14
It was hot in Georgia, too, but more humid. Earlier that same day, as a little breeze stirred the oak leaves, high among the branches Sammie sat straddling a gnarled limb, her bare feet swinging, her long pale hair tangled in the twigs and leaves. Life was good, her daddy was home now, at work at his auto shop just a few blocks away. Later in the afternoon she and Becky would walk down to join him and they’d head over to Grandma’s for dinner. Below her at the picnic table her mother had laid out the monthly figures for Thrasher’s Drugstore, her papers weighted with rocks, her ledger shaded by the sprawling tree.
Looking up, Becky watched Sammie with interest, the child completely absorbed in moving a little metal car along in the air above a leafy branch—she had attached a pair of paper wings to the car, stuck on with tape so it was now an airplane, and she had filled the hollow metal plane with white flour. Becky didn’t know where Sammie’s interest in flight came from, there weren’t many planes around Rome, just a couple of small ones that enthusiastic young men were learning to fly. She watched Sammie pass the little plane over a branch, shaking it so the flour would drift down and cover the leaves. “Dusting the crops,” Sammie said. Becky could swear Sammie had never seen a crop duster. Somehow, the child’s use of the word, her knowledge of the word, made her uneasy.
She was probably reacting to nothing, maybe to some chance remark by a neighbor that Sammie had overheard, but still she wondered. With Sammie, any unusual reference, like so many of her dreams, might have far more meaning than seemed obvious. Sammie’s dreams could affect their lives in ways that were far more real than the ephemeral world of nighttime fantasies.
Though many of Sammie’s visions were small, unimportant events, a neighbor’s truck breaking down late at night; the neighborhood cat who birthed five kittens, two black, three striped, just as Sammie foretold. Becky was used to those dreams, Sammie would tell them to her, then later would smile at her knowingly when the kittens were born just as Sammie said, or the truck broke an axle just before midnight and the neighbor called Morgan for help.
But some of Sammie’s night visions were ugly. When she was barely four years old she dreamed that the courthouse was on fire and she woke crying that the tower was falling all in flame. A week later the courthouse burned, the tower fell blazing, its flying parts breaking ladders, smashing the hood of the town firetruck, severing a six-inch hose, and injuring four volunteer firefighters.
Becky and Morgan had told no one about their child’s predictions, and they swore Sammie to secrecy. The same year she dreamed that her little dog was dead, the small spotted pup Becky had gotten for her from the animal shelter and for which she’d had a fence built to keep him from running in the street, the pup who slept with Sammie and spent every waking hour with her. Sammie dreamed that he followed their car to Main Street where a truck hit him, she dreamed his death in detail far too vivid for any child to have imagined, for any child to have to witness. Three days later the pup dug under the fence and followed their car when Sammie and her mother went shopping. He was killed on Main Street under the wheels of a delivery truck. The child’s grief had already reached its peak before his death; now, her response to the fatal accident was numbness, a cold silence that deepened day by day, badly frightening Becky.
But not all Sammie’s dreams were shattering, some were happy predictions, a new teacher she would grow to love; her grandmother Caroline’s new sewing machine on which Caroline, a tall, handsome woman, would fashion bright new clothes for Sammie. She dreamed the tale in a brand-new storybook, knew it nearly word for word before it was read to her. She dreamed of a school party with papier-m?ch? elephants and giraffes and a cake with a zebra on top, her school “circus party” about which she knew nothing at the time.
But now, this past week, a stranger vision had begun: Sammie had started dreaming of an old man, someone neither Becky nor Morgan had ever met. Sammie called him the cowboy, she would wake worried becausehe was worried, because he was frightened.“Scared because he’s growing old and weak,” she told Becky. It seemed that only by sharing her dreams could the child deal with her fears; and this old man seemed as close and familiar to Sammie as if she had known him all her life. Becky tried to say something reassuring about people gettingold, how natural that was; she would hold Sammie and rock her until the child’s sadness seemed to ease, until Sammie’s pain and fear for the old cowboy drew back, the distress in the little girl’s dark gaze to soften, though she would remain pale and unnaturally quiet.
But now Sammie, flying her crop duster over the leaves saying the cowboy would be happy about the plane and that it would make everything all right, that the airplane would bring him what he wanted, the connection of Sammie’s play with those night visions indeed disturbed Becky. The powerful juxtaposition of dream and waking play left Becky warily on edge, left her waiting nervously for whatever would happen next, for whatever was destined to happen, for the inevitable conclusion to her little girl’s strange and unnatural predictions.
15
Lee’s first sight of Lucita nearly undid him, he was driving a loaded truck in from the fields, the men clinging to the sides cutting up as usual, when he saw a cloud of dust a long way off coming up the dirt road toward the ranch. As it drew near he recognized the green Chevy station wagon that Jake said he’d bought Lucita last Christmas. “Got it just in time,” Jake had said, laughing, “before her old Ford fell apart.” Lee watched her park before the house, step out, and open the tailgate. He’d expected that after so many years she’d be changed some, maybe a bit faded, maybe having gained a bit of weight. He hadn’t thought she’d be even more beautiful, still slim and long waisted, her sleek black hair wound into something complicated, her pale, silky shirt open low at the throat, her breasts high and firm, her jeans just as narrow and smooth-fitting as when she was a girl. He was so intent, watching her haul out packages and a small suitcase, that he nearly ran the truck into a toolshed; behind him the men exploded shouting and laughing. He braked fast and they leaped off, heading for the mess hall.
Killing the engine, he sat in the truck watching her carry a load of groceries into the house, balancing the bags, swinging the door open with her foot. He wanted to go over and help her, to talk to her, but instead he moved on into the mess hall behind the pickers. He loaded his plate at the long counter, found an empty seat alone at the end of a long table where he could see the ranch house, see her unloading the last packages. He ate his meal quietly, and then followed his crew out to the truck again and headed back to the fields. Seeing Lucita had put him off his game so badly that twice he let the truck swing too close to the edge and almost went off the levee. Trying to pay attention to his driving, he thought about dinner tonight with Lucita and Jake, feeling as nervous as a lovesick boy, felt so unsettled he had half a mind to beg off, to say he didn’t feel well.