Page Content (OCR)
The Child - Seven The Child - Seven floating up gently from his bed and through the ceiling. Trav- eling at a great speed, he passed through lights, momentary streaks of brilliant color, and then he was looking down on a sagebrush desert area, with snowy mountains in the distance. Below, an old Grayhound-type bus, inexplicably painted yel- low, moved along a small road. Ted felt himself drop through the roof of the bus into a seat about halfway back from the driver. Several other people were on the bus, too, but they ignored him. The bus drove north toward the mountains for a while, and then it suddenly hesitated and came to a stop on the pavement, as if waiting for something. Curious, Ted walked up to the front and peered through the windshield. Ahead he could see cowboys on horseback, herding hundreds of sheep across the road. He walked back to his seat, and as the heat inside the bus had increased, he opened the window. A small chuckwagon rolled by, and Ted heard a strange language spoken by its passengers. Finally, the last of the sheep cleared the road, and once again the bus started north. The land was beautiful. Ted saw a crystal-clear creek not far from the road, where a few men were fishing, and the moun- tains grew larger and more magnificent as the bus traveled on. Then the road curved around into a beautiful bowl- shaped valley, ringed by the snowy mountains. To Ted, the place looked like paradise, an earthly scene of heaven, a land of pure wonder. The bus passed by several grand buildings that reminded him of Swiss chalets he’d seen in pictures, and then it came to a stop beside the largest building in the valley. It looked to be made of rough redwood. Ted got off the bus, walked straight to the side of the building, and then inexpli- cably reached out to scratch his fingernail across the surface, feeling a sense of surprise. The dreamscape changed, and Ted saw himself wearing some sort of uniform. A middle-aged man was talking to him, but Ted couldn’t make out the words. There was a woman with light brown hair nearby, dressed in a maid’s outfit, and he also saw a chubby, smiling woman sitting behind a cashier’s desk. He was in a small room cluttered Masquerade of Angels 4 with trays, and beyond that was a huge dining area filled with guests. A band played dance music in the background, and through the window Ted could see a frozen rink where skaters wove smoothly among one another on the ice. That’s where the dream always ended. What it meant, Ted didn’t know, but each time it returned the details were identical. He treasured those dreams that were such a beauti- ful part of his private world, throughout high school and into his first year of college. He didn’t have Jill, but at least he had the magnificent valley, if only in his dreams. After high school, Ted enrolled at the University of Alabama. Jill decided upon another college, but they main- tained their friendship with frequent letters and phone calls. His heart still responded only to her, so that at a time when most young men would be dating a number of girls, Ted had no interest in campus romance. Besides, he was rather in awe of those sophisticated students with whom he attended class- es. They all seemed to have done so much more, traveled to different places, to have lived more exciting lives than he had. All he’d really ever known were the farms and small towns of backwoods Alabama. He had never been taught to question his life or his place in the world. People planted their crops, worked at their jobs, tended their families, and went to church on Sundays, and that was the meaning of existence. But college life exposed Ted to other possibilities. Students from bigger towns like Tuscaloosa and Birmingham knew a lot more than Ted, and he became curious to know more himself. Whatever strange events that had occurred in his past were forgotten in the dazzle of his present new world, and he felt the first stirrings of an exploring mind. He wanted to discover a greater uni- verse than that which he’d known on the farm. Toward the end of his second year, some of Ted’s friends began to talk about their summer plans, and he realized that like most of them, he, too, needed help to pay for schooling. That meant finding a job, something he had never had to think about before. His roommate told him about the fun he’d had working at a resort, and the idea caught Ted’s imag- ination. Masquerade of Angels 55