Stepping Stone by Walter Mosley

Author:Walter Mosley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

Maud had taken my hand.

“And did you feel everything that he felt?” she asked.

I nodded, swallowing hard.

“That’s a real nightmare,” she said.

“Thanks for pulling me out of it,” I said. “I was with him on that fall. I wanted to die just like he did.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “If I hadn’t been playin’ wit’ you like that maybe you woulda dreamed about flowers or sumpin’.”

“No. I have dreams like that every night lately. They feel so real.”

“How come?”

“I don’t know. It’s like I’m goin’ crazy.”

“Maybe you should see a doctor.”

“If it goes on,” I said, reviving from the tea and the child sitting with me, so concerned. And then, to change the subject, I asked, “What do think about staying with me last night?”

In the morning Maud’s face was older and more beautiful. Her eyes had sheared through my fears and more quickly than I thought possible the dread of the nightmare ebbed away.

“It was one reason at first but then it was sumpin’ else completely.”

I smiled at the riddlelike structure of her reply. I liked riddles. I was no good at solving them but their language and their maddening questions usually made me happy.

“I been stayin’ with my mother for a few days and then with Roger a few. I was goin’ back and forth and they both hate each other and they both make me mad too. I wanted to show Roger that I didn’t have to be with my mother not to be with him and I wanted to get away from her too.”

“Couldn’t you just stay with some girlfriend?” I asked. “I mean going home with a stranger sounds a little risky just to make somebody jealous.”

“I ain’t afraid a’ you, Mr. Pope. You the sweetest man I evah met. You wouldn’t hurt no girl.”

I couldn’t help thinking that this was what people thought about the mild and smiling men and women of my terrible dreams.

“Anyway,” Maud said, “that’s what I thought when I got to your house but it turned different then.”

“Different how?”

“There wasn’t no TV or radio or magazines in there but I didn’t care. My mama, an’ Roger too, always got music playin’ an’ the TV on. They always talkin’ or on the phone and so are the people through the walls an’ ceilin’ and floors.

“It’s always noise all the time up in their places but it’s so quiet at your place and I didn’t get bored. You listened to me and told me how you felt. I don’t think I could live like you do but it was real nice. I nevah had a man hold me all night and not try and hit on that coochie. And I could kiss you if I wanted. All that meant something to me.”

“Want” was not a regular part of my vocabulary. I could go days without eating and years without sex. I found entertainment in the lay of architecture or dust motes sifting through sunlight. I could work twenty-four hours straight and still not feel exhausted and there was no sweetness or salt, drug or alcohol that called to me.

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