Bredenberg - The Dream Compass

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Copyright 1991 by Jeff Bredenberg

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The Dream Compass

Jeff Bredenberg

Copyright 1991 by Jeff Bredenberg

Published by E-Reads. All Rights Reserved.

Camp Blade, its mostly mud up here. And trees, toospecially up northwest, where we havent logged yet. They say were a few hunnerd miles north of where Toronto used to be, which is why we only get a truckload of women once a year or so. And thats the heart of the catastrophe Im telling.

This aint a casual communication. Its a desperate campaign. Ive penned three copies so far, and I am concealing each in the usual manner and sending them along Government Supply linessouth, east, and southwest. A printing press would help, I know, but never have I seen one, theyre so illegal. Please read and pass along without delay.

If there is oilcloth to spare, or if there is plastic to be found in your Sector, I would appreciate any covering that would protect these pages better than this cardboard and sackcloth. (And if you must eat while reading, please dont dribble onto the pages. You should see the foul stuff I get up here!)

I am thirty-six. Not married, although I tried once this spring, as you will see. The married campmates lodge in the roomier family barracks, which I had quite looked forward to. They get ten or twelve years there before the children ship off, maybe even longer if the Lawyer is feeling charity.

But I have been skinny to surrender my free time (since a year ago we get two hours) to the what-all demanded by marriage and parenting. Free time I read and write. And the family barracks also are busy placesthey say theres always a grubber in your lap, yours or someone elsesand only plumb fools get very showsome with reading. Thats the way in Camp Blade anyway, as Im told it is most places. I lose the sexual convenience, of course, but I can spare centimes for the cathouse every few months. Most of the time I just rub my own bark.

Late an afternoon, it was April 20, one of the Badgers in the lookout tower rang the ka-oong, ka-oong that signals an arrival. Most of the loggers had just bused back into camp, and there already was a fat crowd at the motor port when the troop carrier rolled in. From the whoops and hollers I knew, even down at the warehouse, that it was no wagon of cornmeal. I pulled on jackboots, hauled up the boardwalk, and splashed into the parking lot, thinking to be at a sizable disadvantage for being last there. Stupid feeling really, cause when the matchup starts its bedlam anyway, no advantage to anyone.

Except that the Badgers go first. There are a couple-twelve Badgers here, but just three were interested, and campmates stood back in a tight circle while they dropped the tailgate and rolled up the canvas top on the truck bed. One lady, old overalls and a standard-issue backpack, jumped the side of the truck and landed in the oil muck on her hands and knees. She squinted piss anger all around and slogged through the crowd. Shouted something like, I aint here for this. Im ticketed to the medical office. Then she mounted the boardwalk and clumped off alone.

The Badgerswhat pig pokerspranced and paced in their uniforms, really sucking in the privilege of first pick. They checked for head lice, held forearms up in the falling light, mumbled questions that I figured to be severely personal. They rumined on the answers all somber. Some of the women were polite.

This was that romance promised in the Government announcements. If you gully those fliers read out at assembly, the females trucked up here are of speckless virtue and upbringing. Not even the dullest of campmates believes this. The women are here for the same reasons as men: Most are mandated; a few are idiot adventurers; one or two, like myself, grew up here; and a few are petty criminals working off sentences in privy upkeep or cathouse duty.

The Badgers carried their brides-to-be off in their armsno ceremony, just to keep them out of mud. The last, Sgt. Krieger, nodded at us and said, Your turn.

There was a roar like dogfight gamblers. Some of the women laughed; others screamed in true terror. I felt kinda plumby elbowing my way through, but it was the only way, and I had promised myself Id try. Taang Beecham grabbed the blonde in the flannel shirt and hauled her onto his shoulders. Id fancied her, too, but Beecham is a head taller. I was pulling over the wall of the truck bed when I came nose to nose with a face of freckles and red hair.

Lets go, she said, and I answered, Yeah. Relieved, I tell you, more to have it over than anything; I could get out of this foolishness and maybe, maybe not, get married. I was starting not to care. Im no prize by face, and this lady was a match for that. A scar separated her left eyebrow, and her nose had been broken enough that it stair-stepped down and ended in a potato.

The first full-figure glimpse I got of Nora Londi came when old gray-head Jim Freeberg grabbed her thigh. She cracked him on the jaw with the back of her right and stood6-foot-2, 190 pounds, mostly muscle: Im spoken for, Pops. Nora shouldered her duffel and we headed for the boardwalk. She moved like a living pile of rocks.

You dont have to marry me, yknow, I told.

Nora scratched her nose. You were there at the truck, and we both went for it. Thats how it goes. Youre gonna back out, ya?

No. But its custom, not law. I checked with the Lawyer. You have a work assignment, right?

Logging.

Well, you tenny a right to a singles bunk if you want it. Arent mucha bed with a plywood wall around it and a light hung. Its not often done, understandby women, I mean.

I don mind. Look, I promise not to fall in love, okay?

We went on long like that, embarrassing, like two dogs nosing each others butts. Nora thought about it: Its custom, not law. Theres a difference, I spose, but they don talk it up much, do they? She squeezed my left bicep. Logger?

Supply house. Lifting, uncrating. Move this here, move that there. I can get you anything you wantanything that comes by truck. Hah. Except a womanwere fresh out.

Id like an apple. And tobacco and rolling papers.

I pointed out the temporary quarters, six doors down the boardwalk. We kissedthats what we were supposed to do, right?and I went back to work. I had never seen a woman that big.

Pages later

My father taught me to read, got me started, least. He disappeared when I was a grubber, like a lot of troublemakers doreaders, brawlers, jesus folk. Who knows where they go? Prisons? Some say you might disappear to a better job in a different Sector, which sounds to me a line from another Government flier. Whatever. I dont intend to disappear; sew my eyelids shut, burn the books, or leave them buriedI dont need to read that much.

Ben Tiggle, the warehouse master, is my spiritual father. He is large, dusty, and old, like the warehouse. (The troublous stonework of the warehouses foundation dates it as a pre-War structure.)

As a tenner I would pry the top off, say, a crate of axe blades. I would wipe the grease-and-straw packing from the steel and mount the blades by number on the storage pegs. An hour in I would find a few pages of scratchings among the axe blades, wrapped in a piece of old raincoat, maybe.

Instructions, Ben would say, and toss the papers into a corner. Just instructions. Damned Engerswedes think we dont know anything. But often there were none of the drawings and arrows and such what come with mechanical instructions, and the text was hand-done, nothing from Government presses. Ben has never fessed to reading, of course. I took it to myself that all brochures, instructions, and writings of any kind ended up on a safe, dry shelf and not in the kindling bucket. I still have those scriptingsburied, of coursedecades old, some.

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