Machine Dreams

the rice paddies. He said to punch a peacenik for him.” Billy hit her playfully in the arm. “Maybe he meant you.”
    “Probably did. But he couldn’t be mad at me anymore. Someonetold me he’s engaged to a girl from Lynchburg.” She shook her head. “Just think, Riley wasn’t even drafted. He enlisted and thought he was heroic. I don’t think it takes much to sign yourself up as cannon fodder.”
    Light glanced off bright cars all around them. Horns honked. “That depends,” Billy said. “Might take about everything.”
    Danner was silent a moment. “I know. I didn’t mean that.” She clinched her hands, remembering a box of Riley’s letters she’d put away in her closet at home. Four years ago he’d been a freshman himself, at Lynchburg, and wrote her every day. “I just meant it was easier for Riley, in a way, to join the army than to do well at school. He skipped most of his classes and drank beer with his buddies.”
    “He’s not drinking much beer now.”
    “That’s what’s awful. If he could have just marched and drunk beer, the whole thing would have been fine.” She glanced at Billy. He had his hand on the stick shift, and she reached to touch his wrist. “Billy, I hope you’re going to keep your grades up. Maybe they won’t do the lottery and the deferments will stay.”
    They’d stopped at the last red light on High Street. Billy took his eyes from the road and looked at her. “You sound like Mom, except for the bit about deferments.”
    “I am Mom,” Danner said teasingly.
    Billy raised one eyebrow. “I wouldn’t tell Mitch if I were you, especially this weekend.”
    “No, I won’t.” She crossed her arms and leaned back in the bucket seat. Suddenly she was tired.
    “Mom went away this weekend, didn’t she?”
    “She and Gladys went up to see Aunt Jewel in Ohio. If Mom were going to be around for this, I wouldn’t even be going home.”
    Billy didn’t seem to be listening. “Christ, we’re out of that,” he said, accelerating and pulling onto the highway. “It takes half as long to get out of this traffic as it does to get to Bellington.” He rummaged in a box beside the driver’s seat. “Time to fire up the old tape deck. Now we’re going to cruise with Jimi Hendrix.” He clicked the 8-track into the player. “Hendrix is a vet. He jumped out of airplanes.”
    Hendrix’s “Star Spangled Banner” vibrated through the car as they left the emptying town behind. The Camaro moved fast and smoothly in the passing lane. Danner felt totally safe with Billy. She shut her eyes and heard the loud song: a translation into a language deciphered in darkness. How could anyone play an instrument like that? Even the silences between notes were full. The peals of the lone guitar were shaped like words, and each shrilled its own tremolo, a sound coming back and coming back.
    She slept dreamlessly, and when she woke they were in Bellington. She sat up slowly, disoriented. “What happened to Hendrix?”
    “Gone a long time ago,” Billy said. “I was tempted to drive to Myrtle Beach and surprise you, but instead we’re home.”
    They were driving up Quality Hill, and Danner saw red-tipped leaves in the crowns of the overhanging oaks. Lower, greener limbs moved slightly upward as cars passed a few feet under them. The street was pretty and made her sad. “You want to go to the ocean? Maybe we should.”
    “It’s not too late. We could drive as far as the car will go, then get out and walk until we see surf.”
    “Sounds good.”
    He turned onto their street. Mitch’s big Chevrolet was parked in front of the house, the trunk open. Inside were two big cardboard boxes, neatly taped shut, and a set of golf clubs.
    “I never knew he had golf clubs,” Danner said softly.
    Billy pulled up at the house. A 1950s torch song spilled out of the radio. He put the car in neutral and they sat still, the engine idling.
    Danner gazed up at the brick house. Her father must have packed his clothes that morning. How long had it taken? Two hours? Tomorrow Billy would borrow a pickup from a friend and move Mitch’s desk and file cabinet out of the basement to a bedroom in Bess’s house.
    “We may as well go in,” Billy said. He turned the ignition off. In front of them the blacktopped street was sunny and well kept. The lawns of the houses were trimmed. Everything was in place.
    Danner turned and looked at her brother. “This weekend won’t always matter the way it does