Machine Dreams (20 page)

“He’s been at school with his mother.”

“Ah.” Clayton pretended he hadn’t known, and opened the car door for Billy. “How do you like having your mother for a teacher?” Billy explained how his mother wasn’t really his teacher; he’d get his real teacher in the fall when school started. This was only a phonics class to help kids read.

“Read?” Clayton looked surprised again. “Why you’ve been reading everything around here for two years. What’s it say on those big bags over there?” He pointed to the ninety-five-pound sacks stacked against the truck shelter. Billy knew, of course:
ALPHA READY-MIX.
“Ready-Mix what?” Cement, Billy told him.
“You see there,” Clayton said. “What other seven-year-old knows that much? And you want to keep knowing, because we old men forget what we’re doing half the time. Big Man might be running trucks like these himself someday.”

Mitch was looking toward the plant office, a small wooden building built right against the hill. Access roads wound behind the office in a double tier. “Clayton,” Mitch said, “we got to get a grader in here and bank up that top road. We got a big load of gravel coming in and Saunder’s truck is a lot heavier than ours; liable to slide right down that sand and through the roof of the office.”

Clayton straightened. “Can’t afford to rent a dozer now,” he said. “I phoned Saunders this morning; he’ll bring a smaller truck. Just have to pray we don’t get a big rainstorm to erode that slant.”

They both stood watching the access roads. The first road was level with the office roof and partially obscured by the hills of sand and gravel: aggregates used in the mixing. The higher road was for dump trucks to dump materials into one pile or the other: Billy had seen the big trucks back precariously into position. The big steel beds raised up, straining and clicking until a catch released the tailgate. Then sand fell in cascades, silent and clean, spilling over its own coned shape. Sand fell rapidly, as though it would never stop falling, and the hill of sand grew steeper and larger without ever seeming to change at all. When gravel was dumped, the sound was loud and satisfying. The chips of stone glinted as they poured and the gravel dropped like a hard rain falling all at once, clattering, raising its own brief smoke of dust. The men all stood watching from below, their arms akimbo, and spoke to one another in congratulatory tones.
There she goes
, they’d say amongst themselves. But the dumping of the sand was observed in silence.

Today both piles of aggregate were low; Billy wanted to know when the trucks would come, so he could watch the unloading. But his father and Clayton seemed to have forgotten him. Billy didn’t ask, and followed the men into the plant office. Secretly, he liked it better when no one paid attention to him. He felt
a little ashamed when the grown men were so friendly; their pleased expressions meant he wasn’t one of them.

Inside the office, the big green accounting books were open across the desk. Radabaugh and Pulaski sat on the sofa, which was actually a green vinyl seat from a truck. The seat tipped at an odd angle and rested on rusty metal legs. Beside it was a big ash tray as tall as an end table. The sand in the tray was always full of cigarette butts; the smell of the sand was something like the smell of the whole office—dusty, slightly acrid, a smell of dry, clean dirt mixed with ash.

Pulaski spoke. “Cowboy, Clayton’s been up here looking at those books for an hour already. It’s enough to make a man nervous.”

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.