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Janie looks at Cabel and nods. She’s been wondering it.
“Janie. Do you have any reason at all to think this dream thing could be hereditary?” The car slows and comes to a stop in the middle of the country road.
“I don’t know,” Janie says. She glances over her shoulder nervously. “Cabe, what are you doing?”
“Turning around,” he says. He backs into a three-point turn and hits the gas. “This is important stuff. He might have some information on this little curse of yours. And we might not have another chance.”
12:03 p.m.
Cabel stands at the front door of Henry’s house and pulls his driver’s license from his wallet. He works it into the crack of the door next to the handle and begins to move it side to side. He presses his lips together as he works, trying to get to the bolt to move aside so they can break in.
Janie watches him for a moment. Then she reaches out and grabs the door handle. Turns it. The door opens.
Cabel straightens up. “Well. Who doesn’t lock their doors these days?”
“Somebody whose brain is exploding, maybe? Somebody who lives out in the middle of nowhere and has nothing good to steal? Somebody who’s half-crazy? Maybe he told the paramedics not to lock it because he didn’t have his keys.” Janie steps into the little house, making room for Cabel to follow. “See?” she says, pointing to a key rack on the wall with one set of keys hanging from it.
It’s stuffy inside. Kitchen, living area, and bed are all in the main room. A doorway in the back corner appears to lead to a bathroom. There’s a radio on a bookshelf and a small TV on the kitchen counter. Hot air plunges into the room through an open, screened window at the back of the house. A thin yellow curtain flutters. Below the window is a table where an old computer sits. It appears from the coffee mug and bowl that the table serves as both an eating place and as a desk. Under the table is a three-drawer unit that looks like it once belonged to a real desk. A few papers rest on the floor as if they’d been carried there by the breeze.
Flattened cardboard boxes lean against the wall near the back door. The bed is disheveled. A nearly empty glass of water stands on a makeshift bedside table made from a cardboard box.
“Well,” Janie says. “There’s goes my dream of a magical surprise inheritance. Dude’s poorer than us.”
“That’s not an easy feat,” Cabel says, taking it all in. He walks over to the desk. “Unless maybe he owns this property—it could be valuable.” Cabel shuffles through a few bills on the desk. “Or . . . not. Here’s a canceled check that says ‘rent’ in the memo line.”
“Damn.” Janie reluctantly joins Cabel. “This feels weird, Cabe. We shouldn’t be doing this.”
“You’ll never find out anything if you wait until after he’s dead—the state will take over and the landlord’s going to want a tenant who can actually pay the bills. They’ll clean this place out, sell what they can to pay the hospital, and that’s that.”
“You sure know a lot of random shit.” Janie looks around.
“Random, useful shit.”
“I suppose.” She wanders around the little house. On top of the TV there are a variety of over-the-counter pain relievers. The refrigerator is half-stocked. A quart of milk, half a loaf of pumpernickel bread, a container of bologna. One shelf alone is filled with string beans, corn on the cob, tomatoes, and raspberries. Janie glances out the window to the backyard and sees a small garden and, off to the side, wild-looking bushes dotted red.
The cupboards are mostly bare, except for a few nonmatching dishes and glasses. There’s a light layer of dust all around, but it’s not a dirty house. In the living area, there’s an old beat up La-Z-Boy recliner, an end table with a wooden lamp on it, and a large, makeshift shelving unit filled with boxes. Near it is a small bookcase. Janie pictures Henry sitting here in the evening, in the recliner, reading or watching TV in this almost-cozy house. She wonders what sort of life it was.
She walks over to the bookcase and sees worn copies of Shakespeare, Dickens. Kerouac and Hemingway and Steinbeck, too. Some books with odd lettering that looks like Hebrew. Science textbooks. Janie removes one and looks inside. Sees what must be her father’s handwriting below a list of names that had been crossed out.
Henry David Feingold
University of Michigan
She squats down and pages through the textbook, reading notes in the margin. Wonders if those are his notes, or if they belonged to someone before him. The binding is broken and some of the pages are loose so Janie closes the book and returns it to the shelf.
Cabel is looking through papers on the desk. “Invoices,” he says. “For all sorts of weird things. Baby clothes. Video games. Jewelry. Snow globes, for Chrissakes. Wonder where he keeps it all. Kinda weird, if you ask me.”
Janie stands up and walks over to Cabel. Picks up a notebook and opens it. Inside, in neat handwriting, is a list of transactions. No two are alike. Janie puzzles over the notebook and then she goes to the front door. Pulls the packages inside and looks at the return addresses. Matches them up in the notebook.
She flips her hair behind her ear. “I think he must have a little Internet store, Cabe. He buys stuff cheap and sells it in his virtual store for a profit. So he’s got a little shipping/receiving department over there.” She points to the large shelving unit.
“Maybe he goes to yard sales and buys stuff too.”
Janie nods. “Seems weird that he’d go to school for science and end up doing this. I wonder if he got laid off or something?”
“Considering the state of Michigan’s economy and rising unemployment rate lately, that’s entirely likely.”
Janie grins. “You’re such a geek. I love you. I really do.”
Cabel’s face lights up. “Thank you.”
“So . . . ” Janie sets the notebook on the table and picks up a well-worn paperback copy of Catch-22. Pages through it, losing her train of thought. Sees a torn piece of paper used as a bookmark. Words are scribbled in pencil on the bookmark.
Morton’s Fork.
That’s what it says.
Janie closes the book and sets it back down on the desk. “Now what?”
“What do you want to do? I don’t see any evidence that he’s a dream catcher, do you?”
“No. But would you find any evidence of that in my house if you looked?”
Cabel laughs. “Uh, green notebook, the dream notes on your bedside table . . . ”
“Bedside table,” Janie says, tapping her bottom lip with her forefinger. She walks over to Henry’s bed, but there’s nothing there. Just the water glass. She even pushes aside the mattress and slips her fingers between it and the box springs, feeling for a diary or journal of some sort. “There’s nothing here, Cabe. We should go.”
“What about the computer?”
“No—we’re not going there. Really. Let’s just go. And besides, you saw the guy. He’s not all gnarled and blind.”
“How do you know he’s not blind? You can’t tell that.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” Janie says. “But his hands looked fine.”
“Well . . . what did Miss Stubin say in the green notebook? Mid-thirties for the hands? He can’t be much older than late thirties, forty tops, right? So maybe it just hasn’t happened yet.”
Janie sighs. Doesn’t want to go this deep. Doesn’t want to think about the green notebook anymore. She walks to the door and stands there a moment. Bangs her head lightly against it. Then she opens it, goes outside and sits in the sweltering car until Cabel comes.
“Hospital?” he says, hope in his voice, when he turns the car onto the road.
“No.” Janie’s voice is firm. “We’re done with it, Cabe. I don’t care if he was the king of dream catchers. He’s probably not—he’s probably just some guy who would freak out if he knew we were snooping around inside his house. I just don’t want to pursue this anymore.” She’s tired of it all.
Cabe nods. “Okay, okay. Not another word. Pro
mise.”
7:07 p.m.
At Cabel’s house, they both work out. Janie knows she’s got to keep her strength up. They have a meeting with Captain on Monday, which means an assignment looms. For the first time, Janie doesn’t feel very excited about it.
“Any idea what Captain will have for us?” Janie asks between presses.
“Never know with her.” Cabel breathes in and blows out fiercely as he reaches the end of his arm curl reps. “Hope it’s something light and easy.”
“Me too,” Janie says.
“We’ll find out soon enough.” Cabel puts his weights on the floor. “In the meantime, I can’t seem to stop thinking about Henry. There’s something weird about the whole situation.”
Janie sets the bar in the cradle and sits up. “Thought you said you were going to let it go,” she says. Teases. But the curiosity takes over. “What makes you say that, anyway?”
“Well, you said there was a connection in the dream, like you had with Miss Stubin, right? That’s what got my brain going and now I can’t stop it. And how odd, just the way he lives. He’s a recluse. I mean, he’s got that old station wagon parked in the yard, so he obviously drives, but . . . ”
Janie looks sharply at Cabel. “Hmm,” she says.
“Maybe it’s all just a coincidence,” he says.
“Probably,” she says. “Like you said, he’s just a recluse.”
But.
10:20 p.m.
“Goodnight, sweets,” Cabe murmurs in Janie’s ear. They’re standing on Cabel’s front stoop. Janie’s not about to sleep there again. It’s too hard. Too hard to keep her secret.
“I love you,” she says, soulfully. Means it. Means it so much.
“Love you, too.”
Janie goes, arms outstretched and her fingers entwined in Cabel’s until they can’t reach anymore, and then she reluctantly lets her arm drop and walks slowly across the yards to her street, her house.
Lies awake on her back. And her mind shifts from Cabe to the earlier events of the day. To Henry.
12:39 a.m.
