by Brian Hodge
When they found the site they fell upon it, but slowly, twisted leaves settling to earth. He saw knotted hands buckle and extend like unnatural insects on the face of the granite. He saw the hands become smooth and sleek as praying mantises then, sentient hands, quick, delicate tendrils, antennae, to measure inscriptions with caliper precision, scanning with eye stalk fingers, gesturing faster, seeking to tap wrists, tug clothing, bend together in sightless discovery.
And, suddenly, the memory of another Saturday: six years old and wakened by a smell, the Cream of Wheat he never liked, filtering under the door to his room and a dream fresh as a new bruise inside his head. No one asked, of course, not yet, not Mama or Daddy and not Vin when he crooned Could Mars-ton come out to play today? at the back screen. But he asked himself about it, over and over during breakfast and the tentative beginnings of play by the black walnut trees in the lot, answers that were indistinguishable from questions fading in and fading out on the dim backdrop of his inexperience like the unreadable words of advice that floated up on the underside of his Magic 8-Ball when he shook it and waited for the cloudy ink to clear. The dream: he had stolen a Radio Flyer wagon from Vin's double garage, had compounded the sin by hiding it under twiggy mulch at the edge of the graveyard where he was forbidden to play. Noon came and Vin was called home for lunch, untold. Then, scuffling over unearthed roots, a stripped bamboo stick for a sword in his jeans loop, about to be called in for soup and sandwich himself, Marston felt a need to run after Vin, tell him, apologize for the transgression. But how stupid Vin would think him, and Vin's mother and sister Nancy; they would courteously ignore him as always, reaching over his head to stack dishes or retrieve the wash from the service porch sink. How were you supposed to apologize for a dream? Mama talked with Uncle Ralph and Uncle Harold after supper sometimes about something like that, he knew, and he heard them in the driveway, through the kitchen window, and Daddy had had to meet over the dining room table with a man he was sure Daddy had never seen before about something like that, and silly Aunt Frances still brooded with Mama in the hall about Eddie Who Had Been In The War and when was he going to come over and make up for the way he had cursed her at Dentoni's? and Mama had told her Hush, it was only a dream, and Aunt Frances had said What do you mean, only a dream? You know what's right and wrong, Mabel, and Mama had said You know better than that, Fran, in that righteous way of hers, You know it doesn't work both ways, it never has and Marston had known that that had something to do with it, too. So that when Mama finally called for him out the back door, and he did not answer because he couldn't yet, because he had not told Vin, which he couldn't do, he ran—not to the back door and not across the street to Vin's but away from both, lighting out across town in what turned out to be the direction of the Plunge; and then the rest of it. And he felt something close to that now, here at the edge of the graveyard: he wanted to leave, to go back, something was not right and what he saw upset him, and yet he could not go, not yet, fascinated as he was by the sight of the two mysterious figures hugging a tombstone, something he had not seen or ever even dreamed of before.
And so he ran away from both choices, not toward home and not across the cemetery. He headed off across town in a direction he did not want to have to think about.
"Ol' Marston's got the graveyard blues again," said Joseph when they came into the kitchen.
"Marston," said Mama.
She did not glance up from the fryers on the drain board but continued to lay out the cut-up pieces, gazing at them as if they were somehow objects of pity. The smell of burnt pinfeathers lingered.
"Here, now, you gave your…" mama such a scare, Grandma almost said, but he was no longer a child, though she still spoke of his "going out to play" when he left the house to go into the arbor or to tend the bantams, to sit next to the coops. "You are hungry?" asked Grandma.
"What a question, Karen," said Joseph.
"I…hope you're not planning to go out tonight," said Mama, not turning.
"Your mama wants to talk to you," said Grandma. "Here, a piece of French twist with butter. Go and sit now."
"Oh, Mama," said his mother.
"Mabel, Mabel," said Joseph in his loud voice, which always seemed out of place in the breakfast nook, "don't hover over the boy, will you? For God's sake. Right, Marty?"
"I'm not going anyplace," offered Marston.
Later, after supper, dishes more or less done and drying on the white tiles and Marston tipped back against the wall in his chair, his ear next to the radio on the telephone stand, Mama hung up her apron and left the kitchen. That surprised him. He leaned forward to the table and listened to her footsteps leaving the kitchen linoleum, onto the carpet in the hall, the floor heater grille screaking when she walked on it, the voices from the dining room louder, then muffled again as the door swung shut after her, pulling a thin cloud of cigar smoke in around him.
He did not hear her coming back down the hall, only the sudden flurry of low conversation as the door swung open again.
Mama, wielding a heavy, oversized book, squeezed into a chair on the other side of the table. She positioned the book on the tablecloth. It looked to be an old heirloom. She smoothed her hands, reddened from the sink, over the padded cover, at the same time studying her son's face until he could no longer avoid looking back.
"How much longer is it till your birthday? Marston, can you tell me?"
"Oh, you know, Mama."
"I want you to tell me," she said.
He could not read her expression. At least she was not angry in that way that made him ashamed. "I'm gonna be sixteen day after tomorrow. Monday," he said, a little proudly, and felt a little embarrassed about it. To change the subject he tried, "Is that Grandma's Bible?"
Her eyes focused through him. "Something like that," she answered. "And I'm not being sacrilegious." She considered opening the book. "Sixteen years old. Already," she said softly; and he realized the subject had not changed after all.
He sat straight, feeling tall, and tried to talk to her in a matter-of-fact way. "What book is it?" he said, pushing grains of salt into the white tablecloth. "Mama?" he added, and then realized that his voice had cracked and that it was no use.
He folded his hands and waited.
She was ready to say something, he knew, but was trying to put it off, at the same time trying not to back away from it. She propped her elbow on the table edge and held her chin in her hand with controlled casualness, lifting the heavy cover with her other hand.
"It's such a shame you never knew your grandfather." Then she said, "He would have been able to talk to you."
The book fell open. Marston caught a glimpse of pressed letters written in broad, faded fountain pen script.
"This was his Book, the first one. He carried it with him all through the War. The others, the family Books, we started after he came home."
Marston tilted his head sideways to show interest.
"He was in the Infantry. He and Mama came over from the old country in nineteen, oh, nineteen-eleven, yes, see here? And he joined the service, of course, when war broke out. He was a very striking man…my dad."
When she said "my dad" her lip began to move, but she held it tight with her hand. Marston fidgeted, reached out tenuously and raised other pages. "May I see?"
The pages he lifted were filled with handwriting; and now he felt unease because it was not what he thought; it was not a Bible and it was not a scrapbook.
To speak, to say something to get her past tears, because he would not be able to do or say anything once she started but would have to sit quietly, eyes averted, he said, "Is it your—is it Grandfather's diary?"
"It was his Book," she said in a forced sing-song, "his Dream Book. But I suppose you know about the Dream Books, don't you?" and it sounded almost like a gentle accusation. At last he made the connection. He had seen the others, quickly, once, at their bedroom door: Daddy had been putting the large black volume in on top of the stack in the cedar chest,
had turned his head, said Yes, Marry? Can I help you? with a false calmness, something he never said at home, and then he turned back to twist the key in the Yale padlock, missing it the first time.
"Your grandfather was…a very special man. You've heard me talk about him before, but I only wish you had known him."
Shifting to another level, her voice picked up. Marston had the feeling she was not talking to him, not quite.
"He…" and here she shut her eyes so, as if seeing a scene she had rehearsed many times over the years thrust now suddenly before her, no putting it off this time, "…he recorded every dream he had, starting over there, and then, back home, here, and for a while Mama shared it with him, but then he gave her her own Book… And Ralph, Uncle Ralph and Uncle Harold, and I had one, too, we all did, with my name on it. When Aunt Frances and Aunt Marcella joined our family, and Bill—Daddy—then they were given…"
She was getting at something—why wouldn't she say it? He blinked faster, then kept his eyes closed a second, two seconds; her outline, the hair, the reading glasses flashed in relief on his eyelids. He knew she wanted something from him and he had been trying to give it, he always did for her when she asked and when she didn't, if he could guess, but now he was not sure. He smelled night-blooming jasmine through the window screen, masking the wind from the slough, and cigar smoke.
"What about the dreams, Mama?" He felt a burning in his eyes, and he said, "What do you want me to do? I mean," and here he made a jump, hoping he was not going too far, "I know you want me to tell about what I dream at night—but what for? Mama, what for?" Then, retreating slightly, seeing her eyes again, the glasses coming off, the fingers rubbing, "Is it a game I have to learn, is that it?" Foolish, that was a foolish thing to say.
"It's no game, Marty."
Joseph, standing there how long? The cigar smoke. Marston looked up. Joseph was not smoking, he was not allowed to smoke in the kitchen, but it was in his clothes, in his breath.
Her eyes held on Marston. "We're having a talk, Joseph."
"I say you ought to out and tell him, if you're going to. One way or the other, Mabel. You've got the boy so he doesn't know whether he's coming or going."
"We," and she backed off a bit, he could hear it, "we were having a talk, Marston and I. About…about the way he's been spending his afternoons."
Joseph tucked his shirt in over his belly. His fly was unzipped a third of the way, as always.
"What's she trying to tell you, son? That it's picture albums and good old stories? That's not what it's about. You read it careful. Trenches and blood. That's right. And your grandfather Stolberg watching a man die that didn't have to, his best buddy it was, now get that. You see? It didn't have to happen, wouldn't've if he'd been able to understand the dreams back then."
Mama cleared her throat.
Joseph's big hand clasped him firmly at the back of the neck, as though to hold him from running.
I'm not trying to run away, he thought. Was he? He kept looking to his mother. No, it wasn't true; he only went there to get away, to think, to know what to say, to come up with something Mama, something all of them would want to hear.
"Now, Joseph," she said.
"You like being part of this family, don't you, Marty?' asked Joseph.
Marston, his face burning, lowered his head.
"Well everybody pulls his load here," Joseph began lecturing. "Your daddy—"
"Uncle, I'm trying…"
"—And your granddaddy, they pulled their fair share—more. Nils, he taught us all. So there'd never be any more hurt. And there hasn't been, let me—"
"Uncle!"
Her voice struck the close walls, the tiles. Out on the other side of the sill a cricket stopped in mid-chirp; even the talk in the dining room seemed to pause.
She pushed up out of her chair. Then, her hands locked at her waist, she said, "Whatever I'm trying to explain to Marston…whatever…I'll do it in my own time, and in my own way. What is best for my boy. If you please!"
Joseph stopped himself, mumbled, shook his head, ran a glass of water, touched it to his mouth, poured it down the drain and walked loudly back to the other room.
She sat down.
The sounds of the evening returned slowly, and after time passed she said gently, "Why don't you…you can go to your room now, honey. Or you can look at television. I don't think anyone else is in the living room yet." She had one hand curved over her eyes. "But what am I saying? You're not a baby anymore."
She glanced up, her eyes red. He wanted to stop playing with the salt shaker and touch her arm or her hand but could not.
He said, "I guess I'd like to hear about—about Granddad."
She studied him tiredly.
"There's nothing for you to worry about, Marston. I've never fibbed to you, have I?" She tried to smile. "I want you to stop worrying about it."
"Yes, Mama."
She took a breath and her eyelids fluttered. "I don't want you to worry about anything. Honey, all you have to do for now is this….I want you to start keeping a Dream Book of your own. Use your school notebook if you like until I can get you a good one. That's all. It's just something everyone in this house does. I was waiting for your father to speak to you but he's, well, Daddy's not very good at talking to you, you know that. It was really always my duty, though, because it started with my dad."
She waited, watching him. "Look, I know. You can use the tape recorder I promised you for your birthday, if you like, for the time being. You may as well have it now. If it makes it easier."
"But," he began uncertainly, "but when you told me to start remembering my dreams, remember? I asked you if—if the others would have to hear, too. And you didn't answer. You didn't. Why not? Will they?"
"Well, we don't all sit around and talk about each other's dreams. It's not like that. You see, honey, I wanted you to tell just me at first, so you could get used to it. You have to get the hang, and it takes patience, I know. You have to learn how to wake up gradually, so you keep a thread of it to hold onto, and then you follow the thread back in, this is the way I like to think of it, back in, so you don't lose the whole thing. You have to keep the gist of it, that's what counts."
Marston turned in his chair.
"But I didn't answer your question, did I? You know what else? I think it would be all right if, well, if you just let me listen to your tape recorder in the mornings, after you're through, and then I could, I could explain to the others, tell them what it was about. That way they wouldn't have to listen, or even read it, if you didn't want them to. At least not at first. I'll ask Grandma, but I think it will be all right. How does that sound?
"Because, don't you see, they all, we all have to know something about it. And then, oh, we can talk it over, have a kind of meeting. You know those times when everyone goes into the other room after breakfast, while you're out to pl—outside? Well, that's when we have our meetings. That's the way it's always been. We single out any messages that we think we ought to act on as a family, and then your Uncle Ralph or Uncle Harold, whoever's the Head that week, they decide what would be the right thing to do. This week it's your Uncle Harold."
The after-dinner talk in the dining room grew louder again. He could imagine them talking about his dreams, what they would say if they really knew: how they would laugh, the way the men guffawed and the women made their shocked sound when Joseph told one of his stories about the time he was a salesman. He knew, and imagining made him feel knotted inside, the way he felt on the last Sunday night of summer vacation when he knew he would have to start school again in the morning.
"Marston."
When she said his name like that he knew there was something more, and that it was something he would as soon not have to hear.
"I really did want to talk to you about that other, too."
"About what?" he asked warily.
"It is a point I think we ought to clear up, don't you? You know, it really isn't very nice the way Uncle Jos
eph has to go out looking for you in his car like that after school."
"I do all my chores in the morning."
"I know, honey, but why do you want to go out to that place? It is consecrated ground, after all, and private property…"
"There's no sign."
"Yes, but I'm sure they don't want strangers just wandering around in there. It isn't something that decent people do."
"I don't go there very much."
"Marston…"
"Well, not every day. Nobody says I go there every day."
"But why go at all? You have such a good mind, and there are so many interesting things you could be doing, instead of…"
"I just go there sometimes to be alone."
"But you can be alone right here. You have your own room."
A soreness started in his throat.
"Do you go there to meet someone, is that it? Some friends you don't want to bring home? You know, if they're decent young people…"
"I never see anybody. Except for—"
Just then chairs creaked and the men stood up on the thin rug in the dining room. Loud voices and then the men came out, thumping the swinging door, and followed each other through the kitchen to the service porch and out the screen door to the backyard.
Marston didn't look up.
"Who are they, Marston?" she said after the men passed through.
"That's just Daddy," he tried lamely, wishing it hadn't come up, "and Uncle—"
"You know what I'm talking about, young man."
He gave up. "I don't know!" he said too loudly. "I don't know who they are. Just some people. I didn't talk to them—I don't talk to anybody. They are just two people, they were wearing all black and they walked funny. Like they couldn't see, or something."