Machine Dreams

those captured. I can appreciate what you’re feeling.”
    I didn’t know whether to believe him. Maybe they were supposed to make a non-regulation remark, especially to hostile family members. The houses of Quality Hill were floating into my vision; they were passing. I had to make an effort to speak clearly. “Was your brother drafted, Sergeant Dixon?”
    “No, ma’am. He was a career military officer, a pilot, and he requested combat duty.”
    “Well, Billy didn’t,” I said flatly. I wanted to keep talking, to keep us from arriving at Bess’s so quickly. “Why did you join the military?”
    “I come from a military family, ma’am.”
    “Then your family should be in Vietnam, not my family.” I couldn’t talk very loudly, but the windows were up and he could hear me clearly over the quiet hum of the air conditioner. “You shouldn’t be here. Billy should be here. You should be there.”
    “I have been ma’am.” We had turned onto East Main. He kept talking. “The military owes a great debt of allegiance to every American fighting man in Vietnam, and will do everything in its power to find your brother, to ascertain whether your brother wascaptured. Men in his own company, men he knew, will make the initial search. They are searching for him now.”
    “Then what?”
    “The matter is never dropped. The matter is turned over to Intelligence.”
    “Intelligence?” Bess’s house was in sight. “I hate you,” I said softly. “I hate all of you for taking him.”
    “I understand, ma’am.” He had stopped the car across from the hospital, but the cool air continued humming. His voice was calm and neutral. “Do you feel faint, Miss Hampson? You look pale.”
    “We should walk up the alley,” I said. “If we go to the front, my great aunt will answer the door, and she’s past eighty.”
    We got out of the car and crossed the street into the alley, walking the length of the clapboard house to the concrete walk that went to the small back porch. We came around the side of the house; Katie and my father were there. Katie was sitting in the porch swing. She must have just arrived; her car was on the carport and her purse was beside her. My father sat near her in an aluminum folding chair, cloth strips of the seat sagging with his weight. He looked up at me quizzically as I walked forward with Dixon beside me. He wasn’t wearing his glasses. He would misunderstand; he would think I was bringing a friend to meet him.
    But I wouldn’t have a boyfriend in uniform. Katie knew that. She leaned back in the swing as though pressed backward. Her mouth opened slightly, her hand went to the center of her chest.
    Now we were close enough that my father saw my expression. I had such terror in my face that he stood and walked toward me. He reached me and grabbed my upper arm and pulled me closer, as though out of harm’s way. Quickly, my voice certain, I said, “Dad, Billy is missing. He’s not dead.”
    Many times that summer, I sat in the sitting room with Bess while my father talked on the phone in the hallway to this or that person in Charleston or Washington. He is a little hard of hearing and speaks loudly, especially over long distance. He called our state senator by his first name and called the congressman fromour district “sir.” He sounded deferential and I hated hearing that tone in his voice.
    “Why,” he would begin, not questioning but stating, “we still haven’t received an official account of the incident in which my son, William Hampson, was listed as Missing In Action. Do you remember speaking with me last week, sir? [pause] Yes, sir. Private First Class [slowly now, as though the world is hard of hearing and the name must be understood] William, Mitchell, Hampson, 227th Aviation Battalion. We’ve had unofficial word from a Specialist 4th Class Taylor, a letter to my daughter, but the army still hasn’t confirmed the information.”
    And so on.
    Bess sat in her chair with her sewing in her lap, her hands folded across hooped cross-stitching. Once, early on, she turned her birdlike head to me and said, with no fear of being overheard, “You know, your father doesn’t sleep at night. He hasn’t in all these weeks since. In the afternoon, he falls asleep in his chair.”
    “I know, Bess. I don’t think any of us is sleeping much.”
    “But your father—” She paused and her hands moved once. “His son, and he’s a man. Danner, I think he feels ashamed. That he