Sweet Dream Baby (4 page)

We stop at the curb, and Grandma Hollister says, “Well, here we are, Travis. What do you think?”

The house where I'm going to live is on a hill. It's big and white, and it has screened porches in front and back on both floors. There's a vacant lot next door, and on the other side a house that's smaller. I know I'm supposed to like it, and I'm supposed to say so, and I do. “Wow, it's neato.” Then I remember and say, “Ma'am.” I don't look over at Grandpa Hollister.

We get out, and he gets my suitcase from the trunk, and I look around. There are two big oak trees in the front yard, and two in the back. It's cool under the trees, and I can feel a breeze blowing. The air has that strange good smell, and I wonder if I'm smelling the river. There's a garage beside the house with two doors and the same green tin roof as the house. There's not much grass in the yard, it's mostly just red dirt. We don't have that kind of dirt in Omaha, and I expected sand because this is Florida. The dirt has straight lines in it where somebody raked. The house has columns across the front, upstairs and down, and eight big windows with green shutters. It looks old, and I can smell something cooking, and it smells good.

Out in the backyard, there's a little house with a white door and a green tin roof and a half-moon cut in the door. I look at Grandma Hollister, and say, “What's that, ma'am?”

Grandma Hollister puts her hand to her big chest and blushes. She's got very white skin and a lot of little black dots on her face, moles I guess, and when she blushes, her face gets real red. She says, “Why, Travis, that's the necessary house. Country people call it the outhouse. But don't worry, we've got indoor plumbing. It's just something your grandfather wanted because his family had one. You know, sometimes it's hard for southern people to change.”

I still don't know what the little house is for, but I'm going to find out. I'm going to learn a lot of things here. I know that.

Grandpa Hollister carries my suitcase up on the porch and sets it down. He gets back into the Buick and drives it around to the garage and gets out and opens the doors and pulls it into the dark cool in there.

Tires squeal around a corner, and I turn and see a car coming. It's a white '55 Chevy, and I hear the radio playing loud, and I recognize the voice. It's Elvis. He's singing “Heartbreak Hotel.” I like his voice. It reminds me of the black man in the airport talking. It reminds me of Wendy saying I'm gonna be a heartbreaker.

The white car with the loud radio comes down the street fast, and it doesn't go on by. It throws up a big cloud of red dust as it pulls into the driveway where Grandpa Hollister is just coming out of the garage. He jumps back as the Chevy rushes past and scrapes to a stop in the garage. I didn't see who was driving, just dark sunglasses and a swing of black hair. The engine rumbles in the dark garage, and Elvis sings about broken hearted lovers. Then the engine stops, and it's quiet again.

I watch Grandpa Hollister. I know he's gonna be mad. I wonder if somebody's gonna be arrested. He's the sheriff. I can see the white car door open in the garage now, and two long, white legs swing out of the car seat. I see two white tennis shoes with pink laces, and then a pair of white shorts and a white blouse and a tennis racket with a green cover. She walks out of the garage and right up to my Grandpa Hollister and goes up on her toes and kisses his cheek. “Hey, Daddy-o,” she says, and her voice is music, too. Not like Elvis, but music anyway, and she looks over at Grandma Hollister who's got both hands on her chest now, and the girl says, “Uh-oh. Looks bad. What'd I do now, Mama? Did somebody call in another Widow Rock Gossip Report?”

Grandpa Hollister's eyes change. They look like I never expected them to. They say he doesn't care about the loud radio or the reckless driving. Nobody's gonna get arrested. They say he can't do anything about how he feels right now. Nothing at all. Grandma Hollister says, “Delia, I've told you a hundred times not to charge into the driveway at that dreadnaught speed. You could have run right over little Travis here. You could have gone right through the back wall of my garage.”

My Aunt Delia looks at me and smiles, and her smile is like a sunrise over the wheat fields back in Omaha, and then she winks at me, and it's like Wendy, only better, and she says, “Hey there, old Travis. My, aren't you a big boy? And such a pretty one, too. Killer, your pictures don't do you justice. Come here and give your Aunt Delia a big hug.”

This isn't going to be like hugging my Grandma Hollister. Suddenly, I'm shy. I don't know what to do. I look at Grandpa Hollister, but he's looking at my Aunt Delia like she can do anything she wants, and his eyes will never again be like they were when he pinched my shoulders and said he was going to raise me southern.

My Aunt Delia sees I'm not moving, and I guess she sees my face is getting red, so she smiles and laughs, and her laugh sounds like I know the water in that river is going to sound splashing over the rocks. She says, “All right then, Killer, I'm gonna run you down and hug you. How 'bout that?”

She bends her knees and does a funny Groucho run at me, and I don't know what to do. I hear Grandma Hollister say, “Oh, Delia, don't frighten the boy. He just got here, and he's got plenty of time to know you're a lunatic.”

Delia smiles that smile again. “Look out, ole Trav. Here I come, and I'm a lunatic, and I'm the subject of eighty percent of all Widow Rock Gossip Reports.”

I just let her catch me.

I don't move, and she's got me in a tent of her good-smelling black hair and the soft skin of her cheek against mine, and I go soft and strange all over, and I know I'm going to like my Aunt Delia. A lot.

When she lets me go, I don't want her to. I look at her and try to talk, and she says, “Well, Travis, don't you like me? We're gonna spend some time together, Boy, so you better get used to crazy old Delia.”

I'm still trying to talk, and she says, “Just like his daddy, old sobersides Lloyd. Too serious to let a girl know where she stands with him.”

Finally I get my tongue loose. “I like you, Aunt Delia. I like you fine.”

And my Aunt Delia laughs. She throws back her head, and I see her long, pretty throat, and there's a gold cross on a gold chain, and she laughs loud and long like a man. Finally, she says, “Well, I've had compliments, Son. So I'm fine, am I? Well, so are you, Travis old Killer. I can tell we're going to be friends.”

She grabs my suitcase, and we go inside, and the house smells good with dinner cooking, and she says, “Come on, Killer, I'll show you your room. You're gonna be right across the hall from crazy Delia.” When she calls me Killer and herself crazy, I can hear Grandma Hollister sigh behind me. I follow Delia's long white legs up the stairs.

My room is big, with two windows, and the bed is snug under the slope of the roof. It's a big, high bed made of iron, and Delia says, “Jump up there, Killer, and give it a bounce.” I get on the bed, but I don't stand up because I'd hit my head. I just bounce my butt a few times, and the springs squeak, and my Aunt Delia puts her hand to her ear and says, “Hear it? ‘Welcome, Killer. Welcome, Killer.' That old bed is glad you're here.”

I look at Delia and smile and say, “I'm glad, too.”

Delia sits down on the bed beside me, and her eyes go a little funny, and she hugs me again, and there I am for the second time inside that tent of black hair and sweet, scary smell, and her arms are soft-strong around my shoulders, and she says, “I know you've had a hard time, Travis, and I know you miss your mom and even that old sobersides brother of mine, but I'm gonna do my best to make you feel at home here. We're gonna get to know each other just like family should, and maybe when the summer's over your momma will be better, and things will be good for you again at home.”

She lets go of me and pushes me away from her and holds my shoulders, and we look at each other, and I know I can trust her. I know I can talk to her. Somehow, I know it. She's the first grown-up, or almost grown-up, I can talk to since my mom. I used to talk to my mom, and she used to understand, and I didn't have to be careful what I said like I do with my dad. If I say the wrong thing with him, he tells me a good Marine doesn't think that way, and I have to remember not to say the thing I said again.

Now I look into my Aunt Delia's eyes. They're soft and blue, and I don't know what to say. My tongue is thick again, and I swallow, and I say, “Thank you, Aunt Delia.” She looks at me, and that sunrise smile breaks across her face, and she ruffles my hair, and she says, “You're a poet, Killer. But not of the spoken word.”

She starts unpacking my suitcase and putting the clothes in a big chest she calls a high boy, and it's getting dark outside, and we talk about school and how I'm not doing too well, and about Little League and how I'm a pretty good shortstop and our team finished third last summer and how I'm gonna miss playing this summer. And Delia tells me she's got a mitt and a ball, and she knows where she can borrow another one, and she'll take me out for a game of catch and maybe knock me a few grounders and see if I'm really any good at shortstop. I laugh and tell her girls can't throw, and she pulls up the sleeve of her white blouse and makes a muscle for me and says, “You see how hard that is, Boy? Why, I can whip that pill across the infield like old Scooter Rizzuto. It goes so fast you can't even see it.”

She makes a few practice throws with no ball, and it's pretty good, actually, but I laugh and hold my nose and say, “You look like an octopus tying his shoes,” and I don't know where that came from. It just came. I've never even seen an octopus. She laughs and shakes her fist at me.

She finishes putting my clothes away, and she holds up a pair of my uns and says, “Man, you got some cute little unmentionables, Travis,” and I laugh, and I'm not even embarrassed for her to see my uns.

We go downstairs, and the table in the big dining room is set, and I hear someone singing in the kitchen, and I know it's not Grandma Hollister. It's a deep, sweet voice, and the words are beautiful and sorry. “I looked over Jordan and what did I see-eee, comin' fo to carry me hoooome.”

Delia stands behind me and says, “Killer, that's Marvadell. She cooks for us. She makes the best spoon bread and biscuits and cheese grits in Choctawhatchee County.” She calls out to the kitchen, “Marvadell, come out here and meet old Travis, the lonesome wayfaring stranger from out where the wheat fields grow and the wind blows so hard it snatches a boy's hair right out of his head.”

Grandma Hollister comes in, and she's wearing a different dress, loose with flowers on it, and no stockings, and she's wearing slippers with a big yellow flower on each toe, and she says, “Delia, leave Marvadell alone so she can finish dinner. And stop confusing poor Travis.” Grandma Hollister looks at me like I'm supposed to agree, and I try to look confused, but I can't. I like being a lonesome wayfaring stranger. I look at my Aunt Delia and try not to laugh.

The singing stops in the kitchen, and a big black face shoves through the door in a cloud of steam. Marvadell's smile is as big and white as her apron, but there's something else in her eyes. Something far away and unreachable like the place in that song, that Jordan. She's got look-over-Jordan eyes, but she wipes her hands on her apron and says, “Please to meet you I'm sure, Travis. I hope you gone like it here.”

Delia winks at me and says, “He's sho gone like your cooking, Marvadell. If he doesn't, we'll know he's got a screw loose up there in that cute head of his, and we'll put him on the next plane back to Omaha.”

I hear Grandpa Hollister come into the room behind me. The quiet way he walks puts the hair up on the back of my neck. I turn, and he's looking at Delia in that way again, and he says, “Delia, if you don't stop running your mouth at Travis, he's going to think he's landed in Marianna, not Widow Rock.”

I look confused, and Delia puts her finger across her mouth and says, “Marianna's the state home for the mentally ill. You know, the crazy folks.” Delia sees what happens in my eyes when she says that word, and I guess she remembers about my mom. She says, “Daddy's right. All this Hollister family humor is a little overwhelming. Come on over here and sit with me, and we'll look at the new
Life
magazine until Marvadell serves up.”

After dinner, I'm up in my room sitting on the bed. I brought some books, and I'm gonna read one. My Aunt Delia knocks on the door and comes in. She sits on the bed beside me and says, “Travis, I'm sorry about all that crazy talk about crazy. I shouldn't have used that word with you.”

“It's all right,” I say. Looking into her eyes, it is all right.

She says, “That's good. Words can't hurt you unless you let them. Remember that, okay?”

I tell her I'll remember.

It's night and it's raining and I wake up.

I can smell the rain coming through the open window, and I'm going to go find my dad's radium dial shining in the dark, and then I remember it's not Omaha rain. It's Florida rain. I'm in my new home. I can hear the oak trees swishing and groaning outside and see the white curtains swaying wet into the room. Lightning flashes, and I count like my dad taught me—
one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, one-thousand-three
—then thunder booms three miles away. I get up to close the window, and I'm standing in rainwater.

There's a bathroom out on the landing between my room and my Aunt Delia's. I took my first bath there after dinner (the Florida Hollisters call it supper). They don't have a shower, just a big old tub on feet shaped like bird claws clutching pine cones. I washed and sat in the water until it got cold, and I pulled the plug and watched the last dirt of Omaha go down the drain.

I stand in the doorway of my new bedroom, trying to see my way to the bathroom. I'm going to get a towel and dry the floor. Lightning flashes through the bathroom window, and I can see Delia's bedroom door, and it's open. As I pass, I hear something. At first I think it's just the storm, maybe the oak trees swishing and swaying out in the yard, but then I know it's not. It's Delia. My Aunt Delia. She's crying. I don't know what to do. I hope I don't have to do anything, but I hear her crying. It's like that sound I heard through the locked door in the hospital where my mom is. It's a sad and hurt sound, and it crawls into your heart and makes a home.

I open my Aunt Delia's door a little more and go in. My heart is beating so hard it makes my ears move. I stand in the dark just inside and look for her bed. It's that white thing there under the slope of the roof, and I can see her black hair on the pillow. I don't want to do anything, but I know I can't go. I have to stay here until I know she's all right.

I'm going to say, “Aunt Delia, are you all right?” but before I can, I hear her sob, and then there's a hard catch of breath that says she sees me. She says, “Who's that? Travis? Travis, is that you?”

All I say is, “Yes.” Then, “Ma'am.”

She clears her throat and sighs, and I hear her move in the bed, and she says, “Come over here, Travis.”

I do. I stand by the bed and look down at her. I can't see her face, but I know how it looks. It looks hurt. I can smell her. I can even smell her crying. It's a smell that makes me want to stay and makes me want to run, too. She reaches out and touches my arm and says, “Did the rain scare you?” Her fingers move down to my hand, and the hair stands up on the back of my neck. I shiver and say, “No, ma'am.”

My Aunt Delia laughs. It's a sad laugh. “Travis, you can drop all that ma'am crap with me. Just call me Delia. We're gonna be friends, aren't we?”

I tell her yes, I hope so. Then I say, “Delia,” and it feels strange because she's so grown up. It feels secret, too, because I know I won't call her that in front of Grandma and Grandpa Hollister.

She says, “You haven't told me what you're doing here.”

I say, “I heard you crying. I thought I better see if you needed help.”

She doesn't say anything, and I can't see her face, and I'm glad I can't. She might be laughing at me. I hope not. My face gets hot because maybe I've done the wrong thing. Maybe she wasn't crying.

She moves over to the wall and pulls the covers back. “Get in here, Travis. We'll shelter from the storm together. We'll be a couple of wind-blown waifs. How 'bout that?”

I crawl up into the bed. I don't know what waifs is. I lie on my back, but Delia puts her hand on my side and turns my back to her. She pulls me close against her and puts her chin on the top of my head. It feels so good. She's so warm, and I'm in the nest of her smells. I want to stay here forever, and part of me misses my mom so bad, and part of me doesn't want to think about my mom at all.

We lie that way for a while, and the rain beats against the window, and the oak tree hisses and sways, and it lightnings again, and I count inside my head, and the lightning is getting closer. Delia lifts her hand from my side and reaches around me and takes my hand in hers and squeezes it. “You're a gallant man, Travis. Coming in here to comfort old Delia. You've got the instincts of a cavalier.”

I don't know what she's talking about, but I know what I want to know. I say, “Delia?” It's hard to say her name even in the dark, but I like it, too. And I say, “
Were
you crying?”

She sighs and her breath is sweet in my hair and around my face. She says, “Yes, Travis, old Killer, I was.”

I ask her, “Why were you crying?” and I think of my nights in Omaha lying in my bedroom and listening to my mom and dad talking low and sweet in their bed and the radio playing and Peggy Lee singing, “Fever,” and sometimes listening to them whisper hard and raspy when they don't want me to hear, and sometimes, late at night, hearing my dad have his dreams about the war. That's why I want to know what made my Aunt Delia cry.

Delia sighs again, and again it's sweet, but this time I feel her body go hard behind me, and she squeezes my hand so hard it hurts, and then she loosens her fingers, and her body goes soft again, and she says, “For someone lost, Travis. I was crying for someone lost.”

“Who?” I say.

“I can't tell you that. I can never tell anyone that,” and then she buries her face in the back of my neck, and she cries. Hard. So hard I think even the storm won't cover the sound. So hard the bed shakes, and I imagine Grandpa and Grandma Hollister running up the stairs and finding me in my Aunt Delia's bed, and I wonder what they would do, or if they would do anything, and I wonder if it's wrong for me to be here.

Finally I think it isn't wrong. I'm a cavalier with gallant instincts, and I'm comforting a waif, and there can't be anything wrong with that. I try to turn around and put my arms around her, but she stops me. She holds me hard, and her breath comes so hot and hard against the back of my neck that I can feel her teeth there, and she says, “No, Travis. No. Just let me…. Don't move. This will pass, and…”

Her voice is broken and ragged, and I don't know what to do, but I think I better stay. I better let her ride my back like a boat in a storm. I'm all she's got this night. Maybe this will never happen again. Maybe this is just a storm my Aunt Delia has to get through. I don't think I'll ever understand it. I don't think she'll ever tell me who is lost. I don't think I should ever even ask her.

My Aunt Delia cries and cries. She sobs until my neck is wet, and the shape of her front teeth is pressed into my neck. Sometimes it's almost like she's trying to pull me inside her to stop the crying. I let her do what she wants. I wait. I try not to think about the storm passing over and the sound of her sobbing and the shaking bed waking Grandpa Hollister. And finally, as the rain stops slanting hard, then comes down straight, then just patters in the trees, and then stops and the trees just drip the water left in them, Delia stops sobbing and stops crying, and finally she's breathing soft into the back of my neck, and after a while, maybe she's asleep.

Her breath is long and sweet and slow against the back of my neck, and her arms are loose around me, and I think it's time for me to go back to my bed. It's still dark outside, but I've heard the birds moving in the oak tree, and I know one of them will sing soon, and then the first dawn glow will show at the window.

I try to move, but Delia holds me. She presses her fingers into my chest, and her face against my hair, and she says, “No, Travis. Not yet. Stay with me a little while longer, okay? If you stay, I promise I won't cry anymore.”

I try to whisper, “Okay,” but nothing comes out, and my voice is stuck from so much worrying, and I clear my throat and softly I say, “I want to stay. I just thought maybe…”

“Good. Good, Travis my old Killer. I'm glad you want to stay. Aren't we a couple of messed up kids?”

I think about it. I guess it's true, and I guess it's good to admit it. As long as I admit it only to my Aunt Delia. I say, “Delia, how come you call me Killer?”

“Geez, Travis, I don't know. I guess it's cause you remind me of Jerry Lee Lewis. That's what they call him. The Killer. 'Cause he plays that killer piano and sings, ‘Great Balls of Fire,' and ‘Shake, Baby, Shake,' and ‘Breathless.'” Delia's arms are around me, and now she shakes me, and the bed squeaks. She giggles in my ear, and I know she's going to be all right. I'm glad I helped her.

I say, “Is he good looking?”

“Who?” Delia asks me.

“That Jerry Lee what's his name.”

“He's a dreamboat, Travis. He's a downright dreamboat.”

I want to ask if I'm a dreamboat. Wendy said I'm gonna be a heartbreaker some day. I wonder if a dreamboat is a heartbreaker. I don't think I want to be a heartbreaker. Sometimes I think my mom has a broken heart.

I want to ask Delia about my mom. Maybe she knows. Maybe she knows what nobody will tell me. The things grown-ups say over my head. Delia's grown up, but she's not. I'm gonna ask her about my mom, and my dad, too, but not tonight. Some time I'll ask her, and I know she'll tell me if she can. I know I can trust her, and she can trust me.

I wake up with my Aunt Delia against me. I guess it's the birds singing that wake me. Maybe it's the good smell from downstairs. Coffee and eggs and toast. I wake up, and I don't have my back to my Aunt Delia anymore. I'm facing her. I got turned around in the night. And the thing has happened. I don't know how. I don't know what it is, but it isn't the first time. I'm hard. Down there, I'm hard and it feels good, and I'm touching my Aunt Delia. My face gets hot, and my neck gets thick, and I pull away from her slowly, and I hear her moan, “No, don't go,” and I know she's not talking to me. There's someone in her dream and she doesn't want him to go. Maybe it's that someone lost she's talking to.

I get up and stand by her bed. I don't want her to see me like this. I give myself a hard pinch, but it doesn't do any good. It's like pinching a rock, and it feels good. I go to the door and look out, and I hear someone coming up the stairs. I know I can't make it to my bedroom without being seen, so I run for the bathroom. I run on tip-toes trying not to make a sound, but the old boards groan and crackle under me. Inside the bathroom, I flush the commode and then run water in the sink. All I'm wearing is my uns, and there's a tent pole sticking out of me, and I don't know how to make it go away.

I hear footsteps out in the hallway, and then my Grandma Hollister calls, “Travis! Breakfast, Honey!” She sounds tired.

I call from inside the bathroom. “I'll be down in a minute.”

I can hear her outside the door now, heavy on the old boards. She says, “Do you need anything, Travis, Honey? Is everything all right?”

I don't know what to do. I flush the commode again, and make my voice sound small-boy and say, “I'm okay, I guess. I'll be down in a minute.”

She says, “All right, Honey,” and I hear her walk away.

I stand in the tub and run cold water on it. After a while, it goes away.