Chapter Six
In his dreams, the boy was coming up out of deep water, fighting to reach the surface. When he got there, he felt the hard ground under him and a pain in his chest as if he had been clubbed with a baseball bat. It was worse when he tried to roll over, and when he finally managed to sit up, a pink froth dripped from his chin and spattered the legs of his pants. The pain now was a hard thin spear that went through him slantwise, starting under one arm and coming out over the shoulder blade on the other side.
He got to his feet, swayed, and saw the man lying half hidden by a clump of vine maple. He walked toward the man, not able to stop himself until he was standing right above him. The man's face was blue.
After the dream, he would sit hugging his knees and remembering. The first thing he really remembered was being in the forest, all alone, leaning against a tree and feeling under his shirt to find out what was the matter. Low on one side there was a dimpled tender place, a little soft bulge in his skin, and under that his rib was sore, but even that pain was going away. He looked at his shirt and saw that there was a great smear of dried blood down the side of it; there were spatters on his pants, too.
Then he was sitting in a car, hurtling down a dark road, and the driver, beside him, kept looking at the blood on his shirt. They were out on the desert someplace; he didn't know where he was. The driver, a pale old man with a white mustache, pulled up at a crossroads and said, "This here's as far as I can take you."
He felt thick-witted and sleepy. "I have to get out?"
"Yeah, get out. I can't take you no farther."
The door slammed behind him; he saw the red taillights receding. He turned and started walking up the other road, a gravel road between tall cut banks, dim under the early stars. After a long time he came to a forest of black trees growing in sand. It was dark now, and beginning to rain; he went into the forest and lay down under a tree.
Early in the morning he woke up and heard a voice talking to him from the sky. He couldn't understand what the voice said, but it scared him.
His pain was gone. Even the funny tender place on his side was gone, but he was very hungry and thirsty.
It was strange to be out in the world, where people could see him; it made him feel itchy and ashamed somehow, like the kind of dreams when you walk into class and discover that you are in your underwear. And he still couldn't remember what had happened in the woods, but he knew he couldn't go back there.
It was nearly noon before he reached a traveled road again and got a ride heading south. In a place called Lakeview he found a pay phone in a grocery store and tried to call home. "That number has been disconnected," the operator said.
"Uh -- could you tell me if they have another number?"
"What is the name of the party you are calling?"
"Mr. and Mrs. Donald Anderson."
"One moment. I have a listing for a D. W. Anderson."
"No, that isn't it. Donald R. Anderson, six oh four Columbia Street?"
"I have no listing for an Anderson at that address."
"Thank you," he said numbly, and hung up.
He had had nothing to eat all day but candy bars and two hot dogs, bought at a roadside stand early in the afternoon. He went into a railroad diner, sat in a booth, and had roast beef with gravy and mashed potatoes, two glasses of milk and a piece of apple pie with vanilla ice cream; he marveled that anything could taste so good.
There were only a few coins in his pockets, and the largest was a quarter. Sitting in the back of the booth, out of sight of the counterman and the waitress, he duplicated the quarter, making stacks and then copying the stacks, until he had eight dollars' worth. At the counter he said, "Could you give me some bills for these, please?"
"Sure -- I can always use the change." The woman counted out a five and three ones, subtracted the amount of his check, and handed him the rest.
Then it was getting dark, and he was sleepy. He went into a motel and asked for a room. "Traveling alone?" the clerk said.
"Yes."
"That'll be five-fifty, in advance."
He paid and took the key. His room was not very nice, but it had a bathtub with a shower and soap and towels. He covered himself with soapsuds, washed his hair, rinsed off and did it all over again for sheer pleasure.
In the morning he went into a store and bought two shirts and a little canvas bag which he thought would make him look more respectable. He changed his shirt in the back room, put the others in his bag, and got on the road again.
Los Angeles now was his destination, but his first sight of the Golden Gate Bridge -- that astonishing construction, soaring light as air across the blue water -- so filled him with wonder that he stopped in San Francisco and never thought of going on again. He liked the hilly streets, and the cable cars, and the crowds of cheerful people.
He stayed in a cheap hotel for two nights, and might have stayed there longer, but on one of his walks he passed a sign in a window: "Furnished Apt. For Rent." He went in and asked about it: it was two rooms and a kitchenette, with a linoleum floor and maple furniture; the rent was fifty-five dollars a month.
He remembered that his Uncle Bruce lived in Provo, Utah; that had stuck in his mind because of the funny name. He got the number from the operator and called on a Saturday afternoon.
"Hello?" A woman's voice.
"Hello, is this -- Does Bruce Anderson live there?"
"Yes, he does, but he's not home right now. Can I help you?"
"Well, this is Gene Anderson, I'm his nephew -- "
"Why, Gene! It's real nice to hear from you. How's your mom and dad?"
"That's what I was wondering. You haven't heard from them?"
"Why, no. Is there anything the matter?"
"Well, it's just that -- I was away from home, and they kind of moved, and I don't know where they are."
"Well, I never heard of such a thing! My heavens! Where are you now, Gene?"
"I'm, uh, in Texas. Could you -- "
"Well, you tell me your address and phone number, Gene, and when your uncle gets home I'll ask him -- You know, it's funny, your dad was never much for writing, but we always used to get a Christmas card. And I said to Bruce last year, no, it was two years ago Christmas, I said, no card from your brother this year, I wonder if they're all right. Now let me get a pencil."
"I can't -- I haven't got an address to give you, because I'm just passing through, kind of, but I wondered, could you tell me my aunt Cora's number? In Davenport, Iowa? I don't even know what her name is -- I mean her husband's name."
"Well, her husband's name is Johnson, or, wait a minute, is it Jackson? Something like that, but Gene, what do you
mean
you're just passing through? Who are you staying with? You tell me where to reach you, because I know Bruce will want -- "
"I have to go now," said Gene, and hung up.
In a curious way, he was relieved. For the first time in his life he was free to do whatever he liked, go where he pleased, buy anything he wanted. It seemed to him that he had died and been reborn, back there in the darkness under the tree. Both his old lives were gone, the one at home with his parents and the one in the tree house, and he felt no regret, only a sense of gratitude and liberation.
He changed his dollar bills at the bank for fives and tens, spent them, took change, got more fives and tens. He bought books, paints and brushes, stretched canvases, an easel. He went to the movies every night; his favorite films were those with Glenn Ford and John Wayne, but he watched everything with uncritical appreciation, even Ma and Pa Kettle.
Television was a marvel to him; there had been no such thing in Dog River two years ago. He bought a set for two hundred dollars; it had a round picture tube on which the faces of actors bloomed in furry lines of blue-white.