Machine Dreams

went along with going to school because I didn’t want to cause trouble when everyone was upset anyway. But keeping on with that mistake isn’t going to help—”
    “With my mistakes?” she asked gently.
    “I don’t think you made a mistake. You did what you had todo. I just wish you’d understand—I did, too. I’m in a bind like yours, in a way.” He looked up at her, as though for help with words. “I guess that doesn’t make any sense.”
    “No, it does.” She looked at the floor and bent over to pick up a bit of fuzz from the carpet. Absently she held a blur of gold threads, her fingers touching lightly. “Lord,” she said, “I hope you haven’t given yourself a terrible birthday present.”
    “I don’t think I have.”
    She nodded. Across the gulf of the floor between them, her gaze was direct and quietly frightened. She looked more vulnerable than he’d ever seen her. Billy suddenly wondered if he’d ever sit across some room listening to his own kid and get scared.
    “It’s going to be all right,” he told his mother now. “Things will turn out.”
DECEMBER
    Billy picked his sister up at the courthouse the night of December 2nd. Near evening the day-long drizzle had turned to constant rain. There was no bus station anymore in Bellington, and Trailways let people off on Main Street at the courthouse steps. Billy drove up and saw Danner standing under the portico of the domed building, alone, hems of her jeans wet to the ankles, collar of her denim jacket turned up.
After all the money she spent on clothes in high school
, Jean had said as Billy left the house,
Danner dresses like a bum.
Danner had no raincoat, no umbrella, but she had a larger suitcase than was necessary for a visit of a few days. Billy got out of the car to help her, but before he could cross the street she was halfway to him, the rain drenching her. They threw the suitcase in the back seat and pulled both doors shut; then he handed her a towel.
    “You look drowned,” he told her as she dried her face. “I can’t believe you rode the bus to Bellington in a storm like this. They must have stopped at every little podunk on Route 20. No wonder it took three hours.”
    Danner laughed. “At least it wasn’t snow. The bus would have ended up in a drift in Peel Tree.”
    “You want to go down by Shinner’s and have a beer with Kato before we go home?”
    She looked up as Billy started the car, a little surprised. “Sure, I guess. You seeing Kato again since you came home?”
    “Some.” There were no cars on Main Street. Billy ran a red light and turned the corner down past the movie house. “Why didn’t you wait until the weekend to come home?”
    She threw the towel in the back seat. “I saw the lottery list this morning and I got the first bus that came through Bellington. I want to talk to you, Billy. Before we go inside.”
    Billy parked opposite the billiard room, then pointed across the street. “Take a look at Shinner’s new sign.” The long horizontal sign snapped lazily off and on behind the downward slant of the rain. BILLIARDS , it said in alternate hot pink and blue, waves of the colors rippling, muted in rain.
    “Big,” Danner said. “Not exactly classy, but very noticeable. Billy, can you turn the heat on?”
    Billy did. “All right, I want a beer. What do you want to tell me?”
    “Just hear me out, okay?” She looked down at her bare hands, her long hair dripping onto her jacket. With the heat on, Billy could smell the dampness on her, almost smell rain. She looked back up at him. “Billy, you’ve got to make some plans. You don’t have to let them send you over there.”
    “You mean Fort Knox? Basic training?”
    “You know what I mean, Billy. Don’t make fun of me. This is not funny.”
    “I’m not laughing, Danner.” The motor of the Camaro idled and the windshield wipers thwacked, regular as metronomes.
    “I’ve brought some money with me, a thousand dollars. And an address in Canada. Saturday you’re supposed to drive me back to the University. We’ll say you’re staying overnight with some school friends, and when we get to Montreal, we’ll phone and say where we are. I’ll stay a couple of days and take a bus back.”
    “Where did you get a thousand dollars?”
    “Emergency Student Loans.”
    “You got the money that fast, in one day?”
    “No. I applied last week, just in case.” She gazed out the windshield, then turned to him. “Oh God, please listen to