The Dream-Catcher
JOYCE CAROL OATES
AS SOON AS SHE saw it, she knew she had to have it.
There amid the finely wrought silver and turquoise jewelry, the hand-tooled leather goods, glazed earthenware pottery and baskets and coarse-woven fabrics in the Paiute Indian Reservation gift shop at Pyramid Lake, Nevada, the curious item seemed to leap out at Eunice’s eye: no more than four inches in diameter, an imperfect circle made of tightly woven dried vines or branches threaded with small filmy feathers. An artifact of some kind, exquisitely fashioned, its colors, like most of the colors of the handmade items in the shop, predominantly brown, beige, black. Eunice found herself staring at it, and there, suddenly, it lay in the palm of her hand—virtually weightless. Remarkable! Dream-Catcher the printed label explained. It was so dry Eunice feared it might crack in her fingers. When she lifted it to examine it more closely, noting how the interior of the woven branches was a net, or web, braided with leather thread, in the center of which a tiny agatelike stone dully gleamed, the filmy feathers came alive, stirred by her breath. The feathers, too, were beautiful, finely marked, streaks and speckles of dark brown like strokes of a watercolorist’s brush on a fawn-colored background.
Seeing Eunice’s interest in the dream-catcher, the Indian proprietor of the store explained to Eunice that it was a gift given only to those who were “much loved”—especially to be hung over a cradle or a crib. “The spiderweb inside catches the good dreams, but the bad dreams—no. Guaranteed!” He called out affably to Eunice, as if speaking to a child. Presumably a Paiute Indian, he was a man of vigorous, muscular middle age, who wore a faded black T-shirt, faded jeans, and a hand-tooled leather belt with a brass eagle buckle; his graying black thinning hair was caught in a loose, careless ponytail that gave him a disheveled yet playful look. His forehead was veined and knobby—scarred?—as if vexed with thought and the voice of exaggerated good cheer in which he spoke to Eunice, as to other customers, verged on mockery. From an exchange Eunice had overheard between him and a previous customer she gathered he was a Vietnam veteran. Yet he managed to smile at most of his customers as he rang up their purchases; he certainly smiled at Eunice.
. . .
