The Man from the Broken Hills
Out on the front lawn reading a Louis L’Amour. Cindy, our other next-door neighbor, steps out for a walk with Denali, the dog. She likes my hat, and the next she describes the dream she had the other night:
"... something like a tunnel... water flowing into it... and it was pulling Maggie in. And then you appeared and pulled her out...?"
She looks at me with a dignity-stripped look of a concerned mother. True story, funny how it occurs sometimes on a trail.
"Gee, Cindy. Same all over the country," I drop my hands exhausted. "If you only knew how many mothers come to me with dreams about their daughters-in-distress. Seems the Mormons have struck gold, holding that a woman needs a male broker, that spiritually she can't go it alone. Not once in my travels, not a loneliest once, a mother would come up to me with a dream about her daughter pulling me out of a torrent. It's been always me jumping into the whirlpools after their precious ones..."
"You kidding me?!"
"A mite, Cindy. A mite."
She sends me a “give me a break” squint. I’m in danger now.
"Dreams, Cindy, discharge tensions sometimes. You know it. A sort of safety valve for the psychic steam…”
"You're right, I guess. I've been worrying too much lately…"
She gets on with walking Denali the dog.
"Cindy?!"
"What…?"
"But wasn't it nice of your dream to give me the top billing? It can't be all that bad with me, huh? One can't fool a mother's heart. Even in a dream, right?"
"You should also have a dream to vent your steam."
Americans and come-backs, surely joined at the hip.
