Read Online A Book of Dreams by Peter Reich - Free Book Online Page B

the window as he drove past and threw a salute back at me.
    ‘Good luck, Lieutenant!’
    ‘Yes, sir!’
    Before going back into the lab I jumped off the porch and went out into the grass. I faced the forest and saluted.
    ‘All right, men, this is going to be a tough job.’ The officers and sergeants sat tall in their saddles, a straight line in front of the trees. Dry poplar leaves clattered overhead and the breeze made their yellow scarves wave too. ‘I want you all to be brave and carry on like good soldiers. I don’t know what is going to happen today but I want you to be ready at all times. We can’t let the general down. Take your posts. Dismissed.’
    Back inside the lab I walked all the way to the end of the big room to the telephone and looked out of the window. It was all quiet except for the loud cricket that buzzes sometimes.Actually the cricket was an Indian scout. Crows cawed in the trees.
    On the table next to the telephone all covered with dust was an old army-green telescope. I used to play with it all the time when the lab was open because it had a dial on top that changed the picture into different colours. Daddy used it to watch Orgone Energy streaming across the fields. I looked down into it and it turned Orgonon into a neat rectangle, like a sharp new postcard at the drugstore. The road came out of the trees in the upper right-hand corner above the apple orchard. It ran across the picture, under the red lower cabin roof and across the turn-off to the lab. Click . It was yellow, bright yellow as if the sun came down and lay over everything. Click . All green and dark, like a dreamnight. Click . Bright red, like a red fire on the trees, the road, even our already red roof. Click . Natural. So real and sharp it is just like a new postcard with green grass and blue sky and dark mountains, nothing moving except the black car coming out of the upper corner and moving slowly down the road, throwing sparks of light at me from the roof.
    I couldn’t breathe. The dial clicked slowly through red, yellow, green. Each time there was a black place before the new colour, making the car stop for a second. I turned faster and faster because if I turned the dial fast enough it would stop the car and send it backward, blue into the yellow grass and red forest.
    But the car was shiny black and slowed down in front of the lab in a green field of red dust.
    Dust was still settling on the shiny black hood as I came out the door, squinting in the sunlight. There were three men in the car: two in front and one in back. They wore shiny thin necktiesand white shirts and dark suits. Their faces were shiny and their eyes weren’t good. The man next to the driver leaned out the window. He stretched his hand out to me. In it was a little black leather wallet with a shiny badge in it. The man said he was a United States marshal.
    ‘These other men are Food and Drug Administration agents. We’d like to see Dr Reich.’
    I looked into the window. Holding my teeth together made me braver and look more like Gary Cooper or somebody. The agents didn’t move. The one in the back nodded. I straightened up and looked at the marshal. His suit was lumpy. Maybe he had a gun next to his armpit. It would smell bad. I just kept looking at the men without answering. Finally, the marshal said, ‘Uh, we called.’
    ‘Okay, but you’ll have to wait until I go in and call. It’s by appointment only, you know.’
    ‘Yes. Well, uh, like I say, we called. I think the doctor is expecting us.’
    ‘Well, I still have to call to tell him you are here. It will just take a minute.’
    The marshal nodded.
    Trying not to run, I turned and went back into the lab. I had to be calm and slow. My hand touched every nail in the aluminium moulding on every table as I walked through the lab to the telephone, looking back to watch the black car. And brave. The sun was a yellow dot on the black car trunk. The men were talking. One of them turned around and