These Dreams of You

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Parker says, “Let’s leave.” He’s a fearless kid who will brave things Zan never did as a boy — some death-defying stunt on a skateboard, some preposterously lethal warp-speed roller coaster — but dark closed places push his courage to its breaking point. “Zan,” he says.

“I want to stay,” says Sheba.

“You only want to stay because I want to go,” Parker says.

“I want to stay!” she says again, though it’s not at all clear what it is she wants to stay for other than to momentarily seize control of a life that always feels outside her control. “I WANT TO STAY, I WANT TO STAY, I WANT TO STAY,” and the railroad car becomes a megaphone, the four-year-old’s voice careening from bend to dell and hilltop.

As the babble of the creek rises from the dark through the boxcar windows, a twelve-year-old imagination bubbles. Peering from the bridgehouse’s rafter toward the ocean, Parker says, “When it comes, will the tsunami reach this far?”