Machine Dreams

Maybe he should do the insulation now, borrow a little money and go ahead while things were slow.
    Jean unlocked the thick breezeway door. “I’m cold and then I’m hot, like before with Danner. I should have known sooner, just from these sweats. Mind if I open the door? I have to have some air.” The door swung open and the sound of the sleet rain swept in.
    For a moment he thought she was going to walk out into the covered breezeway to the edge of the dark. “Don’t get chilled,” he said, almost rising from his chair, feeling damned stupid at the flash of fear in his body—not for her exactly, but because the rain was so wild and suddenly present.
    She seemed unaware of him. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had such rain,” she said, staring into the storm.
    He sat back down, settling himself. “You’ve been to Reb already? When are you—”
    “He’s not sure, October or November.”
    “That’s just fine,” Mitch said. “Some time to put money back. And jobs are always thick in the fall, until November anyway.” He kept his tone certain and reached for the pack of cigarettes he’d left on the table after supper. She stood nearly motionless, listening to the storm. Under the pounding of the rain, he heard, faintly, the baby crying: an insistant wailing muted to a shadow of its strength. He waited for Jean to hear, watching her. Her hairand eyes were so dark; she looked pretty in the red robe, and young, without the bright lipstick she wore.
    Peering into the dark, she started, pulled back from the cold, and drew the neck of the robe close. “There, Danner is awake.” Jean pushed the door shut. “It’s raining so hard—flash flood rain.”
    “The creek will have swollen, but it doesn’t matter. That’s why I built on a rise.”
    “She sounds scared,” Jean answered, walking quickly back through the house.
    “Just hungry,” Mitch said, but Jean was too far away to hear over the rain. He got up, lighting his cigarette, to lock the door. Standing, he pulled it open and smelled the full, cold smell of the storm. He hesitated, then walked into the breezeway, trying to see past the rain. The fabric of his pajama pants was thin and he felt almost naked, hugging his arms to his chest. If he squinted, changed how he was looking, he could make out the periphery of the first field and the fence posts. The bulk of the big hill was there but invisible; still, at its foot, he saw a whiteness that glimmered gently in the dense gray shadows of the rain. Puzzled, he walked farther and felt rainy vapor as he leaned almost into darkness. Yes, the stream had already left its banks, and the spreading water was deep enough to dapple like a lake.

THE HOUSE AT NIGHT
Danner

1956
    I n the humid nights her mother let her sleep under one thin sheet, an old one worn soft from many washings, and in the dark of her child’s bedroom she turned and sweated until the sheet wrapped her small body like a sour cocoon. Night sounds in the house were shot with lambent silence: rotary blades of the stilled electric fans gathered a fine dust behind the ribs of their metal cages.
Once you’re asleep you won’t know how hot it is, go to sleep, fans cost money to run
; crickets sounded in the close dark, their throbbing continuous as the running of a high-pitched musical engine. No breeze stirred to break their sounds; Danner drifted, almost sleeping; each shrill vanished faster than the last. She heard faintly her brother breathe and whimper; in these summer days the artificial disruption of school was forgotten and the fifteen months of age separating them disappeared; they existed between their parents as one shadow,
the kids
, and they fought and conspired with no recognition of separation. Doors opened now onto the same unlit hallway; nearBilly’s room the hallway turned, lengthened past the bathroom and emptied into their parents’ bedroom. There the high Grandmother Danner bed floated like an island above its starched white skirt; the row of closet doors slid on their runners, a confusing line of illusions; and the two big bureaus shone. The bank of windows was so high no one could see anything but the branches of the lilacs, branches that now in the August night looked furred with black and didn’t stir. By day the leaves were a deep and waxen green.
Jean, come and get these kids, don’t either one of you ever stand near the driveway when you see I’m backing the car out, goddamn it, I’ll shake the