Keeper of Dreams

by Orson Scott Card

  “To tell you the truth, Mrs. Wilcox, I never figured myself that way, either. But I don’t want to leave.”

  “Is it Douglas Spaulding? Are you in love?”

  “I used up love a dozen years ago, Mrs. Wilcox, and I haven’t looked to recharge the batteries since then.”

  “You mean to tell me you been without a man for twelve years?”

  “I thought we were talking about whether I was in love.”

  “No such thing.” Minnie looked her up and down. “I’ll bet you didn’t wear a bra during the bra-burning days, did you?”

  “What?”

  “Your chest has dropped so low you could almost tuck ’em into your belt. I don’t know what a man would find attractive about you anyway.”

  It was such an insulting, outrageous thing to say that Rainie was speechless.

  “You can stay, as long as you don’t call me Mrs. Wilcox, that just drives me crazy, call me Minnie.”

  Things went right back to normal, mostly because Douglas Spaulding didn’t come in again for more than a week, and when he did come back, he wasn’t alone. He was part of a group of men—most of them in suits, but not all—who came into the café walking on the balls of their feet like dancers, like running backs. “You’re all full of sass,” said Minnie to one of the men.

  “Time to feed the baby!” he answered.

  Minnie rolled her eyes. “I know. Jaynanne Spaulding’s gone out of town again.”

  “Dougie’s Christmas present to her—a week with her folks up in Racine.”

  “Present to himself,” said Minnie.

  “Taking care of the kids for a solid week, you think that’s a picnic?”

  “Those kids take care of themselves,” said Minnie. “Douglas Spaulding’s just a big old kid himself. And so are you, Tom Reuther, if you want my opinion.”

  “Minnie, honey, nobody ever has time to want your opinion. You give it to us before we even have a chance to wish for it.”

  Minnie held up a ladle of her Cincinnati chili. “You planning to eat your lunch or wear it, Tom?”

  One of the other men—a mechanic, from the black stains on his overalls—piped up from the two tables they had pushed together in the middle of the room. “He’s already wearing every bit of food you ever served him. Can’t you see it hanging over his belt?”

  “Under my belt or over it, Minnie, I wear your food with pride,” said Tom. Then he blew her a kiss and joined the others.

  Douglas was already sitting at the table, laughing at nothing and everything, just like the others. He really did seem to be just a big old kid right then—there was nothing of the father about him now. Just noise and laughing and moving around in his chair, as if it might just kill him if he ever sat still for more than ten seconds at a time. Rainie half expected to look down and see him wearing too-short or too-long jeans with holes in the knees, showing one knee skinned up and scabbed over, and maybe raggedy sneakers on his feet. She was almost disappointed to see those shiny sensible oxfords and suitpants with the hems just right. He didn’t not look at her, but he didn’t particularly look at her, either. He was just generally cheerful, being with his friends, and he had plenty of good cheer to share with anybody who happened to come along.

  “You going to order separate checks and make my life miserable?” asked Rainie of the group at large.

  “Just give the bill to Doug,” said Tom.

  “You can make one total and we’ll divvy it up ourselves,” said Douglas. “It’ll be easy, because we’re all having exactly the same thing.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Beans!” cried Tom.

  “Beans! Beans! Beans!” chanted several of the others.

  “We gots to have our daily beans, ma’am,” Tom explained, “cause we gots to feed the baby of love!”

  “I got a double batch of chili with extra cinnamon!” called Minnie from behind the counter. “This time somebody had the brains to call ahead and warn me!”

  Tom immediately pointed an accusing finger at Douglas. “What is this, Spaulding! A sudden attack of maturity and consideration for others? Malicious foresight? For shame!”

  Douglas shrugged. “Last time she ran out.”

  “Chili for everybody,” said Rainie. “Is that all? Nothing to drink?”

  “What is the drink of the day?” asked one of the men.

  “Whose turn is it anyway?” asked another.

  “Tom’s turn,” said Douglas.

  They turned toward him expectantly. He spread his hands out on the table, and looked them in the eye, as if he was about to deliver the state of the union address. Or a funeral prayer. “Seven-Up,” said Tom. “A large Seven-Up for everybody.”

  “Are you serious?” asked Douglas. “And what’s for dessert, toothpaste?”

  “The rule is no alcohol at lunch,” said Tom, “and beyond that we’re free to be as creative as we like.”

  “You’re giving creativity a bad name,” said Douglas.

  “Trust me,” said Tom.

  “If all we get today is Seven-Up,” said the mechanic, “you are going to spend the entire evening as primordial slime.”

  “No, he’s going to spend the night in hell,” said another.

  At the soda machine, spurting the Seven-Up into the glasses, Rainie had to ask. “What in the world are they talking about?”

  “It’s a game they play,” said Minnie. “It’s notorious all over town. More satanic than Dungeons and Dragons. If these boys weren’t so nice they’d probably be burnt at the stake or something.”

  “Satanic?”

  “Or secular humanist or whatever. I get those two things mixed up. It’s all about feeding beans to the baby and when you win you turn into God. Pagan religion and evolution. I asked Reverend Blakely about it and he just shook his head. No wonder Jaynanne leaves town whenever they play.”

  “Aren’t you going to serve up the chili?”

  “Not till they’re through with whatever nonsense they do about the drinks.”

  Rainie loaded the drinks onto the tray and headed back to what she was now thinking of as the Boys’ Table. Whatever it was that Douglas Spaulding and his friends had turned into, it was suddenly a lot more interesting to her, now that she knew that at least some groups in the town disapproved of it. Evolution and paganism? It sounded like it was right up her alley.

  She started to load off the glasses at each place, but Tom beckoned to her frantically. “No, no, all here in front of me!” With one arm he swept away the salt and pepper shakers, the napkin dispenser, the sugar canister, and the red plastic ketchup bottle. “Right here, Miss Ida, if you don’t mind.”

  She leaned over Tom’s left shoulder and set down the whole tray without spilling a drop from any of the glasses. Before she stood up, she glanced at Douglas, who was right across from Tom, and caught him looking down the neck of her dress. Almost immediately he looked away; she didn’t know whether he knew she saw him looking or not.

  My boobs may have sagged a little, Minnie, but I still got enough architecture to make the tourists take a second glance.

  There were other customers, but while she was dropping off their orders she kept an eye on the Boys’ Table. Tom had been creative, after all—he had packets of Kool-Aid in his suitcoat pocket, and he made quite a ritual of opening them and putting a little of every flavor in each glass. They foamed a lot when he stirred them, and they all ended up a sickly brownish color.

  She heard the mechanic say, “Why didn’t you just puke in the glasses to start with and avoid the middleman?”

  “Drink, my beloved newts and emus, drink!” cried Tom.

  They passed out the glasses and prepared to drink.

  “A toast!” cried Douglas, and he rose to his feet. Everybody in the café was watching, of course—how often does somebody propose a toast at noon in a smalltown café?—but Rainie kept right on working, laying down plates in front of people.

  “To the human species!” said Douglas. “A
nd to all the people in it, a toast!”

  “Hear hear!”

  “And to all the people who only wish they were in it, I promise that when I am supreme god, you will all be human at last!”

  “In a pig’s eye!” shouted the mechanic joyously.

  “I’ll drink to that!” cried Tom, and with that they all drank.

  The mechanic did a spit take, putting a thin brown Kool-Aid and Seven-Up fog into the air. Tom must have had some inner need to top that; as he finished noisily chug-a-lugging his drink, Rainie could see that he intended to throw the glass to the floor.

  Apparently Minnie saw the same glint in his eye. Before he could hardly move his arm she screeched at him, “Not on your life, Tom Reuther!”

  “I paid for it last time,” said Tom.

  “You didn’t pay for all the lunch customers who never came back. Now you boys sit down and be quiet and let folks have their lunch in peace!”

  “Wait a minute!” cried Douglas. “We haven’t had the song yet.”

  “All right, do the song and then shut up,” said Minnie. She turned back to the chili and resumed dipping it out into the bowls, muttering all the while, “. . . drive away my customers, spitting all over, breaking glasses on the floor . . .”

  “Whose turn to start?” somebody asked.

  The mechanic rose to his feet. “I choose the tune.”

  “Not opera again!”

  “Better than opera,” said the mechanic. “I choose that pinnacle of indigenous American musical accomplishment, the love theme from Oscar Mayer.”

  The boys all whooped and laughed. The man next to him rose to his feet and sang what must have been the first words that came into his mind, to the tune of the Oscar Mayer wiener jingle from—what, twenty years ago? Rainie had to laugh ironically inside herself. After all my songs, and all the songs of all the musicians who’ve suffered and sweated and taken serious drugs for their art, what sticks in the memory of my generation is a song about a kid who wishes he could be a hot dog so he’d have friends.

  “I wish I had a friend in my nostril.”

  The next man got up and without hesitation sang the next line. “In fact I know that’s where he’d want to be.”

  And the next guy: “Cause if I had a friend in my nostril.”

  “Cheat, cheat, too close to the first line!” cried Tom.

  “Bad rhyme—same word!” said the mechanic.

  “Well what else am I supposed to do?” said the guy who sang the line. “There’s no rhyme for ‘nostril’ in the English language.”

  “Or any other,” said Douglas.

  “Like you’re an expert on Tadzhiki dialects or something,” said Tom.

  “Wastrel!” shouted the mechanic.

  “That doesn’t rhyme,” said Douglas.

  “Leave it with nostril,” said Tom. “We’ll simply heap scorn upon poor Raymond until he rues the day.”

  “You are so gracious,” said Raymond.

  “Dougie’s turn,” said the mechanic.

  “I forgot where we were,” said Douglas, rising to his feet.

  The mechanic immediately jumped up and sang the three lines they had so far:

  I wish I had a friend in my nostril,

  I know that’s where he’d really want to be,

  Cause if I had a friend in my nostril . . .

  Rainie happened to be passing near the Boys’ Table at that moment, and she blurted out the song lyric that popped into her mind before Douglas could even open his mouth:

  He could eat the boogers I don’t see!

  Immediately the men at the table leaped to their feet and gave her a standing ovation, all except Tom, who fell off his chair and rolled on the floor. The only people who didn’t seem to enjoy her lyric were Minnie, who was glaring at her, and Douglas, who stared straight ahead for a moment and then sat down—laughing along with the others, but only as much as conviviality required.

  I’m sorry I stole your thunder, Rainie said silently. Whenever I think of the perfect clincher at the end of a verse, I always blurt it out like that, I’m sorry.

  She went back to the counter and got the chili, which Minnie had already laid out on a tray. “Are you trying to make my customers get indigestion right here in the diner?” Minnie hissed. “Boogers! Eating them. My land!”

  “I’m sorry,” said Rainie. “It just came out.”

  “You got a barnyard mouth, Ida, and it’s nothing to be proud of,” said Minnie. She turned away, looking huffy.

  When Rainie got back to the table with the chili, the men were talking about her. “She got the last line, and it was a beaut, and so she’s first,” said Tom. “That’s the law.”

  “It may be the law,” said Douglas, “but Ida Johnson isn’t going to want to feed the baby.”

  “Maybe I do and maybe I don’t,” said Rainie.

  Douglas closed his eyes.

  “Dougie’s just sore because he could never think of a line to top Ida’s,” said Raymond.

  “Retarded parrots could think of better lines than yours, Raymond,” said the mechanic.

  “Retarded parrot embryos,” said another man.

  “What baby do you feed, and what do you feed it?” asked Rainie.

  “It’s a game,” said Tom. “We kind of made it up. Dougie and I.”

  “All of us,” said Douglas.

  “Dougie and me first, and then everybody together. It’s called Feed the Baby of Love Many Beans or Perish in the Flames of Hell.”

  “Greg had the idea in the first place,” said Douglas.

  “Yeah, well, Greg moved to California and so we spit upon his memory,” said Tom.

  At once everybody made a show of spitting—all to their left, all at once. But instead of actually spitting, they all said, in perfect unison, “Ptui.”

  “Come on, Ida,” said Tom. “It’s at Douglas’s house. The game’s all about karma and reincarnation and trying to progress from primordial slime to newt to emu to human until finally you get to be supreme god.”

  “Or not,” said the mechanic.

  “In which case your karma decides your eternal fate.”

  “In heaven with the Baby of Love!”

  “Or in hell with the Baby of Sorrows!”

  “I don’t think so,” said Rainie. She was noticing how Douglas didn’t seem too eager to have her come. “I mean, if Douglas’s wife leaves town whenever you play, then it must be one of those male-bonding things and I’ve never been good at male bonding.”

  “Oh, great,” said Tom, “now she thinks we’re gay.”

  “Not at all,” said Rainie. “If I thought you were gay I’d be there with bells on. The refreshments are always great at gay parties. It’s you pickup-basketball-game types who think beer and limp pretzels are a righteous spread.”

  Raymond rose to his feet. “Behold our nuncheon feast, Your Majesty,” he said. “Do we look like the beer and pretzels type?”

  “No, you actually look like the boys who always made disgusting messes out of the table scraps on their school-lunch trays.”

  “That’s it!” cried Tom. “She understands us! And she put a brilliant last line on the song. Tonight at seven, Idie baby, I’ll pick you up.”

  From the look on Douglas’s face, Rainie knew that she should say no. But she could feel the loneliness of these past few weeks in this town—and, truth to tell, of the months, the years, before—like a sharp pain within her. Being on the fringes of this group of glad friends made her feel like . . . what? Like her best days living on the street. That’s what it was. She had found the street after all. Grown up a little, most of them wearing suits, but here in this godforsaken town she had found some people who had the street in their souls, and she couldn’t bear to say no. Not unless Douglas made her say it.

  And he didn’t make her say it. On the contrary. She looked him in the eye and he half smiled and gave her a little shrug. Suit yourself, that’s what he was saying. So she did.

  “OK, so I’ll be
there,” she said.

  “But you should be aware,” said Tom, “we probably aren’t as fun as your gay friends’ parties.”

  “Naw,” she said, “they stopped being fun in the eighties, when they started spending all their time talking about who had AIDS and who didn’t.”

  “What a downer,” said Raymond.

  “Bad karma!” said the mechanic.

  “No problem,” said Tom. “That just means she’ll end up in hell a lot.”

  “Do I need to bring anything?” asked Rainie.

  “Junk food,” said Tom. “Nothing healthy.”

  “That’s Tom’s rule,” said Douglas. “You can bring anything you want. I’ll be putting out a vegetable dip.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Raymond. “Mr. Health.”

  “Mr. Quiche,” said another man.

  “Tell her what we dip in your vegetable dip, Dougie.”

  “Frankfurters show up a lot,” said Douglas. “And Tootsie Rolls. Once Tommy stuck his nose into the dip, and then the Health Department came and closed us down.”

  “Ida!” Minnie’s voice was sharp.

  “I’m about to get fired,” said Rainie.

  “Minnie can’t fire you,” said Tom. “Nothing bad can ever happen to Those Who Feed the Baby!”

  But the expression on Minnie’s face spoke eloquently about the bad things that could happen to her waitress Ida Johnson. As soon as Rainie got behind the counter with her, she whispered in Minnie’s ear, “I can’t help it that it’s at Douglas’s house. Count the chaperones and give me credit for a little judgment.”

  Minnie sniffed, but she stopped looking like she was about to put a skewer through Rainie’s heart.

  The Boys’ Table lasted a whole hour, and then Douglas looked at his watch and said, “Ding.”

  “The one-o’clock bell,” cried Tom.

  Raymond whistled between his teeth.

  “The one-o’clock whistle!”

  And in only a few moments they had their coats on and hustled on out the door. They might act like boys for an hour at noon, but they were still grown-ups. They still had to get back to work, and right on time, too. Rainie couldn’t decide if that was sad or wonderful. Maybe both.

  By the time Rainie’s shift was over, Minnie was her cheerful self again. Whether that meant that Minnie trusted her or she had simply forgotten that Rainie was going to feed the baby with the boys tonight, Rainie was glad not to have to argue with her. She didn’t want anything to take away the strange jittery happiness that had been growing inside her all afternoon. She had no idea what the game was about, but she knew she liked these men, and she was beginning to suspect that maybe this game, maybe these boys were the reason she had stopped her wandering at this café in Harmony, Illinois. If there’d been a place in town that sold any clothes worth buying, Rainie would have bought a new outfit. As it was, she spent a ridiculous amount of time fretting over what to wear. It had to be that the sheer foolish immaturity of these boys had infected her. She was like a virgin girl getting ready for her first date. She laughed at herself—and then took off all her clothes and started over again.