Authors: Barry Gifford

Wyoming (9 page)

BOOK: Wyoming

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A telephone rang inside the station. Amelia got up, went inside, and answered it.

“Ike’s Service. Hi, Uncle Ike. How’re you feeling? Did you take your pills? No, not much. A few fill-ups, that’s all. I’ve been workin’ on Oscar Wright’s tranny, mostly. The Olds Holiday, right. A strange thing did happen, though. Woman in a snazzy new Sunliner stopped. No, no, just a fill-up. But she had a story about Tick. Uhhuh. Twenty-two next month, the same day as mine. Yes, how do you like that? I know, sure. Said he’s livin’ in Chicago, workin’ as a paper salesman. Me neither. Right. My thoughts exactly. I never have believed it. Daddy wasn’t that way or he would have done it to me is what I think. No way we ever can. Sure. You take good care now, Uncle Ike. I’ll see you in two hours, could be less. I’m gonna take another crack at that tranny. Just rest, it’s good. I’ll fix supper. ‘Bye now.”

Amelia hung up the telephone. She walked outside and stood next to the flamingo chairs. She put her left foot on the back of the one Terry had been sitting in and kicked it over.

Written by Roy’s mother in the Black Hawk Motel, Oregon, Illinois, 1958.

Fear and Desire

I
DON’T LIKE WHEN THE SKY
gets dark so early.”

“That’s what happens in the winter, Roy. The days are a lot shorter and colder because our side of the planet is farther away from the sun.’

“The trees look beautiful without leaves, don’t they, Mom?”.

“I like when it’s sunny and cold. It makes my skin feel so good. We’ll stop soon, baby, in Door County. I’m a little tired.”

“I think I dream better in winter.”

“Maybe because you sleep more.”

“Mom, what do you think of dreams?”

“What do I think of them?”.

“Yeah. I mean, what are they? Are they real?”

“Sure, they’re real. Sometimes you find out things in dreams that you can’t any other way.”

“Like what?”

“Some experts think dreams are wishes. You dream about what you really want to happen.”

“Once I dreamed that I was running in a forest and wolves were chasing me. There was a real big red wolf that caught me in deep snow and started eating one of my legs. Then I woke up. I didn’t want that to happen.”

“Maybe it meant something else. Also, dreams depend on what’s happening around you at the time. Dreams are full of symbols.”

“What’s a symbol?”

“Something that represents something else, like the red wolf in your dream. The red wolf was a symbol of a fear or desire/’

“I was afraid of the wolf because I didn’t want him to bite me,”

“Do you remember anything else about the dream?”

“The red wolf didn’t have any eyes, only dark holes where his eyes were supposed to be.”

“This sounds like a case for Sigmund Freud."

“Is he a detective?”

“No, baby, he was a doctor who studied dreams and wrote about them.”

“If I’d had a gun I would have shot that wolf.”

“It’s not always so easy to get rid of something that’s chasing you, because it’s inside your own mind.”

“You mean the red wolf is hiding in my brain?”

“Don’t worry, Roy, the wolf won’t bother you again. You woke up before he could hurt you/’

“The sky’s all dark now. Mom, is desire bad or good?”

“It can be either, depending on what it is and why a person desires something."

“A person can’t decide not to dream.”

“No, baby, dreams either come or they don’t. We’ll stay at the Ojibway Inn. Remember that motel with the Indian chief on the sign?”

“I bet everybody has scary dreams sometimes,”

“Of course they do,”

“I hope the red wolf is chasing somebody else now. “

God’s Tornado

O
H, ROY, I JUST LOVE THIS SONG
. I’ll turn it up.”.

“What is it ?”

“‘Java Jive by the Ink Spots. Listen:
‘I
love Java sweet and hot, whoops Mr. Moto, I’m a coffee pot.”

“That’s crazy, Mom. What’s it mean?”

“I love the Java and the Java loves me. It’s just a silly little song that was popular when I was a girl Coffee’s called Java because coffee beans come from there.”

“Where?”

“The island of Java, near Borneo.”

“Borneo’s where the wild men are.”

“It’s part of Indonesia. Coffee wakes you up, makes you feel jivey, you know, jumpy.”

“Who’s Mr. Moto?”

“Peter Lorre played him in the movies. He was a Japanese detective.”

“Why is he in the song?”

“I don’t have the faintest, baby. I guess just because he was a popular character at the time, before the war.”

“Look, Mom, there’s tree branches all over the road.”

“Sit back, honey, I don’t want you to bump your head.”

“There must have been a big windstorm.”

“This part of the country is called Tornado Alley. I don’t know why people would live here, especially in trailers. It’s always the trailers that get destroyed by tornadoes.”

“Where were we when a tornado made all those rocks fall on our car?”

“Kansas. Wasn’t that terrible? There were hundreds of dents on the roof and the hood, and we had to get a new windshield.”

“Where does weather come from?”

“From everywhere, baby. The wind starts blowing in the middle of the Arabian Sea or the South China Sea or somewhere, and stirs up the waves. Pretty soon there’s a storm and clouds form and the planet rotates and spins so the rain or snow works its way around and melts or hardens depending on the temperature,”

“Does the temperature depend on how close you are to heaven or hell?”

“No, Roy, heaven and hell have nothing to do with the weather. What matters most is where a place is in relation to the equator,”

“I know where that is. It’s a line around the globe.”

“The nearer to the equator, the hotter it is.”

“I think hell must be on the equator, Mom. The ground opens up like a big grave and when the planet turns all the bad people fall in.”

“How do good people get to heaven?”

“A whirly wind called God’s Tornado comes and picks them up and takes them there. People disappear all the time after a tornado,”

“And what about purgatory, the place where people are that God hasn’t decided about yet?”

“I think they wait on the planet until God or the Devil chooses them.”

“Are they kept in any particular place?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe they just stay where they are, and they don’t even know they’re waiting,”

“I don’t know if you know it, baby, but what you say makes perfect sense. I wish I could write down some of these things, or we had a tape recorder to keep them.”

“Don’t worry, Mom, I’ve got a good memory. I won’t forget anything.”

Rome-Paris-San Francisco
April-November 1998

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