Boys Life

breakdown.”
    “It was good to see you, Mrs… uh… Lady.” Dad took my mother’s elbow. “We’d better be gettin’ on home now.”
    “Mr. Mackenson, we have some matters to discuss,” the Lady said as we all started moving away. “I believe you understand when I say they’re matters of life and death?”
    Dad stopped. I saw a muscle in his jaw work. He didn’t want to turn back to her, but she was pulling at him. Maybe he felt her life force-her raw, primal power-heat up a notch, just as I did. He seemed to want to take another step away from her, but he just couldn’t do it.
    “Do you believe in Jesus Christ, Mr. Mackenson?” the Lady asked.
    This question broke through his final barricade. He turned around to face her. “Yes, I do,” he said solemnly.
    “As do I. Jesus Christ was as perfect as a human bein’ can be, yet he got mad and fought and wept and had days of feelin’ like he couldn’t go on another step. Like when the lepers and the sick folks almost trampled him down, all of ’em beggin’ for miracles and doggin’ him till he was about miracled out. What I’m sayin’, Mr. Mackenson, is that even Jesus Christ needed help sometimes, and he wasn’t too proud to ask for it.”
    “I don’t need…” He let it go.
    “You see,” the Lady said, “I believe everybody has visions, now and again. I believe it’s part of the human animal. We have these visions-these little snippets of the big quilt-but we can’t figure out where they fit, or why. Most times they come in dreams, when you’re sleepin’. Sometimes you can dream awake. Just about everybody has ’em, only they can’t fathom the meanin’. See?”
    “No,” Dad said.
    “Oh yes, you do.” She raised a reedy finger. “Folks get all wrapped up in the sticky tape of this world, makes ’em blind, deaf, and dumb to what’s goin’ on in the other one.”
    “The other one? Other what?”
    “The other world across the river,” she answered. “Where that man at the bottom of Saxon’s Lake is callin’ to you from.”
    “I don’t want to hear any more of this.” But he didn’t move.
    “Callin’ you,” she repeated. “I’m hearin’ him, too, and he’s wreckin’ my damn sleep, and I’m an old woman who needs some peace.” She took a step closer to my father, and her eyes had him. “That man needs to tell who killed him before he can pass on. Oh, he’s tryin’, he’s tryin’ mighty hard, but he can’t give us a name or a face. All he can give us are those little snippets of the big quilt. If you were to come see me, and let’s us put our thinkin’ caps on, maybe we could start sewin’ those snippets together. Then you could get a good night’s sleep again, so could I, and he could go on where he belongs. Better still: we could catch us a killer, if there’s a killer here to be caught.”
    “I don’t… believe in… that kind of non-”
    “Believe it or don’t believe it, that’s your choice,” the Lady interrupted. “But when that dead man comes callin’ on you tonight-and he will-you won’t have any choice but to hear him. And my advice to you, Mr. Mackenson, is that you ought to start listenin’.”
    Dad started to say something; his mouth opened, but his tongue couldn’t jimmy the words out.
    “Excuse me,” I said to the Lady. “I wanted to ask you… if you’ve been… like… havin’ any other dreams.”
    “Oh, most all the time,” she said. “Trouble is, at my age, most all my dreams are reruns.”
    “Well… I was wonderin’ if… you’ve been havin’ any dreams about four girls.”
    “Four girls?” she asked.
    “Yes ma’am. Four girls. You know. Dark, like you. And they’re all dressed up, like it’s a Sunday.”
    “No,” she said. “I can’t say that I have.”
    “I dream about ’em a lot. Not every night, but a lot. What do you suppose it means?”
    “Snippet of a quilt,” she said. “Could be somethin’ you already know, but you don’t know you know.”
    “Ma’am?”
    “Might not be spirits talkin’,” she explained. “Might just be your ownself, tryin’ to figure somethin’ out.”
    “Oh,” I said. This must be why the Lady was picking up Dad’s dreams but not mine; mine were not the ghosts of the past, but a shadow of the future.
    “You’ll have to come over to Bruton and see our new museum when it’s done,” the Lady said to Mom. “We’ve raised money to start buildin’ onto the recreation center. Should be finished in a