“Yeah. I mean, what are they? Are they real?”
“Sure, they’re real. Sometimes you find out things in dreams that you can’t any other way.”
“Like what?”
“Some experts think dreams are wishes. You dream about what you really want to happen.”
“Once I dreamed that I was running in a forest and wolves were chasing me. There was a real big red wolf that caught me in deep snow and started eating one of my legs. Then I woke up. I didn’t want that to happen.”
“Maybe it meant something else. Also, dreams depend on what’s happening around you at the time. Dreams are full of symbols.”
“What’s a symbol?”
“Something that represents something else, like the red wolf in your dream. The red wolf was a symbol of a fear or desire/’
“I was afraid of the wolf because I didn’t want him to bite me,”
“Do you remember anything else about the dream?”
“The red wolf didn’t have any eyes, only dark holes where his eyes were supposed to be.”
“This sounds like a case for Sigmund Freud."
“Is he a detective?”
“No, baby, he was a doctor who studied dreams and wrote about them.”
“If I’d had a gun I would have shot that wolf.”
“It’s not always so easy to get rid of something that’s chasing you, because it’s inside your own mind.”
“You mean the red wolf is hiding in my brain?”
“Don’t worry, Roy, the wolf won’t bother you again. You woke up before he could hurt you/’
“The sky’s all dark now. Mom, is desire bad or good?”
“It can be either, depending on what it is and why a person desires something."
“A person can’t decide not to dream.”
“No, baby, dreams either come or they don’t. We’ll stay at the Ojibway Inn. Remember that motel with the Indian chief on the sign?”
“I bet everybody has scary dreams sometimes,”
“Of course they do,”
“I hope the red wolf is chasing somebody else now. “
God’s Tornado
OH, ROY, I JUST LOVE THIS SONG. I’ll turn it up.”.
“What is it ?”
“‘Java Jive by the Ink Spots. Listen: ‘I love Java sweet and hot, whoops Mr. Moto, I’m a coffee pot.”
“That’s crazy, Mom. What’s it mean?”
“I love the Java and the Java loves me. It’s just a silly little song that was popular when I was a girl Coffee’s called Java because coffee beans come from there.”
“Where?”
“The island of Java, near Borneo.”
“Borneo’s where the wild men are.”
“It’s part of Indonesia. Coffee wakes you up, makes you feel jivey, you know, jumpy.”
“Who’s Mr. Moto?”
“Peter Lorre played him in the movies. He was a Japanese detective.”
“Why is he in the song?”
“I don’t have the faintest, baby. I guess just because he was a popular character at the time, before the war.”
“Look, Mom, there’s tree branches all over the road.”
“Sit back, honey, I don’t want you to bump your head.”
“There must have been a big windstorm.”
“This part of the country is called Tornado Alley. I don’t know why people would live here, especially in trailers. It’s always the trailers that get destroyed by tornadoes.”
“Where were we when a tornado made all those rocks fall on our car?”
“Kansas. Wasn’t that terrible? There were hundreds of dents on the roof and the hood, and we had to get a new windshield.”
“Where does weather come from?”
“From everywhere, baby. The wind starts blowing in the middle of the Arabian Sea or the South China Sea or somewhere, and stirs up the waves. Pretty soon there’s a storm and clouds form and the planet rotates and spins so the rain or snow works its way around and melts or hardens depending on the temperature,”
“Does the temperature depend on how close you are to heaven or hell?”
“No, Roy, heaven and hell have nothing to do with the weather. What matters most is where a place is in relation to the equator,”
“I know where that is. It’s a line around the globe.”
“The nearer to the equator, the hotter it is.”
“I think hell must be on the equator, Mom. The ground opens up like a big grave and when the planet turns all the bad people fall in.”
“How do good people get to heaven?”
“A whirly wind called God’s Tornado comes and picks them up and takes them there. People disappear all the time after a tornado,”
“And what about purgatory, the place where people are that God hasn’t decided about yet?”
“I think they wait on the planet until God or the Devil chooses them.”
“Are they kept in any particular place?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe they just stay where they are, and they don’t even know they’re waiting,”
“I don’t know if you know it, baby, but what you say makes perfect sense. I wish I could write down some of these things, or we had a tape recorder to keep them.”
“Don’t worry, Mom, I’ve got a good memory. I won’t forget anything.”
Rome-Paris-San Francisco
April-November 1998
Table of Contents
Cobratown
Chinese Down the Amazon
Bandages
Soul Talk
Skylark
Flamingos
Wyoming
Saving the Planet
A Nice Day on the Ocean
Perfect Spanish
Seconds
Roy’s World
Nomads
Ducks on the Pond
Sound of the River
Red Highway
Lucky
K.C. So Far (Seconds/Alternate Take)
Concertina Locomotion
Imagine
The Geography of Heaven
Man and Fate
Where Osceola Lives
The Crime of Pass Christian
Cool Breeze
Night Owl
Islamorada
On the Arm
Look Out Below
The Up and Up
Black Space
Ball Lightning
Fear and Desire
God’s Tornado
Wyoming Page 7