Dreamthorp

by Williamson, Chet

  "No deaths," Tom said. "And it's been nearly two weeks."

  "I know. But there were gaps before, longer than that. Back in August before the Warfel boy died, that was more than two weeks . . ."

  "Since my father was killed."

  Charlie nodded. "Maybe we did it."

  "Maybe we did."

  "Think we could make it rain?"

  "It'll rain. Eventually."

  Charlie looked upward through the trees. "Weatherman's been calling for it. A big storm, possibility of small stream flooding, all that good stuff. And it looks mighty gray up there. Maybe the gods will smile."

  "Maybe they will."

  "You know," Charlie said, "I can't help but think that would mean something, that if it rained, if the sky just opened up and dropped buckets on us, that it would be nature's way of saying, 'Hey guys, you done good. No more deaths. Injuns in de cold, cold ground.'" He chuckled deep in his throat. "But if it does or it doesn't, I'm staying."

  "And waiting."

  Charlie nodded. "And waiting. I hope I have to wait forever."

  "Seems quiet."

  "You realize that if this were a Tarzan movie I would grunt and say, 'Too quiet.' Only Dreamthorp can't be too quiet." Suddenly Charlie paused. "You hear that?"

  "Thunder?"

  "I think so."

  "Or a car," Tom said as he saw Laura's Toyota pull around the corner at the end of Emerson.

  "Damn. Go get your woman, son."

  Tom stood and stretched. "I want to go for a little walk after dinner, check things out. I'm kind of concerned now about burglaries, what with so many people away. You want to come?"

  "No, I'll just have my shabby TV dinner and watch the news. Besides"—he winked—"it looks like rain."

  "God willing. I'll see you later, Charlie." Tom walked down the steps toward Laura's car. She was still sitting inside, watching him. He smiled, went to the passenger side, and got in next to her.

  "Hey, lady," he said, "wanta take a guy out to dinner?"

  She looked at him. "What does that mean?"

  "It means I love you. It means I want you to marry me. It means that if Charlie Lewis weren't sitting up on his porch right now watching every move we make I'd grab you and smother you with kisses to make you see how much I mean it."

  She began to nod her head very slowly, and her mouth twisted in a wry smile that held more humor than irony.

  "My Laura-proscribed time of contemplation is over," Tom went on, smiling himself now. "I thought about what you told me to think about, and it doesn't matter. Nothing matters but us." He took her hand. "You're the person I want to spend the rest of my life with, Laura. Okay?"

  "The hell with Charlie," she said, and embraced him.

  They kissed for a long time, and, when they broke for air, they both looked up at Charlie's porch and waved. Charlie shook his head disapprovingly, and they heard his "tsk tsk tsk" through the open car window. "Kids today, it's shameful." Still shaking his head like an offended grandfather, he got up and went into his cottage.

  Laura and Tom laughed for a long time, then looked at each other as the laughter died away. "I knew you'd say that," Laura said. "Even if you're not telling the truth, I knew you'd say it.''

  "It is the truth," Tom said. "The truth is that I love you. When I thought about it, it bothered me, sure. But it would have bothered me if it had been another man. And if I've got to balance that little, gnawing annoyance against my loving you, then loving you wins hands down." He touched her hair and smiled. "I love you more than I love my ego. More than I love Dreamthorp, or my work, or anything I can name. I need to be with you. More than anything, I need that."

  "I never . . ." Laura said, then paused. "I never knew a really good man except for my father. A man that I could really trust. With everything. But I know another one now. If you said it didn't concern you, then I'd know you were lying. But because it did, and you could accept it anyway . . . I know I've got a good man now."

  "And I've got a good woman."

  Her smile came back. "That sounds like a song cue."

  "All this mushy stuff sounds like song cues. That's the risk you take." He kissed her again. "You want to go out to dinner? Celebrate our engagement?"

  "Yes," she said, touching his lips with her index finger. "But first I want to go inside and make love."

  "That would be a much more interesting way to celebrate."

  "And less fattening," she said.

  She gave herself to him more freely now, Tom thought. Before, even though she had been passionate, he had always had the feeling that she was holding a part of herself back, but no longer. He felt changed somehow too, less rigid, as though they were flowing together into one body. It was intense and warm and filled with love, and by the time they had made love, taken a short, afterglow nap, and gotten dressed, it was nearly eight o'clock.

  They drove in Tom's car to the Chalmers Inn, a refurbished farmhouse that served great beef and as decent seafood as could be procured inland. When their cocktails were served, they lifted their glasses and clicked them together.

  "To a long and happy life with you," Tom said.

  "And to Dreamthorp," Laura added.

  Every window in the little village has its light, and to the traveler coming on, enveloped in his breath, the whole place shines like a congregation of glow-worms . . . To revisit that city is like walking away back into my yesterdays.

  —Alexander Smith, Dreamthorp

  God, this place seemed familiar.

  As Gilbert Rodman walked through the streets of Dreamthorp, he could have sworn that he had been there before. It was not the cottages that gave him the sense of déjà vu as much as it was the land itself, the towering trees, the topography of the hillside, the way the little stream near the road wound its way through the brush.

  It was as if he remembered the stream being larger somehow, and when he stepped off the road to examine it more closely, he could see by the light of the half moon that it had been much higher not too long before. Place needed rain, Gilbert thought. He would give it rain. Red rain.

  Gilbert smiled as he saw Laura's cottage ahead. He had hitchhiked out to Dreamthorp, scrutinized the roads into the tiny community, and discovered that only two, Pine Road and Elm Road, provided legitimate entrances to the small square of cottages that comprised the village. There had been an abandoned Mobil station between the two roads, and he had waited there since three o'clock, sitting on the bench at the side of the station, or standing in the phone booth, pretending to use the phone when infrequent cars passed.

  The town seemed deserted, Gilbert thought. Only one car turned into the town in all the time he was waiting, and that was a late model Buick driven by a man in his seventies. Only one car, that is, until Laura drove in at six o'clock.

  She still had the Toyota. He remembered it outside the tent. And he remembered her, too. She didn't see him standing there watching her. She didn't see him follow the car, running alongside Pine Road, staying in the shelter of the trees, following her for the five short blocks it took to reach Emerson. He stopped at the end of the street and watched as the man came down to meet her and climbed into the car with her. He watched as they went into the cottage together, watched as they came out two hours later (and what the fuck were they doing for those two hours?—wasn't she a dyke?), watched as they drove away together.

  Gilbert went up to Thoreau then, and saw no cars parked in front of any of the cottages. What the hell was wrong with this place? Black plague? He was curious, but thankful, and made his way in the darkness down over the hillside to the back door of what he assumed was Laura's place.

  The lock was easy to jimmy, and he entered quietly, just in case she had a roommate. He found himself in a small kitchen and noticed a light coming from beneath the door. He slowly pushed it open, and saw that Laura had left on a small desk lamp in the living room. There were no windows at the back of the room, but there was one along the side, and through it Gilbert could see li
ght glowing from the windows of the cottage next door. On his hands and knees, he crawled over to the window and, with infinite patience, slowly turned the stick to close the Levelor blinds.

  At last he stood up, and, confident that he was unseen, walked around the room. It was Laura's, all right. He could tell by the cutesy-poo decor, all the goddam trendy colors, everything in its proper place, positioned just so to impress all her bull dyke friends, or her faggots, since she had left with a guy. Gilbert wondered how that pale blue (she probably called it turquoise) and that soft orange (apricot, if you please) would look when her blood was splashed all over it. Jesus, he could hardly wait. Just so she didn't bring back the faggot with her.

  But what the hell, if she did, she did. He could slice the guy first, real fast, just like he'd done Hod before he'd begun to work on Cherry. Maybe he would just bleed the guy, keep him alive so he could watch.

  No. No. He wanted to be alone with Laura. No one watching this time. This time would be very, very special. Very sincere.

  He took the piece of paper from his pocket and looked at it. All those dates. All those people, lovers, friends, carefully listed so that Laura would know that he had been practicing, keeping his hand in. Staying ready. For her.

  Now, where could he put it? On the desk, he decided. She would be sure to see it there when she went to turn off the light before she went to bed. It might take a while, but he didn't care. The anticipation was delicious, and he didn't want to rush it. He put the list on the desk top and noticed, as he did so, another piece of paper next to the brass lamp. A spear of incongruity went through him as he glanced at it and saw that it too was a list of dates with names next to each. He looked at it more carefully, and then at his own, pencil-scrawled list, and shook his head.

  "Jesus," he said. "Ain't that a gas?"

  Then he shook his head at the wonder of coincidence, and looked around the living room, trying to decide where to hide. There were not many options, for the room was small. There was a couch, a few chairs, a wall full of stereo and video equipment, bookcases that housed an assortment of books, records, and videocassettes, a couch against the other wall, and a gun cabinet.

  The gun cabinet made Gilbert uneasy, even though he saw no handguns, only rifles and shotguns. He wondered if she still had the revolver she had shot him with. Wouldn't that be poetic justice, though, for him to finish her with it. . . .

  But then he decided not to, even if he could have found it. Guns were not Gilbert's style. Guns had always frightened him, with their fire and their noise. The knife was so much more subtle, more sincere. You had to come in contact with your victim with a knife. You had to touch. And you could do so many things with a knife that you couldn't do with a gun.

  He shook his head as he looked into the cabinet and then tried the door. It was locked, and that was good. That meant that she couldn't go dashing to it to pull out a gun and try to hurt him again.

  At last he decided to lie behind the couch. There was only a foot of space between it and the wall, but it was wide enough if he lay on his side. He didn't want to go back there right away, though. His muscles were likely to cramp if he stayed there too long, and he wanted to be as supple as a tiger when Laura came home. So he looked through the things on her shelves for a while, paying special attention to the records. Just out of curiosity, he perused her small jazz collection. It didn't take long. There were a few Miles Davis albums. Coltrane's A Love Supreme (did she ever listen to it, he wondered), Wynton Marsalis's Hothouse Flowers, several by Pat Metheny, and a bunch of those fucking Windham Hill aural wallpaper things. Probably used them, Gilbert thought, to ease her weary mind. Potato music. Aside from the Davis and Coltrane, none of the old classics.

  What the fuck did he care anyway? Jazz. Old man's music. His old man . . .

  His fingertips riffled along the edges of the albums, into rock now—Beatles, Springsteen, U2, Joplin, the Doors, the Police, a helluva lot of it, almost a yard's worth. . . .

  A Yard . . .

  Yardbird . . . Bird . . . oh, yeah, he could hear it now—Charlie Parker, the Summit Meeting at Birdland album. His old man had had it. "Groovin' High," that was the song. Listen to that fucking alto, will you. Shitty sound, those radio transcriptions, but still there was that alto riding out over everything, the way his father had played it, just like Bird. . . .

  He blew out hard, shook it off, tried not to hear the music coming from the next cottage. Fuck it, forget it, here was classical, look at the classical. Gilbert didn't know classical very well, but Laura had a lot of classical—a foot of Haydn, almost as much Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and a bunch Gilbert had never heard of, like Bruch, Albinoni, Reicha, Stamitz, who the hell were these guys? No operas, though, he had to give her that. All that goddam whooping and screeching, like they were getting carved in front of the microphone or something. But shows, she had a lot of shows, like Cats, he'd heard of that one, and La Cage aux Folles, that was the one about the faggots, and Sweeney Todd, oh yeah, he'd actually seen that one when he was moving through L.A. The ad had a guy with a razor and blood all around, and he had wondered what the hell and had gone that night and gotten in.

  It had been pretty much like a goddam opera, and there were some dull parts where the women were singing, but the parts where this barber was cutting people's throats was terrific. There was a lot about baking the dead people into pies, which was pretty silly but kind of funny. But the good part, the really good part, was when he sang a song to his razors, about what he was going to do with them, about who he was going to do. Gilbert liked that. Gilbert liked that very much.

  He would have liked to have listened to it now, but he couldn't take the chance of the neighbors hearing music when nobody was home or, even worse, of Laura hearing it when she returned. Maybe afterward he could play it very low. He could play it for Laura, even if she could no longer hear it.

  That sweet alto of Bird's had stopped playing in the cottage next to Laura's, and it was so quiet that Gilbert could hear the beating of his own heart. It was fast and excited, and he told himself to try and relax, to wait, just wait, and she would come.

  Now he heard a soft drum beat from the cottage next door, and in another four bars a piano began to play "Round Midnight." Gilbert listened. It sounded familiar, so very familiar that he could not identify it. But after another sixteen bars, the alto sax began to play, and then Gilbert knew what it was.

  It was not a record. He knew that sound too well. It sounded too real, too . . . alive.

  His father.

  Yes. It was his father and Hampton Hawes on piano, there in Dreamthorp, playing right there in the cottage next door. But he had killed his father, hadn't he? Then how could he be playing?

  All right then. All right. If he killed him once, he could kill him again.

  The music was too loud for Charlie Lewis to hear the screen door opening. He was standing facing the big Pioneer speaker that pumped out the left channel, the one on which Danny Vernon's alto was wailing. Charlie had read about Vernon's death in the newspaper a few weeks before, and had finally gotten around to hauling out the Hampton Hawes Prestige set, the only recording he knew of that Vernon had made. The man hadn't really been in the top rank, but he blew some licks hot enough to get Charlie off his feet and standing by the speaker for one of his rare appearances on air sax. The blinds were all down, and, what the hell, nobody was around to see anyway, so Charlie hunched his shoulders, wiggled his fingers chest and stomach high, and made the proper surrogate motions for the departed saxophonist, whose sounds were now all of him that lived.

  "You stay dead this time," someone said, and the knife went between Charlie's ribs so smoothly that he was almost surprised to find himself on the floor. He looked up and saw a young man standing over him, holding the knife that had, Charlie thought with surprising logic, just traveled in and out of his back.

  Then logic vanished as the pain hit him, and he gave a soundless scream of agony, then looked at the young man ag
ain. "I killed you too fast the first time," the man said. "You didn't suffer enough, because if you would have you wouldn't've come back for more. Now you just lie there and play if you want to. You play your swan song. But you don't go anywhere."

  The young man knelt next to Charlie, pushed him over on his side, and made two swift cuts behind Charlie's knees. The pain burned through him again, and he nearly fainted. Then the man stood up, walked over to the telephone on the side table, ripped the cord out of the connector, and tossed the instrument into the corner.

  Charlie blinked the pain away and looked at the face of the young man, a dark and angular face with the hatchet-sharp features of an Indian.

  An Indian . . .

  "You . . . you're the one," Charlie said, his soul filled to bursting with horror and understanding. "It's you all along. . . ." He stopped talking when he tasted the froth of blood on his lips.

  The man knelt, his face inches away, his eyes burning into Charlie's. "Don't you look at me like that! It wasn't my fault, goddamit, it was yours. Damn you, don't look at me like that!"

  Charlie tried to look away, but it was too late. The knife brought him greater pain than he had thought possible, and then all was darkness.

  People talk of the age of the world! So far as I am concerned, it began with my consciousness, and will end with my decease.

  —Alexander Smith, Dreamthorp

  Tom and Laura arrived back in Dreamthorp just after eleven o'clock. They had had a long and leisurely dinner, and several drinks afterward. As they drove up Elm Road, Tom turned to her. "Should such a lovely evening end so soon?"

  "Is that your subtle way of saying 'Your place or mine?'"

  "It is.''

  "Then your place. Drop me off at mine first, though. I want to pick up a few things."

  He grinned. "Aren't my t-shirts good enough for you?"