A Book of Dreams Read online

Page 3


  ‘How come the other kids don’t get sick then?’ I began patting the dark wet sand mud into the hole, sealing the glow-in-the-dark yo-yo forever.

  ‘But they are, Pete. They are tightly armoured against feeling the deep effects of DOR sickness. They fight it off with toughness and dirty jokes but the sickness still eats them away inside. Their faces become tight and the jaws get rigid because they no longer feel. When they get older, they die of cancer. Sometimes I see armouring in you and that is why I give you treatments.’

  ‘All their bellies are hard?’

  ‘Yes. And their way of achieving things is a hard-bellied way. Do you remember the movie we saw with John Wayne, in which he falls and becomes crippled?’

  ‘The one where he plays a navy officer? Yeah. He fell down stairs at night and the doctors told him he would never walk again.’

  ‘Ja. You see, when he was sitting in bed, looking down to the end of his cast, watching his toes, he resolved to walk again. And he said, over and over again, “Gonna move that toe, gonna move that toe, gonna move that toe.” You see, that is the rigid way of overcoming things.’

  I patted the last of the mud over the tunnel, placed the metal plate over the opening, and spread dry dust over the top. Then I stood up and walked with Daddy toward the house.

  ‘But in the end he walked, didn’t he?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, but you see, to overcome obstacles that way, by force, so-called willpower, that is communist. It is the rigid, mechanistic way of accomplishing things. He had to make himself so tight and hard to force himself to walk again that he forgot how to love and be kind.’

  ‘And it would have been better if he had had Orgone Therapy, right? Then he would have walked and still been a good person.’

  ‘Ja, very good, Peeps. The best way is just to breathe, and relax, and let it come naturally. Never force anything, just let it be natural, and it will always be okay. Okay?’ He smiled at me and I nodded.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘how would you like to go to the Green Lantern and have some special swordfish for dinner?’

  ‘I’d love it,’ I said.

  I ran in the house and washed my hands. Daddy was waiting in the car and as we drove out the driveway I remembered the bus driver.

  ‘Daddy, I have to make a report.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Well, today, coming back on the school bus the bus driver made a bunch of funny remarks about the cloudbuster. He called it a clodbuster and laughed at me when I told him it was for atmospheric research.’

  Daddy looked serious. ‘Don’t let him get to you, Pete. He may be a spy trying to find out what we’re up to, or he may just be a sick person. Whatever you do, just be brave and remember that his type are the killers, the real carriers of emotional plague. You will run into them wherever you go. Did you tell him anything else?’

  ‘No, I just told him that it is a cloudbuster and we use it for weather control. He just called it “clodbuster” and told me not to bust any clods.’

  ‘He sounds like he was just being afraid. Don’t worry about him. Many people are afraid, like those television people who came here and took movies about the cloudbuster for a newsreel. They were interested at first because we spoke about weather control and rainmaking and then, mysteriously, the film was ruined. There are many mysterious things happening….’

  ‘But the grass isn’t mysterious,’ I said, looking out the window at the desert on the road going in to Tucson. ‘They’ll see when they really see the grass.’

  ‘Ja,’ said Daddy, ‘today I drove nearly sixty miles out into the country around Tucson, talking to farmers and cowboys. They all say that they have never seen such nice rich grass growing in a long time. Yes, they won’t laugh when it rains in the desert and makes grass grow.’

  The Green Lantern had a big organ sitting on a platform near the mirror-backed wooden bar, and red, yellow and green lights went around in circles over the organist, making his face change colours. The spotlight shone through coloured disks and its light reflected in the bar mirror across the dining room as if it were shining on me and Daddy, sitting in our favourite booth. Daddy was smiling at me as he sipped his favourite drink, a Manhattan.

  ‘Do you want the cherry?’ He stirred his drink with it, holding it by the stem. It blurred as it went around and around. Daddy always remembered to give me the cherry from his Manhattan.

  ‘Yes.’ He handed it to me and it was sweet and strong, and made my breath feel heavy. Daddy motioned to the waitress who usually served us and she came over to take our orders. She was pretty and had bright eyes and she always made a fuss over me. She leaned over and tousled my hair, laughing. ‘Hi there, how are you tonight?’

  My face got hot. I looked away ‘Oh, all right, I guess.’ She smiled and looked at Daddy.

  ‘He is so cute,’ she said.

  Daddy laughed and nodded, and then he said, ‘I’ll have shrimp and Pete will have swordfish.’

  She took it down and went away, in a wind of perfume and organ music.

  Daddy finished his drink and looked at me.

  ‘Do you have a girl friend?’ he asked.

  He always wanted to know if I had a girl friend and if we kissed or touched each other. He always said, ‘Don’t be afraid to talk to me.’ So we talked a lot about why I wasn’t circumcised and what other kids were like. There was a girl at school who was very pretty and we looked at each other in a secret way sometimes, but we hadn’t kissed.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘there is a girl I like but we don’t go out or anything.’ It made me embarrassed to talk about it, and actually, I had a lot of fun on road patrol and playing yo-yo.

  ‘Daddy, I was talking to my friend Ray today and I told him a little bit about the cloudbuster. That’s okay, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but you must be careful not to say too much.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t tell him about the flying saucers or anything. We just talked about making rain and stuff. His dad works on farms and since it doesn’t rain here, he has to go far away to get work.’

  ‘Ja. That is interesting, because I think we shall be able to bring rain to Tucson, finally, and break the drought. Then your friend’s father wouldn’t have to go away.’

  ‘And maybe Ray could come and be a cosmic engineer with us.’

  Daddy smiled and leaned back while the waitress came with our plates and served the food. She leaned very close to me and winked at me. I smiled and looked away.

  ‘Will there be anything else?’ She smiled at us.

  Daddy said no, and she said, ‘Well, if you need anything, just let me know. I’ll be keeping an eye on you.’ She winked at me again and was gone.

  The swirling lights went around and around in the mirror over the organ.

  ‘Daddy, why is there a desert in the first place?’ I squeezed the lemon over my swordfish, and began eating.

  ‘At first I wasn’t sure,’ he said. ‘Driving out here I saw vegetation dying everywhere. It was clear that something was attacking the atmosphere. At first I just thought it was a natural phenomenon, much like dry spots in the human body, and that the cloudbuster, like the accumulator, could get it moving again. But then I began to wonder if it wasn’t the EAs that caused the desert. Now I think that fallout from the bombs they are testing makes DOR too. All the DOR from the EAs and the bombs is slowly killing the earth’s envelope of Orgone Energy.’

  ‘Is that why we always take rock samples and wood samples?’ ‘That’s very good, Peeps. Exactly. When the DOR became very concentrated, the rocks around Orgonon began to crumble. You remember we looked at the rocks on the observatory together and saw them crumble. That was just an example of how the healthy atmosphere is being destroyed.’

  ‘Do the EAs know about Orgone Energy?’

  ‘I think so. I think they use Orgone Energy for fuel. That would explain why they are silent and that silver-blue colour. It would also explain why they respond when we draw with the Orur.’

  Da
ddy had an experiment called Oranur. He put a radium needle in a big accumulator but something bad happened. Instead of making good energy, it made bad energy. It also made the needle very charged and sometimes we used it on the cloudbuster. It made the cloudbuster stronger.

  I squeezed more lemon on my swordfish. We ate for a while and then Daddy said, ‘Peeps, I know this is all a great deal for you to understand. If you ever become afraid or want to leave, tell me, and you can go back to Mummy. I know it is very difficult for you, for we are not only being attacked by the government, but now by flying saucers. You must be brave, sonny.’

  Daddy said things were building up to a big battle but I wasn’t scared. I was a sergeant in the Corps of Cosmic Engineers with sergeant’s stripes on my pith helmet and a qualified operator of the cloudbuster.

  ‘I’m not afraid, Daddy. I mean, the Air Force is on our side, isn’t it?’

  After Daddy began making reports to the Air Force about his work with the EAs, Air Force jets came over Orgonon a lot more, sometimes real close, sometimes far away.

  When they were high in the sky, they left long white vapour trails. After a while Daddy said he thought the Air Force was helping him by telling him where the DOR in the atmosphere was, because where the DOR was bad, the jet vapour trails disintegrated quickly, and when there was good Orgone Energy, they stayed for a long time.

  Daddy was really sure the Air Force knew and understood what he was doing, and on the way out West, Bill and I stopped at Wright Patterson Air Force Base to talk to a general about the flying saucers. But the general wouldn’t see him and he had to see someone else.

  ‘Ahem, ahem ahem,’ said Daddy, finishing his shrimp. ‘I think the Air Force understands, but for some reason they still can’t help. They seemed so interested in what we were doing at first and then all of a sudden there was nothing, even though their jets continued to fly over Orgonon. That sudden cutting off … it is very much like the Einstein affair … sometimes it all seems like a conspiracy. The changing attitude runs through everything like a red thread.’ He shook his head.

  ‘What Einstein thing?’

  He looked at me thoughtfully and shook his head again. ‘Nothing, Peeps, nothing. I was just thinking. Would you like some ice cream?’

  ‘Yup. Coffee and strawberry.’

  ‘Okay.’ He waved at the waitress. She came over and while Daddy ordered the ice cream I went over to the man on the organ sitting beneath the bright coloured lights. He was big and fat and smelled like a cigar. When I stood next to the organ he leaned over and winked at me.

  ‘Hey there, young fella,’ he said. ‘Is there a special song you’d like me to play?’

  I nodded. ‘Do you know the song from She Wore a Yellow Ribbon?’

  ‘I sure do. Why? Do you like that song?’

  ‘Yup,’ I said proudly. ‘I saw it five times and the fifth time I got in free.’

  ‘Well, in that case I’ll have to play it for you.’ He gave me a big grin and a slap on the back.

  In the mirror, Daddy looked at me and smiled. Then he nodded to the organ man and the organ man nodded back. I went back to the table and started eating ice cream and the organ man started playing ‘She Wore a Yellow Ribbon’.

  The ice cream was good. As I ate it I listened to the song and watched the organ lights spin through different colours onto the organ man. I thought about Toreano, my scout, and our cavalry fort at Orgonon. I had decided to leave Toreano in charge because it was too far for him to come to Arizona. It was fall and Toreano would be out riding his pony across the rainy fields, guarding Orgonon.

  The waitress came and sat down next to me in the booth. She put her arm around me and squeezed her breast into my shoulder. It felt good but I didn’t know what to do.

  ‘Do you like this song?’ she asked, squeezing.

  I nodded and scooped the last of the ice cream out of the dish. Daddy was watching us and smiling.

  ‘I bet you’re a good cowboy,’ she said. ‘And I bet you’re fast on the draw, aren’t you?’

  I nodded and she laughed, squeezing me again.

  ‘Well, if you ever need a good cowgirl, just let me know.’ She smiled at Daddy and slipped out of the booth, picking up the money Daddy had put on the check. Smiling at both of us, she said, ‘Thanks, now, and you come again,’ and went away. On the way out of the restaurant, we waved at the organist and as we got into the car, Daddy chuckled.

  ‘Do you know why that waitress was flirting with you?’ he asked.

  ‘Is it because she likes me?’

  ‘Well, of course she likes you,’ said Daddy, ‘but the real reason is that she wants to make love to me and she doesn’t know how to come out and say it. So she lets her love out on you.’

  ‘Oh.’ Daddy always knew what people were doing and what they were thinking. Once we were sitting in a restaurant and all of a sudden Daddy poked me in the ribs. He nodded to a couple sitting a few tables away with their backs to us. ‘In a minute,’ said Daddy, ‘that man will turn around and stare at me.’ Daddy looked back at his plate but I kept looking around the room as if I were not looking at anyone in particular and sure enough in a few seconds the man turned around very slowly and gave Daddy a long, mean look. When he turned back around, I whispered to Daddy, ‘How come you knew he would do that?’ And Daddy smiled. ‘A few minutes ago his wife was flirting with me, looking at me and smiling. As soon as I smiled back, she turned and said something to her husband. I am sure she said, “Turn around and look at that strange man who is staring at us,” because he did.’

  But I couldn’t figure out why the waitress was flirting with me, unless it was because she liked me.

  When we got home, I started to do some long division but it was hard and I felt like there might be an EA or something in the air, so I went outside and up on the observation platform.

  I stood there for a long time, switching from telescope to binoculars, looking for flying saucers. On really dark nights we could see the rings around Saturn and Jupiter’s moons and it was funny to watch them and then hear a coyote in the hills or a long train rumbling along towards Tucson. Sometimes we saw an EA to the southwest of Tucson. It was a pulsating red-and-green ball hovering in the sky. It came so regularly that we called it the ‘Southern Belle’. Sometimes it went back and forth, sometimes it got brighter and dimmer and sometimes it moved fast across the sky, dodging the draw of the cloudbuster.

  I was just about to go back downstairs to my long division when I saw it, hovering in the south. I watched it for a minute. It pulsated and glowed. Then I ran down to get Daddy.

  He was sitting in his workroom at a long desk, writing in one of his big red ledger books. It felt like a cavalry movie walking in and reporting.

  ‘Daddy, I spotted one. In the east. It looks pretty big. I think it’s the Southern Belle.’

  He pushed his chair back and stood up. ‘Let’s go and look.’ We both went up on the roof and Daddy looked at it for a long time through his binoculars. Ahem. AHEM ahem.

  ‘Peter, go downstairs and call Bill and Eva. Tell them to come over immediately. We are going to operate.’

  I raced downstairs and into the house. As soon as Bill answered, I said, ‘Bill, it’s an EA. Daddy says to come over right away. We’re going to operate.’

  When I got back upstairs, Daddy was looking through the telescope. ‘Here, look through. See if you can see. I can make out a thin cigar shape with little windows.’

  I looked through the telescope and focused it. It was bright, bright blue and glowing, but I couldn’t see the windows.

  ‘Do you see it?’

  ‘Yeah, but I can’t see the windows.’

  ‘Well, they are there. Run to the cloudbuster and make ready. Unplug all the pipes and pull them out to full length. I’ll be right there.’

  My boots pounded against the dry dirt. My jacket was open, and each time my arms went back the sides of the jacket flapped against me and the fringes sounded like rain. As soon as I go
t to the cloudbuster I jumped up on the platform and started unplugging. The pipes were like an old-fashioned telescope and had two more sections inside that pulled out. Bill and Eva drove up just as I pulled out the last pipe. They parked near the truck.

  Bill pulled his binoculars out of the case and put the strap over his neck. ‘Where is it?’ he asked.

  I pointed to it and Bill raised the glasses. He whistled.

  ‘Boy, it sure is something,’ he said, handing the glasses to Eva.

  She looked for a while and said, ‘I knew it would come. I felt bad all day and said to Bill that I thought there was something in the atmosphere.’

  We stood there waiting for Daddy to come, and I felt good and excited, as if we were about to do something adventurous and secret. I wished that Ray could see me, about ready to draw from a flying saucer. But he’d never believe it. He wouldn’t understand.

  Daddy came down the road with his big grey Stetson soft in the starlight.

  ‘Ah! You came quickly. Good! Let’s get to work.’

  Bill got up on the platform and the rest of us stood near the side of the truck. It wasn’t good to be too close for too long.

  Daddy said, ‘All right, Moise. Direct the pipes at the EA.’

  The little rubber plugs at the end of the pipes swung gently as Bill cranked the wheels around so that the pipes were pointing right at the cloudbuster. We waited. It didn’t do anything. Sometimes they went from side to side when we started drawing, other times they’d just get fainter and fainter as if they were on the end of some long yo-yo string being pulled back into the sky. Bill usually did the drawing but I did it too.