The Dream Farmer

In my young days we had a dozen sky mules, their horns polished bright like new moons. It was my job to spread the sheaves out on the barn floor, then Pa would have the mules trample the dream-grains loose from the chaff. Twenty bushels we'd winnow and grind to a thin dust each day. Then we'd throw it to the wind at dusk, so that the earthfolk could dream.

Afterwards I had to sweep the floor with a birch twig broom. The dream-dust would stick in my throat like a hair in a biscuit. It had no other effect on me, you see - our kind don't sleep - though Ma always reckoned I got my voice from sweeping the barn floor as a youngin'. Sure enough, I can carry a tune if the mood strikes me.

We had pigs and goats and an ostrich and a dog too, but they weren't like livestock y'all have on your farms. Ma fed them the soaked chaff of dream-wheat, you figure. Their coat grew thick and silky, with colors blazing in the sun. Jilly and I used to chase the ostrich, but that devil had three eyes on long arms, and it would see us coming no matter what. The dog liked to sprawl under the fig tree, because the branches sprouted hands that scratched his ears. The young were born with wilder hues and more limbs with each passing spring.

A fine job it was too, running that farm. We were the ones that sowed and reaped the dreams the earthfolk dreamed while they slept. We watered and fed their half-blind ambitions and suckling adventures. We scattered dream-dust into the wind each night, come summer breeze or winter squall.

Ma used to say that if you let a baby sleep on top of a fir tree, she'd catch the sweetest dreams.

At night, Pa would sit in front of the fire, smoking his pipe. "When I kick it, you go and live with the earthfolk," he'd say. "Get a real job. Catch the train and see the world for what it is. Sail the seas, climb the mountains. Dream with your eyes open, build something that withstands the light of day."

Pa said strange things when he stuffed that dream-chaff in his pipe. We pinched it once, Jilly and I, for a lark. Tried to smoke it in the barn, nearabout burned the thing down. Got a good whup behind the ear from Pa, too.

Once there came a blight that ruined the dream-wheat. Now, we don’t need sleep more than a sheep needs a swimsuit, but the earthfolk was plagued with nightmares and insomnia. Even our animals pitched a right fit, howling and wailing through the night. The dog bit the hands of the fig tree. A calf was born with only one head, Ma yelped when she saw it. We all felt like we were chewed up and spit out, us and the earthfolk and beasts alike.

Pa started coughing that summer.

After the harvest, we held our festival as usual. Pumpkins and apples were piled high in the pantry. Ma baked her famous pie in the sky, we stuffed ourselves full as a tick. Moonshine flowed free; Jilly and I worn our boots thin at the barn dance. I belted out all the old songs while the farm hands played the mandolin. But the stars twinkled different, and the wind had a cold bite when we threw in the dream-dust. It seemed that even the mountains far yonder had shifted.

The first frost had not touched the leaves yet when we carried Pa off to the woods.

I knew it then, for the first time, what it was like to be confined to the same world, day and night. To not have another place to take you in when this one beat you down and you needed a haven.

I moved to the city not long after, to live among the earthfolk. I worked in factories, pulled pints, stacked shelves, been a chief, a cook, a bottle washer. Always took the night shift. Like you figure, I don’t sleep.

Years went by, the seasons turned without fuss.

Sometimes I'd spot a critter that was a touch different, a three-legged dog, a bluejay with a broken wing on her, or a bug stuck between window panes. I'd take it home and nuss it back to life, but they never changed color, never grew new limbs or fledgling eyes. I planted herbs in the garden, gussied-up flowers, tomatoes and chillies aplenty. I learned to bake. I ground spices and sifted grains, and at dusk I'd take a broom to the fallen leaves, pretending I was sweeping the old barn floor with Pa.

I could feel it then, that scratchy feeling in my throat, but it wasn't from dream-dust.

I traveled the world too, like my Pa said. I trod deserts and glaciers, rain forests, cities with towers reaching the sky.

Til’ one day I met a girl at the fairground. She fashioned animals out of balloons: pink dogs and green giraffes, limbs tied in knots and eyes dangling on tentacles. Her name was Storm, we danced under the fairy lights till morning. Her eyes bloomed like wildflowers when she laughed, and she didn't mind that my jokes were stinkers. We were married before the geese flew south, in a weathered barn in her village.

Our daughter was born the following spring, with electric blue hair that curled as it grew. I cradled her all night, for years. When she couldn't sleep for teething pains, I climbed the roof and held her up to the sky, close as I could. There were no firs in our garden to build her a crib among the birds' nests - singing to her was the next best thing.

Years went by, again, the seasons changing ever faster. There were times of need and times of plenty. I took to stoking a fire on winter nights, to stare into it like my Pa used to do, and think strange thoughts as though I'd smoked dream-chaff. Our blue-haired girl grew up to chase her own dreams. Storm died one raging night, and the years she'd spent by my side suddenly shrunk to a single bolt of time when the earth and the sky were briefly lit up and connected.

I started spending the night in old country bars, drinking till they threw me out in the ditch. I've mellowed since I met the folks in the band - a mandolin, a fiddle, a guitar and a flute, and my scratchy voice with dream-dust in my throat. We don’t get chicken feed for our trouble most nights but it helps pass the time.

One of these days, and soon enough, I'll get in the truck and drive until I see a farmhouse by the fir trees. Pale mountains far yonder, sky mules grazing on lush grass, their horns glimmering in the moonlight.

I'll sit down under an old tree when I get there, in the soft grass, on the warm earth.

I figure perhaps dreaming is less like chasing after wild things and more like remembering old things: taking the familiar you once knew and imagining it back to life. As if there was a place, beyond reason and hope, for them to be possible again. Simple things, like Pa smoking by the fire, Storm's laughter, my daughter's blue hair.

A boy's hands sinking into a cool mound, holding the scaly husk of dreams.