Free The Crazy Horse Electric Game by Chris Crutcher

time in months. Jenny’s hands go to his head, work over his temples, lightly across his face, and he leans into them. He feels a deep sadness for how he’s going to miss her when she gets tired of this new Willie; and his loneliness is bottomless. He wants to ask her what’s going to happen; hear her say everything will be all right. But he knows better. Jenny whispers into his ear, “Gotta go to the bathroom. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
    As Jenny disappears through the kitchen, Willie reaches into his pocket, finds the pill Marty gave him among his keys and change, and pops it into his mouth.
    Chronological time takes a vacation and there is only The Dream and variations on The Dream: The Dream that first revealed its ugly self sometime toward the end of Willie’s coma. The scene is Promontory Point; they’re driving the Golden Spike. Dignitaries in tall hats, railroad workers, a pile of railroad ties, a platform. Speeches. Chinese. Connecting east and west. Like in the history books, only Willie is a spectator. He’sthere; no hint it’s a dream. The crowd gathers round, pinches closer as important men with no names or faces take turns driving the spike; like in the book. Then the crowd disappears. No one walks away; they simply dissolve, and Willie stares alone at the finished track. It’s off. The right rail from the west connects to the left rail from the east, leaving the two outside rails to end in the dust. Willie knows it’s him and his throat swells with panic; screams with no sound and falls to the dirt. When he looks up, he’s on the mound at the Crazy Horse Electric game. Sal Whitworth sneers at him from the plate with Big Will’s face. Willie fires the ball and in slow motion it adjusts itself to the middle of the plate, chest high to Sal Whitworth, who grins now; Willie’s father’s grin. The ball takes forever to get there; Sal roars and Willie hears the wind around the bat, but he’s falling out of balance. There is the crack of the bat and the dull thud as the ball screams into the back of Willie’s head. Sal circles the bases as the ball lies beside Willie sprawled near the mound. He screams at Willie and laughs. None of Willie’s teammates move to field the ball; they laugh and point, too. Runners are produced from thin air at third and streak for home; Crazy Horse Electric goes ahead by a hundred runs, maybe a thousand.
    Now Willie is screaming on the couch. Jenny holdshis head, calling for Johnny, who rushes from the kitchen. People turn to stare, riveted to their spots. Willie convulses, eyes rolled back, screaming from a bottomless pit. Jenny and Johnny yell his name, but he hears nothing; only bounces helplessly back and forth between Promontory Point, Utah, and the Crazy Horse Electric game; there is no relief.
    Marty rushes in from the kitchen. “Oh, God,” he says, “he’s freakin’,” and Johnny’s head jerks up. “What?”
    â€œFreakin’ out,” Marty says again. “I think he took some acid.”
    Johnny leaps from the couch to Marty’s neck, throws him into a headlock and forces him to the ground, pounding his face with his free hand. Petey and two others try to pull him off, but Johnny throws them off like dolls, stands and kicks Marty hard in the stomach, then pulls him to his feet by the hair and runs him through the plate-glass window to the patio, where he leaves him bleeding.
    Three guys hold Willie now, and Jenny cradles his head. His screams go on. Someone has fought through the craziness to call Emergency, and sirens wail through the quiet neighborhood, coming to take Willie away.

CHAPTER 7
    Willie sits in the small, darkened office just off the kitchen of the Community Center, nervously awaiting Cyril Wheat’s arrival. Cyril Wheat, M.A. The state of Montana has funded a pilot program in which a therapist spends one day a week in each of five