Machine Dreams Read Free Page A

was lush before mine drainage ruined it; the river so quiet, isolated. We went to Blue Hole—clear water circled with massive flat boulders, like a stone beach. We walked a long train trestle to reach it, a shaky old trestle high over the gorge, then down a trail by old tracks and over a wooded bank. Once we broke through the trees and a colony of butterflies, big yellow monarchs, were dipping their wings at clear puddles collected on the rocks. Forty or fifty of them, so silent. And the water was cool and clean then, twenty feet deep at Blue Hole. We swam and got lazy on beer, ate dinner, and went home. Peggy always took a wristwatch and hung it on a bush; we left at seven, before dusk. She’d tell us to wake up, children, and she yelled some hide-and-seek chant into the woods for the ones who’d gone off together. We walked back in a warm exhaustion, watching our feet on the trestle ties; trash, broken toys, trickle of stream in the weeds far down. Peggy said not to look—if you stared straight ahead you could be sure of every step and run to meet the train. She was a beautiful girl, fair, with honey-coloredhair. She and Tom resembled each other; the other brothers were dark.
    Tom’s father died before I really knew him, but I’d seen his mother. She dressed her gray hair in a chignon and always wore gloves in the summer. I have a photograph that must have been taken the summer after the father died: Mrs. Harwin in the garden with her children, wearing a long black-lace dress, a gold brooch, three strands of pearls. The sons flank her, all in black suits, and Peggy is directly behind her mother, peering between black shoulders. Must have been an occasion, a wedding, the men wearing boutonnieres, morning coats, cravats. The wide trellis is behind them, and the shaggy trees. Tom is fifteen and pleased with himself, the kid brother dressed in his first tuxedo. Considering what happened, it’s a scary picture. Only Peggy is still living—all the rest died of heart. And Tom was the youngest; we were seventeen, had just graduated from high school. Now it seems to me he died as a child, before anything touched him. But that’s not really true. He’d already lived through the deaths of his parents, not easy at any age. He was one of the boys, popular, but he had such a presence, a gravity. Everyone respected his family and he grew into that same respect. Sure, he fooled around sometimes—once he and Shinner Black dressed in drag on Class Day. Bobby sox, sweaters over C-cup bras stuffed with apples, head scarves, and lipstick. Pretty Peasants, they called themselves, and played it up all during the ceremonies. Another time they somehow got a bull into the chemistry lab. It must have been difficult to lead that animal up three flights of steps; it was nearly impossible to lead him down.
    Tom was different because he was mannish and independent, but not afraid to be attentive the way a woman would be. He never forgot anything I told him, and he was proud of me. Sometimes when we were at a dance or out with the crowd, he’d nod in my direction and say, “Look at her. Isn’t she the prettiest thing you ever saw?” Probably sounds silly to you, but it wasn’t really about being pretty. He wanted everyone to know he loved me.
    I’d gotten a job at the telephone office that spring. “Number please” a few hundred times a day, plugging and unplugging theconnections. The operators knew everything that went on in the town—if you weren’t rushed, you could listen in by leaving the key open. But you didn’t need to, there was plenty of information in who called whom and what they said to the operators. We could always count on Mr. Lee, who owned the dry goods store, to be tight drunk by noon and curse us out for answering too slowly or for getting him a busy signal. A lot of the girls knew which married men were seeing whom by the calls they made at odd hours. I never worried about all that and was glad to be getting a