

  “Hard for us, too, of course. Don’t know what it is about this family—we only seem to have the one child. And it doesn’t matter, except when you lose him . . . well, you might feel like there’s no point to going on. There’s no other little ones who need you.”

  He had one hand on the wheel and the other free to worry the cigar in and out of his mouth. He always smoked while he drove. Rose wouldn’t allow it in the house. “But don’t forget, you still need each other.”

  “I know that.”

  “Course you do. That’s how it is for me and Rose. Evie’s been grown a long time now, but we still take care of each other. This is hard on Rose. She misses her grandson, but she doesn’t think about that. She’s too busy wishing she could fix things for Evie. She’s very worried about her.”

  “I can imagine.”

  George was looking at his own cigar like it was some creature he’d pinched up off the side of the road, rolling it over between his fingers, trying to fathom its nature.

  “She’s got it in her head Evie’s going to get hold of that dream peddler and nothing good will come of it.”

  George wasn’t sure what to make of this turn in the conversation. He had some concerns about Evie in that regard himself, but he didn’t think it was any of Rose’s business. He remembered what he’d told Evie about the dreams, but if he were honest with himself, he wasn’t worried that Evie might waste some of their dollars. He was thinking about her being taken in a different way. He’d seen the dream peddler skulking nearby after the funeral, staring. Had a look passed between them? Maybe not then, but after the dance he was sure of it. He made light of it to Evie because he had to. If he took the idea seriously, anyone might. It might even be true.

  “What does she think will happen, then?” he asked Sam.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Evie’s vulnerable right now, you both are. You remember Rose lost a younger sister when she was a girl? Did you know about that?”

  “Yes, I guess I did.”

  “I don’t think Rose ever told Evie how hard that was for her. Not just Mabel dying, but what happened to her mother afterward. She couldn’t get over it. Started taking something, think it must have been laudanum from the way Rose remembers. After that her mother just drifted. Cried at night, slept much of the day, and it left Rose feeling alone. Her mother never really got better.”

  “I didn’t realize.”

  “Like I said, Evie doesn’t know. But now you see what Rose must be thinking. Here’s Evie with the exact same grief, same wound in her heart, and along comes some dream peddler with his promises and potions. Maybe it’s not laudanum, but what if it acted the same way? What if we lost her?” He threw the end of his cigar out into the ditch. “And if she did get stuck in something like that, dreaming special dreams or what have you, it would be that much worse for her when Robert Owens decides to move on. It’s not what we want for her.”

  George hadn’t thought of this. What would he do if buying dreams took Evie away from them? If she couldn’t stop, would she follow the dream peddler when he left? He shook the thought away.

  “You know, Robert Owens was very good to me when we were out looking for Ben. He walked with me, and . . .” George decided to go ahead and confess. “He gave me a dream, too, free of charge.”

  Samuel whistled a long, sly whistle. “Don’t let Rose hear that. She’ll skin your hide.”

  “She already knows,” said George sheepishly. “She caught me, when I was . . . when I was drinking the dream.”

  “That’s something, isn’t it? To think of drinking down a dream like that. I never could have conceived of such a thing.”

  “He made no promises. It didn’t prove to be useful, but after Benny was found . . . I don’t know, I started thinking about it. Because I did go into the water—in this dream I had. Not into the bay, but there was a river, and I was chasing after this beautiful glowing woman who was like a kind of ghost or . . . a water sprite or something. I’m sure it’s nonsense. We did worry about whether he had gone down there, and I told Evie no, he would never do that, because I thought he knew better. . . .”

  George felt his throat clamp around the last words, while his fingers slowly turned their unwanted cigar. “Maybe it all just got mixed up, somehow, in my head.”

  “Well, I’ve heard plenty about Owens from my patients, I can tell you that,” said Sam, chasing off George’s heavy silence. “All kinds of dreams, all kinds of crazy nonsense. Seems this man and his potions are all anyone can talk about lately, at least to me.”

  He turned the wheel. “‘Dr. Whiting,’ they’ll say, ‘you would not believe the dream I bought from that man. I was crossing the Arabian Desert in a long caravan with camels and elephants, and then a giant whale was beached there even though there was no ocean for miles around. And then a row of monkeys began to dance across the sand, and they were blowing horns, too, and waving flags. . . .’”

  He humphed not quite a laugh at his own retelling. “I don’t listen that closely, tell you the truth. What all kind of dreams they want . . . well, it doesn’t concern me. I tell them that’s wonderful and to go ahead and enjoy it, know why? Because people who have good dreams are more content with their life, and those kind of people don’t call for my services as often. Don’t know why exactly that should be, but it is. No harm in having a little fun in your sleep, I say. But Rose . . . well, Rose, she’s dead set against Evie getting into all that. And I don’t suppose Evie’d want to waste your money on it either.”

  “I don’t know what it costs. He never charged me.”

  “I can imagine. There’s a good price for that kind of thing. It can’t be too much or people won’t pay no matter how great they think it might be. Or if they do pay once, they’ll judge it harshly and they won’t come back again. Can’t charge too much. But it has to be just enough to convince ’em it must be something special.”

  “Well, I don’t know if you can put a fair price on magic, though, can you? Seems like he’s got something in him. I don’t know how else he does it.”

  Finally George put the cigar he did not really want to his lips and sucked in. He’d accepted it to be polite, but he never was very good at smoking a cigar properly. He wanted to breathe it all in, didn’t understand how to take a shallow taste of it into his mouth without letting it all down to his lungs, where it made you queasy. George only knew how to breathe one way, big and deep. So he always felt a bit sick trying to enjoy one of Sam’s cigars with him after supper.

  Then S
am asked him, “So it surprised you a little that Ben would have gone out on the bay? When spring was near and he knew he couldn’t trust the ice?”

  George thought a moment. “Well, I don’t know if ‘surprised’ is the right word. I was disappointed, and then I was angry. Because it needn’t have happened, you know. We thought he knew. We’ve told him however many times. He wasn’t a real small lad. Didn’t wander out in the morning like a tot when we should have had the door barred. We thought we could trust him to have more sense. And he didn’t, and now I can never forgive myself, and Evie can’t either. Senseless. I can’t see the sense of it.”

  Sam nodded, but he was already onto some other idea.

  “Do you ever think it strange . . . that Robert Owens should have shown up in town the very morning Ben went missing?”

  George looked at him, eyes wide.

  “I guess I didn’t know it was the same morning, not the very same. We heard of him because Violet told Evie he wanted to help us, with the search. We never knew exactly which day he was at Violet’s house. I never thought of it.”

  “Well, it’s a funny thing, but it turns out it was the same. Violet mentioned what day to me when she came to me about her rheumatism. She remembered the day, and she put it together. Evie said something to her about thinking Robert might have been sent here to us, or some such nonsense. Like he showed up the same time providentially, because he could help her.”

  “Did she say that? She say providence, did she?”

  “Oh, I don’t know if it was that word exactly. Just that she seemed to think there might be some reason.”

  George turned away then, hoping his profile would betray less of his surprise. He didn’t know that Evie had stopped in on Violet, although she told him she’d been going into town seeing different people—the Joneses, people like that. He thought it was a good idea, something to cheer her, some distraction. But he couldn’t imagine Evie saying anything about Robert Owens having been sent to them. God didn’t exist for them anymore. That was George’s understanding. He continued to go with Evie to church every week because it was what you did, not because he believed anymore that there was anyone out there to worship.

  “Boy,” was all he said when he realized he was expected to say something. “Sometimes women get silly notions, don’t they?”

  “That they do. I have not repeated what Violet said to Rose, and I’m sure you won’t either. It will cause her unnecessary worry. I’m sure Owens’s potions are harmless, but I’m not inclined to think his showing up here at such a time is a good thing. I’d just keep an eye on him, is all. I’m not sure he’ll be good for our girl.”

  “No, doesn’t seem that way, does it?” George watched the fields trundle by.

  They pulled in to the drive of the peeling Coldbrook farmhouse. Sam hopped out of the car, reached over the running board, and pulled out two fat mason jars of slithery nectarine slices, curled up together against the glass. He walked up the steps and used the bottom of one jar to tap against the door.

  Chapter 15

  Robert was hiding in the apple orchard beside the graveyard. He’d been coming out of Jenkins’s store when he caught sight of Evie Dawson heading toward him down the street. He must ask Violet to go shopping for him, he thought. He could pay her extra. Then he could never be caught inside the store, waiting to be served. When he was quite sure Evie had seen him, he darted across the road, into the apple orchard with his satchel as if he were going off for a picnic. He resisted the temptation to look back, hoping Evie would continue into the store rather than follow him. When he thought he’d gone in far enough, he sat down and waited. In fact there was nothing much in the satchel to eat, just some shaving soap and tobacco and another batch of sugar hearts to dole out to the girls. He wanted to go home to Violet’s for his dinner.

  Ahead of him the blossoming apple branches splayed out into the grassy rows, so low to the ground he was covered over with white. His scudding heart began to slow, and he felt the bark of the tree he leaned against through the back of his shirt. He imagined the roots of the tree spreading out through the ground below, drawing its water from the earth, and it calmed him. He took deep breaths that pressed his spine into the trunk.

  In the distance the whole horizon was white-petaled and trembling. Then, through the curtain, somehow with no parting of it, she was there, coming toward him. She had found the right row, the one where he huddled, and she had no trouble spotting him. It was as if he could not hope to hide from her, and all his weeks of trying had been a waste. She walked through the trees with the chalky blossoms lighting at her feet where the breeze carelessly dropped them. Even though it was the time for blossoms to loosen, it still seemed unfair against her, as if every beauty of the world must fall down around her.

  He stood up, resigned, and took a few steps forward through the grass. When she reached him, he drew breath; he wanted to speak first.

  “Mrs. Dawson, I think I know why you’ve been following me, and I have to tell you frankly, I just won’t do it. I am not going to sell anything to you. It wouldn’t be right.”

  Her pink eyelids slipped down slightly over her eyes. Her hands gathered her skirt quietly at her sides.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, wishing she’d go away. “I can’t give you any dreams of your son.”

  At that she looked up at him, reading his face.

  “I think you misunderstand me, Mr. Owens,” she said. “I do want something from you. . . . I’ve been trying to ask you for weeks, but it’s not dreams I want. I was only hoping you could give me something that would make me stop dreaming of him.”

  Robert stared as if he could not comprehend.

  “Sleep is hard on me,” she said. “Every night he is alive, and every morning he dies again. It makes me wish I didn’t have to sleep. And I thought you might have something I could use for that. I’d really rather not have any dreams at all. If I didn’t, maybe then I could stand the waking up.”

  Robert put a hand to his face and palmed along his jaw, like someone who’d been slapped.

  “In that case,” he said slowly, “Mrs. Dawson, I think I can help you.”

  * * *

  * * *

  “Did you lie to me, Evie?”

  She turned from where she stood at the sink scrubbing the supper dishes, hands held down in the milky little pond of soap and water. She twisted like a statue, head turning full across her shoulder without her body, because if she removed her hands, they’d drip all around her.

  “What?” She tried to wait in stillness while she listened for what he would say. Listened for what came sliding under, if it were a breath of fury or fear. After so many years, she was practiced at hearing the undersides of George’s words. They were trusting, like dogs who rolled over willingly for her and exposed their bellies.

  “About the dream peddler, did you lie to me about him?”

  Evie turned back to her work and tried to think fast enough to answer without delay.

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  He couldn’t know about the orchard, could he? She didn’t even have what she’d asked for yet. Robert had agreed to meet her there again in a few days’ time. She tried to figure out if anyone could have seen them. Even if someone had, she thought, how could word have traveled to George out on the farm faster than her own feet had carried her there? It couldn’t.

  “Did I say anything about the dream peddler?” she asked.

  George sighed. It was not in his nature to peck at his wife, not to be jealous. He felt it like a fist pressing hard to his chest, trying to plunge in through the bone and reach something else.

  “You told me you weren’t interested in going to him for anything. You agreed it was all nonsense, about the dreams. But Violet Burnley was talking something about you telling her maybe he’s come here to save you. And that’s the opposite entirely.” She heard him
shuffle a step behind her. “So I was just wondering. You know I’m not the kind of man to put my foot down. Jesus, Evie, if it’s that important to you, just go on and try it. You didn’t have to lie to me.”

  Evie took a towel and dried her hands.

  “Violet Burnley? She told you what I said?”

  Evie couldn’t imagine the two of them in private conversation. It seemed so unlikely she almost laughed.

  “Not me, no. She told your father, and he thought I might want to know.”

  Evie’s mind was skittering over her memory of how many times they’d been to her parents’ the last few weeks, and it wasn’t many.

  “When did my father talk to you of this?”

  “Does it matter?”

  She fingered the edge of the towel in her hands. “No, I guess it doesn’t. But if I said that to Violet, I must have been thinking about it later on, after we talked, and just wondering . . . if maybe I was wrong.”

  She wanted to yank the conversation back from this ledge but could not figure out how to do it.

  George looked into her eyes, trying to read something in them that she would never let rise there. The gray pools had iced on him, sealed over the lights he was used to.

  He spoke quietly. “Why don’t you go ahead and get your dream, then? If anyone deserves one, it’s you. Your mother and father are worried about what might happen, and maybe they got me worried, too. But then I started thinking . . . what if you need to have your dream, to get past this? Go ahead and have it. You don’t have to tell me what you want it to be. Just have it and then . . . be done with it. Then you can forget.”

  Evie was still. “Forget what?”

  “About the dreams. The dream peddler.”

  She nodded at him, willing to let the matter rest there. There was a settling, as if she’d taken a pot of boiling water off the stove.

  * * *

  * * *

  Evie went into the forest because she felt safe there. She returned to the woods when there was nothing on her stove that needed watching, no task that couldn’t wait for her. The pile of mending nestled in its basket, and the dust paled the dark furniture, the neglected corners, while she walked out into the past. The tall trees had become a different kind of shelter. In the forest she could sit still, put herself down small and folded at the base of the towering pines. The whispers led her in there, and the world turned over, and the light disappeared from the forest floor. It rose into the treetops, while Evie felt she was watching an unbearable brightness from a safer, shadowed place.