Machine Dreams

“Ready-Mix what?” Cement, Billy told him.“You see there,” Clayton said. “What other seven-year-old knows that much? And you want to keep knowing, because we old men forget what we’re doing half the time. Big Man might be running trucks like these himself someday.”
    Mitch was looking toward the plant office, a small wooden building built right against the hill. Access roads wound behind the office in a double tier. “Clayton,” Mitch said, “we got to get a grader in here and bank up that top road. We got a big load of gravel coming in and Saunder’s truck is a lot heavier than ours; liable to slide right down that sand and through the roof of the office.”
    Clayton straightened. “Can’t afford to rent a dozer now,” he said. “I phoned Saunders this morning; he’ll bring a smaller truck. Just have to pray we don’t get a big rainstorm to erode that slant.”
    They both stood watching the access roads. The first road was level with the office roof and partially obscured by the hills of sand and gravel: aggregates used in the mixing. The higher road was for dump trucks to dump materials into one pile or the other: Billy had seen the big trucks back precariously into position. The big steel beds raised up, straining and clicking until a catch released the tailgate. Then sand fell in cascades, silent and clean, spilling over its own coned shape. Sand fell rapidly, as though it would never stop falling, and the hill of sand grew steeper and larger without ever seeming to change at all. When gravel was dumped, the sound was loud and satisfying. The chips of stone glinted as they poured and the gravel dropped like a hard rain falling all at once, clattering, raising its own brief smoke of dust. The men all stood watching from below, their arms akimbo, and spoke to one another in congratulatory tones.
There she goes
, they’d say amongst themselves. But the dumping of the sand was observed in silence.
    Today both piles of aggregate were low; Billy wanted to know when the trucks would come, so he could watch the unloading. But his father and Clayton seemed to have forgotten him. Billy didn’t ask, and followed the men into the plant office. Secretly, he liked it better when no one paid attention to him. He felta little ashamed when the grown men were so friendly; their pleased expressions meant he wasn’t one of them.
    Inside the office, the big green accounting books were open across the desk. Radabaugh and Pulaski sat on the sofa, which was actually a green vinyl seat from a truck. The seat tipped at an odd angle and rested on rusty metal legs. Beside it was a big ash tray as tall as an end table. The sand in the tray was always full of cigarette butts; the smell of the sand was something like the smell of the whole office—dusty, slightly acrid, a smell of dry, clean dirt mixed with ash.
    Pulaski spoke. “Cowboy, Clayton’s been up here looking at those books for an hour already. It’s enough to make a man nervous.”
    Clayton said nothing, but Mitch smiled. “Now Pulaski, we don’t want you thinking hard enough to get nervous.”
    “That’s right,” Clayton said. “Relax. We’ve been at this five years and we’ve been in rough spots before.”
    Radabaugh leaned forward and began rolling a cigarette. He lay the thin paper on his knee and tamped the loose tobacco across it in a straight line. “Rough spots builds character,” he said. “That’s what my dad always told me. Your dad tell you that, Billy?”
    Billy wasn’t sure what to answer, so he smiled; slowly all the men smiled, even Pulaski. “What the hell,” Pulaski said. And then they were all standing but Clayton, Radabaugh holding the thin cigarette in his mouth and putting on his bulky work gloves, Pulaski buckling his boots. Mitch stood near Clayton and touched the wide page of an account book. “Let me get them going on this engine, and I’ll be back in,” he said.
    The men were out the door. Billy could see them through the big rectangular opening, walking away across the lot.
    “Go with them,” Clayton said. “Go on, they don’t mind. You can learn how to fix an eight-year-old truck that ought to be taken out and burnt.”
    “Okay,” Billy said seriously. But maybe he hadn’t said it right, because when he turned around Clayton looked away from him at the books. He put his hand to his head and sat looking so intently that he didn’t notice Billy leaving. Clayton didn’t notice,and the men at the far