Machine Dreams

alternating strips of oak, maple, walnut, ash. We worked ateach strip until the whole parquet square came up, an hour, two hours, quietly, breathing dust. “If I find it,” Billy whispered, “I’m the king.” “King of what?” I asked. “King of the World,” he said, “king of everything that’s down there.” “You are not,” I told him, “it’s my floor.” “Doesn’t matter,” he said, “I told you the secret. I knew it was there.”
    My mother discovered the project one Saturday while vacuuming. She had moved the bed away from the wall to do a thorough cleaning, and then she called my father into the room. She called us in from outside.
    Mitch stood in my small bedroom, his hands in the deep pockets of his work pants. “What the hell were you kids doing here?” he said.
    Billy knew we were in trouble. He explained about the trapdoor.
    Mitch knelt down on one knee to get a closer look. He’d already moved all the loose flooring slightly aside. The dismantled work area was about two foot square and looked impressive in daylight. “You two must have worked on this pretty hard,” he said respectfully.
    I know my father reglued the flooring and Billy helped him. Mitch probably did actually tell us there were no secret passages, that a trapdoor couldn’t lead anywhere because the house didn’t have a basement—but I don’t remember any remarks, only that his lack of anger seemed miraculous.
    Now I know his reaction had partly to do with the house. He knew all about the Brush Fork house; he’d contracted the labor and built it himself. He’d designed the heating system, radiant heat piped under the floor so the parquet squares were always warm. He knew how well the floor was built; the parquet had been specially made. Billy’s investigation of the house was exploration my father understood: the house was my father’s, what he’d made, what he owned. Information he wanted Billy to have.
    I think about the past now in terms of what Billy knew. The information he took away with him, his training, what he knew before he ever got to Fort Knox. The world, so to speak, how much he knew. What he’d practiced, what he’d perfected before he everlaid hands on an M-60. Because when he jumped from the chopper, he didn’t have the gun anymore. Robert Taylor’s letter said Billy hid.
    “Cover me,” Billy said, “cover me all up.”
    I piled leaves on top of him until only his face showed, like a face in a hole.
    “No,” he said, “that too.”
    “What, you don’t want to see?”
    “No, I don’t want to know where you’re running from.”
    Maybe we were nine and ten. In autumn we went down into the field and crossed the creek, walked up into the woods to a clearing where the leaves were layers deep. Our game was to pile the leaves up very high: one of us got inside, buried to the shoulders, while the other ran and jumped on top. The buried one watched the attacker run forward, screaming like a kamikaze. If the buried one made any sound, the jumper won and got to jump again. Sometimes it didn’t matter but occasionally we played the game in earnest.
    “Bury me way down deep,” Billy said. “You’re still bigger than me and you won’t be able to tell where I am.”
    I covered him, piling on more leaves. The wind rattled faintly in the naked trees of the woods, leaves scuttling, dipping and turning in the air. The more leaves I gave him, the better chance he had. I wanted him to win, to stay hidden, stay silent. I kept piling leaves, alone in the clearing, hiding him deeper and deeper, the mound of leaves higher than my chest. I kept working until he was secret, buried, warm. Until he was nowhere.
    I dream about Billy. At first I liked having the dreams because I didn’t think about what they meant. And I got to see Billy, his face, so clearly. I still see his face, usually his young face, his kid face more real than any photograph or memory. My sense of him is so strong I think he must be coming through from some completely foreign zone, a zone free of interference and boundaries. A zone that is out of this world. I wake up sweating, scared. Then I tell myself the clarity may be a direct correlative of how alive Billy is, how desperate he feels, how hard he’s trying to get through.
    But in the dreams, Billy isn’t desperate. He’s just himself. I’mthe one who is afraid, who knows something terrible might happen, has happened, will happen. I’m the one who can’t stop it from