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Night's Midsummer Dream By Night Hawke |
The morning sun had already begun to transform the surrounding grassy dew into sweat on my forehead. Summer cicadas were awake and replaced the chirping of the nocturnal crickets and frogs with their familiar humming din that mixed with the intermittent trumpet of blackbirds, crows, and robins. Tamara walked barefoot on the rail, high heels now bound to the tether of her small white purse, balancing with arms outstretched as if she were walking a tightrope. She wore no stockings, or anything else, under her white linen strapless summer dress. Seeing her there was disquieting to me and yet a revitalizing solace at the same time. She was long and lean with summertime skin and she moved with the grace of a dancer -- toes pointing with each deliberate step as if she was about to launch into a pirouette Looking down at my two left feet they were equipped with my old snakeskin boots tripping across the center of the ties. I hadn't worn them in years. I hadn't had them in years. This was a familiar place though and a wave of dejavu flashed across my brain. Although not a literal place I had dreamed of it before. But, no it was a real place transformed for the sake of the dream -- but it wasn't a dream. The events of the night before were still vivid in my mind. We'd been out engaging in conduct unbecoming an officer and Tam was definitely out of uniform. That much was real. How could I be back here though? Everything seemed out of place yet perfectly placed. The dress. The boots. The railroad track through the woods. The joint she was passing to me. I remembered rolling it in vivid detail. It was homegrown and slightly green and free of seeds, which made it easy to roll. I coughed it out on exhale. Maybe I wasn't dreaming. Maybe I was just high. But, for some reason it seemed as though I hadn't seen her in years. Or longer. Decades maybe. But we'd just been out the night before. We'd gone to our favorite restaurant and had French onion soup with white wine -- and then -- we'd gone for a midnight drive in my old B... a 74.5 MGB ragtop. Top down we'd slept in it in the Tennessee woods. MG, in case you ever wondered, stands for 'Might Go"...and it hadn't that morning -- the electric fuel pump located in the gas tank was fucked up again and left us stranded in the middle of nowhere. I remembered it all like it was yesterday. Or last night. Because it was. But if all that was true then why did I miss her so? Why was seeing her balancing on the rail with her painted toenails like taking a long drink of water on a hot day? We were walking on the tracks because the Rail Bridge across the river would be the fastest route on foot back to town. As the pieces fell into place everything started seeming more real and less dreamlike. I pulled at Tam's hand and drew her to me. She was the Tam I'd known seventeen years ago... this had to be 1984. Her shoulder length hair was honey brown with sanguine highlights instead of the Marilyn blonde she'd color it later. How she hated it when I called her that. It was an easy tease. Cheap shot. Her middle name was Lynn. So I would call her ta Mara Lynn. And it would come out sounding like Marilyn. But here she was. I was touching her. She was smiling at me, squinting in the sun, crystal eyes sparkling like morning stars themselves. "What?" she asked with an impish grin. I answered her back with a kiss taking her face in my hands. She was beginning to sweat too and a strand of hair was clinging across her cheek.. I brushed it away. She tasted like pot, sex, onion soup, wine, and peppermint gum. I couldn't get enough of her. Kissing her as though I hadn't been with her in ages. As if I never would be again.. "Wait" she said turning her head. She took the half-smoked joint and placed it between her teeth backwards. Pulling my face back to hers she inserted the exposed end of the hand rolled bud into my mouth and began shotgunning the acrid smoke into me as I inhaled it. Inhaled her. Inhaled her soul. I backed away tossing my head back holding my breath. My arms wrapped around her waist feeling the sun blasting through my closed lids as I snorted a bit trying to hold in the toke. The world began accelerating around me as the THC began its uptake through my lungs into my bloodstream and brain. It was a long, long, rush. Everything went silent around me except for the ringing in my ears. When I opened my eyes she was standing there. Grinning. "Now me..." she said... "This is some good shit." Her hands grasped my biceps like handlebars and she leaned into me to get her hit. They tightened squeezing me to the point of pain as I blasted the weedy drag down her throat. Then I felt her begin going limp and knew she'd gone to the point of hyperventilation -- which -- is not a bad rush in and of itself. I held onto her to keep her from falling down and spit the roach off onto the gravel around the tracks. She began moaning, her head swaying from side to side as her eyes partially opened with pupils running up under the half closed lids. She took her right hand and ran it across her forehead and through her hair brushing it with her fingers, "DAMN!", she said coughing the smoke out into the air. "Fuck!", she continued tossing her hair back and cupping her hands around her nose and mouth. She coughed again. "Damn." She rubbed her hands across her face wiping her eyes and her sweaty hair back from her forehead. "Fuck me!" Grabbing the back of my neck with her hands she then proceeded to do just that, kissing me with enough force to nearly knock me over. "Baby I love you..." she said between kisses and fumbling fingers. One hand had slipped down inside the back of my jeans and she was rubbing me. We were near the river delta now and the bridge was only a few steps further from where we stood locked in mutual subjugation. It was a suspension bridge with big green painted steel girders networking across the river and trusses grew up out of the ground at a thirty-degree angle where the trestle began. I picked her up by her ass wrapping her legs around my waist as I clumsily made my way over to the reclining beam. Leaning her against it I stood up straight straddling the beam with her legs still gripping me firmly. Her hair splayed against the strut and she gazed up at me with half-open eyes. The river was alive with barge commerce and off in the distance I could see traffic picking up on the automobile bridge. Across the span the town was beginning to wake up to its Sunday morning routine with church bells clanging and I thought I could smell coffee blowing in the breeze across the rushing water. Coffee would have been good. But my salty snack was better. Pulling the hem of her dress to her waist she exposed her own morning flower blossoming pink with dew and honey, "Breakfast is served" she laughed. Like a bee I was drawn to it. Tongue first the saline sudation from her naked paunch mixed with my own salivary excretion and her tawny skin glistened in the sun. I blew across the fine moist blonde hairs lining her stomach and she shuddered at the sensation of it. I continued to blow warm air from my lips across her belly and down past her enchanted button gingerly tasting her as she engulfed me in her briny cove. Her arms bent back behind her gripping the beam to brace herself as her head tossed back and forth. Far off the faint forsaken sound of a train horn blended with the sound of her moans like a requiem. The resonance of insects, water flowing, traffic, and church bells accompanied our sonata of abandon -- my tongue performing the role of conductor's wand, she hit every note, every trill, pianissimo, forte, and tempo as a prodigy playing a Stradivarius. I composed the cantata across her flesh. It must have been a comical site for the engineer; my bare white ass hanging out of my jeans now slung down around my knees and lunging into her against the truss of the bridge. He blasted the horn as he went by us. We continued our course in the breeze and cacophony of steel wheels against rails -- thumping, screeching, and clanking as the freight cars sped by. She thrust back as I knew we were both about to culminate in our final consummation. The world began to spin and I lost myself in her lips again resting my chest against her breasts. We collapsed into the buzz, the sensuality, and the indulgence of new love as we melted into a mid morning respite. As we walked across the bridge Tam balanced again on one rail with her bare feet. I had left my shirt unbuttoned to catch the damp breeze blowing across the river. I marveled at how white she'd managed to keep that dress. There wasn't a speck of dirt on it anywhere. And her hair was -- blonde? I thought I'd just made love with Norma Jean -- but now -- she was ta Mara Lynn again. More mature -- more muscled -- and more the woman I was in love with. "We'd better hurry or you'll be late for church", she teased. "I don't need to go to church," I fired back. "No?", she queried. "No, I've already talked to God this morning." I said with a wry grin. "Yes... I remember," she said and began mocking me "Oh God... OH GOD!... OH.... GAWD!" She snickered. "Well at least you've yet to reduce me to whimpers.", I teased her biting my lip and making the frail nasal sound she produced when approaching an orgasm. "Well that's because I'm an atheist'" she shot back laughing. "You still believe in God." "Oh well, not an anthropomorphic one, that's for sure." I replied realizing this conversation had transpired before. "But you believe, don't you Richie Cunningham?" she chortled smugly. "Well I'm willing to ALLOW for the possibility," I said pointing out the superiority of my agnostic position. Her Episcopalian schooling was starting to come out now as she rushed into her standard set of polemics. "If there is a God -- then why do bad things happen to good people mister?" "Well," I responded not hesitating to drag out my own rhetoric, "people are free to choose for themselves what they do and where they go -- sometimes that involves consequences for themselves -- sometimes it means injustices thrust upon innocent bystanders." "Oh free choice eh?" she retorted, "was it your free choice this morning to leave us stranded in the woods?" "No ma'am." I answered, "but it was my choice to buy the piece of shit to begin with." "Well then what about Job? Was it his choice to lose all his wealth, power, and family?" she was going to go through the whole thing. "Job was a parable written in protest against the ruling authorities of the re-established Southern Kingdom of Israel -- you know that and you know that I know that." I returned, "game, set, and match." "Oh not so fast mister," she began, "What about natural disasters? Disease?" "I suppose there's a certain amount of choice in that," I launched into my compromise mode, "but somewhere there is destiny involved and if there is destiny -- there must be a God." "Destiny -- or Chaos?" she challenged. "Would a kind and benevolent God create a destiny where an innocent baby is killed by a Tornado? Or contracts aids from his mother during birth?" "Well," this one always stumped me; "everyone dies." "Yes," she said stopping to turn and look at me, "everyone dies." Just then it seemed like the sky was filled with clouds and a downpour broke with a flash of lightning. I suddenly had a vision of her in a hospital bed with a plastic tube running to her nose and more tubes stuck in her arm. But then, I realized it was me that was in the bed with tubes coming out of me. I looked around the hospital room. There was a tray of un-eaten food. An empty chair. Water dripping from a sink. Next to me a blue control panel flashed with red numbers and beeped at me. It was a computer controlling the administration of morphine into my IV. I pushed the button in my hand and gave myself another dose. It must have all been a dream from long ago. Just the morphine getting to me. I'd been in this hospital bed for weeks now. Or maybe years -- I really didn't know how long. On the television above me there was a newly produced digital animated episode of Gilligan's Island playing with the audio turned down. I looked over at Tam at the side of my bed where she was holding my hand. "It's ok old girl," I said, "Everybody dies." "Yes they do." She echoed, "everybody dies." She was old now. Hair white as snow. A handsome woman with eyes like steel. The same eyes that had looked into mine for all these years now with a mischievous smile. I pointed up at the television. "You'd think with all this damn digital technology they'd come up with something better to watch than Gilligan's Island." I said. "You want me to change it?" she asked trying to cater to me as she had since I was put in this damn bed. "No, I want you to get some rest babe." I told her. "They have nurses here to take care of me." In that moment I wished ever so briefly that it was she that was dying instead of me. I didn't wish it because I wanted her to die and for me to live. But because I imagined how much I would miss her if she was gone -- and I didn't want her to have to go through that. But the old girl was probably tired of me by now anyway. Why shoot. She'd probably have a great time doing all the things she couldn't do with me tying her down, holding her back. She'd sacrificed everything to be with me. I squeezed her hand. She squeezed it back. "I was dreaming," I began, "about the time we went out in the woods in my old MGB and had to walk back to town the next morning." She smiled at me and looked off out the window at the rain coming down in torrents. "I'm going to go get the tickets baby," she said, "you close your eyes and get some sleep." I watched her walking away in a stiff gate. The miles had taken their toll on both of us. I started to think like her. If there was a benevolent God then why did he make these damn bodies so high maintenance? I could feel the pain starting to well up again in my back and I pressed the morphine button again and closed my eyes. "I have the tickets," she said. "Baby, wake up. It's almost time." In the background I could hear the sound of a crowd of voices echoing in a large room. "Wake up!" she said again. I opened my eyes and she gave me a peck on the lips and backed away. "Wore you out huh?" she smirked at me. She was ta Mara-Lynn again. We were somewhere else. A big room. People all around. I was sitting in an uncomfortable hard-backed chair. It was the train station. I stood up and tried to get oriented but I was a little bit dizzy. "You wouldn't believe the dream I just had" I said looking at her. Outside the rain was coming down in sheets and lightning flashed through the skylights up above. She jumped when the thunderclap shook the building. "I was an old man and you were an old woman. I was dying in a hospital bed dreaming about today." I told her. She smiled back at me. "Everybody dies." The train was pulling into the station and stopped at that moment. It was an old western type locomotive with a big steam engine and when it stopped it did so with a foreboding hiss. The bell began to ring slowly and deliberately. Tam put the tickets in her purse. "Well it's time." She said with a portentous air. Something about the way she said time. We began walking toward the doors with the crowd and she took my arm, "If anything happens," she whispered, "I want you to go on without me." The concourse began crushing in around us. "Promise me." She said. As we approached the door the people were flooding through. She stopped and I did also. She turned toward me and looked into my eyes. "There was one question we didn't answer," she said. "How can a good God create a devil?" She shook her head. "The only true evil -- is to be disconnected from the universe." She went on. "You can't come with me this time." She turned and headed for the door. Before I could catch up the herd had filled in around her. I made my way on through the doors and tried to stay in a straight line from the point where we last were together. I kept calling to her but there was no answer. I thought I heard her once and looked toward where the sound originated which merely resulted in my being pushed further off course. The rain had slowed down to an annoying drizzle and the sky was turning pink as the clouds began to dissipate. Forcing my way onto the train I began searching up and down the aisles but I couldn't find her anywhere. The conductor approached me asking for a ticket and I explained the tickets were in Tam's purse and I just needed to find her. He asked for money until I could locate her and then he'd reimburse the extra ticket -- but she had my wallet as well. He said we had five minutes. We searched every car we could but didn't find her. I thought I caught a glimpse once of a woman going into a berth.. But when we investigated it wasn't her. Time was up. Time to get off. I stood there in the rain and sun watching the train as it clanged out of the station. Walking with it. Running. Looking in every window as it passed by. But she was nowhere. Soon the caboose rolled by and I continued to pursue calling her name. But there was nothing. I turned away when the last glimpse disappeared beyond the horizon and walked back into the empty station. My footsteps echoed through the large promenade as I made my way up to the ticket office. There was a balding older man in there with a dark vest and rolled up sleeves. The stereotypical image we'd have of such a figure from old movies we'd seen. I asked him for a ticket. "Where to young fella?" he asked me. Where to indeed? I thought to myself. Where had we been going? I didn't know. "Gotta close up shop now," he said pulling down the window, "you can come back tomorrow." The station had fallen silent now. The rain was gone and the evening sun came through the windows blinding me to what was outside. I walked around inside and called her name a few more times and then went back out by the tracks where the cicadas were singing again and the air smelled new. And I awake again to the reality of reality. Tam has been gone now for three years and two months but this dream has possessed me periodically for many years now usually coming to me early in the morning just at daybreak -- just before I am due to rise-- and leaves me haunted for the whole day. I don't know why I've ever bothered trying to work on such days since I never accomplish anything -- merely feigning attention as people speak to me. It may have started in early childhood before I even met Tamara. But that would have meant it would have started before I was five years old -- a possibility perhaps. My first actual recollections of having the dream were around age seventeen. Even then it seemed as though I'd had the dream before and it effected me profoundly staying with me for weeks as I struggled to identify the mysterious woman. Tamara was only twelve then. Just a little pain in the ass brat who was always trying to beat everybody up -- including me. Sometimes this was painful because even though she was twelve she was already nearly as tall as I was and had long gangly legs that were well suited to her karate skills. Of course within the context of the dream I knew who she was -- but then -- inside the dream she was older, grown up and that may have been why I couldn't remember her identity when the dream would end. Nothing ever changes in this dream. Although, to say nothing is somewhat misleading. Obviously the dreamer is constantly changing and my contemporaneous perspective is always added to that of my younger self and this tends to modify the dialog and minute details somewhat. It's always exciting because it is like getting that second chance -- and knowing now what I didn't know then. But, the setting, the events, the sharp detail of light and sound -- even smells -- are always the same. I've struggled with the interpretation my whole life and have come to understand the train is symbolic of death, the river is life, and the cicadas -- I think maybe they are the ever presence of God if there is one. The rain of course -- is washing the world clean -- for a new beginning. Because the end of darkness is always light. Scientists have struggled with the metabolic need for sleep for decades now. The exact benefit can't be pinpointed. I know a man who is trying to develop a pill for the military so soldiers don't have to sleep. The problem is -- even though they can keep a man up for days at some point he always goes psychotic and starts acting out what seem to be the fantasies of the dream world. In short, it may not be sleep we need at all -- but dreams. Dreams give us the ability to go silently and peacefully insane for a little while every day -- or maybe -- just go happy. Someday I'll catch that train. You will too. Until that day comes we have to live out our dreams. Or sleep through life. |
| Edited By Jim Chandler & Haze McElhenny Site Design & Cover Graphics By UrbanDecay.Org |
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