Machine Dreams

me. One way or the other, they’re going to fuck you up. Look, if you’re standing on a railroad track and a locomotive is coming closer, very fast, don’t you step off the track? Don’t you get the hell out of the way?”
    “Not until the last minute.” He looked away from her and switched off the wipers. Rain immediately runneled on the windshield, distorting the street to colors on a black shine.
    “You can’t wait, Billy. If you leave after you’re inducted, you’re AWOL, you’re a criminal. If you leave now, you’re a resister. A lot of people think resisters will be pardoned, maybe in just a few years.”
    “You mean the draft counselors at the University think so.”
    She didn’t miss a beat. “Draft counselors everywhere think so. But I didn’t get the address from them. A girl in my dorm has a sister in Montreal.”
    He smiled at her. Lighten it up. “A pretty sister?”
    But she looked at him, frustrated, fearful, her face open and naked, and bit her lips. “Please,” she said, “please think about this.”
    “What the fuck, Danner,” he said quietly, “don’t you know I’ve thought about it? I thought before I quit school and I’ve thought all month, selling trousers up there at Rossing’s. Hardly anyone comes into Rossing’s. I had time to think about it a lot.”
    Danner looked past his face at the billiards sign, but he knew she wasn’t seeing it. She was planning her next remark, some way to convince him.
    “Listen,” he said, “if it was possible to avoid the army, I would. But my number is nineteen. I’m not going to Canada for ten years, I’m not going to Canada at all. I decided I’d go with the numbers.”
    “Don’t be an idiot,” she said angrily. “They’re not your numbers.”
    “I don’t feel that way,” he said, raising his voice. “Things are in the cards. I could buy it right here in Bellington, crack up my car on the Winfield road, like that college kid did last weekend.”
    “That’s stupid reasoning,” she yelled back. “You don’t put yourself where bad things happen.”
    “Bad things can happen anywhere!” He caught himself then and sat back. “You don’t reason through these things. The best way to be lucky is to take what comes and not be a coward.” He looked silently into the rain. “I’m going to go. It’s in the cards.”
    “What cards?” She was almost whispering.
    “Everyone’s cards.” He looked over at her. “It’ll be different for you after I go.”
    “Jesus, I’m not worried about me.”
    Billy touched her hands and they were cold. He held both her hands hard between his. “The fuckers won’t do me in. I’ll stay off the ground if they send me, get into an air crew. I’ll keep my ass in the air.”
    “Great. Then you’ll have farther to fall.” Danner had slumped down in the seat beside him, and she moved her legs toward the heating vent.
    “Please,” he said, encircling her forearm with his hand, “take the money back to Student Loans, and don’t give me any more suggestions. Not about Canada and not about Nam. And don’t mope around all through Christmas. Weren’t you going to go to Florida for New Year’s with your pals? I want you to go ahead and go.”
    She looked away from him, her eyes wet.
    “Don’t be a pain,” he said gently. “You’re not the one with the number. It’s not your show.”
    “All right, all right. Let’s go have a beer.” She caught his arm as he turned off the ignition. “But if you change your mind, you’ll tell me.”
    “I will.” He opened the door of the car and the rain asserted its steady patter. “When we get inside, be sure to tell Shinner you like the sign.”
    The first heavy snow blanketed Bellington on Christmas Eve. Billy sat in the living room. He listened to his mother and Danner in the kitchen and gazed at the tree, a six-foot pine decked out in lights and ornaments and gold trim. The thing had been hell to get through the kitchen door and into the holder, since Danner wasn’tstrong enough to help much. Jean had swathed the metal holder with a wide length of hemmed red corduroy. Billy and Danner had marked the change silently; always before there had been a simple white bedsheet under the tree, to look like snow. But the dining room table was familiar, set with the white damask cloth, the silver service, the Havilland china. Billy knew the name because Jean had always referred to the white, gold-scalloped plates as
my mother’s