Dear Little Jo,
I get this one nightmare every couple months. Whenever it happens I know I’m not going to be able to sleep again the rest of the night. We’re doing a roof, and the rule on a roof is always lean forward, but in this dream I stand up and instead of leaning forward I lean back. The others all give me these looks like, Now you’re in for it. My whole body clenches up trying to correct it, trying to lean forward again. I mean my guts are like a fist, they’ve clenched so tight. But of course nothing works. My arms start to wheel around and my feet pedal air and I fall. You know that thing about dreams where they say that you always wake up right before you hit the ground? Not me. I hit the ground and my head bursts open. I mean I can feel hot liquid pouring over my skull and out of my ears. I feel each of my ribs stab through my chest. Lungs deflating. Leg bones pleated like accordions. Then, only after all that, do I wake up. My stomach muscles ache the whole day after one of those roof dreams, like I’ve done a thousand sit-ups the night before.
So now it’s 2:30 a.m. and I’m supposed to be ready at 5 a.m. to leave with Uncle Viktor in the truck. That’ll be about two hours total sleep tonight.
To be honest, Jo, I sort of hate roofing. Not just my uncle power-tripping on me all day long either. I hate everything about that job. I hate the grit of the shingles and the stench of tar. I hate the pounding of our hammers all day going in and out of sync so that it can never become rhythm, only noise. In summer I hate the way the heat beats down but also gets absorbed by the tarpaper and boils up from underneath. Burned shoulders, burned knees, burned hands. Drinking water all day but still feeling thirsty. In spring and fall I hate the cold wind that whips across the housetops from all directions at once.
I’m glad my dad isn’t around to hear me saying this. I mean I doubt he was crazy about the job either, but I don’t remember him ever complaining.
I was just picturing you asleep inside your army tent. Your Inner Sanctum. I have to say it made me feel a bit better, that mental picture. Thank you for giving me all those details about the records you listen to et cetera. It’s actually making me smile right now, sitting on the rug on my bedroom floor.
I guess maybe what I have is an Outer Sanctum instead of an Inner one. It’s this stretch near my house along the railway tracks. Mark and I used to go there a lot as kids, before they fenced it off and put up all those NO TRESPASSING signs. We used to ride our bikes down the middle of the tracks, between the rails. Mark got so he could ride right on the rail, but I never got the hang of it.
He made this sort of sled out of plywood that we could pull along the tracks. We would pile rocks or branches and slide it along the rails. Once we found an armchair in the ditch and put that on the sled, and he would let me sit in it and pull me along. For some reason it was the biggest thrill.
They’ve fenced it all off now so you can’t go right up to the tracks except through this one area where the chain link is rolled back. Recently they put in an asphalt path for bicycles and dog walkers et cetera. But it’s still fairly wild down there. Grasshoppers everywhere. Unmowed grass, that kind Walt Whitman says sounds like So many uttering tongues in the wind. And I don’t know. A feeling of being on the edge of things. A dividing line between the city and wherever those trains are heading.
Sincerely,
AK