The Dream Peddler Read online

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  When Christina Blackwell awoke, she was right away panicked, because she could not remember her dream. She placed her fingers lightly on her temples like a fortune-teller, concentrating. Her heart beat through, whispering the blood along, and then the dream fluttered in and lifted her eyelids.

  This was unexpected. The face of the man in the dream was not the twisting comic face of Jackson Banks but a smooth, expressionless one with ginger freckles clustering under two light blue eyes. She wasn’t sure she could grasp the dream’s details through the haze of sleep. They seemed to be floating just beyond her, as trees and houses appear to drift across a morning fog. She remembered dancing in a white satin wedding dress, encircled in arms, and the freckled cheek close to her own, reflecting her own flush back at her.

  The face was not unfamiliar to her. In fact, she knew it well. She’d caught it shyly turning to her sometimes at school and church, but she did not like the face and hadn’t paid it much mind. His name was Rolf Baer, and his parents were immigrants, although he’d been born in the north and spoke perfect English himself. He might as well have spoken only a foreign tongue, she thought, since he never had anything interesting to say. He only looked.

  Rolf. Christina sat in her nightgown with the chilly air nosing its way under to her skin and considered him. Her first impulse was to reject him, because he was, after all, Rolf and not Jackson Banks. Had the dream been wrong? Was the potion faulty? She did not think she could go to the dream peddler and complain when she had in fact dreamed of a wedding day and a husband, just as promised. Then she remembered, too, what the dream peddler had said about the future changing, and all of a sudden the problem became clear to her. At the time she had not understood him, but as she stared in her mind’s eye at Rolf’s pale, spotted features, it made sense. Rolf preferred her above all others. He must, if he had earned this place in her dream. But she loved Jackson. Her dream had been a warning. If she wanted to change the future, she would have to take action.

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  The buds were beginning now on the trees, the tight yellow knots of them mossing the branches and belying how quickly they would spring out into the big, flopping leaves. Though thick mud was bubbling on the roads, the people began walking, taking the sun, young couples strolling side by side and letting their hands swing close enough to touch. And girls, girls in twos and threes could always be seen ambling, talking in low voices together, a sound that hovered around them in a midgey cloud. They clasped arms around each other’s slender waist, and from time to time their bright laughter flew up like a flock of birds and settled again. Sitting outside the general store on a bench, one could admire the flutter of their spring dresses and the gentle sway of their figures as they left their sloppy wake in the clotting mud.

  Everything was slither and slime, the spinning of cocoons and the rain running roads to slick and shine, and the leaves uncurling idly as they would. Robert spent a good deal of his time reposing there outside the store, that townspeople might see him and stop quietly if they wished to pass the time of day or make a private appointment with him. The girls all knew who he was and would slide him shy glances and then giggle to each other as they looked away. Most of them had no money to buy a dream and would hesitate to engage him even if they had. He didn’t mind them; they were pleasant to look at, and he also counted on them to take the memory of him home to their families. He would have a place, then, at the supper table, the shadow of him cast there even as he ate his own supper with Violet far away. As talk of him circulated, he hoped the blood of the town would quicken with his presence.

  There were often children playing about the store as well, coming in with their pennies for candy and using the wide porch boards to shoot their marbles. When wayward marbles rolled under his feet, he would tap them gently back out. If any of the children came crawling under the bench after a lost marble or ball, they’d be scooped up with a growl and tickled; he became a great favorite with them.

  One afternoon Cora Jenkins came by arm in arm with her friend Christina Blackwell. They smirked at him, and he tapped his hat brim gallantly, murmuring, “Ladies.” He gave no sign of knowing Miss Blackwell except to see her. He never hinted at having customers, ever, even as weeks went by and it became obvious, simply by his still being there, that he must. He kept his counsel as a priest would among them.

  “He’s a handsome man, isn’t he?” Cora observed, casually as she could, when she decided they were out of earshot.

  “Yes, I suppose he is.”

  “I wonder why he’s not married? So unusual.”

  “Well, you can’t be married and do what he does, dragging a wife and children along behind you, can you, now?”

  “I don’t see why not. The circus people all live like that. He could land himself a fine bearded wife, I expect.” Cora laughed at her own idea.

  Christina’s voice went down low, like it was trying to hide itself.

  “If you want to know what I think . . . maybe he has a gift. And he has had to make sacrifices for his gift. Maybe he wouldn’t have anything left over, you know, for making his wife happy and playing with babies at the end of the day. Maybe he has to use it all up on his magic.”

  “Magic!” Cora considered this as she gazed down the road at the long muck and the wide-open pale blue sky rippled with clouds whose tide had gone out. “I don’t know about that.”

  “Well, your own brother said his dream worked. He said it was exactly what he was hoping for.”

  Cora frowned. “Toby says a lot of things, you know. He’d be just as likely to brag about that dream if he couldn’t remember it at all. Just to have a story to tell, I mean. Just to have something to say.”

  Christina was quiet for a while. She tired of walking along arm in arm. Because Cora was so much taller than she was, they could never really match their strides, and their hips jostled together uncomfortably. She slipped her arm away and stooped to check the laces on her boot. When she stood again, they walked on with a little space between them.

  “He has magic, Cora. I know because I went to see him.”

  Cora stopped still in the street. “Christina Blackwell, you never did!”

  Christina didn’t bother to insist.

  “Where would you even get the money to see such a man?”

  Christina sniffed. “It’s not so expensive as all that, really. I have some put away. . . . You know I used to help Winnie Macon with her sewing business sometimes in the summers, and she always paid me a little something.”

  “Did he sell you a potion? Did you take it yet?”

  Christina glanced around, but they were almost out of town now and there was no one within a mile except old Mr. Hollister driving his horse and cart down the road in the distance. The houses were all quiet, with their dark windows reflecting the sunlit world like squares of motionless pond.

  Christina said, as meekly as if she were confessing a crime, “He did sell me a potion. And I did take it.”

  Cora drew in her breath, then squealed it out like a swollen window forced open. “Oh, Chrissy! This is the most exciting thing I’ve heard about in a month.” They both inadvertently thought back to the disappearance of Benjamin Dawson, and their conversation tripped over it, because you couldn’t help but think of it but it was not supposed to be exciting—that was not the right feeling at all. Then Cora gathered herself back into her delight. She was good at that.

  “You must tell me everything—absolutely everything. First you have to tell me how you ever got the gumption to go over to Violet Burnley’s house to see him. Was she there? Do you suppose he gives her dreams, too? And what was he like to talk to? He’s such a fine-looking man. I don’t think I could talk to him at all if I went there, if I got the courage. I’d be hypnotized.”

  She didn’t ask about the dream itself yet. Christina was like
a butterfly—you couldn’t blow on her, or she’d wobble away. Christina for her part was thinking she need hardly bother telling Cora a thing—just let her imagine it all for herself, and that would be easier. She shrugged her shoulders.

  “I don’t know how to describe it exactly. Miss Burnley was at home, I think, but she was cleaning in the kitchen, and he was the one answered the door. I’m glad. I don’t think she ever knew I was there.”

  “And what about him? What was he like?”

  “You know, I was so nervous I don’t remember. He was kind, he was very warm and kind, like talking to your own father. You don’t think about what he looks like when you talk to him.”

  Cora clapped her hands together. “That could be the hypnotizing effect!”

  “Maybe. I don’t think so. I didn’t feel hypnotized, just sick to my stomach.” She looked past her friend at a mob of birds in a nearby tree. They were so obvious now in the bare branches. By summertime those same birds would be invisible in the leaves and she’d hear them without ever knowing exactly where they were.

  “I have to tell you about the dream I had, Cora. It wasn’t at all what I expected.”

  “Maybe it didn’t work? Do you think he gave you the wrong one, then?”

  “No, it’s not that. He makes up your dream while you wait for him, I don’t think he could ever mix them up. It’s just . . . Do you ever think about getting married someday?”

  “Well, of course I do! What else is there to think about in this sleepy old town?”

  “Do you ever think about who you want it to be?”

  Cora turned her face away. “I don’t know. Seems like we don’t have a whole lot of choice in the matter, living out here. Sometimes I do imagine how great it would be if we could leave and go to a city where there would be all kinds of people to meet. Or if someone different came—” She stopped short.

  “I know what you mean. But”—Christina dropped her voice low again—“lately I’ve been thinking about someone.”

  “Oh, I know.” Cora began to nod, and her lips curved smug into her cheeks. Christina noticed they were still chapped from the winter cold, and small white disks of skin curled like salt flakes away from the pink. Christina wanted to reach out and scratch them off with her fingernail. “I can see that, Chrissy. I’ve seen the way you look at—”

  “You don’t need to say his name.” Christina sighed. “He doesn’t know, does he?”

  “No, he doesn’t know.” Cora pulled at her lips as if she had read her friend’s mind. “There’s something about Jackson and the way he talks, the way he winks and flirts. . . . I don’t know if he’s ever been sweet on anyone, really. That’s just something he does for himself.”

  “I asked Mr. Owens to give me a dream of the man I’m going to marry.”

  Cora looked sideways at her with a new admiration. “Christina Blackwell!” she exclaimed again. “You do surprise me. Who would have thought you had all this in you?”

  “Not me, that’s one thing. But somehow, I don’t know, this feeling came over me and I just had to find out. I thought there was a chance he might be able to help me. But it wasn’t at all what I thought.”

  “What did you dream about, then?”

  “Well, I did dream about my wedding, and I could see my husband plain as day—but it wasn’t Jackson. It was Rolf Baer.”

  Cora cackled at that. “Oh, my goodness. Well, I can’t say as I’m surprised. That boy is definitely crazy about you. He stares when he’s around you like he thinks you’re going to disappear if he takes his eyes off you.”

  “But don’t you see? I don’t want to marry him.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Cora said thoughtfully. “That might not be so bad.”

  Christina could not tell if she was being teased.

  “What on earth can you mean, ‘not so bad’?”

  “I just meant . . . to be married to someone who adores you like that.”

  Christina thought for a minute. “Maybe,” she said. “But . . . but I want to adore him back.”

  Cora sighed. “Well, that’s a tall order, now, isn’t it? Kind of hard to picture anyone worshipping that long, freckly mug.”

  “Oh, I know!” Christina burst out. “I don’t want to! I don’t want to marry him. I wonder what you think about . . . the possibility that the dream was wrong.”

  “Of course it could be wrong,” said Cora immediately, comfortingly. “Dreams are just dreams. Did he tell you about his guarantee? I think you can get your money back.”

  “Sure he did. I don’t want my money back. But I have this idea that my dream was . . . just one possible future. There could be others. Don’t you think? If Rolf came to me in my dream because he wants to be my husband and maybe he’s my only choice right at this moment. But maybe I could change that, too.”

  Cora was thoughtful for a while. She lifted her arms up to the sun and spun around, and her red hair blazed and seemed also to kindle everything around her. Christina admired her friend. If anyone could have Jackson Banks’s attention, it would be her, this living doll with her skin so white it was almost like frosted glass. Frosted glass with a red wine poured into it.

  “We will just have to do something about this,” Cora said finally. “Let’s put our heads together and think how we can shift old Jackson’s attention off his jokes and onto you. It won’t be so hard, I don’t think. He just needs to be put off his balance, you know? Then we can tip him in your direction.”

  Chapter 11

  Evie was going into town today. She did not like to see people since the funeral, their glassy, pitying eyes, so she’d had George going in for sugar and tea, little things as she missed them. Today she changed her mind. It was doing no good to hide. Even though she didn’t really care whether she was doing herself any good, she did care about George. She could still see him vaguely, moving through the murky house aro-und her, as though she were encountering him underwater. It even felt like her limbs were weighted down with it, propelling her sluggishly through the depths. She felt George’s worry as it drifted and ensnared her like seaweed, and she thought she could try to be normal, for him. Even if she could only recover a surface of herself, she thought it could work; she could help him have a life.

  So she put on the spring dress she would usually wear if she were visiting, a blue dress not so shabby as her housedress but maybe not good enough anymore for church. She pulled it down over her head, and she felt pale and soft, vulnerable like a grub turned up by the plow. As the dress hung loosely around her, she noticed for the first time how her body had shrunk, how she’d lost the fat of herself and the curves somewhere. She was more like a young girl now. She’d gone back in time to when she was still growing and the flinty bones inside her used to show through the skin.

  She went to the mirror over their old brown dresser and studied herself. She smoothed her hair back from her temples out of habit—the curls there would not be put down. Her chest before had been plump and smooth, with white hitched creases just beginning to show around her neck. Now her collarbones had emerged, and there was a hollow between them that she had not known would be there. It looked as if a finger had pressed down on her, trying to close her throat, as if she were made of dough.

  She stepped out of her house and into the sunlight she no longer loved. The breeze had become unfamiliar, the way it grew bolder when it found her and gusted to lift the hair off the back of her neck, like George going to plant a kiss. She rubbed her own arms, trying to slough this pleasure off them.

  George had taken Bess, her favorite horse, to go and pull her father’s motorcar out of the mud again, so she would walk. There was not enough to do at home these days, and walking would wear out the time. She moved her boots forward doggedly, feeling them sometimes sucking in the mud, sometimes finding purchase on a patch of spongy brown grass or slushing through a lingering plate of snow. She thoug
ht of the earth like a hide, a surfacing creature whose back she was riding.

  Once the ground was that warm, as warm as an animal, then they would go back and bury her son.

  She turned and looked at the trail she had made behind her, tracks like tooth marks biting a long, dark wound around the world. She walked an hour toward town and passed no one, but as she came nearer to Main Street, she began to see them drifting, like stray snowflakes, all around her. It was hard to make out their faces, as if they could come only so close before they whirled away again. Evie looked down and watched her boots instead. Strange to feel the cotton dress push between her legs like an exploring hand, where once her thighs would have rubbed against each other as she walked. Now she understood what the lack of appetite meant for her body, that the heft of her might actually start to lift, the layers of her evaporating into the air.

  Eventually she sensed the storefront quivering into view at the edge of her vision. As always, a few men enjoyed their pipes on the bench outside. Two of them she knew, older farmers whose sons and sons-in-law now tended their land while they rested, recuperating from forty years of forcing the dirt. Now they were stretching their legs before them like long, stiff oars on a boat left to drift.

  The third man she had never met, but she knew who he was: the one she had seen staring at her from under his hat brim when they left the funeral. He was much closer now, and she could see the cloudless blue of his eyes. Out of politeness he nodded her way, but she noticed today he would not take the hook of her; his eyes merely skimmed her surface and slid away. The two old farmers noticed nothing, and she went wordlessly into the store. She was not the first bereaved woman they had seen and would not be the last. Their sympathy came out naturally and easy, like a sweat, and would dry just as swiftly with the next cool breeze.