Machine Dreams

nearly empty and the swimming area frequented only by a country family or two. The men were present then: they were truckers between hauls, or miners or plant workers on night shift, or they were out of work. Never less than five or six kids, and the parents middle-aged on wool blankets. The kids wore shorts and T-shirts; the babies went naked. They brought big rubber intertubes and tires instead of toys. No radios, no plastic bottles of oil. There was little talk and easy silence; the kids could all swim and were usually obedient, and the older ones took care of the younger. Billy sat all day in the swoony heat. By four in the afternoon everyone was gone from the swimming area; he put away life jackets and guard poles, checked the bathrooms, picked up litter. He would lock up at five. Just before, he knelt by the river with a set of corked vials to take a water sample. The river was getting dirtier; mine drainage striped the rocks orange just a few miles up. In a year, twoyears, swimming would be officially disallowed. Billy held the vials to the sun, watched the water cloud, then wrote dates and acidity registration in the record book. The days smelled of pollen. Close insects sounded, faint stirrings, dollop of a fish breaking. Billy would dump the vials, rinse them, put them back in the case and shut the lid. He stood looking at the water and then went in, swimming underwater. He cleared the river to the opposite bank in five powerful strokes and long glides, surfaced, and moved back across with a regular butterfly stroke, hearing only the quick, flat impact of his limbs cutting water.
    Often on the way home he stopped at a small beer joint called Bartley’s. It was a peaceful red-neck bar not big enough for fights or dancing. The interior was just nine bar stools, the bar itself, and five square tables arranged across the slanted wood floor in front. A closet to the right of the bar held a stained toilet. The insulbricksided building had been some worker’s shanty house back in the days when there were lumber mills. Narrow secondary roads near the park were dotted with such houses, some of them fallen away to frames and inverted roofs, the struts pointing into air. Trees grew up through the floors where there was sun enough.
    At Bartley’s the sun was muted by brown paper blinds; the blinds were old and faded and strained the light to a dull gold. Unhurried conversations continued at the tables. The patrons were mostly men in their fifties or sixties who lived nearby in Hampton or Volga, rural settlements begun as mill towns along the river. Billy’s grandfather had built Hampton, had owned a mill. But the man, his mother’s father, had died when Jean was a girl; Hampton had died before he did. Even then, it must have been steamy in summer. Country near the State Park was brushy and still forested, valleys overhung by hills. The old air conditioner at Bartley’s wheezed over the entrance, and a small rotating fan, its face no bigger than a pie plate, stood on the bar. Billy drank one or two cold beers in tall Stroh’s glasses, and wondered about Kato with little urgency. He thought in terms of ‘getting rid of her,’ getting her out of his mind. But four years back, things referred to her. Summers, winters, high school, movie houses. His car reminded him of her. His friends reminded him. Girls he went out with now reminded him; even the best ones seemed coy andmannered. They were willing to different degrees but wanted something in exchange for their loyalty, their favors—some assurance. They all had plans, secretarial school or college, and they believed in their plans as though the future were cast in iron. His sister, Danner, was a little like that too, but Danner was smart enough it seemed reasonable she have plans. And she could veer off course suddenly. Most girls around Bellington didn’t. And to Billy, who’d been sleeping with Kato for nearly two years, the proceeding and backing off in parked cars, the lines drawn, the expectations, seemed a waste of time. He wouldn’t make any promises.
    Kato hadn’t needed promises. He guessed they might have slept together even sooner if he’d tried. Somehow his getting a car had started them off. He wasn’t the first; Kato told him candidly she’d been with another boy before, twice. She attached no judgments and neither did Billy. He took her to school every morning and took her home in the afternoon, except during football season, when he was