The Sandman: Book of Dreams

by Neil Gaiman

It slowed as it passed overhead, then settled, almost but not quite landing. Men ran to it, queuing up to form a line that soon stretched twenty or thirty yards between the motionless lines of rusty cars and trucks. Benson joined them.

  Glancing behind him, he saw hundreds of women and children falling into line in back of the men. A barefoot young woman, a lanky blonde of perhaps seventeen, dashed past him and was admitted to the line by a young man who might profitably have pursued a career in professional football. There was a rumble of complaint, soon stilled.

  "Should be eggs today," the man standing behind Benson said happily.

  Benson nodded his agreement. Far ahead, flat white boxes about eight inches by eight were being passed out by the crew of the helicopter, together with... He strained his eyes.

  Men who had been at the front of the line were drifting back now, some eating from the flat boxes they carried, more drinking from clear, squat bottles that were distorted by the pressure of their fingers.

  "Hope we get there 'fore the water runs out," the man behind Benson said.

  "I'd like a nice drink of water myself," Benson admitted.

  "They ought to take as many waters as cracker boxes," the man continued bitterly. "They never do. Water's cheaper, too, only they don't like to bring it."

  "It's heavier, I imagine," Benson said.

  The man ahead of him turned to stare back at him. "What's that got to do with it? It's just water."

  "Weight limits the amount of cargo that a helicopter can carry," Benson explained. "The size of the fuselage is just a matter of convenience, really. Capacity is determined by the power of the engines and the configurations of the rotors."

  The man behind him asked, "You from hereabouts?"

  "From this city?" For a half a second, Benson considered. "Why, yes, I suppose I am. At least--"

  The fist of the man behind him caught him just below the ribs, sending him staggering forward. Something struck the side of his head, and something else, presumably a kick, the side of one knee. He fell, dropping the Magus-guitar. Shod and booted feet attacked him like a flock of birds. He rolled, covering his head with his arms, his legs drawn up to protect his belly.

  Someone sprawled on top of him. He gasped and struggled before realizing that the body above his was not that of a new attacker. Overhead, in the lofty space occupied by those who still stood, a woman said, "Don't get him," and a man: "That's enough! Hold on!"

  The protecting body vanished. Benson coughed and spit, wondering how badly he had been hurt. There was no blood in his spittle--or if there was, the dust in his eyes kept him from seeing it.

  They were still talking above his head. A new voice, a boy's or a very young man's, said, "I guess he didn't know. I ought to have told him." Was that the young man for whom he had played "Londonderry Air"? Benson tried to get to his feet, and succeeded in getting to his knees.

  Someone nudged his arm with a booted foot, saying, "You. Get up."

  He did, finding that he could stand although his legs were shaky.

  "You get back there to the end." It was the hulking young man who had allowed the lanky blonde to join him in line.

  Benson nodded, still too dazed to speak. Magically, it seemed, the Magus-guitar was in his hands as before.

  "Come on." This was a new young man, short and slight. "You made that out of a muffler, didn't you?"

  Benson cleared his throat and spit again.

  "I never seen one like that."

  He managed to nod. "A replacement muffler." He came very near to adding that it was one of his, one of his company's. He really had made that muffler, in a sense, although not as an instrument.

  "You cut those fancy holes with a li'l file? There's a man by us had a file." The young man himself was grasping what seemed to be a hubcap with a dozen wires strung across it, a rude harp or lyre.

  Benson contrived to say something suitable.

  "It get busted? I'd like to hear it."

  Dusting his hands, he spat again. "I owe you a lot more than that." He offered to shake hands, conscious that his own was soiled, but conscious, too, that the one it would be shaking would be soiled at least as badly. "I'm Tim Benson."

  The young man's hand was small, but surprisingly hard and muscular. "Aldo Berry. We both of us play, an' we both got names with a B."

  They had come to the end of the line, the place marked by a bedraggled child who said, "You won't neither get nothin'. Me neither." Her small face was sad and resigned.

  "What's your name?" Benson asked her. "You know ours, if you were listening. I'm Tim and he's Aldo. Who are you?"

  "B'neice."

  "How old are you, B'neice?"

  "Ber-nice! "

  Benson was so involved with his thoughts that he scarcely heard her. This young man, Aldo, was presumably a musician of some kind; that explained his rushing to the aid of a stranger--the age-old sympathy of one performer for another. And now his rescuer wanted him to play.

  Unbidden, his fingers caressed the strings, evoking for perhaps the millionth time since its composition the old Irish melody.

 

  "The minstrel boy to the war is gone,

  In the ranks of death you'll find him,

  His father's sword he has girded on,

  And his wild harp slung behind him...."

  Aldo opened his mouth to speak, gulped, stammered, and at last managed to say, "You got to learn me."

  Benson sighed. Had he ever been this young? Yes. Yes, of course. He tried to say that he had very little of value to teach anyone--that what he really needed was courage like the boy's own, adding, "You play and sing yourself, don't you? You implied a moment ago that you did."

  Aldo nodded hesitantly, accepting a limp slice of bacon from one of the men "The Minstrel Boy" had attracted.

  "May I try your instrument? You may try mine, if you like."

  The exchange completed, Benson ran his fingertips across Aide's strings; A-sharp was a shade flat, and he tightened it. Someone handed him a pastry dotted with nutmeats; to free his hands, he gave it to the child.

  He had never so much as touched even a modern harp, and he remembered reading somewhere that it was the most difficult of all the stringed instruments; this primitive harp of Aldo's, with its very limited range, should be much easier--more like a mandolin than a modern pedal harp. The question was whether even an approximation of real music could be coaxed from it.

  The opening notes of "Shenando' " sounded thin and poor. He would have to reinforce them with their harmonics, plainly, and fill between them like a jazz pianist.

  He tried again.

  "Oh Shenando' I long to hear you,

  Away, you rolling river..."

  Still pretty bad. He made a third attempt, at first only half-singing the lyric.

  "Oh Shenando' I long to hear you,

  Away, you rolling river.

  Oh Shenando' I long to hear you.

  Away, I'm bound away,

  Across the wide Missouri . .."

  This time a chance-caught spell among the dancing, tinny notes showed him the river as the composer of that song had seen it, the enchanted gateway to freedom, to adventure and riches, a call stronger than home or honor or any woman. Like the river itself, the song carried everything before it.

  "Oh Shenando' I love your daughter,

  Roll away, you rolling river.

  Oh Shenando' I'm bound to leave her,

  Away, I'm bound away,

  Across the wide Missouri!"

  There were deafening cheers, applause greater than he had ever imagined in his most self-indulgent moments.

  Later, as they walked beside a motionless Greyhound bus, Aldo offered him a slab of flatbread. He took it and nibbled tentatively, troubled by the feeling that once he had eaten in this strange place he would become as desperately hungry as the rest of its inhabitants.

  "Don't bite down hard," Aldo warne
d him, " 'less you got good teeth."

  Swallowing the morsel he had succeeded in gnawing free, Benson ventured a remark about saliva softening it.

  "Or water, if you got a bottle." Aldo appeared troubled; by silence, Benson encouraged him to speak.

  "There's the off-road way an' then there's the free way, Tim. We're the freewayers, but you're an off-roader, ain't you? I won't tell."

  They talked about that for a time--not about the world beyond Interstate 75, in which Aldo seemed to have very little interest, but about the freewayers, the people like Aldo himself, squatters who lived in their cars waiting for the hand-drawn carts that brought them gasoline, compressed air, and sometimes water, and for the helicopters that brought food and clothing. "It's your clothes," Aldo told him. "Off-roader clothes. You turn them in, Ma'am said, to churches an' things, an' they pick them up an' put them in the slopchopper, an' then throw them down for us."

  As Benson tried to grasp the twin horrors of poverty and idleness, Aldo explained, "Ma'am was my ma. Can I tell you 'bout her? You might make a song 'bout her, an' it'd make her proud if she knew."

  Benson had tried to write songs of his own many times, never with success. New folk song, where he was concerned at least, was an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. Aldo looked incredulous when he explained that, so Benson asked whether he himself composed the songs he sang.

  Aldo nodded, solemn as if they were deciding an issue of life and death. "That's why I'm goin' to the Spaghetti Bowl. I'll get a new one there, but I can't say how I know it. I just do. The songs you sang back there where the chowchopper was? Didn't you make them up?"

  Benson shook his head, and spoke (more openly than he ever had to anyone before) of the pleasure folk music had given him, and of his own fruitless efforts to compose folk songs. When he felt that he could stand the pain of self-revelation no longer, he returned the rude harp. "Sing me one of your songs, please, Aldo. A song you made yourself."

  "Here's yours," Aldo said, and returned the Magusguitar. "This's about my ma." He cleared his throat and strummed his rude harp.

  "In all this jam, there's none like Ma'am,

  For playin' nor for singin'.

  She'd drove the land, her an' her band,

  And set the big rooms ringin' ...

  "It's not a very good song," he said when it was finished, "an' that's all the farther I ever got, an' now she's drove out." As though seeing that Benson had not understood him, he added, "Dead, it means."

  After that, they talked of Aide's mother and a sweetheart he seemed not entirely sure was his until he sprinted away to the spot beyond the outer lane where a yellow helicopter was landing.

  Benson followed more sedately, wondering what had caused such excitement; the yellow helicopter appeared to be a four-seater, and was certainly too small to carry much cargo.

  When he reached the place where it had set down, a tall professionally personable young woman in a tailored blue jumpsuit was addressing a microphone for the benefit of a video recorder.

  Aldo nudged him. "See what she's got, Tim? Ma'am had a thing like that what she's talkin' into, only there wasn't nowhere to plug it in."

  Benson nodded, giving most of his attention to the young woman in the blue jumpsuit.

  "We're here to look for very special artists we can put on our program," the young woman's amplified voice announced to the crowd. "But it has to be something visual, basically. You have to make things that we can show, or do something we can show you doing. So if there's anyone here like that, I hope that he or she will step forward."

  Benson watched Aldo, half-expecting him to volunteer; but he did not.

  The young woman in the blue jumpsuit spoke glowingly of the future that she and her station offered, and a voice from the crowd called, "There's somebody back at the chowchopper that sings real good."

  "That's you," Aldo whispered.

  Nearer now, the young woman pointed to Aldo's rude harp. "What's that you've got? Our other crew discovered a girl last night who had something like that."

  Aldo held it up. "Was her name Mar'?"

  Mar', Benson remembered, was Aldo's sweetheart. He said, "Sing for them, Aldo. They want to hear you, and so do I."

  The young woman in the blue jumpsuit had gotten a grip on Aldo's arm. She drew him nearer the handheld video recorder. Aldo resisted at first, then grinned at her.

 

  "Choppergal, choppergal, dressed so fine,

  Got a gal already, an' that gal's mine ..."

  It was a good, rollicking song, and Benson applauded as loudly as anyone when it was done.

  "And you, sir," the young woman in the blue jumpsuit said, "what's your name?"

  Until two men pushed him forward, Benson believed that she was addressing someone else.

  "What's your name?" she repeated.

  He did not belong in this nightmarish traffic jam, was not what Aldo would have called a freewayer--or perhaps he was. He had awakened in a stopped car, after all. Would very likely be there now, if he had not locked himself out of it and set off with some vague notion of exploring, of finding someone who would help him retrieve his keys without breaking a window.

  "Will you play for us, Tim? We'd like to hear you." He had not been conscious of giving the young woman his name, but perhaps he had. He shook his head.

  "Go 'head, Tim," Aldo said. And to the others, "He's so fine! Wait 'til you hear."

  He had played "Londonderry Air" only an hour or two ago, and there was a haunting song, "My Gentle Harp," set to the music.

  Almost before he knew that he had begun to play, he was concluding -the first verse, singing, yet hearing his own voice soar above the crowd as though it were another's. How envious he would have been of that voice, so vibrant with sorrow and majesty, had it not been his own!

  "Yet even then, when peace was singing

  Her halcyon song o'er land and sea,

  Though joy and hope to others bringing,

  She only brought new tears to thee."

  That was enough, surely--time to retreat into the crowd, to become one of them again. Benson looked at the circle of starved and dirty faces, at the open mouths and awed eyes of a hundred men and women who had never--until now--heard music that touched their souls, and launched into the second verse.

  "Then who can ask for notes of pleasure,

  My drooping harp, from chords like thine?

  Alas, the lark's gay morning measure,

  As ill would suit the swan's decline.

  Or how shall I, who love, who bless thee,

  Invoke thy breath for freedom's strains,

  When e'en the wreaths in which I dress thee,

  Are sadly mixed, half flowers, half chains?"

  Only when the closing notes had ascended to the clear sky from which the yellow helicopter had dropped, did he entirely comprehend how well that old song accorded with the freewayers' plight. Looking at them, he knew that they had known almost as soon as he had begun.

  The young woman in the blue jumpsuit, who clearly had not, said, "That was--was just so wonderful, Tim, but won't you play something about this mess? This traffic jam that's kept so many of you here so long? That's what they want to hear, back at our building."

  Speaking more to himself than to her, Benson said, "I'd like to go with you. That's been my dream, to sing folk music and be a star. But I don't know any. Only one, actually."

  She gave him a professionally charming smile. "Then sing that."

  He asked Aldo's permission and received it, then began Aldo's song about his mother, certain that it would mark the end of the opportunity he had so long feared and desired. What dream would remain for him, when this one was gone?

  "In all this jam--"

  That was what the young woman in the blue jumpsuit wanted, of course: something that actually employed the words traffic jam. And whatever its other defects, this did.

  "There's none like
Ma'am,

  For playing or for singing.

  She'd drive this land, she and her band,

  And set the big rooms ringing."

  How had she felt, Aldo's mother, confined to this sixteen-lane hell until death came for her? How had she felt, this no doubt personable, determined, and talented woman whom he would never meet?

  "Her face you'd see on your TV,

  'Most any day you played it."

  Benson struggled to keep the pity he felt from his voice-- and, appalled; heard it issue from the Magus-guitar, at once sorrowing and raging.

  "She'd like to gone, with me, her son,

  But this here jam's delayed it.

  Now here we stay, and pray each day ..."

  The last notes died while Benson was still wondering

  what good those prayers had ever done Ma'am--or her son Aldo, for that matter.

  The young woman had his right arm and her cameraman his left. He ducked under a whizzing rotor blade and found himself pushed into a seat behind the two front seats of the yellow helicopter. The door shut, and in a moment the young woman was in the seat beside the pilot, and the cameraman in the seat beside his own. The helicopter rose, seeming almost to float up like a balloon.

  Over her shoulder, the young woman said, "I want you for the noon news, Tim. With a little luck we ought to be able to make it." She glanced at her wrist, then back to him. "It's ten-twenty. That's an hour and forty minutes to get you there and get you made up. Should be fine."

  The cameraman said, "What about clothes?" It was the first time that Benson had heard him speak.

  "I want them to see what he wore in the jam, the first time. Tim, I bet you're wondering when you'll get to live at the Consort-Hilton and do all that shopping I talked about."

  He had been wondering no such thing.

  "We're going to put you on the eleven o'clock, too. Maybe on the four-thirty if you really go over at noon and nothing big's breaking. After that, we're going to save you for the 'People You Should Meet' show Sunday afternoon--three or four songs and an interview. Today's Grunday, so that'll give you five whole days, and afterward we'll see. It could be longer."

  Benson asked, "What day did you say it was?"

  The cameraman answered for her. "Grunday."

  They were banking, high above the tallest buildings in the city. Far below, obscured by haze, Interstate 75 might well have been locked in any ordinary rush-hour traffic jam.

  Benson swallowed, and swallowed again as the helicopter began to descend--far too quickly, it seemed to him. In front, the pilot appeared unconcerned, and the young woman in the blue jumpsuit was whispering into a handheld microphone; on his right, the cameraman was unwrapping a stick of gum.

  Benson gripped the armrest and his seat belt. Grunday. Where was he? Where in the world was he, anyway?

  The yellow helicopter landed with a slight thump on the tarred roof of an office tower, and before he could catch his breath a short, bouncy, round-faced woman with carroty curls opened his door. "I'm Jennifer," she said. "You're Tim? Come on."