Machine Dreams

lined her eyes while the plumbing hissed. Here in the June sunlight of the festival parade, school seemed to have ended years ago. Danner remembered her own surreptitious face, shadowed by yellowish lights of the low cement ceiling and reflected in the cracked mirror. Lined in black, alive in the empty, cell-like room, her eyes had seemed the eyes of an animal. She thought she looked older than she was, but in a secretive, evil way. She didn’t belong to her own face; except for her womanish hips, she was skinny and gawky, too tall; her straight brown hair wouldn’t curl. She had a reputation for being smart. Boys her age wouldn’t talk to her much; she didn’t know how to make the kind of conversation they liked. Mornings before classes, older boys from the country had to change school buses to get to the high school; they waited on the massive stone steps of the junior high. They scared Danner; they were like men, big and grown, with shadows on their faces and big hands like her father’s hands. They had no money for cars or they wouldn’t be riding the buses; they wore shabby coats and laced-up farmers’ boots, combed their oily hair forward and then back in out-of-style pompadours, smoked cigarettes in defiance of the rules. Danner walked past them, up the worn steps to the big double doors of the school, stealing glances at their mysterious faces. Always, they were watching her, their expressions guarded, sullen, angry. What did they know about her? No one else ever paid any attention.
Hey
, they sometimes said, softly, appraisingly. Their smiles were sneers. Though she dressed like a girl from town—in penny loafers, full skirt, ankle socks—they watched her openly. She was ashamed and lowered her eyes; the boys looked away then and continued talking as though she were invisible. She heard phrases, snatches of words, as she passed.
How many times she give it up?
or
dead before you know it.
Who was dead? Most of them joined the Army or the mines as soon as they turned eighteen. You never saw them except on the steps—not at dances or the movies, or at the carnival in summer,not at the festival parade.
Son of a fucking bitch
and
she found a train to pull.
    Danner tried to imagine them now, sitting across the street amongst the families, but their faces stayed coldly vaporous in smoke and winter breath. She was sweating and the sun shone in her eyes. The Bellington band had stopped to perform, three minutes of a fancy march-in-step. Horns glinted sideways above shoulders as the band dipped its knees, strutted, retraced its steps, and rocked. Farther up, the majorettes would be doing a routine; from here, Danner saw batons fly into the air above the numberless blue hats of the band. The bobbing hats were like those of wartime soldiers, garrison caps billed in black, the crowns flat. The jackets were dark blue with gold piping and fringed epaulettes; the trousers straight-legged; the shoes black, polished, the flying shine of trombones reflected on their surfaces. The band was beautiful and massive, a well-practiced shock of gold and silver against the mourning of the dark blue. The gold bowls of the tubas turned left to right above it all. In the back row were the boys with chimes and the base drummers, huge blank drums strapped tight to their bodies with belts. Danner felt a pounding in her stomach as the boys marched near her; they stepped in place and beat double time. The rest of the band kept silence and the boys stood pounding with both arms, their bodies vibrating in the center of the noise. Then it was over and the band marched on, “Stars and Stripes Forever” with horns in full and chimes ringing. Relieved, excited, the crowd stood and cheered.
    Danner looked for Billy; he’d like the drums, and she thought she heard him yelling. Inclining her head, she saw him farther down the row. He was sitting on the Styrofoam ice chest, slumped forward in his white T-shirt and dirty shorts, his skin sun-beiged and his blond hair bleached almost white.
You kids tan dark as Indians: you can thank your mother’s Black Irish blood.
Did that mean Irish Negroes? Last night they’d watched the news on the big Motorola television: police with attack dogs in Birmingham, columns of dark bodies scattering suddenly, as though the film were sped up by mistake.
Those niggers have made a fine mess down there
, Mitch said, and Jean had called from the kitchen,
You don’t need to speak that way.
His voice,