Free On the Right Side of a Dream by Sheila Williams Page B

bedroom and gave me a sneer. “I don’t feed him sissy food like you do. Plain old dog chow, that’s what he gets.”
    “Well, Lordy, no wonder,” I commented, squeezing Dracula again, then I shrugged off my heavy coat. ‘He’s starvin’ you t’death,” I told the dog, lowering my voice so that Jess wouldn’t hear. He thinks that I spoil Dracula. What does he know? “Don’t you worry ’bout a thing, I’ll get you straight.” Dog chow for my baby. I fed Dracula a little chow mixed up with . . . well, that was my and Dracula’s little secret.
    “This week’s mail is in the hall, on the sofa table,” Jess yelled from the other room.
    I was looking out the windows at the snow. It was so quiet-looking, so clean, not even rabbit tracks to break the cake-icing smoothness. It wasn’t tinged with gray or dirty like a February snowfall that’s stayed longer than a third cousin from Alabama. It was so white that it sparkled in the little beams of sunlight that sneaked through the trees to the forest floor. A stag held up his nose to catch a scent on the wind. He was the “fourteen pointer” that Bobby Smith coveted. But Jess owned this part of the ridge and posted “No Hunting” signs, so the old stag was safe for now.
    “Jess, I’ll split the meat with you,” Bobby had offered. “Juanita can fix up some venison steaks with one of those fancy French sauces that you like to make.”
Nice of him to volunteer my services.
    But Jess had turned him down and I was glad about that. Cooking up the father of Bambi didn’t appeal to me.
    The mail was on the table in a neat pile with a paperweight on top just as Jess had said. Two pieces of paper got my attention right away. One was a telephone message from my son, Randy. Next to Randy’s name, Jess had scrawled, “Not urgent.” The other was a large white envelope with a return address from the Arcadia Valley Community and Technical College, Food Services Management Department, Mason, Montana. I fingered the envelope. It was thick. And on the front, in bold red letters, there were the words, “Your future begins at AVCTC!”
    “I saw the packet from Arcadia Valley,” Jess spoke from the doorway. “Are you and Mignon signing up for another painting class?”
    “Yep,” I lied, gathering up the rest of the mail and the phone messages.
    My heart was thumping in my chest the way it always did whenever my children called. They are grown now, past the age where I have to worry about high fevers or fights on the playground. They have graduated to bigger and better things for me to worry about. Randy was paroled a while back and now works as a sous-chef in a restaurant. I am still learning the lingo.
    He had patted me on the shoulder as if I was ten years old.
    “No, Momma, not ‘cook,’ ‘chef,’ ” he’d corrected me.
    My baby was sautéing, stir-frying, and searing with the best of them. I was as proud as I could be.
    My daughter, Bertie, had come a long way, too. She’d gotten away from the couch, the soap operas, and the beer and was now working two jobs. She was taking business courses at Franklin and had decided to be an accountant. Not a bad job for a girl who’d always been able to count up change in her head from the time she was six and memorize all of the numbers on my lotto tickets, including the tickers.
    Rashawn was my wild card. He lived on the edge and he liked it that way. Drugs and guns. He knew what he wanted wasn’t anything that I was talking about.
    “I’m a businessman, Momma,” he would tell me in his cool tenor. It was a voice smooth enough to sing in a church choir. It was a voice that was scalpel sharp when it told you that your time was up and hand over the money. “Every business has its rewards and its risks.”
    It sounded very black and white, like he was talking about running a dry cleaners or a Starbucks or something. I wished he was making lattes.
    “I can take care of myself,” Rashawn always said. I had no choice