Machine Dreams (11 page)

“He brags how he hired every experienced vet that applied, just so I don’t get a swelled head. It’s an education, rooming there on Dago Hill.”

“Dagos aren’t bad people,” Clayton said. “They just aren’t our people.” He ate the bread slowly; Mitch knew he wouldn’t finish it.

Jam. Mitch got the jam from the shelf and put it near Clayton’s plate. Damn if he didn’t get nervous, talking about work with Clayton. Might as well be a teenager again. He leaned back from the table and looked out the window at his car. Now was as good a time as any.

“You know, Clayton, while I was gone I used to think you and me ought to start up a business. A war over and room for new people. Look at Costello—he’s cleaning up.”

“What’d you have in mind?”

“Oh, a supply business, maybe concrete. Did a lot of that work in New Guinea—and I can keep about any engine running.”

He didn’t look at Clayton but at Clayton’s hand on the tablecloth. The hand was big and finely shaped, the fingers tapered, the fingernails so perfect they looked manicured. And when he raised his eyes, Clayton was watching him with that still, contemplative gaze Mitch had thought about in the war, wondered about.

“We’ll see, Mitch,” he said. “Things calming down now. We’ll see.”

They sat while Clayton finished the coffee. There was an easy silence in the room. Only the sound of the clock, and a car going by in the alley.

Mitch hadn’t gone to the Elks’ much before the war but now he went for lunch nearly every day he was in Bellington. The aura of the back barroom was overpoweringly familiar: smells of tobacco and men, the sound of men’s voices. He liked the ritual of the locked door with the triangular window, the card he stuck in the slot beneath the doorknob, the official sound of the buzzer as the door unlatched. The people were always the same, the food modest and cheap. Past the dining room, it was just the men.
Mitch paused a moment at the swinging door to the bar, hearing a low hum of conversation, then walked on through into an ocher, interior shade.

The Elks’ barroom was always a little dark, dark enough that the electric beer signs along the back wall shone with a pale night-light glow even at noon. Windows along the single row of booths were draped with dark green pleated curtains that kept the sun out; behind the drapes the window glass was thick and patterned, opaque as bottle bottoms. The wall behind the bar was almost solidly covered with clippings, jokes from men’s magazines, newsprint photos. Scattered heroics: twenty years of high school sports wins; service news of local boys; color photos of Roosevelt, MacArthur, Patton. Patton was a favorite of McAtee’s, the bartender; a miniature Fourth of July flag bordered Patton’s picture. On the far end of the wall, near the mirror, McAtee had tacked up
Life
newsprint of Patton’s funeral, wrinkled black and white images of a blurred cortege. Directly below, the plastic Schlitz beer wagon lamp looked like a battered toy, the illuminated horses gone white in patches where color had flaked away.

Mitch and Reb habitually sat at that end of the bar. Reb wasn’t here yet; Mitch walked back and sat down as McAtee brought him a draft.

“Cowboy, my favorite bachelor. How goes it?” McAtee wiped the already polished bar top and set the frothy beer in front of Mitch.

“Not bad, McAtee. Where’s our Doc? Fell asleep over his operating table probably. Out causing trouble last night.”

“Yeah?” McAtee gestured toward the door. “Don’t let him get away with that. Here he is now.”

“Hey, Old Man Hampson.” Reb saluted as he walked toward them, then shook hands as he reached Mitch. His hands always felt cold and dry and clean; the alcohol, Mitch guessed, sterile hands. “Clayton up yet?”

“Just barely,” Mitch said.

McAtee grinned as Reb sat down and leaned on the bar, sighing with satisfaction. “Home,” Reb said.

Mitch watched the two men; he raised his eyes to McAtee’s
jovial face and glimpsed behind him the
Life
newsprint pictures—they looked almost like enlarged Kodak snapshots, out of focus and aged. Mitch smiled. “Home is damn morbid lately, McAtee. I don’t know why you have to have those funeral clippings right here where Doc and I sit.”

“I’m trying to get you boys to think serious,” McAtee said.

Reb raised both hands to his eyes and peered at the pictures as though through binoculars. “Fate does play the old trick.”

“Damn right. Never can tell how things will turn around.” McAtee set the beers up and gestured toward the clippings. The glossy paper of the pictures shone slightly in the light of the lamp. “Look at old Blood and Guts. Liberated the damn graveyard and then laid down in it. All those battles and then breaks his bastard neck in a kraut car wreck.”

Reb pulled his beer mug closer, turning it by the cracked handle. “Plenty broke their fool necks for him.”

“Right, Doc.” McAtee made a show of scowling. “Broke their necks to save yours.”

Reb grinned. “Old Man here saved my neck personally—I know that for a fact. Isn’t that right, Cowboy?”

“That’s right, and I’d say you owe me a little sobriety.” Mitch threw McAtee a collaborative glance. “You’re an insult to your profession and to Bond Hospital.”

Reb laughed. “He’s on me again, McAtee. Reads me like a book.” He took a long drink, draining half the glass. “Damn you, Cowboy, you know I don’t take a drop till one in the afternoon. McAtee, tell him.”

“I got work to do. You two want the special? Yeah, you want the special.” McAtee moved down the bar away from them, pulling his long apron tighter. Behind him the glass bottles registered the shading of his passage, then shone again with their same dull sparkle.

Mitch leaned on the bar, his hands touching his cool glass. “Really, Doc, you and Clayton been keeping some late hours here.”

“Cowboy, I believe you’re serious.” Reb was quiet a moment, then tipped the glass and drank slowly. “Clayton’s been hitting it lately.”

“He was damn drunk when you brought him home last night. Finished that bottle the two of you started.”

“No kidding.” Reb took his cigarettes from his suit jacket pocket. “My drinking buddy is getting ahead of me.”

“Maybe you’d better talk to him, Reb. Be a doctor, give him a scare.”

“Hell, Mitch, where you been? He’s already scared, that’s why he’s drinking so much. He’s scared about Katie. Thinks she’s going to die and then Bess will go to pieces. Trying to beat Bess to it, fall apart himself before anyone else does.” Reb lit a Marlboro. “He’s wrong. Bess could stand up under anything.”

“Die? Katie?” Mitch felt his stomach tense as though in preparation for a blow.

“Listen, she’s not going to die. I just said Clayton thinks she will, though he won’t admit it.” He took a drag on the cigarette, then looked at Mitch squarely. “Katie’s on a daily dosage of penicillin now. She’s safer from infection than you or me, but Clayton doesn’t believe it. The truth is, Katie scares him every day. She’s not the healthy kid she used to be. Clayton can’t take it.”

Mitch touched the rim of his glass. The edge was blunt and thick. “Katie won’t ever be any better, will she?”

“She’ll get some stronger, maybe, but she’ll always have that heart murmur, tire easily … be delicate. No way to repair a damaged heart. We never even knew about that first strep throat. Katie kept it a secret because she didn’t want to miss school. Strep symptoms go away, show up later as fatigue, pain in the joints—and by then it’s rheumatic. But everyone in town had a flu then, and Bess thought Katie had it too. Kept her in bed and gave her aspirin. I saw her after about a week, heard the murmur, knew what had happened. That was in December. She just didn’t have much resistence afterward and got pneumonia in February.”

“That was the term she was out of school.”

“Yes, and she was ashamed to be home in bed. Bess tried to explain it all but the kid is—over-responsible.”

Mitch touched the grooved, uneven surface of the bar. It was true, she had to be perfect, like Bess. Ten years old and would drive herself to a frazzle. “And the second time, she didn’t tell you she had a sore throat?”

“She knew she was supposed to, but in the winter of ’44 she’d only been back in school a few weeks, afraid we’d take her out again. I’d had her on sulfanilamides, only thing I could get during the war, but she developed an allergy and I had to take her off.” He shook his head. “So she was unprotected and went rheumatic again. Bess recognized the weakness right away, but the damage was done. That’s why the murmur is so bad.”

“But she won’t get strep again?”

“No. Katie is real lucky the war is over. Now we can get penicillin. And the heart will get a little stronger, with rest, good food, care. No one could take better care than Bess. She blames herself for not realizing it was something serious that first bout, but no one could have known.” He was quiet a moment. “Maybe, if we’d known about the throat that first time, before the strep developed—”

“And the kid did it, kept it secret, to win some school attendance prize. Now here she is. It’s a goddamn hell of a thing.”

“Yes—lots of hellish things. Holdovers from the war.” Reb smiled sadly. He looked up and Mitch watched the ceiling light play across his eyeglasses. Didn’t use to wear those; Reb had gotten older too. Now Reb took the glasses off and rubbed the lenses with his wrinkled linen handkerchief.

McAtee brought the plates and moved on down the counter to wash glasses. Meat loaf was good today, and Mitch ate with Reb quiet beside him. Sound of the glasses in water, clink as McAtee set them on the drying rack.

“They say the Nips like MacArthur,” Mitch said. “First ruler they’ve had isn’t a direct descendant of the gods.”

“What gods are those, Cowboy?”

“Who the hell knows.”

They ate then without speaking until Reb pushed his empty plate to the far edge of the bar. “Clayton said you were out with Miss Chidester last night.”

“That’s right.” Mitch looked over and registered Reb’s expression without much surprise; of course, he’d been there too. “You old married lech. Then she’s a real tramp.”

“Hey.” Reb did a modest pantomime of throwing up his hands. “Doctors get it easy. And I’m not saying she’s a tramp. Be
a little broad-minded, Old Man—might be a good idea to marry a girl like her. Lively, young enough to keep her looks awhile. Move her out of town, settle her hash quick with a few kids. You’re up to it, aren’t you?” Reb finished the beer and faked a right cross to Mitch’s ribs. “Then you really got problems.”

Mitch stopped Reb’s hand and held him by the wrist. “You’ll talk to Clayton? I don’t want this getting any worse.”

“I hear you.” Reb pulled his arm away gently and stood from the bar stool, reaching in his pockets for money. “What’s more, I’ll buy lunch. With Mary Chidester’s hands in your pockets, your change won’t last long.”

Mitch shrugged, smiling. “It’s a crime. I keep telling you, Doc, you don’t get anything in this world for free.”

Katie loved to ride in the new Pontiac. Mitch had first brought the car home the week before, and she’d asked to have her picture taken—a movie star picture, she said. Clayton sat her on the long swoop of front fender, and she arranged her white skirt against the dark blue of the car. Twister stood aside making faces, trying to get her to laugh and spoil her serious expression. Where did she get those expressions? Studied movie posters probably, looked at magazines. Always after Mitch to take her to the matinees.

Today she sat over next to the door like a grown-up, wrapped in a soft cotton blanket from head to foot. Mitch had made a joke of it and said he’d wrap her in the warm cloth like an Egyptian mummy.

“You sure you’re warm enough, Fritzel?” He glanced over. She’d assented to the blanket for his sake, but once in the car pulled it down so only her legs were covered. In case anyone saw her in the bright new sedan, she would look like any other kid.

“I’m warm, honest.” She smiled, rested one arm on the plush gray armrest.

“Lock your door there. Don’t want you falling out before we even get to the pictures.” He always drove her around a bit before they went to the movie house; the route was a ritual by now: length of Main Street, up Quality Hill past the big old houses and the school, down around by the grocery and the Mobil station, where he got gas. The Mobil station was a favorite
since they’d installed the new sign. Giant red horse with wings: NEW
MOBILGAS GIVES FLYING HORSEPOWER.
She would sit and stare at that big sign until he didn’t know what the hell she was seeing, and he usually bought her a cola from the cooler in the station, so she’d have an excuse to stare longer.

Now she pushed the lock button down on her door and said, adultlike, “The motor still runs very smoothly.”

“Sure it does. Only been a week since you heard it.”

She nodded. “One week. I told all the girls at school: you got a Streamliner sedan, four doors.”

Of course she would tell them. Aloud, he said, “That’s right. And why is it called a Silver Streak?”

“Because of the chrome strips. Like right there.” She pointed in front of them to the silvered midline of the hood. “Runs right down to the grill. Those are the streaks. But you know too,”—she raised her eyebrows—“if the Pontiac was going real fast, like in a comic, the chrome would shine like lights. The car would look like a blur, but the chrome would be all streaks.”

“I guess you’re right, Fritz.”

She frowned as they turned onto Main Street, pretending to look carefully at the storefronts. “You ought to call me Katie,” she said, “I’m too old for nicknames by now.”

“Well, is that so.” He steered with one hand and lay his arm along the back of the seat. “Don’t seem possible you’re that old already. Reb is called Doc Reb by the whole town—he’s a grown man and most people don’t even know his real name. And look what he calls me.”

“He calls you Cowboy, I realize.”

Realize?
Where did she get that word? “Around home,” he continued, “you all call me Old Man.”

She seemed to deliberate. “I think you started calling yourself that,” she said softly.

Damn, he supposed she was right. He kept himself from smiling. Quickly, just as he’d intended, she read his response as hurt and tried to make it up. “Men have a lot of nicknames,” she said, “but it’s different with girls and women.”