Farmboy - The Novel is a Dream Machine Site The Dream Machine --- The Imagination of the World Wide Web

"What the hell have I done?", he asked himself angrily.

Forgetting about coffee, he took the top off the whiskey bottle and took a big gulp. He knew that only the hair of the dog was going to help him this morning. The damage he had done to his body and mind was far too advanced to be touched by mere caffeine. When the liquor hit his stomach he was nearly overwhelmed by a wave of nausea before it settled in and began to cure his hangover. Michael remembered reading somewhere that all drugs cure their own hangovers. This is part of their addictive lure. Still, he found himself wishing he had some morphine instead of booze or at least some codeine.

Finally the pain began to subside and he began to make plans for an elaborate apology he was going to extend to Martha. A loud bellow from the barn reminded him he had other things to do as well. He got up slowly and made his way out of the house. Despite the effect of the liquor, his head thumped and rumbled as he moved. But, he pulled himself together as he had so many days before and got to work.

His chores behind him, he decided to skip breakfast and try to make up to Martha instead. His first call, to her house, brought no answer. The second, to her job, got him no further. She hadn't been in this morning and they either couldn't or wouldn't tell him where she was. Finally, he called her mother. There he discovered that she had come home early in the morning, packed her bags and driven to St. Paul. Her mother didn't seem too happy with this turn of events and asked Michael if he knew what was going on.

Michael lied and told her he was in the dark about it. But he knew damned well what was going on. Martha was fed up with him and had moved to the city. She had been threatening him teasingly about it for months. He never really thought she would do it, what with all the turmoil in the cities. He himself had run away to the country mostly to get away from it. And to run away from his memories.

It was those damned memories that were hard to escape! He poured himself a large glass of whiskey and settled down to do some serious drinking. The drunker he got, the more he thought about Miranda. How well they had gotten along. How much they had suited one another.

If only he hadn't spent so much time working. He would have been home that night. He didn't ask himself just exactly what he thought he could have done. Miranda gone out to the store about one o'clock in the morning. It was a hot night and she probably couldn't sleep. For some reason, Michael never did find out why, she decided to take a walk to the corner store. It was open all night. Maybe she was going to buy some milk or something. While crossing the street, she was run down in the crosswalk by a car. It was driven by a man who drunk far too much to walk, much less drive a car. He didn't even know he had hit her until he saw the blood on his front bumper and grill the next morning. He called the police and was arrested for leaving the scene of the accident. He had several prior drunk driving convictions. So he was sentenced to thirty days in the county jail. Miranda died on the way to the hospital.

Michael knew deep down, that there was nothing he could have done about it. Still, the visions in his mind of her terror in that last moment and what he imagined it would feel like to get smacked with a 2000 pound vehicle...these horrible thoughts kept returning to haunt him. Meanwhile, he had been at company lab running meaningless computer simulations. He didn't even know what had happened until he got home about three in the morning and found Madelaine crying in the living room. She was the only one in the family the police could locate at that late hour.

For a while, Michael dreamt about it nearly every night. He would wake up in a cold sweat and lay there for hours running through all the what-ifs and maybes. His friends had offered what seemed to be endless concern and comfort. Nothing worked to relieve his guilt. In fact, the more they tried to console him, the guiltier he felt. He had even tried therapy. "Nothing works but this!", he said aloud, as he downed what was left in his glass. On the way to the cupboard to refill his tumbler, he stumbled heavily and fell on to the couch. He tried to lift himself, but thought better of it and passed out.

When he awoke, it was already dark outside. The inside of his head and mouth felt like an herd of bison had trampled on through, leaving their droppings behind them. When he stood up, he was immediately conquered by nausea. He barely made it to the bathroom before noisily losing what little remained in his stomach.

"Jesus H. Christ!", he swore through the pain of the dry heaves. "I thought I learned this lesson years ago!" Although he drank nearly every day, he hadn't been this drunk since the day he buried Miranda. It reminded him of his college days, the drinking contests at the fraternities. In those days he had felt invulnerable. Now he only felt shitty.

After what seemed like an eternity, the nausea retreated. When it had subsided enough, he gulped down three aspirins with a large glass of water. Then, he walked unsteadily back to the couch, turning on the television as he passed it on the way. The TV commentators were in the middle of what seemed to be a special program.

"...so, Martin, what you are saying is, that this object, whatever it is, struck the Earth at high speed earlier today, somewhere in Southern Wisconsin. Didn't it make an explosion or something like that when it hit?", were the first words Michael was conscious of. The words "Southern Wisconsin" had caught his attention.

"That's what has the scientists so puzzled, Jim.", replied the other announcer. "They are saying that even a small object travelling at such high speed should have made some kind of impact. But there have been no reports from anywhere in the area of explosions, or craters or even loud noises."

"You keep calling it an object.", the first announcer broke in. "Is there any chance that this thing, whatever it is, is not a meteor?"

"You're guess is as good as anyone's. At this moment no one is saying anything definitive about it. The Air Force and the governor's office have refused to comment. A spokesman for the state police said that they expected more information to come to light in the morning, when search parties can be dispatched."

"Well, that about raps it up. Now, back to...", and Michael was lost in his own thoughts.

He spent the next several hours flicking the remote control from channel to channel, trying to get more information on the mysterious object. There was plenty of coverage. Almost every channel had something to report. What he found out is that the unknown object, which had been first detected as it passed the orbit of Mars, had hit the Earth's atmosphere at an extremely high velocity. Lighting up the early evening sky over southwestern Wisconsin, it had attracted an enormous amount of attention. Early reports from radar stations stated that it had seemed to maneuver somewhat after entering the atmosphere, but had disappeared from the screens so rapidly that they couldn't be sure. The motion of the object was like that of a flat stone skipping across the water. No aircraft had passed within ten miles of it, so there were no close up sightings. At least none that anyone in official position would acknowledge.

"Just what we need on top of everything else," thought Michael, "flying saucers." Still, since the incident had occurred so close to where he lived, he couldn't help but be interested. From the sound of the news reports, he probably would have seen it himself, if he hadn't been out like a light. He decided to call a few of his neighbors, to find out if they had seen anything.

Indeed they had! Everyone he called had either seen it or knew somebody who had. It had been the brightest meteor that anyone could ever remember seeing. It streaked across the northern sky for at least ten seconds. Glowing bright green and trailing a cloud of flames, it impressed the hell out of everyone who had beheld it. The story was that it must have hit somewhere nearby, but nobody saw it hit and nobody heard a thing.

When he called Randy, he found out that a group of men had decided to get a couple of cases of beer and go out looking in the coulees. Most of his neighbors were sure that it had hit, or landed, very close by. The possibility that it was something more than a meteor had stirred their collective imagination. Michael was no exception. Randy suggested he come along since he was the closest thing to a scientist in the area. But the mention of alcohol made his stomach churn. He begged off, pleading illness, which was certainly true. He tried to get something to eat instead. It was almost nine o'clock and he hadn't eaten all day.

He fixed himself a breakfast. It was the only thing he could think of that sounded good. "Better late than never." That trite thought came to mind despite his effort to avoid it. "Like trying to not think of a pink elephant..." he imagined, "...or Miranda."

Once again, he was overwhelmed by thought of her. Now, however, he no longer thought of Miranda's sad death, but her life. The excitement he had felt at his neighbor's accounts of the evening's events had revived and excited him. He remembered all the evenings he had sat up late with Miranda, after the children were in bed, talking about the stars, the universe and the meaning of life.

Miranda had always been more romantic and imaginative than Michael in those discussions. He had been raised without much ado about religion and philosophy. His father had been a successful farmer and his mother a traditional farm housewife. They had raised their children with a calm but sure certainty that as long as the kids made it to adulthood alive and well, they had done their jobs and all was right with the universe. Neither of them ever talked about God or religion or anything other than the practicalities of life. Farm life keeps your mind trained on the essentials.

Consequently, Michael grew up thinking of himself as an atheist. As a young adult he modified this view slightly. He realized that a non-belief in God was almost a religious belief in its own right. Mostly, he realized that you didn't really have any control over what you believed. You either believed something or you didn't. Or, sometimes you were simply unsure. He began to think of himself as an agnostic, one who wasn't sure. He was sure that God wasn't an old white man with a beard, as so often depicted by Hollywood. That image struck him as being particularly Jewish, echoing the Old Testament vision of God the Grouchy. On the other hand, he couldn't quite shake the belief that there had to be someone...something more, somewhere.

Miranda, on the other hand, had been raised in a family that used to talk about such things at the dinner table each evening. She had been confirmed in the Methodist church. It was the Northern rather than the more fundamentalist Southern variety. Her family didn't go to church every Sunday, but made it for all the important holidays. Every once in a while her father would suggest that the whole family go to church together, but Miranda could never quite figure out what the motive was for those events. She concluded tentatively that it was something her mother and father decided in private, but it was always a surprise when she was told they were all going to church the next day. It was a sign of the integration of her family life that it never occurred to her to object.

The whole family frequently talked about the purpose of life. Each of them was certain that some higher being was responsible for all of it. They also wondered at the marvels of the world, at each new scientific or artistic advance. It was as though each new discovery merely confirmed what they already believed. Michael often found himself envious of Miranda's background. He told her that often that he felt he had missed something really important.

Miranda always assured him that he was the one who had it good. Living on a farm, so close to nature, he and his family were naturally casual about the many marvels of the world. What she and her family found so wonderful, were commonplace to him and his family. Birth, death, the beauty of nature, even scientific discoveries were commonplace on a farm. Now, at last, as he sat there recalling the past, Michael felt she might have been right.

These thoughts brought him around to a general feeling of well being. By the time he turned in, the illness and pain of the day had receded into the background. He drifted easily into sleep, but once again he dreamed.

This night the dream seemed to take off where the one the night before had left off. He was in the same alien forest searching for someone or something, but tonight, as he peered behind each strange tree or shrub, he was sure that which he sought would appear at any moment. It never did.

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