I think this is a dream.
But that does not mean it is less than true. Your father taught you that.
What? What did you say? Come back here and repeat that.
Then he was gone. I turned around and reached for the door. It was locked. Then I felt myself walk right through it and down the hall to my bed. At 0600, when I awoke, I was balled up under my blankets, my teeth chattering.
* * *
AFTER BREAKFAST, COTTON and a couple of Mexican wranglers and I went to work on Mr. Lowry’s horses, twenty of them that needed their yearly shots and quarterly worming and grooming and hoof care and a penile procedure I won’t describe. Spud walked down from Mr. Lowry’s house chewing on a matchstick. “The old man wants to see you.”
“What for?”
He tilted up the matchstick to a forty-five-degree angle with his teeth, then rolled it around with his tongue. “Got me.”
“Is this about the rosebushes again?” I said.
“No, he asked me if you were out late last night. He must have seen you roaming around. How’s it feel to have people check up on you?”
“What did you tell him, Spud?”
“I’m not my brother’s keeper.”
I took off my leather apron and walked up the grade to the Lowry house. Mr. Lowry was reading the newspaper on the veranda, wearing a straw planter’s hat with a black ribbon around the crown. He lowered his paper. “Oh, hello, Aaron. Come into the library. Mrs. Lowry is shopping with Chen Jen this morning.”
Why did I need to know his wife was away? “Is there something I can help you with, Mr. Lowry?”
“It’s something no one can help me with. Nevertheless, I need to explain something to you. Now, come in.”
His tone seemed totally foreign. I did not want to enter his house under the circumstances. I knew that whatever was on his mind would prove embarrassing for either him or me or both of us.
“Mr. Lowry, I was hoping to get all the horses back to the south pasture by noon.”
“You’re my foreman. Now please do as I ask.”
I removed my hat as I followed him through the French doors into the library. I had seen the library through the door previously but had never been inside it. It was an extraordinary room, with floor-to-ceiling bookcases and deep maroon leather chairs and a large walnut desk and a framed antique map of Salem, Massachusetts, on the wall. There was also a telescope on a tripod by the French doors, one that could magnify either the heavens or the buildings at the bottom of the slope.
“I saw you standing outside the bunkhouse early this morning,” he said. “Talking to a fellow I’ve never seen before. Want to tell me what that was about?”
“I thought maybe I had a dream about a man wearing a hooded raincoat,” I said. “I had hoped that’s what it was.”
He sat down behind his desk and took off his glasses and cleaned them with a soft cloth. “I’m having a hard time sorting through that one.”
“I have blackouts, Mr. Lowry. Not from alcohol. I go places inside my head and then wake up and can’t remember where I’ve been. A lot of times I can’t distinguish dreams from reality.”
“Sit down. You want a sandwich?”
“No, sir.”
“Whoever the man was, he was not here with my permission. Can you tell me the nature of his errand?”
“He said I was surrounded by evil.”
“Let’s see if I have this straight. This man with apparently no name or origins has come here to tell you that my farm, my produce, and my milk and feed business are evil?”
“He said nothing about you, sir.”
He seemed to study the antique map on the wall. “This is more than I can deal with, so I’ll say no more about it. If you see this man again, will you ask him to knock on my door? I’d love to meet him.”