Free A Book of Dreams by Peter Reich Page B

agent’s and Bill’s. They all got out and walked to the lab. All their shadows made the doorway darker.
    Bill came over, pulled a screwdriver out of my back pocket,and helped unscrew. The hardest part was reaching the high hinges, especially if you wanted to watch the men at the same time. I wished I had hidden my gun in case they tried something. The hinges were like silver butterflies holding onto the pale yellow corners of the accumulator. After the screws came out they fluttered into my hand and when I had a whole bunch I took them over to the jar. Everyone was so quiet I was scared.
    The three men were standing by the green telescope, looking out of the windows. One of them was writing in a black book. Daddy was walking around, checking boxes and watching us. Tom looked at him.
    ‘Doctor, where do you want us to take them?’
    The men looked up.
    Daddy said, ‘Well, gentlemen, do your orders say anything about where to do it?’
    ‘Uh, no, Doctor.’
    ‘So.’ Daddy walked out onto the porch and looked out across the meadow towards the cloudbuster. Then he turned and looked the other way into the sun. The road forked. The tar part went up the hill and turned right towards the observatory. The other part was the tractor road that Tom uses to get to the back field. I like mowing with Tom except once I fell off. The sun was shining on the grassy place where the two roads made a V. ‘Ahem. AHEM ahem. Mr Ross?’
    ‘Yes, Doctor.’ Tom went onto the porch, dropping a handful of screws into the jar along the way. The jar was almost full. They stood on the porch for a minute then Daddy pointed to the hospital field and they came back in.
    Tom said, ‘Come on, Pete.’
    He grabbed the side of an accumulator and started out the door. I grabbed a top and followed him. Bill stayed in the lab, watching the men. We walked up the road lugging the pieces and then crossed onto the grass, where tractor tyres had worn the grass away. Tom walked down the tractor road a ways and then off into the little clearing between the two roads. He set his piece down in the middle of the ‘V’ between the road to the observatory and the road to the fields. I laid my top on top. On the way back we passed Bill, carrying more sides. Daddy was on the porch, waiting. The three men came out too, to watch the pile grow.
    Inside, two accumulators were left so I took my red screwdriver and started unscrewing them while Tom and Bill made more trips to the pile in the ‘V’ in the middle of the two roads, which got bigger and bigger. Then they helped me and the three of us finished the last accumulator and carried it outside together.
    The three men moved closer and stood together next to the pile, squinting into the sun.
    Tom walked over to the pickup and took the axes off the tailgate. He gave one to Bill and one to me.
    We stood in front of the pile holding the axes and then Daddy came off the porch. He walked slowly across the grass, looking hard at the three men. They stood together and stretched their necks in their collars and pulled at the neck of their shirts.
    ‘All right,’ said Daddy. ‘Go ahead.’
    The way Tom taught me to swing an axe is that I put my left hand close to the bottom and then slide my right hand up at the same time I swing the axe over my right shoulder. Then, quickly, I pull down with my left hand, sliding my right hand all the way down the smooth wooden handle until it meets my lefthand. All the while rolling my right shoulder and swinging my hips to the left, following the pull.
    The blades flashed in the sun and sank deep into the Celotex, steel wool and tin, leaving big gashes in the sides of the accumulators. Tom and Bill were swinging too and then we were all swinging together in the sun. Chung, chung, chung.
    The wooden moulding on the sides split easily and after a while some of the panels fell apart under the chung, chung, chung of the axes.
    I stopped to rest for a minute. Daddy was still watching the men.