Charles De Lint: Dreams Underfoot

“You care too much, you just get hurt,” he said finally.

Jilly nodded. “I know. But I can’t help it. Do you know where we can find him?

“Well now. Come winter, he lives with a Mex family down in the Barrio.”

“And in the summer?”

The Bossman shrugged. “I heard once he’s got himself a camp up behind the Beaches.”

“Thanks,” Jilly said.

“He might not take to uninvited guests,” the Bossman added. “Body gets himself an outof-theway squat like that, I’d think he be lookin’ for privacy.”

“I don’t want to intrude,” Jilly assured him. “I just want to make sure he’s okay.”

The Bossman nodded. “You’re a standup kind of lady, Jill. I’ll trust you to do what’s right. I’ve been thinkin’ old Jack’s lookin’ a little peaked myself. It’s somethin’ in his eyes—like just makin’ do is gettin’ to be a chore. But you take care, goin’ back up in there. Some of the ‘boes, they’re not real accommodatin’ to havin’ strangers on their turf.”

“We’ll be careful,” Jilly said.

The Bossman gave us both another long, thoughtful look, then lifted his harmonica and started to play again. Its mournful sound followed us back up to the boardwalk and seemed to trail us all the way to Lakeside Drive where we walked across the bridge to get to the other side of the Kickaha.

I don’t know what Jilly was thinking about, but I was going over what she’d told me earlier. I kept thinking about wheels and how they turned.

Once past the City Commission’s lawns on the far side of the river, the land starts to climb. It’s just a lot of rough scrub on this side of the hills that make up the Beaches and every summer some of the hoboes and other homeless people camp out in it. The cops roust them from time to time, but mostly they’re left alone, and they keep to themselves.

Going in there I was more nervous than Jilly; I don’t think she’s scared of anything. The sun had gone down behind the hills, and while it was twilight in the city, here it was already dark. I know a lot of the street people and get along with them better than most—everyone likes a good fiddle tune—but some of them could look pretty rough, and I kept anticipating that we’d run into some big wildeyed hillbilly who’d take exception to our being there.

Well, we did run into one, but—like ninety percent of the street people in Newford—he was somebody that Jilly knew. He seemed pleased, if a little surprised to find her here, grinning at us in the fading light. He was a tall, bigshouldered man, dressed in dirty jeans and a flannel shirt, with big hobnailed boots on his feet and a shock of red hair that fell to his neck and stood up on top of his head in matted tangles. His name, appropriately enough, was Red. The smell that emanated from him made me want to shift position until I was standing upwind.

He not only knew where Paperjack’s camp was, but took us there, only Paperjack wasn’t home.

The place had Paperjack stamped all over it. There was a neatly rolled bedroll pushed up against a knapsack which probably held his changes of clothing. We didn’t check it out, because we weren’t there to go through his stuff: Behind the pack was a food cooler with a Coleman stove sitting on top of it, and everywhere you could see small origami stars that hung from the tree branches. There must have been over a hundred of them. I felt as if I were standing in the middle of space with stars all around me.

Jilly left a note for Paperjack, then we followed Red back out to Lakeside Drive. He didn’t wait for our thanks. He just drifted away as soon as we reached the mown lawns that bordered the bush.

We split up then. Jilly had work to do—some art for Newford’s entertainment weekly, In the City—and I didn’t feel like tagging along to watch her work at her studio. She took the subway, but I decided to walk. I was bonetired by then, but the night was one of those perfect ones when the city seems to be smiling. You can’t see the dirt or the grime for the sparkle over everything. After all I’d been through today, I didn’t want to be cooped up inside anywhere. I just wanted to enjoy the night.

I remember thinking about how Sam would’ve loved to be out walking with me on a night like this—the old Sam I’d lost, not necessarily the one she’d become. I didn’t know that Sam at all, and I still wasn’t sure I wanted to, even if I could track her down.

When I reached St. Paul’s, I paused by the steps. Even though it was a perfect night to be out walking, something drew me inside. I tried the door, and it opened soundlessly at my touch. I paused just inside the door, one hand resting on the back pew, when I heard a cough.

I froze, ready to take flight. I wasn’t sure how churches worked. Maybe my creeping around here at this time of night was ... I don’t know, sacrilegious or something.

I looked up to the front and saw that someone was sitting in the foremost pew. The cough was repeated, and I started down the aisle.

Intuitively, I guess I knew I’d find him here. Why else had I come inside?

Paperjack nodded to me as I sat down beside him on the pew. I laid my fiddlecase by my feet and leaned back. I wanted to ask after his health, to tell him how worried Jill was about him, but my day caught up with me in a rush. Before I knew it, I was nodding off.

I knew I was dreaming when I heard the voice. I had to be dreaming, because there was only Paperjack and I sitting on the pew, and Paperjack was mute. But the voice had the sound that I’d always imagined Paperjack’s would have if he could speak. It was like the movement of his fingers when he was folding origami—quick, but measured and certain. Resonant, like his finished paper sculptures that always seemed to have more substance to them than just their folds and shapes.

“No one in this world views it the same,” the voice said. “I believe that is what amazes me the most about it. Each person has his or her own vision of the world, and whatever lies outside that worldview becomes invisible. The rich ignore the poor. The happy can’t see those who are hurting.”

“Paperjack ... ?” I asked.

There was only silence in reply.

“I ... I thought you couldn’t talk.”

“So a man who has nothing he wishes to articulate is considered mute,” the voice went on as though I hadn’t interrupted. “It makes me weary.”

“Who ... who are you?” I asked.

“A mirror into which no one will look. A fortune that remains forever unread. My time here is done.”

The voice fell silent again.

“Paperjack?”

Still silence.

It was just a dream, I told myself I tried to wake myself from it. I told myself that the pew was made of hard, unyielding wood, and far too uncomfortable to sleep on. And Paperjack needed help. I remembered the cough and Jilly’s worries.

But I couldn’t wake up.

“The giving itself is the gift,” the voice said suddenly. It sounded as though it came from the back of the church, or even farther away. “The longer I remain here, the more I forget.”

Then the voice went away for good. I lost it in a dreamless sleep.

I woke early, and all my muscles were stiff. My watch said it was ten to six. I had a moment’s disorientation—where the hell was I?—and then I remembered. Paperjack. And the dream.

I sat up straighter in the pew, and something fell from my lap to the floor. A piece of folded paper. I bent stiffly to retrieve it, turning it over and over in my hands, holding it up to the dim grey light that was creeping in through the windows. It was one of Paperjack’s Chinese fortunetellers.

After awhile I fit my fingers into the folds of the paper and looked down at the colors. I chose blue, same as I had the last time, and spelled it out, my fingers moving the paper back and forth so that it looked like a flower speaking soundlessly to me. I picked numbers at random, then unfolded the flap to read what it had to say.