print
The Bodies
From the journal of M___ D______, March 29, 19—.
Last night, after falling asleep around 7 o’clock instead of 1 o’clock like I usually do (it must have been the alcohol), I had a dream during the space between the sound of the flushing toilet and the rustling of the bed as S____ returned from her 3 a.m. piss and smoke.
I lived in a house on a lake for part of the year. It was a summer house and I was working a job near the lake. The house was small and white—resembling my mom’s on the beach on the southern coast—laid out a little impractical, but very suitable for living on a beautiful lake.
I had some friends over who were laying around lazily in the living room, silently watching television in the somber air of a muggy summer afternoon. I was standing against the doorjamb leading into the living room from the kitchen staying uninvolved, just looking at the people laying around. Peering back into the dream, of all ten people in the room I can only recognize Robert and Scott from that terrible Tillman Construction job over ten years ago. As I was observing the room indifferently, Jeff Tillman came through the front door looking frantic and angry. He needed help disposing of the bodies of two men he left a little earlier to go and kill. I silently went along with him and one other person and we jumped into his motorboat (you could only reach my lake house by boat). We sped off under a flat gray sunless but hot sky coming to a dock where we tied the boat down. Only a few hundred feet from the dock there was a pile of sawdust and behind it lay the men in a swarm of flies, both killed, but I don’t know by what means. He meant to do this by himself, Jeff did, but the bodies were too heavy for him to carry it turned out despite his strong and stout wrestler’s physique. So we helped him lug the warm, loose men, to the dock and onto the boat. They were just any men, both in jeans, flannel shirts, worn work boots and weighing at least 200 pounds apiece. Jeff sped away with the bodies and took them to somewhere we didn’t know about to dump them into the lake. He returned later and took us back to my house and all was done and quiet. I remember that I didn’t give a shit about the bodies or that Jeff killed these guys or that I was taking them to the boat to help him dump them off. It was all the same to me. If Jeff wanted to kill someone—fine—his problems were his business and I didn’t care as long as they didn’t affect me. But if he needed some help loading a boat, fine, I can lend a hand on a lazy afternoon. I didn’t kill them and I didn’t care who they were either and I didn’t care about Jeff or if he was arrested either. I just didn’t care about any of this. And because I didn’t care, I was never really involved and felt no guilt what so ever.
So time went by in the dream in a strange way. I rode a bicycle into a part of the city that I wasn’t familiar with and the air became cold and icy. In a hidden alleyway I found a market place full of exotic traders with exotic goods and wandered around for a day or two just looking here and there without speaking to anyone or bothering to pick up even one piece of merchandise. Later, I returned to my side of town in the east and there it was hot, very hot, even in the night. So I rode to the park to cool off by a small pond where I found a few friends sitting on a picnic table. They carried on a chattering conversation with me although I never said one word to them the entire time, eventually riding off, leaving them to their talking.
The following summer I returned to the lake. I had many friends and we were having a party but I was not directly involved. I stayed very dissected from the main group who were enjoying my place on the lake. I went for an afternoon walk alone in the surrounding woods and remembered a canoe ride I had taken in the spring when the ice was still on the lake in patches. I thought of the bodies below hiding in some unknown place. I wondered if they might decide to pop up someday. I thought they may even be trapped just beneath the ice holding out for spring. But I wasn’t troubled. Somehow the chill of winter still lingering in the air strengthened the indifference that I felt could save me from my knowledge.
I returned from the walk to the house. I found everyone had left to go into town to get some food save only a man and woman. They were sitting on the couch—the moderately built man in gray cotton boxers and the little woman in matching black underwear and bra. His two inches of peppered hair was thrashed like a stormy sea about his head and her long black hair was sweaty and tangled and the couple looked as though they had been fucking but I knew they were both too drunk and too hot to successfully pull it off. When I entered the house, they continued to stare through the heat at the television not batting a lash in my direction and I returned their greetings likewise, continuing into the kitchen where I pulled out of the refrigerator a bag of vegetables, some cheese, bread, a jar of mayonnaise and leftover turkey. As I sliced the cheese on a cutting board, the phone rang. The voice seemed to be altered, and almost familiar, like a man I used to know who would fix my car from time to time. He spoke:
“This is R______, from the city police department. I know about the bodies.” The voice was sly and lacked the element of truth that would have frightened me. But for a moment, I felt one giant thump of panic beat in my heart, but my extreme indifference took over, soothing me so efficiently that I instantly believed I had no idea what he was talking about and could care less even if I did.
“What bodies,” I asked dryly, unflinched, still chopping vegetables for my lunch.
“The bodies. You know what I’m talking about.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes. Yes you do.”
“No. No I don’t. What bodies are we talking about here?”
“You know—the bodies,” the voice sounded a little taken back, fumbling for something else to go on, but coming up short.
“No, I don’t.”
“Very well,” he replied relenting, “good-bye.”
“Good-bye.” I hung up the phone, and finished making my sandwich. When it was done, I walked over to the doorjamb and leaned on it with my shoulder to the right looking into the living room while taking a mouthful of sandwich into my teeth, chewing as the woman on the couch got up and changed the channel on the TV set, her sweaty hair hanging all about, hiding her face from me.
In regards to the analysis of the dream, I don’t have one. After reading through the dream, and despite the disturbing elements involved, I simply have lost interest already in what ever meaning could be squeezed out of a rock. I have no intentions of discussing this ever again.
|
Stealing
Wings from an Angel
The Secret Curse Surrenders