A Book of Dreams Page 6

  ‘What about you? Are you stayin’ here?’

  ‘Yes. Bill is supposed to come too and I have to tell him to go up to the hill too. And then if the agents come back, I’m supposed to stop them here and call on the phone.’

  The gear-shift lever fell into first under Tom’s hand.

  ‘Okay. Now you be careful.’

  ‘Okay, Tom.’

  He let the clutch out and started up the hill. I walked into the road and watched the tailgate disappear up the first little hill in the woods and walked the rest of the way across the road in between the barn and the tractor shed to the hard, mossy dirt behind. My penis was white in my hand as I spread my legs to pee. The foreskin was closed all the way down and when the pee came out, it had to find a way out in a ripply yellow line into the dirt. I might have been peeing on Experiment 20. They buried it here years ago, maybe to let it be near the earth or something. Experiment 20 – I used to call it X X – was very important. For a long time, when people were still here they stood next to the big busy tables in the lab with microscopes, holding glass bottles up in the air. Everybody talked about the experiment for a long time and then one day they all walked out here and planted it, in their white coats standing in the woods. I watched it from my treehouse.

  I shook off the last drops, put it back, and went out across the grass to the cloudbuster platform near the lab. We had lots of cloudbusters, some on trucks and some on platforms. One was at the lab and there were two up at the observatory. That way, we could make big operations with a lot of them, like an army.

  Up on the platform was an equipment box that Tom built. He built a lot of things. Inside it were some rocks and a folded piece of paper. It was an old map I had made, showing how to make rain.

  When there is a big drawing we use more than one cloudbuster and have a special system to tell which direction to draw from, since the cloudbusters are far apart. We worked it out with whistles. My metal whistle with the rawhide necklace is the loudest so I usually stay with Daddy and relay his commands. One blast is north; three long blasts means west. Four is south because we don’t use it very often, and three short ones means east. Two is Zenith. Zenith means pipes straight up in the air but it sounds like God or a place in California. It is like a gathering place. After drawing for a few minutes, Zenith is like pulling in the drawstring on my striped marble bag and holding the sky together. Once it is in the bag you can loosen it up again and do things with wind and clouds and energy.

  Sometimes we punch holes in the clouds and sometimes we bring clouds together. Sometimes when it is a bad day we make it move and sometimes we just play and catch the wind. Once there was a big hurricane coming. The radio said it was very dangerous because it was heading right for the Maine coast. We all went out and operated and the hurricane went away. The man on the radio said it was very strange how all of a sudden the hurricane just started swerving out into the ocean. We were all proud. Daddy said we were men of the future.

  He wrote a letter to the Air Force about it, just like he did for the flying saucers, and to the Weather Bureau. But they never answered. He said it was part of the conspiracy. The conspiracy was that the Communists and Hoodlums in Government – HIGs – were out to get us, but they can’t do it in the open because they are weasels. The conspiracy is that President Eisenhower and the Air Force are on our side and they know what is happening but can’t help. Or else they are all against us and that is why they are coming today.

  That is why I have to be a good soldier. Daddy was in the Austrian Army and Bill was in the Navy. Now Bill is a major and I’m a lieutenant in the Corps of Cosmic Engineers. Daddy is the general. In my other outfit, though, I’m Lieutenant Cohill from She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.

  Toreano rode up with a dispatch that Bill was coming, so I went back to the lab and waited. His green station wagon came up the road. He turned up the drive and when he got close I stood to attention and saluted. He leaned over to the window as he drove past and threw a salute back at me.

  ‘Good luck, Lieutenant!’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  Before going back into the lab I jumped off the porch and went out into the grass. I faced the forest and saluted.

  ‘All right, men, this is going to be a tough job.’ The officers and sergeants sat tall in their saddles, a straight line in front of the trees. Dry poplar leaves clattered overhead and the breeze made their yellow scarves wave too. ‘I want you all to be brave and carry on like good soldiers. I don’t know what is going to happen today but I want you to be ready at all times. We can’t let the general down. Take your posts. Dismissed.’

  Back inside the lab I walked all the way to the end of the big room to the telephone and looked out of the window. It was all quiet except for the loud cricket that buzzes sometimes. Actually the cricket was an Indian scout. Crows cawed in the trees.

  On the table next to the telephone all covered with dust was an old army-green telescope. I used to play with it all the time when the lab was open because it had a dial on top that changed the picture into different colours. Daddy used it to watch Orgone Energy streaming across the fields. I looked down into it and it turned Orgonon into a neat rectangle, like a sharp new postcard at the drugstore. The road came out of the trees in the upper right-hand corner above the apple orchard. It ran across the picture, under the red lower cabin roof and across the turn-off to the lab. Click. It was yellow, bright yellow as if the sun came down and lay over everything. Click. All green and dark, like a dreamnight. Click. Bright red, like a red fire on the trees, the road, even our already red roof. Click. Natural. So real and sharp it is just like a new postcard with green grass and blue sky and dark mountains, nothing moving except the black car coming out of the upper corner and moving slowly down the road, throwing sparks of light at me from the roof.

  I couldn’t breathe. The dial clicked slowly through red, yellow, green. Each time there was a black place before the new colour, making the car stop for a second. I turned faster and faster because if I turned the dial fast enough it would stop the car and send it backward, blue into the yellow grass and red forest.

  But the car was shiny black and slowed down in front of the lab in a green field of red dust.

  Dust was still settling on the shiny black hood as I came out the door, squinting in the sunlight. There were three men in the car: two in front and one in back. They wore shiny thin neckties and white shirts and dark suits. Their faces were shiny and their eyes weren’t good. The man next to the driver leaned out the window. He stretched his hand out to me. In it was a little black leather wallet with a shiny badge in it. The man said he was a United States marshal.

  ‘These other men are Food and Drug Administration agents. We’d like to see Dr Reich.’

  I looked into the window. Holding my teeth together made me braver and look more like Gary Cooper or somebody. The agents didn’t move. The one in the back nodded. I straightened up and looked at the marshal. His suit was lumpy. Maybe he had a gun next to his armpit. It would smell bad. I just kept looking at the men without answering. Finally, the marshal said, ‘Uh, we called.’

  ‘Okay, but you’ll have to wait until I go in and call. It’s by appointment only, you know.’

  ‘Yes. Well, uh, like I say, we called. I think the doctor is expecting us.’

  ‘Well, I still have to call to tell him you are here. It will just take a minute.’

  The marshal nodded.

  Trying not to run, I turned and went back into the lab. I had to be calm and slow. My hand touched every nail in the aluminium moulding on every table as I walked through the lab to the telephone, looking back to watch the black car. And brave. The sun was a yellow dot on the black car trunk. The men were talking. One of them turned around and looked out of the window at the lab.

  I held the receiver down with one hand and cranked with the other: two longs and a short, two longs and a short. Then I picked up the receiver. It shook, so I squeezed it harder. Daddy picked up in the observator
y.

  ‘Ja. Pete?’

  ‘Daddy, they’re here. One is a US marshal and the two others are—’

  ‘Ja, I know. Now tell them—’

  Outside, the sun started to slip off the trunk of the black car. The car was rolling. It couldn’t be rolling uphill. Daddy’s voice squiggled and the sun dropped all the way off the car into swirls of dust and tears.

  ‘Daddy! They didn’t wait!’

  Tears tangled my words, making the receiver wet and shiny. The car disappeared around the side of the lab up the hill. ‘Daddy! They’re coming up! OH DADDY OH GOD THEY DIDN’T WAIT. THEY’RE COMING UP DADDY THEY’RE COMING UP!’

  The screen door slammed before the receiver hit the floor. Grass was already whipping my legs as I ran up the hill. The whole field was swimming and I cried uunnh each time I breathed out and it made it easier to run uphill.

  Everett Quimby said if you run with your hands open you could go faster so my hands were wide open, going back and forth like a train all the way up the hill, like a train running. Because if I ran fast enough, maybe I could beat them to the top of the hill and warn Daddy. What did they want? What did they want? Why did they always make us unhappy? If I just watched my palms running back and forth uunnh like a train, it would go faster than if I kept watching the top of the hill for the observatory to start coming out. The hands went faster and then they went slower with uunnhs. I walked for a minute almost at the top. Stopped. There was no sound of cars and you could always tell just where a car was on the hill by the noise it made, climbing and going around corners.

  Uunnh I started to run again and when I got to the top, all I heard was my breathing, salt at the corners of my mouth. I ran up the side of the porch and across the front. The black car was parked in the lot with the pickup and Bill’s car. Daddy’s car was in the garage. Up the last thin steps to the door I ran and then tried to stop the hard breathing and uunnhs to listen.

  There was no noise. If they had guns … With silencers I wouldn’t have heard any shots.

  Quietly on the red rug on the steps I went upstairs, listening at the first landing and then going all the way to the top, looking into the study. Daddy was sitting at his desk. The three men were standing in front of the desk with their backs to me. Tom and Bill were by the window. Daddy had on his red-and-black checked shirt and his pens were shiny in the pocket next to his heart.

  I hid behind the double doors right underneath the photograph of two hands and the energy field. You can feel Orgone if you hold your palms apart and make them go in and out. I sniffed and wiped my nose.

  Daddy looked in between the men and saw me. He nodded and motioned for me to come in. I ran across the carpet to Daddy.

  The men turned to look as I ran past them and stood next to Daddy behind the desk. The men’s ties were shiny and their mouths moved but it didn’t look like their mouths were saying the same words I heard.

  ‘That’s just what we were told to do, Doctor…. Uh, you sure you want the boy here?’

  My back stiffened and I bit my lower lip to stop it from moving.

  ‘Yes. That is all right. Go ahead,’ said Daddy. I put my hand on the back of his chair.

  The man talking was the marshal. His hair was short and close to his head. The corners of his jaw stuck out close to his ears. The other two men looked at him and then at Daddy, with their hands behind their backs.

  ‘Well, Doctor, the orders say that it is supposed to be done today, right here at Orgy-non. I’m sorry, Doctor.’

  ‘Well, don’t be sorry. We must all follow our orders, right?’

  The marshal tried to smile. ‘Yup, that’s right, Doctor.’

  ‘So. How is it to be done?’ Daddy had a pencil in his hand. He hit the eraser against the table and slid his forefinger and thumb down the pencil, grabbed the eraser, flipped the pencil over and hit the point of the pencil against the table. Tic. Then he slid his fingers down to the point and did it again. Toc. He did it again and again. ‘Shall we use our bare hands?’ He smiled and turned to Tom and Bill. Bill laughed and nodded. Tom smiled and shuffled his feet. The two men cleared their throats and watched the pencil go up and down.

  ‘Well, Doctor, I’m sure we can find something. You must have hammers, picks, saws, axes….’

  I could feel the glow from Daddy’s head. Around his ears it was redder and I knew he was looking at them very hard because one by one their eyes dropped and they shuffled their feet. The pencil went up and down, making a soft noise on the desk. Nobody said a word. The marshal looked back and tried to smile but then the smile went away and he watched the pencil. Daddy was warm. He smelled like a baby. His red shirt moved with his breathing as he looked at the men.

  Sometimes he showed me the way crazy people look. He would suddenly stop and let his face sag and his eyes get dim. His eyes would look off and I would stand in front of them and wave but he wouldn’t even blink. It was scary and I always yelled, ‘Stop, Daddy, stop!’ Then when he stopped, he smiled and said that that is a sign people have gone crazy when their eyes are dim and don’t move. That is why we always do eye exercises. When he is angry his face drops and his eyes drill into you. His whole face gets red and his eyes burn and make you hot, like a fire. He said the only colour painters can’t paint is the colour of a dying fire.

  The pencil went toc against the desk and the clock over the fireplace went tic and sometimes they went tic together toc. Finally, after a long time, Daddy said; ‘Mr Ross, take Peter and go to the lab. Start dismantling the accumulators. Get some axes out.’ The pencil stopped but his eyes didn’t move. The men still watched the pencil.

  Tom nodded. ‘Okay, Doctor.’ He looked at me and nodded to the door. Daddy turned to me. His eyes said, ‘Be brave.’

  The side of the truck was hot against my arm but I could bear it.

  When we got to the lab we parked the truck and went into the barn.

  ‘You know where the screwdrivers are, Pete. Why don’t you get a couple?’

  He pulled shiny two-bladed axes off the wall while I went to the tool box and got some screwdrivers with clear yellow handles. I got my red-handled screwdriver out of my toolbox and stuck them all in my back pocket and followed Tom out the door.

  Tom spread three axes out on the tailgate of the pickup. They glinted. The blade on my axe was smaller because we used it to cut brush in winter and it had been sharpened so much that the blade just got littler and littler. The handle had tape around it at the top because once when I was learning how to swing it, I hit the handle against the tree instead of the blade and it shivered all the way down, like when you hit a baseball with the thin part of the bat. Tom put black tape around the top part so it was okay.

  There is a special way to swing an axe that Tom taught me and on this axe it was even easier because Tom said he used my axe for years and years before he gave it to me and the handle was darker and smoother than the other axes and it smelled good.

  Tom looked at me from the lab porch.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  He put a tall glass jar on one of the tables and started unscrewing, dropping the screws into the jar.

  Tom could unscrew faster than I could. He just flipped his wrist and they came out. I had to turn a lot harder but I could still do it pretty good.

  Screws clinked in the jar. Tom already had the door and a side off one accumulator. He leaned them against the wall.

  Car noises came through the window. First, Daddy’s car and then the agent’s and Bill’s. They all got out and walked to the lab. All their shadows made the doorway darker.

  Bill came over, pulled a screwdriver out of my back pocket, and helped unscrew. The hardest part was reaching the high hinges, especially if you wanted to watch the men at the same time. I wished I had hidden my gun in case they tried something. The hinges were like silver butterflies holding onto the pale yellow corners of the accumulator. After the screws came out they fluttered into my hand and when I had a whole bunch I took them over to
the jar. Everyone was so quiet I was scared.

  The three men were standing by the green telescope, looking out of the windows. One of them was writing in a black book. Daddy was walking around, checking boxes and watching us. Tom looked at him.

  ‘Doctor, where do you want us to take them?’

  The men looked up.

  Daddy said, ‘Well, gentlemen, do your orders say anything about where to do it?’

  ‘Uh, no, Doctor.’

  ‘So.’ Daddy walked out onto the porch and looked out across the meadow towards the cloudbuster. Then he turned and looked the other way into the sun. The road forked. The tar part went up the hill and turned right towards the observatory. The other part was the tractor road that Tom uses to get to the back field. I like mowing with Tom except once I fell off. The sun was shining on the grassy place where the two roads made a V. ‘Ahem. AHEM ahem. Mr Ross?’

  ‘Yes, Doctor.’ Tom went onto the porch, dropping a handful of screws into the jar along the way. The jar was almost full. They stood on the porch for a minute then Daddy pointed to the hospital field and they came back in.

  Tom said, ‘Come on, Pete.’

  He grabbed the side of an accumulator and started out the door. I grabbed a top and followed him. Bill stayed in the lab, watching the men. We walked up the road lugging the pieces and then crossed onto the grass, where tractor tyres had worn the grass away. Tom walked down the tractor road a ways and then off into the little clearing between the two roads. He set his piece down in the middle of the ‘V’ between the road to the observatory and the road to the fields. I laid my top on top. On the way back we passed Bill, carrying more sides. Daddy was on the porch, waiting. The three men came out too, to watch the pile grow.

  Inside, two accumulators were left so I took my red screwdriver and started unscrewing them while Tom and Bill made more trips to the pile in the ‘V’ in the middle of the two roads, which got bigger and bigger. Then they helped me and the three of us finished the last accumulator and carried it outside together.