Machine Dreams

together in one corner of the field. They leaned against each other like they were asleep standing up, and swayed. Later in the day they never stood so close to the road; cars passed and scared them maybe. Or they liked it on the other side of the hill where the big water trough was, and the salt lick. The cows stood so still, Billy wondered about them. When his dog, Polly, slept, she stretched flat on her side and shivered, moving her feet.
Chasing rabbits
, Billy’s father always said,
watch her chase them now.
Polly was dreaming. Sometimes Billy dreamed about the cement mixers. Often the Chevrolets were just sitting in his dreams, big and vacant as abandoned houses. There was almost a kind of music near them, like a humming of motors or heat.
    Last night Billy had dreamed about the trucks. He’d seen Uncle Clayton in his dream. Billy and his father and some of the men were watching one of the mixers load. The big drum was turning very fast, so fast it looked like a blur. Then Billy’s father picked him up and lifted him way high to see inside. Billy had never looked in there before; as his father lifted him higher and higher, he realized he’d always wanted to see. Mitch’s hands were very big, but as Billy got higher the hands seemed to go away. The end of the drum was open and Billy peered in. The sides were glowing and going round, grinding out a familiar rumble. Uncle Clayton was in the drum. He was sitting in the metal desk chair from the plant office and the chair floated.
    Clayton’s face was strange.
Billy?
he said. His voice was almost a whisper. The sides of the drum whirled, shining so bright the air was silver.
Boy
, Clayton said,
go find your father.
He spoke with great effort as though from far away, and his words had a wind behind them. The whirling drum shone painfully bright, so bright Billy could see nothing but the light itself. He had wakened then and looked at the walls of his room, unsure where he was. Then he heard his father in the bathroom, the hiss of the shower and the whine the pipes made as water passed through them.
    The kitchen spigot made a similar sound. Billy watched his father rinse out the coffee cup, filling it full of water but no soapand rubbing the inside once with his hand. “Hurry up now, Billy.” Billy took the bowls to the sink. “Go get your shoes on, and your jacket. Be quiet though, don’t wake up Danner or your mother.”
    They drove out along the Brush Fork road, past the McCues’ house and the Connors’, then past the still fields and across the narrow stone bridge. Prison Labor was on one side and the old stables on the other. Billy knew about Prison Labor: rows of big stone buildings with almost no windows. His father said prisoners used to live there and build roads, but now the prisoners were gone and the buildings were full of State Road equipment, bulldozers and buses and trucks. Trucks like the concrete mixers? “No, no, just dump trucks and rollers. Clayton and me have the cement plant, you see; State Road hires us to pour concrete for them. After they’ve dug out the road and got the surface all graded and smooth, why we come along.”
    Everyone was already at the plant, and Radabaugh, who worked as a driver, was making coffee. All the men called Billy’s father Cowboy, but Uncle Clayton called him Mitch.
    Clayton stood by the office door as they pulled up, then walked out to meet them. He wore khakis like the other men but never wore a cap. His bald head was shiny and his forehead broad. When he rode Billy on his shoulders, Billy touched the bald head with a sense of awe: he could not cover it with his two hands. Now Clayton leaned in close through Billy’s window and smiled his slow smile. “Here’s my big man,” Clayton said. “We haven’t seen you around here lately. Where you been keeping him, Mitch?”
    “He’s been at school with his mother.”
    “Ah.” Clayton pretended he hadn’t known, and opened the car door for Billy. “How do you like having your mother for a teacher?” Billy explained how his mother wasn’t really his teacher; he’d get his real teacher in the fall when school started. This was only a phonics class to help kids read.
    “Read?” Clayton looked surprised again. “Why you’ve been reading everything around here for two years. What’s it say on those big bags over there?” He pointed to the ninety-five-pound sacks stacked against the truck shelter. Billy knew, of course: ALPHA READY-MIX.