Hunts in Dreams by Tom Drury Page A

flannel with a pair of rusted scissors, and cleaned the gun again.

7 ◆ Micah
    E VOLUTION HAD MADE A LOT OF TROUBLE at school. There had been night meetings at which fundamentalists from another state argued that it should not be taught. In the meantime, Micah’s teacher had to take down the poster of prehistoric men. The children were not privy to the meetings, but they noted a new sense of purpose in the teachers. The endless days for once seemed to hold an importance to the outside world. Micah’s parents had their own opinions. Descended from single-celled organisms or not, Charles said, everyone had to pay the electric bill or lose the house. Since Republicans were against evolution, however, he felt honor bound to be for it. Joan attended one of the meetings, in a long dress and airy perfume, and afterward she said that far from disproving the presence of God, the old changes showed the elegance of his work. Eventually evolution won, and the teacher taped the poster up again, and the children cheered the return of the naked extinct men striding forth, leading with their chins, as they might cheer the football team at homecoming.
    Maybe this explains what Micah saw when he woke in Colette’s house. The figures from the poster had come to life and were walking through her living room. Java, Heidelberg, Peking, Broken Hill, Solo, Swanscombe. They sang and carried firesticks and flint scrapers. They lumbered thoughtfully, as if they had miles to go. Of course, they would not think in terms of miles. Solo Man banged into a standing brass ashtray, and Micah jumped from the davenport, too late to catch it. Swanscombe Man looked at the fallen ashtray, stepped over it, and followed the others out the door. Then Micah’s grandmother came into the room, taking her turn in line as if she were the latest model of human development. She turned on the overhead light, which shone soft yellow through a bowl of cut glass.
    â€œListen,” he said. “Do you hear singing?”
    She stood the ashtray upright. “That’s ‘Absterge Domine’ on my new sound system.”
    â€œWhere’s Dad?”
    â€œHe had to go do something for someone.”
    Micah looked around the room, wondering whether to tell her what he had seen. He decided to go ahead, since his grandmother was at ease with unusual notions. She believed, for example, that people should eat dirt once in a while to maintain their health.
    She sat down. “They’re ghosts,” she said. “You don’t have to worry about them. What they want, they don’t want from you. Once in the hallway I seen an old farmer with a box of matches. Another time there was an Indian wearing snowshoes and a red hat with a string on it. Ghosts can’t help where they go. This house just gets them. I think at one time it was an important place.”
    â€œI can’t sleep.”
    She went out to the kitchen and brought back a tray bearing a bottle, a pitcher, two glasses, and some rocks. She gave him one of the rocks to look at.
    Micah guessed it was an arrowhead, but his grandmother said more like a knife. She held it in her long, wrinkled fingers. “See all these little hone marks along the blade? That’s how you know it was worked by human hand.”
    â€œWhere’d you find it?”
    â€œWhen they dug the sewer line, why, these were just laying on the ground. People walk by this sort of thing every day, but they’re not looking.”
    â€œWhat did they cut with it?”
    â€œSkins, I imagine. Deer and buffalo and so forth. Everybody’s got to eat.”
    â€œNot ghosts.”
    â€œThat’s true. But even they want to eat. They’re always hungry and they don’t know why. And it’s too bad.”
    She poured brandy and water into the glasses. “Go to sleep.”
    â€œI’m not tired.”
    â€œDrink this and you will be.”
    â€œIt tastes like