Machine Dreams

pressed close, smelling the engine-oil smell of Radabaugh as they stood in the office doorway. The room had changed and the stillness was totally gone. The metal chair was pushed far into a corner where it had rolled when the men bent down together and lifted Clayton away. The gloves were there, near the wall, worn palms turned upward; Billy looked at them once and glanced away. Now he was high up in Radabaugh’s arms, and Clayton was lying on the floor with a jacket folded under his head. Pulaski had covered him with an army blanket and now he smoothed the green wool, tucking it under Clayton’s shoes. Billy looked for his father and saw Mitch kneeling beside Clayton. His knees touched Clayton’s head and he kept one hand on Clayton’s shoulder as though to hold him still. Clayton’s eyes were half-closed the way Danner’s were just as she fell asleep. There was a lot of noise; the men were all talking at once and Mitch was saying, “Take my car and get Billy home. I’ll ride in the ambulance and Bess will meet us there.” Then Mitch was throwing the ring of keys to Radabaugh; Billy saw the keys in the air for an instant, and Radabaugh’s open hand, but the keys fell on the floor. Radabaugh bent to get them and the floor came up fast at Billy; he pulled back and struggled to jump free. “It’s all right,” Radabaugh mumbled. His breath was musky with tobacco, intimate and close.
    Radabaugh walked quickly to the Pontiac and they were in the car, halfway down the dirt road to Route 20, when the ambulance passed them. The siren blared and it was the same sound as a fire truck. Though the men in the ambulance didn’t look at Radabaugh, he waved them frantically up the hill toward the plant. Billy felt strange seeing Radabaugh in Mitch’s place behind the wheel, and everything along the road looked wrong. There were just a few cars at Nedelson’s Parkette and someone had left the neon sign on all night.
    The Pontiac shook as Radabaugh went over the railroad tracks too fast. “You’re scared, ain’t you Billy.”
    Billy didn’t answer. He watched the road and they drove past the Mobil station. Soon they would turn onto Main Street and go past Aunt Bess’s house and the hospital and the Dodge Sales and Service, then out toward Brush Fork and home.
    Radabaugh spoke again. “Billy, your dad was too hurried tosay so, but you did just the right thing. You came straight to get us and that was exactly right.”
    Billy nodded but he didn’t want to ask questions. He would wait and ask his father, because his father would know more, wouldn’t he? Right now Mitch was with Clayton in the ambulance. Radabaugh lit a cigarette. His khaki sleeves were rolled halfway up, and his wrist was tattooed with a banner folded like flags. From the service: Billy knew. The siren had flown past them up the hill to the plant and Radabaugh had waved it faster to make the sound go away.
Keep your mind on your business.
Clayton said that. How still the room had been. Still—but with a floating heat that moved like the chair in the dream. It was like the clock on Saturday afternoons, the long afternoons: when his father was gone to the plant and Danner was in her room and Mom was sewing on the Singer machine in the dinette. There was nothing to do then and television wasn’t allowed, and Billy sat at the kitchen table. He sat there with his Tonka trucks—metal trucks so small he could hold all four in his hand at once—and he ran the trucks on the blue-painted surface of the wooden table. But really he only looked at the empty road out the window, and heard the kitchen clock. The clock was round and yellow and it hung on the wall with its white cord snaking down. The clock always ticked but no one heard it really; only on those afternoons was the sound so loud. Billy was quiet and his mother forgot where he was; there was only the steady buzz of the sewing machine, and the clock sound: a gentle and regular knock behind a yellow face, a circle of numbers. Someone wanted in or out but they stayed in between and kept knocking, paid no mind to anything.
Your mind is full of business.
The quiet the clock made leaked into the air, and was only a hint of the quiet Clayton made. Not like ghosts; no one was scared. What was it?
    Radabaugh swerved too hard for the turn-off to Brush Fork. The Prison Labor buildings seemed to move their tall stone towers as the car lurched over tracks. They drove across the bridge and up the hill. As the