MACHINE DREAMS
Billy
1957
Every weekday they went to class; his mother’s hands held the letter cards, and she kept her book in front of her so all the kids around the table could see. She had to look at the pictures upside down but she seldom looked because she knew them by heart: that meant she had them in her mind, the same way Billy remembered the cement mixers from the concrete company. He wished he could go to the concrete company with his father every day, the way he went to phonics class. Other kids didn’t go to school in the summer; Billy knew he and Danner went because their mother was the teacher. Phonics class wasn’t really school; it was only two hours a day, not like school he would start in the fall. Then school would be his job, Mom had told him, he would be gone all day like Mitch was gone to the plant, and he would work just as hard at school as his father did on the trucks and in the office with Uncle Clayton. In a year Billy would be reading entire books, like Danner did now; didn’t he want to know what words said? Billy didn’t care so much; words were black and hard and flat. But he liked to hear words, especially the way his mother said them in class. Rhymes were words and words were letters: letters made the sounds in the rhymes. There were numbers in rhymes but no numbers in words: he didn’t know why. Six, seven, go to heaven; Billy would be almost seven to start school because last year his birthday was not in time. Billy imagined the birthday far off, alone in the dark until time traveled toward it. But that was good, his mother had said, he’d have a head start. So school was like a race.
They were the only class using the school. When they went there, the building was empty and full of sunlight. The other rooms were locked, but Billy could see in through the glass panes in the doors: the desks weren’t in even rows but sat jammed together in a corner. The big reading tables were covered with sheets, and the shelves were bare. In his mother’s room the desks were in straight rows, and the one table was kidney-shaped, not really a circle. Twenty kids could all see each other around it and still have room for notebooks. But there were only eight kids and no one had a notebook but Danner, who already knew everything and was only in the class to make enough students.
They played games. Phonics had to be fun because it was summer. Everyone put their heads down and shut their eyes, listening for the a sound. Billy smelled, near his face, the piney furniture polish Mom had used to clean the table because the janitor did things halfway. Anything worth doing was worth doing well, his mother said, and she said it in the same voice she used for phonics words. Now she was talking and Billy watched the linoleum floor between his feet. Apple, animal, atom. What was atom? Someone had gouged little holes in the spotted linoleum with a sharp pencil. Under the table, Danner put her sandaled foot on Billy’s shoe. He raised his eyes and Danner was so close all he saw was her face, so still she seemed to be sleeping, but she raised one arm at all the right words. Her eye didn’t move under its smooth lid; Billy knew if he touched her there he’d feel something flutter, alive on its own. Their mother had told them: the eye is made of water but the water is hard. Hard water. Heads up. “Listen,” she said now in her teacher’s voice. “All together.” And they chanted:
I went away
on a trip.
In my giant
trunk I packed
“What?” his mother asked. “Billy, a word beginning with a.”
“Animal,” Billy said.
In the attic Billy’s father had a giant trunk. The trunk was from the war. Mitch had taken a trip to the war; Billy knew: there was an animal in the trunk. He’d seen the animal in his mind but he couldn’t quite see all of it. Only it was hard and shining and sharp, and the animal wasn’t alive. That’s why it could stay in the trunk; it was very old and didn’t have to breathe. Billy thought the animal was all folded up in the steel trunk, but once Mom had let Billy follow her into the attic, up the long ladder. She let him open the trunk; she had to help him, and when they lifted the heavy lid the trunk was almost empty. It was deep, and stained inside where water had gotten in. The trunk had been somewhere else; now the stains were dry. Billy touched there and the paper was crackly. Don’t, his mother had said. Then she found the string to pull and the light bulb above them shone its weak glare. There were things in the very bottom of the trunk: a brown briefcase zipped shut, a green leather scrapbook Mom wouldn’t let him open, a folded map. His father’s army hat.
I went away
on a trip.
Billy pleaded; she held it up and said it was a lieutenant’s hat. The hat was khaki like Mitch’s work clothes, so soldiers were like the men at the plant. But the hat smelled pungently of moth balls and was a strange shape, hard on top, and round as a plate. On the front above the stiff bill and leather strap was a heavy gold pin. Billy touched its sharp prongs and recognized it: the animal, wings spread to fly.
“Danner? Another a.”
“Arrow,” Danner said. “No, Atlantic. That’s the ocean.”
“You can’t take the ocean on a trip,” someone said.
The animal was hard like a jewel, a secret come back. Billy touched the pin to his lips and breathed. Mom took the hat away. That was an eagle, she said, to show who was American while the soldiers were away. But who else was away? Many soldiers, the world was in the war.
“I need everyone’s eyes,” his mother said. “Watch what I draw on the board.” She was wearing her blue and white skirt and one of the white blouses she ironed at night, and the long white chalk in her hand made a squeak like claws. She drew cars that looked like trucks and put letters under them. “Only the ones with a’s are real ambulances,” she said. “Raise your hand if you see one with an a.” In the attic she’d leaned over to say near Billy’s face, move away and I’ll shut this up. Her perfume smelled like warm soap in the dry, cold air from the trunk.
Ambulance was a dark car. Danner drew the first cross to show how. It was a cross like the one at church where the minister stood; their mother erased to show she meant a Red Cross, not a church cross. In church Danner was in a play; she was the lame boy who walked to the angel, down the long red aisle between the pews. Red Cross meant doctors who made people well, but Billy hated doctors and he thought it was dark in an ambulance, dark like the church was dark after they turned off the lights and lit candles. His father and Clayton said church was a racket, they took money from you all your life and when you died they said a few words. What words were those? Great words I’m sure, the men had laughed, and Clayton was not just an uncle but a great uncle, that’s why he was old and lost his hair. God is great was a prayer Danner learned at school, and the night of the play had been Christmas; afterward Danner got sick and shivered. She said the dark church made her stomach hurt and she got cold when the angel touched her. That was silly, their mother said, Danner knew the angel was only Ann Gottfried, a high school girl who wanted to be a minister. But Danner had to take a hot bath to get warm, and Mitch let their dog Polly sleep under Danner’s bed instead of in the kitchen; he said the Methodists were good at shaming children. In the big dim church, Danner really had looked lame; there were shadows on the red aisle from the candles. At the altar where the angel waited, there were so many candles it was like day in one small place. Danner was fanciful and it wouldn’t hurt her to practice her sounds over summer, then help Billy at home.
His mother was erasing the board. Chalk dust made a cloud around her fingers, and the day was warm.
Tomorrow there was no class at school or at home because it was the Fourth of July and there would be fireworks. His father would barbecue chicken on the grill and then they would set off their own fireworks instead of driving into town to see the Armory show. Mitch had rockets and Japanese lanterns that exploded tails of sparks. Gladys, his mother’s friend, would come for supper and bring the sparklers that Aunt Jewel always sent home from Ohio.
His mother shucked the corn into a plastic bucket on the porch, but the yellow silk fell around her feet. Gladys stood beside her, shaking clods of dirt
from the fresh-pulled onions. The garden wasn’t really a garden anymore; Gladys said Jean and Mitch were no farmers except to kids and green onions, which could grow anywhere. Gladys wore red shoes that were brighter than her hair, and Billy watched both women through a curtain of wavering heat. He stood near the barbecue while Mitch cooked. Mitch never cooked except outside at barbecues, when the grill was a simple machine rolled out on small wheels, and the metal rack cranked high or low over coals white-hot because fire had burned to the center.
The coals were flaky and pale as dirty snow, and they lay in the cradle of the drumlike pit. The chicken crackled and his father stood still, holding the long fork, his work cap tilted back, one hand on his hip. He was silent and smoked his cigarette. Billy waited beside him but Danner had to set the table, a big wooden picnic table Mitch had been given by the State Road Commission after a road job. The table had long benches and thick legs bolted in the shape of an X. In winter it sat in the snow, but every summer Radabaugh came out from the plant and helped Mitch move the table onto the porch. The men would lift it, staggering a little, and when they set the weight down Billy felt a tremor in the concrete floor of the terrace. The jolt of weight seemed to please the men; they laughed and shook their heads. Then Mitch would bring a beer for Radabaugh. Both men sat down and drank from one bright can, their hands splayed out on the rough wood of the table. Billy sat with them and Radabaugh always gave him a drink of the cold, bitter beer. Billy would swallow, serious, his face expressionless, but Radabaugh grinned anyway and said Big Man was going to be a Cowboy like Old Mitch, nothing Jean could do about it. Soon the men would go back to the plant, and Billy knew his mother would come outside; she put a slick red oilcloth over the tabletop so no one would get splinters from the old boards. The oilcloth was as bright as Gladys’ shoes or Gladys’ painted toenails. Gladys called the table a healthy issue and when they all sat down there was plenty of room on the benches. The food steamed and the chicken was hot and reddish on the platter Mitch had filled. Mom said Gladys was like family since she was Aunt Jewel’s mother, and Billy felt strange eating outside. Sometimes Danner or Billy wouldn’t eat and had to sit with full plates past the dinner hour, watching the day go dark through the screen of the kitchen door. The green of the ragged grass slanted downhill to the tall wire fence and the fields until green turned gray in the secretive dusk. Now Gladys passed the food while she talked to Billy’s mother.
“Lately your brother wants to be a wholesale shoe salesman,” Gladys said. “Jewel told him he could get himself a van and drive shoes all over Ohio, she wasn’t moving again. And if they split up over shoes, so be it.”
Mitch touched the edge of his plate with his fingertips and looked at Gladys. “It’s real trouble trying to find work these days”, he said. “Sounds to me like Jewel might need a good shaking.”
“That’s a Hampson for you,” Gladys said. “I have a mind to get up from this table right now.”
“Gladys, I didn’t say he should knock her out.”
“If my daughter needs shaking,” Gladys said, “I’ll do the shaking. Not some man. Men have got no excuse to beat on women. I’ll tell you, a man might hit me once, but he wouldn’t know where to find me to hit me again.”
Mitch smiled. “Gladys, if you pushed him to hitting you, what makes you think he’d want to find you?”
Billy watched his mother. She was looking at her plate, and she spoke in a quiet, angry voice directed at the center of the table. “Jim wouldn’t ever hit Jewel,” she said. “He used to have to stand between Mother and Dad when Dad would come in drunk. Now, will you both stop this kind of talk. The kids are right here listening.”
“Let them,” Gladys said. “Danner and Billy, do you hear your father?”
“Hell,” Mitch swore. He put his fork down and pushed the salt and pepper shakers to one side of the table. “I don’t think either of you women has been much mistreated,” he said. “If I was up there at the Sunset Inn right now with every other man from along this road, you might have reason to complain. Am I right, Billy?” He winked and touched Billy’s hair. His hand was big and rough.
“Mitch, if you’d rather be up there, go right ahead. Your son will eat your share.”
“No chance,” Gladys said. “Mitch cooked this chicken and he’s going to eat it. Besides, those men will be splitting each other’s skulls when they get roused up tonight. Talk about hitting.”
“Why, they’re nothing but a bunch of damn yokels,” Mitch agreed. “You take your life in your hands in the joints around here. They get out of the mines and they’re drinking from first light to last.”
Gladys buttered her bread. Her dentures made delicate noises when she chewed. “God knows those miners have reason to drink,” she said. “They live thankless lives. When I used to own the shop, they’d come in at Christmas to buy a store dress for their wives.”
Machine Dreams Page 14