The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

Sanderson laughs, surprised. ‘We sure did! Ma said I was born foolish but you had no excuse. And Reggie wouldn’t come near us. He was disgusted by the whole thing.’

‘I was drunk,’ Pop says, then begins eating his dessert. When he finishes, he belches, points out the window, and says, ‘Look at those birds. What are they again?’

Sanderson looks. The birds are clustered on a Dumpster in the parking lot. Several more are on the fence behind it. ‘Those’re crows, Pop.’

‘Christ, I know that,’ Pop says. ‘Crows never bothered us back then. We had a pellet gun. Now listen.’ He leans forward, all business. ‘Have we been here before?’

Sanderson briefly considers the metaphysical possibilities inherent in this question, then says, ‘Yes. We come here most Sundays.’

‘Well, it’s a good place. But I think we ought to go back. I’m tired. I want that other thing now.’

‘A nap.’

‘That other thing,’ Pop says, giving him that imperious look.

Sanderson motions for the check, and while he’s paying it at the register, Pop sails on with his hands tucked deep in his coat pockets. Sanderson grabs his change in a hurry and has to run to catch the door before Pop can wander out into the parking lot, or even into the busy four lanes of Commerce Way.

‘That was a good night,’ Pop says as Sanderson buckles his seatbelt.

‘What night was that?’

‘Halloween, you dummy. You were eight, so it was nineteen fifty-nine. You were born in ’fifty-one.’

Sanderson looks at his father, amazed, but the old man is staring straight ahead at the traffic. Sanderson closes the passenger door, goes around the hood of his Subaru, gets in behind the wheel. They say nothing for two or three blocks, and Sanderson assumes his father has forgotten the whole thing, but he hasn’t.

‘When we got to the Foresters’ house at the bottom of the hill – you remember the hill, don’t you?’

‘Church Street Hill, sure.’

‘Right! Norma Forester opened the door, and to you she says – before you could – she says, “Trick or treat?” Then she looks at me and says, “Trick or drink?”’ Pop makes a rusty-hinge sound that Sanderson hasn’t heard in a year or more. He even slaps his thigh. ‘Trick or drink! What a card! You remember that, don’t you?’

Sanderson tries, but comes up empty. All he remembers is how happy he was to have his dad with him, even though Dad’s Batman costume – put together on the fly – was pretty lame. Gray pajamas, the bat emblem drawn on the front with Magic Marker. The cape cut out of an old bedsheet. The Batman utility belt was a leather belt in which his father had stuck an assortment of screwdrivers and chisels – even an adjustable wrench – from the toolbox in the garage. The mask was a moth-eaten balaclava that Pop rolled up to the nose so his mouth showed. Standing in front of the hallway mirror before going out, he pulled the top of the mask up on the sides, plucking at it to make ears, but they wouldn’t stay.

‘She offered me a bottle of Shiner’s,’ Pop says. Now they’re nine blocks up Commerce Way and approaching the intersection at Airline Road.

‘Did you take it?’ Pop is on a roll. Sanderson would love for it to continue all the way back to Crackerjack Manor.

‘Sure did.’ He falls silent. As Commerce Way approaches the intersection, the two lanes become three. The one on the far left is a turn lane. The lights for straight-ahead traffic are red, but the one handling traffic in the left-turn lane is showing a green arrow. ‘That gal had tits like pillows. She was the best loving I ever had.’

Yes, they hurt you. Sanderson knows this not just from his own experience but from talking to others who have relatives in the Manor. Mostly they don’t mean to, but they do. What memories remain to them are all in a jumble – like the pilfered puzzle pieces José found in the cigar box under Pop’s bed – and there’s no governor on them, no way of separating stuff that’s okay to talk about from the stuff that isn’t. Sanderson has never had a reason to think his father was anything but faithful to his wife for the entire forty-some years of their marriage, but isn’t that an assumption all grown children make, if their parents’ marriage was serene and collegial?

He takes his eyes off the road to look at his father, and that is why there is an accident instead of one of the near misses that happen all the time on busy roads like Commerce Way. Even so, it’s not a terribly serious one, and though Sanderson knows his attention wandered from the road for a second or two, he also knows it still wasn’t his fault.