EVIE’S DREAM

Evie’s dream began as it often did, with fog and the snow and the forest. James stood on the edge of the wood in his crisp khaki uniform, pale and grim. Evie’s lips formed his name in her sleep, but inside the dream, there was no sound. With one arm, James motioned to her to follow.

The trees grew sparser as they came to a small clearing filled with soldiers. A boy in sergeant’s stripes began shouting orders, and the camp blurred with sudden movement—cigarettes tamped under boots, tin coffee mugs abandoned, gas masks donned, positions taken, every man alert and waiting. Dark clouds swirled overhead. Flashes of lightning broke the gloom like a charge—one, two, three! Someone was pulling her down into a deep trench, and Evie slid along the earthen, tomblike walls, hiding from an enemy she could not see. There was a haunting silence, like the world holding its breath, and then Evie watched in awe as a fierce wave of bruising light spread across the sky, followed seconds later by a violent force that knocked her to the ground like the punch of an invisible giant.

The air swirled with smoke and ash. Evie climbed out of the trench and fell onto a soldier whose bones shattered into dust. It was as if he’d been hollowed out completely. His eyes were gone, his mouth stretched into a hideous grin. Bloody tears scarred his shriveled, sunken cheeks. Evie screamed and scrambled forward across the scorched ground, where soldiers’ strewn bodies lay like trampled wildflowers. The beautiful trees were no more than blackened wisps now. Here and there, she caught glimpses of ghostly soldiers on the field’s misty edges, but when she turned her head, they were gone. Evie called for James, and there he was on the path up ahead, safe! She ran to him, but his expression was one of warning. He was saying something, but she couldn’t hear it. His eyes. Something was happening to his eyes. James stretched out his arms and threw back his head. There was another blinding flash.

Evie woke, biting off the start of a scream. The little fan beside her bed whirred, but she was drenched with sweat. With trembling fingers, she felt for the lamp switch, then blinked against the sudden light. The unfamiliarity of the new room made her jittery. She needed to breathe. She climbed onto the rickety fire escape and up to the roof, where it was cool and open. Jericho was right—the view was great from up there. Manhattan unfurled before her like a jeweler’s velvet adorned with diamonds. The trains still rattled over the tracks, even at this hour. The city was as restless as she was. On the ledge, a pigeon cooed and pecked at scraps of bread.

“You and me, kiddo, we’re gonna take this town by storm,” Evie joked even as she wiped away the tears that blurred the skyline into fractured light. “Don’t be a sap, old girl,” she scolded. “Buck up.”

Evie let the wind kiss her cheeks. She opened her arms as if to embrace Manhattan. Starting tomorrow, she told herself, things would be different. There would be shopping, a picture show with Mabel. On Saturday, they could take the subway out to Coney Island, dip their toes in the Atlantic, and ride the Thunderbolt roller coaster. In the evening, she’d find a party and dance as if there were no dead brothers or terrible dreams. It was all going to be the berries.

Evie brought her arms back to hug herself. She rubbed her nose on her sleeve and crooned in a soft voice, “The city’s bustle cannot destroy the dreams of a girl and boy. I’ll turn Manhattan into an isle of joy.”

The train rattled past, startling the pigeon into flight.

In the blazing canyons of brick and neon, the city carried on. People met and parted, hurried and idled. Subways rumbled. Car horns bleated. Traffic lights cycled from green to yellow to red and back again.

In Harlem, Blind Bill Johnson lay on his cot in the long room of other cots inside the YMCA and waited on sleep. It was warm in the room, like the press of sun on the back of his neck when he used to work the cotton fields back in Mississippi. He could see that butter-thin sun of memory now, the way it had broken through rain clouds and glinted off the dark car that carried the shadow men.

Mabel Rose read Tolstoy by lamplight and tried to block out the sound of her parents’ arguing in the other room. At last, she rolled onto her back, staring up at the ceiling and imagining that a few floors above, Jericho lay in his bed, also awake, thinking only of her.

In the African graveyard, leaves scuttled across long-quiet graves and onto the lawn of the house on the hill. The broken angel statue did not feel the cool of the long shadow passing over the yard. Its sightless eyes took no notice of the stranger wiping the blood from his hands as he took in the majesty of the starry sky. And its deaf ears did not hear the chilling whistle of the tune from long ago as it idled briefly on the wind before being lost to the frantic, yearning jazz of the city.

Miss Addie stood at her large bay window looking out at the Central Park Reservoir and Belvedere Castle, bathed in the slightly orange glow of the moon. She rocked gently on her heels and sang a song she had known since childhood.

“Tea’s almost ready,” Miss Lillian said, joining her at the window. “Ah. Look how the moon hits the Belvedere. Beautiful.”

“Indeed.” Miss Addie put a hand to the glass, as if she could hold the castle in her palm. “Do you feel the change, sister?”

Miss Lillian nodded solemnly. “Yes, sister.”

“They’re coming.” Miss Addie turned her eyes back to the park, keeping watch over the night until the moon paled against the early dawn sky and the untouched tea had gone ice-cold in its cup.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 944