Laura and My Sisters Walking Home

A pretty good dream, although it wasn’t a good time for the me who was in the dream. I think the majority of my dreams are about conflict, things not working out, romantic failure: but I like them anyway. Why? I guess because they are the closest thing I have to outdoor activities, family life, interactions with women. Quite often there are a number of people in the dream, for example a lot of people visiting our house at Holiday Ranch. Often I live in a great apartment.

Last night’s dream: I am doing some work on Bluebird Hill and the A-Frame field across the road from there. Bill and a paid worker, some Tex-Mexican type guy, name of Carlos, are working together on the A-Frame side. I do a series of tasks using one of the tractors: mow a few patches of grass on Bluebird Hill, as specified by Bill. About three other tasks I can’t remember. Then I load some pontoons into the two-wheel trailer behind the tractor and move them from the A-Frame side to Bluebird Hill. To get to them I drive across about 60 feet of soybeans, rather than carrying the pontoons to the tractor. I know I shouldn’t be destroying part of the crop, but I know also I am no longer in shape to do that kind of lifting. It would wear me out, maybe give me a heart attack. I haul the two pontoons to Bluebird Hill and unload them.

Meanwhile, Carlos has shouted across the highway to Bill, “He drove over the soybeans!” in a cocky, mocking way. Not a deferential type guy at all, but clearly Bill’s pal and united with Bill in thinking very little of me.

Dad arrives in one of his cars. I meet him back on the A-Frame side, near the soybean patch, where Bill and the other guy are working. Bill tells Dad I’m not getting much done. Dad asks what I’ve done so far. I detail the tasks, letting it show that I’m irritated with Bill, gladly but obliquely rubbing it in that he’s wrong, because obviously I’ve done a good number of tasks so far. As I spell out what I’ve done, I add: “And as I’m hauling the pontoons to the other side, Carlos yells to Bill, ‘He drove over the soybeans,’ and Bill yells back, “I know.” I give both Carlos and Bill a Tex-Mex accent and also imitate Bill’s tired, scornful sigh. I add, “I’m sorry, guys, but the pontoons were in the soybeans.” My implication being that reality doesn’t change because we want it to, my further implication being that Bill and Carlos are simpleminded. 

My whole tone and bearing shows I’m fed up with these guys and with the whole business of doing work around the place, and that I now consider myself more intelligent than the rest of them. I’m not believing it, but I’m coming close to making them believe it. My demeanor is that I may not even have to be doing any of it if I don’t want to, though inside I feel I’m not doing as much as I should and am afraid of the consequences. 

Dad says good and he’ll meet meet me at the other end of the field to give me some more jobs. I drive the tractor there to meet him, and he doesn’t show up. I drive back and ask Bill where Dad is. He says Dad forgot to meet me and is gone now, that his mind is obviously on something else — something foolish, Bill’s tone says, and then he makes it specific. So and so has offered to rent or sell (I don’t remember which) some office space to Dad up in the next county, towards Foristell and Wright City. We both know Dad doesn’t need more office space, but that he’s on an office-space jag and will probably take the place no matter what its condition or price.

I say, “Good, I’m going back to the house, then.”

Carlos gives a frank groan of dismay. Bill is disappointed, too, but is too stoic to show it. Apparently they do need my help, but Bill no longer has the leverage or authority to command me.

And me? Part of me feels like a shirker. A smaller part feels I am in the right — that I no longer have to be doing this work, not even a little late-afternoon stint of it.

This is when something bittersweet occurs. The school bus has let some people off up at the intersection, by the old log cabin. These children and adults have been walking and chatting from there along the curving blacktop to a car parked alongside the road near the A-Frame field, where I have been standing with Bill and Carlos.

One of these adults is my sister Sue. Another is Laura Tucker, my ex-girlfriend. I am relishing this chance to see her. Her nice clothes, her relaxed and self-confident way of walking, her way of going through life in an unrushed way, always troubling something out but never seeming troubled or anxious, the fine beauty of  her hands. I walk towards my tractor, planning not to pay her any obvious attention. I can see she is talking with one of her male companions, a somewhat effeminate black guy. The group of them get into the parked car as I seat myself on the tractor, and I look that direction at last. My point isn’t to ignore them, but just to hide how glad I am to see Laura. Sue waves at me in her cheerful way and I wave back.

This scene has taken place with a couple of alternate renderings. In one, there is a point when I am walking away from the tractor and away from the group, and although I am conscious of being older and fatter than when Laura and I used to date, I know that my fat-broadened back shows me to advantage when I am walking away from her.

In another, I see that it is not Laura after all, but “that ugly girl” with a small face and big, old-fashioned glasses (no obvious real-life version of this girl) who has Laura’s manner of dress and bearing and a similar body — pretty hands and all.

The thrust of this interlude has been that I still love and desire Laura; she is friendly towards me and still ready to happily welcome my attentions, which she will consider to be friendship. I envy that she and Sue are still living this life of school and friends. It seems wonderfully perfect to be dropped off by a school bus at the top of the long hill and have that half-mile walk with friends every afternoon between woods and green fields that curve together along their opposite sides of the road. Laura has seemed as perfectly desirable and beautifully formed and graceful as always, and as blithely selfish in relishing my friendship but never bothering to understand what feels like comfortable friendship to her is a nightmare of frustrated love and jealousy to me.

References in this dream are:

• There was that time when I had begun working at Emmaus and no longer had to work a lot for Dad, leaving Bill behind in a way to do the same old thing while I went on to something more sissified but (or therefore) more satisfying to me. I have had a lot of dreams since then in which I feel both great relief and guilt over no longer helping around the property. Quite often I do a smidgen of work, as I did in this dream, and feel acutely that I’m shirking my load, yet I am getting away with it. What I never remember in these dreams, and only remember it now by thinking deliberately about what actually happened, is that Mom paved the way for this, talking with Dad to get his agreement: I could take a job at Emmaus and in return would contribute something from each paycheck ($15 I think) to cover part of Bill’s room and board. That is, Mom volunteered her blessing and Dad was talked into giving his, on me abandoning Holiday Ranch, the work of Holiday Ranch anyway, which to me seemed like much the same thing, so that I could have the job at Emmaus. Mom knew it would be better for me. Wish very much I had recorded the conversation in which she told me all this!

• The big, broad, impressive middle-aged back as I am seen walking away: that came from seeing Matt Dillon last night in “Factotum,” in which he plays a middle-aged writer.

• Sue and Laura together: probably based on the time Sue visited and the three of us went to see Ground Zero together, and generally spent an afternoon together. It was very nice to be sharing my ex-girlfriend with family, because it is has always been a fundamental aim to bring a girlfriend home to my family, to walk her around Holiday Ranch, as David and Terry and the others did with their girlfriends. I think it was Terry who carved a love note in one of our trees: “Terry + Terri” maybe.

• Laura being recognizable even from a distance by the prettiness of her hands and her way of holding them: that comes from a scene in Garden State, which I saw yesterday. The actress dancing in her bear costume but her mother saying you can recognize her “by the hands.”