THE DREAMERS
It was weeks since school had gotten out.
It was weeks until school would go back in.
Summer doldrums hit the gang.
"There’s nothing to do," said
Ellen.
Ingrid had been thinking the exact same
thing at the exact same time and she wanted to sit up and tell Ellen this
astonishing fact. She knew that Ellen
did it often with Lucy but they were twins. Maybe friends could do it too. In spite of her discovery Ingrid was just too lazy to move.
Some of the gang were lying in the long
grass where the lawn mower could not easily go beside the garage at Joshua’s
house.
Piya yawned and Sam sighed. John was seeing if he could breathe grass up
his nose by burying his head in the long stalks and inhaling. Joshua was helping Bill deliver Bill’s
brother’s newspapers – his brother was away at camp for two weeks.
Lucy was checking to see if the guppies in Kresge’s fish
department had had their babies. Any
day they’d have new guppies the lady who worked there had told her. "Then we have to hope the babies don’t
get eaten by the other fish."
Lucy had been horrified to hear this. She was determined to help, somehow, even if
she had to stand by the tank and scare the big fish away. She hoped that at nighttime the babies would
be safe because she knew no one would listen if she asked to stick around the
store then too.
Ingrid yawned. Piya yawned. John sneezed as he finally managed to sniff a whole
bunch of grass up his nose. Sam
shouted, "Idiot numbskull" because John had startled him with the
sneeze but it was a lazy shout.
"There’s nothing to do," said
Ingrid and Ellen said, "I was just thinking that."
Lucy suddenly appeared up the driveway and
squeezed between the garage and the house. "Hey!" she yelled. "Let’s have a carnival!"
"What?" said the gang in a
yawny, communal voice.
"Idiot numbskull," yawned Sam.
"Come on – sit up – listen,"
said Lucy and the gang did so because they could not help but respond to her
bossy enthusiasm.
"Mrs. Mabel told me all about it –
she used to be part of one when she was a girl. It sounds like fun and we make money and I get to wear my ballet
costume."
She stopped for breath.
"Money?" asked Piya and John.
"Ballet?" questioned Ellen.
"Did the fish have babies?"
Ingrid wanted to know. Mrs. Mabel was
the fish lady at the cent store.
"Zillions of babies," Lucy told
them and I helped Mrs. Mabel scoop them out into another tank so they wouldn’t
get eaten and while we were doing this she told me all about the carnival."
"I can do acrobats," yelled Sam
and this time it came out a yell and then he threw himself into a
somersault."
"I can do card tricks," said
John as he moved out of Sam’s way.
"I can do magic," said Ellen.
"You can?" asked Lucy in
disbelief.
"Yes." She did not explain. Lucy
looked at her with a new thought that maybe she didn’t know everything about
her twin and hadn’t she just mentioned ballet which Ellen did not know she had
been secretly practicing from a book in the empty room that used to be her
grandma’s.
Then the gang all started talking at once
and before they knew it they were planning a carnival.
Bill and Joshua were certainly surprised
when they came back from delivering the papers and found the gang had moved
from lazing in the meadow to busily working on the verandeh with paper and
coloured pencils.
Ingrid was figuring out the acts and
making a list. John was drawing up
posters with Sam and Pia and Ellen. Lucy was doing ballet steps in a corner of the verandeh and calling out
suggestions to Ingrid.
Bill and Joshua collapsed onto the porch
swing. "Wow," said
Joshua. "What a beehive of
activity."
"Yeah," said Bill, "I just
want to rest after all that work we did."
"Aw come on," said Ellen,
"we need a strong man to lift weights and also a lion tamer – you could do
that, Bill, your cat looks like a tiger. And Joshua, we need someone to take tickets and organize the whole
thing."
"I can juggle," Joshua said
quietly, "And I can charm snakes."
He took off his glasses and stared at
them. "I’m not only good at booky
things."
After a pause in which the gang considered
this Ellen said, "I didn’t know you minded."
"Well, I don’t really, I just wanted
to let you know."
Piya looked worried and Ingrid looked at
Ellen and shrugged.
"We need a lot of stuff done so
everybody can help," Ingrid said.
"I wanna see you charm snakes,"
Sam shouted at Joshua.
"Okay," he said. He trotted off but was soon back. He had a rumpled paper sack and a flute and
his school book bag. He put the sack
and flute down and took a wooden snake out of the school bag. The snake was made of many wooden pieces
cleverly joined together. It was
painted red and black.
Sam was about to protest that it wasn’t a
real snake but when he saw how it shivered he yelled, "Neato."
The rest of the gang just watched but they
moved down off the verandeh to where Joshua was on the front grass which was a
lawn.
Joshua draped the snake around his neck
and let
the
tail and head rest over his shoulders. He reached over to pick up the flute and the snake fell off so he had to
adjust it back on his neck. Lucy handed
him the flute.
He put the flute to his lips and closed
his eyes and began to play notes. As he
did so he moved his shoulders slightly so that the snake shivered a bit. It started to fall off and he stopped
playing and adjusted it and went back to making one note after the other drop
out of the flute, his eyes still closed.
The gang watched but didn’t say
anything. There didn’t seem to be
anything to say.
After awhile he opened his eyes, stopped
playing and looked at the gang. The
gang looked back. Suddenly Ingrid
started to clap and everyone else followed but John and Sam both made a bit of
a face.
"Now I’ll juggle," Joshua said. He took three balls out of the paper
sack. Two were red, white and blue and
the same size and sponge rubber. One
was smaller and white and made of hard India rubber.
Joshua stood back from the gang and
started to throw the balls one by one up in the air and try to catch them. He wasn’t very good. He kept dropping them and he juggled so
slowly. Again the gang did not say
anything. Sam yawned.
"You need the balls to be all the
same size," Bill said to him.
"Well, I don’t have three the same
size," Joshua said and kept on juggling.
Sam got even more bored, gave a loud sigh,
and tried to leap to his feet from a lying position. One of his brothers could do this. Then Joshua stopped juggling. "I’ll have to practice a bit," he said.
"That’s a good idea," said Piya,
"I mean, it isn’t easy to juggle."
"Especially when the balls don’t
match," Lucy said but not out loud.
Ellen and Ingrid looked at each other but
didn’t say anything.
The gang went back to making posters.
The next day Joshua was sick. Piya came running to tell the gang.
"He’s sunstruck," she said. "His mother said he got too much sun
delivering those papers and he should have been wearing a hat."
"No wonder he was so bad at
juggling," Lucy said and Piya yelled, "Don’t say that," and she
jumped on Lucy and started to hit her. Ellen and Sam pulled Piya away from Lucy while the rest of the gang
looked on in shock. Piya never hit
anyone. She started to cry and ran
home. Lucy started to cry and ran
home. Ellen rolled her eyes and went
after her sister.
Joshua had to spend the day in bed in a
darkened room. The gang didn’t work on
the carnival. They somehow didn’t feel
like it.
The next day Joshua was better but his
mother said he still had to take it easy. She let him sit out on the verandeh and the gang could visit if they
were quiet.
Joshua’s mom gave the gang a big bowl of
raisins and peanuts to keep them settled.
"I had a terrible dream last
night," Ellen told them when they were all sitting around Joshua who was
lying on the porch swing. They munched
on the treat. John was trying to line
up a peanut on one side of his mouth and a raisin on the other and crunch down
and feel the difference in texture.
"Your dreams are always
terrible," Lucy began, but Bill shushed her.
"I could tell you about it but that
isn’t nearly good enough. I wish I
could show you."
"Take a picture," said John.
"Of my dream?" Ellen was incredulous and she scrunched up
her face.
"Yeah – wow!" shouted Sam. "Let’s do it. Ellen you go to sleep and I’ll get my brother’s camera and when
you’re dreaming I’ll snap the pitcher."
"Pic-ture," breathed Lucy,
wondering if he would ever get it right.
"How will you know she’s
dreaming?" Piya wanted to know while Bill and Ingrid and Joshua were all
saying, "You can’t photograph dreams" and John was just shaking his
head and Lucy said to Sam, "Idiot numbskull."
"Has anyone ever tried,"
demanded Sam and startled the gang to silence.
"I can tell my cat is dreaming
because she twitches," said Ellen thoughtfully.
"Maybe you could stick the camera in
her ear," Piya giggled and everyone laughed and Lucy gave her a quick
hug. They were friends again.
"But I dream in colour," said
Ellen.
"You do?" Lucy was astounded. She dreamed in regular black and white. It didn’t seem fair that her twin could
dream better than she could.
"We could colour the
photograph," Ingrid said, "My Mom did this somehow with a picture of
her Dad for a gift. Except she made his
hair look funny."
"We could try it, I guess," said
Lucy.
Joshua grabbed his head as if it were
aching. "What are you going to
photograph?" he asked. He sounded
tired.
"Why, the dream," Ellen said.
"But it’s in your head."
"It seems it should be
possible," Ingrid said, almost apologetically.
"Mass hysteria," murmured Bill.
He’d heard his mother say this.
"Oh be quiet," Piya told
him. "What do you know. You’re just a boy." And once again the gang looked at Piya with
raised eyebrows. For a timid little
girl she was developing some pretty assertive characteristics. "We just don’t know how to take
pictures of dreams yet," she explained. "But if we can think about doing something then eventually we will
be able to do it. My aunt told me
this."
"Your aunt the scientist?" asked
Bill.
"No – the one who’s a mystic."
"A lipstick?" hooted Sam.
"No, silly. A mystic."
"What’s that?"
"Oh, she sort of knows things by
feeling rather than thinking. It’s hard to explain."
The gang was silent, thinking.
"Actually," said John, "I
meant you could take a picture of your dream by drawing it."
"Idiot numbskull," shouted Sam,
who felt he had been tricked.
"I can’t draw," said Ellen.
"You draw very nicely," said
Lucy who drew even better than her sister so she could allow herself to be
generous with praise.
"Just do it a bit at a time and let
it sort of develop like a photograph would," John suggested. He had once been allowed in the darkroom of
a newspaper by a friend of his father’s and had seen how photographs were
developed.
"Okay," said Ellen. "I’ll have to go and get some
crayons."
"Mom!" Joshua shouted suddenly,
scaring everyone.
"What?" she called from
somewhere inside the house.
"I need pencil crayons and
paper."
In a few minutes his mother brought them
out to him. She smiled at everyone and
then went back inside.
"You should have said thank
you," Lucy said. She also thought
he should have said please. At times
she thought he was spoiled.
"Oh, yeah, I forgot," he
said. He spread the paper out on the
floor and gave Ellen the pencils.
"I don’t know where to start."
"Well, what was the dream
about?"
"Oh – a little bird was outside the
window sort of squeaking the whole time – "
"Birds don’t squeak," Sam
interrupted.
"In dreams they do," Ingrid
shushed him.
Ellen drew a tiny bird in one corner.
"Nice bird," commented Bill.
"Then my aunt and uncle showed up
from Tillsonburg. They have a blue car
but in the dream it was a red fire truck and they drove it right into my
bedroom and their son Mark was with them but he had a mustache even though he’s
only four years old. And instead of my
bedroom door there was a tunnel and instead of a road there was a river of
strawberry jam and then my Dad came in and I jumped up on my bed to yell at him
not to get his feet all sticky in the jam and he started to laugh and say okay,
okay, I’ll walk on my hands – "
Ellen was not drawing the dream but
everyone was listening so hard that no one noticed.