Machine Dreams

a big tiger cat, hears every sound his girl makes. Old Mitch with that new Pontiac to wax this morning, too, and not a lick of sleep. After a hard week selling trucks.” He opened his own eyes wide, had to make sure she knew he was joking, kids took things so serious.
    She breathed calmer, sniffling. “Over at Winfield,” she said. Occasional involuntary gasps. No talk about the matinee this afternoon: then Bess had said nix to the movies. Take a different tack.
    “That’s right, Hon, and after I get me some breakfast I’m going upstreet to buy some wax for the car, and some ice cream and comics for you. Whaddya say? Four comics enough? Keep you busy?”
    She nodded hopefully, twisting her hands under the covers like a schoolmarm. She’d always seemed old for her age, a little prim, damn cute kid. Smart, too, a shame she’d had it so rough. Her wide, tear-brimmed eyes looked too big for her face, and she held her mouth tense.
    “Know where old Mitch was last night?”
    Shook her head no.
    “Lean back there on the pillow while I tell you, that’s right.”
    She leaned back, so tired her eyelids fluttered, and sighed.
    For a minute he was taken aback but talked on smoothly. “Your old Mitch took Mary Chidester over to the big dance at Winfield, and a fella was playing the fiddle to beat the band.” A good time, that Chidester girl, no doubt about it, she’d drunk more than Mitch and there was no fight getting her out to the car before the dance was even over. “Everybody danced up a storm and the whole ceiling was full of colored balloons,” he told Katie. He could feel her concentrating on the sound of his voice and he talked on, automatically, his thoughts elsewhere. Surprised at Mary Chidester though, she was damned experienced. College for two years over at Lynchburg, that was it. Snap of her sweater as she’d pulled it up over her brassiere, smoke of her cigarette in his eyes, and her brassy laugh like the laughter of the boozy Aussie girls. Warrenholtz weaving in a doorway and Strauss leaning solidly against a wall. First leave in Sydney before they’d shipped out to New Guinea, and they’d roughed up that hotel room a little, Strauss with a bruised face where the girl he’d laid socked him just as he’d rolled off her and she discovered he’d had no bag on, did he want to spread Yank brats all over New South Wales? Mitch looked at Katie and tried to imagine her grown-up, fair prey, couldn’t, what did a man with a daughter do?
    “Fiddle is like a violin,” she said now, sleepily. Her gaze was drifting and she touched his large hand with her small one.
    “Sure, Fritzel, that’s right. And then we went for a ride in the Pontiac just like you and I did last weekend, but it was night and the moon out bright as a plate. White lines on the road just like silver.” Somehow Mary had talked him into letting her drive and they’d ended up in the empty fairgrounds, driving too fast on the dirt roads between the stock pens, zigzagging up and down. She wasn’t bad on the turns, fishtailed once but he grabbed the wheel. He was laughing and finished off the bottle as she took off fast, then slammed on the brakes—he was thrown forward and banged his head good on the dash. When he opened his eyes, odd sensation of total blackness: she’d driven straight into one of the big open stock barns and stopped, but in his high from the liquor he thought they were still moving and he looked out into the blackness and didn’t know where he was. Didn’t know. Then: peal of her laughter, the joke on him.
    “Katie?” He said her name but she was asleep, dead asleep, tumbled blond of her curls on the pillow.
    In the kitchen, Bess was heating the iron skillet for his eggs. The butter, the clean spatula, the two brown eggs, lay on the sideboard. He sat down and she poured his coffee, put in the sugar and cream, set the steaming cup in front of him.
    “Morning, Mister,” she said as always. “I hope Katie didn’t wake you. Still, aren’t you glad it’s Saturday and you’re home with us, instead of in that rooming house in Winfield.”
    “The rooming house is fine,” Mitch said. He watched Bess tie her apron as she turned to the stove. She hadn’t wanted him to get the room in Winfield, but the fact was they really didn’t have room here for him; kids getting older, Katie with her own room because she needed so much rest. Bess looked tired. Her glasses magnified her eyes and concealed their fatigue,