Sweet Dream Baby (18 page)

My Aunt Delia whispers, harsh, “Get dressed!”

She turns and swims downriver as fast as she can, and before I can get out of the water, I see her run up the bank, all the long white length of her, and disappear behind the driftwood clump.

I swim to the bank and run to my clothes. I'm pulling on my uns when I hear it, “Pop-Pop-Pop!” The sound comes from out there in the woods where my Aunt Delia parked the white Chevy the first time we came here. I get my jeans and T-shirt on and look downriver. My Aunt Delia's already in the boat, and her wet hair is squeezed into a rope that hangs down one side of her face and pours water onto her white blouse. She turns to the woods, listens, calls to me, “Hurry, up, Travis!”

I run down to her and push the boat off the sand and wade in and jump aboard. We make a lazy turn, floating down with the current. My Aunt Delia kneels in the back of the boat, pulling on the cord that starts the outboard. She pulls and pulls, and mutters, “Shit!” She pulls, and finally it hacks and stutters and then roars, and she throttles it back and throws us into a turn so tight it sprawls me down in the bottom of the boat.

When she straightens us out, we're reared up and going as fast as we can, and our bow is splitting the river and sending out a long, wide V that washes up on the banks behind us. I look at her and smile and try to get her to smile back, but she doesn't. She bites her thumbnail and feels for the cross at her throat, and a dead sick look comes into her eyes when she knows the cross is not there. After that, she bites her thumb again and scrunches down small in the middle of the seat, and we speed on down the river without saying anything.

• • •

We drive way out into the country to an old roadside park. There's a rotting picnic table and a rusted-out barbecue grill, and nobody comes here anymore. A Highway Department sign says, No Dumping. The sign's full of bullet holes. My Aunt Delia pulls us under the shade of a big oak and turns on the radio. The song is “Summertime Blues,” and she whispers, “Shit,” and changes the station from Tallahassee to Birmingham. Birmingham is playing, “Goin' to the chapel, and we're gonna get married. Goin' to the chapel of love.” She leaves it there, but turns it down low.

I don't know if we're gonna talk or just sit here. Either one is all right with me. I can't get my mind off what I learned about men and women. I can't stop looking at my hand, the one that fit perfectly between my Aunt Delia's legs. Finally, she says, “Did you hear it?”

I nod.

She throws her head back against the seat and rests her arm across her eyes and says, “Oh, God.” It sounds like a curse, not a prayer.

We sit for a while, and the radio plays soft, and the songs come and go, and I know they can't tell me the truth about love. Not the truth I learned in the river. You can't put that truth on the radio. I say, “He won't tell.”

My Aunt Delia tears her arm from her eyes and looks at me like the fish hawk I saw perched in the cypress by the river bank. “He'll tell,” she says, harsh, cold. “He's a boy. They always tell.”

I turn away and look out at the rotting picnic table and the rusted grill. “I'm a boy,” I say. It's so low I don't know if she can hear me above the radio. “I won't ever tell,” I say.

I sit there listening to my own heart rattle like rain on the roof. I feel her hand on my shoulder, light, then gone. She whispers, “I know, Killer. I believe you.”

When we get home, my Aunt Delia puts the white Chevy in the garage, and we go upstairs. Halfway up, we hear Grandma Hollister say, “Why Delia, look at you. You're all wet.”

My Aunt Delia says, “Travis fell in the river, and I pulled him out.” She says it without looking back. She keeps climbing the stairs. My Grandma Hollister says, “My goodness! Travis, are you all right? Delia, I hope you aren't letting that boy do anything dangerous at the river. You can swim, can't you, Travis?”

I stop and look back. Grandma Hollister stands there with her hand at her neck twisting her strand of pearls. I say, “Yes, ma'am, I can swim.” I start to tell her not to worry, but my Aunt Delia says, “It's all right, Mother. Come on Travis.” She pulls me by the sleeve of my wet shirt.

Grandma Hollister says, “Delia, come down here. I want to talk to you.”

My Aunt Delia says, “Mother, I've got a headache,” and keeps on walking.

Grandma Hollister doesn't say anything more, but I know she doesn't like it. When we get to the top of the stairs, I hear her walking toward the kitchen.

In my Aunt Delia's room I sit on the bed, and she sits at the vanity with her back to me. I can see her face in the mirror, and she can see mine. She says, “We have to talk.”

“Sure,” I say.

She says, “Did you see anybody? My back was to the bank. You were facing that way. Did you see anybody?”

I was facing the bank, but my head was under her chin. My eyes were closed, and I was in a place I never wanted to leave. How could I see anybody? I say, “No.”

“Tell me what you heard.”

“It was somebody laughing, maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“I think it was somebody laughing.”

She lifts her chin and looks at herself in the mirror, and it's like the night she came home from Bick's party, only worse. She's looking in a window at somebody she doesn't know, and now it's somebody she doesn't want to know. Somebody she doesn't like. She says, “That's what I heard, too.” She lowers her head and whispers, “Damn it. Damn it to hell.”

I say, “Don't worry. It's gonna be all right.”

She turns so fast on the chair that it twists the rug under her. “Don't say that.” Her eyes are flame, and her voice is ice. “You don't know that, and you shouldn't say it. Say things that are true. Isn't that the way we are?”

I look into the heat of her eyes. I know she's right. I know I shouldn't have said it. I nod. “What are we gonna do?”

She watches me, and finally she smiles. It's a smile I've seen before. It scares me, and I like it. Then I remember where I've seen it. It's Grandpa Hollister's smile. She says, “I don't know. We can't do anything yet. We have to wait and see what happens. We have to wait and see what he does.”

“You mean, Griner?”

“If it was Griner.”

“It was his car.”

I'm the one who wakes up nights hearing that car go by. I'm the one who hears that engine backing down, Pop-Pop-Pop, in my dreams.

My Aunt Delia closes her eyes and says, “Yeah, it was his car.”

She turns on the radio. It's Tallahassee. The Killer singing, “You shake my nerves, and you rattle my brains. Too much love drives a man insane. You broke my will. What a thrill. Goodness, gracious! Great balls of fire!”

My Aunt Delia lies on her bed. She puts her arm over her eyes, and her fingers drop to the side of her neck, and they try to find the gold cross. When they know it's not there, her hand seizes into a quick white fist.

I say, “Did it come off when you were swimming?”

“No,” she says. “I think he took it. I hung it on the driftwood with my clothes. He must have been hiding down there for a while, and he took it.”

It makes my stomach drop like it did on the plane. It makes my knees so weak I'm glad I'm sitting down. It makes my eyes so small I'm seeing my Aunt Delia like she's on the other side of a keyhole. And then it makes me mad.

A week goes by, and we stay close to home. Bick doesn't call, and we don't know why. My Aunt Delia thinks maybe he's out of town. Caroline and Beulah come over, and my Aunt Delia asks if they've seen Bick. Caroline says sure they've seen him. She says her and Beulah go see who's there, and he's there, just like always.

“We haven't seen much of
you
, though,” Caroline says.

Beulah says, “What's the matter, Delia? You say Bick's a dork, and now you're all curious about him.”

My Aunt Delia gives Beulah a look that could burn through a manhole cover. It's like a death ray. She says, “I'm not
all
curious about him. I just asked if you'd seen him around.”

“All right,” says Beulah. “I don't know what you're getting so pissy about.”

My Aunt Delia picks up Beulah's tenny pumps from where she shucked them off over by the door. She shoves them into Beulah's middle. “Go home, Beulah.”

Beulah gasps. “Well, I never! Come on, Caroline.” Her chin quivers.

Caroline gets up blinking like she's trying to find her way out of a dark room. She looks at Beulah and my Aunt Delia. “You two need to cool off.”

My Aunt Delia turns to the window. “Good-bye, Caroline.”

• • •

We're supposed to be at the Baptist Youth Group in Warrington, but we go back to the river to look for the gold cross. My Aunt Delia thinks maybe she shook it off on the bank when she was putting on her clothes so fast. She says it's a long shot, but maybe we'll find it. She sneaks a flashlight from Grandpa Hollister's car, and we drive out there. It's creepy in the woods at night, and there's a cloud of mist snaking up and down the river, and my Aunt Delia sends me back to the path halfway between the car and the bank. She says, “Stay there, Killer, and keep watch. I'll go look for the cross.”

I want to go with her, but I don't say so. I do what she tells me. I'm scared for her, and I'm just plain scared, but I don't say so. I stand in the path for a while, then I move into the woods and stand with the dew dripping on me and skeeters whining around my head until I see her flashlight beam come back along the path. “Did you find it?”

“No,” is all she says.

The next day my Aunt Delia and me are in the living room playing
Monopoly
. I've got Boardwalk and Park Place, and she has the whole side from New York Avenue to St. Charles Place. My Grandma Hollister comes in the front door. She stops in the foyer and heaves a sigh because it's so hot outside. She's wearing her white organdy dress with the black belt and a string of coral beads. She's wearing her black and white spectator pumps and carrying her matching handbag. It's her church committee outfit.

She looks worried. She says, “Delia, I just talked to Mrs. Dagle at the Tri Delta chapter meeting, and she happened to mention that they missed you at the youth group the other night.”

My Aunt Delia looks up with the dice in her hand. She's about to throw, and she doesn't want to land on my property. Her eyes jump with fear, then she covers herself with a stretch of her arms and a yawn. She puts down the dice and says, “Well, she was right. I wasn't there. Travis and me went out driving around.”

My Grandma Hollister says, “Travis, come with me.” She turns and walks into her bedroom. She leaves the door open for me. I look at my Aunt Delia. I can feel my stomach filling up with cold. My Aunt Delia looks at me hard and draws a finger across her lips, and I get up and go into my Grandma Hollister's bedroom.

She's sitting on the bed. Her white gloves are folded on her handbag on the bed beside her. Her hands are clasped and her mouth is tight. She looks determined, but she's no match for my Aunt Delia. I know that. Then I see Grandpa Hollister sitting at the little desk in the corner by the window. It's where he does his accounts. I didn't even know he was home.

My Grandma Hollister reaches out and pulls me close by the shoulders. When she looks into my eyes, I see worry and hurt. I still like her, but she's weak, and I'm not going to be like that. She says, “Travis, where did you and Aunt Delia go last night when you didn't go to the youth group?”

I look into her eyes. It surprises me that my hands don't sweat, and I'm looking at her so straight, even with Grandpa Hollister over in the corner working on his sheriff papers. I say, “We just went out driving around.”

Grandma Hollister screws her eyes down tighter and grips my shoulders harder. “
Where
did you drive to, Travis? You must have gone somewhere.”

I smile. I shrug. “We went to the Dairy Queen in Warring-ton. We had Cokes and french fries and listened to the radio.”

My Grandpa Hollister clears his throat and leans back in his chair. I look over at him. He's not looking at me, but he's listening. I say, “We sat there for a long time just listening to the songs on the radio. We like to do that.”

My mind storms, then clears, and I see the last time we went to Warrington. We sat in the Dairy Queen parking lot and listened to the radio. Kids from around the county came in their cars, and we said hey to them. This funny song came on the radio for the first time: “Purple People Eater.” It made us laugh.

My Grandma Hollister holds my shoulders tight. “Travis, are you telling me the truth?”

When she says “truth,” Grandpa Hollister looks over at me. She's never asked me a question like this before. I don't like it, but I smile and say, “Yes, ma'am.”

She takes me by the hand and walks me back to the living room where my Aunt Delia sits at the table counting her
Monopoly
money. My Aunt Delia looks up and smiles. My Grandma Hollister says, “Delia, come with me.”

My Aunt Delia looks at me, and then at Grandma Hollister standing with her hands on her hips by the bedroom doorway. I look into my Aunt Delia's eyes, and I sing: “One eye, one horn, flying purple people eater.” I sing it low, under my breath. My back's to Grandma Hollister, and I wink at my Aunt Delia. She looks confused. She doesn't get it. We hold our eyes together for as long as we can, and I'm sending her thought letters about the Dairy Queen in Warrington. Cokes, french fries, and purple people eaters. She gets up and goes into the bedroom.

The door closes, and I wait. I count my money and arrange my deeds. I rub my hands together because they're sweating now. The cold in my stomach moves down into my legs.