Torey Hayden - The Sunflower Forest

‘I haven’t ever brought anyone out here before,’ Paul said as he banked the fire. ‘But you know, I’ve been sitting in history class watching you. All term. You seem different from other girls.’

‘Oh?’ I said, flattered. ‘How’s that?’

He shrugged and reached an arm out around my shoulder. We went walking down the empty waterway. We didn’t speak again. We walked about a quarter of a mile in the moonlight until we came across a trickle of water under thick panes of ice. Paul crunched the ice with his shoe and we followed the water until it disappeared into a culvert running under a farm road. He stopped a moment to bend down and watch the water. Then we turned and walked back.

Paul stabbed the fire to life again. He threw small, dry branches on it. Sparks rose up into the air, and he stood back, watching them.

I thought how I wouldn’t mind at all if he did make a pass. A kiss from him would be nice. He had a sensual mouth, full lips. I wondered if I dared to start something.

Paul tipped his head back and stared up to the sky. The fire cast grotesque shadows on his throat. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘whenever I’m out here at night and looking up at the stars, I always wonder. I mean, I feel like such a small thing compared to all that up there. I think that I’m just one little person and there’re billions of people and this is just one little planet and there’re billions of planets.’ He looked over. ‘Do you ever think about stuff like that?’

‘Sometimes.’

There was silence. The fire crackled.

‘And yet,’ he said, his eyes on the stars again, ‘every one of us still has dreams.’

We stayed out very late. Paul and I talked for so long that the fire fell into embers and the cold held us rigid in its grasp. I had never come across anyone like Paul before, who found places like these bare plains beautiful and who thought about things like the stars. When we finally gave in and drove home, heater and dog stench going full blast, it was after three in the morning.

‘What are you carrying in there?’ he asked as we neared my block. ‘I saw you get in with it.’ He indicated a brown grocery sack.

‘It’s a gift I got,’ I said and opened the bag to show him.

He touched it. ‘It’s soft, isn’t it?’

I nodded and took the turquoise shawl out, laying it across my jeans.

I had become frightened on the way home, thinking that my father might be waiting up for me. I dreaded to think of the state he would be in because I had stayed out so late. And I was so tired that I didn’t feel able to cope with anyone’s anger just then. So, when we reached my house, it was with great relief that I saw all the lights were out except the porch lamp.

As noiselessly as possible, I let myself into the house and tiptoed up the stairs. My eyes had long since grown accustomed to darkness. I undressed and prepared for bed without bothering to turn on any lights. The room seemed unnaturally warm to me after being out so long in the winter night.

Carefully, I took the turquoise shawl out and draped it across my chair so that if Mama came in early in the morning, she would think I’d worn it. Then I went to the window and pulled back the curtain. The moon was high. It had lost its hugeness and now threw out a cold, lifeless light. The wind had picked up and drew debris from the street into noisy eddies below the window. I watched intently, still half lost in the dreamy strangeness of the evening. I was tired, but for some curious reason, I was not sleepy.

Then the door opened. I started violently. It was just a whisper of a sound but my heart popped into my mouth, and I jumped enough to hit my head on the upper edge of the window sash.

It was Megan.

She closed the door quietly but deliberately behind her, so that the latch sounded in the silence. Then she turned and looked at me but came no closer.

‘What are you doing up?’ I whispered.

‘I heard you come in.’

We stared at one another across the expanse of the room. It was almost too dark to distinguish her when I let the curtain drop back down.

‘Why aren’t you in bed?’ she asked.

‘Why aren’t you ?’

Again, no words. Megan reached up and pushed back her hair.

‘Is something the matter?’ I asked. ‘Why are you awake?’

She continued to try and keep her hair back from her face.

‘Come over here,’ I said.

She came, hesitantly, stopping just before she was within my reach.

‘Did you have a bad dream or something?’

She shook her head. ‘No. I wet the bed.’

‘Oh. Oh well, Meggie, don’t worry about it. Do you want some help getting it changed?’

‘No. I did it already.’ She scratched her nose. Her long hair was wild about her, like a secondary garment. She looked up again. ‘No, I was just sitting there and I heard you come in.’

‘Well, you better get back to bed then. It’s really late.’

A pause. ‘Can I sleep with you?’

‘Are you having bad dreams or something?’

She shrugged. ‘No, I’m just sort of lonely.’

‘It’s like the old days,’ Megan whispered after we had gotten into bed. She had the quilt right up to her nose and it muffled her words.

I had my eyes closed.

‘Remember how I used to come in and sleep with you when I was little? When we lived in Yakima. Remember that, Lessie? I came in all the time.’

‘No lie.’

‘It was because of those dreams. Those nightmares I got. Remember them? And I’d wake everybody up? Remember?’

‘Yes, I certainly do.’

Megan shifted. We didn’t fit together in my single bed like we used to. I had almost outgrown it myself. And Megan was no longer tiny. I lay with my cheek resting against the top of her head.

‘Did I ever tell you what I believed then?’ she asked.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Well, you know how Mama was in the war? And she couldn’t go home to her family?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Well, when I was little and in the school in Yakima, I thought maybe they were going to do that to me. That teacher, remember, she used to always keep me after school. Mrs Hoolihan. Because I kept doing those worksheets wrong. And I thought it was going to be like it was with Mama. That pretty soon she wasn’t going to let me go home at all.’

‘That would never have happened, you know,’ I said. ‘You should have told somebody you felt like that, because we could have told you. It wouldn’t really happen.’

‘But it happened to Mama, Lessie. And it was when she was at school. She told us that. She was there and she couldn’t go home.’

‘Yes, but that was different. There was a war on. And she was at the university, not in grade school. Besides, that was in Germany a long time ago. Not America. It wouldn’t happen here.’

‘Well, yes, I know that. I’m telling you what I believed then . Remember, I was just little.’

‘Yes.’

‘And I mean, you can understand it. They did keep Mama there and not let her go home. So I thought they might do that to me too. Especially when Mrs Hoolihan made me stay after school and wouldn’t let me leave until I did those papers right. It really wasn’t such a stupid notion.’

I put my arms around Megan.

‘It was you guys I was scared about most,’ she said. ‘That they’d keep me there and I’d never see you or Mama or Daddy again. That’s what happened to Mama, and I think I’d just die if the same thing happened to me. I would. Even now. So, I kept dreaming about it. Over and over and over.’

‘Was that tonight too?’ I asked.

‘No. I just wet the bed, that’s all. Then I got up and changed the sheets and I was just sitting around. It made me feel lonesome.’