Machine Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page B

afraid when you were sick because you couldn’t take drugs—you never could—allergic to sulpha and penicillin, and almost anything affected you badly. You were always so strong, but if you really got sick it was a matter of luck that you didn’t get worse and worse.
    You couldn’t even take motion-sickness pills. Once in summer Gladys and I took her old Plymouth up to Ohio to visit Jewel and my brother—you were a little over a year old and Billy would be born in two months. Gladys did all the driving because I was toopregnant. We weren’t on the road an hour before you went crazy on those pills—thrashing and screaming, throwing yourself against the dash. “We’ve got to stop,” Gladys said. “She’s going to bounce that baby right out of you.” So Gladys walked up and down the road with you while I sat and sweated on those prickly car seats; they were wooly and as full of springs as an overstuffed chair. When she brought you back, you had quieted and your eyes were glazed; you went into such a sound sleep that I was worried to death.
    You were always too sensitive. Everything that passed through you showed. That’s why I don’t know how you can take the kind of life you have, always moving around. You’ve got too much guts for your own good, and one of these days you’ll come to a dead halt. Sometimes I’m afraid for you; I feel responsible. I stayed married all those years until you and Billy were grown—I only kept going to make you safe. It turned out I couldn’t keep anyone safe. Not you. Not Billy.
    Still, you and I will go on and on, despite whatever differences, whatever quarrels. For me, we are what’s left. How are we different? Body and soul, I know—but some things don’t change.
    You were late getting born. I drank a bottle of castor oil to start my labor. I remember leaning out the door, still holding the bottle, yelling to the neighbor woman across the road that I’d drunk it all. August, ten in the morning, already hot as Hades. Then there were twenty hours, on and off the delivery table three times that night while other women had their babies and got on with it. I thought you were a boy for sure; no girl would cause such trouble. But when I knew I had a daughter, I was so thankful—like my own mother had come back to me.

THE SECRET COUNTRY
Mitch
    I was born on the farm in Randolph County, 1910, lived there until I was six. Then went to Raynell with my aunt and her husband. He was a conductor on the railroad—big business then, everything went by rail. It was a new job for him and not traditional in the family; they had all been household farmers and worked the mines. Mines weren’t like they are now. Then, there was no automation, mostly crawlspace, and the coal hauled out by mule. Three of the brothers died in the mines, including my father, but I never really knew him, never even remember seeing him. I know he was there sometimes in the summer, because there are photographs.
    My mother lived at the farm during her confinement and left right after I was born. The birth certificate gives her name as Icie Younger, but no one ever told me anything about her. Her people were from down around Grafton and she went back to them. When I was selling road equipment for the State I used to travelthrough there. Asked after the family several times but no one had ever heard of them.
    I grew up living always with one or another of the sisters. In the beginning there were twelve kids in that family, seven boys and five girls; and the farm was five hundred acres. Bess was the youngest, twenty when I was born, and she took care of me. The boys, my uncles, worked all over the county once they were grown, but the sisters stayed home until they married. Even after, they came home in the summers—the sisters and the wives of the brothers, with all the children. The men came for a few weeks and made repairs, helped the old man. They grew their own food but didn’t farm much on the rest of the