Dorothea Dreams (Heirloom Books) Read Free Page A

which was how she wanted it to be. She had not let herself get caught up in local cross-currents, social or political. She was not here to take up causes and crusades but to leave them behind — demonstrations against nuclear testing, against American-packaged Fascism in South and Central America, against power’s penchant for more power. All those struggles she had thrown herself into when she had first found herself free of her marriage and involved instead with Nathan and his passionately political friends — timidly involved, full of indistinct misgivings.
    She had come here to be an artist, not an activist — especially after Nathan, with his tendency to fly off into action instead of completing a difficult piece of work, had left, and the stimulus of his simmering anger was withdrawn.
    She had deliberately turned away from the local problems, too — mainly the problems of Hispanic people and Indian people trapped in the familiar maze of few jobs, poverty, drugs and alcohol, poor education, no expectation. Politicians’ promises on the one hand, exploitation on the other — the old, old story. What a relief to drop all that after Nathan’s departure!
    Better to play the wise woman, since people seemed to wish that, and ignore the greater world and its upsets and its rages. Her work was huge, and more worthy, more significant, than any number of petitions and marches; that she knew. The work left no room for all that seething and planning, all that excitement that left no mark but only drained her energy.
    Not everyone, she thought against a vague doubt, is a political animal, whatever Nathan and his friends said. I am happy as I am.
    She had a sudden flash that made her swerve off the road. A dark wing had swept through her mind leaving her lurching with terror. But what — ?
    A dream. She had dreamed last night and woken from some kind of nightmare. She’d forgotten until this moment, and even now all she could recall was the image of someone standing at a window in a sort of black nightgown and looking out; that and the pale remnant of her fear.
    A pick-up truck rattled by with goats in the back. She waved in return when the driver honked. That was Tomasso Vigil, who lived further down her road. If she stayed here, pulled over on the verge, he would stop and back up to see what was wrong. Nothing, Tomasso, just a bad dream. She got moving again.
    By the time she stopped inside her front door the black moment had faded. She made herself some coffee and took it into the living room, where she settled down to look over the latest crop of mail-order catalogs. Loads and loads of magically upscaled polyester clothing and Rube-Goldberg electronics — who in the world bought that stuff?
    The dogs, loafing on the front porch in the shade, began to bark. A gray car that she did not recognize (you knew people out here by their cars, as they had once been known by the horses they rode) had drawn up out in the yard. As she looked out the window, a man slowly uncoiled himself from the driver’s seat.
    She headed for the door, smiling: for God’s sake, of all people! She knew that figure, the stick-man climbing awkwardly out, all slack curves and clumsy angles and longer in the tooth than an old race-horse, which he rather resembled. Ricky Maulders, friend of how many years now?
    “Ricky, I’m not dreaming, am I? That is you,” she called, going to meet him.
    The two dogs lolloped ahead. She watched him rumple their ears and give each of them, the Doberman and the big gray poodle, a good sniff of his hands.
    “Oh, it’s me, all right,” he answered, smiling that half-averted smile that seemed always to be apologizing for itself. “Who else could track you down in this appalling wasteland?”
    She embraced him lightly, inhaling the mixed scents of dust, sweat, and soap from his bush-shirt. His arms like bony tree-branches closed across her back; his throat emitted a soft sound almost like a groan as his cheek