Lydia Millet: How the Dead Dream

"You told Mrs. Hitchens you were doing a March for Hunger," she said once. "She told me after Mass. She said she pledged twenty cents a mile."

"Hitchens, Hitchens. ." he mused, stalling.

"It was either a March for Hunger or it wasn't."

"It was definitely a March for Hunger."

"She said you billed her for ten dollars. Fifty miles, T.?"

"It was over a period of several days."

"When did you walk fifty miles?"

"Over, you know. A period of several days. There was a bunch of us from school. We did laps on the track."

"Hmm."

"Well, we kind of counted gym class. For a couple of weeks. Double-tasking made it more efficient"

"I see. And how much money did you raise, T.?"

"Like a hundred forty."

"All of you, T.? Or just you?"

"Just me."

"For hunger, T.? Who's so hungry suddenly?"

"Children, Mom. OK? In Africa. Just for one example. What is this, now you don't like giving to the needy? You're supposed to be a Catholic!"

"So you're telling me that all one hundred and forty dollars went to a group that helps starving children? That's what you're telling me?"

"All the funds went to children. Yes. They did."

Cheerful and popular, he was also cocky. He did not hesitate to punish adults as he saw fit; he remembered slights and took particular exception to condescension. His youth was no reason to presume him stupid, for stupidity was not the province of the young alone, as he himself had observed through careful study. Indeed there were millions of frail elderly gentlemen, slope-shouldered, weary, and brimful of gravitas, who despite their dignified appearance were dumb as a shot put.

His own grandfather on his mother's side struck him as one of these: the poor old fellow was a half-deaf Ukrainian who had immigrated to Florida not long after the war but never mastered English, and who, when he visited them, struggled around the neighborhood feebly waving his walking stick at fast-moving children and cursing at cars in his incomprehensible native tongue. T. tried to treat him with kindness, if not exactly the respect his mother said he deserved; but the codger constantly stymied his attempts at pretend deference, be it through glaringly obvious pee stains on his tan corduroys, a chronic inability to count out change, or the total opacity of the old man's blithering rage, which delivered itself in seemingly random outbursts of strange syllables.

He did not rejoice in this-far from it. He liked things to be as they appeared. The young were at least smooth-skinned and straight; the old were flabby and wrinkled. At least, he thought, they should pony up some piece of timeless wisdom to make up for their wretchedness: yet most shambled from breakfast to bedtime in the same dumb state that had taken them through adolescence. A fair number had grown up quite simply dimwits, and stubbornly remained so even in their dotage. He wanted to venerate them, for with their lined faces and dignified bearing they reminded him of august men of state. But then they spoke.

On the neighborhood black market he was known to have sold purloined bottles of liquor, a dog-eared copy of The Joy of Sex, Super Plus size tampons (a novelty item that inspired great speculation among the local boys), brassieres, and once a Polaroid of Adam Scheinhorn's naked sister. Her eyes were small as currants in a bleached-white face but the rest of her was so clear that fingers trembled as they held the photo, pinching the frame along the very edge. Oh yes: he knew where value lay.

Although he learned to put the lion's share in the bank, throughout high school he also kept a small safe in his room. And on occasions when he felt rebuffed, when he perceived an insult or failed at something he had desperately tried, he would retire there and carefully remove the portion of his stash he always kept nearby. With hands in latex gloves he soothed himself by counting out rare dollar bills-the two, for instance-and old coins that were prized by collectors, including many dark and brittle rounds dating from Roman times. These he would remove from his safe in ritualized style and lay out on a sheet of newspaper spread across his desk, in strict order from least value to most.

And it was not only the ritual, not merely the repetitious and the pious act of counting that afforded him comfort. He liked to hold and see the legal tender and then bend his head and close his eyes, the metal or the paper in his hands. He would order himself to concentrate until his jaw was aching from clenched teeth and his eyes beneath his eyelids almost hurt; in the still room both his ears would ring and he would feel himself reeling, as though in one position, bowed over his desk, he hurtled through a static night. He reeled, he reeled: he might disintegrate: his mind was pulsing like a heart.

After such effort he was spent.

One of his lowest moments in high school came at the hands of a friend's mother. The friend was Perry, short for Pericles, who was not a first-order friend but one of the less fortunate (prominent teeth, flood pants) to whom he granted favors in exchange for services rendered. They were playing Donkey Kong when Perry's mother entered the bedroom.

At first she made small talk, distracting them from Donkey Kong but failing to penetrate; finally she dropped the pretense and called T. away for what she called a "private chat." Perry rolled his eyes and seemed ashamed, but did not have the upper hand. His mother ushered T. hastily out the door, whereon a large poster of Captain James T. Kirk was boldly tacked, and into the nearby laundry room. There she shut the door behind them, began to fold towels with agitated precision, and asked him in a whisper where he got off, as she put it, "taking" Perry's allowance money.

T. nipped this in the bud with a quick denial, but she persisted. Though Perry said he was giving the twenty dollars weekly to T. in exchange for protection from various jocks who had it in for him, she did not think it was "fair" for T. to "extort money on that basis."

"It's more than fair," said T. "Before I stepped in, Perry got beat up like twice a month. One time they broke a tooth. He had to get new braces and a crown. You don't remember that? I mean how much did that run you?"

"The point is, if you're friends he shouldn't be paying you for helping him. It's something you do for your friends for free. Friends help each other, T."

"I'd like to do it at no charge to Perry," said T. firmly. "I really would. Believe you me. And in a perfect world I could. But here's the situation: I'm not the problem. I'm the middleman here. Those dollars go straight to the guys who were doing the beatings. In return, they keep their hands off your son."

"But T. — "

"Mrs. G., we were lucky they took the deal at all. I mean, they really like beating on him, Mrs. G. It's basically all they've got to live for. They didn't want to take the bribe at first, but I convinced them. So now they target other kids instead. But if we stop paying them-especially now we've had this gentlemen's agreement and everything was going smoothly-they'll boomerang on him. They have this thing they do with locker doors? He could lose the use of his pinkies."

"If it's that serious, T., Perry's father and I should just take it up with the school administration, or maybe the parents of those reprobates who like to hurt innocent little boys."

"Sure you could. But I would advise against that, Mrs. G. It would be like killing Perry. I mean socially. It would get out that you had to go in there for him and everyone would be saying one word to him: L, O, S, E, R. Loser, Mrs. G."

"I can spell too."

"He might not take as many physical beatings, that's true, but the psychological scars would be lasting."