Back in now, I could see up ahead, the break in the tree-line that meant the end of the roadside trees and the beginning of the field. My shoes made soft whispering sounds on the asphalt. They seemed to be talking to each other. I wondered what some writer guy would make of that.
When he did sit up, he used his whole arm to wipe his eyes. He sniffled a lot. “I’m sorry,” he said, eventually.
“For what?” I asked.
He pointed, and the upper arm of my shirt was soaked through. I looked back at him, and said “Oh.”
“Don’t laugh, okay?” he said.
“I won’t,” I said.
“Promise?” he asked.
“Yeah, promise. We gotta’ go, though,” I said. I stood up. He inhaled, and I heard him almost sob, but catch himself. I offered him my hand, and he took it. I pulled him up, and we walked back to the bike. All the way back to town, we were quiet. His head was just under my chin, and his shoulder blades were against my chest. I didn’t want it to end.
When we pulled up at the end of his street, I realized just how close to my house he lived. “That one,” he said, pointing. Our two streets backed up against each other. His backyard was only four down from mine. I said so, and he smiled. “Will you come get me next time?” he asked. I said I would. I sat there and watched him climb back in his window. When he leaned back out, waved, then closed pulled his window shut, I biked home, and fell asleep.
Standing in that field again, I can feel my knees go wobbly. The field that used to go off into the horizon didn’t, anymore. While I’d been away, someone has bought the part I always called “the side field;” the part that hadn’t been used by the little greenhouse domes. Standing there, all I could see were the wrecked ruin of the little domes, and acres on acres of cornstalks.
The dirt didn’t make little noises under my shoes like it used to. It didn’t move, or billow in the wind, either. The dirt that used to smell so good had become just a thick layer of dust. I got to the first collapsed dome, and pulled back some of the plastic. Underneath were a pile of wood, and dried up plant remains. The air was thick with decay. I closed the flap immediately.
Another memory started to form, in my head; one that I had left behind a long time ago. We’d been inside one of the domes together. I could see Randy start to form, his face very close to mine in the memory. Then I remembered that I’d glanced from his face up at the dome ceiling. I stopped the memory there, looking down at the heap of plastic and wood before me. I couldn’t bear to look at what remained. I was afraid of what the rest of that memory would reveal if I let it form. Some writer guy would say I was haunted, probably; that this was a graveyard for the past. I never could think up stuff like that.
I walked away from the field, back out onto the road. The entire time I got that feeling; the one where you’re watching a movie, and the character walks out of a room, but you can see that just behind him, a hand reaches out of the darkness. I kept expecting to feel it on my shoulder.
Back up on the road, I could look along the trail I’d come from. The town’s lights were cold white just above the tops of the trees. I smiled. Funny, in all the remembering I’d ever done, I’d forgotten that the path out of town was uphill. I never remember that.
The door squeaked a little when I came in. I half expected Sarah to be waiting up for me. I thought I’d come in, close the door quietly, turn and see the tiny flare of her cigarette against the deep black of the room. I felt disappointed when it wasn’t there, in a way.
Getting up the stairs quietly, and into my room, was a little harder than I remembered, but no one woke. I shut the door, watching the patterns of light from the window play across it. I stopped for a second; I’d always wanted to be an artist, and paint that pattern. Something about the light on the doorway made me feel cold, but in a peaceful way. I don’t know; some writer guy would probably say that better. All I know is how it made me feel. It was like seeing an old friend after a long time away looking at that pattern again.
I toed out of my shoes, and was hit by the sour smell of them. ‘Of me’, I thought. I’d always liked that smell; my smell when I was younger. It hadn’t been as strong, then, and it had something more—young about it. I didn’t know any difference, then; it was just my smell. It was my smell. Thinking back on it, though, I could tell. Susan had told me that the best piece of advice her mother had ever given her was ‘don’t get old; just get more comfortable in your skin’. I thought about that, watching my silhouette on the wall as I stripped. I remembered being wafer thin through the middle, and whip-cord strong through the legs, arms. I never got the large belly of my father, but I thickened. I grew a stomach in place of the hollow that used to separate my ribs from my legs. I grew fur, as well. I couldn’t make it out in the shadow on the wall, but I knew it was there. I stood for a moment, in the cold cold air of my room, just feeling my body.
When I got under the sheets, it wasn’t Susan or even the old phantom of the bodiless hand that I thought about. I didn’t think about anything. In that still hour, it was only me, my body, and the explosion that curled me around my center; then, sleep.
FIFTEEN
I was riding on the back of an airplane as though it were a horse. I kept thinking that I should adjust the straps, some; that the saddle was loose. The sky was perfectly clear and when I looked up, there was a gorgeous red sunset. It seemed as though it were calling toward me. When I looked back down, though, the plane had changed into a long, black car.
The next thing I knew, I was inside, and too small to look over the seats. I could see the ropes around my wrists. I remember the hum of the air past the windows. The driver’s shoulder seemed miles away. The whole inside of the car was lit in the garish red of that same sunset I’d seen earlier. The driver started to turn around, and just as I was about to see the face of who ever it was, my eyes snapped open. My bedroom door was open, and Sarah was standing halfway to the bed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Her face meant there was more she wanted to say.
“It’s okay,” I mumbled, and burrowed deeper into the pillow.
“Mom’s almost finished making breakfast,” she said, and walked to the bed. She put an arm on my thigh, “She says she’d like you to come down.”
I nodded without opening my eyes. I felt Sarah sit down.
“What was it about?” she asked.
“The dream?” I mumbled, still not opening my eyes.
“Yes.”
I waited a moment, then said “I was on an airplane headed into the sunset.”
She sucked in air past her teeth.
“What?” I asked, opening my eyes.
“Nothing. Was that all?” she was concentrating hard on the carpet near my empty bookcase.
“No,” I said, “then I was Randy McPherson.”
“Oh,” she said, standing. She walked to the door without turning around. At the doorway she said, “come on, before it gets cold.”
“Sarah?” I asked. She stopped. “What does it mean?” She shook her head without turning around, then walked away.
The room was still cold, but light streamed in past the blinds. I closed my eyes and thought, seven. Back in the apartment, this much light with this little warmth would have meant about seven in the morning. The cold pockets under the sheet contracted against my skin as I stretched. My body felt small. I pulled the blanket back and picked up my jeans off the floor.