IMPERFECT EDEN- chpt 2

THE DREAM

Reverend Darling, he is dreaming again. In bed, in the darkened room that is cooled by an open window just feet from where he lays caught up in a dream he has been keeping company with for more years than he wants to count.
His skin is soft and sweaty yet cold and clammy to the touch. If someone were to touch him, their hand would sink deep, go inside past dark skin once taut and drum like now slack and flat; go past bone that relents to all sensation, to spleen, past the heart and liver that for a man his age still functions well enough to move him his through days. Whomever that person was that would be so bold as to touch the sleeping man now, their hand would go straight to the spine which appears solid but would be quick to crumble and disintegrate at the slightest touch. He has been weakened by age, fear and loathing both of which have taken away his free-will until all he knows how to do is react to life and to dream.
His normally silent sleep is twisted and stormy, his restless feet quietly tap out patterns underneath the sheets, his every move telegraphs his thoughts through the covers, through the springs of the bed over to his wife. Mother Darling she feels the dream come again. It has been away for a long while this time, but it has come as she knew it would to take her husband somewhere forbidden and out of her grasp.
In her own restless half sleep, Mother Darling avoids her husband’s side of the bed, curls up tightly just across the imaginary line they have, over the many years, lain out together and which she has learned through the test of time, to walk, even in her unconscious.
For fear of disturbing his reverie, His wife dares not roll over off of her side and touch him. She lies alone and bodiless clinging like a ghost to her edge of the bed, her lace and gauzy gown laying coolly between her crossed legs, caressing her curves and folds deeper than any lover. Mother Darling feels nothing. She wills her breathing down, her senses that cascade down her brain silent, in an attempt to find a deadening slumber that has so far eluded her. Reverend Darling or Deakin, his first name, a name which she rarely calls him by, lies alone bound to his side of the bed by a phantom she is not supposed to know about, but his fear and urge for freedom she has felt for many years now.
He was sixteen when he first had the dream, when it first overtook his youthful and bucolic sensibilities turning them sharp and lustfully giddy. At sixteen upon waking that morning, he held his burgeoning teenage dick in his left hand while his right lay flat upon his chest as in salute or a prayer. He felt the stirrings brought on by the dream, starting somewhere deep in his body, shaking him and causing him to stir emotionally as his loins woke and rose. He had heard other boys talking about touching themselves down there and knew the feelings, but he had always thought it wrong and the only thing his dick was meant for was peeing and eventually, when the time was right and the mood was sufficiently dark and hallowed, maybe for making a baby or two.
He had heard his brothers telling about the feeling messing with themselves or pounding their meat as they called it most often, brought on and he wanted to avoid such frightful temptations. He wanted to follow what Pastor Meshach Keep always preached about and stay pure and in God’s light. Often while swimming with the other boys down in the hollow back over on his grandfather’s farm, he had felt the stirrings, at the slightest touch from one or other of the boys his dick would rise on its own forcing him to hide under the water, allowing his impetuous body a chance to relax and retreat back into itself. He would hear the preacher’s words “Be led not into temptation, sodomy and fornication out of marriage is wrong and the Devil’s path.”
During sleepovers out in the barn and after his sister and her friends left to retreat back into the house and to their giggles and primping, slowly the talk would turn to girls and sex and as boys were wont to do dicks came out and a “my dick is bigger than yours” contest would start up. Most nights once this started Deakin or Deek as the others called him back then, would quietly slip off into the darkness only returning once the others were well asleep. Some nights he stayed and watched. So he always opted out of such boyish sexual pastimes, because he was afraid of the carnal thoughts he had, black thoughts he knew were wrong and would get him into trouble in his small town and which needed to be hidden and squelched. So he did so. Locked up his youthful desires behind walls of sun-toughened skin and muscle and bone both toughened to steel hardness by hours and hours of from sun-up to sun-down, back-breaking hard labor. Six days a week he worked his young body to fatigue. On the seventh day, he followed the pattern of all the old folks in the small town of Haven, Missouri and gave his mind and body over to God fully and without reservations. Once again from sun-up to sun-down he found himself busy, too busy for lax moments and mind-wandering.
Then the dream came, sweeping through his life like fire, not the fire of the Old Testament, the fire and brimstone of Reverend Pryor to his flock on any given Sunday; not cleansing but a destructive, damning fire burning through boundaries, weakening the foundation of sobriety his young self had so meticulously constructed. Once the dream came he lost his tight-fisted grip on his urges, his bones collapsed under the new-found weight of his desires and he threw caution away like the Bible that now lay tossed to the back of the bedroom closet he shared with his brothers.
At sixteen his life could be marked in two phases- before dream and after.
After the dream hit, early evenings would find him resting up for his next assault on the town two miles away. None of the old folks expected him to be around and not off running the hills with his brothers and the other boys and definitely not somewhere secretly listening in on their sacrosanct conversations, he would hear the old folks in the house, or sitting on the front porch speaking on him. Kids, and even at sixteen he was still considered a kid, were not supposed to be privy and intimately involved in the affairs of grown folks.
THAT BOY DONE GOT A SNIFF OF SOMETHING AND NOW HE CHASING OFF AFTER IT ALL DAY AND NIGHT. AINT SAINTLY. HE AINT NEVER BEEN THE BEST KID, THOUGH HE ALWAYS MADE IT TO CHURCH EVERY SUNDAY OUT FAIL, BUT HERE LATELY HE BEEN SLIPPING TOWARDS THE DEVIL. Deakin’s grandfather Lou who was deaf in one ear and the other one for was mostly just decoration now as well, always started off the conversations. As elder of the family it was his right.
Lou, somebody gotta talk to that boy. He always down in town now carousing. Mr. Farmer said he saw Deakin hanging outside of one of those bars. No telling what kinda trouble that chile getting hisself into. Lawd. That boy aint the same old Deakin no more. He could hear his grandmother, the care and fear in her voice. Next somebody more than likely his aunt Niecy would pipe up.
Well if you ask me somebody should take a good green hickory stick to that boy’s backside. He might be filled out but he aint too grown to get Jesus whipped into him. Daddy, you useta whip us something fierce when we acted up. Mal still got a few scars to prove it.
GIRL
Niecy!
You know ya right on that Niecy. HAHAHAH
Uh huh- too late for whipping.
GIRL I AINT NOBODY ASKED YO ‘PINION. YOU BETTA LOOK OUT FOR THOSE HARD HEADED KIDS OF YOUR OWN. BESIDES I AINT YOUNG NO MORE- AINT GOT THE ENERGY TO BE BEATING ON NO OLD TAIL KIDS LIKE DEAKIN.
Then, all sad and slow, he would hear his mother speak. Her words were always slow to come now even years after her stroke. The doctor said nothing appeared wrong with her muscles in her face but still she talked slow and deliberate taking her time to push the words out.
…if his dad was still round he would put him to rights. my Deak still a good boy, i just don’t know what happened, but he gonna come back to God. i know i’m right, he will be right with God soon. i know my boy. now its niecy boys and them other two fools of mine we should be worrying bout. they some hardheaded rambunctious negroes now that can try a person’s patience with all they foolishness. Lord.
With that laughter and the topic would change from him to crops or church or town gossip which even the men momentarily added to.
Deakin knew, even if no one else did, what had happened to him, it was the dream.
It is this the dream of the village that stirs him again tonight from his deep slumber. After hours of working in his study under a dim bulb too weak for his old eyes, on a Sunday sermon that refused him sanction into its holy moments, he thought sleep would take him down just one step before death and not relinquish him until he had sucked from it all of its nourishment. But here he was stirring and restlessly turning, coming up from under the weight of the dream. He was caught unawares, half-sleep and bearing his soul under a thin coating of slumber for anyone to see and divine if they so wished.
As he knew it would eventually, it had come back to him again this dream of dirt and sun; this dream of unbridled spirit and passion that after all this time was still unspent. This dream, It felt sanctified, light on his spirit;
But unlike other hot and sweaty nights spent entangled in the dream, he is chilled tonight, his black cast-iron skin is not holding the warmth of the dream sun inside of its every cell. Half awake, he shivers a shake that feels like possession, or a throwing off of something bad; a thing he can only hold for moments at a time without getting burned.
He doesn’t remember how he knows it is a dream of ancient Africa, doesn’t remember when he first claimed this land as the land of his forebears. He does remember though how he felt the first time that he had the dream and the naked native, black and shiny with sun and sweat, beaming like new money in the copper sun, walked into his vision; he remembers the flush of heat his then boy body felt, the bristling tingle in his loins the dream left behind. He remembers looking for the dream many nights afterward to no avail. Later he realized it would return, it always did, but in its own slow time.
In his waking hours he can still picture the young native girl, her breast small and ripening- not the temporary sensuous ripening of fruit, lime, mango, papaya, alligator apple, but that of youth coming into itself whole and full with a knowledge of its power and beauty and the spell that both cast. But it has always been her companion, the half-naked man standing tall and dark against the horizon; the man chest muscled and taut, every sinew ready to burst like glory, ready for action and to pick up the girl and her new heaviness off the ground that moves him to tears. His smile is broader than his shoulders which are as wide as the African vista spreading out around them, it is to big for his face, too big for the space of the dream. The dreaming Reverend watches the man, his thighs, dense and mountain hard, his penis flaccid and drained of its life yet still large and straining at the confines of the dream air which caress it. He stares and yearns to embed his body along with his spirit into the dream
Tonight he remembers the feeling again with elation and sadness. The room is still, the air stalking around the bed waiting for something to happen. Reverend Darling, temporarily more awake than sleep, lies staring up at the darkness not really seeing anything just blank space. He doesn’t know what the dream means or why every seven or eight years it revisits him like an old friend, a lover, warming his blood, re-invigorating his every step. But now instead of sending the blood racing like stallions to his loins like it used to do when he was younger, the dream of African passions leave him lukewarm but passive and distantly moody. He lies alone sad and perplexed drifting back into a deep sleep.
Tonight there is no warmth, no charge or tingle for him; he finds no solace in his nocturnal transmissions. Tonight, for the first time, the dream has changed; there is still the town layered in the brittle harsh yellow sun, a tropical Virginia of the 1800’s, still gabled houses frosted white in the glow of the late afternoon sun, still could be seen ladies and gentlemen, somewhere off in the distance yet palpable, strolling along dusty streets, twirling parasols, holding hands as if going to an ice cream social. Again, somewhere to his left stands a small building, unadorned except for the carved woodwork over the lintel, intricate patterns reminiscent of what he now knows are the markings over a high priest or chiefs door. The markings like dissatisfied snakes, writhe, undulating and shape shifting one second then still the next.
Out of the door first comes the girl- still young and pretty, but now her breast are the fullness of too ripe youth, a youth not wasted and sequestered away from the light, but lived to its fullest. Her breast are sweet he can tell, filled with cane juice that is much too sweet and potent for anyone person to bear; much too tropical and sweet for his pallid and urban taste buds.
The naked man is the same as he ever was, if not stronger and more ready than ever to enter into the Reverend’s waking world from the dream. The sun still pervades the quickly approaching shadows, but still he knows there is something different tonight. There is a third person here, his dream self slowly registers his presence and knows he has never been there before- he is the anomaly.
This person stares and watches the two lovers. Off to the left of the hut, just feet from the naked man, hidden behind a bush, stands the short and stocky, jet skinned man radiating an inky sheen in the harsh sun. Somehow he is hidden from view. His shirtless muscles striped with sweat and dust make him look more native and primal than the other two or what the serene setting suggests is proper. The new man wears three quarter length sack cloth pants, his thigh muscles flexing and popping in restless agitation.
The young girl walks away from the cabin away from the scene as the third man just watches his eyes trained only on the other young man.
He doesn’t belong here, bringing into the scene a strong sense ill-will and doom. The reverend tosses roughly in his semi-sleep as if he is trying to shake this new person out of the scene, dispel the newcomer and the malice he brings so he can get back to watching the man and the girl. He feels hate towards the stranger, a hate and anger driver by fear and something that he has not felt or visited since he was a teen back home.
Reverend Darling loves the dream, he loves the feel and taste as it fills his head, his mouth with its warm honey tropical sweetness. He loves the dream like nothing he has allowed himself to feel since, since he was tucked away in the mountains of West Virginia as a boy before he forsook the country life never to look back on its terrible memories. He loves the dream like nothing he has allowed himself to feel since running free as a child a teen and would never ever feel again.
This dream is all he has of pleasure and when it comes, infrequent and softly, as he lies in bed next to his wife, who is cocooned in her own world, he allows it total possession of him. The dream is all his, his beauteous shame not meant for prying eyes, especially not his wife’s who would not understand the soft glow of sun catching the repose of skin, glinting off the hard-edged angles of unfettered lust thick in the dream. Rolling over he hunkers further under the covers, sags deeper into the mattress, into sleep in an attempt to become one again with his dream. But tonight it is wrong, it is not his same dream.
Normally at these times of dream-fall, Mother Darling, never used to an over active sex-life with the Reverend, would retreat into her own self, cradling her own body to sleep; hold her own counsel. The dream would make him more distant sexually, taking her husband further away from her. But now she is too old and settled to worry about such. She also lies half awake listening to her husband tumble around, his breathing the low quiet pace of half-wakefulness. Her skin sweaty and warm to the touch belies his chill. Her thoughts like her skin are sweaty and damp. She smiles unconsciously; she touches herself instinctively, slowly and without disturbing the bed. Mother Darling languishes in her thoughts; stolen thoughts that fill her with hunger.
They lie separately, both half dreaming, he waiting for morning, the light of day to come and excise his new-found unease, she for a chance to leave the bed, shower off her night-sweats, head to the kitchen so she can cook to feed her man.