“Miners make good money,” Mitch said, “if they didn’t drink most of it.”
Gladys sighed. “Well, what would any of us do without the few pleasures we have? People go through times when they’d shoot themselves in the head if it weren’t for booze.”
“Gladys, for Lord’s sake.” Billy’s mother rolled her eyes at him. She always told Billy and Danner not to listen to half of what Gladys said.
“It’s true,” Gladys continued. “And some of those people are good people. I’ve known Clayton Bond to take a few drinks.”
Mitch leaned toward Gladys over the table. “Gladys, that’s a damn lie. Clayton hasn’t touched a drop in years.”
“I didn’t say he drinks.” Gladys smoothed her napkin over her lap. “I said I’ve known him to.”
“Do you mean Uncle Clayton?” Danner asked.
“There, are you satisfied?” Their mother put her silverware down, and her fork clattered on her plate.
“Little pitchers,” Gladys said softly. “But it doesn’t hurt them to know things.”
“I think it does, and I want you to be still.”
But Gladys gazed out past the table, over Billy’s head. “Clayton is a good soul,” she said. “Bess is the iron in that family. He had some hard times.”
“Who hasn’t?” Billy’s mother started to get up from the table.
“Everyone does,” Gladys said. “Everyone at this table will.”
“We could be a lot worse off. Gladys, come in and help me fix the shortcake.”
Mitch was chuckling. “Gladys,” he said, “it’s a good thing we’ve got those firecrackers. They’re about the only thing that could drown you out when you’re wound up.”
“I guess you’re right,” Gladys said. “Now I’ve got to talk twice as fast to get Jean to forgive me.”
Mitch and Gladys were smiling. Billy watched his mother stack dirty dishes, and her tone was steely. “Can we talk about something else now?” she said.
“Yes, Jean,” Mitch said. “What would you like to talk about?”
Gladys lifted her napkin to her face and wiped her mouth. “Talk nice to her, Mitch. She’s going to be up saving you money tonight, making school clothes for these kids. Why do you think she’s got me out here? I bet you’ve already got those patterns pinned, don’t you Jean. And your potato salad was delicious, as usual.”
There was silence at the table. Billy swallowed a last mouthful of white meat and turned his head, so Mom wouldn’t see him squinting and ask again if he needed glasses. He liked to squint into the distance, out across the fields and the creek, to the hills behind the house. One hill rose conical and forested against the others; Danner said the big hill was a volcano and would blow up sometime in the dark when they were all asleep. Billy squinted harder, his eyes nearly shut, his vision an approximate blur through his lashes. All the shapes were slanted shadows with colors now, and lights shot through them.
“Billy, turn around and finish eating,” Mitch said.
At last their father lit the sparklers, held them away in midair just as the flame burst into sprays and stuttered white fire. The sound of the burning was a high-pitched crackling, filling the entire dusk. Danner had grabbed one slender, flaming stick and was down the hill in front of Billy, her white shorts ghostly pale against her skin and the sparkler flaring in one upstretched hand. She always wrote her own name over and over, tracing letters that trailed into one another as they fell away. Billy made ever-widening circles, and slashes that crossed his vision with firey lines. Danner and Billy ran first down the slope of the hill, jumping and screaming, then ran the boundary of the acre lawn, racing along the wire fence and past the square of lumpy ground they called the garden. Just when they were behind the pine trees, hidden from sight of the house, they stopped abruptly and held the sparklers above their heads like lanterns. Billy could feel sparks in his hair, a flare of heat near his face as burning ash fell past his shoulders. “Look,” Danner breathed, and he did: the field was darkening in the yellowish dusk. All the way to the fence down by the creek, fireflies were lighting.
The lights were brief and bright and random along the stalks of the grasses and field stubble. Lights were in the briars and the milkweed plants. Then the lights flashed upward, glowing faintly, barely perceptible against whiter sky so they seemed an echo or reflection of those on darker ground. The sparklers began to spit and hiss.
Gladys was sitting on the toilet with the lid down like it was a chair, which made Danner laugh until their mother signaled her nothing was funny. Gladys went on smoking her cigarette and looked at a copy of Upper Room, a magazine the church gave out. “I don’t know what’s so funny about a commode,” Gladys said. “No one can have a conversation with your mother unless they follow her from room to room.”
“I’m not getting out another washcloth. Danner, get through with that one and let Billy wash.” Their mother rested her arms on the edge of the porcelain tub, then sat back on her haunches and wiped her wet hands on her skirt. She pushed her sleeves farther up.
“A person would think two kids six and seven years old could bathe themselves,” Gladys said. She put her cigarette down and blew the smoke so it made a cloud around her face; in the big mirror over the sink the smoke looked even bigger and cloudier, furling into a shape. Billy wanted it to grow even larger and fill the small room like a fog, like steam did when someone took a shower. But Gladys had smoked the cigarette to its butt and she put it out, grinding it hard into the ash tray so the leftover tobacco would spill out and the filter show. “Right, kids?” Gladys said now, “and you’d like to, especially if she’d give you back those water pistols she took away.”
“If I did, they’d take forever, and we’ve got all those patterns to cut out tonight.” Jean rubbed her eyes and frowned, and Billy saw the part in her dark hair when she bent her head. She wore her hair long; she kept it pulled back and fastened with a clip, then folded her hair all around the clip so nothing showed but a thick, dark, spiral knot.
Gladys’ reddish hair was tightly curled all over her head. She’d been to the beauty parlor that day and told how Mabel had got her permanent too hard again. Their father had said from his chair when Gladys first arrived that she didn’t look any different than she ever did. Mitch Hampson, what would you know about permanents, I doubt you’ve ever had one, Gladys had folded her pink chiffon head scarf into a square then and touched her head all over, lightly, as Billy and Danner watched.
Now she squinted over the magazine. “It’s a mystery the Methodists bother to print this thing,” she said. “Who reads it?”
“You’re reading it, aren’t you? Here, Billy, rinse off.” His mother gave him the wet cloth and opened her arms wide with a towel for Danner. Danner stood up streaming water.
“That Danner is getting long and stringy. She’s tall for her age.” Gladys put the magazine down and sat looking, her rouged cheeks pink and her round face nearly expressionless.
“I’m older,” Danner said.
“Older every minute,” Gladys said, “too old to bathe with boys before long.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jean said, “they’re brother and sister.” She held Billy’s shoulder as he climbed out, then wrapped him up in a towel that covered him to his knees. “Billy,” she said then, “get your pajamas on.”
Later he heard them, cutting with scissors. He knew they were on their knees, smoothing the patterns with one hand and cutting along a thin line. There was a sound of tissue crinkling against the darker, dull sound of cloth cut steadily. They were cutting the dark wool into shapes with sleeves, shapes to fit big dolls. They were cutting, and his father was sitting at the kitchen table, snapping open the square briefcase that held the plant’s account books. He was smoking and coughing and moving a cup across the wooden surface of the table.
His father put bowls in front of them, and Billy poured the cereal. They were going to the plant because it was Saturday morning and business was off this week
end; that meant Billy would not be in the way. “We’ve just got that one driveway to pour,” Mitch said. “One truck will do it easy.” Mitch got up to get another cup of coffee. He had his khaki work clothes on but still wore his bedroom slippers; his boots made too much noise, and the work boots he pulled on over his leather boots made even more noise.
All the men at the concrete company wore big rubber boots while they worked. Billy’s father wore the boots open until the mixers were actually loading. They were firemen’s slick, black boots with metal buckles halfway up. When the boots were open they flopped above the ankle and their black tongues hung to the side. The buckles rattled every step: a sound like someone shaking chains. Now Mitch was stirring orange juice with a long wooden spoon, holding the plastic pitcher away from himself and jabbing at the frozen cylinder of concentrate. When he poured Billy’s juice the warmish liquid would still taste of tap water—not like the juice Mom made, which was always very cold and more like oranges. Mitch would pour the juice into the wrong kind of glass, a big milk glass instead of the little cheese-spread containers Mom saved for juice glasses. He did that now and set the still faintly swirling mixture beside Billy’s napkin. “Look here,” he said, touching the napkin, “I don’t want you telling your mother you’d rather be at the plant than at school.” But he would rather be at the plant. “That don’t matter,” his father said, “you’ve just started the class with your mother and you need to do real well.” But could they still go to the plant on Saturdays, every Saturday? “Not every Saturday,” his father said, “you know that, but some weekends we will.” They were silent and Billy drank his juice. When he dared look over again, his father was watching him. “You sure do like those trucks, don’t you?” Mitch laughed quietly, almost to himself. “I guess you sure do.”
The big Chevrolet trucks were bright mustard yellow, with black lettering across their huge mixer drums. The big letters said MITCH CONCRETE and Billy had known those words long before he could actually read them. When his father took him up to the plant to be among the men, Billy watched the trucks as though they were live animals, large and ancient. He stood beside the big tires, measuring his own height beside the wheels, then walked around to stand in front, looking up into the massive grill and hood as into a snaggled metallic face. If the men weren’t too busy they lifted him into the cab of one of the trucks and let him sit in there by himself. The interiors of the trucks were cracked and brown, with one long brown seat and all the gearshifts coming up out of the floor. The big steering wheels were white and the dashes were brown metal, slightly dented, with a few long scratches where silver showed through. The broad windshields were streaked with dust. Billy would sit looking out. Below him the blond ground was oddly distant and the men gestured toward him, smiling.
Now his father began eating toast, and Billy understood that their conversation was over. Billy drank the juice, holding the glass to his face and drinking slowly until the juice was gone. He could see out the kitchen window; across the road he saw the cows huddled together in one corner of the field. They leaned against each other like they were asleep standing up, and swayed. Later in the day they never stood so close to the road; cars passed and scared them maybe. Or they liked it on the other side of the hill where the big water trough was, and the salt lick. The cows stood so still, Billy wondered about them. When his dog, Polly, slept, she stretched flat on her side and shivered, moving her feet. Chasing rabbits, Billy’s father always said, watch her chase them now. Polly was dreaming. Sometimes Billy dreamed about the cement mixers. Often the Chevrolets were just sitting in his dreams, big and vacant as abandoned houses. There was almost a kind of music near them, like a humming of motors or heat.
Last night Billy had dreamed about the trucks. He’d seen Uncle Clayton in his dream. Billy and his father and some of the men were watching one of the mixers load. The big drum was turning very fast, so fast it looked like a blur. Then Billy’s father picked him up and lifted him way high to see inside. Billy had never looked in there before; as his father lifted him higher and higher, he realized he’d always wanted to see. Mitch’s hands were very big, but as Billy got higher the hands seemed to go away. The end of the drum was open and Billy peered in. The sides were glowing and going round, grinding out a familiar rumble. Uncle Clayton was in the drum. He was sitting in the metal desk chair from the plant office and the chair floated.
Clayton’s face was strange. Billy? he said. His voice was almost a whisper. The sides of the drum whirled, shining so bright the air was silver. Boy, Clayton said, go find your father. He spoke with great effort as though from far away, and his words had a wind behind them. The whirling drum shone painfully bright, so bright Billy could see nothing but the light itself. He had wakened then and looked at the walls of his room, unsure where he was. Then he heard his father in the bathroom, the hiss of the shower and the whine the pipes made as water passed through them.
The kitchen spigot made a similar sound. Billy watched his father rinse out the coffee cup, filling it full of water but no soap and rubbing the inside once with his hand. “Hurry up now, Billy.” Billy took the bowls to the sink. “Go get your shoes on, and your jacket. Be quiet though, don’t wake up Danner or your mother.”
They drove out along the Brush Fork road, past the McCues’ house and the Connors’, then past the still fields and across the narrow stone bridge. Prison Labor was on one side and the old stables on the other. Billy knew about Prison Labor: rows of big stone buildings with almost no windows. His father said prisoners used to live there and build roads, but now the prisoners were gone and the buildings were full of State Road equipment, bulldozers and buses and trucks. Trucks like the concrete mixers? “No, no, just dump trucks and rollers. Clayton and me have the cement plant, you see; State Road hires us to pour concrete for them. After they’ve dug out the road and got the surface all graded and smooth, why we come along.”
Everyone was already at the plant, and Radabaugh, who worked as a driver, was making coffee. All the men called Billy’s father Cowboy, but Uncle Clayton called him Mitch.
Clayton stood by the office door as they pulled up, then walked out to meet them. He wore khakis like the other men but never wore a cap. His bald head was shiny and his forehead broad. When he rode Billy on his shoulders, Billy touched the bald head with a sense of awe: he could not cover it with his two hands. Now Clayton leaned in close through Billy’s window and smiled his slow smile. “Here’s my big man,” Clayton said. “We haven’t seen you around here lately. Where you been keeping him, Mitch?”
“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.”
Machine Dreams Page 15
