There is no random, just streams and eddy’s carrying us afar, and if one looks about us, they’ll see we’re all just stars.
~ Chade, Starstuff
The Tender of Dreams used to stand at the end of the driveway, hands in his pockets, not saying a word, just waiting for me to call him up. He’d have a hard time looking you in the eye, ‘on account of all the dreams’, he’d told me once, but if I looked up fast, I would catch him sometimes, before his eyes would shift away, staring at me.
“What are you doin’?” I’d ask. The question of a child. “Hungry?”
We’d go inside and I’d pull open the refrigerator, and then the two of us would stand there, staring into the cold.
“What’s that?” he asked once, pointing at a plate of leftover hamburgers.
“What do you mean?”
“That, right there. What’s that?”
“Hamburgers,” I said. “Don’t tell me you don’t know what hamburgers are. Everyone knows what hamburgers are.”
Surely you’re aware that there are dreams all around you.
~ Brad Zellar, This Planet of Dreams
“A lot dream about them,” he said, his chin dropping down to rest on his chest. “But I never really knew. So those are the hamburgers. How’d you get them?”
“What you mean, the hamburgers? These are just some old hamburgers. There aren’t any the hamburgers. That doesn’t even make sense.”
“I wonder why so many dream about them then?” he asked, but I’m sure he wasn’t asking me. I was ten.
“I wouldn’t know. You want one?”
I watched then as the Tender of Dreams reached out and plucked one of the hamburgers from the plate, flipped it over to look at the bottom, which was covered in a layer of cold, white grease. He studied it for a second, then reached out with it. I thought he was going to put it back on the plate, but instead, he wiped the greasy bottom of the hamburger across my forehead. I jumped back, but too late.
“Gross! What’d you do that for?” I’d always known the Tender of Dreams was odd, but he’d never done anything like that before.
“Puberty.”
“What?” I still held the plate of cold hamburgers between us, and I remember now worrying that he might reach down for another one. I didn’t know what I’d do if he just starting attacking me with cold hamburger grease. Part of the confusion of being ten, I guess.
“Puberty,” he said. “No one dreams much about puberty. You’d think they would, wouldn’t you? More than hamburgers, anyway.”
“I can’t believe you wiped a hamburger on me. Now my forehead’s all greasy.”
“Like puberty,” he said. “Ironic, isn’t it?”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just put the hamburgers back in the refrigerator and closed the door. “Let’s just go outside. Maybe go down to the stream so I can wash this off.”
“There is no random, you know. Just streams and eddy’s carrying us along.” I didn’t know what to say. I was still thinking about the cold grease on my forehead.
“We’re all just stars,” the Tender of Dreams told me, “which people do dream about from time to time. Still not as much as they dream of hamburgers though. Odd, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that is odd,” I said, touching my fingers to my forehead.