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did not scream. I did not think that I could go back there to the dark house where my family slept. I somehow knew they would not receive me. I knew that I was guilty of something neither man nor God could forgive. But it would always be so when I walked in my sleep.
    I stood utterly still and waited because I knew if I waited long enough, the terror would find a source and a name. Once it had a name, no matter how awful, I would be able to live with it. I could go back home.
    Gradually, the terror shapes itself into a school bus. I can see it plainly. It is full of children. Stopped by the side of a road. I am in the ditch by the side of the road. They do not see me. It is broad daylight and many of the children are looking right at me. But they don’t—they can’t—see me. I have something in my hand. I do not know what it is. I cannot tell what it is. I come slowly out of the ditch and touch the school bus with the thing in my hand. The moment contact is made, the whole bus disintegrates in my eyes. There is no explosion, no sound at all. The disintegration is silent as sleep. When I can see again, the bus is on its back, broken children hang from open windows, and some—the ones toward the back—are drenched in gasfrom the ruptured tank and they are frying, noiselessly frying. I can smell them frying. And I am terrified at the probable consequences that will follow what I have done, but I am glad I have done it.
    Now I can go home, and I start off in a dead run between the rows of cotton toward the dark house beyond the oak tree.
    When I got to the door, I opened it quietly and went down the hall to the little room where I knew daddy was sleeping on a pallet. It was where he often had to sleep when he came in drunk and out of control and mama would not let him into their room. He lay, still dressed, curled on the quilt spread across the floor under an open window through which bright moonlight fell. I sat down beside him and touched his face, traced the thick scar of perfect teeth on his flat high cheekbone. The air in the room was heavy with the sweet smell of bourbon whiskey. Sweat stood on his forehead and darkly stained his shirt.
    â€œDaddy,” I said. He made a small noise deep in his chest, and his eyes opened. “Daddy, I’m scared.”
    He pushed himself onto one elbow and put an arm around me and drew me against him. I could feel the bristle of his beard on my neck. I trembled and tried not to cry.
    â€œSho now,” he whispered against my ear. “Everybody’s scared now and then.”
    â€œI was in the cotton field,” I said. “Out there.”
    He turned his head, and we both looked through the window at the flat white field of cotton shining under the moon.
    â€œYou was dreaming, boy,” he said. “But you all right now.”
    â€œI woke up out there.” Now I was crying, not making any noise, but unable to keep the tears from streaming down my face. I pushed my bare feet into the moonlight. “Look,” I said. My feet and the hem of my gown were gray with the dust of the field.
    He drew back and looked into my eyes, smiling. “You walked in your sleep. It ain’t nothing to worry about. You probably got it from me. I’as bad to walk in my sleep when I was a boy.”
    The tears eased back. “You was?” I said.
    â€œDone it a lot,” he said. “Don’t mean nothing.”
    I don’t know if he was telling the truth. But hearing him say it was something that he had done and that I might have got it from him took my fear away.
    â€œYou lie down here on the pallet with your ole daddy and go to sleep. Me an you is all right. We both all right.”
    I lay down with my head on his thick arm, wrapped in the warm, sweet smell of whiskey and sweat, and was immediately asleep.

ELEANOR MUNRO (1928-)
    Eleanor Munro has written several volumes of nonfiction, including On Glory Roads: A Pilgrim’s