By Dana Jerman

“HE WASN’T AROUND FOR LONG WHEN I WAS A CHILD. But one good thing that came out of him that made him seem larger inside—more real—a story.

He'd never tell what town he'd lived in. But it never occurred to me he'd be lying about what came next. He was simple. Wasn't that type of person.

He'd just started to raise a family in a very quiet place. A new baby. A wife, herself pretty new. And a big bed where she could sleep sound while he lay awake.

One night he sat up—his body telling him just what he had to do.

No shoes, no clothes—he went out for a walk around the neighborhood. He began to do this at least twice a week.

I imagined the cool of the air on skin that rarely knows it. The light shapes melting over him as he moved under each streetlight. He walks in the center of the road in the dead of night. The houses set back from the street by yards sporting soft white night lights. Never getting close enough to trigger a motion sensor over a garage, or the bark-alarm of a family dog.

He was a slow wisp in my mind. Something that didn't exist inside a world that could not conceive of a man walking naked, still fully cognizant, around the block on the pads of his feet.

In each of my mind's retellings I become a small boy on the edge of a bed beside a second floor window. Watching for nothing, but then this man materializes amongst the deep orange of soft swinging fall leaves.

He moves forward while the seasons go backward. The neighborhood dissolves and retreats seamlessly both into the corners of the mind’s eye and into forest and grass and vine from whence it truly sprung.

He moves beyond the child's view of the street from the window. The child is finally able to help himself to sleep.

You have to go to sleep to dream after all. And you can't sleep if you haven't been awake long enough to live. Babies can, maybe. But not men who are certain they must first wander naked into subreal hours of salient silence to find peace.

Everyone knows, though some are better at this than others—dreams are always too easily mistaken for reality once you're in them. Once there comes to be perceived too much at stake, you forget to pinch yourself—to stop taking it seriously.

Maybe it should be practiced first in waking life—the pinching. The saying aloud of the phrase "I'm dreaming." Especially if it isn't true.

✶

I LOOKED IN THE REARVIEW AS WE STOPPED. After a moment she looked back at me.

“That's a story about my uncle,” I said.

She exhaled through a smile.

“A good story. And not all about him either. Shows you've got imagination. Imagination pleases God.”

It was a long signal and we were silent for a beat. Just enough time for my gaze to drift for no reason at all, over the door down to the blacktop where a female praying mantis lay crushed and paved over.

My heart caught. It was like a pinch. I wasn't dreaming.

Green light.

As we swung thru the intersection she looked out the window.

“You go on driving. I'll go for a walk on the sky and see what I have to say.”

Soon she let out a coo.

“Here's something...”

Something personal. Shameful to some I guess, if they had this in their past. But it was good to be fearless for a time. Good to tell hell to wait for being selfish. A girl who has decided she’s bad takes love where she can get it. She can get it in things if she wants them bad enough. Much better to get it in comrades. Better still from above.

But anyhow,

I grew up with girlfriends and nothing. We had school, which came easy. Ourselves and our secrets amid the jobless boys of our nowheresville.

We were five before she was murdered. The youngest of us. Skin like milk. Lips like rose petals. A daddy with the idea nobody should be allowed to love her but him.

He took her from us and was never caught and we felt more-than-empty without justice.

We thought about what could be done to hurt him, but we were never foolishly brave enough. We'd seen all those movies about witch covens and girl gangs... but we were smart-alecky sisters. It couldn't be like that. Besides, one of us liked the youngest’s much-older half-brother. A serious crush…

Anyway, stealing was a way we managed to cause some damage.

We'd make dates and take our bags. Big empty things saved from department stores where one of us would buy a small thing and ask for the large tote. It's hard to keep them looking new, but we tried.

Never caught once, any of us. Items slipped into each other's purses. Items taken back and swapped for cash without receipts.

It was harder to do until the eldest’s daddy had a heart attack and left her a car. Then we were a five-fingered flame. We even pulled a TV off a truck, all dressed up in Sunday’s best.

Always, it was the time of our lives while we were "streaking" we called it. But after, we looked at each other and felt a little bit further away from ourselves. Not even tallying prices and coming up consistently into the grands continued to fill us with any sense of accomplishment. We'd seen our own lives building up with lots and lots of "never enough.”

Soon it was a year the youngest had been gone. All this stuff was supposed to replace her, we realized. And it would never happen.

I turned sixteen the day before we set all the things we'd snatched onto bad daddy's back lot and started a conflagration in the middle of the night.

It was like a belated birthday present from a beloved relative to me, knowing it caught part of the house, though none of us stayed too long watch it burn. It was really for her.

In the end I can't say my own satisfaction pleased God. But after that it became easier to make room for him in my heart.

✶

SHE SAT UP. Looking straight ahead as we pulled thru another light on the far end of town.

“Thanks. I'll get out here.”

She did, and was gone.