A Book of Dreams (16 page)

‘How old you say he was?’

‘He was seventy-six,’ answered the man.

‘Is that all?’ said Vernon, shaking his head. ‘Well, we all got to die sometime.’

He carried the can of creosote back to the counter, walked around to the back and pulled out the account book. ‘Yessir,’ he said, adding the cost of creosote and a pair of work gloves to our account.

‘Yessir. You know, I was down at the University of Maine that time when they called him up, must have been back 1952 or 3 on account of that drought they was having.’

‘Yeah, I remember that, I was along and helped operate.’

‘Yessir. You know a lot of people laugh at that business with the cloudbusters, but I seen it work. Yessir.’

‘Yeah, I know what you mean. Those blueberry growers weren’t really too sure it was going to work. But when it started raining the next day …’

‘Yessir, it was really something to see. I remember one day I was drivin’ around up near Orgonon with some friends and they seen the cloudbuster sitting there by the lab and they said, “What’s that?” and I told them about it, but they just laughed so I said, “Well, let’s go up and see if the doctor is there and he
can show you.” So we drove up and I went in and the doctor was there and I said, “Doctor, I’ve got some friends down here who’d like to see the cloudbuster work,” and by gosh, he come down and went up on the one right there by the laboratory and he said, “Do you see that cloud right over there?” and pointed to a cloud up in the sky. Then he said, “And do you see that one over there?” and pointed to another one. And then he started working and by gosh, didn’t those two clouds come right together into one big one. Yessir. And they just looked at it for a minute and the doctor said, “Now watch,” and he started workin’ on the cloudbuster again and in a couple of minutes that cloud opened up like a great big doughnut. Yessir.’

I put the tyre gauge back in the glove compartment and ran across the grass to the cloudbuster while Daddy parked the car. I started pulling the plugs and extending the pipes so by the time Daddy came to the platform I was finished and we stood quietly for a moment.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘First let’s feel what it is doing.’ We both looked at the sky and the mountains. It was warm. Afternoon clouds had already begun to bunch up on the mountains. With no wind at all, we could look down to the lake and see the clouds moving there, too. Up the road from the lake sunlight glowed on the new hay. Saddleback was purple, not blue like it should have been. The birds were quiet, hopping in the branches of the droopy birch next to the cloudbuster platform.

‘Ahem, ahem,’ he said. ‘So. Let’s start by working with the
flow. The energy isn’t moving at all. Start in the west and draw it over to the east.’

I cranked the cloudbuster around, raising the pipes at the same time. Inside the base of the cloudbuster, gears clicked as it went around.

We started in the west because Orgone Energy flows from west to east and when we operate, it helps the flow. Daddy said never to draw from the east because that interrupts the streaming energy and causes storms.

The cloudbuster pipes moved around to the east, rubber plugs dangling.

‘Good. All right. Come back now, slowly.’

Creaking the wheels slower, I nursed the flow around to the south. I think the reason we go south is because south is warmer and if we went north, we would get colder. But sometimes we go to the north too.

A car came up the road and we both stopped to look. It drove past and people looked out of the window. The car slowed down but kept on driving past us down towards Badger’s Camps at the end of the road, with the people staring out of the window at us.

‘Who was that?’ asked Daddy.

‘I don’t know….’ It might have been spies. Sometimes Daddy had to chase agents and spies off Orgonon with a gun. There were all kinds of strange people coming and bothering him.

‘It is okay, Peter. Let’s continue. Bring it around again.’

I raised the pipes, turned them around and dropped them in the west. I held it for a minute to let the flow catch up and then started to swing around to the east again. It felt good, cranking
the cloudbuster around. That’s why I like cloudbusting, because you feel better as the air gets better and you can go up, down or sideways, or any way it wants to go. There aren’t any rules.

‘Okay. Now sweep the horizon. All the way around.’

Cranking hard with both hands, I guided the pipes over the observatory hill and back down again, following the line of treetops all the way around to where it stops for the gap which is the tractor road out to the golden field of hay, and then on around.

‘Ja. Now some more. Keep it going.’ Past the road, the lake, Saddleback, around the sky.

‘You see, we are stroking it gently to get it moving again. When it moves, it is just like the streaming in your legs during treatment.’

The gears made their dull, oily, metallic noise as we went around the hill once more, over the top of the observatory, back down again until the cloudbuster faced west, straight out through the opening in the trees to where the smooth grass had turned golden. We could smell it.

‘Now. Zenith. All the way up.’

He leaned back and looked straight up. I cranked the pipes straight up too until the little plugs hung straight down.

‘Ja. Good. We’ll leave it there for a while.’

I came away from the controls and stood next to Daddy.

‘I feel better,’ I said.

‘Ja. It is better already. Look at the mountains.’ Saddleback’s purple was gone and it sparkled clear blue. It even looked closer to us. I felt better.

‘Why are the streamings in my legs like the streamings in the sky?’

He smiled. ‘That is a good question. You see, Orgone Energy flows in your body the same way it flows in the atmosphere, or perhaps even in the universe. When I give you a treatment, I loosen up your body and get the energy streaming again.’

‘Why does it stop in the first place?’

‘Well, sometimes I can see it when you have been playing with some of your friends. They have been brought up in an armoured way, a way that makes them feel guilty when they touch their genitals, a way that makes them feel ashamed to cry. Some of that rubs off on you. It makes you tight and I have to loosen you up again.’

‘Why are they that way?’

‘That’s a question of history,’ he said, looking through his binoculars. ‘You see, most people have always thought that it is wrong to feel good and to feel happy. They are afraid of the good feelings, like the streamings. They try to stop these feelings in their children. They take their children and make them miserable. Well, if you take any natural drive and block it, it twists and turns but it still comes out. But instead of coming out in a straightforward, direct way, it comes out twisted and ugly. That is why some of your friends make dirty jokes about girls. They have learned to block their feelings, so they enjoy more the perverted, secondary feelings. When the blocking starts, their bellies get hard and their breathing becomes shallow. And they begin to hate.’

‘But my friends don’t hate me.’

‘No, of course they don’t. It isn’t that kind of hate. It is a different, more subtle hatred. They put on a front of being nice and then the front becomes a real mask for the fear and hatred
inside. They struggle to keep the good feelings down, inside the masks, so their mouths become tight and rigid. They are miserable and they take it out on their children because they cannot stand to see their children happy.’

‘Well, why can’t you just tell them all to come here and give them treatments and make them understand? And make them happy?’

‘It is not so easy,’ he said, smiling. Then he nodded to the hospital field. There were dark rings in the yellow grass where the tractor tyres had pressed down. ‘But someday I hope we will have a hospital in that field that will begin to help people. But it is not easy to explain all of this to people. You see, after people have been holding back their emotions for so many years – for so many generations – it becomes a way of life and people accept it. They even think they like it. Life is safer behind the mask.’

‘Or in the trap,’ I said. We talked about the trap a lot.

‘Ja. Good, Peeps. In the trap. And because it is safer there, people want to remain. They are so accustomed to killing and hating that they spend all their time justifying it and trying to destroy anyone who tells them they may be wrong. They make drugs that suppress the unhappiness and say they have cured it. But the badness is still there, eating them up. They say I am a quack and that the accumulator is a sex machine. Don’t you see, Peter? Man is afraid of the streamings in his legs and he is afraid of life. He is afraid of his basic core of goodness. That is why the FDA has attacked us and is trying to destroy us.’

‘But the sky isn’t afraid, is it? I mean we can help the streamings in the sky and make it better, can’t we?’

He nodded and looked around. The sun was just above the treetops, but it was still quiet. I felt a lot better.

‘But why is the sky sick?’

‘That’s a very good question. I’m not sure I fully understand it yet. At first I thought it was all due to Oranur, but since I see trees, plants and much vegetation dying all the way down to New York, I am not sure any more. Something is killing the atmosphere.’ He shook his head and pushed his hand through the white hair. ‘Ja. It is better. Drawing from Zenith helped.’

‘Is drawing from Zenith like when you make my belly soft?’

He laughed. ‘Ja. Somewhat. It sort of loosens it. Ja.’

He looked at me hard. ‘You are a good little soldier, Peeps. You are very brave and you must be strong for the battle that may come.’ He looked at me very hard and his eyes made mine water.

‘All right, son.’ Nodding at the cloudbuster and looking to the mountains, he gave the gentle order, ‘Now, catch the wind.’

A loon warbling across the lake’s black water woke me at dawn. I lay shivering in the pale morning light watching the sky change. The loon cried again and again and then there was only shimmering dew.

Soon, before it was fully light, Tom began mowing up by the lab. The low putt of the mower came across the dark wet meadows into the bedroom changing all the time as he mowed in low places and then in high places. I slept.

After breakfast I went into town and borrowed the 16-millimetre projector from the public school. When I finally found Makavejev
after I spoke with Vernon Collins, I told him I had some old footage my father took, and he wanted to see it. That evening we tacked a sheet up to the wall in the motel and sat back to watch the movie.

The film had no leader and started very suddenly with me bouncing a big ball in Forest Hills – it must have been 1947 – so conscious that Daddy had a camera and was watching me through it.

And then, all of a sudden, I was terribly conscious of the fact that I was Reich’s son. Here, sitting in a dark room with a real movie crew looking at a movie – of me! – I felt stupid. Like an object, sitting there, laughing at myself looking at the camera, clowning around. I wondered what they thought of me. Here I had been friends with these strangers because … because they liked me? But they had to like me, didn’t they? Didn’t Makavejev have to be interested in what I told him back in New York? He was making a movie about my father. He wanted information for
his
movie.

The projector rattled on. This must be before 1948 because we were still living in the upper cabin while the lower cabin was built. Ilse is giving me a bath in a washtub outside the cabin. We are laughing. She dries me in the doorway and our dog, Doggy, comes up and nips at me. I draw away.

What does this movie crew think about this naked child and this person sitting naked and open in the same room with them? Playing naked, in colour now, with a friend at Mooselucmeguntic Lake. Naked at three or four, chasing a sweet naked girl into the water. Now, alone at Orgonon.

Naked. Picking apples. I am older. It is the same apple tree that stands alone up by the road to the lab. Ilse climbs the tree
and shakes the branches. I remember the way apples sound falling into the grass. I sit naked in the grass, turning an apple over and over in my hand. Was I afraid then?