Sometimes, in her dreams, she runs.

Her feet push against the ground, but she can barely feel it; there's just the lift forward, almost like she's going to fly. Dozens, hundreds, thousands of takeoffs, and the landings don't even register. Every step in these dreams is the best part of flight--the beginning. Possibility.

Running is freedom. There are no door jambs, no curbs, no furniture, no clothes or books left carelessly in her way. The way is open, and for some reason, in her dreams, she trusts it implicitly. The way is wide--she veers right, left, turns around and runs backward, and there is no one who catches her, who pulls her back and tells her to be careful, to slow down, to wait for help.

Sometimes, when she's done running, she dances.

She wakes up with her arms flung wide and her feet still moving. Through all the hours that follow, hours of caution and control, of canes and guides, of the kindness of friends and strangers, she can smile, because she remembers what it is to be free of the world she lives in, the world she's lived with for almost as long as she can remember.

She tells Gary about this one day, without ever meaning to. They're eating lunch at their desks; taxes, payroll, and inventory are shoved aside for turkey sandwiches and milk. He's talking about a dream he had the night before, about going to a football game with Chuck and having to chase a blue flamingo out of the locker room. After they're done laughing, the talk turns to kinds of dreams that everyone has: the flying dreams, the falling dreams, the back in high school dreams. And then, because she wants the easy, friendly conversation to last, she tells him. Just another kind of dream, that's all. No big deal.

He doesn't say much, just makes the same kinds of "huh" noises that he does when he doesn't know what to say. She doesn't tell him all of it, and she tries to make it sound very logical, just a hodgepodge of sense memory and fears and longings, like any other dream. When she's done, he says, "That's neat, Marissa. I mean it, I'm glad that you can--I mean, I wish..."

"That's what dreams are for," she tells him.

"It's just, I never thought about that, that you might miss it. There are times I forget that you can't do everything you want to do."

"Thanks," she tells him, and means it, for all the times he's forgotten to be her protector, the descant to her own inner voice of caution, and just been her friend. Their sandwiches are finished; they go back to work.

Two days later, he asks for her help. Not a decoy, this time, nor an anonymous caller with a tip for the police. This time he brings her along to an outlying farm, where a little girl, a little too daring for her own good, is paralyzed by fear on the roof of an outbuilding. By the time they get there, the rain has begun and the thunder is rumbling, and Julie O'Reilly has looked down and realized just how far away down is.

"She's up there," Gary says. "She's clinging to the lightning rod."

"What do I do?"

Gary hands Marissa the umbrella, takes her shoulders from behind and turns her just so. "Talk to her. Loud, because she's way up, but she'll get scared and jumpy if she thinks I'm going to hurt her. She might even let go, or slip and fall. I need you to keep her calm."

How many times has Gary done this, and not asked for, not needed, anyone's help? But she's not about to refuse, and so, over the little thuds of raindrops on the umbrella, over the occasional crackle and boom, she tells Julie to hold on. She asks the girl about her pets, and gets weak answers about ducks and chickens, the dog and the horse. Marissa listens, trying to track Gary's progress, while she tells Julie about the time the little boy next door dared her to climb a tree and then left her there. She had to wait, clutching a swaying branch in the Chicago wind, until her sister found her and brought her home. They'd made a pact, Marissa tells Julie, never to tell anyone--not about the tree, because her mother would have grounded her for being so foolish, and not about their revenge, which involved sucking the centers out of a couple of chocolates and replacing them with worms. Kenny Andrews had never bothered her again.

By the time Gary gets to Julie, she is laughing between sniffles, relaxed enough to let this stranger help her climb off the roof and slide down the hay bale. "I would have given him a whole box of worm chocolates," she says, and is gone, running, Gary tells Marissa, for her own back door. When lightning hits the rod atop the barn, they're a safe distance away, in the jeep.

"Was that true, about you and the tree and your sister? And the worms?"

"Of course it's true. Kenny spit that chocolate clear into the next Tuesday."

"You ought to tell Chuck about that one sometime. He'd be proud."

"Chuck," she tells him, "would have been the one who got me up into that tree, if we'd grown up together."

"Probably. But he would have helped you down." He's right, of course.

By the time they bump their way back to the main highway, the rain has stopped altogether, which is the way of midwestern storms in the spring.

They drive for a while without the radio, without saying much of anything at all. Twenty minutes after she figures they should be up to interstate stall and go, that Gary should be cussing out rush hour traffic on the Eisenhower, they are still moving smoothly, and she hasn't heard another car for miles.

She asks him why; he says there's something else he needs to do--no, not another save, but an errand to run.

"In the middle of nowhere?" she asks, in her best citygirl snark.

"Best place for it." And under his casual tone, there's something else. Not the usual annoyance or anxiety over impending doom, but something younger. Something that's having fun with this. Considering how often Gary gets to have fun, she decides to just be glad she's along for the ride.

They rattle through some gravel, and then it smoothes out to..."A dirt road?"

"Yup. Somebody's back forty."

She forgets this about Gary, much of the time, that he grew up in a small town and knows as much about this landscape as he does about Chicago. "Um...why?"

"Just looking for the right spot." The jeep slows, just for a minute, before their speed climbs again. "When we were growing up, and there wasn't anything to do in Hickory--between sports seasons-- this is what we did to get away--to get free. Driving on country roads to see how fast the car would go." They round a corner . She's pretty sure it's on two wheels, and she grabs the dash. Gary laughs. Laughs. "My dad's pickup could never do this."

"Gary!"

"It's okay, the road's clear."

Marissa is used to caution, used to anticipating obstacles that seem to come up out of nowhere, but that really shouldn't happen at she-doesn't-want-to-know miles per hour. But Gary sounds happy, sounds...for once he sounds free. She pulls her hand back into her lap and tries to relax.

"Here." The jeep finally slows, bumps and rolls to a stop. When he opens her door, he says, "Let me see your shoes."

"They're muddy."

"But practical?"

Of course they are. She may be a city girl, but she knows better than to wear her favorite boots to a barnyard. Or a...a field? She climbs out of the car and into a vast sense of space. Her cane touches soft earth, firm, not muddy. The rain didn't last that long. Their first steps, with Marissa's hands, as always, full of cane and Gary's elbow, open up a world she's only experienced a few times. The sense of space is incredible. Their voices drift away from them, go on forever.

"Did you ever think about the sky, how it really comes all the way down to the ground? I mean, that's what the atmosphere is, right?"

"Gary Hobson, philosopher?" she asks.

"It's just...I wish you could see the sky out here." This is a Gary she doesn't hear very often. He sounds almost wistful, and there's a hint of the boy he used to be in his cadence. It's almost confessional when he says, "Sometimes I forget what it's like, but when I was a kid, when I got to play in places like this, I think I always knew about how we run around in the sky."

She stops for a moment, lets the cane dangle from her wrist, and reaches forward. "I may not be able to see the sky, but I can feel it. And smell it." The air is washed clean, full of plants that are waiting underneath for the right moment, but still, for now, asleep. Still, she believes she can smell them, knows that if they could quiet the birds and the wind, she'd be able to hear them whisper in their sleep. Gary isn't the only one reverting.

"What are we doing, Gary? Are you going to give me a lesson in agriculture?"

"Something better." He pulls his elbow away from her touch; reaches over and takes her cane. There's no mistaking the grin in his voice now. "Run."

She doesn't move. She knows what he means, but she doesn't dare. Which direction? How far? Does she even remember how? "But--"

Part of her hates herself, at that moment, for hesitating, for being afraid. But she's had it drilled into her by long experience, this caution; she knows the cuts and bruises that come from incautious trust. It's vast and open here, and she's exposed, and her feet won't move.

"C'mon, Marissa, run." Gary grabs her hand and pulls her along; it's little more than a jog, at first.

"What if there's something--"

"There's nothing. Trust me."

"But if there's a hole--"

"You'll fall. And I'll be there, but don't worry, there's not going to be a hole."

"Or a stick?" They're moving more easily now, and a little faster. Their words come between breaths now.

"This is the Illinois prairie. There aren't any trees, not for miles." His grip on her hand eases, and something flutters inside her.

Not panic. Wings.

"Which way?"

"Any way you want." And he pulls her around like the yo-yo on the end of a string and lets go, and though she stumbles at first, she doesn't go down. She runs.

It's is harder work here on the ground than in dreams, but there's still the liftoff in each step, still the possibility that she just might fly. Hands out in front, she doesn't know where she's going; pretty soon she doesn't even care. It all falls away, and she doesn't have to think, doesn't have to plan, doesn't have to measure her steps or reach for what's in front of her. Her arms come down and move with the rest of her body in an easy rhythm, and she just runs, she just is. It's movement, it's freedom, and when she laughs, it's delight that bubbles through her.

Somewhere near, Gary's laughing too, not hovering, not worrying. Forgetting.

God, Gary's laughing.  She's laughing.

And running.

When she stops to catch her breath, he's there, a light touch on her shoulder. Is this okay, it asks. In answer, she dances away and twirls, arms spread wide, leaning into the wind that's followed the rain, letting it spin her. She's drunk on freedom and spring--no, not drunk, it's ten times better. For once, she's out of control, and for once, there's nothing wrong with that.

She's about to ask Gary if he's spinning, too, though she can't imagine he would be, when one foot catches the other and there's nowhere she can go but down onto the soft, damp dirt.

"Oh, no--Marissa, are you okay?"

But she is okay, more okay than she's been in a long time--it's just that she's laughing so hard, at her own clumsiness, at this feeling of racing and twirling through the sky, that she can't answer him.

Plop. He's sitting next to her. "I'm sorry. I really didn't think you'd fall."

"No, no--" She manages to breathe long enough, deep enough, to speak. "I'm fine, Gary, better than fine." Her hands rest on the dirt for a minute, exploring its crumbly texture while her heart rate comes back to normal. Then she lifts her hands free, into sky. She knows where Gary is from the sound of his voice, and knocks her shoulder against his, the way they do when there's something more than words to be said.

Well, maybe one word. "Thanks."

"Anytime, okay? Just ask." He chuckles as he pulls her to her feet.

"What's so funny?" It's all funny, it's all fun.

"I was just wondering what Chuck would say if he could see us now."

She rolls her eyes. "Chuck doesn't have to know."

"Deal. Race you to the jeep?" He gives her a soft slap between the shoulder blades, pushing her in the right direction, and he's gone on ahead. She follows the sound of his feet, of his calls, but he lets her run back on her own. Before long, too soon, they're back in the jeep, back to seat belts, to caution and control.

But Gary puts the top down; takes the back roads at speeds that Marissa suspects no pickup could match, and once again--this time with Springsteen on the stereo--they're racing through the sky.

Laughing.

Email the author:   peregrin_anna@hotmail.com
 

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