The Dream Peddler

by Martine Fournier Watson

  Robert pulled in his chin. “I’m afraid that might be the price you pay for giving up the dreaming. I don’t know if it’s ever the right way. Sleeping without them.”

  “Why do you think we can sometimes remember our dreams and sometimes we forget? I’ve had dreams in my life I can remember so clearly, even years later. Do you know why?”

  He lifted a fallen leaf out of her hair. “Maybe there are some we just don’t need to remember and some we should. Some dreams that try to tell us something about ourselves, so we remember, even if we don’t understand why.”

  Evie thought for a while, turning the glass cylinder over in her hand, rolling it down one palm and then the other.

  “Do you ever make dreams for yourself?”

  “No, I never do that. I just let whatever dreams would like to come to me come in. I don’t usually remember them. Sometimes I suspect I might have dreamed of the past. Except it wouldn’t really be the past, just one that should have been. And then, when I’m awake, I don’t choose to remember that.”

  “Why do you do what you do?”

  She had put her vial into a pocket and sat now with her hands around her knees, her skirt pulling up and her waxy white calves showing themselves.

  He shrugged. “It’s a way to make a living.”

  “There are lots of ways to make a living.”

  “You think there’s some better one? Something else I should have chosen?”

  “Well, it just seems a lonely way to go through life. You never can stay anywhere very long. You’re always alone, and no one ever really has a chance to know you. Wouldn’t you like to stay in one place longer? To have friends who have known you a long time? Maybe have a family of your own?”

  He squinted up into the distance, as if he must take his answers from the breeze or find them on the faint horizon.

  “I had a family once. I had another job once.”

  “What was that?”

  “I used to be a man of God.” The look on her face made him laugh out loud. “I know, people find that hard to believe. But maybe you can believe me if I tell you I wasn’t a very good one.”

  He pulled a long blade of grass from the ground and sat rolling it thoughtfully between his palms.

  “The preaching part I was good at. I’ve always had a talent for selling things, you see. Convincing people. Charming them. The kingdom of heaven is a great idea, I think. It’s a happy idea, it’s easy to sell.”

  “Didn’t you believe in it at all?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I did, at one time. I guess I became a minister because it seemed like a good thing and I never really bothered to think the matter through.” He sighed. “I was a drunkard, Evie. Most of the time. I drank too much before I ever was ordained—I just hid it well. People thought I was gifted, joyous. But mostly I was just . . . intoxicated. The girl I was courting never saw, not until it was too late for her.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Well, she found out what it was like to live with me, once we were married. We started off happy enough, I think. But there are times when I am drinking . . . when I am not a good man. I could be mean, say mean things, and I was frightening. Many times I wouldn’t remember afterward, but often enough I would. I would apologize and cry. My wife would forgive me. She would curl into herself and wait for the next time I would be drunk.” He threw the grass blade back to its own. “I think she lived mostly in fear of me. We had a baby girl, and she was afraid of me also. She was two, last time I saw her. She had these big brown eyes. Her eyes used to fasten on me when I was across the room, like she thought if she looked away, I would change on her without warning, and maybe I did do that.”

  “Where are they now, your family?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. Still with her mother’s people, maybe. That’s where they went. There was this one night, I came home dead drunk, and I took a candle upstairs to go to bed and must have knocked it over onto the floor. Didn’t even notice. I woke up when I felt the heat and saw the window curtains blazing and the wall beginning to light. Rachel wasn’t beside me. I ran and looked into Emma’s room, and she was gone as well. I ran down the stairs and outside to find them standing a little distance from the house. Rachel was holding Emma in her arms, and Emma was staring at the roof in flames, sucking her thumb like she always did. Rachel, though, Rachel was not looking at the house. Rachel was looking at me.

  “When I got close enough to them, the fire had sobered me up quite a bit, see, and everything was clear to me then. ‘Why did you wake up?’ That’s what she said to me. ‘Why did you have to wake up?’

  “The house burned. I stumbled into the field that night and slept there. Rachel must have gone to the neighbors’ to stay. There wouldn’t have been much anyone could do about the fire but stand and watch that the church didn’t go up, too. Eventually Rachel took Emma to her mother’s house, and I did not see them again. There wasn’t anything I could do but let them go. . . . I didn’t deserve to keep them. I couldn’t ask forgiveness for a thing like that. I didn’t want any.”

  He looked into Evie’s face to see how she was taking everything, if it changed her feeling about him. He couldn’t tell what she might be thinking.

  “There is one thing I am grateful for. Emma was only two when I almost killed her—so she will never remember me.”

  For a while Evie played with the fabric of the dress bunched in her lap. “I didn’t realize you were so sad,” she said finally, looking up. “You hide your sadness very well.”

  “I don’t think it’s hidden,” he said. “But sadness isn’t really the right word for it, maybe. I’m resigned, is all. I was who I was, and I did what I did. I left it behind me because it was all I could do at the time. I like my life now. I like moving from town to town and meeting new people. And this might sound proud, but I really do think there are some people that I help. Certainly I help more people now than I ever did trying to minister to them.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Maybe not. But it’s what I believe. It’s all in our minds, everything. The past. Now. Maybe heaven. That’s what I believe in. A mind is a magic thing.”

  “And what about your soul?”

  He was looking down at his own chest, as if divining what might lie within himself.

  “I haven’t got any soul. Perhaps I did, once. When I was a child, I suppose. I can’t imagine any child without a soul. I gave it up, though. I was never true to my soul. I didn’t care for it, and it died.”

  As he was sitting right beside Evie, when he turned his head toward her, his eyes were so close to her own that she couldn’t look past them.

  “That man, you see, that man who drank and scared his own wife and child, he is still in me. He’s still in here.” He pointed to his chest. “So to answer your first question, no, I don’t really want anyone to know me. I don’t want to have friends who have always known me well. I can only be a decent man if nobody knows what I was.”

  Evie leaned forward and put her two hands on his shoulders and moved her face even nearer to his. She was so close he imagined for one dizzy moment that she might kiss him.

  “Of course you still have a soul,” she told him. “Maybe you don’t feel it anymore inside yourself, but the rest of us can see that it is still there.”

  In the east the sky had darkened, and the air growled at them, low and distant. Over her shoulder Robert studied the livid storm rising up behind the trees. From the west the sun illuminated the forest, and the trees crackled like a growing fire against smoke.

  “You’d better be getting home,” he said. “You’ve much farther to walk than I.”

  Evie stood up and brushed at her skirt.

  “Before you go,” he said, “I wanted to give you something . . . well, loan you something.”

  Evie stood, unaware of the inferno of tree
s behind her. Robert was sliding a book from his bag and holding it out to her. She took it and turned it over in her hands. It was a small volume. The Wind Among the Reeds by W. B. Yeats.

  “You told me you like to read, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” Evie said. “I don’t remember. But yes, I do like to read. Lately my concentration . . .”

  Robert shrugged. “Well, you’ll have it anyway. It’s poetry. Most of ’em really short, one page at a time. Read it if you like.”

  “Thank you,” Evie said. “Thank you, I will.”

  When she turned and saw the eerie light of the blazing trees, her breath caught, like clothing on a nail. She felt Robert watching her leave the graveyard for the road, but she didn’t turn around.

  Evie hurried home, trying to beat the storm. When she heard the sky crack from a slap of thunder overhead, she knew she was too late, and the warm rain began to fall and wiggle through her hair. She had nowhere to protect the book, so she rolled it into the front of her skirts and held it to her chest, rain streaking down the front of her petticoat until it was heavy and clinging with water.

  Running up the path to the house, she met George on the front porch, also soaking wet, and they laughed at the sight of each other.

  “What on earth are you doing with your skirt?”

  “Nothing,” Evie said quickly. “Just holding it up out of the mud.”

  She went inside, and when George was not looking, she tucked the book safely in among the others on the shelf.

  * * *

  * * *

  Toby thought about all the things he’d rather be doing, from best to worst: putting together a game of baseball behind the school . . . crowding with the fellows onto the back porch, chewing tobacco, playing cards. . . . Even getting dressed for a dance would be better, his fresh-starched collar too tight, his face red from heat and the giggling girls. . . . Even marking down inventory in the dusty storeroom would be better than this. But the Reverend Arnold had asked him to come, and there was simply no way to refuse.

  The minister himself answered the door after Toby knocked, and ushered him into the front room. Toby had never been inside the manse, and he thought it seemed quite fine. The furniture was worn, but the walls were all hung with paintings, and Toby admired them. They gave like windows onto warm, glowing scenes of mountain waterfalls and sheep in the pasture. And he had never in his life seen so many books all in one place—rows and rows of them, leather spines stamped in gold. Toby could not imagine reading this many books in one lifetime, even if reading were all he ever did until the end of his days. He was slow at it, and every time he’d put a sentence together, he had a hard time holding on to its meaning, remembering those words while he worked his way through the next one.

  It made perfect sense to Toby that Mr. Arnold’s room would immediately surround him with the things to make him feel nervous and small. He sat on the sofa, unknowingly in the same spot Mrs. Schumann had taken, but denting it deeper. He rubbed his hands on his knees.

  “No need to be nervous,” Mr. Arnold said. “I just thought it might be time you and I had a chat. A kind of a man-to-man chat.”

  Toby could feel himself sliding forward down the slick horsehair. He braced his big feet firmly against the floor. “All right,” he said. Mr. Arnold had cornered him as he left the church last Sunday but had given him no idea what he wanted. Toby could not remember ever having a conversation alone with the minister. He could remember only standing awkwardly silent with his parents in the yard after service or sitting silently when Mr. and Mrs. Arnold came for supper. He didn’t think he’d ever been alone with the Reverend Arnold, ever, even for a few minutes.

  “My boy, I’d like to talk with you about Mr. Owens.”

  Toby looked away from the books. “The dream peddler?”

  “The very same. This town is a small place, as you know. I sometimes think it must seem very small to a young man your age.”

  Toby considered. He’d never thought of the town, with its long dirt roads and its outlay of vast swaying fields, as small. To him it felt like an endless stretch of land and work, bordered only by the pale, low sky and the bay. He didn’t know how to answer Mr. Arnold, but it didn’t matter.

  “It’s natural,” the minister went on, “to look for some kind of adventure, a little something more. Even a kind of escape, if you will.”

  If he would? Toby had no idea what the reverend was driving at, but he did not like to ask. He sat patiently instead.

  “I’ve heard some talk . . . that is, I’d like for you to answer me honestly here. Have you been going to the dream peddler? Buying dreams?”

  Toby’s hands rubbed his knees again. “Well, I—”

  “And your friends? Have they been buying dreams also?”

  “Yes, I think so, sir.”

  “What I mean is, these dreams . . . there are . . . girls in them? Ladies?”

  Toby dropped his eyes. “Oh. Yes.”

  “Aha. Toby, it seems to me this kind of patronage needs to stop.”

  “Sir?”

  “I don’t think it’s right for Mr. Owens to come into this town and corrupt young people such as yourself. Do you understand? There are certain things you are not ready for, things you should know nothing about. Because although you may feel like a man, and you may have certain feelings . . . you are not. You have not fully become a man, and I believe this kind of indulgence—such dreams, as it were—can only serve to delay the coming of your full maturity.”

  “Yes?”

  “There are things a man should not know until he is married. Do you understand?”

  “Oh. Yes, I think so.” Toby shifted uncomfortably.

  “Now, I’m not trying to accuse you of anything. But my concern is with . . . the moral nature of such a dream. The sheer wrongness. I’m concerned with your immortal soul, the part of you that will abandon these . . . desires of the body in what is a comparatively short amount of time, if we take the long view. If one is thinking of eternity.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I know this must be . . . embarrassing. But you must be perfectly honest with me. Is it true that you and your friends have been buying dreams in order to . . . satisfy . . . certain corporeal urges?”

  “Sir?”

  Mr. Arnold looked exasperated. But his words were so strange, so slippery, that Toby couldn’t grasp them to get at their meaning.

  “What I’m asking is, have you been using the dreams to take care of certain urges of your body?”

  Toby was now past embarrassment. He was beginning to feel worried. He felt bad, and guilty. He could not lie.

  “Yes sir.” He stared into his lap. “I’m afraid that’s the truth.”

  Mr. Arnold sat back. “Well done, Tobias. I appreciate your honesty. You should know you can always come to me with these things, questions or problems. Even when you feel you can’t tell anyone else . . . especially then. I hope you’ll remember I’m always here, and I would never judge you. I leave that to God.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It’s important that you know,” Mr. Arnold went on, “even though these urges may be . . . natural, it’s still up to us to . . . control them. To give them the right shape. God gave us these desires so that we might know the blessed union of marriage and the beautiful miracle of children. But these feelings . . . they are only intended for that. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now that we have established the truth of the matter, it’s my duty to caution you, to guide you. This kind of indulgence, with you and your friends . . . it’s wrong. There’s really no way around that. For example, when you’re dreaming your dreams, have you ever found that you know . . . do you ever recognize the . . . the objects of your affection?”

  “Sir?”

  “The girls, Toby, the young ladies. Are any o
f them residents of this town? Friends, neighbors?”

  “Oh. Well, not usually.”

  This was close enough to the truth, but Toby was growing increasingly uneasy. He thought of his dreams of Mrs. Dawson and how much he cherished them. He wondered if Mr. Arnold could possibly read his mind. If maybe God, and not only the town gossip, had been whispering in the minister’s cauliflower ear.

  “Consider this: if you have a dream, or a fantasy, about a young woman of your acquaintance, then you have done her wrong. You have disrespected her, used her. It’s very important you see this. A man who can’t control himself, his body and mind, is a danger to us all.”

  Toby was nodding hard. “I understand, sir.”

  “I’m sure you remember the Tenth Commandment.”

  As he seemed to be waiting for Toby to say it, Toby looked down and started his lips moving, silently counting them off on his fingers. Mr. Arnold soon lost patience with him.

  “Thou shalt not covet. And this applies to your neighbor’s wife, but also to everyone you know.”

  Toby hadn’t thought of this. How could he have forgotten? Mrs. Dawson was his neighbor’s wife, and he had been dreaming about her right along as if it didn’t matter who she belonged to. He felt a deep roiling in his stomach. His conscience must have been asleep in there, but now it had woken. Toby felt himself blinking, and he tried to listen as carefully as he could to the rest of Mr. Arnold’s words.

  * * *

  * * *

  “I’ve always wanted to ask you . . . how did you ever discover what you could do? Whatever gave you the idea of selling dreams?”

  Evie had taken off her boots and stockings and was working her bare toes through the cool grass.

  Robert smiled at her. “You are the first person ever to ask me that.”

  “I find that hard to believe!”

  “It’s the truth. No one ever asks, just like no one probably ever asked a fortune-teller when exactly they knew they were seeing the future. Does it have something to do with believing in me, I wonder? If you don’t look too closely at a card trick, then it will seem like magic.”