Jim Grimsley - Dream Boy

They reach a sharp curve and then, beyond, a twin row of oak trees flanking a broad lane. Sections of fence have tumbled along the ditch. At one point, the remains of a footbridge have partly collapsed into the running water of the creek. Some of the sentinel oaks are dying; Roy points them out. Last night's storm has tossed one grandfather to its side across the road. A raw gash rips the earth beneath the upraised roots. Man thick branches are splintered in the air, oozing orange. The ground has a startled look.

"Must have been some wind," Randy says.

"It was some wind all right," Roy answers.

Burke stares into the plate of earth and roots, the shadow of which falls across his slightly dull expression. He scratches his hairy navel with a finger, then ambles ahead swinging his arms. Roy waits for Nathan to step away from the fallen tree.

Burke, near the road, feints an attack on Randy, then grabs him from behind, gets him in a headlock and grinds his arm on Randy's head, Burke gritting his teeth, sunlight cascading over his brown shoulders. He pulls Randy this way and that by the head. Randy, enraged, shoves Burke violently away and Burke staggers forward, laughing mildly.

Randy says, "You always try to hurt somebody"

Burke laughs into his fist.

Handing Burke his pack, Roy steps between them. Randy is still breathing heavily, glaring at Burke. Roy says, "You all right?"

"Shit, yes, he's all right, I ain't done nothing to him." Burke rips the pack from Roy's hand and straps it over his shoulders. Adjusting the weight, settling it over his arms.

"I'm fine," Randy says. "He just likes to be too rough all the time."

Burke has stepped ahead again. Roy, for the first time, follows.

Ahead, as if posed, Burke in a pool of sunlight studies the two halves of an iron gate, a stone wall.

Beyond the gate is a lane, now thick with weeds and undergrowth; Nathan recognizes a stand of blackberry bushes and a tangle of wild roses, out of bloom. At the end of the tangled lane, glimpsed beneath lowering branches, hangs a shadow, a broad sagging porch and slatted window shutters.

Roy flanks the vision now, and looks Nathan in the eye. "This is what I wanted to show you. I never brought anybody here before."

"This is a plantation house," Burke says. "My dad told me about this place. He saw it one time when he was hunting."

Roy chews the end of broom straw.

Randy says, "I didn't know there was ever any plantation out here."

"Some of the Kennicutts owned it," Roy says. "Their graves are out yonder in the trees. They cleared out the woods around here a way long time ago. They were kin to the people who had the place where our farm is, but that place burned down and the land got sold."

"And they all just left this place." Randy is gazing upward, at the vague outline of a roof beyond high treetops.

"It never did pass for much. That's what my dad said."

The first sight of the ruin, when they pass the oaks that obscure the mansion's breadth, take Nathan aback. He has never seen a house as large as this, and it rivals, for bulk, the federal courthouse in Gibsonville and the elementary school in Potter's Lake. Wooden columns support wide plank porches that surround both floors of the house. The wood has weathered uniformly gray, windows shuttered or broken, doors mutely closed. Dormer windows peer out from the attic. A tree has fallen across one of the side porches, shards of roof timber littering the overgrown yard beneath. The signs of damage are old; this did not happen last night.

They pick a path along the side of the house, beneath the shuttered windows and sagging porches. The stillness of the house lends an eerie sense of waiting to the walk, not as if the house is truly empty but as if its inhabitants are all hiding, or watching. Nathan remembers Roy mentioning a haunted house in the Kennicutt Woods and realizes, with a sense of wonder, that this must be the place.

They cross what had been the front lawn, leading down to a place where the creek widens over smooth rocks. By now the afternoon is waning.

"We should spend the night here," Roy says.

"In the house?" Randy gazes at the huge bulk, perplexed.

"No. We can camp down by the creek."

"Good. I know I don't want to sleep in that house."

Nathan is also disturbed by the prospect. The tent and open air seem more inviting.

"This place is supposed to be haunted," Roy says, sounding wary. "My Uncle Heben says it was in a book about North Carolina ghosts. There was a picture of this house. The last full blood Kennicutt who lived here got killed by one of his slaves, and they cut his head off. So he still walks around the place at night looking for his head."

"You're full of shit," Randy says.

They look around at the somber setting. They stand in the remains of the front yard now, thick with poplars and privet; they are facing the house, within the broad curve of the carriageway, behind wildly overgrown hedges that border the approach to the main doors. The facade of the house has graceful lines, and there is something hospitable, inviting, about the spacious porches and broad doors, even given the present state of decay. It seems less like a mansion than some pleasant farmhouse that grew larger than expected. If it is haunted, the afternoon sun reveals nothing of its ghosts. But even so, the boys accept the facts as Roy presents them, that he has an Uncle Heben who once saw a picture of this house. That a headless ghost is said to roam the grounds, in a story famous enough to have been published in a book. They will sleep tonight in sight of a haunted place.

Burke gazes at the house with an expression of serenity, a peaceful emptiness.

They set up camp within sight of the main doors, near the creek, and sunset strikes a kind of bronze glow from the decay. As if the grass were burning. Amid the late afternoon changes of light and shadow, they set up tents. Roy finds rocks for the fire circle. Nathan heads off to gather wood and Randy follows. The two work quietly in the diminishing light, mindful of their noise as if they are in church, or in the library at school. Because of Randy's size, he has a hard time with the wood, the sticks and branches digging into the softness of his belly. He works without complaint, sweating as if it is summer, humming softly, Just as I am without one plea. Nathan finds himself humming too. The soft sound connects the two boys. Randy's air of gentleness makes Nathan feel welcome in his presence, though they hardly speak. They return to the campsite with armloads of kindling and branches, the driest wood they can find.

Burke splits the wood with a short ax, and the late sun falls over him from the west, flashes of warmth along his shoulders and back. He stacks the split wood, and Randy helps, till soon they have plenty for the night's fire. Most of it is dry enough to burn, Burke says, and wipes the sweat from his forehead. He winks at Nathan over Roy's head.

They eat supper early, with the sun setting at their backs. After cleanup, deep into dusk, they go exploring in the grounds behind the big house. In the overgrown yard beyond what was once a kitchen garden, they find a stone barn, doors hanging off the hinges, flaked with what remains of a deep blue paint. Inside the shell of the house, grass has overtaken the dirt floor, and the lofts have collapsed along the walls. Bats and swallows live in the rafters, darting in and out of a gaping hole in the roof. Behind the bam is a dairy and another long, low building near the wreck of a paddock fence. They recognize this as a stable by the layout of horse stalls and the remains of a wagon wheel, spokes rotted inside the iron rim. Nathan finds a bit of leather harness in the grass near one of the stalls, the soft leather coming to pieces in his hand.

Beyond the stable, down a just discernible path, stands a row of shacks. Most are still intact, though the roofs have rotted away, but one or two have collapsed to heaps of gray clapboard. Eerie, the street of some deserted town. Roy says these were the slave houses, a notion that sobers Nathan.

Out past the shacks he the once cleared fields of the farm, long since overgrown. One day even the house, even the stone bam, will be reclaimed by the forest. Amber light floods the grounds, almost horizontal, like a tide. Among the long shadows of trees and the burning of color against sun bleached wooden walls they wander. The silence of the place draws them close together, and by sunset they are walking almost shoulder to shoulder in the purpled light. They halt at the edge of a grove of cedars, outside of a low iron fence that bounds a patch of high grass. "My Uncle Heben said this was where they buried the slaves, right here. They buried the family somewhere else." Nathan finds the gate and steps through it. The grass is waist high, and he picks his way forward carefully. He is well within the fence before he realizes he has come exploring alone; the others are gaping at him from the last of twilight. He stands in the murk under the trees.

Nathan has spent so much time, lately, among the dead Kennicutts, he feels almost at home here among their chattel. But he finds not even a single gravestone to read; he finds no sign of graves here at all. He stares down at the grass as if waiting for a hand to reach upward, or for a voice to call out from the ground. He wonders how they marked the graves, if they did. Maybe with wooden crosses, as in Western movies. Maybe the evidence is here, unseen, beneath the grass. He waits. The others are watching, holding their breath.

Retreating carefully, he joins them. He is acutely aware of his feet. He has a feeling the graves are crowded together and one must be careful. Though he is aware of no fear, he is relieved when he clears the fence and stands with the others again. They are gaping at him as if he has done something extraordinary. "There's nothing in there, you can't tell where the graves are."

"They were slaves," Roy says.

"But there's a fence. Why would they put up a fence if they wouldn't even mark the graves?"

"This is creepy." Randy looks around the dark grove of trees as if waiting for one of the shadows to begin to move.

"It's getting pretty dark." Burke reaches for his flask again. It is almost too dark to watch him drink.

"A ghost will haunt you in the day time just like it will at night," Randy says, "that's what my Aunt Ida told me one time. She says it's a superstition that a ghost will only get you at night. A ghost will get you in the daytime just as quick. If it's a real ghost." He pauses. "But I still don't want to stand around here."

They study their whereabouts carefully, for any signs of suspicious movement. But the graves are still, and the air is still, and the leaves on the branches of the trees are still. The evening weighs down on them. They move reverently away, and no one says anything at all until they reach the stone bam.

"I bet this place is haunted too," Burke says. No one asks why he thinks so. He sips from the narrow bottle again, this time offering to no one.

Dusk passes to twilight. The ruin of the farmyard looks different now. Vast as the shadow of a mountain, the mansion exudes an air of vigilance, as if there are eyes at every window, peering through the shutters. To reach their campsite they will have to dare a walk through inky darkness close to the house, through high grass where they cannot be certain where they are stepping. Amid the wild cries of cicadas, bats, distant owls, they drift forward uncertainly.

"I wish we had a flashlight," Randy says.

"I brought one but I left it in my pack," Roy answers.

"You guys ain't scared, are you?"

"No, I just wish I could see what I'm stepping on." But a slight tremor in Randy's voice betrays him.

They fall silent. The night's harsh chorus rises. Nathan steps toward the shadow. It is safe, in the darkness, to pause near Roy, to inhale his familiar smells. They are close, for a moment, in the overgrown yard; they are almost touching, and no one can see.

"Let me know if you get scared, Nathan." Burke's voice is full of scorn.

Nathan steps past Roy, into the shadow of the big house. He refuses to turn. The others can follow, or not. He vanishes into the blackest shadow of his life.

The cool darkness lends his motion a feeling of gliding. He is a fish slipping through water, he remains very calm. Soon he can hear the others following, and he smiles to think he has gone first, even ahead of Roy. Breathtaking, to walk so close the house, to slide through air as if it were water, headed toward vague light that is more and more like mist or cloud. To step past tangled branches, to lift them aside. Who knows how many eyes are there, watching from the black space around him? He listens, and it seems to him the silence of the house engulfs the sound of the others; now he can only hear the ringing emptiness of the house beside him. The emptiness beckons him, as clearly as if it is calling his name. Again comes the sensation that the passage of time has been slowed or stopped. That he will never leave this darkness.