Today the smelter was not operating at all; not a single plume of smoke or flaming speck of sawdust escaped from the black screen that covered the large opening in the top of the stack. He could hear, however, the high-pitched revving whine of the saw blades as they cut logs down to size, and he saw Tim McDowell's blue pickup parked next to the chain link fence that surrounded the sawmill. Nine or ten other cars and trucks were parked nearby.
Gordon passed the sawmill, waving, though he didn't know whether Tim could see him or not, and swung off Main Street onto Cedar, cutting across a corner of the small dirt parking lot Dr. Waterston shared with the Sears Catalog store. The Jeep dipped and bounded over the sharp ruts and washboard surface of the parking lot before leveling off on the paved road. Gordon glanced at his watch. Eight-fifteen. Not bad. He was only fifteen minutes late. He looked to his right. A young boy in short pants--Brad Nicholson's son--was trying to pedal his Big Wheel through the gravel of his driveway out to the street, and Gordon honked his horn, waving. The boy looked up, startled, then grinned and waved back as he recognized the Jeep. Gordon pulled into the vacant lot on the other side of the Pepsi warehouse next door. He hopped out of the car and made his way through a small forest of weeds toward the boy. "Hey Bozo!" he called. "Your dad in yet?"
The boy giggled. "My name's not Bozo. It's Bobby."
Gordon shook his head as though ashamed of himself. "That's right.
Bobby. I keep forgetting." He grinned. "Your dad here yet?"
The boy pointed toward the blue metal front of the warehouse. "He's in there. I think he's waiting for you to load up the truck."
"Thanks,pard ." Gordon waved good-bye and jogged across the gravel to the warehouse door. It was open, but the lights inside were off.
"Brad!" he called, walking in. "You here?"
"I'm out back. Come on through."
Gordon stepped past the couch, chair, and old oak desk that comprised Brad's makeshift office and maneuvered his way through the maze of stacked Pepsi cases toward the rear of the building. He stepped over a stray bottle that had shattered on the concrete floor forming a sticky pond of Pepsi and glass. "How come no lights?" he called out.
"Too damn hot in here. Goddamn metal walls really soak up the heat. I
figure if we keep the place dark and shut up it'll stay cool 'til the afternoon."
The aisle of Pepsi cases opened out and Gordon could see Brad's delivery truck backed up to the loading dock. The rear doors were open. Brad had already started loading cases onto the truck, and there appeared to be about a dozen of them stacked against the far side of the van. Gordon signed his timecard on the small folding table next to the loading door and grabbed his hat from its nail on the wall. He put the hat on. "What're we doing today?" he asked, picking up a case.
"The boonies?"
Brad nodded, his thick bearded face moving almost imperceptibly. He spat. "Willow Creek, Bear Wash, all of those."
Gordon put his case into the truck. "Is Clan going to be helping us today?"
"No," Brad said.
Gordon let the matter drop. They could have used the help; the small outlying areas didn't take many cases, but there were a lot of them and they were few and far between, and if they wanted to finish by nightfall they almost had to take two trucks. But he had been working for Brad Nicholson for the past four years, and he knew that if Brad said no he meant no. And that was that. Brad wasn't a bad guy, but he did take a little getting used to. He was-what was the word?--unaccommodating. Unyielding. Clan only worked part-time now, down from half-time, and Gordon wondered whether he had quit, whether he had found a better job, whether Brad had fired him or whether he was just ill and taking the day off. He usually helped out on these trips.
But Gordon knew that it would be futile to ask Brad anything. He picked up another case of Pepsi.
"Weirdfuckin ' dream last night," Brad said, changing the subject. He stood there for a moment, pulling on his beard.
"Really?"
"Yeah." Brad picked up a case and laughed. "You're a college boy.
Maybe you can tell me what it means."
Gordon put his case down in the truck. "I'll give it a shot."
"Okay. Me and my brother are driving through, like, farmland --"
"I didn't know you had a brother."
"I don't. This is a dream, all right? Okay, so we're driving along, and the road ends. It stops by this farmhouse that's been painted white and turned into a restaurant. We get out of the car and stand there, and a group of men come out through the front door. They're being led by you. You ask us to come into the restaurant and eat breakfast, and we do. It's like a coffee shop inside. Then this guy I've never seen before comes in and startstalkin ' to you. You walk up to us and tell us that we have to help you search for missing children.
We walk outside and everybody splits into groups of two, and me and my brother walk across these grassy hills until we come to, like, a canyon. We start walking through this canyon, and all of a sudden we're scared shitless. We hear whispering coming from the rocks. We start to run, and we come to a stand of trees. There're kids swinging in these trees, babies, and they're sitting on these long white swings, laughing to themselves. Only the kids aren't having fun, they're all deformed and crazy. So we run like hell, and then we're back in front of the restaurant. "Let's get out of here," I say, and we both hop into the car. I try to start the car, but nothing happens. The car won't start. The battery's dead. This strange guy walks out of the restaurant, and he'scarryin ' the car's distributor cap in his hands.
Behind him, a group of farmers comes out. They're grinnin' at me. And they're carrying pitchforks. And then I woke up." He looked at Gordon.
"All right," Gordon said. "Let's figure this out. You don't really have a brother, but you have one in your dream, right?"
"Right."
"And you're driving through farmland?"
"Right."
"And the restaurant used to be a house?"
"Yeah."
"And the kids' swings were white?"
"Uh huh."
"Okay, and the farmers are carrying pitchforks and you think they're going to harm you somehow?"
"That's right."
"That dream has deep psychological significance," Gordon said. He tried to maintain a serious expression but failed. He grinned hugely.
"It means you're a fag."
A half-moon of white teeth appeared suddenly in the midst of Brad's tangled black beard and he laughed. He picked up a bottle cap from the floor of the truck and chucked it at Gordon's head. Gordon ducked, and the cap missed him, clattering onto the concrete floor of the warehouse. "I should've known better than to tell you, you bastard."
"I call 'em as I see 'em."
They both stepped out of the truck and back into the warehouse. Brad picked up a case of Pepsi. He shook his head. "It did scare the hell out of me, though. I thought for sure it was real."
The rains hit in the late afternoon, making the trip up the Rim Road in Brad's truck almost impossible. Besides having three nearly bald tires, which slid at the slightest hint of wetness, the truck had a faulty clutch--something that Brad kept meaning to fix but somehow never got around to doing. They delivered a half case of Pepsi to the store at Willow Creek, then decided to head back toward town.
Gordon sat silently in the cab as they turned back toward Randall , listening to the faint strum of Willie Nelson's guitar on the radio, barely audible over the static, and staring out at the passing scenery.