The Dream Bearer (6 page)

“I was born one year, almost to the day,
that Malcolm X died,” Reuben said. There was sugar on his chin from the donut he was eating. “They had to kill Malcolm because they couldn't control him. You know they can control most people. Did you know that?” “How?”

“They do it by making you think in circles,” Reuben said. “See, if they tell you to do something you don't want to do, right away you're going to think they're stupid and you won't do it. Say a man walks up to you and tells you to give him your money. What are you going to say?”

“Probably no,” I said.

“That's just what you're going to say,” Reuben said. “But if he told you there were germs on your money,
you'd give him a look and wonder what his game is. Then you'd wonder why he's coming up to you. So your thinking went to the money, then to him, and then circled right back to you. See what I mean?”

“Yeah.”

“That's how they control you,” Reuben said. “They talk about you giving up your money, then they talk about the money having germs on it, and before you know it, your money's gone.”

“Nobody said my money had germs on it,” I said.

“No, but they're telling you that it's better to use a credit card instead of carrying money around, don't they?”

“That's so nobody will rob you,” I said.

“No, that's so you won't think your money's going,” Reuben said. “You buy something with a credit card and you take it out of your pocket. The man zips it through his machine, and then you put it back in your pocket. You got your TV, your CD, whatever, and you still got your credit card in your pocket. You think you got everything, but your money's gone. See what I mean?”

“Yes.” I didn't know what he meant, but I didn't want to say that.

The telephone rang and Reuben answered it. It was Aunt Mabel wanting to know if Mom was on her way. Reuben told her yes. Then he hung up and sat back down.

There had been six donuts in the bag. Reuben had
eaten one and I had eaten one. Now he pushed another one to me across the table.

“Another way they control you is through your dreaming. When you go to sleep at night, you got to dream or you go crazy. Even dogs dream. You ever see a dog dream?”

“Yeah, my friend Ralph had a dog,” I said. “And you could tell he was dreaming about running because his legs would go like he was running and so would his tail.”

“They put things on TV, real pretty things, and get you to dreaming about them,” Reuben said. “You see them on television when they come on, but you just push them on out of your mind because they ain't real to you. You know what I mean?”

“I think so.”

“They put a house on TV, all spotless and shiny. The wife, she's smiling, the children are smiling, everything is pretty and nice. Maybe they even give them a little problem so they look like a real family. Looking for a new car—something like that. Then they go back to the news or the weather but that little scene, the house and family and all, is still in your head. You think you got it pushed out, but it's just out of the front of your mind and pushed down into your subconscious mind and you dream about it. They got you dreaming about what they want you to dream about, so they're controlling you.”

“Oh.”

He kept on talking about how people were trying to control him, and I was getting a little scared. He said Mom was trying to control him too.

“Who is supposed to be the man of the family?” he asked.

“You are.”

“Now if I'm supposed to be the man of the family and she's standing up against me, then we're fighting about who the man is,” he said. “She's keeping me off balance. Just like you're playing ball and somebody tries to go around you. They move this way and that way and you're trying to follow them, and if you lose your balance they go around you. You don't have to lose it big-time, just a little, and they're gone. Then, if they don't want to go around you, if all they want to do is control you, they act like they're going around you but then they don't go. That's what she's doing. Yeah.”

He looked like he was getting mad. I tried to act like I wasn't scared or anything.

The faster Reuben talked, the more donuts he ate. He finished them all and then he said he had to clean the bathroom. He told me I could go over to Loren's house if I wanted.

I wondered what kinds of dreams Reuben had. When I thought about him dreaming, I thought of him having a storm in his head, with lightning and far-off thunder and the wind blowing big raindrops in your face and a
bigger storm coming just down the street, just around the corner, like a monster waiting for you. I thought Reuben dreamed of monsters that scared him.

They scared me, too.

Me and Loren took Kimi and Sessi over to the park.
We tried to teach Kimi how to play basketball, but all he wanted to do was to write down the rules in a notebook he brought with him. Sessi liked the game, and every time she threw the ball toward the basket, she jumped up and down and clapped her hands. I enjoyed watching her and Kimi, and even the way Loren was enjoying himself.

“Hey, man, you're laughing again,” Loren said. “You're looking like the old David now.”

We played two games, with me and Kimi on one side and Loren and Sessi on the other, and after a while we were all laughing and just fooling around. When Sessi said she and Kimi had to go home, I was sorry. Loren
said he had to go too, and I decided just to sit in the park for a while.

“I'll e-mail you,” Loren said.

I watched my three friends walk off, with Kimi trying to dribble by slapping at the ball. As happy as I had been with them, I was sad as they left. I didn't want to go home. What had Mr. Moses said? There weren't any homeless people, just people not in their homes.

I was thinking a lot about Ty and wondering how he was feeling. Was he wondering what me and Mom were doing? Or maybe about his bed? Maybe he would be thinking about his comics, if I was messing with them or just reading them. Maybe he was thinking about Reuben and about being hit. Nobody likes to think about being hit.

I saw Mr. Moses coming across the playground, sort of shuffling from side to side, wearing too many clothes for such a hot day. He was pushing a shopping cart filled with old clothes and newspapers. There were times I liked to hear him talking, but there were times I liked to be alone with my thoughts, to let them sit in my head and just get the feel of them through me without being disturbed.

He stopped a few feet away from me and, for a moment, stood perfectly still.

“Hello,” I said.

“Sometimes…”

“I don't want to talk to you,” I said.

“Sometimes when it hurts so much, we want to bury
the pain deep inside of us,” the old man said.

“I don't want to talk to you,” I said again. “Why don't you just go somewhere?” All I wanted to do was to sit on the park bench and be by myself. I didn't want to talk to Mr. Moses, or even to Loren.

“You just tell me why you can't stand to hear me talking, so I can take that away with me,” Mr. Moses said.

“I'm tired of people talking to me. Talking doesn't do any good anyway. It's just about people laying their stuff on you, trying to make you agree with them.”

“Yeah, well, that's true. That's true. But we only got one way of seeing the world, and we all running around trying to get everybody to see what we see,” he said. “You can't blame a man for that.”

“Yes, you can,” I said.

“I guess you don't want to hear another of my dreams?” he said. “It's a good one, nothing bad happens in it.”

“No.”

“It's about me working in the field down in South Carolina, about two hundred and fifteen years ago. You ain't never seen a field this big. Well, in this dream it was a hot day, so hot you could reach out and grab the heat in your hand. I had done got into a beef with one of the other fellows in the field. I don't know what it was about, some little thing.” Mr. Moses put his fingertips together in front of him. “Anyway, I seen him in the field a little ahead of me two rows down. He seen me,
too, and started picking faster and moving on down his row. Then I started picking faster to keep up with him. Before long we was snatching cotton like two fools under that hot sun.

“The old overseer seen us, and he knew we needed to be picking all day and wasn't going to do it like that. He snapped his whip to let us know he was watching us. I heard that whip snap but I just dropped my head and kept on picking as fast as I could.

“I walked and walked and picked and picked. And the spot on my shoulder, the spot where that bag went across my body, got so hot, I thought I could feel it burning through my body. I looked up at the other fellow and he was doing the same and we was both suffering for it. Lord knows we was both suffering, but we had got caught up in it and couldn't do nothing about it. Now ain't that a sorry dream? Two men couldn't find no way out the pain. Ain't that a sorry dream?”

“That don't sound like much of a dream to me,” I said.

“I didn't say it was going to be a fancy dream,” he said. “I just said it was going to be a dream.”

“Dreams don't mean anything anyway,” I said. “They're just thoughts that run through your head. Your dreams aren't even interesting. Anyway, I think you read them in a book about slavery or something. You talking about picking cotton and whips and all that stuff, it probably came straight from a book.”

“I don't know, maybe you're right,” Mr. Moses said. He had got to the bench and, putting one hand on the back of it, had eased himself down to a sitting position. “On the other hand, dreams might be the only things we got that's real. After the wind has lifted up what's left of the body and sent it swirling into the distance, and all the memories that seemed to be our lives have yellowed and faded away, then all that's left of a life is the footprints the dreams left behind.”

“I don't want to be rude or nothing, but…why don't you just leave or something?” I said.

“Yes, I see it's time to leave you to yourself,” Mr. Moses said. “But let me remind you of something you need to know. It is not only the wicked that travel with pain. Sometimes it is the innocent as well.”

He stood up and started picking up his things. He turned his shopping cart around and started pushing it away.

“You can stay,” I said when I saw him going, but the words didn't come out too loud and he kept on walking.

I felt bad when Mr. Moses left, and a little surprised how easily the words had come from me that had pushed him away.

Two boys I knew came into the playground. One was Scotty, who lived in the projects. He was okay, but the other one was Robert Davis, and he was always starting something. I got up and started walking toward the gate.

“Hey, punk, you got any money?” Robert said.

I didn't say anything, and Robert came over and pushed my shoulder. I turned to him and just looked at him. He tried to put on a mean face but I wasn't going for it. If he wanted to fight me I was ready, even if I was sure I was going to lose. Scotty called to him to come on and play some one-on-one. Robert called me a punk again, but he went on and played with Scotty. I wondered what kind of stupid dreams he would have.

Ty came home in the middle of the day.
He took a long shower and then fell across the bed.

“You look tired,” I said.

“I am tired,” he said.

“Mom was worried that you were using drugs or something,” I said.

“What's that supposed to be, the magic word?
Drugs?
Anything happens in the streets and the only thing people can think of is drugs. You can have some kind of…some kind of disease or something and people still talking about drugs,” Ty said. “I'm just busy and she's not used to busy people. You want to get paid out there on the street, you have to be busy.”

We heard the outside door open and shut, and
Reuben's heavy step in the hallway. I looked over at Ty. He sat up, took the remote, and put on the television. Reuben came to the door and just looked at Ty for a while.

“Glad to see you home, boy.”

Ty did a little lame nod of his head and I saw Reuben's jaw get tight. The phone rang and I said I would get it.

Loren was on the phone, all excited, saying that Mom was on television. He told me what channel to get.

I ran into the living room. “Mom's on television!” I called.

Reuben came in just as the picture of Mom came on.

“Turn up the sound!” he said.

“I still believe in the project,” Mom was saying. She looked fat on television. “I just feel that my personal commitments make me more needed elsewhere.”

“I understand that your husband is part of the opposition,” a man's voice was saying. “Is that why you're dropping out of the controversy, and is the community that torn up about the Matthew Henson shelter?”

“The community's not torn up,” Mom said, shaking her head. “There are different opinions of how to use the neighborhood resources, that's all.”

“She sounds like a real television reporter,” Ty said.

“Is gentrification an issue?” the reporter asked.

“No, gentrification is not an issue,” Mom said.

“What's that?” I asked as Mom turned and walked away.

Reuben held up his hand for me to keep quiet.

“Today's question is how to use the precious resources of Harlem.” The camera pulled back and the black reporter looked very serious. “And it's also a matter of who exactly will benefit from the enormous amount of money now circulating in this up-and-coming community. For Channel Sixty-three News, this is Mike Grimmett, from the Upper West Side.”

“She looked like herself but a little different,” I said. “I liked it.”

The phone rang again and it was Loren asking me if I had seen Mom, and I told him yes. He said she looked foxy and I told him he'd better watch his mouth.

“So I guess you won,” Tyrone said to Reuben.

“You have to do what you have to do,” Reuben said. “You want to go to the park and play some ball?”

“Who? Me?” Tyrone looked at Reuben like he was crazy or something.

“What you think, I can't play ball?”

“Yeah, well, maybe some other time,” Ty said.

“You think I can't play ball?”

“What you going to do, lay in some father-son time?” Ty asked.

This funny look came on Reuben's face, like he was hurt or something. “I just wondered if you was man enough to play ball,” he said.

“I'm as much man as I got to be,” Ty said.

Ty wasn't all that good. The big kids who were good
could take him easy. He thought he was good, though, but I knew he shouldn't play against Reuben. I think in Ty's heart he knew better, but something was eating at him. I called Loren and asked him if could come to the park, and he said yes.

By the time Ty got dressed and we walked downstairs, Loren was already on the stoop waiting for us.

“Your mom said you could come?” I asked.

“She's not home,” Loren said. “My father's not home either.”

“You're going to get one of those all-night lectures about how kids end up in jail,” I said.

“When I tell her your mother was on television, she's going to forget the lecture,” Loren said.

We got to the park and I got a ball from the park man. Reuben wanted a jump ball, but Ty told him to take it out.

Mr. Moses was on the bench and I thought he was sleeping, but then he waved, and me and Loren waved back.

Reuben took the ball out and started backing into the basket. Ty got behind him and was trying to hold him out of the lane, but there was no way he was going to hold Reuben out when he could hardly keep me out.

Reuben backed Ty all the way in and then did a little turnaround layup that went in. Ty got the ball, and right away he started a lot of head shaking, like he was going to fake somebody out. I looked at Reuben, and he looked
the same way he did when he was mad at me. I could see all the muscles in his neck. He's got a lot of muscles and I knew he was strong. Ty couldn't back him into the lane, and then he tried to put a move on him but he still couldn't get past. Finally Ty threw up a jump shot that didn't even touch the backboard.

They were supposed to play until one of them got to ten, and I knew who that was going to be. Me and Loren sat on the bench.

“Ty doesn't have a chance,” Loren said.

I was hoping that Ty didn't mouth off and get Reuben mad. Sometimes I didn't like what Ty did, but I hated it when him and Reuben got into it. I especially didn't want Loren to see Reuben hit Ty.

They played until the score was six to nothing and then Ty quit.

“You hacking me to death!” he said.

“You didn't think I could play ball, did you?”

Ty just walked away, and Reuben told him to come back but Ty kept walking. Then Reuben went after him and put his arm around Ty's neck. It looked like they were just talking when they came back, but I knew better. Reuben was mad again. They played for two more points with Ty hardly trying, and then Reuben asked him if he gave up.

“Yeah.” Ty was mad because Reuben has a way of making you feel little inside. Ty didn't even look over to where me and Loren were sitting.

Reuben threw me the ball and told me to take it back to the park house, and Loren asked me if I wanted to play some one-on-one. I said I had to go home, but I took a shot before I left.

Just then Mr. Moses started coughing. He was coughing bad, like his whole body was going back and forth.

“I'll get some water!” Loren said.

The park was suddenly like a bunch of scenes, all drifting away from the basketball court. Ty, in the same black coat he always wears, was walking across the playground with his head down. Loren was running to the park house to get some water, and Reuben was standing near the foul line looking at Mr. Moses coughing.

“He's sick,” I said.

“Stay away from him,” Reuben said.

“No, he's okay,” I said. “We know him. He's a nice guy. We should try to help him.”

“You need to stay away from people like that,” Reuben said. “They ain't got nothing for you. They're just dead people waiting for a place to lay down.”

Loren came back with the water and gave it to Mr. Moses, and he drank it and stopped coughing.

“Let's go,” Reuben called to me.

“We should see if he's okay,” I said.

“I said let's go!” Reuben's voice was angry.

“I feel bad about not helping Mr. Moses,” I called to Reuben. I could feel my eyes tearing up. “Real bad.”

I didn't look at Mr. Moses when we were leaving
because I felt so bad. I didn't even get the water. Loren got it and gave it to him. Just as we got to the gate, Mrs. Hart came jogging up.

“David's mother was on television,” Loren said.

Mrs. Hart had this little smile on her face and looked at Reuben, and then at me, and then back at Reuben and asked him if everything was all right.

“Yeah, she was just on the news,” Reuben said.

I looked over at Loren and he had this real calm look on his face, and I knew he was going to make up a lot of stuff to tell his mom. Loren's mom said he had to go to the store with her, and they went off.

Me and Reuben walked home together. I hardly ever walked anywhere with Reuben, and all the way home I felt that my legs were stiff. It was a funny feeling.

Mom was home and Reuben said he had seen her on television.

“I thought it was time for me to withdraw from the project,” she said.

“Do what you want,” Reuben said.

I went into the room and saw Ty lying across the bed, and that made me feel good. I sat next to him and rubbed his shoulder a little. He slapped my hand away without turning, but then he saw it was me and gave me a little punch, the way he does sometimes.

“You feel messed around?” I asked.

“He was hacking me to death,” Ty said. “That's all he can do is hack somebody to death.”

“I'm glad you're home,” I said.

“I owe some guys a lot of money,” he said. “Four Bennies.”

“Why you owe them four hundred dollars?”

Ty touched his head with his finger. “Stupid,” he said. “Just plain old stupid.”

“When you got to pay them?”

“Yesterday.”

 

We were having spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, and I asked if Loren could come over. Mom said to ask Reuben and he said it was okay with him. Loren loves spaghetti and meatballs.

When I sat back down after calling him and telling Mom that he was coming, Reuben said that me and Loren were really good friends.

“You ever go to his house to eat?” he said.

“I don't like what his mother makes,” I said.

“You and him need to stay away from these bums on the street,” Reuben said. “You never know what they up to. They can have some kind of disease, they can be up to no good, you can't tell.”

“Who's this?” Mom was putting olive oil in the sauce.

“We met this man who says he's three hundred years old,” I said. “He said he keeps dreams and carries them around with him for all that time.”

“Stay away from him!” Reuben said.

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

“I think he's okay,” I said.

“Stay away from him!”

The tears came again and I just let them run down my face. Reuben was looking at me, and he was mad, and for the first time in my life I didn't look away from him.

I was sorry when Loren came over. Reuben sat with us at the dinner table, and nobody said anything as we ate. At first it could have been that nobody had anything to say, but then we all knew how quiet we were being, and it was like we were caught up in it.

Mr. Moses' dream came to mind, and I imagined him in the cotton field, in the hot sun, caught up in his dream. But he hadn't told me why they had been picking the cotton so fast. That was a part of the dream that didn't make any sense. Having a hard time swallowing spaghetti didn't make sense, either.