A Book of Dreams Read online

  ‘I feel terrible,’ said Eva. ‘I can feel it reacting already. I get that salty taste in my mouth.’

  ‘Ja, I feel it too,’ said Daddy. ‘Do you feel anything, Moise?’ ‘Mmhmm,’ said Bill, ‘I can feel it starting in my stomach a bit.’

  ‘I’ve got a kind of choking feeling in my throat,’ I said.

  Ahem. AHEM ahem. Daddy took off his hat and pushed his hand through his long silvery hair. ‘I wish I knew if this was an attack or if they are just observing Earth and don’t know what they are doing.’

  We all watched the EA, sparkling blue, growing brighter, then dimmer, then bright again.

  After a while, Daddy said, ‘Pete.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know where the Orur needle is kept, ja? Go and get it. Make sure you carry it very carefully. There is a flashlight in the truck.’

  It was scary, walking down past the shadowy, dark cactus, but the flashlight helped. The needle was hidden under a little pile of rocks in a dry riverbed. I took a couple of rocks off and shone the light against the dull lead container. The needle was inside, tied to a string that hung over the side. I picked up the end of the string and holding it as far in front of me as I could, I went back to the cloudbuster.

  ‘Here it is,’ I said.

  ‘Good,’ said Daddy. ‘Now hand it carefully to Moise. Ja. Good.’ There was another lead bottle right at the base of the cloudbuster where the metal cables came up to the pipes.

  ‘How do you feel?’ asked Daddy. Bill said he was okay but Eva said she had to go back to the house. She was supersensitive to Orurizing.

  Bill kept the cloudbuster trained on the EA but it didn’t go away. I was itching to get up and try it because I had an idea that might work.

  ‘Daddy, can I relieve Bill?’

  ‘Ja, it might be good. He has been up there a long time. Take a rest, Moise.’

  I climbed on the truck and stood next to Bill for a minute, feeling like John Wayne or Clark Gable or somebody taking the controls from Robert Mitchum or William Holden.

  ‘How is she going?’ I asked.

  Bill kept his eye on the EA. ‘Well, I’m just holding pretty steady on her.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Bill got down with Daddy and they both stood next to the cloudbuster with their binoculars trained on the EA. I had one hand on each wheel, one for making the pipes go up and one for making them go down.

  ‘Moise,’ said Daddy, ‘please go to the car and get the Geiger counter. I want to see how much the count has risen with the EA.’

  While Bill went for the Geiger counter, I tried my idea. I figured that if the cloudbuster could sort of take the energy away or weaken it, I could make the EA sort of fall by drawing underneath it and to either side of it, weakening the energy around it. So I moved the cloudbuster slowly from one side of the EA to the other. I let it draw on the right side for a while and then dipped slowly under it like a baby’s cradle on a yo-yo and rubbed back and forth at the sky beneath it before coming back up the other side. I let the cloudbuster Orurize on either side.

  Bill came back with the Geiger counter and held his flashlight over the dial while Daddy flicked the switches.

  ‘Incredible,’ said Daddy. ‘Such a high count cannot come only from the Orur. It can come only from the EA or the atmosphere. It is almost as if we are directly in the path of the exhaust from the EA. Maybe it is the exhaust which is causing the desert, sucking away all the moisture.’

  Bill agreed. ‘It seems consistent with your theory that Orgone Energy could neutralize fallout in a nuclear attack. If the EA’s exhaust is DOR, just like fallout creates DOR, then the cloudbuster could be the answer to the desert and the dying atmosphere.’

  ‘Ja. The atmosphere is always so clear and fresh after Orurizing. If we can stop the disintegration of the atmosphere and bring rain over from the Pacific we will break the drought and prove our point. Then the Air Force will understand. But look! The count has gone way down! Where is the EA?’

  They looked up at the sky. ‘Why, it’s gone,’ said Bill, searching the horizon with his binoculars.

  I grinned. My idea had worked.

  ‘What are you doing with the cloudbuster?’ asked Daddy. ‘I’ve been doing this. Watch.’ I moved the cloudbuster back and forth and up and down, checking through the sighting scope. Sure enough, the EA was just a faint glimmer and seemed to be getting smaller and smaller as if it was being sucked up by the sky.

  When it was gone and we were putting the pipes back together, Daddy said, ‘That was very good, Peeps, very good. You are a real good little soldier because you have discovered a new way to disable the EAs. I am very proud of you.’

  After I put the needle away in the dry riverbed and Bill had finished putting the rubber stoppers in the cloudbuster, we all walked back to the house together. I walked between Bill and Daddy. Daddy had his hand around my shoulder.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we are really engaged in a cosmic war. Peeps, you must be very brave and very proud, for we are the first human beings to engage in a battle to the death with spaceships. We know now that they are destroying our atmosphere, perhaps by drawing off Orgone Energy as fuel, or by emitting DOR as exhaust. Either way, we are the only ones who understand what they are doing to the atmosphere and we can fight them on their own ground. The Air Force can only issue misleading reports about the flying saucers and chase after them helplessly, while we are dealing with them functionally, with Orgone Energy. It is fighting fire with fire and that is why we are going to win. We are dealing with the knowledge of the future.’ He patted my shoulder. ‘And you, Peeps, may be the first of that generation of children of the future. Here, at the age of eleven you have already disabled a flying saucer using cosmic Orgone Energy. Quite a feat.’

  I was proud and happy as we walked back and stayed outside with Bill while Daddy went inside to get Eva. We stood there for a minute or two, looking at the sky and then Bill said, ‘You did a real good job, Peter. You really are a pretty good soldier. In fact—’ he grinned – ‘I guess that after tonight, you’d better change those sergeants’ stripes to lieutenants’ bars. I think you’ve earned it.’

  I was so happy I didn’t know what to say. Bill smiled at me as if he knew how happy I was. When Eva came out and they got in the car, he leaned out of the window as the car started down the drive.

  ‘Goodnight, Lieutenant,’ he said. We saluted.

  It felt good. I was proud and happy. I had disabled a flying saucer and was in the Cosmic Engineers. And it was okay if a battle came with the spaceships or even the government because I was going to be a brave soldier and I had just gotten a promotion.

  I wished Toreano were there to see me.

  Inside, Daddy was at his desk, writing in his big red notebook. His pen scratched loudly. The record player was playing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. I sat down on the couch and listened for a while.

  ‘I feel a lot better after Orurizing,’ I said.

  ‘Ja,’ said Daddy.

  I sat back on the couch and let the music pick me up and carry me.

  ‘Daddy, remember we talked about getting uniforms?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I think we ought to get blue ones. And maybe they could have white belts, like they have on road patrol.’ If I had brought my belt home, I could have worn it on the cloudbuster.

  Daddy was humming and nodding with the music. He looked at me and then he looked up.

  ‘Ja. And a nice flag, too. I think a blue flag with the spinning wave emblazoned in white. For the sky and the stars.’

  ‘I like green too. Maybe we could make it green and blue. Green for the grass we’re going to make.’

  I closed my eyes and my mind was joined with Daddy’s and Beethoven’s and we were all seeing the same thing: a great plain with bold white clouds climbing the sky like mighty stallions, and coming through the clouds on beams of sunlight was the Army of Cosmic Engineers marching straight, forward, and proud beneath tall flags
snapping in the wind, marching proudly in smart blue uniforms with hats with shiny brims and shiny white belts. First, Daddy – the General – and then Bill and Eva and me, and Tom and the others, maybe even Ray could be one of us and we would march onward to victory over the EAs and the FDA.

  ‘And silk, so it would wave nicely in the wind.’

  ‘Our wind.’

  ‘Ja, sonny, our wind.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  Judge me, O God, and plead my cause against an ungodly nation: O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man. For thou art the God of my strength: Why dost thou cast me off? Why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? O send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles.

  PSALM 43

  ‘MONSIEUR?’

  Breathing woke me up slowly. Everything else was numb except this tingling where the breathing came in and out, louder and louder. Then there was another person breathing too and I tried to remember what was familiar because something had already happened that I didn’t remember again.

  ‘Monsieur? Monsieur?’ I shook my head. The voice tumbled out of the breathing. ‘Monsieur?’ When I opened my eyes the doctor was looking at me, talking to me in French in a French hospital … but there was another hospital, from the dream….

  The doctor told me that they had not succeeded in getting my shoulder back in its socket. He said they would have to give me gas again and I was frightened because that other dream in another hospital was almost there in my mind. It was something about the shoulder or the arm, the same arm. The doctor said it was a very bad dislocation.

  ‘Une luxation très sévère,’ he said.

  ‘Ipswich,’ I said.

  ‘Comment?’

  I shook my head. The doctor smiled and said they would have to give me gas again but the hospital was almost there. It was in Ipswich. The nurse was getting the mask ready but I couldn’t remember. The hospital’s crazy darkness flitted against my head. I’ve got to remember what it was in that dream because there was another dream. The nurse brought the mask close to my face. It was a crazy summer in England. I raced old rickety bicycles all summer up and down the paths of a huge old mental hospital, dodging patients on the paths. Everybody said I was going to crash….

  ‘Attendez!’ I shouted. The doctor and nurse looked astonished. It was after I lived in Arizona. I left Arizona and went to live with my mother. In the summer of 1956 she wanted to take me to England to see her relatives but I wasn’t sure I wanted to go. I wanted to stay with my father because something bad was going to happen, but I ended up going. It was a miserable summer. I spent my time being miserable and breaking things. I broke, by accident, a large quantity of my aunt’s fine china. On a trip to Scotland I broke, by accident, my eyeglasses, and spent the entire trip sulking beneath a raincoat. Finally, shortly before we returned to America where I was to spend the rest of the summer with my father at Orgonon, we spent a few days in Ipswich, where my uncle worked as a resident psychiatrist in a mental hospital. Riding a bicycle across the insane asylum grounds like a maniac, I broke, by accident, my right arm. When they took me to the hospital, they gave me gas.

  THERE WAS ANOTHER DREAM!

  ‘The dream!’ I shouted. I sat up and looked at the doctor and nurses. They looked bewildered. ‘I gotta find that dream!’ I shouted. ‘I’m gonna get it!’

  In broken French I explained to the doctor that I would give him a signal with my hand when to start working on the shoulder. I needed time to get into the gas, into the dream, and really get knocked out. I told the doctor not to start until I gave him the signal. He shrugged and the others nodded.

  ‘Okay, allons-y,’ I said.

  The nurse brought the mask up slowly and I raised my left hand, forefinger extended. I had to remember everything, absolutely everything that happened that summer after I broke my arm. The mask was snug against my face. The hissing began and I breathed deeply, sucking the gas to get the dream. Heavy, soft, and full, filling me like an enormous breast, it came steadily, and through the hissing I remembered the huge hospital spreading out around me. Stop! Wait! This is scary! This is a mental hospital! I tried to shout but already the rainy brick dark English hospital was so heavy it melted my mouth and it began to breathe too, and grew bigger and bigger, expanding like a great balloon filling me and it was going to burst. All the bricks were going to tumble over me, overtaking and drowning me like the grey ocean of numb needles when I was a baby boy in Maine wearing blue pyjamas with a tiny black dot that got bigger and bigger and bigger, and was all black.

  Streams of water went like rivers through the white hair on Daddy’s chest and made his cloudy white hair come down around his face so it was holding up his cheeks as he smiled.

  I smiled back and turned around underneath the shower, letting it pour right on top of my head and then drip all over me.

  Standing in the cool water in the sun on the observatory roof we could see all the way to Mount Washington and all across Orgonon past the lake and past Burnham Hill way up to Saddleback. I liked the rooftop shower.

  I was happy to be back at Orgonon after an awful summer in England. It made me feel good to stand on the observatory roof and see it again. The big field in front of the observatory was full of waving grass all the way to the bottom. When I was younger the trees were lower and you could see the laboratory roof at the bottom of the hill but now you just have to know it is there because the road up to it from the Badger Road is there. Badger Road runs through the fields of Orgonon down to the main road. But before the main road is the turn-off to our cabin, the lower cabin with a red roof, but you can only barely see it because the trees have gotten older around it too, and made the path from the cabin to the lake darker.

  Orgonon is so big that if I stretch my arms out in the sunlight, everything that is inside my arms from the observatory to the lake is ours.

  After Daddy turned off the shower, it was quiet except for water dripping through the wet boards onto the gravel roof and, in the trees, birds. The gravel hurt my feet a little as I walked to the edge of the roof. It wasn’t like when I was younger and went barefoot and had tough feet.

  ‘Be careful at the edge,’ said Daddy.

  ‘I will. I just wanted to get a better look at the field. Look how blue the lake is. There is a lot of Orgone today.’ I was getting pretty good at observing.

  ‘Yes, it is very charged.’ He wiped himself off with a big bath towel except for where his baggy underpants dripped. He never went naked. But I did all the time and all over me shiny drops of water sparkled in the sun like golden medals.

  Looking down into the fields I could see Toreano leading the troops on manoeuvres. Ever since I got back from England, we’d been getting ready. Daddy said the agents might come any day.

  ‘Daddy, can we shoot?’ The cast had only been off for a few days and I wanted to make sure I could still shoot straight. The accumulator helped my arm get. better fast so my arm felt pretty strong.

  ‘Yes, if you would like to.’

  ‘Can I shoot the .45?’

  ‘No, you shoot your rifle. I’ll use the .45.’

  ‘When will I be able to use the .45?’

  ‘You will be able to use it soon.’

  We went downstairs to get dressed and then I went into the little room next to the study where Daddy kept the guns. My rifle was a Winchester carbine .32–.20 and its serial number was 906608. It was patented in 1864 and James Stewart had one like it in the movie where his saddle had a bell, only his had a ring on the side. At first I just had a BB gun and once when I was playing with it over at Tom’s I pulled the cock lever open and pulled the trigger. The lever shot back and cut my finger almost off. There was a lot of blood but the accumulator healed it fast but I think I got a nerve because whenever I hit the finger against something it buzzes inside. Then when I was about seven or eight Daddy got me a .22 special. It was a nice gun but it backfired. So before we went to
Tucson we went to Pearson’s in Farmington and got the .32–.20.

  I kept it in the rack with Daddy’s other guns. He had a double-barrel 12-gauge shotgun with a .38–.55 Winchester underneath it that I could hardly lift, a Mannlicher and a Mauser. They were 8- or 9-millimetre guns that I couldn’t shoot yet. Then there was a .32 special that he gave to Bill just in case, and hanging in the holster, the .45.

  Daddy had dressed in his khaki pants and was waiting for me on the porch, looking through binoculars, checking out the atmosphere.

  ‘Go ahead,’ he said.

  I put three shells in the magazine and walked up to the edge of the railing. Daddy stood back by the big window. We’re always careful. Daddy told me never to point a gun at anyone because it is not good.

  The sound of the metal sliding around the chamber and the bullet slipping in was just like a western. Click! I brought the lever up and brought the sights into line over the target just like Daddy had showed me with his fingers so that the pointer at the end of the barrel came right into the V. He showed me with his fingers. It was like at school one day a girl made a V with her fingers and poked another finger into the V. ‘What does it mean?’ she said. I said I didn’t know and she said it was fuck.

  Bang!

  In comics the guns go krang. They go pow pow or krang. Once I saw a war comic and the guns went budda budda budda and wham. My rifle was actually more like krang.

  ‘Very good,’ said Daddy, lowering his binoculars. ‘Almost bullseye. Try again.’ From Saddleback the echo came back like the sound of a lot of rain falling all at once.

  I turned back to the railing and cocked the rifle. The spent shell fell on the gravel. The target came in front of the sights. Fuck was bad because it was without love. War wasn’t love either but it was okay against the communists.

  Krang!