Just Dreams

The boy leaned in, his forehead touching the crack in the door.

"What are you going to do?"

"How do you stop nightmares?"

The boy's father did not answer for so long that the boy wondered if they knew about his eavesdropping. He almost slipped back to bed.

"When do you go back to Ethiopia?"

"You know I can't just take him back. I owe his father more than that. I owe him more than that."

"You sure this is what's right for him? You sure he's not better off with his own people?"

"You worried about your boys? He ain't dangerous, Hagan."

"How can you be sure?"

"I'm sure."

The boy knew they were talking about Adunya. When Uncle Albin brought that boy home, everything changed.

Forced friendships begin with reluctance--the boy protective of his turf, Adunya eager to claim his new home. But over the past few months, the boy and Adunya had eased past any differences and disdain. Though it remained unspoken, a friendship had evolved to the point that they shared an easy understanding--if one boy needed help up the last five feet of the canyon, the other reached back without question, without the judgement the boy often glared back at Jon Jon when he asked for his hand. Adunya had seen real lions, he had killed game with a spear. What could be cooler than that?

The boy showed Adunya mule deer and pronghorn and coyotes and grouse and bull snakes and listened as Adunya compared them to kudu and gazelles and jackals and franklin and pythons. But what most fascinated the boy about Adunya was the way he walked, without shoes, without sound. The boy tried, but it hurt his feet and with shoes on, he had no chance to mimic the Ethiopian's silence.

Adunya sometimes stared blankly at the sky, he carried that big machete, he ate little, and any chance of a storm terrified him, but dangerous? Maybe. The boy knew Adunya's father had been hacked to death by a neighbor. He knew Adunya saw it and he knew how angry he'd be if it had been his own father. Strange as he might be, Adunya had never given the boy any reason to fear him. No, the boy agreed with Uncle Albin. Adunya was not dangerous. And he did not need to go back to Ethiopia.

"That boy's seen things I wouldn't wish on no man," the boy's father said. "Maybe you should have him see a shrink."

"Ain't no shrinks around here, Hagan. Have to take him to Cheyenne or Denver. How's some city fellow supposed to help a boy who grew up in a dirt-floor hut?"

"What you going to do?"

"I guess I'll raise him the way Pop raised us."

"What about schooling?"

"What's he going to do with schooling?"

"He's gonna need an education."

"He'll get an education. Better than he would from some public school system."

"You think it's easy to be a teacher?"

"He'll learn what he needs."

"You just going to hope them nightmares take care of themselves?"

"I don't know, Hagan. They're just dreams."

"You know they're more than that."

"I know."

The boy crawled back into his bed. As he stared at the darkness, he thought about lions. He thought about dirt-floor huts. He thought about machetes.