Dinner Along the Amazon by Timothy Findley

getting in his way. It spoke, over and over again, Harper’s own name, but like the silent figures on the ground and the bleeding figures against the city’s walls, no voice accompanied the speaking. The lips moved over his name, again and again, but no sound came with the movement.
    Soon, beyond the face, he saw his mother and his mother was wearing his own white sun hat with the green eye-shade and she carried the stone jug of ‘lemonade’ in one hand. She went straight to his father’s body and she poured the ‘lemonade’ into a cup and gave it to the body to drink. Then she hunched down on the ground and began to drink the lemonade herself.
    Harper knew that he must stop her—but he couldn’t get past his father’s face, which continued to blink at him, mouthing the shape of his name.
    Harper remembered the Colt revolver in his father’s highboy, which he saw sitting in the corner of his dream. He ran to it and pulled the drawer open. The gun was there and he took it out and ran back towards his father’s body and towards his mother hunched on the ground beside him. They were both drinking lemonade and they were laughing.
    He was about to reach them, about to throw the gun away, when his father’s face suddenly blanked out the entire picture and he shot at it, firing three times straight into the mouth.
    The face fell apart as though it had been torn like a piece of paper and the pieces melted into the air and ran, waxlike, down a pane of glass. After that, everything began to fade—the pictures and the noises together—rushing away into final darkness and silence.
    Harper lay awake.
    He listened, rigid and wet with perspiration. Someone was running down the hall past his door.
    He turned his head to listen. For a moment there was no further sound, until suddenly there was a violent knocking, he guessed at his mother’s bedroom door.
    Was someone trying to get in or to get out?
    He went to his own door, unlocked it and opened it.
    Bertha stood near his mother’s room, wrapped in a blue dressing gown, barefooted and wild-eyed.
    “Harper, get a key,” she said.
    “What key?”
    “Any key. Any key. Just get a key.”
    Bertha turned back to the closed door and knocked on it again.
    “Mrs Dewey!” she said. “Mrs Dewey you gotta let me in. It’s your Bertha, Mrs Dewey—you gotta open it up.”
    Harper, not being able to guess at all what was happening, ran back to his own room and got the key out of his door. He took it to Bertha. She put the key into the lock and turned it from side to side.
    “Oh Lord,” she said, “you gotta make this work.”
    The key, however, jammed in the lock and presently broke off in her hand. Instead of becoming angry Bertha turned to calmness. She came to Harper and spoke quietly.
    “Honey Harper, we’re gonna hafta break it down.”
    “What’s it about?” said Harper. “What’s it about, Bertha?”
    “I don’t know, baby, but something pretty bad’s just happened to your mother and we got to get her out. Come on now, what’ll we do it with?”
    Harper suddenly felt sick to his stomach. He turned away and sat on his little chair beside the door. Sitting there the sick feeling receded and he tried to think.
    “We could hit it with a brick,” he said.
    “That won’t do nothing. We gotta ram it right down. I know,” she said. “We take away the handle.”
    “It’s the lock that’s busted,” Harper reminded her. “Handle won’t count anyway.”
    “Dear God please tell me what’s to do.”
    Bertha prayed.
    They both fell silent as Bertha waited for guidance.
    After a moment she announced mysteriously: “He says we ought to use the phone.” She went downstairs, switching on the lights as she did, and took up the receiver in the hall.
    “Get me police,” she said. “Get me police. Don’t wait.”
    The stunned operator connected Bertha with the police station and the night sergeant answered her thickly.
    “Listen,” said Bertha. “Get here