Machine Dreams

wanted to put Billy somewhere safe while things settled and time passed, but he couldn’t cooperate any longer. He’d thought carefully and wondered for weeks; this was the day to go ahead. Withdrawal from the University wasn’t difficult. He’d fill out the form and decide what to do next. At home they’d think it was the divorce, or Vietnam and the times, or Kato—or maybe they thought she was out of the picture.
Gone but not forgotten.
Whose phrase was that really, who first said it? The bus pulled at a crawl across crowded Stadium Bridge, a one-way wooden lane, and the Student Union was in sight.
    Yesterday he’d taken most of the money out of his checking account at a downtown bank—$400. Tuition at the state school was inexpensive, less than two hundred, but Jean must have paid nearly a thousand for room and board at the dorm. He’d get a job here or in Bellington and pay the rest before he went south, or into the army. The army. Supposedly the first few minutes of the lottery drawing in December were going to be broadcast on television. Just like TV, catch it on film up to about number 30.
    Well, numbers were pure if television wasn’t. Now it was a matter of numbers, published in a newspaper list. No more dodg’em plans or IS deferments: fuck up, drop your grades, and you’re gone. He’d know once and for all in December; he wouldn’t have to argue it out in his head. It was a joke, really. His birthday—today—written on a white plastic ball and bounced around in a machine. Exactly whose hand would touch the machine? Sometimes Billy dreamed about the lottery, a close-up interior view: hundreds of days of white balls tumbling in a black sphere, silent and very slow, moving as though in accordance with physical laws. A galaxy of identical white planets. No sun. Cold, charged planets, simple, symmetrical, named with months and numbers.
Nov. 1, no. 305 of 365.
Universe stops. Hand reaches in. Suddenly everything in color, and the black sphere turns midnight blue. Crazy dream. The black and white beginning, when the balls moved around and through each other slowly, must be a Bio I flash: all those films of microorganisms, bacteria, swimming shapes.
    Billy wasn’t worried about the lottery, he wasn’t hassled. The lottery was an ingenious system, better than the draft. Having your birthday picked early in the countdown was a completely coincidental happening, like being struck by lightning. Your birthday had been all those cakes and bicycles and new shirts: now pay up. The government could claim near innocence. Of course, they’d set up the system. Supposedly they’d set up the war, too, but Billy wasn’t sure. He didn’t know histories or politics—he didn’t need to know. Knowing wouldn’t change what was going to happen. It had no more to do with him than this bus ride, but maybe it would hurt him a lot worse. And it was two years.
    His roommate joked over beer and pretzels.
December 1
you’re going to see me drop acid and park in front of the tube in Towers Lounge, watch it all on the big screen.
Then, more seriously:
Look, Vietnam is practically over. Suppose we do get drafted, might not even go to Nam. Might go to Hawaii. Be fun. Surfboards.
That was DeCosto, the loony Italian from Scranton, Pa.
    Some of Billy’s friends had talked to draft counselors. Various tables were set up every weekend outside the Student Union: sorority and fraternity rush sign-ups ( GO GREEK ), Environment Club ski trip sign-ups ( PRAY FOR SNOW ), Mobilize Against Strip Mining sign-ups, Draft Counseling ( PLAN NOW ). DeCosto said he planned every Friday so he could get dates with older women on Saturday nights: most of the draft counselors were women grad students. They wore baggy clothes; they looked pale and studious in their wire-frame glasses, or they were clean and energetic, like campers. Occasionally the counselors were men, a hippie law student or a vet. The Vets were usually skinny, long-haired, never glossy. One guy sat there in a wheelchair at the side of the table. Always—in the milling of students, honking of traffic, barking of mutt dogs wearing bandannas—short, intense conversations took place at the draft-counseling tables. Billy never went near them. He would take his cue from the numbers. He thought he would. Numbers were his plan while the holding pattern held.
    The bus pulled up to the Student Union steps. Billy knew that General Studies students had to withdraw from the Dean of