Deep Into That Darkness Peering

Over at his blog, William James Tychonievich posted about dreams and included several interesting comments from readers in the post, which he had originally shared in 2013. I enjoyed the post because it got me thinking about my own dream life, which is a maddening one. As I mentioned to William, I almost never remember my dreams, with sporadic and rare exceptions.

After reading William’s post, I talked about it with my wife, who is not only a lucid dreamer but who also recalls her dreams in remarkable and consistent detail. As I’ve said many times, this ability must be contained in some chromosome that my double helix is missing.

I’m writing this in the early morning of Leap Year Saturday, typing quickly to get it all down before it fades –I had a dream last night that I actually remembered upon awakening. Thanks, William!

To set the dream-stage —  at the southwest corner of our house, a large pine tree stands just at the fence line separating our property from our neighbor’s pasture. The tree shades the front of our house in the afternoons, and the neighbor’s cows usually take their afternoon siesta in the shade there.  The neighbor who owns them, like his father before him, is renowned in the area for both his avarice and his neglect of his animals, a toxic personality combination. To say that the family is not well-liked is to understate the case. But they own much of the land around here and have more money than they can ever waste, so most people opt to simply avoid them.

Okay, then. In my dream…

I was looking out the southwest window, and the weather was warm and everything was green and vital. I noticed the aforementioned neighbor squatting at the base of the pine tree in my yard. He had two chimney-type charcoal lighters and was fiddling with them. My came up to me and watched him with me, and I had the distinct feeling that she wanted me to leave him be, not to confront him, and I decided not to say anything to him. I did go outside, though.

Once outside, I saw that the pasture on the other side of the fence was now an immense lake, full of cornflower-blue water. Someone had set up several beach chairs along the entire fence line, and I saw that the bad neighbor was grilling some burgers and steaks. He had built a huge charcoal fire beneath the pine tree and had inverted a jon boat over the coals and was using the bottom of the boat as a grill. The metal surface was so hot, it was undulating like water. But I could smell the beef cooking and it made me hungry. While I watched, the bad neighbor looked over his shoulder at me and nodded in greeting. I nodded back and then went to sit in one of the beach chairs. I was untroubled by the fire hazard, but I was aware of the potential.

A woman who was not the bad neighbor’s wife sat in a chair near me. She seemed to be about thirty years old, with hair so blonde it was nearly white, and bottle-green eyes. I have no idea who she was. She was making chit-chat with me, the content of which I cannot recall, and then she sat up straight, leaned towards me, and with intensity in her eyes and voice said, “I work down in Blountville. So….” and she gestured to the scene around us, as if to say, “….so that’s the reason for this get-together.”

Just then a little boy, about five or six years old, came up to where I sat. He was quite thin, as I was at his age. He had bright red hair and a sweet, shyly-smiling face. He stood next to me for a minute, and I think he was talking to me but I cannot recall what he said. Then he put his arm around my neck and stood there. In another minute, he asked if he could climb into my lap, and I gave him the go-ahead. He sat on my lap with his little arm around my neck, watching the bad neighbor grill the meat, and he pointed at the blue water in the pasture-lake. Then he scootched around and faced me and put both arms around my neck and his head on my shoulder. I reached up and held him, and I could feel how thin he was, his little ribs like a washing board, his knobby little shoulders, his scapulae like spatulas. At that moment, a sense of deep, overwhelming peace flowed over me, and I was aware for just the briefest instant that I was in fact dreaming…and I feared that the dream was about to end.

But the dream didn’t end just yet. My wife appeared and announced that it was time to eat. I settled the boy onto the ground and stood up, and he took my hand and walked with me to the house, his bony little frame almost melded to my leg and waist as we walked. Once inside the house, I saw that our living room had grown to the size of a gymnasium, and there were many long tables with benches stretching throughout it. The boy and I went in and selected a bench on which to sit, and sunlight began to fill the room, brighter and brighter, and my wife sat down with us, and the little boy was looking into my eyes, and then the sun grew so bright that I couldn’t see him anymore….

….and then I heard Dixee whimpering in the next room, telling me that it was time to let her outside, and I could see the faint predawn gray sifting in around the edges of the curtains. But the dream stayed with me. Why, and why now? I think dreams will forever be unknowable to me.

~ S.K. Orr