The Dream Dust Factory

by WILLIAM LINDSAY GRESHAM

I DON’T know if you ever tried to crawl through a drainpipe sixteen inches square but if you never did, don’t try it. Unless you’re built slim like me. I had to take the chance because that pipe was the only way out of Coulterville Pen, and you see I had to get out or beat my brains against the bars like a bluejay I caught when I was a kid.

I started a tunnel under the floor of the paint shack and it took me six months before I got down twelve feet to the main pipe of the old prison building. I broke into it with a piece of iron sawed from a cot. Then I waited for a rainy day. If you’re thinking about a crush-out, you want to wait for fog but rain will do. After the noon mess I started. With luck they wouldn’t miss me before the count at quitting time.

There was some two hundred feet of pipe between me and Ross Creek and I wasn’t sure there wouldn’t be a grating over the pipe mouth. I had to take that chance.

In the dark I inched my way along, rapping the metal bar against the clammy sides of the pipe to scare any water snakes that might have holed up in there. Once something w riggled out from under my hand and I started to laugh and the laughter came booming and shrieking back at me in a sort of echo.

Then I got to something I didn’t know about — an elbow in the pipe. I stopped dragging myself along and began to cry. You see, there was no way back and if I got stuck I didn’t think Warden Duffy would rip up half the prison yard just to keep me from starving to death in there. I figured he would just fill in the tunnel, when he found it, and fix up the books somehow to account for another inmate being dead.

Lying there, half inside the elbow, I could feel the muck squash under my chest. My eyes were burning with the slime, and the tears washed them clean and that was one on my side. You get to be grateful for little things like that.

I began to cuss my old man and think about my mother. He was my stepfather and I guess he meant all right but be had a high temper. It came back to me like a picture on a movie screen — Ma was in bed with a headache. She always had to ha ve the blinds pulled down because the light hurt her.

I was sitting in the kitchen reading. I was a big kid, going on seventeen. I’d done my chores so the old man hadn’t no real kick coming; he just come in feeling mean.

The book I was reading was one of Ma’s, called Phantastes, by a fellow named MacDonald. It was an old book with a green cover and the name in gold letters with a lot of curlicues. The back was pretty near off it, Ma and me had read it so much.

First thing I knew the book was snatched away from me and I saw the old man standing there. He was breathing hard through his nose. He didn’t say a word, just took the book and with his other hand grabbed for the stove plate lifter.

I got burned some, reaching into the stove before he yanked me out and began giving me the open hand, first one side of my face and then the other. I was built light and I couldn’t budge him. He cut my lip. It didn’t amount to nothing but I knew right then and there what I was going to do.

That night late Ma came into my room, not making any noise. I made believe I was asleep. She bent down and kissed me and then she smoothed back my hair and I wanted to jump up and grab a hold of her but I didn’t. I was planning to cut out of there, you see, and I knew if she talked to me I would never make it.

I waited until both of them were asleep and then I didn’t leave no note or anything. I had a valentine some girl from school had stuck in our mailbox and I left it under my pillow where Ma would find it in the morning and then I was off. The sky had never seemed so full of stars and them so far away.

I heard a freight whistle up the line and I headed for it, cutting across fields in the dark and snagging my pants on barbed wire plenty but I didn’t care. I had been on the go ever since — until I landed in Coulterville Pen.

When I stopped dreaming and had got some of my wind back I reached ahead of me in the dark and felt around as far as I could and then I found a ridge where the elbow fitted on to the pipe. I grabbed that little rim with my fingers and somehow, by digging with my toes to push from behind, I managed to worm my way through the elbow. And there, ahead of me, was a little gray spot of light.

I had to hurry because I knew one of the screws or a fink would find that tunnel under the paint shack and they’d have the prison siren blowing its brains out in no time. I inched along, the spot of light getting bigger all the time and my ears stopped ringing because the air was getting better, the closer I got to the pipe mouth.

Finally I reached out and grabbed the edges and pulled myself right out into the creek. It was muddy and roaring with the spring rains. I lay there in the shallows for a minute, letting the icy water wash the muck off me. Then somebody spoke from the bank over my head.

“Don’t try to swim for it. We’ve got a launch out there waiting to pick you up.” It was Warden Duffy’s voice. “Wash that slime off you and then turn and face me. Drop that iron bar.”

And that was that. I was so tired I hardly cared. There had been an old blueprint kicking around the prison population of that stir for years. It had been stolen from the record room probably before I was born. Nobody had ever tried a crush-out through that drain, though, and now nobody would ever get another chance. That was all I thought about while they were taking me back.

I was marched down into the “hole” under the old prison and thrown into a cell. For a long time nobody showed up at all. No food and no water. The floor was studded with rivets and I couldn’t sleep more than a few minutes at a time.

When they finally came for me it was Duffy and a couple of big screws who worked in the solitary block. Duffy started trying to find out where I had learned the layout of the drains and I had kind of a hard time not telling him. In the end they locked me up again and went away.

2

I BEGAN trying to dope out another way of beating the stir but I couldn’t put my mind to it. My mouth was dry and I kept slipping into all kinds of crazy dreams for a while. It felt like they had turned on the heat down there and then suddenly it was ice-cold and I was shivering so I could hear my teeth rattle. Every now and then I would get a flash of memory — things that had happened to me long ago — and one kept coming back and back as if it was trying to tell me something.

It was the picture of a little valley I had discovered when I was a kid, a couple of ridges beyond our farm. I called it Happy Valley because when I first found it, it was the spring of the year with the trees all slow green and the crocuses coming up golden under them where there had once been a garden. It seemed like nobody could ever be anything but happy there.

It was a great place to run off to when things got kind of steamed up at home. I went back to it year after year. In winter you would think the whole world had been shut out, like as if a big cold frame had been dropped over the valley, when the sky was pressing down gray and close with more snow coming and it was so still you could hear your own heart working. Once I flushed a partridge there and the boom it made, shooting up out of the snow, sounded as loud as a cannon.

Well, a picture of this valley began coming back to me and I tried to hold on to it. After a while I didn’t feel the rivets any more. “This is pretty good,” I said to myself. “I’ll just camp here for a while in the valley.” And it worked fine for what I judged was a night and part of the next day.

Sometimes it was winter in the valley and sometimes it was summer. Then I let the year roll over it, quiet and slow, and watched the leaves come out and the grass get high and then the sky got a deeper blue and the leaves turned and the valley was all gold and red with the fall of the year.

As I watched it, the first snow came and then more until it was all soft white and nothing breathing or moving except maybe an owl, out hunting when the night was settling down.

The next time they came for me and started asking questions about that drainpipe layout I was ready for them. I was determined to hang on to the valley as long as I could. They started to work me over and I hung on tight to the valley. I got so I could crawl right out of my skin and slide into one grass blade, standing there in the early summer light. I don’t know how to tell it any better than that, what I did.

I could feel the strap fetch me a lick across my shoulders and I could feel something go off in the back of my head like a firecracker but there I was, safe and sound, inside the grass blade. It always had to be something little.

Once I slipped out of the grass and then it was tough for a while; I lost the valley and had nothing but the table top. When I lifted my head I saw that my lip had been bleeding in a little puddle. I had bit it without knowing.

I hoped they’d get tired soon and put me back into the cell because I didn’t want to rat on the fellow who had given me that blueprint.

When they did get tired and I was safe back in the cell I just curled up and fell asleep. After that I got so I could shift in my sleep and give the rivets a fresh place to work on without waking up much.

The warden threatened to keep me down in the hole for the rest of my life but I stayed clammed up and in the end they took me out and gave me a hot shower and a shave and issued me clothes and I was taken over to Cell Block 9 which is the solitary block where they keep all the hard cases — the guys that get caught with shivs in their shoes and the guys that start fights. This was all right with me because I wasn’t in any shape to work then anyhow and I didn’t mind not having mail privileges — Ma was dead a few years back; nobody ever wrote to me except a couple of girls I had met in lunchrooms and that kind always get married and quit writing anyhow.

3

THE valley kept me busy a long time. But at last it sort of wore out and I began to get scared again until I thought of a pet bluejay I used to have. Not the one that beat his brains out but another one. This fellow I caught when he was young and had fallen out of his nest. I kept him out in the barn and used to feed him scraps. He tamed up nice and would ride around on my shoulder and I called him Smarty because he was an awful sassy customer and used to talk back to me a lot while I petted him. In the end a cat caught him. She come bringing him into the house, proud as could be. But Ma took Smarty away from her and the two of us buried him out under an apple tree. Ma said, “He’ll always be here, son. He’s part of the tree, now. When the blossoms come out next spring you come out here and listen and I’ll bet you’ll hear him scolding away as the wind goes by.” And that’s the way it was, too.

So now I began to think about Smarty and it was just like the cat hadn’t got him at all. I could sit on my bunk and make believe I had him with me, perched on my shoulder, and then I would send the make-believe down into my fingers until I could feel the soft feathers of his back. I recalled the way he’d stretch out one wing and fix his feathers with his beak and then hop down and look at me, first with one eye and then with the other. The way I saw him now his feathers were brighter blue than they had been for real. He would hop all around the cell and flutter between the bars and I could lean against them and see him flying back and forth and roosting on the bars of the windows across the cell block. Then I’d whistle real soft and he’d come back to me.

About that time Dreamy O’Donnell, an old trusty, was given a job helping out in the office where they keep the records of fellows that go stirsimple. One day the doctor sent for me and the screws took me to the office and the doc asked me a lot of questions. I wasn’t sassy or anything but I kept thinking about the bluejay and smiling to myself because I could see him sitting on my shoulder, giving little soft pecks at my ear, and they couldn’t.

Once when the doc was called to the phone the old man whispered to me, “Nice going, kid. You rode out the storm in fine shape. You’re regular.”

I just smiled at him. It seemed a long time ago — that business with the pipe and me getting the shellacking. It was O’Donnell that gave me the blueprint, you see — he was too old and worn out to use it himself. But I hadn’t ratted on him.

The old man was still whispering out of the side of his mouth, “. . . says you’re over the line. But I told him any kid that could go through that pipe was a long way from being stir bugs.”

“I’ve got a bluejay,” I told him, out of the side of my mouth. “He rides on my shoulder. Nobody can see him excepting me.”

O’Donnell’s face lit up. “No kidding! Say, kid, you’ve found it all by yourself— the only real way out of this stir. I gave up the crush-out ideas years ago. What you’ve been working is what cons call the Dream Dust Factory. Ain’t nothing you can’t have in stir, son, if you want it bad enough. You build it out of Dream Dust, inside your head. Only there’s one thing you mustn’t never make out of it...”

The doc came hustling back right then and I didn’t learn what the old man was going to tell me only’ I didn’t care much. I wanted to get back to my cell.

Outside of the windows across the cell block the summer days were getting shorter. The light on the wall across the courtyard looked different and the cell block smelled like autumn — fresh-painted steampipes.

In Cell Block 9 they didn’t allow us magazines or papers but I didn’t need any. I could see all the pictures I wanted right inside my head — built out of Dream Dust, like the old guy said.

After a while I got tired of the bluejay; he was always around and always pestering me to pet him. He would wake me up in the morning, pecking gently at the blanket over my face, and I would push him away and he would fly up to the cell bars and scold me for not getting up. I decided to fade him out but it took a long time until he was really gone.

4

BEFORE I knew it the winter was over and the air coming through the windows across the block smelled like spring. That’s the toughest time in stir — when you can smell the spring. I began remembering girls I’d met on the road; not real road sisters, because they are pretty tough, but girls on farms where I had dinged the back door for a meal, and girls in hash joints. There was one girl I’d been so stuck on I got a job washing dishes for a couple of weeks but she started going out with a fellow who had a car.

But remembering her was what really started me working the Dream Dust Factory for fair. I wondered then why I had never thought of this one before. Maybe it was because I was scared of it — scared it wouldn’t work and then I would be up the creek with nothing to hang on to.

I began building out of Dream Dust, over and over, shaping it up inside my head and trying to see what I had made. It got clearer and brighter and I could see it fine with my eyes shut but when I opened them it faded away. I didn’t really think it could happen to me and to work the Dream Dust Factory you’ve got to believe it can’t fail.

Nights were the noisiest time in Cell Block 9 because that part of the prison population are restless sleepers, always having dreams and cussing or waking up yelling and bringing the night shift screw down to tell them to shut up.

But one night I was lying there in the dark, listening to the fellow in the next cell coughing. I was just dropping off when I heard a voice, clear as could be. It was a girl’s voice, right down close to me, speaking low. I couldn’t make out the words very clear, just part of one sentence: “. . . come to you. Don’t worry.” And with that I waited to see if there was any more. There wasn’t but I turned over and went to sleep happy.

The first time I saw her was at night. There’s something about night that makes it easier. She was just a shadow — that first time — between me and the bars of the cell front. I saw her first with my eyes shut and then when I opened them, real, real slow, I could see her shadow. She seemed to be wearing a pair of old denim pants, just like prison pants, but she had them rolled up above her knees and she had on a man’s shirt that was too big for her, with the sleeves rolled up, and there in the dark I could only see her shadow but I thought her bare arms, as she stood with her hands in her pockets, were about the sweetest sight I ever saw in my life. Her hair was long; it hung to her shoulders, and even though I couldn’t make out her face I knew she wasn’t smiling. The tears started slipping out and down my face. She had come to me at last.

The next time I opened my eyes she was fading; I could see the bars through her. I knew that the Dream Dust takes a lot of time, but time was something I had. I had all the time in the world.

It’s funny, in stir, how the days crawl by so slow and yet the months seem to go sailing over your head if you don’t count them. I gave up thinking about the seasons outside. Where I was now it was mostly summer and out of Dream Dust I made trees — big ones, growing close, with their leaves meeting overhead; and in the dim light there was a little creek flowing over stones and in the willows were blackbirds nesting — there and in the rushes.

Sitting beside the stream on a smooth flat rock, I brought her back. I could hear the water over the stones, chuckling to itself. The wind came through, stirring the willows, and there, with my eyes wide open, I found the one I waited for. She parted the branches and stepped out on the rock and I saw her face, just as clear as could be.

She had a wide mouth that was red without having a lot of paint on it and her eyes were brown, under the golden hair. She looked at me, smiling to herself, waiting for me to speak to her. I reached up and took her by the hand and drew her down on the rock beside me; her hand was warm and sweet and I held it in mine. Then I leaned over and her lips were firm and real. She had a modest way of kissing that went through me so I wanted to cry, and yet she didn’t draw away from me, either.

“What’s your name?” I whispered to her and she put her lips close to my ear and whispered back, “Vida.”

It wasn’t like I had given her a name. She told it to me, all by herself, and I knew that this was the Dream Dust all the way. I had a little Mex girl once down in El Paso who taught me some Spanish but all I remembered of it now was that “Vida” means “life.”

Sometimes we sat on the rock under the willows, and sometimes it was a wide, white beach with the sun beating down and a cool wind sliding over us. Vida lay with her head on my arm, her eyes closed, feeling the sun warm us when the wind quit blowing every now and then. Her bathing suit was made of some kind of cloth I had never seen for real — the colors in it shifted and changed like in a sunset. She would turn and lean over me and let her hair fall down on each side of my face and it was like a little room with the light coming through it as she kissed me.

Whenever something would pull at me and bring me back to the cell in Block 9 I kept my temper and waited until I could get back to her and as time went on, getting back to her got easier and easier.

When the lights in the block went out at night she was always there; she would slip under the blankets and put her arms around me; feeling her hands on my back and shoulders was like satisfying a great hunger, somehow. And when I would wake up during the night she was still there, breathing slow and deep as she slept, and kissing her took a little while to wake her but then she would kiss back and maybe whisper something to me and it was all in the cell. But it was fine.

I could see the bars, dim in the light that filtered in from the windows across the way; I could feel the blankets that covered us, but Vida was there with me and I didn’t ask for any more. She was life and I had found her and I never doubted that she would stick by me.

Sometimes when we couldn’t sleep I’d change the cell with Dream Dust and it would be a boat out alone in the middle of a big river, all quiet under a million stars, and the new moon riding along with us, and a soft wind over the water. It was always warm on the river and we would drop over the side and swim a little ways, Vida’s hair darkening in the starlight when it was wet. I would swim after her and she would turn, treading water until I got close. Then we would be together and let the water close over our heads and we would kiss in the darkness, with the water all around us, until we had to let go and swim up for air.

In the boat were towels and dry clothes and Vida would press the water from her hair and tie one of the little towels around her head like a turban and we would drift, again with the same blanket around us, warm and close and feeling the touch of the night wind cool on our lips after we had kissed and Vida’s eyes were big and dark in the light of the new moon and all the summer stars. We would fall asleep in the boat, and when morning came I would hear the guard’s whistle and kiss Vida and she would step out of the bunk and stand there, making a face toward the end of the block where the screw had sounded his whistle, and then she would blow me a kiss and walk past the head of the bunk. When I turned she would be gone. Then I pulled on my clothes, made up the bunk, and waited for the first formation and breakfast.

Once the fellow who marched on my right in the file came down sick and there was a blank file beside me as we marched to the mess hall. But halfway to it I felt someone next to me and there she was. She had on prison denims that were cut to fit her and her hair was caught up under her cap. She slid her hand into mine and I closed mine on her fingers, holding my hand so nobody would notice anything. That morning she sat beside me at the table and whispered to me all during breakfast, mostly little jokes about the screws up on the balcony of the mess hall. I couldn’t keep from laughing a couple of times, quietly, to myself.

5

AND then, in the middle of all this — when I had everything a man could want in this world — I get sent for one morning to come to the warden’s office. I thought he was still after that blueprint of the drains and I smiled to myself because if they took me down into the tank and worked me over I knew Vida would be there, holding my face between her hands while I got my licking, and I knew it would be all right.

The warden started to say something but I didn’t pay much attention. I had better things to think about and I just smiled a little and then suddenly his voice cut through to me: — “... this other fellow was picked up, pulling a gas station heist with the same modus operandi used in the case for which you were convicted. The resemblance is one of the most uncanny things I have ever seen . . .”

It didn’t seem very important to me and I tried not to listen but he put two cards in front of me and I saw that they both had pictures of me. Only the fingerprints were different.

The room cleared and I picked up the cards and looked at them again. The warden went on, “. . . you’ll probably sue the state for false arrest and imprisonment. If you’re smart, you won’t hold any grudges toward this institution or its administration. Let bygones be bygones. You’ll get a good job out of it; I’ll see to that. You’re a bright lad. You’ll be okay. No hard feelings, eh?”

I couldn’t quite figure it. They gave me a suit and shoes and a full outfit, even a tie and an overcoat. It was spring and still cold in the evenings. The screws chipped in and gave me some dough and the warden doubled it. But it was all sour. Guys went about asking me questions and in the office of the prison psychiatrist the doc filled out a lot of forms, with Dreamy O’Donnell grinning over his shoulder at me. Then I was on the platform of a railroad station, holding a ticket. I didn’t want to be there. I began to cry.

A train came along and I got on it and the screw told me it didn’t go where this ticket said I was going which was the town where the job was. Only the screw wasn’t a screw, he was the conductor.

I got off again and while I was waiting I walked out of the station and saw a bus and I got on it and paid the driver. But I didn’t know where it was going. I wanted Vida to hurry back and tell me where we were, but she didn’t come.

I got off the bus again and we were in a town and I saw a hotel and went in and they wanted me to pay in advance. It was all right by me. The clerk came running after me and handed me some change; I stuck it into my coat pocket without bothering to count it, I was in such a hurry to get to the room and be by myself. I started up the stairs, only the kid who had the key said we’d better take the elevator.

I wanted to be by myself and find Vida and then everything would be swell.

When I got in the room I drew down the shades so it would be nice and dark and peeled off my clothes and got into the bed, pulling up the sheet with blankets over it until it covered my face. Then I whispered to her, “Vida, Vida. Come on, darling.” But nothing happened. I waited, listening to a big clock somewhere knock off the hours.

I stayed there in the bed until it was dark outside and then I got dressed and went out, looking at the lights in the stores. Once I thought I saw her but it was just one of these figures of girls they have in store windows, wearing a playsuit something like one I’d seen on Vida once. It wasn’t Vida, even though I stood and stared at it, trying to throw enough Dream Dust around it to make it come alive. I knew if she came alive she could slip through the glass and come to me. Only I couldn’t work it at all this time. I thought maybe it was because I was hungry.

I had coffee with cream and lots of sugar and then I had some more and the girl behind the counter kidded with me a little but I answered her with only half my mind. The rest was worrying about Vida and how I would find my way back to her.

6

I HAD this money they had given me and I lived on it until it was gone and then I found myself walking toward the freight yards. A string of empties was pulling out and I found a refrigerator car. My arms were weak, so weak I could hardly make the top. It wasn’t sealed and I crawled down inside, hoping Vida might be in there. But she wasn’t. After a lot of backing and jolting we were some place else and I climbed out and cut down a country road and hit a back door for a meal. I don’t know what it was I ate or who gave it to me or whether I even thanked them for it.

But I looked around while I was heading toward the highway and I thought it looked familiar. It wasn’t far from the old place — maybe fifty miles. Then I knew where I might find her — in Happy Valley. I started thumbing but nobody picked me up. And I couldn’t walk much because my feet were soft and the shoes had begun to gall me.

There was a car parked in a side road; whoever left it there had forgotten to take the keys. I just wanted it for the short trip and I knew the state cops would find it as soon as I left it. I didn’t think whoever had left it needed it as much as I did right then. It was the first time in my life I’d ever swiped anything and I wasn’t going to sell it, you see. I just needed it to get to Happy Valley and Vida.

I let the clutch out too fast and nearly piled it up against a telephone pole but I got it going at last and then I rammed my foot down on the gas and let her fly. I knew what I had to do and that was to get to Happy Valley before dark and wait there for the light to fade. Then, I kept telling myself, she would come to me. I prayed to her to come to me when the daylight was going and the valley shading over.

I stopped the car on the old timber road nearest the valley and set off straight up the side of the ridge, stopping to rest and get my breath every little while. I went as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast because I was out of condition. Finally I got to the top of the ridge.

The valley was gone.

That is, the Happy Valley I knew. It had been logged over; was nothing but stumps and spindly second growth. It looked dead and naked and I just stared at it for a long time. This was the end of the road, all right., because Vida would never come to me now, not in any place as empty and wide and ugly as this. I lay down and just about died. Only I didn’t die. I just wanted to.

I went back to the car. The light was fading. But the night wasn’t friendly any more. There was no place.

I thought I might as well take the car back again because I hadn’t found Vida and it didn’t matter now where I went once I took the car back, so I drove slow. There was a weight pressing on my shoulders and I felt like something was mashing me to death. I would start up and realize that I had driven a couple of miles in a dream, not remembering anything I had passed. I would find myself on the left-hand side of the road sometimes and wrench her over with a start.

I was almost there when I heard a siren behind me and I fed her the gas to try to get back in time — the state cops had spotted the license of the car and I wanted to get away from them. But they slid up alongside me. Then I saw the side road where the car had been and I turned left into it. Or I started to. That’s all I remember.

There was a hospital and I was handcuffed to the bed. I heard talk — it seemed one of the cops who had been chasing me was dead in the same crash that knocked me out but I was too miserable to listen any more.

The jail wasn’t like Coulterville. Besides, I had a broken collarbone. It kept aching under the cast and then itching and I couldn’t fix my mind on anything.

The court didn’t seem real, or the lawyers, or the judge — nothing seemed real. The train trip was all a dream. Until I saw the big gate of Coulterville Pen and I felt better because this was the place I had found her first and I could remember better here even if I couldn’t ever find her again.

I was mugged and printed all over again and this time I got a new number.

In the shower I slid my hand up the concrete wall and it felt old and familiar and I began to slip back into life again, only the old things were gone from inside me and it was just a stir now and deadlooking everywhere I turned.

I pulled on the denims and jacket and a screw took me into the office of the prison psychiatrist. There I sat, waiting on a bench. There was a clock on the wall and I watched its hand jerk in little jumps for the minutes, thinking about Vida and wanting her again, and I shut my eyes because I felt tears coming.

Something touched my hand. I didn’t want to open my eyes and have them sec me crying right there. But the next thing I knew was the soft touch of her hair. Then her lips on mine. She whispered, “Cry now, before they come back,” her arms going around me and pulling my head over to her breast. She was kneeling on the bench, holding me, when I heard the door rattle. Vida stepped down and just stood there with her arm around me.

I didn’t care any more if they saw me holding on to her, I needed her so.

It was the old trusty, Dreamy O’Donnell. I gave Vida a little hug with the old man looking square at us. Or at me.

His face was sharp and sad, in spite of the little smile that was always stamped around his mouth. He came over and put his hand on my shoulder and said out of the side of his mouth, “Cold winter coming outside, kid. Eh? Don’t you worry, kid. Stir ain’t the worst place in the world. Not for us. Eh, kid?”

I just smiled at him again and Vida reached up and kissed my ear. I kept my arm around her, not caring right then if the old man saw me or if the doctor saw me or if anybody saw me do it. I had her back again; that was the big thing.

O’Donnell watched me with his sad old eyes. Finally he said, “I tried to tip you off, kid. There’s one thing you shouldn’t never make out of the Dream Dust — or you’ll spend your life in stir.”

The door was rattling again and I knew this time it would be the doctor so I took my arm from around Vida and she strolled over to the window to wait for me.

O’Donnell stood looking at me for a moment and then he whispered out of the side of his mouth, “ Well, kid, you’re over the line now. I only hope she treats you right.”