Machine Dreams

sixteen weeks training my ass?” His voice was soft and easy in the dark. “How was jail, anyway? I never asked you.”
    I heard him draw in, a sound like a calm gasp. “Not much fun,” I said, “but calling Mom long distance to get bail was worse.”
    A silence, then he exhaled as he passed me the joint. “Telling him was no picnic either. New Year’s Eve day, snowing like hell, and I went down to the house. We were in the kitchen with Bess, and I told him.” Billy tipped the bottle of beer to his mouth, his throat working in the amber dark of the car. He swallowed. “That man went through some changes. You know that blue and white tablecloth with the little squares? He sat there looking at the tablecloth, with his eyes so wet that tears ran down his face.” Billy raised his brows and looked at me. “Changes.”
    I sighed. The joint was gone and I put the roach in the ash tray. “Billy, if you get in trouble over there, you won’t be able to call home.” I leaned against the door on my side so I could see him.
    He pointed upward. “I’ll call the Big Guy.”
    “Do they have a Big Guy? They’re Buddhists. They have Buddha.”
    “Yeah. I believe someone mentioned Buddha at Fort Dix or somewhere.” He smiled. He looked younger with his hair shaved so close his head; I hadn’t seen him with such short hair sincejunior high. “Well,” he said slowly, “Buddha is a big guy, isn’t he? A short, fat, big guy. Besides, Danner, Big Guy is everywhere, like Santa Claus. Isn’t that what they always told us?”
    “But look what happened to Santa Claus.”
    “What happened to him?” Billy was laughing, stoned; we were both laughing.
    “He kind of disappeared, didn’t he?”
    “No, sister, he didn’t disappear. He just isn’t favoring you with his presence lately. He’s got urgent calls elsewhere.”
    “Urgent calls on the phantom phone. The air zone phone. The phone the faithful talk on.”
    He nodded, seriously, and passed me the beer. “That’s right, absolutely.”
    The beer bottle was cold, beautifully cold on such a balmy spring night. “You get in trouble, is that the phone you’ll call me on? Is the Big Guy going to get you through to me?”
    “Exactly,” Billy said. “Don’t call me, I’ll call you.”
    We shook on it. Billy executed a modest salute, two fingers to his forehead; then we sat silently, looking out the windows of the Camaro at our mother’s house. The house was pretty and perfect, white curtains behind the panes of the dormer windows, a white trellis by the red stoop of the wide entrance. The flagstone sidewalk along the hedge to the door was breaking up, and pale grass seeded between the stones and the cracked mortar. Along the walk was the bed of yellow marguerites Mom had planted so carefully. She knelt on these spring evenings and picked beetles off the blossoms, then dusted the plants with fertilizer until the fernish, lacey leaves were pale.
    “I’ve been taking a good look at all these houses,” Billy said. “Last night I drove around late after I left Kato’s; I parked across from Bess’s house on East Main and looked for a long time. Then I drove out Brush Fork and looked at our house. You seen it lately?”
    I nodded.
    “I don’t know who owns it now, but they’ve got a bunch of junk cars parked in the backyard, down near the field. Parts of motors sitting around.”
    “I know. Mitch kept it all spotless—the yard. In the homemovies, he used to take as much footage of the yard and the house as of us. We’d be standing there with the Easter baskets or whatever, holding up some chocolate rabbit according to Mom’s directions, and Mitch would be doing a long pan of the driveway.”
    Billy grinned. “And the fence. He filmed the fence all the way around the field so you could see the boundaries of the lot.” My brother took the bottle from me and drank the last of the beer. “Last night, the house was all dark except for one light, in the back bedroom, their room. The swing set is still in the backyard, and the trees are getting big.”
    Near Lai Khe in Vietnam, there are rubber plantations still owned by the Michelin Company of France. The rubber trees are forty feet tall and planted in even rows. The light-colored bark is scarred with diagonal cuts on one side; the slashes begin at about the level of a man’s chest. If GIs damage any of the trees in maneuvers, the Michelin Company has to be reimbursed by the US government.
    Billy never