Sleepside: The Collected Fantasies Read online

  “Richie!” Thomas yelled. “Damn it, come back here!”

  Some of it seemed to fall in place as Thomas ran outside with his go-aheads and raincoat on. The boy didn’t have a home to go to when he left their house. He slept someplace else, in the woods perhaps, and scavenged what he could. But now he was in the rain and soaked and in danger of becoming very ill unless Thomas caught up with him. A flash of lightning brought grass and shore into bright relief and he saw the boy running south across the sand, faster than seemed possible for a boy his age. Thomas ran after with the rain slapping him in the face.

  He was halfway toward the Thompson house when the lightning flashes decreased and he couldn’t follow the boy’s trail. It was pitch black but for the lights coming from their cabin. The Thompson house, of course, was dark.

  Thomas was soaked through and rain ran down his neck in a steady stream. Sand itched his feet and burrs from the grass caught in his cuffs, pricking his ankles.

  A close flash printed the Thompsons’ shed in silver against the dark. Thunder roared and grumbled down the beach.

  That was it, that was where Richie stayed. He had fled to the woods only after the first storm had knocked the structure down.

  He lurched through the wind-slanted strikes of water until he stood by the shed door. He fumbled at the catch and found a lock. He tugged at it and the whole thing slid free. The screws had been pried loose. “Richie,” he said, opening the door. “Come on. It’s Tom.”

  The shed waited dry and silent. “You should come home with me, stay with us.” No answer. He opened the door wide and lightning showed him rags scattered everywhere, rising to a shape that looked like a man lying on his back with a blank face turned to Thomas. He jumped, but it was only a lump of rags. The boy didn’t seem to be there. He started to close the door when he saw two pale points of light dance in the dark like fireflies. His heart froze and his back tingled. Again the lightning threw its dazzling sheets of light and wrapped the inside of the shed in cold whiteness and inky shadow.

  Richie stood at the back, staring at Thomas with a slack expression.

  The dark closed again and the boy said, “Tom, could you take me someplace warm?”

  “Sure,” Tom said, relaxing. “Come here.” He took the boy into his arms and bundled him under the raincoat. There was something lumpy on Richie’s back, under his sopping t-shirt. Thomas’s hand drew back by reflex. Richie shied away just as quickly and Thomas thought, He’s got a hunch or scar, he’s embarrassed about it.

  Lurching against each other as they walked to the house, Thomas asked himself why he’d been scared by what he first saw in the shed. A pile of rags. “My nerves are shot,” he told Richie. The boy said nothing.

  In the house he put Richie under a warm shower—the boy seemed unfamiliar with bathtubs and shower heads—and put an old Mackinaw out for the boy to wear. Thomas brought a cot and sleeping bag from the garage into the living room. Richie slipped on the Mackinaw, buttoning it with a curious crabwise flick of right hand over left, and climbed into the down bag, falling asleep almost immediately.

  Karen came home an hour later, tired and wet. Thomas pointed to the cot with his finger at his lips. She looked at it, mouth open in surprise, and nodded.

  In their bedroom, before fatigue and the patter of rain lulled them into sleep, Karen told him the Thompsons were nice people. “She’s a little old and crotchety, but he’s a bright old coot. He said something strange, though. Said when the shed fell down during the last storm he found a dummy inside it, wrapped in old blankets and dressed in cast-off clothing. Made out of straw and old sheets, he said.”

  “Oh.” He saw the lump of rags in the lightning and shivered.

  “Do you think Richie made it?”

  He shook his head, too tired to think.

  Sunday morning, as they came awake, they heard Richie playing outside. “You’ve got to ask about the kittens,” Karen said. Thomas agreed reluctantly and put his clothes on.

  The storm had passed in the night, having scrubbed a clear sky for the morning. He found Richie talking to the Sheriff and greeted Varmanian with a wave and a yawned “Hello.”

  “Sheriff wants to know if we saw Mr. Jones yesterday,” Richie said. Mr. Jones—named after Davy Jones—was an old beachcomber frequently seen waving a metal detector around the cove. His bag was always filled with metal junk of little interest to anybody but him.

  “No, I didn’t,” Thomas said. “Gone?”

  “Not hard to guess, is it?” Varmanian said grimly. “I’m starting to think we ought to have a police guard out here.”

  “Might be an idea.” Thomas waited for the sheriff to leave before asking the boy about the kittens. Richie became huffy, as if imitating some child in a television commercial. “I gave them back to Julie,” he said. “I didn’t take them anywhere. She’s got them now

  “Richie, this was just yesterday. I don’t see how you could have returned them already.”

  “You don’t trust me, do you, Mr. Harker?” Richie asked. The boy’s face turned as cold as sea-water, as hard as the rocks in the cove.

  “I just don’t think you’re telling the truth.”

  “Thanks for the roof last night,” Richie said softly. “I’ve got to go now.” Thomas thought briefly about following after him, but there was nothing he could do. He considered calling Varmanian’s office and telling him Richie had no legal guardian, but it didn’t seem the right time.

  Karen was angry with him for not being more decisive. “That boy needs someone to protect him! It’s our duty to find out who the real parents are and tell the sheriff he’s neglected.”

  “I don’t think that’s the problem,” Thomas said. He frowned, trying to put things together. More was going on than was apparent.

  “But he would have spent the night in the rain if you hadn’t brought him here.”

  “He had that shed to go back to. He’s been using the rags we gave him for—”

  “That shed is cold and damp and no place for a small boy!” She took a deep breath to calm herself. “What are you trying to say, under all your evasions?”

  “I have a feeling Richie can take care of himself.”

  “But he’s a small boy, Tom.”

  “You’re pinning a label on him without thinking how... without looking at how he can take care of himself, what he can do. But okay, I tell Varmanian about him and the boy gets picked up and returned to his parents—”

  “What if he doesn’t have any? He told Mrs. Hammond we were his parents.”

  “He’s got to have parents somewhere, or legal guardians! Orphans just don’t have the run of the town without somebody finding out. Say Varmanian turns him back to his parents—what kind of parents would make a small boy, as you call him, want to run away?”

  Karen folded her arms and said nothing.

  “Not very good to turn him back then, hm? What we should do is tell Varmanian to notify the parents, if any, if they haven’t skipped town or something, that we’re going to keep Richie here until they show up to claim him. I think Al would go along with that. If they don’t show, we can contest their right to Richie and start proceedings to adopt him.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Karen said, but her eyes were sparkling. “The laws aren’t that cut and dried.”

  “Okay, but that’s the start of a plan, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Okay.” He pursed his lips and shook his head. “That’d be a big responsibility. Could we take care of a boy like Richie now?”

  Karen nodded and Thomas was suddenly aware how much she wanted a child. It stung him a little to see her eagerness and the moisture in her eyes.

  “Okay. I’ll go find him.” He put on his shoes and started out through the fence, turning south to the Thompson’s shed. When he reached the wooden building he saw the door had been equipped with a new padlock and the latch screwed in tight. He was able to peek in through a chink in the wood—whatever could be
said about Thompson as a boatbuilder, he wasn’t much of a carpenter—and scan the inside. The pile of rags was gone. Only a few loose pieces remained. Richie, as he expected, wasn’t inside.

  Karen called from the porch and he looked north. Richie was striding toward the rocks at the opposite end of the cove. “I see him,” Thomas said as he passed the cabin. “Be back in a few minutes.”

  He walked briskly to the base of the rocks and looked for Richie. The boy stood on a boulder, pretending to ignore him. Hesitant, not knowing exactly how to say it, Thomas told him what they were going to do. The boy looked down from the rock.

  “You mean, you want to be my folks?” A smile, broad and toothy, slowly spread across his face. Everything was going to be okay.

  “That’s it, I think,” Thomas said. “If your parents don’t contest the matter.”

  “Oh, I don’t have any folks,” Richie said. Thomas looked at the sea-colored eyes and felt sudden misgivings.

  “Might be easier, then,” he said softly.

  “Hey, Tom? I found something in the pools. Come look with me? Come on!” Richie was pure small-boy then, up from his seat and down the rock and vanishing from view like a bird taking wing.

  “Richie!” Thomas cried. “I haven’t time right now. Wait!” He climbed up the rock with his hands and feet slipping on the slick surface. At the top he looked across the quarter-mile stretch of pools, irritated. “Richie!”

  The boy ran like a crayfish over the jagged terrain. He turned and shouted back, “In the big pool! Come on!” Then he ran on.

  Tom followed, eyes lowered to keep his footing. “Slow down!” He looked up for a moment and saw a small flail of arms, a face turned toward him with the smile frozen in surprise, and the boy disappearing. There was a small cry and a splash. “Richie!” Thomas shouted, his voice cracking. He’d fallen into the pool, the circular pool where the whale had been.

  He gave up all thought of his own safety and ran across the rocks, slipping twice and cracking his knees against a sharp ridge of granite. Agony shot up his legs and fogged his vision. Cursing, throwing hair out of his eyes, he crawled to his feet and shakily hobbled over the loose pebbles and sand to the edge of the round pool.

  With his hands on the smooth rock rim, he blinked and saw the boy floating in the middle of the pool, face down. Thomas groaned and shut his eyes, dizzy. There was a rank odor in the air; he wanted to get up and run. This was not the way rescuers were supposed to feel. His stomach twisted. There was no time to waste, however. He forced himself over the rim into the cold water, slipping and plunging head first. His brow touched the bottom. The sand was hard and compact, crusted. He stood with the water streaming off his head and torso. It was slick like oil and came up to his groin, deepening as he splashed to the middle. It would be up to his chest where Richie floated.

  Richie’s shirt clung damply, outlining the odd hump on his back. We’ll get that fixed, Thomas told himself. Oh, God, we’ll get that fixed, let him be alive and it’ll work out fine.

  The water splashed across his chest. Some of it entered his mouth and he gagged at the fishy taste. He reached out for the boy’s closest foot but couldn’t quite reach it. The sand shifted beneath him and he ducked under the surface, swallowing more water. Bobbing up again, kicking to keep his mouth clear, he wiped his eyes with one hand and saw the boy’s arms making small, sinuous motions, like the fins of a fish.

  Swimming away from Thomas.

  “Richie!” Thomas shouted. His wet tennis shoes, tapping against the bottom, seemed to make it resound, as if it were hollow. Then he felt the bottom lift slightly until his feet pressed flat against it, fall away until he tread water, lift again...

  He looked down. The sand, distorted by ripples in the pool, was receding. Thomas struggled with his hands, trying to swim to the edge. Beneath him waited black water like a pool of crude oil, and in it something long and white, insistent. His feet kicked furiously to keep him from ducking under again, but the water swirled.

  Thomas shut his mouth after taking a deep breath. The water throbbed like a bell, drawing him deeper, still struggling. He looked up and saw the sky, gray-blue above the ripples. There was still a chance. He kicked his shoes off, watching them spiral down. Heavy shoes, wet, gone now, he could swim better.

  He spun with the water and the surface darkened. His lungs ached. He clenched his teeth to keep his mouth shut. There seemed to be progress. The surface seemed brighter. But three hazy-edged triangles converged and he could not fool himself any more, the surface was black and he had to let his breath out, hands straining up.

  He touched a hard rasping shell.

  The pool rippled for a few minutes, then grew still. Richie let loose of the pool’s side and climbed up the edge, out of the water. His skin was pale, eyes almost milky.

  The hunger had been bad for a few months. Now they were almost content. The meals were more frequent and larger—but who knew about the months to come? Best to take advantage of the good times. He pulled the limp dummy from its hiding place beneath the flat boulder and dragged it to the pool’s edge, dumping it over and jumping in after. For a brief moment he smiled and hugged it; it was so much like himself, a final lure to make things more certain. Most of the time, it was all the human-shaped company he needed. He arranged its arms and legs in a natural position, spread out, and adjusted the drift of the Mackinaw in the water. The dummy drifted to the center of the pool and stayed there.

  A fleshy ribbon thick as his arm waved in the water and he pulled up the back of his shirt to let it touch him on the hump and fasten. This was the best time. His limbs shrank and his face sunk inward. His skin became the color of the rocks and his eyes grew large and golden. Energy—food—pulsed into him and he felt a great love for this clever other part of him, so adaptable.

  It was mother and brother at once, and if there were times when Richie felt there might be a life beyond it, an existence like that of the people he mimicked, it was only because the mimicry was so fine.

  He would never actually leave.

  He couldn’t. Eventually he would starve; he wasn’t very good at digesting.

  He wriggled until he hugged smooth against the rim, with only his head sticking out of the water. He waited.

  “Tom!” a voice called, not very far away. It was Karen.

  “Mrs. Harker!” Richie screamed. “Help!”

  Sleepside Story

  Oliver Jones differed from his brothers as wheat from chaff. He didn’t grudge them their blind wildness; he loaned them money until he had none, and regretted it, but not deeply. His needs were not simple, but they did not hang on the sharp signs of dollars. He worked at the jobs of youth without complaining, knowing there was something better waiting for him. Sometimes it seemed he was the only one in the family able to take cares away from his momma, now that Poppa was gone and she was lonely even with the two babies sitting on her lap, and his younger sister Yolanda gabbing about the neighbors.

  The city was a puzzle to him. His older brothers Denver and Reggie believed it was a place to be conquered, but Oliver did not share their philosophy. He wanted to make the city part of him, sucked in with his breath, built into bones and brains. If he could dance with the city’s music, he’d have it made, even though Denver and Reggie said the city was wide and cruel and had no end; that its four quarters ate young men alive, and spat back old people. Look at Poppa, they said; he was forty-three and he went to the fifth quarter, Darkside, a bag of wearied bones; they said, take what you can get while you can get it.

  This was not what Oliver saw, though he knew the city was cruel and hungry.

  His brothers and even Yolanda kidded him about his faith. It was more than just going to church that made them rag him, because they went to church, too, sitting superior beside Momma. Reggie and Denver knew there was advantage in being seen at devotions. It wasn’t his music that made them laugh, for he could play the piano hard and fast as well as soft and tender, and they all liked to dan
ce, even Momma sometimes. It was his damned sweetness. It was his taste in girls, quiet and studious; and his honesty.

  On the last day of school, before Christmas vacation, Oliver made his way home in a fall of light snow, stopping in the old St. John’s churchyard for a moment’s reflection by his father’s grave. Surrounded by the crisp, ancient slate gravestones and the newer white marble, worn by the city’s acid tears, he thought he might now be considered grown-up, might have to support all of his family. He left the churchyard in a somber mood and walked between the tall brick and brownstone tenements, along the dirty, wet black streets, his shadow lost in Sleepside’s greater shade, eyes on the sidewalk.

  Denver and Reggie could not bring in good money, money that Momma would accept; Yolanda was too young and not likely to get a job anytime soon, and that left him, the only one who would finish school. He might take in more piano students, but he’d have to move out to do that, and how could he find another place to live without losing all he made to rent? Sleepside was crowded.

  Oliver heard the noise in the flat from half a block down the street. He ran up the five dark, trash-littered flights of stairs and pulled out his key to open the three locks on the door. Swinging the door wide, he stood with hand pressed to a wall, lungs too greedy to let him speak.

  The flat was in an uproar. Yolanda, rail-skinny, stood in the kitchen doorway, wringing her big hands and wailing. The two babies lurched down the hall, diapers drooping and fists stuck in their mouths. The neighbor widow Mrs. Diamond Freeland bustled back and forth in a useless dither. Something was terribly wrong.

  “What is it?” he asked Yolanda with his first free breath. She just moaned and shook her head. “Where’s Reggie and Denver?” She shook her head less vigorously, meaning they weren’t home. “Where’s Momma?” This sent Yolanda into hysterics. She bumped back against the wall and clenched her fists to her mouth, tears flying. “Something happen to Momma?”