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The Somnambulist

by Roger Bonner

 

I noticed something was odd about me at the age of eleven. A couple of times a month, I would wake up with dirt on my feet. In those days I watched a lot of horror movies, so my first thought was that I had turned into a werewolf. I pictured myself prowling the neighborhood and hiding behind a palm tree, ready to pounce on some victim who, horror stricken, would gasp and scream at the sight of me advancing, fangs bared. In the morning, I would carefully examine my body for traces of blood or hair growth, but the only spot showing any abnormal hirsute activity was in the genital zone.

 

I managed to keep my double life a secret for several weeks. Father O'Casey, our parish priest, was the first to find out all was not as it should be.

 

“Have you sinned, my son?” I heard his raspy voice as he put his head close to the grille.

 

After confessing that I had told a fib, skipped mass and had bad thoughts about Sally, the girl in my sixth grade class, I whispered, “I…um…also walk around at night.”

 

There was silence on the other side. I could picture Father O'Casey's blotched face, eyes rolling upwards the way he always did to make us kids laugh.

 

“What do you mean, ‘walk around'?”

 

“I kinda get up in the middle of the night and move around,” I said, trying to conceal the werewolf bit, surely a mortal sin.

 

“There's nothing wrong with going to the bathroom,” he said in a reassuring tone. “Did you touch yourself in…an impure way?”

 

That was always the big question which made my heart beat fast. I had examined my few pubic hairs, but gingerly avoided that dangling root of all sin.

 

“No, Father. I go outside and…”

 

“Outside!” He coughed. “And what do you do out there?”

 

“Just walk, but I don't know it.”

 

“Oh, you sleepwalk.”

 

“I guess so,” I said, not really understanding what he meant.

 

“That's not a sin,” he calmly said. “Tell your parents.” And he mumbled the penance, concluding it with a hasty absolution.

 

Needless to say, I didn't tell my parents, especially not my father. He was usually away on some business trip, and the times he came home were full of trouble. My parents slept in separate bedrooms. Phil, my older brother, and I also had our own rooms, which made my imagined werewolf prowling easy. But every time it happened I would anxiously listen to news about horrible murders. In a city like Los Angeles that wasn't hard, but the victims were usually shot or stabbed. None, I was relieved to hear, had been mangled by a five-foot-two beast.

 

It was a mystery how I did it without anyone noticing. I must have climbed out of my bedroom window, which wasn't hard since we lived in a one-story house. And how did I find the way back? Except for my dirty feet, there was no sign I had ever been gone. I admired a cleverness not mine in waking hours, where I was subject to the taunts of classmates who nicknamed me ‘Captain Space' because I was slow and dreamy and always one of the first to sit down during spelling bees.

 

In my second month of nocturnal wandering, my mother began to suspect something was wrong. I went to bed early one night, crawling under the sheets with a flashlight to read Jack London's ‘White Fang' , with which I now strongly identified. I fell asleep and in the middle of the night rose from bed to go sleepwalking. Something must have gone haywire with my automatic pilot because I glided down the hallway and entered my mother's bedroom. I made my way towards the window, but missed it and wound up in the walk-in closet. In that rush of silk and satin gowns, the intoxicating perfumes, I woke up.

 

“Danny, what are you doing in there?” she called out.

 

“I must have been dreaming and thought…”

 

She came and stroked my cheek.

 

“Has this happened before?”

 

“I guess so.”

 

“Are you sick?”

 

“My throat's kinda tight,” I said, seeing a chance to skip school.

 

“You'd better stay home.”

 

She led me back to my room. On the way my father's bedroom door tore open.

 

“What the hell's going on out here?” he grumbled.

 

“Nothing,” she said. “Danny's not feeling well.”

 

“Does he have to wake up the whole damned house?” He raised his hand as if to hit me.

 

“Leave him alone!” she said, holding me to her as we walked back to my bedroom where she tucked me in.

 

A few days later, my mother took me to see Dr. Taylor. He was a kind, elderly man whom I really liked because there were lots of comic books in his waiting room and he always gave me a candy. He and my mother stuck their heads together and whispered, then he examined me.

 

“It's nothing to worry about,” he declared after he had finished. “You're what we doctors call a somnambulist.”

 

“A som…what?” I snickered, my chest swelling.

 

“That's just a fancy word for sleepwalker. Tell me.” He peered into my eyes. “Do you get enough sleep?”

 

I sensed a plot afoot and kept my nightly reading habits to myself.

 

“Sure I do.”

 

“Is something bothering you, Danny?” he went on, his bushy eyebrows arching.

 

Lots of things bothered me, like Sally. I was starting to feel weird about her, but that was another secret I kept to myself.

 

“No, I'm okay,” I said.

 

He went to his desk and scribbled something on a piece of paper which he gave to my mother.

 

“Be a good boy.” He winked at me.

 

That was the last thing I wanted to do. My brother was already calling me a ‘sissy' because I hung around my mother a lot and helped her with the cooking and cleaning. He was seven years older and real tough. He slicked his hair in a duck tail and wore metal cleats on his shoes so they would click-clack when he walked. That was neat. He had a girlfriend too. I knew it because I followed him one afternoon and saw them in the alley behind the house. She was Mexican and had braids. And, one time in the bathroom, he showed me his ‘thing'.

 

“Watch this.” He peed in the toilet. Afterwards he rubbed it and it grew big and hard and scared me. From then on I regarded him as kind of evil. He also got into trouble with the police for stealing stuff and joyriding. Secretly I admired him because he was a little bit like the devil Sister Claire warned us about in catechism class.

 

Now it looked like my werewolf days were over and I was just a goodie-goodie walking around in my sleep. But I soon found a way of using my somnambulism to make me more interesting.

 

“Pssst,” I said one day to Sally who sat in the desk next to me at school. “Wanna hear a secret?”

 

We had come in from recess. The girls preened themselves and adjusted their blue pleated skirts. I liked to watch their skinny legs fidget and small breasts shift in the white blouses.

 

“What is it?” She turned her freckled face toward me. I thought she had the most beautiful eyes, large and dark and full of wonder. That was also the time I started writing poems. One began with, ‘Sally's eyes are like dark, fat cherries' – I was so proud of that line.

 

“Come on, what is it?” She yanked my sleeve.

 

Sister Claire was at the blackboard, drawing a triangle to illustrate the Holy Trinity. It was a hot, dusty afternoon and we could hear the swish-swish of the lawn sprinkler in the school yard.

 

“I'm a somnambulist,” I said. “Bet you don't what that is.”

 

Sally was smart and liked to use big words. She always stuck up her hand when Sister asked a question.

 

“Sure I do.”

 

“Bet you don't...”

 

“What's going on back there?” Sister Claire scraped the chalk under the Holy Ghost.

 

After class Sally came up to me.

 

“How long you been doing it?”

 

“Pretty long,” I said.

 

“What's it like? Come on, tell me.”

 

“Pretty neat, but it's kinda dangerous.”

 

Her eyes widened as I went on elaborating the risks. I saw my chance to become a Zorro of the night.

 

“Oh, I'd love to see you.”

 

“It only happens during full moon,” I said, borrowing from werewolf lore. “That's when there's dirt on my feet.”

 

After the incident in the walk-in closet, it wasn't easy anymore for me to go sleepwalking outdoors. My mother had my bedroom window secured with a safety catch, but I could easily open it. I desperately wanted to impress Sally, so I decided to fake the sleepwalking.

 

“There's gonna be a full moon tonight,” I told her a few days later. “Be on the lookout.”

 

She clapped her hands in excitement. “What time?”

 

“I ‘spose around midnight, but remember you gotta be quiet 'cause I don't know what I'm doin'.”

 

“I will,” she said and patted my hand.

 

That evening I went to bed extra early. I set the alarm clock for 11:30 pm and put it under my pillow. My mother now made me keep my bedroom door open a crack. I had to be careful because she could hear a feather drop a mile away.

 

At 11:30 the alarm clock rang. I turned it off, slipped out of bed and shut the door. I undid the catch on the sash window, slid it up and pushed out the screen. I climbed onto the sill and let myself drop into the flowerbed. The moon was as big as a dinner plate and cast a glow on the houses and the palm trees, making them look eerie. I had never consciously been outside that late before and was nervous. There I was in my pajamas, sneaking around like a weirdo. I headed for Sally's house, the big one on the corner with the wide porch. Her bedroom was in the back, on the other side from her parents. She had no brothers or sisters. Nobody else would see me.

 

When I reached the backyard, I began to walk like a zombie. I passed her bedroom window, moving stiff and staring straight ahead. There was no sign of Sally. I turned and walked back again. Still no Sally. She was sleeping!

 

I went up to the window and stood there and coughed in the hope she would hear me. Still nothing. I was about to give up when the window slid open.

 

“Danny,” she called in a hushed tone.

 

I stiffened again and, holding my arms out in front of me the way I'd seen in movies, glided towards her.

 

“Be careful,” she said as she pulled the window way up.

 

With a boldness I still admire today, I clambered onto the sill and slid into her room. The moonlight shined on the bed, the dresser full of dolls and teddy bears, the poster of Pat Boone on the wall.

 

“Come over here,” she said, taking me by the hand.

 

It was difficult to keep a straight face and my eyes watered from trying not to blink.

 

She led me to her bed and sat me down. It was soft and smelled sweet, as did her body in the cotton nightgown, like a field in spring full of daisies – there I was waxing poetical again. I felt a hot flush and a strange tingling in ‘the loins', that's what I read once in a story my brother gave me, but I wasn't sure where these loins were. Now I had an idea. Sally inched closer. I leaned sideways and, on an impulse, pressed my mouth against hers. Sally froze. I wasn't sure what to do, so I didn't budge. I had seen my brother kissing his Mexican girlfriend in the alley, but it looked icky they way they gobbled each other up. After a second Sally gently pushed me back. I thought the moment was right to resume my sleepwalking. I stood up and groped my way to the window. As mysteriously as I had entered, I disappeared into the night.

 

The next day at school Sally ignored me and when she finally looked over, we both blushed. Sister Claire was at the blackboard, all flustered because she was trying to explain the Immaculate Conception.

 

“Did you see me?” I dared to ask.

 

She nodded. “Sure did.”

 

“What happened? I can't remember a thing.”

 

“Well, you came at midnight, sleepwalking the way you said. It was real creepy.”

 

“What did I do?”

 

She played with her skirt, exposing a knobby knee which excited me in a new way.

 

“You…” she hesitated, “…climbed in the window.”

 

“I didn't!”

 

“Yes, you did, and then you…you osculated me…” She lowered her head and primly folded her hands.

 

That flabbergasted me. After class I rushed to the library and looked up the word. It meant ‘kiss' – I had kissed Sally!

 

At home things were getting more complicated all the time. My father had come back from another business trip and he and Mother argued practically every day. I tried to stay out of the way and read a lot. That was also the time when I started a kind of diary. Boys were not supposed to have feelings and write them down, so I really kept that a secret. I wrote about Sally and other stuff, like poetry.

 

One evening I was sitting at my desk working on a poem called “A Stormy Night”. It started dramatically with the line, “The battlefield of gods is set on high.” I was trying to think of a rhyme for ‘high' when the door opened and my father barged into the room.

 

“What are you doing there?” I could smell liquor on his breath.

 

I tried to hide my notebook, but he snatched it from my hand.

 

“What's this rubbish? And what do these words mean, high, lie, fly, die…?”

 

“I'm doing my English homework,” I said, trying to grab the notebook.

 

“You should be learning something useful,” he said, tossing it into a corner. “And why do you read these stupid books?” He knocked White Fang and The Hardy Boys off my desk.

When I tried to stop him, he slapped me in the face. I cried and then my mother rushed through the doorway.

 

“What did you do to him?” She was fuming.

 

“I was checking his homework,” he said. “And he got smart alecky with me.”

 

“Get out of here!” she screamed.

 

My father's face turned purple and he clenched his fists. He moved towards us. My mother picked up the paper puncher from my desk and raised it at him.

 

“Don't you dare!” she said.

 

He stopped, threw back his head and laughed, exposing his gold fillings.

 

“You jerks,” he said, “you're biting the hand that feeds you.”

 

He stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

 

In the morning we were relieved to see him leave for another trip. From the living room window we watched his bulky frame climb into the taxi. My mother let the curtain drop and said, “He's asking for it!”

 

That night I didn't sleep well. I dreamed I was walking down a street. I came to an open place and suddenly I could fly. I floated like a balloon and landed in something that felt prickly, as if I were being scrubbed with a brush. When I woke up in the morning, the window was half open with the screen hanging loose. A fly buzzed on the pane. I lay sprawled on the bed and fumbled to pull the sheet over me, but something seemed strange. I sat up and looked down – I was naked!

 

I jumped out of bed and felt around for my pajamas. I searched in the closet, under the bed, behind the chest of drawers, in the junk box where I hid my notebook, but there was no sign of them anywhere. The soles of my feet bore the telltale marks of dirt. I had undertaken another nocturnal journey.

 

I heard my mother coming down the hallway to wake me for breakfast and quickly pulled on some shorts.

 

“Danny, what's the matter? You look all upset?”

 

“Nothing,” I said.

 

She looked at the open window and the unhooked screen.

 

“You've been sleepwalking again! How on earth did you manage to open the catch?”

 

“I didn't,” I protested, but I was not very convincing.

 

“And why are you getting dressed already? Where are your pajamas?”

 

It was useless trying to fool her. She could read minds.

 

“I did it again, but it's not my fault.”

 

“I'm not blaming you, dear. What are those scratches? Let me see.”

 

She examined my arms. It looked like I had fallen into a rose bush. I was mildly shocked, but also thrilled. What secret adventures had I experienced?

 

“I…I…woke up without pajamas,” I stammered, growing red in the face.

 

“You mean naked?”

 

I nodded shamefully.

 

“What did you do with them?”

 

“I don't know. I was asleep.”

 

She looked around the room.

 

“They're not here,” I said. “I looked everywhere.”

 

“Did you check outside?”

 

We went out to the backyard and thoroughly combed it. We rummaged through the garage. We searched the alley behind the fence, lifting garbage can lids, but nowhere could we find those pajamas.

 

*

 

After that last sleepwalking episode, our lives changed fast. My brother suddenly dropped out of high school and left to join the army. My mother told me that she and I were moving to her sister's place in the San Fernando Valley. She wanted us out of our house before my father came back. Over the next few days we packed like mad.

 

When the moving truck pulled up the driveway and the man carried out the boxes, my heart was bouncing. I had spent the week saying good-bye to my friends, promising to stay in touch. Even though Aunt May's place was only two hours away, it wouldn't be the same anymore. And what about Sally? At school she would write little notes, passing them to me under the desk.

 

“Why do you have to leave?” said one.

 

“ 'Cause we have to,” I wrote, too shy to say, ‘I like you'.

 

“I'll miss you,” she wrote in another one.

 

“Me too,” I managed to get out and slipped it back with the beginning of a tic-tac-toe game.

 

And now the truck was loaded and I didn't want to leave. I went out to the front lawn and looked up and down the street. The truck was backing out of the driveway when I saw Sally rush down the sidewalk. Her skirt flounced above the knees and her ponytail bobbed.

 

“Thought I'd say good-bye,” she said coming up to me.

 

We stood there on the grass. The truck was now out in the street. My mother flew down the stairs of the porch carrying a polka dot dress on her arm. She went to the front of the truck and climbed in next to the driver.

 

“Danny, are you coming?” she called, sticking her head out the window.

 

I shifted from one foot to the other, not knowing what to say to Sally. She put her hand on my shoulder. I saw little beads of perspiration on her forehead and the armpits of her blouse were moist. She always smelled good, even when she sweated.

 

The driver honked the horn.

 

“Gotta be goin',” I said.

 

She moved her face up to mine and whispered, “You know something? I found your PJs in our backyard, but I won't tell anyone.”

 

And then she kissed me. It wasn't one of those pecks, but, as far as I could tell, a real kiss. I could feel her teeth knock against mine and the rubbery movement of her lips and the salty taste.

 

The driver honked again. I pulled away from her and ran to the truck. I wanted to ride in the back and hopped up into the jumble of boxes and plants. Sally stood there on the sidewalk and waved and I waved. As the truck picked up speed, she gradually became a speck on the long road of irretrievable years.

 

-The End-