That he had dreamed anything at all surprised him, given he had stopped dreaming since leaving New York—or at least he had stopped remembering his dreams. When he was young, he used to have nightmares all the time, so much so that for a while around age nine or ten he had been afraid to go to bed at night. He’d dream of terrifying monsters in the bedroom, demons behind walls. In what he’d since decided must have
been a regular if temporary psychotic state that came about when fear awakened him just enough to keep him suspended midway between sleep and dream, he’d hear the heavy-footed approach of monsters as clearly as birdsong in the morning and equally real. When he’d try to scream, he’d produce a dry rasp. His father, a naturally cold man with little interest in his son, didn’t want to hear about it. Once he carried T crying up the stairs to his room and literally threw him down onto his bed. He told him to be a man, then turned out the lights and slammed the door as he left. His mother took him to see Father Cardinale, who told him to pray to Jesus before going to sleep each night and ask him to take away the dreams. He did. Jesus didn’t. The lucid dreams persisted on and off through his twenties. Once, in college, he awoke crawling across his dormroom carpet, trying to escape something. Once, spending the night with Carolyn at her house, he’d leaped from her bed and stumbled out of her bedroom before finally awakening in a dark hall.
Eventually the power of the dreams diminished until, all the years with Alicia, he had dreamed rarely, and the last year in Salem, he hadn’t dreamed at all. When his daughter, Maura, turned out to have the same problem, he’d understood that it was simply something built into his nature and not a matter of having an uncaring father or an ineffectual mother. Maura had the same horrid dreams, perhaps even more intensely since she complained of waking hallucinations, of seeing things in the corners of her vision that she knew weren’t there. Once she told him she had lain in bed for a half hour in the morning
listening to a lovely piano concerto, only to realize on her way to the shower that it had all been in her head. She had heard it, she said, with absolute clarity. Neither he nor Maura was crazy, but they both, in their youth at least, had violent minds, violent in that they threatened to break through the boundaries between what was real and what wasn’t. Maura subjugated hers with a regimen of study and extracurricular activities that kept her intensely busy every waking minute of her young life. He understood this. A disorderly mind required an orderly world to keep it in check. He hadn’t figured out a similar tack until much later in life, when he discovered the world of business.
Jenny had been beautiful in his dream. She had entered the room of the crying child like a vision. He couldn’t remember what she was wearing. Her hair was long and flowing. She was so beautiful that just looking at her did something tangible to him, produced within him something he could feel, a sense of longing that was physical, as if to touch her would be the fulfillment of all his desires. Even as he lay in bed worrying more and more about Lester, he could almost feel the dream again. He could almost recall that sense of yearning at the sight of Jenny. Once, in his early teens, after being awakened by a nightmare, he had wandered out into his back yard, where he had seen a single light on in his neighbor’s otherwise dark house. Without thinking much about what he was doing, he stealthily climbed a trellis to peek into the lighted room through the inch or two of space between the bottom of a shade and the window sill. Inside the room, his neighbor’s daughter,
a girl a year ahead of him in school, was standing in front of a full-length mirror in her bedroom, inspecting and taking measure of her body, her pajamas on the floor at her feet. She’d pull her shoulders up and look at her breasts with her head cocked to the side. She’d turn her back to the mirror and twist her head around to see how she looked from behind. She did this for several minutes before lazily pulling her pajama bottoms back on and buttoning up her top while she gazed dreamily at nothing. When she turned off the light and disappeared in blackness, he climbed down quietly from the trellis and went back into his own yard, where he lay a long while on the grass with his eyes closed, trying to recall her every movement in front of the mirror. For the rest of his life, he’d remember those few minutes, and he’d never really understand why, except that, like Jenny in his dream, the beauty of his neighbor’s body and the stolen intimacy of watching her unobserved seemed somehow to transport him to a place so much more desirable than the revealed, ordinary world.
T considered waking Jenny and decided against it. He rubbed his eyes, wiping away the last vestiges of sleep, and pulled himself up in bed. From the kitchen, he heard the rush of running water in the sink followed by a high-pitched moan from the water pipes, then a moment of silence after the last squeak of the old-fashioned faucet, then a heavy crash that was the sound of a water glass falling to the floor and breaking, and finally a soft curse and footsteps into the living room and the sound of a body dropping down into the cushions of the couch with a moan. He stood in the moonlit bedroom and
went quietly as he could manage to his suitcase, where he found fresh clothes neatly folded and arranged. As he pulled on his underwear, careful not to make a sound, and slipped into khaki slacks and a blue knit shirt, he practically leaned out into the hallway listening to the various small sounds, the clanks and knocks, coming from the living room. He again considered waking Jenny as he sat on the edge of the bed to put on his shoes and socks, and again decided against it. He hesitated a moment longer, his heart beating fast and hard, then stood and went out into the hallway with all the casual bravado he could manage.
Lester was on the couch in a long tongue of moonlight from the cabin’s front windows. He was sitting up, leaning forward with his weight on the balls of his feet, his elbows on his knees, holding his head in his hands. He seemed not to be aware of T. He sat on the couch breathing hard, the heels of his feet tapping a rapid beat against the air. He was barefoot and shirtless, the top button of his jeans undone and the zipper down an inch. The guitar case was opened at the foot of the couch and the guitar lay on the cushions next to his thigh. The instrument, as Lester had promised, was red. It was, however, an unusual shade of red, a resonant terra-cotta, an earthy red that brought to mind wet clay or a vein of muted crimson inside a rock crystal. The wood’s texture and polish was lustrous, the fingerboard inlaid with a naturally dark wood and spaced with silvery frets. As T watched from the hallway, taking in the scene, the guitar seemed to glow in the moonlight. It seemed to vibrate slightly, as if it might at any second simply
rise up and float out the window, following the trail of moonlight off into darkness.
In the center of the kitchen, a puddle of water was spiked with shards of broken glass. T sat on the arm of the couch. Lester nodded several times, more jerking his head than nodding. He seemed to be acknowledging T’s presence, though his face remained buried in his hands and his feet kept tapping their manic rhythm. T touched the guitar, running a single finger along the edge of the neck. He noticed, through the sound hole, a sliver of crumpled aluminum foil inside the guitar. Next to it lay a length of blue rubber tubing, maybe an eighth of an inch in diameter. He plucked the low E string with his thumb. It made a sick, wobbly sound.
“Don’t do that,” Lester said through his hands. “Fuck’s wrong with you? Fucking asshole. Fucking clown. Fucking old man.” He rocked back and forth as he spoke each curse.
“Lester—”
“Don’t fucking Lester.” He took his hands away from his face and looked at T for the first time. “You piece of shit. You arrogant sum’ bitch.”
T said, “Look—”
“Don’t fuckin’ look nothing.” He jammed his hand through the sound hole into the guitar box and came up with the gun. He cocked the hammer and pointed it at T’s head.
“This again?” T said, again surprising himself with his calm.
“I’m thinking maybe I should blow you away. I’m thinking maybe you should die, T. What do you think?”
T said, “What the hell happened, Lester? I thought we had—”
“Shut up,” he said through his teeth. “Shut up, you miserable fuck.”
“I’ll shut up,” T said. “But can you tell me—”
Lester shoved the barrel of the gun into T’s chest, nearly knocking him off the arm of the couch. He said, “You don’t sound like you shutting up.”
T steadied himself and crossed his arms over his chest.
“That’s better,” Lester said. “You know what? You’re scum. I know you think it’s me, it’s
us
—but know what? That ain’t way it is.” He paused a moment and looked T up and down, almost as if he had suddenly forgot who he was talking to. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. He asked T, “Who you think I am?”
T said, “What do you mean, Lester? What do you mean, who do I think you are?”
“I mean what’s my fucking last name, Tom, ‘T’ Walker? Tom ‘T’
Aloysius
Walker? You got four fuckin’ names, how come I only got one? That all you think I’m worth? One name?”
“It never came up,” T said. “I don’t know. What’s your last name?”
Lester tapped the side of the gun against his heart several times, hard, a gesture that mystified T. Trying to read the gesture felt like trying to interpret a foreign language. T folded his hands in his lap, half paralyzed with calm. He looked like a counselor working with an hysterical patient, trying to calm
him with his own calm. He sat on the armrest, an older man neatly dressed in khaki slacks and a knit shirt, looking across the moonlit cushions at a shirtless, long-haired youth in unbuttoned jeans holding a small, lethal-looking pistol in his hand.
“Deveraux,” Lester said. “Got some French, got some Cherokee.” He rubbed the butt of the gun against his temple as if trying to relieve a sudden itch. “You think I’m the scum,” he said, with his eyes closed. “But ain’t me,” he said. “Ain’t Jenny.”
T said, “I don’t think anybody’s scum.”
Lester nodded but didn’t respond.
“Lester,” T said, “can you tell me what’s going on? I thought—”
“Shut the fuck up, T.” He leaned back and held the gun in his lap with both hands. “I’m celebrating,” he said. “You got a problem with me celebrating?”
“No problem,” T said. “What are you celebrating?”
“Fish.” He smiled, as if suddenly pleased. “Caught me a stringer of fish. Man,” he said, excited, “soon as it got dark, bro— Fish started hittin’ like fuck-what, man. Boom, boom, boom,” he punched the air. “One after ’nother. Got must be fuckin’ eight fish out there on the stringer. Swear God.”
“No kidding,” T said. “What kind?”
Lester gave T a sideways grin. He said, “You interested, huh?”
“Sure,” T said. “What did you catch?”
“You mean while I was out there fishin’ and you was in here with Jenny?”
“Yes,” T said. “What did you get?”
“Pickerel, I think, mostly. One monster: fuckin’ huge, must be three feet long, swear God.”
“Brown?” T said. “Sharp teeth, like the pickerel?”
“Uh-huh,” Lester said, watching T carefully, the gun still in his lap.
“Sounds like a northern pike.”
Lester nodded solemnly. “So how come you fuckin’ her again after I told you—” He grimaced, as if suddenly in pain. “
I told you
how much it hurt her and you in there at it again.”
“We didn’t—”
“Shut the fuck up,
we.
” Lester sat up straight, holding a cushion with his left hand, his right hand on the gun.
“We,”
he repeated. “What do you think,
we?
What are you like, high school romance now? You fuckin’ asshole.”
“Nobody’s—”
“Thing is,” Lester said, pointing the gun at T, more gesture than threat, “onliest thing is, you know you hurtin’ her. That’s the only thing far as I’m concerned. She’s about money, can’t blame her. She need money to get out. You got the money. That’s way it is for her. But you, you piece of shit. You think we’re scum? You hurtin’ her like that?”
“I’m not hurting her.”
“Fuck you’re not,” Lester said quietly. “You know you are.” He paused a second and then repeated himself even more quietly. “You know you are.”
“Are you high?” T asked. “I don’t get the sudden change, Lester. A few hours ago, you were making a deal with me. Now—”
Lester interrupted as if he hadn’t heard a word T said. “I never known Jenny to be with a guy much as she’s bein’ with you. You know what I’m sayin’?”
“No,” T said, “I don’t.”
“What’s she sayin’ to you, man? She sayin’ that she loves you? She tellin’ you that shit?”
“Lester—”
“She is, isn’t she? Fuckin’ bitch. You believe her?”
“Look, Lester—” T touched his forehead, as if it might help him stay focused. “Can you answer my one question, please?” he said. “Didn’t we have a deal? What happened?”
“She lying to you.” He leaned forward again, dropping back into his original position, holding his face in his hands, only now there was a gun in his right hand, the butt of it against his eye. “My daddy,” he said, “he basically a decent man. All he really care about, ’course, was fishing and fucking—and didn’t really matter who he did either with. He basically a good man, though.”
“I’m sure he was,” T said.
“You sure he was,” Lester mocked. “Get the fuck out of here,” he hissed. “Swear God I’m inch away from puttin’ a bullet through one of your eyes.”
T stood. “I don’t get it,” he said.
“You two seconds from being dead, you don’t get the fuck out of here.”
T backed away several steps, then turned and walked down the hall to the bedroom. Inside, he closed the door behind him gently, careful to make as little noise as possible. Under his breath, he cursed the lack of a lock on the bedroom door, then scanned the room for a chair he might wedge under the knob—though he knew there was no such chair in the room. Behind him, Jenny lay on her side wrapped in a sheet and clutching a pillow to her breast. His heart was beating hard enough that he could feel it through his shirt, and he placed the palm of his hand over it and rubbed, as if trying to massage it to a regular beat. He sat on the edge of the bed, by Jenny’s feet, and waited in the dark for his breathing to even out and his heart to slow down. When he woke Jenny in a moment to tell her what was going on, he didn’t want to sound breathless and scared.