“Oh. Uh, I want to ask you.”
“Wha’?”
“Do you believe me?”
I did. I really did and I told her so.
“I’d never lie to you,” she said. “I mean …” She laughed a little. “I mean I would lie but I’m not. I need you.”
Those three words shot a tremor through me.
“Hold it, Easy,” she said, feeling my mood. “Wait a second. I didn’t do anything wrong. I want you to believe that.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Really?” she asked.
I didn’t answer. Neither of us said anything for the next while. I fell out from the chair and we wrestled across the floor more like snakes than humans, or birds.
IN THE DREAM there was an orange-hot sunset at the horizon of a dense German forest. I was a dogface again, separated from my troop and deep behind enemy lines.
The forest was beautiful and rich with the scents of things living. I wanted to take off my uniform and get down on my belly. I wanted to grow fur and scurry off between the thick branches that bristled at the road.
There were men coming up through the woods. They moved cautiously and abreast. I could see snatches of them but they were mainly hidden by the foliage, and I was nearly blinded by that orange sun.
Were they GIs like me? Or Nazi soldiers? My heart thumped in my throat and I tried one last time to become a beast and run.
A rifle swung up and aimed at me. Was it a GI who saw a bear or a German shooting down an American invader? Maybe it was just a white man shooting at shadows.
Whatever it was, I jumped, gasping my last breath.
“Easy, what is it?” Idabell was lying next to me, her hot skin against my back.
The lamp in the living room had an orange shade.
My pants were down around my ankles and my shirt and jacket were pulled up to my chest. I was in a strange house in the middle of the night sleeping next to a woman who might have been a murderer.
My nightmares were no more threatening than my waking life.
“Nothin’s wrong,” I said. “I got your dog out in the car.”
She jumped up with a wide grin on her face.
“I was so happy to see you that I forgot. Where is he?”
“Out in the car,” I said again. I was sitting there pulling up my shorts and pants. Then I stood trying to straighten out my clothes.
“Can we go see him?” she begged.
PHARAOH LEAPT HIGH into the air on our walk back to the house—splashing in the puddles and putting paw marks on Idabell’s skirt. Inside he licked her face and wagged his whole backside along with his tail while Idabell cooed and giggled and scratched.
After a long reunion I pointed out that it was nearing two o’clock in the morning.
“I have a bus ticket for five.” She yawned deeply and smiled at me. When she reached out to stroke my face Pharaoh growled.
“Oh shush,” she said. “You silly dog you.”
“You wanna ride to the bus station?”
“Yes. I just need to drop something off.”
“What’s that?”
“Just a note to my friend Bonnie,” she said sleepily.
“Is that Bonnie Shay?”
“Yes.”
“Did you get my number from her?”
“She called me here after you came by. We’ve had our differences but Bonnie’s still my friend.”
“So you just wanna drop this note off and then go to the bus station?”
“Yes.” She had very white teeth. “When I get somewhere I’ll write you. Maybe you could come visit—after a while.”
“Uh-huh, sure.” I was as sincere as a boxer putting up his guard. “Well, let’s go.”
“I just have to bring a couple of things,” she said.
She ran somewhere in the house and came back with a child’s croquet set that consisted of two wooden mallets and six large wooden balls held together in a wire frame that had a handle at the top. She also had a carrying case for Pharaoh. It was a little doghouse with a screened door and a handle at the top.
