The Dreaming Field
Page 24
“Promise…me.”
“As best I can, Simon.”
Before he slept, thoughts and images mixed with the darkness, the ambivalent desire to preserve all that had occurred, an abiding anger at it, too—subtle, old, enduring—always the underlying whisper in his life. Best not to remember. Salvation seemed to exist through forgetting such things, the difference between the orphan and the ignored child, hopelessness and possibility. Did Benjamin really think a moment of unselfish interest would do away with unfathomable, destructive whims? And weren’t there other dreaming fields, equally sad and isolated? Let Abraham sacrifice a son, prove his love to the self-absorbed, the insecure, the vengeful. Choosing the orphan made sense. When it came to God, or whatever he’d seen the day he had grabbed Benjamin’s hands, possibilities merely got in the way. The tragedy of ignored children was hope, the belief they could change the disinterested parent, alter the unalterable.
Still…
Orphans and sons have been known to be wrong.
An image of Mary Kathleen in the subway came to him: the short gray skirt, hypnotic eyeliner, hair teased and blond; Mary Kathleen, glancing at him, a shy to-herself smile. Would you stop those boys again, Simon? How ‘bout if I was old and fat and had a gross wart on my nose? Would you stop them then?
“Yes.” Simon, eyes shut, muttering this, “What’s that…got to do…with anything?”
So what’s your problem, huh? Give Benjamin and his little buddies a break. After all, you met Dora—your Dora—didn’t you? Remember her? The girl with the too short hair and the nervous face?
“—Lovely, nervous face.”
Then tell me, Simon, how bad can things be?
Sleep was overtaking his senses, the way Dora sometimes did, by an accepting touch, by a look that drank him in, by the perfect fit of her body.
He probably had a hundred answers to that one, but couldn’t recall any of them.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ron Savage received his BA, MA and doctorate from The College of William & Mary where he graduated with honors and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He has published more than 100 stories worldwide. He is the recipient of the Editor’s Circle Award in Best New Writing and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He also has been a guest fiction editor for Crazyhorse and he’s the author of the novels Scar Keeper (Hilliard & Harris), Sharing Atmosphere (Black Matrix), Cheap Meat (Damnation Books), and the short story collection Loving You the Way I Do (Black Lawrence). Some of his publications include Film Comment, the North American Review, Shenandoah, The Baltimore Review and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Visit him on the web at:
www.ronsavage.net
www.facebook.com/ron.savage2
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