Keeper of Dreams (66 page)

After work Rainie didn’t have anywhere much to go. She ate enough for breakfast and lunch at the café that dinner didn’t play much of a part in her plans. Besides, the hotel restaurant was too crowded and noisy and full of people’s children running around dripping thick globs of gravy off their plates. The chatter of people and clatter of silverware, with Montovani and Kostelanetz playing in the background—it was not a sound Rainie could enjoy for long. And when she passed the piano in the hotel lobby the one time she went there, she felt no attraction toward it at all, so she knew she wasn’t ready to surface yet.

One afternoon, chilly as it was, she took off her apron after work and put on her jacket and walked in the waning light down to the river. There was a park there, a long skinny one that consisted mostly of parking places, plus a couple of picnic tables, and then a muddy bank and a river that seemed to be as wide as the San Francisco Bay. Dirty and cold, that was the Mississippi. It didn’t call out for you to swim in it, but it did keep moving leftward, flowing south, flowing downhill to New Orleans. I know where this river goes, thought Rainie. I’ve been where it ends up, and it ends up pretty low. She remembered Nicky Villiers sprawled on the levee, his vomit forming one of the Mississippi’s less distinguished tributaries as it trickled on down and disappeared in the mud. Nicky shot up on heroin one day when she was out and then forgot he’d done it already and shot up again, or maybe he didn’t forget, but anyway Rainie found
him dead in the nasty little apartment they shared, back in the winter of—what, ’68? Twenty-two years ago. Before her first album. Before anybody ever heard of her. Back when she thought she knew who she was and what she wanted. If I’d had his baby like he asked me, he’d still be dead and I’d have a fatherless child old enough to go out drinking without fake ID.

The sky had clouded up faster than she had thought possible—sunny but cold when she left the café, dark and cloudy and the temperature dropping about a degree a minute by the time she stood on the riverbank. Her jacket had been warm enough every other day, but not today. A blast of wind came into her face from the river, and there was ice in it. Snowflakes like needles in it. Oh yes, she thought. This is why I always go south in winter. But this year I’m not even as smart as a migratory bird, I’ve gone and got myself a nest in blizzard country.

She turned around to head back up the bluff to town. For a moment the wind caught her from behind, catching at her jacket and making it cling to her back. When she got back to the two-lane highway and turned north, the wind tried to tear her jacket off her, and even when she zipped it closed, it cut through. The snow was coming down for real now, falling steadily and sticking on the grass and on the gravel at the edges of the road. Her feet were getting wet and cold right through her shoes as she walked along in the weeds, so she had to move out onto the asphalt. She walked on the left side of the road so she could see any oncoming cars, and that made her feel like she was a kid in school again, listening to the safety instructions. Wear light clothing at night and always walk on the left side of the road, facing traffic. Why? So they can see your white, white face and your bright terrified eyes just before they run you down.

She reached the intersection where the road to town slanted up from the Great River Road. There was a car coming, so she waited for it to pass before crossing the street. She was looking forward to heading southeast for a while, so the wind wouldn’t be right in her face. It’d be just her luck to catch a cold and get laryngitis. Couldn’t afford laryngitis. Once she got that it could linger for months. Cost her half a million dollars once, back in ’73, five months of laryngitis and a canceled tour. Promoter was going to sue her, too, since
he
figured he’d lost ten times that much. His lawyer talked sense to him, though, and the lawsuit and the promoter both went
away. Those were the days, when the whole world trembled if I caught a cold. Now it’d just be Minnie Wilcox in Jack & Minnie’s Harmony Café, and it wouldn’t exactly take
her
by surprise. The sign was still in the window.

The car didn’t pass. Instead it slowed down and stopped. The driver rolled down his window and leaned his head out. “Ride?”

She shook her head.

“Don’t be crazy, Ms. Johnson,” he said. So he knew her. A customer from the café. He pulled his head back in and leaned over and opened the door on the other side.

She walked over, just to be polite, to close the door for him as she turned him down. “You’re very nice,” she began, “but—”

“No buts,” he said. “Mrs. Wilcox’ll kill me if you get a cold and I could have given you a ride.”

Now she knew him. The man who did Minnie’s accounting. Lately he came in for lunch every day, even though he only went over the café books once a week. Rainie wasn’t a fool. He was a nice man, quiet and he never even joked with her, but he was coming in for her, and she didn’t want to encourage him.

“If you’re worried about your personal safety, I got my two older kids as chaperones.”

The kids leaned forward from the back seat to get a look at her. A boy, maybe twelve years old. A girl, looking about the same age, which meant she was probably younger. “Get in, lady, you’re letting all the heat out of the car,” said the girl.

She got in. “This is nice of you, but you didn’t need to,” she said.

“I can tell you’re not from around here,” said the boy in the back seat. “Radio says this is a
bad
storm coming and you don’t walk around in a blizzard after dark. Sometimes they don’t find your body till spring.”

“Dougie,” said the man.

That was the man’s name, too, she remembered. Douglas. And his last name . . . Spaulding. Like the ball manufacturer.

“This is nice of you, Mr. Spaulding,” she said.

“We’re just coming back down from the Tri-Cities Mall,” he said. “They can’t wear last year’s leather shoes cause they’re too small, and their mother would have a fit if I suggested they keep wearing their sneakers
right on through the winter, so we just had the privilege of dropping fifty bucks at the shoe store.”

“Who are you?” asked the girl.

“I’m Ida Johnson,” she said. “I’m a waitress at the café.”

“Oh, yeah,” said the girl.

“Dad said Mrs. Wilcox had a new girl,” said Dougie. “But you’re not a girl, you’re
old
.”

“Dougie,” said Mr. Spaulding.

“I mean you’re older than, like, a teenager, right? I don’t mean like you’re about to get Alzheimer’s or anything, for Pete’s sake, but you’re not
young
, either.”

“She’s
my
age,” said Mr. Spaulding, “so I’d appreciate it if you’d get off this subject.”

“How old are
you
, then, Daddy?” asked the girl.

“Bet he doesn’t remember,” said Dougie. He explained to Rainie. “Dad forgets his age all the time.”

“Do not,” said Mr. Spaulding.

“Do so,” said Dougie. It was obviously a game they had played before.

“Do not, and I’ll prove it. I was born in 1948, which was three years after World War II ended, and five years before Eisenhower became president, and
he
died at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, which was the site of a battle that was fought in 1863, which was 127 years ago last July, and here it is November which is four months after July, and November is the eleventh month and so I’m four times eleven, forty-four.”

“No!” the kids both shouted, laughing. “You turned
forty-two
in May.”

“Why, that’s good news,” he said. “I feel two years younger, and I’ll bet Ms. Johnson does, too.”

She couldn’t help but smile.

“Here we are,” he said.

It took her a moment to realize that without any directions, he had taken her right to the garage with the outside stair that led to her apartment. “How did you know where to take me?”

“It’s a small town,” said Mr. Spaulding. “Everybody knows every-thing about everybody, except for the things which nobody knows.”

“Like Father’s middle name,” said the girl.

“Get on upstairs and turn your heat on, Ms. Johnson,” said Mr. Spaulding. “This is going to be a bad one tonight.”

“Thanks for the ride,” said Rainie.

“Nice to meet you,” said Dougie.

“Nice to meet you,” echoed the girl.

Rainie stood in the door and leaned in. “I never caught
your
name,” she said to the girl.

“I’m Rose.
Never
Rosie. Grandpa Spaulding picked the name, after
his
aunt who never married. I personally think the name sucks pond scum, but it’s better than Ida, don’t you agree?”

“Definitely,” said Rainie.

“Rosie,” said Mr. Spaulding, in his warning voice.

“Good night, Mr. Spaulding,” said Rainie. “And thanks for the ride.”

He gave a snappy little salute in the air, as if he were touching the brim of a nonexistent hat. “Any time,” he said. She closed the door of the car and watched them drive away. Up in her room she turned the heater on.

During the night the snow piled up a foot and a half deep and the temperature got to ten below zero, but she was warm all night. In the morning she wondered if she should go to work. She knew Minnie would be there and Rainie wasn’t about to have Minnie decide that her “new girl” was soft. She almost left the apartment with only her jacket for warmth, but then she thought better and put on a sweater under it. She still froze, what with the wind blowing ground snow in her face.

At the café the talk was that four people died between Chicago and St. Louis that night, the storm was so bad. But the café was open and the coffee was hot, and standing there looking out the window at the occasional car passing by on the freshly plowed road, Rainie realized that in Louisiana and California she had
never
felt as warm as this, to be in a café with coffee steaming and eggs sizzling on the grill and deadly winter outside, trying but failing to get at her.

When Mr. Spaulding came into the café for his lunch just after one o’clock, Rainie thanked him again.

“For what?”

“For saving my life yesterday.”

He still looked baffled.

“Giving me a ride up from the river.”

Now he remembered. “Oh, I was just doing Minnie a favor. She never thought you’d stay a week, and here you’ve stayed for more than a month already. She would have reamed me out royal if we had to dig your corpse out of a snowdrift.”

“Well, anyway, thanks.” But she wasn’t saying thanks for the ride, she realized. It was something else. Maybe it was the kids in the back seat. Maybe it was the way he’d talked to them. The way he’d
kept on
talking with them even though there was an adult in the car. Rainie wasn’t used to that. She wasn’t used to being with kids at all, actually. And when she did find herself in the presence of other people’s children, the parents were always shushing the kids so they could talk to
her
. “I liked your kids,” said Rainie.

“They’re OK,” he said. But his eyes said a lot more than that. They said, You must be good people if you think well of my kids.

She tried to imagine what it would have been like, if her own parents had ever been with her the way Mr. Spaulding was with
his
children. Maybe my whole life would have been different, she thought. Then she remembered where she was—Harmony, Illinois, otherwise known as the last place on Earth. No matter whether her parents were nice or not, she probably would have hated every minute of her childhood in a one-horse town like this. “Must be hard for them, though,” she said. “Growing up miles from anywhere like this.”

All at once his face closed off. He didn’t argue or get mad or anything, he just closed up shop and the conversation was over. “I suppose so,” he said. “I’ll just have a club sandwich today, and a diet something.”

“Coming right up,” she said.

It really annoyed her that he’d shut her down like that. Didn’t he
know
how small this town was? He’d been to college, hadn’t he? Which meant he must have lived away from this town
sometime
in his life. Have some perspective, Spaulding, she said to him silently. If your kids aren’t dying to get out of here now, just give them a couple of years and they will be, and what’ll you do
then
?

As he sat there eating, looking through some papers from his briefcase, it began to grate on her that he was so pointedly ignoring her. What right did he have to judge her?

“What put a bug up
your
behind?” asked Minnie.

“What do you mean?” said Rainie.

“You’re stalking and bustling around here like you’re getting set to smack somebody.”

“Sorry,” said Rainie.

“One of my customers insult you?”

She shook her head. Because now that she thought about it, the reverse was true. She had insulted
him
, or at least had insulted the town he lived in. What was griping at her wasn’t him being rude to her, because he hadn’t been. He simply didn’t like to hear people badmouthing his town. Douglas Spaulding wasn’t in Harmony because he never had an idea that there was a larger world out there. He was a smart man, much smarter than the job of smalltown accountant required. He was here by choice, and she had talked as if it was a bad choice for his children, and this was a man who loved his children, and it really bothered her that he had closed her off like that.