Before We Sleep

by Jeffrey Lent

  They all turned when they heard the screech of nails resisting a pry-bar and watched as one section of the dome wall was taken down. Then Steven spoke to them.

  As she’d been told, he was older—into his early twenties. He wore overalls with no shirt and steel-toed work boots. He was tall and moved with the confidence of a man inhabiting his own space. His beard was full and black and his hair was curly and reached his shoulders, tied back from his forehead with a rolled red bandanna. He said, “I knew it when I saw it which is why Phoebe did her thing. We got carried away and so that part got off-plumb. It’s not easy, we’re talking shaving edges to get true joints. All joints look true—it’s the problem of seeing in your mind what will be, before it is. But we’re doing what’s never been done before: All of Fuller’s domes have been built by people who knew everything about them and most of them were overseen by Bucky himself and no one knows more than he does. So we’re out here—you dig it? On our own. Making it from the ground up. It’s good, we’re good. It’s just this one section and that’s fucking increments right? So we go slow and measure once, measure twice, measure one more time and then we make the least shave with a plane. Maybe two, but Phoebe and me, we’re over your shoulders all the time. Do you hear me, people? We got this so close. That’s what you have to groove on. We got it so close, and we knew enough to stop and look again. Everybody down? I thought so. Let’s get to work.”

  Now he stepped out of the dome, through the opening where one day a door would be and as he did he shut down the lantern. He came to the fire and set the lantern in the grass and swung to the woodpile and with careful deliberation placed three chunks upon the fire. Then he stood waiting, looking about.

  Katey sat in the grass at her remove and watched as one by one all of them looked up at him. Susan dribbled a last few notes from her guitar and set it aside, away from the fire but in the grass where the dew was coming down. Katey thought At least put it up somewhere, on the table. You’re only asking for trouble. Her dad’s voice.

  Steven spoke low but certain, doubtless. “It’s dip time, my sisters and brothers. Well, brother. Chuck. Time to wash clean. They used to call it baptism to make it special. So people would do it. But we’re old time. Older time. Get the sweat and dust and dirt off us so we’ll wake ready to go. Dig?” He swept his gaze again and missed Katey altogether this time. He said, “Hey, Phoebe, let me get a hit of that?”

  She lifted up the cigarette she’d been passing back and forth and Steven smoked deeply and let loose plumes that came across the field to where Katey sat and she smelled something like balsam needles. He did it again and then handed it down to Chuck. Then he turned and stepped away twice and lifted his feet from his boots, stepped again and reached and undid the straps of his overalls and let them drop. And Katey watched his legs and back but mostly his butt as he walked away. Then the others were rising and pulling off clothes and she watched them also, not moving herself, amazed by how ordinary and clumsy and beautiful these naked people were. She’d never seen anything like this. Then she heard the soft swoosh of water as Steven dived into the beaver pond. Out of sight from her but she saw it in her mind’s eye. Enough so she barely saw the others walk from sight around the dome.

  But she heard them. Laughing, gasping. Splashing each other. Long moments of silence where she wondered what exactly they were doing and then again would come a splash, a laughed-up splash. Voices. The strokes of arms through water. Swimming. All they were doing was swimming. On a lovely summer night after a long day.

  He came walking into the firelight. He stopped there and looked out toward her. Drops of water beaded in his hair, his beard, upon the crotch of his thick pubic hair. He bent and lifted his overalls and shook them free of the fine sawdust, stepped into them and then walked toward her, hoisting his straps as he came.

  He knelt before her on one haunch, his other knee up and said, “You’re Cathy.”

  The way he said it, with a curl of a question, made her realize he knew that wasn’t her name. That he chose this false error in an attempt to unsettle her. His very presence unsettled her although she wasn’t sure why but also guessed he knew and intended that as well.

  “No, I’m Katey,” she said, her voice flat. She almost said Katey Snow and last moment decided to keep that to herself.

  “Katey.” He reached and took her hand and squeezed it gently, tenderly, but when she didn’t respond he let go. She composed her hands together in her lap as he flashed a smile, white teeth in his dark face. “I almost got it right, didn’t I? When you rolled in with Phoebe I was so excited to find out if she’d learned a thing from those people, so glad to see her back, knowing she’d done her job and that we’d be back on track here, I heard her when she said your name but the moment was all about her. You dig that?”

  “Sure.”

  “This is a whole new scene for you, isn’t it?”

  She shrugged but couldn’t help herself. “I think it’s pretty cool.”

  “It’s very cool. Now, I say that but I also think it’s only the way things should be. We’re working not to make things right but to do things right. Like for a little while, maybe a hundred years, maybe more, maybe less, we—humans—have got way off-track and now we’re nudging our way back to how things should be. Or maybe I’m wrong, maybe it is a whole new way. I studied history and a few other things at Berkeley before I heard about this place and headed east. I heard the name and it rang like a bell in me. But let me get back—so, history—once there was a time when the village all worked the same land and all people worked together and so life—come hard, come easy—was good. Right? And those villages were all built around a church. Or a monastery or even a cathedral. And that was where the power lay and the people believed, because they were told to believe this, that all things came from adherence to the church. Because the church spoke the language of God and God was either happy with his people or unhappy but only the priests could talk to God or listen to God. So the people depended upon the church to know if they stood right with God. But I thought If you take God out of the village and just let the village be the people, then maybe the people will find that God is not far away but right there, within them, within the fields and forests, within the magic of the earth. Which is what gives us life, dig? And then I heard about this place and thought There’s something else happening there. I wanted to check it out. So I headed east and took a bus up from Boston and walked around and haven’t looked back. This is sacred, what’s going on here.”

  No one had ever talked with her quite this way and she felt as if words were out in the air that didn’t belong only to him but to her also. As if her thoughts had been given breath, voice. But she said, “Yeah, I guess so.” All she could manage, all she trusted herself with. Because she had other questions. And hadn’t known she did until she agreed with him.

  “Wait,” he said. “You’re thinking there are bigger things, that it’s not as simple as I say. That the world is filled with great wrongs, terrible threats and fears. Of course it is. Where do we start? The war? Okay. Stop the war. Civil Rights? I was in California when the Watts riots went down. I’ve never been south, never went down there to join hands and try to help our black brothers and sisters safely to the polls. Never had my head bashed in or been shot and tossed in a river. No, I have not. Should I? Wait. How about the Bomb? Which is not a bomb but hundreds, maybe thousands, of warheads. On each side. MAD. Mutually Assured Destruction. Got that right, didn’t they? What about the poisons that fill our rivers, our air? Not just the places you hear about which is bad enough but what worries me is the places you haven’t heard about. Yet. And some of those same companies are the ones that made so much money during World War Two and then had products that they needed to figure out a new use for. And they did. And now they’re at it again. Napalm? Man, what the fuck are they going to use napalm for once this shit in Vietnam runs out of steam. Even if we win and I’m wondering what that would look like? China and the Soviets just si
tting back and saying, That’s cool, you got Japan, you got half of Korea, just nuzzle up a little more to us. No fucking way. And then, and then, you have to wonder, where else are we—the U.S. I mean, where else are we poking our nose in other countries’ business? You think we’re done with Cuba? Yup, got out asses kicked in Piggy Bay and Khrushchev blinked on the nukes, best we know. But Fidel is standing strong and proud, and Che’s out there somewhere, down south, way down south, south of Cuba, ya got that, spreading the word. And I bet you anything right behind him is a CIA spook or somebody like that, waiting for a chance. So, aw shit, sister, it just goes on and on. The machine. Orwell. Big Brother—is that the Soviets or is it LBJ and Hoover? Or both. You get thinking like this and it’s dominoes or endless chains that wrap around each other and twist and turn and it makes your head hurt and your heart want to explode in your chest, the more you see, the more you know. You dig that?”

  The others were back around the fire, dressed and the fire burning higher and she was tired and wondered where she’d sleep and it came to her she could always sleep in the truck but wasn’t ready to make that decision, wanted to see what else the night held, what it would be like to move in to around the fire and sit and listen or maybe sing with the others. Curious about the burning balsam scent again floating through the night, soft pillows of smoke here and then gone.

  She said, “But you have to take a stand. Right? What you’re saying is it’s all hopeless and so all we can do is hope it all falls down. Because we can’t do it all? But if you think that way, we can’t do anything? Right?”

  Suddenly clear and strong and a little angry.

  He looked at her and then reached and placed a hand on her knee, left it there. He smiled and said, “No. We tear it all fucking down. But we start from a strong place. Which is this. Not talking about it but showing the world a new way to live. Maybe that old one, some way like it, but really a new way. And it’s not just us—others are doing it too. So, enough of us do that and we have a base, right? Maybe a place to retreat to if things don’t work out as fast as we’d like? But also a base, a model to inspire others. I’m talking about a core, you dig that concept? A core is where we came from and where we return to and it never changes, never crumbles, never falters. Because it’s so deep within us that nothing can fuck with it. We get that core, others get that core and what we have is a huge net, solid and also invisible, that spreads all over the earth. Big parts are already there and always have been—think about it—how they live in Nepal, Afghanistan, India. What’s going on in France, right now. But others also: The Amish, Quakers, the Tinkers, gypsies, all those people who’ve been living quiet mostly on the outside because they won’t live on the inside, most have been doing so for centuries. There’s a reason. Same way we have a reason. For being up on this mountain building a dome. Let me tell you something about domes, why we’re building one? Buckminster Fuller, the guy who thought them up, did so a while ago. And the Army got interested because Bucky saw them as a way to build cheap but strong housing and after World War Two there was a great need for that in Europe, hell, everywhere. Around the world. And they did some prototype towns. Kansas, I think. Maybe also the Netherlands or maybe Germany. And it worked. Worked real well. Cheap to build, cheap to heat and cool, comfortable, friendly. And they’d last forever. And somebody, meaning some big defense contractor, got wind of it and probably took a look and shut the whole deal down. Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He grinned at her. And shook his head. “Because there wasn’t enough money to be made from it, that’s why. It was too good for people. Think about that—a way to live, a house, a neighborhood, a town, a city, all made from buildings that were so good for people that someone with the power, the big defense companies, the military, the government, some combination of all—likely not just ours—Ha—a joke there but what I mean is other countries joined in, is my guess. And they shut that whole idea down. An idea that worked and they saw it worked and it scared the hell out of them. So, Katey: You wonder if I’m bogarting somehow being up here on this mountain in New Hampshire? Instead of down in the trenches? But this is a trench, right here. You bet it is. A new way to live needs a new way to live. Big ideas need smaller ones to help hold them up. This idea got stolen once but we’re the housing outlaws. Sneaking it back in. And there’s others like us. Bucky’s still out there—he knows about us. And also, to go way back where we almost started: One day I will come down from the mountain. When the time is right, I’ll know.”

  He reached a palm flat to the earth and pushed upright. For a moment his shadow obscured the fire and loomed over her. Then he said, “I’m going. You come, too?” He turned then and was gone, a shambling form in and out of the firelight.

  She hadn’t understood half of what he’d said. Or maybe she’d understood half of half. Not a quarter, not demarcated so easily, but rather large parts of some larger part. She wasn’t sure she liked him although much of what he’d said she found interesting, even compelling, and she understood that she came from quiet people, not only her father and mother with their own particular silences but from a community that spoke little, letting unsaid but commonly understood words fill the gaps. And of that, a world complete. But a small world. And Steven Christensen spoke, perhaps wildly, perhaps not, from a sense of tribes, from a wider and wilder world. As if he not only saw fault lines but had assembled a vision for how those lines would split, and be split, for the new world. So it was less not-liking him than being uncomfortable with his certainty, also his grasp of the present, as if he held an understanding that was still beyond her, and perhaps it was this—that intentionally or not, he’d in the course of what—twenty minutes, half an hour?—allowed her to understand how ignorant she was. How much there was to learn. And how much had been hidden from her in the intentionally or not but mutually agreed-upon small community she sprang from. And knew now, knew again, she was leaving behind.

  She sat, watching them all about the fire, their ease, repose, the end-of-day fatigue but also of knowing one another, of fellowship. Of a small tribe fully and quietly aware they were part of a larger tribe. And Katey still felt on her own. But closer. She was also aware that now and then one or another, mostly Steven and Phoebe, also Luna, seemed to glance out toward where she sat.

  She wondered if Phoebe was Steven’s girlfriend. And flushed with the question and flushed again over wondering why she’d asked herself such a thing. And guessed it was true. Then shivered in the falling high mountain air and steeled herself; she rose up fluid and walked in toward the fire. Just as Susan tossed a big chunk of wood on and sparks dazzled upward. Luna watched her come and stood. She was a tiny birdlike woman with long hair the color of honey and she seemed to sway with the pulse of the flames and she held out a sweater and said, “It gets cold fast at night, here. Why we have the fire. Why don’t you put this on? Are you okay? We weirding you out a little?”

  Katey took the sweater and pulled it on, the heat of the fire warming her also. She said, “No. I’m good. I really am.”

  “Cool. You want to get stoned? Smoke with us?”

  Katey settled down on the pressed dry grass around the stones of the fire ring. She said, “I don’t know.”

  “That means you do.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  Much later she sat upright in the borrowed sleeping bag on the floor of the dome, her knees pulled up, the bag a wrong cocoon around her. Overhead the stars held and flickered, chill and distant. He’d come some unknown time earlier, waking her as he unzipped the top part of her bag and slid in on top of her. When she woke his hand was already over her mouth. His other hand stripping down her jeans. He was naked. Her lips spoke Don’t against the press of his hand. As a wedge his joined knees cleaved her thighs and spread her. He whispered You want this. Then he hurt her, a red pulse pumping inside her, far too long—so brief. When he was done he sagged against her and she thought he would smother her. He tried to kiss her and she t
urned her head away, closed her eyes. Then he was gone.

  The drizzle of water over the beaver dam was a song in the night. Constant flowing, downhill and gone.

  She reassembled her clothes. Then quiet as a thief and feeling somehow a thief, she pulled herself out of the sodden ugly bag and made her way across the starlit dome and down out, her knees shaking, her brain a red tumor, murderous and wanting to cry but slipping silent as a thin blade toward the shadow of nighttime trees and the snout of the truck. There she sprawled against the hood, her legs weak and shaking. Then turned as she felt her gorge rise and vomited into the grass. Over and again. Sour chunks and then a hot bile that burned the inside of her mouth, her throat. Every time she thought she was done she smelled herself and choked and the bile rose again. Her stomach ached, her thighs were shaking and sore, her mouth foul. She pulled off the borrowed sweater and scrubbed her face and lips with it, breathing in the woodsmoke, sweat, odors of someone else. She vomited again, then balled the sweater and threw it down into her vomit. She wondered that none of the others had heard what had happened, or none heard what was happening now. The stream of water over the dam was all she could hear. She turned back to the truck, opened the door and stood, her hands up holding the top of the doorframe. Her knees week, thighs trembling like trout pulled from a river, barely able to stand.

  A hand touched her shoulder and she almost collapsed. The hand was joined by a second and held her under her arms and then circled her and held her upright and the girl’s voice was in her ear. Even as Katey realized the girl was smaller and struggling to hold her. Luna was saying, “Oh, God, I’m sorry. I heard, I mean I heard but didn’t know what I was hearing really until you left. Are you okay? No, shit, of course you’re not okay. Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”