Dream Wheels

by Richard Wagamese

  They wanted him to move. They wanted him to make small excursions down the hallway. He almost laughed. All his life he’d been able to envision his body doing the things he asked it for beforehand, like a dream, a vision, a prophetic glimpse, so that when he swung into the motion it looked like second nature to those watching. They called him a natural, and he supposed there was some truth to that. But in the bed, staring at the crutches and being incapable of seeing himself perform the feat of humping down the hallway, however slowly, he felt nothing natural about his body at all. The crutches were symbols of how far he’d fallen, and he wanted nothing to do with them.

  The sun climbed higher on the wall and he watched it, remembering how he’d loved the light of morning on the ranch. It never failed to give him a sense of melancholy so deep in the bones that he could swear purple was a feeling. He’d loved sitting on the porch in the early morning, enjoying a coffee and watching the tricks of the light as it broke over everything. It was an old light, ancient and powerful, rich with stories, and sometimes he believed it spoke to him. There was a voice in the cackle of the ravens, the wacky wobbled call of the loons, the hushed whisper of the breeze and the soft moan of cattle. It was a voice he recognized but couldn’t put a name to. The Indian in him, he reckoned. The Indian in him heard all of that and it reminded him of something gone but not forgotten, something in the background of everything he knew, something relevant to everything but remaining unseen, unheard except for fleeting moments in mornings when the quiet peeled back slowly to allow it a vague undertone, a beckoning he assumed was something of the Sioux and the Ojibway spirit of things moving through all of it, himself included. He never told anyone that. It was hardly the kind of thing you could bring up in a back-lot conversation with men who were three-quarters grit and one-quarter gumption. But he’d always loved the cool edge of the air and the look of the sky in the early mornings.

  This morning was different.

  It was the crutches. In his mind he could picture the ride and he could pinpoint the exact moment when he lost it. He could feel the separation between the bull and the seat of his pants and he knew that one slight twist of his trunk the opposite way had caused it. One fraction of an inch to recover balance, a smidgen, a tad. That’s what this boiled down to. Nothing big. No huge, looming mistake. Just a point of the shoulder the wrong way. His whole world had spun on a small twist. That’s what the crutches represented.

  Then there was the arm. The arm lay limp in a sling across his chest. With every ounce of strength he could summon Joe Willie could not get the arm to move. He could raise the shoulder some but the elbow wouldn’t bend, and even though he could flex the hand and wrist there was no way he could raise it.

  “Fucking thing,” he muttered. It lay in the sling like it was boneless, rubbery, wet with weight, limp.

  He closed his eyes and saw the ride. He watched it unroll like a slow-motion replay in his mind. He could feel every downward slam, every crazy, sudden elevation and every dervish of a spin in his hips, his neck, butt, thighs and back. Everywhere but the arm. He saw it then, saw the break happen, saw the bull kick out with the rear legs high and powerful, the opposite direction its shoulders were pointed, saw himself make a slight turn with his shoulders to adjust and felt the air slip under his seat like a hand, lifting him, removing him, disengaging him. Then it became a series of snapshots. He saw his legs shoot out to find the shoulders of the bull again, saw himself lean forward to try to find the pocket, saw the air slip open like a door beneath him and then the pop, the release, the spin out of the safety zone. He saw the whirl of the world then, the lights, the crowd, the scramble of the bull fighters, and felt the awful strain at the shoulder, felt it like a searing jet of flame, and he saw himself grimace mightily, face pointed toward the arena roof, mouth agape, pinioned to the bull by the suicide wrap, frozen there, and he snapped his eyes open.

  He put his good hand to his mouth and leaned against the side rail of the bed, staring at the blank face of the wall and imagining himself staring out across the pasture to the mountains in the near distance, craving that, needing it and breathing hard through his fingers. He wanted to cry, felt it build behind his eyes, and he squeezed his fingers against his face. Hard. He squeezed until the desire for tears went away. In its place was the hard plain of anger. He’d left something behind in the bull rigging that night. They’d carried him away on the gurney and it sat there in the tangle and coil of rope and leather calling to him. A voice, a need, the key to this emptiness he felt so completely, and it was then that he knew that all the replays in the world would never bring it back. It had been cut off as neatly as they’d cut the shredded remains of muscle from his shoulder joint. He looked at the arm like an enemy. He poked it with his finger, felt its slackness, and he set his mouth in a hard line.

  “Dead fuckin’ weight,” he said and reached for the water again.

  After about two hours Golec made the trip downstairs to let him know that Cort would be okay. Aiden nodded. Golec stood there watching him, waiting, as though Aiden would suddenly break down in teary sorrow and relief to spill the beans on hatching the robbery that Cort had ruined. Aiden let him wait. He sat studying the graffiti smudged onto the wall by burning matches and marvelled at the inventiveness. Eventually he raised his head and looked at Golec, who leaned against the opposite wall.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Just wondering how you felt about your buddy, that’s all.”

  “He’s not my buddy, okay? Not my winger, not my partner. I just know him.”

  “Yeah. Right. I could forget all about opposing the bail thing, you know.”

  “So?” Aiden said. “You still got nothing.”

  “There’s enough,” Golec said. “And it strikes me that anyone who had nothing to hide might do himself a big favour and get everything into the clear so he could go home.”

  “Keep fishing,” Aiden said.

  “This isn’t a game, Aiden. It’s tough business. Here’s how it’ll play.” Golec stepped closer to stare at him through the bars. “Cort’s already given you up. There’s a statement that tells all about you buying the gun, casing the store and telling Cort how the job should go down. I’ve seen kids like you pull a couple years when they’re in this deep. That’s two years, Aiden. More maybe, given the fact that a boy was shot and nearly killed.”

  “So?”

  “So? You want to waste two years? You cough up on this and I’ll speak for you myself. I know what’s been going on with your mom and you.”

  Aiden looked steadily at Golec through the bars. The cop waited for something to break in the gaze but the kid held whatever moved in him tightly and his face retained its smooth lines, a coldness that Golec recognized all too well.

  “My mom’s got nothing to do with this,” Aiden said.

  “She better,” Golec said.

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s all you got, son. When push comes to shove, no matter how this turns out, your mother is all you’re gonna have, now or after two years of time.”

  Aiden just looked at him again. Golec stood there for a moment, scratching at his chin, then turned and walked away. Aiden watched him go and for an instant almost broke, almost called his name. But he’d heard enough promises from men. He’d been lied to before about how things would be better, how things were going to be different, how life would be a dream, how the man was going to make everything that happened before go away and everything that would come after better than he’d ever known. But they all just wanted to hump his mother. He was just the lever they used to jack her into the sack. Men. All the same. All of them. Whatever happened to him he wouldn’t turn out like any of them. He watched Golec leave, watched the steel door at the end of the corridor slide heavily shut and heard the firm, unflinching click of it locking behind him. He pursed his lips. He’d push through this himself. Golec was wrong. He didn’t need anyone. He was the only one he could trust. Cort had proven that. He was the only
one solid enough to get him through it. He’d prove it. He’d say nothing. He’d take whatever came his way and he’d walk through it. But he wouldn’t break. Not to a man, not to anyone. The resolve settled in him with a firm, unflinching click.

  “I have to get out of here,” he said.

  “What’s that?” his grandmother asked.

  “I can’t be here.”

  She studied him for a long time, and he let her look right into him. When he was small it was her he’d always run to for the explanation of things. He’d never known why. She was simply the one who seemed to be the bearer of knowledge, and even though he trusted both his parents and his grandfather implicitly, the old woman was the one he went to when the world begged clarity. Now he could feel her measure him, and the level way she regarded him told him that she saw beyond the cast and bandages and the sickly austerity of the hospital room. He held her look. After a time she nodded and raised the glass to his lips, and he sipped at it while she brushed his hair back with the other hand.

  “The land,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Sight more useful to the eyes than here.”

  “A sight,” he said.

  “You won’t have the nurses running at your beck and call.”

  “Don’t beck and call ’em now.”

  “Doctors won’t be around.”

  “They’re never around now.”

  She offered a small grin. “What if there’s something you need that me or anyone can’t get for you?”

  “I’ll get it.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll get it.”

  She brushed his hair a final time and then went to the window to look out across the skyline of the city. There was desert there and mountains and somewhere off to the far western edge of them an ocean, and beyond that another vast stretch of territory she’d never visited. She let herself imagine how it all looked from space and she understood completely how he felt, like a planet impaled against a huge blackness, the light of it dependent on a distant sun that blazed unceasingly. She would be that sun. She turned back to him, and when he looked at her she nodded solemnly and he watched her gather her things together.

  “I’ll see to it,” she said.

  He humped his shoulder to find a comfortable position and let himself sink deeper into the mattress, and then sleep arrived without the help of the drug and he drifted off into space.

  The shower took some of the sting away. Claire let the hot water run over her body and felt it soothe her bruises. When she was finished she patted herself dry and made her way to the kitchen and helped herself to some of Eric’s scotch. She wanted the warmth of it. The beating had left her cold, and even the shower had failed to provide enough heat to chase the shiver she felt in her belly and along the inside of her legs. Damn. She ached, but the scotch left a trickle of fire that ran down her throat and into her belly, and she began to feel more pliant. She stepped out onto the patio and lit a cigarette and stared around at the houses that surrounded her. For the most part they were big two-storey homes with the same small swatch of grass in back that held a patio and a storage shed and the array of kids’ bikes and toys and clutter. There were families here. Inside these houses were lives that moved, swung between varied rhythms, separated and came together again like a musical theme, and she wondered how they ever held it together long enough to make a history. At times like this she felt like she had a gene missing, a vital chromosome that held the stuff of family and home and security. She’d mutated into something and someone that didn’t fit the parameters of a regulated life.

  As she smoked she envisioned all the places she’d moved through, the buildings she’d called home at one time or another, and the line went far back into her memory, into her girlhood, and she began to sense an idleness, a detachment of sorts that had never allowed her to set her feet down anywhere, feel them sink into the ground and take root. When she became a woman she was fourteen and her body had raced far ahead of her emotions. Even grown men were attracted to her, and she felt the first tingle of power that comes from a body both buxom and petite, the swells and curves of it mysterious and alluring even to her. She ran a hand along her side from the push of her breast at her ribs down the swoop of her waist and outward along the wide plain of her hips and stopped at the firm, rounded ground of her buttocks. She’d always been proud of her body, but now it felt as though it had failed her. By virtue of its very lushness it had denied her entry into the vague world of the homes that sat around her in the darkness. Men had promised. Men had undergone the process of buying them for her. Men had even abandoned homes in order to attempt to rebuild one with her.

  But there was a gene missing, and the mitosis necessary for growth into a home, a family, a history had never had a chance to begin. Instead, it felt as though she wandered to and fro mindlessly, almost like a guest in her own life, hoping someone somewhere would explain it all for her, guide her, show her the next careful plant of her foot. But no one ever had, and she’d become this beaten woman, incapable of deciding whether to stay and suffer the abuse or cut her own path and leave. She felt the absence of that gene like an old pain.

  When the phone rang she startled. She was quick to run back into the kitchen and grab it before it rang again and had a chance to wake Eric.

  “Miss Hartley?”

  “Yes.”

  “Detective Golec.”

  “Yes?”

  “We have a hearing in front of a magistrate in one hour.”

  “One hour? That quickly?”

  “Yes, I pushed it.”

  “Okay. I’ll be there.”

  “Good. Miss Hartley?”

  “Yes?”

  “Is there anything else you want to talk to me about?”

  Claire stared at her reflection in the glass of the French doors. She couldn’t see the bruises, only the outline of herself, only the shape of her body and only the memory of what that body had been through all her life. She ran a hand down her side again and breathed deeply. Her son needed her now and she would be there. That was all that mattered. She saw the keys to Eric’s Cadillac on the counter and a thick roll of bills he’d forgotten in his passion.

  “Miss Hartley?”

  She pressed her lips tight together and and reached out to grab the keys and the money and then answered Golec as deliberately as she remembered doing anything. “Yes, Detective,” she said. “There is something I want to talk to you about.”

  “Good,” Golec said. “I’ll see you in an hour.”

  “You will,” she said and hung up the phone.

  “He’s better off at the ranch.”

  The others just looked at her, waiting, it seemed, for her to flesh out the comment. But when she stood there saying nothing more they exchanged glances and rustled about some.

  “Tough getting help for him,” Birch said. “Small town and all.”

  “It just takes money. I figure we got enough of that,” Lionel said and removed his hat to sit.

  “He can have the spare room on the main floor so there’s no stairs, but if you ask me, he won’t like it,” Johanna said. “He’ll take it. At least until it angers him enough to make the moves himself.”

  “He’s a cowboy,” Birch said.

  They all looked at him and he arched an eyebrow in return and the words hung there between them.

  “Did he ask for this?” Johanna asked.

  Birch looked at her, surprised. “Does it matter?”

  “Yes, it matters,” she said, and Birch folded his arms across his chest and leaned on the wall to await her explanation.

  “If he asked for it, it means he’s yearning. Missing something. Feeling a gap he doesn’t know how to fill, and that might not sound like a lot to any of you but it’s a whole lot to me,” she said.

  “How so?” Lionel asked her.

  “Because he feels,” she said. “He hasn’t shut down everything. The anger in him hasn’t blackened everything. There’s a powerful lot
of anger in my son right now and that frightens me because I’m not sure I know how to deal with it, but the yearning tells me that there’s more in him than rage. I’ll take a little sorrow and melancholy right now. I’ll take a heap of woe over nothing now.”

  “Home’s best,” Lionel said.

  “Where it all come together,” Birch said.

  “It’s the land more than anything.” Victoria sat beside Lionel and took his hand. “It’s constant. It sits there and remains, and despite all the things we might ever do to it, it stays the same, always feels the same on your feet, the wind always a little sharper in the lungs, the smell of it richer and older than anything you ever smelled. Constant. Always makes coming back to it special.”

  “Because it’s regular,” Lionel said.

  “That and we all need a place we can come back to.”

  “He needs it to fill that gap you’re talking about,” Birch said.

  “For now,” Johanna said. “It’ll do some for now. The rest he’ll have to fill on his own when he’s ready.”

  “Or when we help him get ready,” Victoria said, and they all stared at her and the words hung there between them again. The ebb and flow of the hospital passed about them and they sat together on a short line of chairs and watched it happen. Eventually they came back into themselves and looked at each other, each wondering what the next move should be or who should tend to it.

  “I’ll see to it,” Victoria said.

  Johanna rose with her and the two women walked away toward the nursing station. Birch and Lionel watched them go, then turned and looked at each other. Birch grinned at his father and patted the chest pocket of his jacket.

  “Guess we might as well smoke,” he said.