The Dream Reels

[Sam the Socket]

When he did sleep he fell heart-first with brain and body dragging behind. Sam didn?t like to dream but there were points deep in the dark fist of the night that he just happened to, handicapped with a stack of unslept nights and enough morphine jacked into his left half to kill anyone less motivated to keep alive until daylight. He let the dream reels start running then because he ceased to care--they never wanted him for longer than an hour, usually left in such a rush that he wasn?t even permitted to chase them off.

They felt him up: they were foul that way. Full of hands they passed him along farther down the path of sleep until he was suddenly thrust out into the Kentucky sunshine. He knew it by the way it hit him from all sides; the way it smelled of steam and very bitterly, of oil smoke. The way it groped him for memories, he knew it was the same sun that saw him through many years of his life and the last of his brother?s. It was a murdering sun.

The dreams (there was more than one at work, there) funneled up, moved him forward to the field where all the engines and odd body parts were piled up; more than half of them had been blasted to that part of his world by failed attempts. He saw them scrawled with symbols in white chalk that baked in the heat, and he knew it?d been the hand that?d put those symbols down that had also pried them open like pieces of fruit. Chains had rallied together, put their common strength into crossing and hatching patterns over those junk efforts.

He didn?t float, just craned his neck until he passed the fields, heard the hailing sound of metal racket and music beating fast in the oncoming building; he smiled at the song when the words came together and thought about sending himself into space. It was far too late: he moved into the scene on the dream reels and settled in. In the mass of space inside the steel hangar the music had room to work around.

Got no religion, don?t need no friends;
got all I want and I got no need to pretend--


Just by the opening he saw the pair, as he?d expected, hounding each other with fists and sideways kicks while they appliedthemselves to a process that had, by then, become as heavily a part of them as breathing. Sam there with his hands crackling, shedding very old (very, very old) magic onto a struggling body. He shouted but the music wailed louder; his brother laughed at the effect it had on the body--tubing and legs of wire trying to stand up, metal clapping and snapping like a cat?s jaw--and waited. He always waited for his turn.

?I?ve got it, I?ve got it!? barked Sam, ?Grab that son of a bitch!?

The brother backed off at a lash of sparks.

?Sai! Now!?

He woke that particular time to find a different sun surrounding him, watching him sweat and fall silent from all the mirrors in the room.


(( Song lyrics: "Supernaut" by Black Sabbath))

[Sam the Socket]

Loretta entered his brain for a dream session. She was done up as he remembered her in one of her gingham day dresses full of red checkers and cinched loosely at the waist. She wore it without apology in the fashion of a lady ?about to lose it? and the sooty-skinned woman, always with her hands knuckled up in fists sweetly, called upon the heat when her feminine honor came into question.

?Must be out of their damn minds,? she repeated to him, turning aside from the memory she?d shifted out of with the ease of a falling leaf, her dark eyes looking to the approach of a different season, ?like I ain?t hot enough in this skin.?

She let another button go, took up a saunter that was not so much provocative as it was hanging all daringly in the hips, and not bothering to contain itself. A dirt drive rolled out for her to walk down. She summoned up some scenery.

Sam assumed his place opposite her on that drive. It ran south to the house from the highway, bisected the fields full of junk?the yards, they called them. The hangar held itself up in the mid-day drench of summer sun, throwing off waves of visible heat. Beyond it was a faraway strand of sleeping mountains supporting the only shadow, at that time, he could make out.

So there had been mountains?he remembered his line and replied, ?Don?t keep uncomfortable on account of me,? so the dream could safely continue. It was one of the few enjoyable memories his brain restored to him, and Loretta a shade he didn?t mind revisiting.

?Just what?re you implying, boy?? The dark woman shoved a look at him. They were walking in the direction of the house.

Then the dream became confused about time and the surroundings couldn?t settle: trees sprouted up and were eroded away; the grass swarmed; even the vehicle parked in the drive changed brands, changed shape, became two. Only Loretta stayed the same.

He felt her hand hurt his side, but just to get an answer.

?Nothing,? he said as he took that hand in his own, ?you?re just pretty with or without the dress.?

Loretta laughed, jerking herself away with a hip jut and smoothing out her dress; she re-buttoned it along the bust probably as some form of punishment. The two of them took their last steps on the drive. The porch waited for them, and there, his brother sat scanning the pages of a book with his fingertips and those suffering eyes; they looked up.

?Hey baby,? his brother called to Loretta?

He was woken up by Henry in the dark?not only his apartment, he could immediately tell, but all the buildings around it were dead. Sam didn?t try to sit up, he knew better.

?Power surge,? the officer explained, ?just wanted to make sure it wasn?t you.?