The Dream Merchant by Fred Waitzkin Read Free Book Online Page A

confronted him about the furniture, stood in front of him, hands on her broad hips while he weaved around. Where’s the furniture, Nathan? Where’s my money? Or else he would have walked out the door without a word about it. And he wouldn’t have cared, on the wondrous first night of his odyssey, lying on his back, looking up at the stars from a speeding train. He told her he had taken the money and gambled it on pork options, lost every last penny. He explained this while he gathered his things, folded his suit, put on his new shoes, searched for a clean handkerchief without sense for the outrage of his vanity, let alone the import of his crime.
    We might have made a fortune, but it didn’t work out, Sally. I tried, he said with heaped-on repentance. She shook her head and didn’t say a word.
    What did it matter if he spent her money on pork options or poker or more likely on some women who thought he was a business owner having a sporting weekend on the town—what did it matter? Or maybe he was leaving them with a hundred in his pocket and a dream about where he would go and whom he would meet. She could feel his festive stirrings—she knew him. But what did it matter how he lost it? They were a desperate family. In a few more days they would owe eight dollars for the month’s rent. She didn’t have two dollars. What would she do when the lady came for her money? Nathan left them this way, rushing out the door for the whistle of a train.
    It was deep into the fall and the prairie wind was frigid even before dark. Wind seeped through the thin wood walls, rushed through loose window frames and beneath the front door. Even with the stove hot, the house was cold and the children wore most of their clothes to bed at night. They smelled from never bathing.
    Sally begged in the church and when she had nothing, she pleaded with strangers on the street. She heated a little soup before bed and gave the boys bread in the morning. One man took pity and gave her three dollars—it gave her just enough to pay the rent a week late. But what about next month? If they were put out, where would they go? How would Nathan find them?
    One morning Jim woke to go to the bathroom and the toilet was frozen solid. Go out back, said Sally. They were living in a frozen house. The four of them began sleeping in the kitchen huddled together around the fire. There was no tub to bathe in. In the morning, they went to the bathroom in the yard beside a broken shed. The earth was too hard to dig a hole. She sent them off to school, walking across snowy fields with holes in their shoes. At least it was warm in the school. Sally spent her day walking the streets looking for work, and then it was a five-mile hike back from town. She came into the freezing place bone tired and hungry, lit the fire before the kids arrived from school. But then, gripped with fear that her children would starve, she rushed back out to the church, two miles down the road, and mopped floors until night to earn a quarter or two. She was driven by terror, and often took the two little ones into a store and begged for an onion or a carrot. If she was lucky she would cook a few vegetables in her little pot with some butter. The four of them dipped bread into the pan.
    Months passed and the family starved. Not a word from Nathan. But Jim was certain his father was doing something splendid. Starting a business was what usually came into Jim’s mind, although he wasn’t altogether sure what that meant. He had many fantasies about Nathan. Some days he worked in a wood-paneled office dressed in his fine suit with a folded handkerchief and shining shoes. Other days Nathan was out west searching for gold in the mountains. That was the story Jim liked most. His dad was striking it rich in the mountains, maybe in Alaska. On some days Jim allowed himself to join Nathan and they found gold together.
    One evening Sally came home with her face flushed and