Machine Dreams

eyes and Danner was so close all he saw was her face, so still she seemed to be sleeping, but she raised one arm at all the right words. Her eye didn’t move under its smooth lid; Billy knew if he touched her there he’d feel something flutter, alive on its own. Their mother had told them: the eye is made of water but the water is hard. Hard water. Heads up. “Listen,” she said now in her teacher’s voice. “All together.” And they chanted:
    I went away

on a trip.

In my giant

trunk I packed
    “What?” his mother asked. “Billy, a word beginning with
a
.”
    “Animal,” Billy said.
    In the attic Billy’s father had a giant trunk. The trunk was from the war. Mitch had taken a trip to the war; Billy knew: there was an animal in the trunk. He’d seen the animal in his mind but he couldn’t quite see all of it. Only it was hard and shining and sharp, and the animal wasn’t alive. That’s why it could stay in the trunk; it was very old and didn’t have to breathe. Billy thought the animal was all folded up in the steel trunk, but once Mom had let Billy follow her into the attic, up the long ladder. She let him open the trunk; she had to help him, and when they lifted the heavy lid the trunk was almost empty. It was deep, and stained inside where water had gotten in. The trunk had been somewhere else; now the stains were dry. Billy touched there and the paper was crackly. Don’t, his mother had said. Then she found the string to pull and the light bulb above them shone its weak glare. There were things in the very bottom of the trunk: a brown briefcase zipped shut, a green leather scrapbook Mom wouldn’t let him open, a folded map. His father’s army hat.
    I went away

on a trip.
    Billy pleaded; she held it up and said it was a lieutenant’s hat. The hat was khaki like Mitch’s work clothes, so soldiers were like the men at the plant. But the hat smelled pungently of moth balls and was a strange shape, hard on top, and round as a plate. On the front above the stiff bill and leather strap was a heavy gold pin. Billy touched its sharp prongs and recognized it: the animal, wings spread to fly.
    “Danner? Another
a.
”
    “Arrow,” Danner said. “No, Atlantic. That’s the ocean.”
    “You can’t take the ocean on a trip,” someone said.
    The animal was hard like a jewel, a secret come back. Billy touched the pin to his lips and breathed. Mom took the hat away. That was an eagle, she said, to show who was American while the soldiers were away. But who else was away? Many soldiers, the world was in the war.
    “I need everyone’s eyes,” his mother said. “Watch what I draw on the board.” She was wearing her blue and white skirt and one of the white blouses she ironed at night, and the long white chalk in her hand made a squeak like claws. She drew cars that looked like trucks and put letters under them. “Only the ones with
a
’s are real ambulances,” she said. “Raise your hand if you see one with an
a
.” In the attic she’d leaned over to say near Billy’s face, move away and I’ll shut this up. Her perfume smelled like warm soap in the dry, cold air from the trunk.
    Ambulance was a dark car. Danner drew the first cross to show how. It was a cross like the one at church where the minister stood; their mother erased to show she meant a Red Cross, not a church cross. In church Danner was in a play; she was the lame boy who walked to the angel, down the long red aisle between the pews. Red Cross meant doctors who made people well, but Billy hated doctors and he thought it was dark in an ambulance, dark like the church was dark after they turned off the lights and lit candles. His father and Clayton said church was a racket, they took money from you all your life and when you died they said a few words. What words were those? Great words I’m sure, the men had laughed, and Clayton was not just an uncle but a great uncle, that’s why he was old and lost his hair.
God is great
was a prayer Danner learned at school, and the night of the play had been Christmas; afterward Danner got sick and shivered. She said the dark church made her stomach hurt and she got cold when the angel touched her. That was silly, their mother said, Danner knew the angel was only Ann Gottfried, a high school girl who wanted to be a minister. But Danner had to take a hot bath to get warm, and Mitch let their dog Polly sleep under Danner’s bed instead of in the kitchen; he said the Methodists were good at