The Flicker of Old Dreams Read online

  “Look at that,” someone says loud enough to call attention. “Leaves his mother alone while he goes to the festival.”

  Several turn toward Robert, and others toward Doris, painting in her window.

  “Can’t even take his mother out for hot chocolate.”

  I’m close enough to call hello to Robert, but not with everyone watching. I pause at a booth about fire safety and carbon monoxide poisoning. I pretend to study a child-made poster as Robert tries to cut a path to the diner. He seems to find an opening, when a large man clips his shoulder.

  “Watch it,” Robert snaps.

  He is tangling with the wrong man.

  Years ago, on that fateful day at the elevator, three boys stood in front of our house sharing details of the accident. The one with the camera, the one talking to Robert right now, isn’t someone you want to mess with.

  I’m sorry for Robert, but I need to leave, turning quickly into a back alley. I wind through backyards until I’m near the Purvises’ house. Pete measures and marks one board while my father saws at another. They talk and laugh, though it seems impossible that they’d be able to hear each other over the electric buzz.

  I walk closer until my shadow crosses over Pete’s work. He looks up and motions to my father to shut off the saw.

  “Hey there, Button,” he says. “Nice to see you out and about.”

  “What are you working on?”

  “Right now? Making storage shelves for their basement,” Pete says. “Later? Stabilizing a column on the porch, changing lightbulbs, checking smoke detectors.”

  “A ways to go, I guess.” I turn back toward the crowd. “People are getting kind of worked up near Vinter’s. Did you see?”

  “Well, the guy’s wearing a getup that makes himself a target,” Pete says.

  “It seemed like all he was doing was walking.”

  “Best to just let him be,” Pete says. “He’ll leave town soon enough.”

  “Ask Mary about her mystery man,” my father says, lifting his safety goggles. “I can’t get more than a couple words out of her.”

  “Pop, don’t.”

  “Just a name,” he says. “Or the town he’s from.”

  “You don’t need to tell anything you don’t want to tell,” Pete says and grins at my father. “If she gave you one piece of information, you’d still want another.”

  “Fair enough,” Pop says, smiling hard.

  It hurts how a lie is the happiest I can make him.

  My father lowers his goggles and starts the saw again, and I watch Robert open the door to the diner and go inside. I feel sick that I’m breaking my promise to meet him, and he doesn’t even know it yet.

  Teachers and elementary students begin to march through the streets, dinging musical triangles and tapping wooden blocks. Martha, who tutors remedial readers after school, marches among them, chin lifted with the day’s pride.

  “Parade’s coming,” I say, as if I needed to announce it. “I better cross while I still can.”

  My father and Pete put down their tools. They stand tall. A show of respect. Behind the musicians, older students carry a large wooden board with “The Wall of Heroes” painted in large letters across the top. Just before the procession passes, I slip back to my side of the street. I turn to wave to my father, but his eyes have wandered toward Martha.

  17

  Every year at the Blizzard Festival, students solemnly carry the Wall of Heroes through the streets. The Wall is a painted piece of plywood with laminated photos and tributes attached. It’s a celebration of those who helped save Petroleum from the Great Rimrock Fire, when the town, with no fire department, no hydrants, could have burned to the ground. The children carry the Wall to the front of Vinter’s grocery store, where they decorate it with red, white, and blue ribbons, in remembrance of the heroes’ courage and sacrifice.

  Now that Doctor Fischer has passed on, the only surviving hero is Albert Purvis, who would normally dress in a button-up shirt and bolo tie and stand when his name is called. Today, he’s in a hospital bed, his wife at his side. I watch Pop sawing, sanding, passing the tape measure back and forth with Pete. I know how important it is to them to provide for Mrs. Purvis, as her husband would have.

  It was the fire that forged their friendship when Pete and my father were both eleven years old. I know the story well; I’ve overheard it enough when they’re drinking late at night.

  Young Pete, with his lopsided walk, was a sickly child, partly due to the birth defect—how it made him delicate with chronic pains in the hip, knee, back, ankle, foot—and partly due to his mother’s overprotectiveness, how she ensured that he’d stay delicate. She warned boys who came by to play that there must be no teasing or roughhousing, rules boys could not abide. My father had no interest in a kid of that sort. And so, more often, Pete was left to play with a houseful of sisters.

  During the great fire, when a wall of flames trapped a number of homes between the blaze and the rimrocks, Pete and my father were the only young boys on that deadly side. Their one escape was to put the fire out.

  The sky was red, flames surging from the Mackeys’ barn roof, and inside, dry grass and hay caught quickly. Jim Mackey, his face flushed from the heat, raced from stall to stall, pulling out pins so his horses could escape. The fire roared, and the panicked animals’ high-pitched squealing was a sound the boys had never heard before.

  Everyone was in motion. Men moved livestock and as much combustible machinery as they could, then began to dig a wide trench around the fire with plows and bulldozers. Pete and my father were among the handful of neighbors, mostly teenage boys, standing in a line, sweating, lungs burning, as they passed buckets of water toward the flames. Their mothers stood at the edges of the fire, beating back embers with wet feed sacks, everyone waiting for the Agate fire trucks to arrive.

  The boys struggled to lift and pass buckets until they slipped out of the line and over to Pete’s house. There they played cards while Mrs. Petersen, relieved to see them away from the flames, made peanut butter sandwiches. But my father could only play cards for so long, and soon he convinced Pete to sneak out the side porch, passing through the thick air that dried their lips and the backs of their throats. They trekked up to the rimrocks, above the smoke, black flecks twisting through the air, frenzied families on either side of the firewall calling to one another and shouting instructions.

  My father learned from the top of the butte that day how young Pete snuck out on a regular basis, not quite the mama’s boy everyone figured him to be. On evenings when Mr. Mackey let his horses run free, Pete would slip out of bed, pull jeans over his pajamas, and step into his rubber mucking boots. With a rope hackamore in hand, he’d hop the fence to Mr. Mackey’s.

  Guided by moonlight, Pete could feel the dry, stunted brush and grassy tufts of manure beneath his boots, breathing in the good smell of hay and horse and night. The horses watched him warily as he approached, some snorting, stamping, throwing their heads back, or stepping sideways. His favorite, though, a chestnut gelding named Nelson, always seemed to welcome him.

  Nelson had a white mark the shape of Brazil on his forehead that seemed to light up at night. Pete would pet that mark and sometimes offer a sugar cube or a peppermint, the horse still warm from the sun. Then he’d gently slip the rope over his nose, tie and loop it, and pull himself onto Nelson’s back, looking over his shoulder, making sure no lights suddenly turned on at the Mackeys’ or at his own home.

  Sitting high up in the dark, he was afraid of falling off, afraid he couldn’t handle a good tumble—his mother’s fears and doubts always a voice inside his head. But he’d ride, the bugs and dust swirling about his face, Nelson moving across the open land with beautiful, even steps. The horse’s breathing drummed beneath Pete’s hand. He’d cluck his tongue and slap Nelson’s side, go, go, galloping bareback until all the fear of getting caught and the loneliness and the feeling of being cooped up and odd footed drained out of him.

 
Amid all the shouting and rushing around, the boys felt an ease and a distance from the emergency that could only be attributed to youth. Up on the rims, they climbed to the giant letter P and carved their names into the sandstone, then ran across its craggy top, trying to dodge the smoke, which stung their eyes. My father ran hard and wouldn’t wait for Pete; he had to keep up. For hours, the boys climbed and jumped, they lifted rocks and kicked at gopher holes.

  The firefighters, when they finally arrived from Agate, climbed into local tractors to help finish making fire lines. They used big cutters to open up fences so they could drive closer with their reserve tanks. In the end, the wind, which rules this land, was on their side, blowing the flames toward the trench and the hoses.

  After nearly twelve hours, they had it surrounded. This brought no comfort to Mrs. Petersen, hysterical since the boys had gone missing. What if they were overcome by smoke or, out of fright, had wandered so far that they became prey for a bobcat? She paced back and forth at the bottom of the rims, muttering her fears.

  Mr. Purvis, old even then, refused to come down from that hill until he found the missing boys. Pete and my father were huddled beside an intriguing hole in the ground when the old man extended a hand to them. Breath whistling and face full of soot, he was too tired to say anything, but walked in front of them as a shield from the embers that floated through the air. One stung him good on the cheek.

  When the boys emerged through the scorched brush and gray ash and into the mud created by the hoses, their mothers ran anxiously toward them. And while their end of town still smoldered and those who’d fought the fire stood hunched and silent, the mothers stroked their sons’ hair and humiliated faces.

  The boys learned from their frantic and soot-covered parents about the day’s toll. Every member of the Flint family who lived in the house between the barn and the rims had died—both parents, three girls, and the family pets. The other casualty was Mr. Mackey’s young quarter horse, Nelson, his charred body covered with blankets and rolled out of the barn on a trailer. With nothing left of the fire but its aftershock, the two new friends felt the shame of having spent a day playing like children when they were old enough to help like men.

  Mr. Mackey never recovered from that day, not his lungs or his spirit. He never rebuilt the burnt skeleton of his barn that crumbled a little more each year. His surviving horses went to another ranch, and he died a few years afterward. He had never forgiven himself for having saved money by not installing a sprinkler system, or for the unnecessary cause of the fire—an uncleaned lint screen in the barn’s dryer, which smoldered until it ignited hundreds of hay bales.

  Pete was different from then on. Sturdier. Someone the other boys could hang out with. Someone tough enough not to cry when they imitated his limp, which, of course, they did. But he and my father carried a private agony about that day, tormented by the faces of those who’d worked to exhaustion, wheezing and coughing up black phlegm, their eyebrows singed. And though Pete had assured his parents he was fine, he told my father that he often dreamed of Nelson running from window to window, unable to find a way out of the barn. He has always believed, if he’d paid better attention, he could have freed Nelson himself.

  Each time the fire is mentioned, each time the Wall of Heroes is carried through Main Street and decorated with ribbons, you can see Pete and my father still trying to separate themselves from the idle boys they were that day.

  From my bedroom, I watch the Wall of Heroes travel back down the street, toward the school, where it will be stored until next year. I kneel near the window and watch until Robert, who stayed at the diner for almost an hour, walks back to his mother’s house. I sink lower, shoulders curled forward, head down. Sometimes you don’t know what you believe until you feel the awful sickness of getting it wrong.

  18

  Into the night, my father and Pete work until you can see nothing more than the narrow beam of a flashlight. The tables and stalls from the festival have all been packed away, the crowd dispersed. Many continue the festivities at the Pipeline, its strings of colored lights blinking behind steamed windows. When the door opens, you hear laughter and loud, drunken conversations.

  I pace from window to window with a cup of soup, unsettled, ashamed, moving as if I might leave the feeling behind me in another room.

  The top floor of the hotel glows yellow. The children, settled into their rooms by now, have claimed their cots and crammed their few belongings inside shared closets or dressers. They must have left much behind, Christmas presents they’d hardly gotten to know—creaky saddles, music boxes, rifles that will have to stay in their cases until spring. I imagine those who haven’t boarded before are jittery with memories of their mothers’ lips against the tops of their heads, and yet there is the excitement of sleeping side by side with other children, no parents hovering. Whenever there is a large gust of wind, faces appear at the windows to see what floats through the sky. I wonder which face is Minnow’s and how direct a view she’ll have of our house and her mother’s visits.

  My next spoonful of soup is cold. When I set the cup beside the sink, men’s voices trail up the driveway. I meet my father and Pete outside, take the toolbox from Pop so he can carry the sawhorse with both hands.

  “There’s a lot happening at the Pipeline,” my father says. “Sure you don’t want to join in?”

  “I’m good,” I say. “Want me to make you some dinner?”

  “No,” Pete says. “People have been feeding us all day. Your pop still has some sauce on his face.”

  My father sets down the sawhorse and wipes a hand across his mouth. Down the road, the door to the diner opens.

  “Take it outside!” a woman shouts.

  Pop smiles at the sound of Martha’s voice.

  Out the door and down the steps they go, the unemployed, the underemployed, men so close to losing it all. They shove and provoke and circle each other.

  “They’re going to fight,” I tell Pete.

  “Sometimes alphas need to knock horns,” he says. “Don’t worry about them.”

  Lights blink off at the hotel, but shadows cluster near the glass. We all want to see what will happen.

  “Hey, look who we have here,” a drunken voice calls out. “It’s the younger brother.”

  Heads turn toward Robert, who does not change his path, but walks more cautiously.

  Pete clicks a button on his key chain and unlocks his truck.

  “I have to get back to Agate,” he says.

  “You’re going to leave now?” I ask.

  “These things work themselves out,” he says.

  He gets in his white Ford and drives down the road, no police lights on. I walk to the edge of our driveway, watch as the growing pack surrounds Robert. Just the sight of his black leather and strange hair seems to have set them off.

  “Beautiful locks, miss,” says one, looping a curl with his finger.

  Robert shakes his head hard to show his disgust. “Excuse me,” he says.

  Pop taps my arm. “Let’s go inside, Mary.”

  He heads into the house, but I hurry toward the fray, no idea why I’m running.

  “Excuse me,” Robert says again, but they’ve given him no room to move.

  “Come back to collect your mom’s money?” someone asks Robert.

  “I’m here to take care of her, asshole.”

  Someone shouts from the back, furious, high-pitched. “You lie!”

  Voices thunder with agreement.

  It’s as if they don’t even see Robert. He is a fiction they’ve invented, some terrible force that threatens their traditions, their livelihoods. He is a release for frustrated men who are tired of the promise that life will get easier when it never does. The crowd tightens around Robert as he takes a clumsy swing.

  “Ooh, look at those delicate hands!”

  I elbow closer as punches fly. The wind joins in, slapping faces as we squint in anticipation.

  The man Robert tangled with e
arlier steps forward and grabs the leather collar.

  “Maybe we should drag him to the elevator,” he says. “Throw him down the empty bin.”

  “And then what?” Robert shouts.

  “Then I’ll feel better,” he says and hits him hard.

  Robert falls to the ground, holding his jaw.

  “See,” the man says. “I feel better already.”

  The mob seems to hum with anger. So do I as I move closer. And I am frightened. Frightened of this side of me because I don’t know it well. Because I worry what I might do.

  “Mary, come back to the house,” Pop calls.

  Robert sits up, woozy. He catches my eye as he gets on his feet. Another punch is thrown and down he goes.

  “What’s happened to us?” I shout.

  I turn in a circle, looking at each familiar face.

  “When did we become enemies instead of neighbors?”

  I hear laughter and feel a shove from behind.

  “Stop it!” I yell, still turning. “We are better than this!”

  I want to say more but I can’t think. I look into the faces that sneered when I stood in the pool alone.

  “Freak!” a voice shouts.

  “Mary, come on home.” I hear my father but can’t see him.

  “Go on home, Mary,” someone calls.

  More laughter.

  “It was a good festival, everyone,” my father says as he finds his way to me. “Probably time to call it a night.”

  He keeps pushing through bodies until he’s in front of Robert.

  “Do you need help getting home?” he asks, bending down.

  “No,” Robert says. He looks briefly at me and then away.

  “Let me give you a hand up then,” Pop says.

  Robert stands on his own.

  “Okay,” my father calls out to the crowd. “Good night, all. Get home safely.”

  He leads me home, a hand on my back.

  “I’m not a child,” I say.

  He removes his hand but leans close to my ear. His whisper is stern.