The Silence Between Dreams         

3,315 wds                      

Rising, his sister-in-law's head swept upward by his fists in her hair, he sat up in bed and grabbed himself and gripped hard. Ice. Ice. The Arctic. The Arctic. He often thought of ice, of wide, white, frozen fields to shatter his desire. His pinching fingers and hatred of masturbation made him shrink. The swelling juices retreated beneath his skin by way of their mysterious sluices and channels.

He breathed out, now in control and still a man. The dreams had exhausted him. He leaned forward on the edge of the bed, inhaling slowly and completely, staring into the darkness. The dreams were confused, frantic, exciting, but he was not yet ready to admit he enjoyed them or why the dreams filled him with weary satisfaction. There was no uproar in the house, his mother was undisturbed. 

From the next room he could hear his mother breathing even and gentle. He had never heard it before but now that his father, her husband had passed on, in the last few days since the funeral, he noticed about her many such minor details.  The others had gone, more concerned about their own lives, leaving him to linger and comfort her at the old home place, the house where he and all the rest of them had grown up. 

      It was four o’clock in the morning. The stillness and quiet surprised him, so he listened to the night. Only his mother’s faint exhalations pattered on the air. He rose and looked outside. First light outlined the trees and black buildings and the stars were fading. A tree cast a weak shadow through the open window onto his chair. He pulled on a pair of pants and sat down at the table by the window.    

In the first dream he and his oldest brother Willy were traveling in Columbia, South America. They had rented a car and were touring the rain forest looking for action when the exploded. Before attempting to fix the vehicle they rested in the shade of a shack nearby and waited for the metal to cool. 

“Hell of a car you rented, Bob,“ said his brother.

“It could happen to anyone, Willy.” 

Bob offered his brother a cigarette. 

“Thanks, Bob, preciate it.” Willy put the cigarette between his lips and as he often did in waking life, waited for Bob to light it for him. Inhaling, he said, “Thanks. Y’know, Bob, i always beat you up when you were a kid. It was fun. In fact, when i saw you for the first time in your crib, all wrinkled and purple with veins bulging out of your head and neck, i bounced my basketball off your face.”

Bob replied unsteadily, “But none of us were surprised when we found out who the real infant was.” Willy’s laugh made Bob go hollow. “That’s not even mildly witty, Bob, but nice try. Hey, tell me something. Why are you always on an ego trip? You lose your cool over the dumbest things. “

Bob, now a little brother in control of himself, if no one else, was silent. 

“I gotta take one,“ Willy said, rising and grabbing at his pants. He walked behind the shack. Soon Bob heard fluid begin to flow as of someone bursting a water balloon. . 

On the narrow dirt road which passed the shack the car engine stopped smoking. That’s odd, thought Bob. He walked over to look undr the raised hood. He got in the car in the heavy heat and started the engine. It ran without smoke and smoothly. There was no oil draining into the dirt. This is very strange, he thought, eager to tell Willy. 

He called out, “Come on, Willy, the car’s fixed itself.”  

No answer. Bob didn’t know what time it was. The tree tops revolved in the corners of his eyes and no wind stirred them in the heat. 

        “Come on, Willy!”

No answer.

Bob walked behind the shack. His eyeballs rolled in his head. Was Willy standing or sitting? Was there a silent scream on his lips? Was he drowned in blood?

The sight of Willy clarified suddenly. In a pool of blood and urine he sat, his back against the shack. A bed of flies had already settled on the gash in his throat so he seemed to wear a writhing black beard with thousands of shimmering wings.

Judging by the blood on his clothing, Willy had been the victim of a ‘necktie‘ murder. During the period 1948-58, known to Columbians as ‘La Violencia,’ the ‘necktie’ was a popular form of execution. The victim’s head was pulled back and the throat from immediately below the chin to the base of the neck was hacked out with a machete. An upward stoke to remove a wedge of flesh often followed, not to insure the mortality of the wound but merely to make it more gruesome and frightening. The victim was usually left sitting, head fallen forward, the blood stains on the chest resembling a wide, red necktie. 

“My God, Willy, how did this happen?” Bob gasped. As if in answer to his question his hand brought up to his eyes a bloody machete. 

He threw it down and fled to the car. The engine started instantly and he raced away. 

As he drove his mind cleared and he noticed how the handling qualities of the car had improved. It now rolled smoothly down the lumpy road and all of a sudden the radio was on, blasting out a happy tune. 

Bob was unburdened and increasingly jubilant. He had taken care of Willy throughout their travels. Willy refused to let Bob teach him even the simplest Spanish, so Bob had to speak to all hotel clerks, ticket venders, bank tellers, police, etc. When they took a wrong train or bus or received a poor room, Willy blamed Bob and instead of taking a more active part, continued to pester and pick at him until the situation improved. Their conflicts and Bob’s confusion with the language, compounded by Willy’s hyper-criticism, entertained many Columbians. Yet Willy communicated with them. Although he knew nothing of the language he had a natural confidence which won him more smiles and good fellowship than Bob made fumbling through his dictionary.  Bob thought, It has been like this since we left home. Now no more! He laughed.

Awake at home in his small room, he could barely sit still. How could i feel so good and be so full of hatred? he thought. Looking out at the dark, sleeping buildings, he grew more ashamed remembering the death of his other, also older brother, Eddie. 

In this dream it was late afternoon of a sunny day and they rode to work on an oil drilling rig. It was Eddie’s first day on the job. In the car with the other men of Bob’s crew Eddie said, “ Bob, if you boss me around i’ll whip your ass, just like i did when we were kids.” The rest of the roughneck crew looked at Bob, who was driving the car; some laughed. Bob turned up the radio. Bob was already so mad he wanted to push Eddie out of the car. At last they arrived at the rig, put on work clothes and started their shift.                           

As the driller, Bob was in charge of all the men and had done Eddie a favor by hiring him instead of an experienced man. The other men knew this and knew it was a risk to them to have an inexperienced hand on the rig. Since it was Eddie’s first day the other men called him ‘worm’ or ’squirrel’ in accordance with roughneck tradition.  

“I ain’t gonna slow down for you, worm, “Bob shouted at Eddie as the derrick hand climbed to his perch and the other man walked onto the drilling table, “just because you’re my dumb brother. You better pay attention and keep your . . .  “

“Shut the hell up and let’s get to it!” shouted Eddie casually pulling on a pair of new gloves. This unhurried interruption crushed Bob’s self-confidence. He was mute with fear and rage. 

They had arrived as the 8 am to 4 pm crew was pulling drill pipe out of the hole, preparing to replace a worn out drill bit. Now Bob's crew would finish the job, rejoin the sections of pipe tipped by the new bit, return the pipe to the hole and continue drilling. The pipe the previous crew had removed and disconnected at every third joint was stacked in the tower, the lower, male ends set on the drilling table on a half piece of pipe with ridges on it, known as an alligator tail, and the other, female ends stowed in fingers of steel cut in the floor of the derrick hand’s platform halfway up the tower. This platform was walled in and the derrick hand there pulled in the tops of the pipe after the opposite end                                                                

had been set on the alligator tail, pushing each in against the last between the steel fingers. When all the pipe had been removed from the hole they would replace the old bit on the end of last section, the pipe would all be screwed back together and returned to spin in the hole. 

Through that hole in the center of the drilling platform or table the pipe passes down into the earth through the strata of clay and rock toward the oil. Behind the table in the shadow of the tower four huge diesel engines run constantly, powering the rig lights and machinery. These are the draw-works, whose cables lift the giant pulley, the drilling block, attached to which are the clamps and chains which spin, raise or lower the pipe. The draw-works also power the hand operated tongs that break down and make up pipe connections. All this work with flying steel takes place around the table, where most accidents occur. T

Eddie and one other man worked on the table, under the drilling block. Bob stood back from them controlling the machinery, one hand on the throttle, the other on the brake. He had to keep very steady hands. One slip could mean the loss of a finger, a hand, or worse.

To his left and behind Bob, a huge spool of two inch cable turned by the draw-works, rose through the top of the tower and descended to the drilling block. Bob didn’t know exactly how much the drilling block weighed, but he calculated it was about five tons, since it was almost solid steel and the size of a small car. Perhaps if Eddie had paid more attention to this hunk of steel above his head and had been more respectful of his brother he would have suffered less. 

But he abused his brother.

Being told to shut up not only damaged Bob’s self-respect, it embarrassed him in front of his men. Their lack of confidence in him was a danger to the entire crew. Bob was angry, but not angry enough to retaliate right away. He waited, he had his hand on the controls and felt his anger sinking deep. He pretended to be concerned, yelling at Eddie, “Hey squirrel, look alive! Watch your hands and feet!” Eddie ignored him. To Eddie, Bob was a stupid little brother, nothing more. 

The other men, even the one looking down from his platform in the tower, saw Eddie becoming more and more insolent and careless. They watched out for him, keeping at a safe distance. The lead tongsman, opposite Eddie, was relieved when the old bit was off and he was told to dispose of it below. He didn’t want to be on the table with Bob and Eddie, now, when they were alone together. 

“There’s a new bit over here by the door to the doghouse,” Bob shouted at Eddie, knowing his brother would object to his tone, “carry it up on the table.”

Eddie was busy with his new gloves, which pinched his fingers. He said, “Do it yourself, pinhead.

This particular word, pinhead, enraged Bob more than any other because, as Eddie knew, it was their father’s favorite insult. Furious, Bob grabbed the one hundred and fifty pound drill bit in its rough wooden box and hurled it onto the table. Eddie jumped out of the way. It had almost crushed his feet.

“Hey, jackass, watch out!”

Bob calmly stepped over to the throttle and brake and raised the approximately five tons of drilling block above Eddie’s head. Eddie watched the rising steel, then looked at Bob, looked him straight in the eye and laughed.

Bob released the brake. It was a satisfactory deposit.  

“Oh my God! Oh my God!” Bob shouted, barely able to conceal his joy. 

The lead tongsman ran up the stairs to the table.

“What happened?”

“The brake slipped!”

The man looked at what was left of Eddie, about two inches thick now under five tons of steel. A hand stuck out here, a boot protruded there. The man said, “You sure kilt that sumbitch!”

“It was an accident! It happened like this!” He showed the tongsman how the brake had slipped. The man looked at Bob and knew the truth, but said nothing. He understood. In the company of this man, Bob felt he had found a new brother. 

The derrick hand climbed down the outside of the tower and jumped to the table. 

“He dead?” the derrick hand said. As Eddie was unquestionably deceased, Bob and the other man took his real question be, “Do we clean him up now or have coffee first?” 

“Yeah, but let’s get a cup before we clean him up.” Bob turned toward the doghouse. “It was an accident, by the way.” He tried to put sorrow into his voice but he couldn’t withhold a high note of exhilaration.

The others were already going into the doghouse and as they passed him Bob’s feet sprang into a small jig and he turned away. 

Now, watching the darkened, silent neighborhood, out his bedroom window, he was worried. "Am i sick?" he said aloud, "Do i have some sort of mental disease?" His sharp voice split the air. He tensed. Mother? The faint, easy breath continued without pause.

The violent murders troubled Bob less than what had happened after the memorial service for his brothers.

In the last part of his dreams Eddie and Willy's widows stood by Eddie's coffin.  No internment for Willy was possible; his body was lost in the rain forest. The widows were as slim and sexy as the day Bob first met them. The curves of their shapely bodies were easy to see, even in mourning clothes, and behind their veils Bob glimpsed naughty smiles. 

Eddie's coffin was closed. The undertaker had told him it had to be so, for nothing of Eddie could be reconstructed, or recognized. 

"Could you bury him in a five gallon bucket?" Bob asked.

"Smaller than that," said the undertaker.

The dream became a scattering of times, places and impressions until the day the widows were to leave for home. On that afternoon the widows came downstairs together, wearing tight shirts and short pants. Their large, upturned breasts swung freely in rhythm with their hips and long, firm legs. 

"Oh, Bob, it was so good of you to let us stay here," Willy's widow said. She gently squeezed his arm. 

"I just don't know how to thank you," Eddie's widow said. She caressed his hand and kissed his cheek with wide, moist lips.

"We can work something out," Bob said boldly. He 

audaciously examined her blossoming flesh. "Are you leaving so soon? I thought you might like to go swimming."

"Oh, we'd love to! Why didn't you tell us earlier?"

Bob shrugged, "Didn't cross my mind."

"Oh, you handsome devil," Eddie's widow said, "I always thought you were neat." She playfully punched him on the shoulder. 

"Better get your suits on. I'm leaving soon," he said.

"Not without us!" They ran upstairs to dress, shouting on the way up, "Can you round up some towels?"

It was strange to Bob, but not disturbing, that he had never been in this house before. In a linen closet he found two shelves full of beach towels of many colors. 

"What color do you want?" he shouted up the stairs.

"What did you say?"

"I said what color of towel?"

"We can't hear you!"

Angry, Bob stomped up the stairs to their bedroom. They were naked. Shocked and fearful, they gave cute squeals and covered themselves, then, seeing Bob's bold face and virile walk, revealed their hard, tan bodies like offerings for his inspection, a lush, perspirant odor rising from their physical junctures. 

"We're all family here, " Eddie's widow said, "why be shy?"

"If we can't relax with our relatives," the other widow purred, "who can we relax with?"

A column of fiery lust, Bob stood smug, firm, his heart hammering. 

“Come on, Bob, relax,” Willy’s widow said. She placed a hand on his shoulder. He stared at the red peaks of her breasts.

“Come sit on the bed. Let me massage your shoulders.”

“No! You sit on the bed!”  Bob shoved her to the mattress and sneered. From behind him Eddie’s widow caressed his shoulders. “Oh, your shoulders are so much broader than Eddie’s.”  She pressed against him, moved her body against him. “Take off your shirt, please, Bob,” she said, the tip of her tongue lightly caressing his ear. “I want to soothe your sore muscles.”

He tore off his shirt and pants and snarled, “This is what you want, is it?’

Willy’s widow sat up slowly, reaching for him. She dug her fingernails into his flat, hard stomach, moving down with her palms and lips. “Please, Bob, can i? Please?” she gasped, her hands clasped together on him as if in prayer. “I’m so hungry, and Willy was impotent, you know.”

Bob nodded casually, as if he were bored.

“Oh, such a nice shape!” Eddie’s widow said, rubbing the length of her body against the unmoving stone tower of his physique. She sighed, “You’re so much bigger than Eddie.”  She giggled, her voice trilling upward like a lizard climbing a vine.

“Or Willy,” the other said, briefly pausing in her exertions to speak. Bob slid his fingers into her hair and made fists, twisting. 

It was then the light in his head exploded. He sat up in bed, his mind still half in the dream, his hands frantically grabbing. “No. No. No! Ice. Ice. The Arctic. The Arctic.”

Gradually he relaxed, got up and sat by the window. He felt refreshed and alert, but as he sat in the still night, thinking, his good feeling slipped away. He had felt so good, so free!

        Now he felt like a murderer, or worse. His own brother’s and their wives, who had just been in the old house last week, all of them together, mourning the passing of their father. Now this, and how could he dream such things?  

  How could i treat family like this? Am i being fair? Doesn’t everyone deserve a second chance? You probably do love them, deep inside, so deep you can’t admit it and now you’ve shoved that in their faces. Their wives are not that loose and cheap. They didn’t treat you so bad and look what you did to them. Only a dream? It’s what you want! No, you always loved them and never thought of them that way. Bob smacked himself in the leg and did it again and again and again until pain clouded his mind. It was a temporary relief. 

Bob had to believe only he was to blame. Not to believe this would be to admit that he hated his brothers, bore grudges against them and lusted after their wives. If they had treated him so badly, why didn’t he do something about it, why didn’t he, at the time they abused him, punish them? Better yet, why didn’t he act? Coward. He had not acted instantly, with firm, decisive strokes. He was a coward. Bob was also jealous of his brothers. They had women while he was unmarried, living now in a distant city shared a small apartment with a beer drinking buddy. If, in fact, he hated his brothers and lusted after their women he would have to admit that all his past attempts at friendliness were false acts empty of true meaning done to cover his hate and worse, his fear of them. He feared retaliation, injury, the fist, or a spanking. As Bob didn’t admit to feeling good, guilt rose in him like a smoke, crowding him into self-loathing. 

I haven't really spoken to them of how we grew up and what happened along the way, he thought. The funeral was a grim ceremony, best carried on in silence. Now what can I do? They live more than a thousand miles away and we've lost touch!

Bob took out pencil and paper. They'll appreciate a letter, he thought, they'll like knowing i was thinking of them, that ist was good seeing them. He wrote;

Dear brother Willy,   How's it going? Work okay? Car still using more oil than gas? How's that foxy wife? 

Bob stopped. He tore up the paper .

Maybe i should just get to the point, tell him straight out what happened and he'll understand. Bob wrote;

       Dear Old Buddy,  Tonight I had a strange dream. We were traveling together in Columbia, South America (ever want to go there?), the car broke down and as we were taking a break in the shade of a nearby shack beside the road I killed you with a machete. It quite honestly left me feeling very good.

Bob stopped. He reread. What am i trying to say? This is not going to work. My first letter in years has got to be more general, he'll be turned off if i get so personal. He began again;

Dear Willy,  We're having some marvelous weather down here now, unlike when you were here for the funeral, too bad you and you r lovely wife could not stay longer.  

He wadded the paper in his hand. To hell with it, i'll write to Eddie. We worked together; he was always more of a buddy. Bob wrote;

Dear good old Buddy,  Hey, there, Lightfoot . . .

He stopped. This nickname, Lightfoot, was very important to Eddie. The family had called him this all his life for reasons no one could remember and the first thing he asked a person he liked and wanted to make friends with was to call him Lightfoot. And how many times had Bob spoken this much loved name, full of affection, seeing Eddie look proud. Remembering all that had passed in his dreams, Bob felt like an enemy extending a hand of false friendship. But he continued;

. . . how's it going in the mile high city, you back? Been drinking enough beer? Doing anything worth a damn? How's work? I just had a dream tonight about work and i thought you might want to hear about it. I thought, to be fair, you deserve to hear about it.

Bob paused again to ponder a scheme, a plan to write two letters exactly the same but for minor details telling the complete dream stories and asking if they might want to speculate on the meaning of them. Bob paused and then continued to pause.

      He turned off the light and watched the neighborhood in the growing light. What would they say, would they respond at all?  The houses stood out more boldly in the coming day, a few lights were on in windows, very faint. No birds sang yet, or automobiles passed on the street. No wind turned the stillness of the treetops. The brightest light was the tip of Bob's cigarette, which gave his face a ghostly glow.  He impulsively lit the cigarette in response to a memory and a longing to be with Eddie again smoking together and talking.

He remembered other clear mornings when he worked the midnight to morning shift on the drilling rig and as often happened when there was no work for several hours he leaned against a rail and watched the eastern sky. It turned dark blue, then the horizon edge was cut with a bright clear light because in the mountains of the west the air is thin and clean. If no one spoke to him his thoughts slid into a rhythm completely disconnected from the past, a new way of thinking full of air and light and composed entirely of images. His thoughts became those of a stranger.

Later he would see it not as thinking, but remembering, and how it made him feel like he had discarded his name, ambitions, all the cargo of a circular life. He was directed towards the dark mountains slowly emerging. If he could sustain this current of feeling he would never do the same thing twice, never return but be lifted always forward into newness. He would feel this way, leaning on a rail of the rig, until one of the other hands approached him and accused him, or merely suggested that he was sleeping on his feet.

As soon as he found himself with the other workers his mind became familiar again, was lost among them, and he could only wait for the moment of clarity to return.

It returned again on the night of his cruel and satisfying dreams and stayed less than a minute before it vanished. 

Bob turned on the light. He reread the beginning of the letter to Eddie, then slowly tore it to pieces. They'll never know about it, and besides, who cares? Ice it. It's all so vague, it was all too long ago that we did anything fun together. He put the paper and pencil away and returned to bed.  For a few moments he lay looking up and became aware of a vast segment of time passing him in the darkness. Time was gone, years were gone and he hadn't talked to his brothers or done anything with them. He imagined from a high altitude the roads and bridges crossing the green land toward where he would find them at home, cornfields and forest, rolling hills, steel and concrete networks of cities where they lived. They were sleeping now in the arms of their women. Their city butted against the mountains under frozen clouds, and it was all spinning away, spinning off into black, empty space as he fell asleep.

        A curtain lifted and there were his brothers again. They were all children dressed in flannel shirts and blue jeans with patched knees. His brothers were bigger. They were at war with him again and he felt it; two against one. 

They stood behind him at he base of a granite boulder which was almost surrounded by a rocky stream. On one side of this rock was a ledge of smooth stone big enough to stand on. Bob was tying a piece of leader a foot long on the end of his line and was preparing to tie on a fly and work into a deep pool on the other side of the boulder. The stream was shallow, wide and rapid before it narrowed around the boulder and deepened and slowed. Dry stepping stones were dispersed throughout the stream bed along the upstream edge of this pool. Bob heard his brothers approach and stand behind him on the ledge. He said nothing.

"Why did you use all my leader line, fool?" Eddie said.

Without turning to look at his brothers Bob quoted the Bible; "He who calls his brother a fool is condemned to hell fire." Their mother said this if she heard them call each other a fool.

"What an idiot."

"Hey, you jerk, did you use all Eddie's leader?" said Willy. He stood behind Eddie on the ledge. He often protected Eddie, mostly when Eddie needed no protection. 

"He only had a foot or so left."

"So what? That was a foot too much, dummy," Willy said.

They looked at each other, then Bob turned his back on them. Ignore the rat finks. Willy bent down (he was a head taller than Eddie, who was a head taller than Bob) and whispered in Eddie's ear, "Push the pinhead in the water."

Eddie laughed.

Bob had not heard Willy's words clearly, but that laugh was bad, so he jumped forward onto a dry stone in the creek bed at the same moment Eddie shoved him. As Bob leapt away and Eddie’s hands glanced off Bob's back, the blow turned him, knocking him off balance. Willy grabbed Eddie from behind and stopped him from falling in the water. Bob staggered on the rock. To keep his balance he threw away his fishing rod and hopped rock to rock over the rushing water. Glancing back, he saw the butt of the rod disappear into the swirling dark pool. His new rod and reel, lost!

"Hey, boy, Daddy's gonna kill you for losing that rod!" Willy shouted.

Eddie laughed, "Daddy's gonna kill you. I'm gonna tell!"

Bob stood on the opposite bank and looked at them.

"Don't cry, Bobby! Don't cry, Bobby!" Willy laughed.

"Don't cry, don't cry, Bobby!" Eddie shouted.

He was too excited to cry until they shouted not to cry, then his eyes filled with tears.

"Daddy's gonna kill you!" Willy shouted.

        Bob ran up the creek bank. He wanted them to know how much they hurt him but not to see him cry.

They were still watching as he walked downstream and into the pine forest that covered the surrounded hills. The stream flowed out of the hills into flat ranchland. Before it reached the edge of the trees and ranchland the creek passed under a bridge of log piles with a plank deck. Bob came out of the trees, crossed the bridge and walked up the dirt road. 

This was a new road. He wanted to get as far from his family as possible. All that mattered was that the road took him away from them and the cabin where they stayed, away from the creek and his lost rod and reel. No one in his family had been up this dusty road, which led to a secluded house surrounded by trees. There he found a corral full of horses. There was a barn beside the corral. The air was full of the odor of manure and raw wood oozing sap. 

"Wow, i'd like to live here," he said to himself. 

"Hi. Whatcha looking at?" asked a voice behind him.

Bob turned and saw a girl leaning against a post. Her shining hair fell in dark brown curls and her moist mouth smiled, naughty. Behind a faded work shirt her breasts were large and round, the nipples erect. 

"Nothing. I just wandered up the road."

"You can find a lot of neat things wandering. You live around here?” She moved closer, the sway of her thighs and hips in rhythm with her breasts and all alight with her smile..

"Yep. Couple miles down the road."

Since she had spoken Bob had grown older. The lost rod and reel no longer concerned him. 

"My parents are in town," she said, taking him by the hand. "Come on, i'll show you around." As soon as they entered the barn they kissed. She pulled him down on a pile of hay, circled him with her arms, her breasts against him, her heaving stomach on his stomach. He pulled his face down to her exceptionally large breasts. She grabbed his hair. He held a button of her shirt in his teeth.                                        

End of “The Silence Between Dreams”