The Flicker of Old Dreams Page 9

  Out on the ice at dawn, you can hear everything, every sniff of a runny nose, every rustle of snow pants, the whir of the fishing pole’s reel, the sound of opening a second candy bar, the one you snuck that was supposed to be his. Pop relished this time outdoors in the dead of winter when a man who liked to be busy could escape his cabin fever. But for me, it was endless waiting, frozen fingers despite the mittens, and a lot of effort for something we could buy at Vinter’s grocery.

  There was one fish that day. The pole bent and tugged, and Pop stood, reeling at intervals. He wouldn’t let the fish get away. Near the end, he put the pole in my hands, instructed me not to move, and then bent on his knees over the hole. He reached in to get the fish, a rainbow trout, his arm wet to the elbow. I had to give up my seat for the fish. The cold and boredom were suddenly too much to bear. As we walked back to the fire, he told me if I wanted to become a good fisherman, I’d better learn not to fidget. My constant singing and kicking the bucket had scared away all but that single trout.

  I always wondered if my father was disappointed I never took to fishing. How we’ve never found an activity to do together besides work.

  “You’re quiet,” Robert says. “Did I lose you?”

  “My father used to take me fishing here,” I say, like it was something we did a lot.

  A great gust of wind awakens geese on the lake, sending them running along the water, trumpeting and squawking until they alight. We track the birds as they fly overhead in the dotted sky, their heavy black-tipped wings flapping, their hysterical chorus sending a vibration we can feel below.

  “We have a lot of snow geese in Seattle,” he says, his skin growing red with cold. “That’s where I live.”

  “I’ve never been farther than Agate,” I say. “What made you choose Seattle?”

  He pauses a long while and flicks the zipper of his jacket up and down.

  “I went out there at fourteen,” he says. “Took the bus and stayed with a distant aunt.”

  And I realize he’s going to tell me about running away from Petroleum, when I’d wondered what another part of the world looks like. What I believed I had asked is, Have you seen oceans? Tall buildings? Trains that still run?

  “Worked on getting my GED while she taught me about laundry, bills, and job hunting.”

  “Who? Your aunt?”

  This is not the conversation I wanted to have. Why does everything have to circle back to the accident?

  “People are nice there,” he says. “Never had my car keyed. Never had people smoking in my driveway while they stared at the house.”

  His face twists so hideously, I wonder if he’s bitten his tongue.

  “I thought when I came back to stay with my ma, maybe enough time had passed.” He stops, his mouth twisting again. “It doesn’t matter. Good thing I’m not here for long.”

  I wait for the feeling to pass, the sting that I’m included in his disappointment. The whole idea of being together here leaves me trembling with old wounds. The strange girl burying dolls, the brush of handlebars, the word Freak. I should have stayed in the basement and spent the day cleaning my tools and lining them up on the tray in an order that makes everything right. I stare hard at a family of wrens as the wind pushes them across the lake.

  “You haven’t liked any part of being here?” I ask.

  “Obviously I don’t want to hurry this time with my ma,” Robert says. “But as for the rest, I really can’t leave this place fast enough.”

  He looks up now.

  “Mary,” he says. “You’re crying.”

  He reaches out as if he’ll touch me and then doesn’t.

  I turn my head and furiously wipe at the tears.

  “Did I do this?” he asks.

  I keep my back turned.

  “I didn’t realize you hated every person you met here,” I say.

  “I wasn’t talking about you, Mary.”

  He sits down on a rock and motions for me to sit as well.

  “You’re easy to be around. One of the few.”

  He finds a flat rock to skip.

  “Well, that’s a first,” I say, my voice in a knot.

  He raises one eyebrow as if to tell me he’s serious.

  “We don’t quite fit here, do we?” he says, reaching for another rock and brushing it clean of snow. “Sometimes that’s a lonely place to be, and yet, you don’t really want to be on the inside, either, where you feel pressure to be someone you’re not.”

  He has identified something I’ve felt but never put into words. That feeling of being most alone in company, the frustration of trying so hard to enjoy fishing, hunting, and basketball, when I just can’t. I’ve lived in Petroleum my whole life, but somehow I feel like an outsider.

  “This town wants you to be as it’s always been and do as it’s always done,” he says. “But what if that’s not what makes you happy?”

  He throws another rock, and I feel the flicker of old dreams. The haunting of what I’d given up. The feel of a good, graphite pencil in my hand, the memory of a girl I sat beside year after year in art, who said my drawings were pretty. For some number of weeks, we talked about how we wanted to become artists, how we’d open an art gallery on Main Street. She moved away before we graduated, and I wonder if she still draws, if she opened an art gallery somewhere else.

  Robert passes me a good flat rock, which I cup in both hands.

  “Go on, show me what you got,” he says.

  I give it a sideways toss and we count the number of skips. It hurts, what he’s said. I don’t know what happened to that girl who dreamed such impractical things. As we reach for the next rocks, I long for our hands to touch.

  Though it’s too cold to sit by the lake for so long, we name all the wildlife we see—yellow perch, northern pike, waterfowl, ring-necked pheasants, mule deer, snow geese. Then, for a long while, there is no more talk, just the plink of rocks into the water.

  In the quiet, I think of Robert’s crooked smile, his flashes of temper, and the way he nearly wiped my tears. I pause each image, turning him like a prism. Something about how different he is both frightens me and draws me to him. When we’ve thrown all the flat rocks from the pile, I know it’s time to head back.

  “I’ve had a nice time,” I tell him.

  Though this is not true. Nice does not at all describe the time we shared today. I feel shaken. Exposed. Awake.

  12

  Robert and I drive back past ranches so far off the highway you won’t see the roads leading to them unless you already know where they are.

  “Do you live near the ocean?” I ask.

  My question probably sounds like it’s come out of nowhere, but I’ve been thinking it since he first mentioned Seattle.

  “Not too far,” he says. “I can see the Sound from my office. If I open the window, the salt air comes in, which is so nice but can mess up the computers.”

  Salt air.

  I’ve never heard of such a thing, and my brain conjures images until I notice we are passing the rodeo grounds. Up ahead is the grain elevator set against the beige rimrocks.

  “Mind dropping me off here?” I ask.

  “Along the highway?”

  I can’t hide my cowardice.

  He stops the truck and asks, “Are you sure?”

  All that bravado when I first got into his truck, now he knows it was just an act. Once my boots touch the ground, I whisper an apology, but I don’t, can’t, look at him. I look instead toward cattle, wandering the pastures, snow sprinkled on their backs. Many are already pregnant, ranchers trying to get a jump on the market. Robert drives on and takes the turn at the gray tower.

  I walk into the wind, my coat tight against my body like someone’s pulling it from behind. I try to at least enjoy the smell of hay, the chatter of livestock, the jolt of crisp air in my nostrils. But mostly, I feel guilt for how I treated Robert.

  My face is numb from the wind by the time I turn off the highway. As the sky dims, I noti
ce coats and bikes scattered across the frozen grass outside the grain elevator. And then I hear it, the old game we used to play. Children who weren’t even born at the time of the accident, and they’re in there, singing.

  “Sissy, sissy.”

  I see them through the gaping hole where the sliding doors have rotted off. They hold hands and march in a circle, wind in their hair. I watch their colored shirts as they spin and laugh and tackle each other.

  When I was cast in the younger brother’s role in childhood games of Eddie, my chest used to tighten with shame. I would have rather played anyone else. I would rather play the grain; that was one of the parts you could play, just lie down stiff and let kids step on you.

  Time doesn’t seem to dull the old prejudices. They just become unconscious, reflexive, fact. I pass Robert’s truck, long cooled off in the driveway. Did he hear the song, too? Would he have known they were singing about him?

  I turn back toward the kids playing in the fading light. I imagine them inside those dark passageways—frayed ropes hanging from the old pulleys, gears and cranks rusted in place, motors quiet. A couple of teenagers have climbed to the top of the tower to sit in the window, cigarettes glowing.

  When I walk through the door, I smell my father’s cooking, my eyes still watering from the cold. I see we’ve received our payment from the Mosleys, the kitchen table dark red with elk meat. My father has begun the task of chopping it into meal-sized portions and placing it into plastic bags. The meat takes up the whole table—some of it bagged, some sliced on the cutting board, and a giant hunk of carcass needing to be butchered. A cooked steak sits in the frying pan, the grease still clear.

  “Is that you?” my father calls down the stairs.

  “Yeah, Pop.”

  “Dinner’s on the stove,” he says. “Grab a plate and come to the den. I have the TV trays set up.”

  Now that work has slowed—no bodies since Mr. Mosley—Pop sits too much, over the bookkeeping, in front of the TV, and dialing Martha in the fleeting hours between her shifts, each word buzzing with fear, paranoia, ecstasy.

  “Get you a beer?” I call.

  “If you’ve got a free hand.”

  Climbing the stairs, I feel the careful balance performed by my hands, but also by the expression on my face, trying to hide my nervousness for the lies I’ve told and will tell again.

  I find Pop in the recliner, gnawing on a bone. I set the beer on his tray and take the armchair. He begins wiping his hands on a paper napkin, using a touch of beer to help clean off the grease.

  “What are we watching?” I ask.

  “It’s that singing competition,” he says, eyes on the TV.

  I think of the singing inside the gray tower, how many emotions are swirling through our town. I pick up my knife and fork and pretend I’m not someone who got dropped off on the highway, not someone who spent the day walking Robert through the very paperwork I promised not to give him.

  “You were gone most of the day,” Pop says, passing me the saltshaker.

  “I spent some time with a man I like,” I tell him, shocked I said it so straightforward, or at all.

  Pop sits up tall. “Well, this is some good news,” he says. “Do I know him?”

  And now the conversation feels intrusive. I shouldn’t have shared this private news, this overstated description of my day, as if I’d been on a date. Pop stares at me, awaiting the mystery man’s name.

  “We drove around, that’s all. I don’t think it was even a date.”

  “I wasn’t trying to pry,” he says. “I’m just interested in who you spend your time with.”

  But is he interested, or only when my choices and feelings line up with his? I can’t remember the last time I talked to someone without faking an interest or feeling bored, and I won’t let my father take this joy from me.

  A singer belts out a song we don’t know, voice full of power, face contorted, fists clenched, but the music strangely devoid of emotion.

  “I’m going to keep him to myself for a bit. But I’ll tell you that we drove out to Brine Lake, and I told him about ice fishing with you.”

  “If you call eating chocolate and kicking your heels into a bucket fishing,” he says, laughing.

  “I do.” I smile.

  Sometimes I feel like we get along best when I tell only pieces of the truth.

  The heat turns on, causing a great rattling noise as if men with hammers are in the basement and in the walls, banging on pipes.

  “Maybe you and I can go out there with our poles sometime,” he says.

  “Maybe, yeah.”

  Pop draws on his beer and turns the sound back up when he sees a singer wearing a cowboy hat. “Finally a song I know,” he says, his grin slow and satisfied.

  “He has a nice voice,” I say.

  “I hope this one wins,” Pop says. “You can vote by telephone, but it costs money.”

  Though I am staring at the TV, I’m thinking of the little rain boot hanging from the old battered tree house. I’m thinking of the pile of flat rocks, the dark smell of the leather jacket, the glee of children singing, Sissy, sissy.

  Pop looks over at my plate. “Like your steak?”

  I take another bite and enjoy the tender meat, its spill of sweet juices, the faint taste of sage that I know is from the elk’s diet and nothing Pop added from a spice jar.

  “Yeah, it’s good,” I say.

  “I’m glad.” He adjusts the pillow behind his back. “I hope you don’t get sick of it too soon.”

  We can’t use elk to pay the bills or fix my van, but the meat is good and will last most of the year if we’re careful. The show is almost over, the singers lined up onstage to see who will go on to the next round. I saw at another piece of meat so mindlessly that, once it’s cut, I continue sawing into the plate.

  “You told him about ice fishing?” Pop asks, muting the TV.

  He laughs, more to himself than to me. But I have drifted back to the feel of the smooth rocks, the sound of their plunking, and how everything looked sprinkled with sugar.

  “You don’t seem like yourself today,” Pop says, moving his tray to the side so he can kick out the footrest on the recliner.

  And I’m not. I feel tingly and in flux. “It’s just this lull in work,” I say because this is what we do. We only let each other get so close.

  13

  Normally, I’m an early riser, but today I stay under the covers as the sun reaches my bed. My fingers mindlessly stroke the quilt. My limbs feel heavy. I fiddle with a loose thread in the stitching and feel a weird fluttering in my chest that makes me want to stay very still so it doesn’t go away.

  In my mind, I’m back at Brine Lake, skipping rocks, but I’ve edited that day—no more awkwardness or friction. Robert places a flat rock in my hand. This time his touch lingers. He wipes my tears, hair blowing all about his face. Has it already been a week?

  I make the mistake of opening my eyes, and the lake is gone. I see only my bedroom. The clock showing it’s past noon. The too-bright stretch of sun along the floor.

  How foolish to believe he might see me as I see him. I know the danger of overconfidence, feeling as if you belong, as if you’re wanted, walking into that old trap. I feel, even lying here in my bed, the pinch of my old mustard-yellow one-piece, the bottom nubby from its previous owner. A barrette held the straps together so they wouldn’t slip off my shoulders. With one hand, I tugged at the fabric whenever it exposed a cheek, while trying to keep up with my father’s brisk pace.

  Pop, distracted with a case neighbors still talk about, walked me to the municipal pool, telling me I could swim as long as I wanted on that hot afternoon. He’d hurriedly changed out of his embalming clothes and into a blue suit just for that brief walk, pumping my hand in his, something I’d experienced many times as a kid and had learned it meant he was thinking hard.

  The body in his workroom was the victim of a rappelling accident, a badly tied rope, and a fall that smashed one side
of the climber’s head. Pop used newspaper to reconstruct the skull like a papier-mâché project, but I didn’t know it holding his hand at age six, that summer after kindergarten. I stepped carefully on the dirt road, my feet still tender.

  He took me inside the gates of the pool, the powerful smell of chlorine in the air. Kids bobbed up and down in the water, their shouts echoing.

  “Do you see anyone you know?” he asked, careful not to step too close to the water. A splash of chlorine could stain his suit.

  I studied the wet heads as they appeared and disappeared.

  “I don’t know,” I said, and then, “Yes. That one.”

  I pointed to the girl I’d sat with on the train track the previous summer.

  “Good,” he said. “When you’re done swimming, just walk home.”

  He handed me the towel he’d been carrying. It looked like an American flag. My father turned to exit when the teenage lifeguard called, “Hey!” He tweeted his whistle and said, “Mr. Crampton!”

  My father walked over to the boy, looking worried for his suit.

  “You can’t leave her here without an adult,” he said. “She’s too young.”

  Pop took my hand again and we started to leave.

  “But I want to swim,” I told him, and he pulled harder.

  When we got to the gate, a familiar voice called after my father.

  “Allen, wait,” said Bernice, wrapping a towel around her waist. “I can watch her.”

  She had not been to our house for many months—and there had been other women’s voices in his bedroom since. My father put his hands in his pockets, and Bernice scrunched a handful of the towel in her fist, her face tight. Finally, because my father needed to get back to the body sitting unrefrigerated in our basement, he let her take my hand.

  “How are you, dear?” she asked.

  I looked at her painted toenails and the little silver chain around one ankle.

  “Fine.”

  “How was your first year of school?”

  I felt too shy to answer. It still hurt that she had come over almost daily and then not at all. It wasn’t until she was gone that I realized how comforting I found the sound of her clomping through the house in my father’s boots.