17 - dreams that were not dreams

I went to bed and dreamed the dreams that were not dreams.

It was 1946.

We lived on Lee Street near the deep woods on the edge of Shelby, in a small white frame house with a white picket fence. It was across the road from Shelby Millwork where my father was the superintendent.

I went to Washington School. One morning at recess I rolled my shirt sleeves up over my tiny biceps, imagining that I looked good, like my father or my uncle. The other children were noisy, darting shapes. Phil materialized from the mob, sneered, and said, “Hey, do you think you are a tough guy?”

Watching, I heard myself stutter, trying to come up with a rational answer to his question.

He laughed.

Again.

This time when Phil spoke I started to walk away. But he pulled my shoulder. I turned and grabbed his nuts, squeezing as hard as I could. He took a whooping breath and his eyes rolled back. I held on for dear life. Watching him suffer I squeezed harder.

I was grand.

It was 1950.

I was on the playground with Charles who would grow up to be an attorney and who 57 years later wandered among the crowd at our fiftieth reunion shooting pictures with a really good digital camera. We were near the jungle gym, just outside the cafeteria where they served livermush, cornbread and creamed potatoes. Normally we were friends, visiting one another’s homes, trading Hardy Boy books. But today we disagreed about something. Other children heard and closed in. They made us go around the corner where no one could see. They wanted us to fight. They pushed Charles back against the wall. They pushed me in front of him. His head tossed from side to side, hair sticking to the rough brick, hair and tears and snot all over his face, in his eyes and mouth. I didn’t hit him. I did not hit them either. My arms had no strength; I was slowed by dreamlike lethargy.

That night I opened the drawer where my uncle (who lived with us then) kept his pistols, like hard babies, oiled and cleaned, sleeping fitfully on a greasy cloth.

Again.

I was walking home when the same group of boys came up to me. I was carrying my uncle’s little .44 derringer in my pocket. I pointed the pistol at Jack the ring leader and said, “Leave me alone.”

He laughed and said, “That gun ain’t real.”

I shot him between the eyes which stayed opened wide in surprise even after the hole appeared in his forehead.

I was sick.

It was 1952.

Frankie and I crossed over to another place.

We started beyond the little white frame house at the end of the Lee Street entering nearby pine woods where even the smaller children sometimes played

We walked down the trail to the big mossy rock that ran slick with water when it rained. The other children didn’t come here often. It was where my uncle tried out newly purchased or traded guns (my favorites were the long-barrel German luger, the big .455 Webley carried by the British in WWI and II, and the 10-gauge shotgun with which I once brought down a small pine tree in two blasts).

Just beyond the rock was the Old Tree, where the trail forked around the base of another hill. The left fork descended toward a spring and the run-down house where Vera our maid lived. I suppose she might have walked up the trail to our house. The right fork snaked behind a colored neighborhood. A limb from the Old Tree angled out ominously over the path and it was easy to imagine that someone had been hung there.

We left the trail and climbed the next hill into deeper, darker woods. No one, not even my uncle or the people from the colored neighborhoods went there.

We pushed past low hanging limbs and spider webs draped in wait for the last insects of Fall. We walked by the cave under fallen rocks that smelled inside of old leaves and animals. Getting lost was not a possibility. The forest was in us as much as we were in it.

Finally we came to the small clear stream known only as The Creek. This was as far as we had ever been. Frankie said, “Let’s go on.”

We forded the stream, crossed a field and climbed the strange cone-shaped hill that had attracted us from the beginning.

Up close the hill seemed steeper and taller. The ground was loose and difficult. Scrub trees grew on the lower slope. The top was covered in patches of broom sage and other dried-up vegetation. Shreds of mica glittered in the low sun. It was windy and the air seemed colder. The sky was a deeper shade of blue.

We looked around. The woods extended in all directions. Except for the field below, there were no signs of people - no houses or roads. It could have been the end of the world, or the beginning.

I said, “This place is spooky.”

Frankie said, “Let’s get back.” and we returned to the woods and home.

Again.

I said, "No lets stay here for a while."

I was large, expansive.