Machine Dreams

by Jayne Anne Phillips

  Clayton said nothing, but Mitch smiled. “Now Pulaski, we don’t want you thinking hard enough to get nervous.”

  “That’s right,” Clayton said. “Relax. We’ve been at this five years and we’ve been in rough spots before.”

  Radabaugh leaned forward and began rolling a cigarette. He lay the thin paper on his knee and tamped the loose tobacco across it in a straight line. “Rough spots builds character,” he said. “That’s what my dad always told me. Your dad tell you that, Billy?”

  Billy wasn’t sure what to answer, so he smiled; slowly all the men smiled, even Pulaski. “What the hell,” Pulaski said. And then they were all standing but Clayton, Radabaugh holding the thin cigarette in his mouth and putting on his bulky work gloves, Pulaski buckling his boots. Mitch stood near Clayton and touched the wide page of an account book. “Let me get them going on this engine, and I’ll be back in,” he said.

  The men were out the door. Billy could see them through the big rectangular opening, walking away across the lot.

  “Go with them,” Clayton said. “Go on, they don’t mind. You can learn how to fix an eight-year-old truck that ought to be taken out and burnt.”

  “Okay,” Billy said seriously. But maybe he hadn’t said it right, because when he turned around Clayton looked away from him at the books. He put his hand to his head and sat looking so intently that he didn’t notice Billy leaving. Clayton didn’t notice, and the men at the far end of the lot didn’t notice him either; Billy walked in privacy toward them.

  Pulaski was in the cab, revving the engine of the Chevrolet. Even this far away, Billy saw the whole truck tremble when Pulaski pressed the gas. Mitch and Radabaugh stood on either side of the big front end, pressing the yellow hood with their hands. They held their heads to the side, listening. What did they hear? “Again,” Mitch said loudly. And the motor roared. Mitch waved his hand at Pulaski as Billy reached them, and the motor stopped.

  Mitch and Radabaugh stood in place, waiting. Billy waited with them.

  “Engine is pulling up,” Mitch said. “That right motor mount is near rusted through, and the points have gone again.”

  “She’s rough as a bitch.” Radabaugh spat and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “She ain’t firing right or those points wouldn’t go so fast.”

  “We can’t put new ones in now unless we have to,” Mitch said. “We’ll clean these and see how she sounds.”

  Billy moved to stand nearer his father and he saw, very close, the pale crusted mud that covered the massive inside fender. In there was a hollow that made room for the tire to go round; even with that furious turning, the dried mud was undisturbed, a rumpled interior shell washed of color.

  Now his father stroked the back of Billy’s neck, the way he did when he was really thinking of something else. “I left my damn gloves in the office,” he said. “Run and get them for me, Billy—they’re on Clayton’s desk, beside the books.”

  Billy knew the gloves; they were workmen’s gloves with hard fingers; even the palms were stiff from getting wet and drying in the sun, or freezing in the winter. The gloves used to be light green but now they were almost white. Billy walked quickly to get them; he knew his father didn’t really mean he should run. Mitch wouldn’t have run. And besides, Billy knew where the gloves were. They weren’t on the desk: they were on the floor, in the corner behind Clayton’s chair. Billy saw them in his mind, just the way they lay. He walked watching his feet, wishing he had boots with hard toes that scuffed, and the scuff mark stayed like a scratch that didn’t heal. He would tell Clayton he’d come for the gloves, and he would say it matter-of-factly; Clayton would still be studying the books and he wouldn’t pay attention any more than if one of the men had come back for a moment. Billy stopped at the door of the office and looked up, poised to speak.

  Clayton was sitting beside the desk in the chair. He’d said how the chair tilted backward and forward on a big coiled spring; now the chair was tilted slightly and Clayton sat quite still, one long leg stretched before him and the other pulled close. His foot curled strangely near the small gritty wheel of the chair. Clayton’s hands were on his thighs, his arms tight to his torso as though he had braced himself. Billy stood watching, arms outstretched to touch both sides of the doorjamb. Under his fingers the wood was minutely gouged and ridged; he touched this splintered surface and waited. Clayton was looking toward the door, but the focus of his blue eyes was not fixed; his gaze was directed far off.

  Billy knew not to move. The room was quiet and still; Clayton had changed all the air in it. Billy was cold but his face burned as though some heat approached him. The morning light was behind them both and fell through the door to lighten Clayton’s face and Clayton’s puzzled eyes. The light moved; Clayton’s gaze shifted subtly and grew dimmer. It wasn’t like the dream; Clayton didn’t say a word, he didn’t try to talk.

  Billy turned and ran. The ground tilted beneath his feet; the buildings of the plant looked unfamiliar and odd, sheds and garages standing alone like so many big blocks with slanted roofs. Mitch and Radabaugh and Pulaski stood at the far end of the lot as before; the big mixer was still running but now the hood was raised up and all three men stood listening. Billy couldn’t see his father’s face. Mitch had leaned down to inspect the craw of the opening; he was lost to the waist in dark gears.

  Billy never remembered speaking but all three men ran to the office. They were dressed in khaki, like soldiers, and the one mixer kept rumbling in their absence, the empty drum turning. Billy stood where he was until Radabaugh came back and picked him up. He was too old to be carried but Radabaugh lifted him easily; Billy was pressed close, smelling the engine-oil smell of Radabaugh as they stood in the office doorway. The room had changed and the stillness was totally gone. The metal chair was pushed far into a corner where it had rolled when the men bent down together and lifted Clayton away. The gloves were there, near the wall, worn palms turned upward; Billy looked at them once and glanced away. Now he was high up in Radabaugh’s arms, and Clayton was lying on the floor with a jacket folded under his head. Pulaski had covered him with an army blanket and now he smoothed the green wool, tucking it under Clayton’s shoes. Billy looked for his father and saw Mitch kneeling beside Clayton. His knees touched Clayton’s head and he kept one hand on Clayton’s shoulder as though to hold him still. Clayton’s eyes were half-closed the way Danner’s were just as she fell asleep. There was a lot of noise; the men were all talking at once and Mitch was saying, “Take my car and get Billy home. I’ll ride in the ambulance and Bess will meet us there.” Then Mitch was throwing the ring of keys to Radabaugh; Billy saw the keys in the air for an instant, and Radabaugh’s open hand, but the keys fell on the floor. Radabaugh bent to get them and the floor came up fast at Billy; he pulled back and struggled to jump free. “It’s all right,” Radabaugh mumbled. His breath was musky with tobacco, intimate and close.

  Radabaugh walked quickly to the Pontiac and they were in the car, halfway down the dirt road to Route 20, when the ambulance passed them. The siren blared and it was the same sound as a fire truck. Though the men in the ambulance didn’t look at Radabaugh, he waved them frantically up the hill toward the plant. Billy felt strange seeing Radabaugh in Mitch’s place behind the wheel, and everything along the road looked wrong. There were just a few cars at Nedelson’s Parkette and someone had left the neon sign on all night.

  The Pontiac shook as Radabaugh went over the railroad tracks too fast. “You’re scared, ain’t you Billy.”

  Billy didn’t answer. He watched the road and they drove past the Mobil station. Soon they would turn onto Main Street and go past Aunt Bess’s house and the hospital and the Dodge Sales and Service, then out toward Brush Fork and home.

  Radabaugh spoke again. “Billy, your dad was too hurried to say so, but you did just the right thing. You came straight to get us and that was exactly right.”

  Billy nodded but he didn’t want to ask questions. He would wait and ask his father, because his
father would know more, wouldn’t he? Right now Mitch was with Clayton in the ambulance. Radabaugh lit a cigarette. His khaki sleeves were rolled halfway up, and his wrist was tattooed with a banner folded like flags. From the service: Billy knew. The siren had flown past them up the hill to the plant and Radabaugh had waved it faster to make the sound go away. Keep your mind on your business. Clayton said that. How still the room had been. Still—but with a floating heat that moved like the chair in the dream. It was like the clock on Saturday afternoons, the long afternoons: when his father was gone to the plant and Danner was in her room and Mom was sewing on the Singer machine in the dinette. There was nothing to do then and television wasn’t allowed, and Billy sat at the kitchen table. He sat there with his Tonka trucks—metal trucks so small he could hold all four in his hand at once—and he ran the trucks on the blue-painted surface of the wooden table. But really he only looked at the empty road out the window, and heard the kitchen clock. The clock was round and yellow and it hung on the wall with its white cord snaking down. The clock always ticked but no one heard it really; only on those afternoons was the sound so loud. Billy was quiet and his mother forgot where he was; there was only the steady buzz of the sewing machine, and the clock sound: a gentle and regular knock behind a yellow face, a circle of numbers. Someone wanted in or out but they stayed in between and kept knocking, paid no mind to anything. Your mind is full of business. The quiet the clock made leaked into the air, and was only a hint of the quiet Clayton made. Not like ghosts; no one was scared. What was it?

  Radabaugh swerved too hard for the turn-off to Brush Fork. The Prison Labor buildings seemed to move their tall stone towers as the car lurched over tracks. They drove across the bridge and up the hill. As the car pulled into the driveway, Billy saw Danner outside with the dog. Danner was out without her shirt, like a boy, and her long hair obscured her face as she whirled in a circle, holding a stick for Polly. The dog leapt in place again and again; they kept a sort of time.

  Clayton died that night in the hospital. They dressed up to go to the funeral home. Billy didn’t tell anyone about the dream, and he couldn’t see in the office again because his father wouldn’t take him to the plant. In two weeks the concrete company was sold, though the cement mixers stayed the same bright yellow and continued to bear the legend of his father’s name through the town. Radabaugh stayed on to work for the new owners, but Pulaski quit. And now Mitch was going to work for Euclid and sell big machines, like the ones sealed away in the Prison Labor buildings. He would sell dozers and cranes and trucks to construction companies, and to Prison Labor. But why would Prison Labor buy machines when they had so many in their closed stone buildings? Those were scrap machines, Mitch told Billy, used ones saved up for auction. Billy imagined the rows of old machines shut away in the dark, the way they would look from the door of one of the cool stone garages. Giant wound-down toys smelling of aged dust and rock, their separate shapes merged in the twilit far end of the long building. They sat like big, sleeping things. Billy didn’t ask to go there and see them. But he still saw the mixers around town that summer; once he was in the car with his mother and they passed a parked MITCH CONCRETE truck. The truck blocked a small side street, and sawhorses had been set up to keep anyone from driving over a strip of newly poured surface. Radabaugh had patched the road where gas lines had been dug up; now he sat on an overturned bucket, low to the ground. He kept his elbows on his knees and hunched over himself, smoking. What was he waiting for? He looked small sitting there and kept the cigarette close his lips. The sawhorses were bright yellow like the still drum of the parked mixer, and they formed a crooked line of demarcation. Radabaugh sat behind them, guardian of a territory under repair.

  REMINISCENCE TO A DAUGHTER

  Jean

  1962

  I can’t reconstruct things enough to know when I decided. I guess it seems I was working toward the divorce for years, but I was only trying to get to the point where I could support myself. I never even considered divorce—not with kids at home. Maybe I stopped thinking on purpose during those years and lived in the day-to-day. No struggle because every minute was filled.

  I try to remember. A few separate days, isolated from each other by months or years, swim up. Then I have to think hard to know what years those were. I know immediately how they felt, the weather, the news. How old you and Billy were, your teachers in school, clothes you wore. Your face and Billy’s face—exactly how you looked.

  You know, I don’t remember my own face then. I didn’t really see myself. Just the slash of red lipstick and a comb through my hair. There are no photographs of me with you kids from the time you were old enough to be photographed without me. Every year there were school pictures with my first-grade classes, and I always threw them away.

  I went back to college when Billy was in kindergarten and took a full course load, but nothing changed at home. I did all the housework and meals and put you kids to bed with stories, then stayed up till two or three reading and memorizing. Long nights, with all the house in darkness and one light burning over the kitchen table. I’d hear sounds outside and the breathing of sleepers.

  I’d always been afraid of being alone, but now there was no fear or wondering. I was alone, though not surprised, not bitter. My mother had been alone, hadn’t she, except for me? I’d borrowed the money to pay for classes and wanted to get straight A’s, a perfect record. The one time I got a C on a mid-term, I sat in the rocker in my bedroom and wept. I remember you standing there, trying to reason with me, being very grown-up at eight years old. I suppose my nerves stayed frayed until the degree was finished, and never a word of encouragement from Mitch. No blowups, no fights; he knew it was important I start earning an income, but he grew more silent.

  We never fought much. Once, I remember having to stand up to him.

  What year was it? The news was full of scary headlines about Cuba, and Mitch maintained we’d never be in this fix if a Catholic hadn’t been elected president. People around town were talking about fallout shelters. The VFW organized a Civil Defense League: classes at the post office one night a week for four weeks. Mitch took them in the summer, when those old rooms must have been airless. Then he taught the same class in September. He was working for a construction company then, selling aluminum buildings on commission. Always yelling at you kids, Get the hell off the telephone! Don’t you know I earn a living on this phone? Things were easier when he was involved in the civil defense work; there were books and pamphlets and construction details. Which basements were to be used for town shelters: the courthouse, the high school, all the churches.

  It would have been October, and grainy aerial photographs of Cuban missiles were appearing in the newspapers. People were alarmed and news was broadcast on the hour. I didn’t care much; I remember thinking myself strange. I spent eight hours a day with six-year-olds bused fifteen or twenty miles from hollows back in the country. Did they have fallout shelters? They didn’t have mittens or winter coats unless I could find enough at the Salvation Army. Civil defense seemed crazy to me but it was important to Mitch, so I kept quiet. He talked about building a shelter in the little room behind the garage, a utility room where he kept tools, where the hot-water tank was, and the big cabinet that held canned goods. A ladder up the wall led to the attic door, which had to be shoved open from underneath. You kids were never allowed in the attic—there was no floor except for a narrow walkway, just insulation between the boards. Every change of season, I’d find myself up there, opening Mother’s big cedar chest in a corner under the eaves. Packing woolens away with moth balls or shaking out summer cottons, hoping they weren’t all outgrown.

  That night, I was in the attic, trying to find enough winter school clothes. Dresses with big hems, pants to let out, but there would have to be new boots and coats. I had a whole pile of woolens and thought I’d get you both to try everything on while I finished ironing a basket of Mitch’s shirts, and my blouses. Teaching, I wore skirts and those Shi
p ’n’ Shore cotton blouses with roll-up sleeves and Peter Pan collars; two white ones, a pale green one, a blue one. Those are the details I remember, colors and clothes and the smell of chalk at the blackboard, going over your homework at night—the red arithmetic book Billy had in the sixth grade called Fun with New Math. No questions about the meaning of things; you don’t think that way if you have children. The meaning is right in front of you and you live by keeping up with it. I have my house and my children was a phrase I kept in mind. Piling up clothes, I calculated which would do and which wouldn’t. The light in the attic was dim, one bulb glowing and the sun setting outside with a gold tinge. Underneath that yellow color was the cold of the fall coming on. It was a Sunday night because I was thinking I had the week’s lesson plans to do, and thirty-five big jack-o’-lanterns to cut from orange construction paper. I loved decorating that classroom and spent hours on a different display every month. Just that day I’d gotten two big rolls of brown paper so the kids could trace each other’s shapes and color their own portraits. I could put the shapes up all around the room, with the movable arms and legs holding vowel sounds, and the jack-o’-lanterns for heads, each with a different expression. In October I was still teaching letter recognition to kids from the country who hadn’t seen many books, kids who’d never seen themselves full length in a mirror. At Halloween, a third of the class would be too poor to have costumes; I could take staples and elastic string to school to make masks out of the jack-o’-lantern faces. I’d ask Bess and Gladys for worn-out linens again, and use torn sheets for capes. I stood there in the attic with all these plans, looking at shirts I knew Billy couldn’t wear; in the half-finished top of the house, I felt as though I were standing behind the scenes of some production. I couldn’t move for a minute, the feeling was so strong. Nothing seemed real. I thought of my mother hemming my dresses on the porch, letting down hems one after another while I sat playing with soap bubbles, a skinny dark sparrow of a kid.