Land of Dreams

Land of Dreams

  By

  Eugene Lester

  Copyright 2013 Eugene Lester

  Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. Thank you for your support.

  This book is a work of fiction and is a product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to any events, or any persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover image: The Angel of Revelation by William Blake

  Connect with Eugene Lester at his blog:

  www.relicsofcivilization.typepad.com

  Father, O Father! what do we here

  In this Land of unbelief & fear?

  The Land of Dreams is better far,

  Above the light of the Morning Star.

  William Blake, "The Land of Dreams"

  . . . for the world, which seems

  To lie before us like a land of dreams. . .

  Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach"

  PART ONE

  DOUBLE ZERO

  In April 1982 Clendon Lindsey barreled a new white Cadillac down a two-lane highway through spring-green alfalfa fields. Clendon's rawhide briefcase lay next to him on the leather seat. Inside the briefcase were copies of probate records, property tax rolls, and deeds concerning an eighty acre tract of land.

  He had worked at the Caddo County courthouse for three days studying county plat maps and deed books, separating the mineral rights from the surface rights, and had discovered that ownership of that eighty acres had been carved up forty-seven ways. He was sure those titles were all clean and now he only needed a fast trip back to Oklahoma City so his boss, Wylie Cobb, president of Cobbco, could sign the standard oil and gas lease offers and authorize paying the drilling bonuses to the owners of the mineral rights. Clendon's commission for untangling the rights and then tracking down and signing that many owners would give him another solid month.

  Production companies like Cobbco had a lot of leverage in offering bonuses, because the state's pooling laws allowed drilling whether the owners of the mineral rights agreed or not. When pumping started, and the crude oil began coming out of the ground, state law required that the owners receive a twelve and one-half percent royalty. After expenses and taxes, Cobbco kept the rest.

  As a landman in the oil business, Clendon dealt with the land's surface, but the business was really about finding what's under the ground. The petroleum geologists had told Wylie Cobb that this land, part of the Anadarko basin, still had large pools of oil under it. However, the price of oil had been dropping faster than a thermometer in January. Since the recession began, most production companies had stopped drilling and pumping. Rumors had filled oilmen's talk that spring that the Drillers Bank had gone bad and was about to be taken over by the Feds. Clendon figured Cobb's net worth must be about ten million dollars as Cobb kept telling him not to worry, that the Caddo County property would keep the bank from calling in Cobbco's note.

  Clendon checked his rearview mirror. It was filling with towering dark clouds and lightning flashes. He unscrewed the cap from a Jack Daniels bottle, took a sip and searched for a radio station that didn't interrupt the music with tornado watches. When he found Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again," he beat time to the music with his open palm on the seat. As he passed the I-35 junction sign and headed up the on ramp, he began singing along.

  In half an hour he reached the City. It was thundering and lightning, raining hard and hailing. The Cobbco office was on the northwest side of town, on the eleventh floor in the Pioneer Tower, a modernist spire attempting to imitate the architecture in Dallas. Clendon was glad for the underground parking garage, because he didn't like stepping out of the Cadillac during a thunderstorm and getting water and red mud on his new snakeskin boots.

  Clendon, carrying the rawhide briefcase, entered Cobb's office. His boss smiled, which was unusual. Cobb's teeth were stained dark from too much Red Man chaw. He absently fiddled with his Western string tie as he leafed through Clendon's courthouse work.

  "Clendon, you're the best goddamn landman in the City, maybe the whole state."

  "That's why I drive a Cobbco Cadillac."

  "This boom was the greatest two years of my life. Never thought I'd see so many Mercedes-Benzes in this town. Think I was in Germany." Cobb picked a piece of chewing tobacco from his teeth. "Clendon, we have to let you go. Business is so bad my wife can't make payments on her Camaro. I don't have the cash to give out for signing bonuses. Drillers Bank called my note today and the Feds are closing it down any time. When that bank bellies up, it'll take half the city down with it. In another month Cobbco will be history."

  Clendon had an angry urge to choke Cobb by his Western string tie.

  "You'll get two weeks pay," Cobb said. "That's all I have left. I'll take your briefcase now. Turn in the keys to the Cadillac tomorrow. I expect you'll have arranged other transportation by then?"

  Clendon's mind went blank as he slowly walked out of Cobb's office back toward the reception area. There was no receptionist. As he stared through a window at the lightning flashes, a thunderclap shook the building like a bomb and the electricity went off.

  Cobb Junior approached Clendon and clapped him hard on his shoulder. Junior was so skinny and nervous that he reminded Clendon of a Chihuahua. Even though Junior couldn't type and had dropped out of three universities, he had been riding Clendon about some paperwork he claimed Clendon had messed up.

  "Can you come into my office?"

  Clendon followed him down the dark hallway, ready to tell Junior what to do with his paperwork.

  Junior's office was dark. Dim storm light leaked through a window. He fingered an old Colt .45 revolver on his desktop.

  "I heard you got laid off," he half-whispered. His eyes were red. "We're going to lose it all." He gripped the Colt and raised it. "I'm depressed," he said.

  "Don't!" Clendon shouted.

  "Why not?" Junior said. "We're ruined." He pointed the revolver at his head and chanted, "Why not, why not, why not," and rocked the barrel against his temple.

  "It's only a setback," Clendon said. "It's not the end of your life."

  "Life sucks."

  Clendon jumped him and went for the .45. Clendon was bigger and stronger and gripped the barrel, forcing it toward the ceiling. He started yelling for help. Junior jerked the .45 and aimed the barrel again at his temple. Clendon yanked back hard. The barrel just cleared Junior's hairline as he pulled the trigger. It felt like a Roman candle exploding in Clendon's right hand and knocked him to the floor. He thought he had gone deaf from the sound. Junior fell, unshot but out cold, still clutching the handle of the big revolver. Little drops of rain began seeping through the bullet hole in the window.

  * * *

  Clendon began having the same dream every night. In each hand he held a ten-gallon bucket filled with hot, stinking crude oil. Above him was a skyscraper skeleton that disappeared in the sky. Wind howled through the rusting girders. The first stair was made of steel and concrete, and he began the climb. He had to reach the roof without spilling one drop. Flight after flight slid away beneath his feet as his hands ached and his arms turned painful and rubbery. Plains stretched beyond the horizon.

  Dizziness spun through him whenever he glanced through the unfinished stairs towards the ground. Sweat rained off him but his mouth went dry. The oil swirled around inside the buckets until it leaped over the top and trickled down the sides. Then, a light shone ahead. It was only two more flights to the top. Sweat puddled in his eyes and blurred the steps as they began to sway in the loud, rising wind. The girders groaned and
the stairs rolled. At the top of the last flight, a giant red and blue neon sign blinked off and on: NO EMPTY BUCKETS.

  Clendon's buckets were full and the last stair was only a step away. Then a hard gust of wind threw him down and jerked the buckets from his hands. The hot oil blew over him and blinded him. He cracked his shin on the sharp edge of a step and slipped down the stairs, banging his face, head, and knees. He fell as the building clattered around him. The wind swept the oil from his eyes. Before he hit the ground, it turned foamy. When he landed the pain and wind disappeared. Another neon sign flashed: FULL BUCKETS.

  He took two new buckets filled with hot crude, and began carrying them up the first flight again.

  Valium, barbiturates, Thorazine-- after his Cobbco layoff this small pharmacy had no effect on the dream. Only his waking paranoia grew until one hot afternoon for no rational reason he walked into the Jesus Saves Pawn Shop on 23rd Street and purchased a pre-owned Winchester .410 automatic shotgun and a box of shells. With his still sore hand, he couldn't even grip the barrel and trigger tightly.

  Seven hours later outside the Red Dog Saloon, a police officer terminated Clendon's ownership of the Winchester and shells. The officer confiscated them along with a nearly virgin case of Coors because Clendon had an open container in his car. He talked the officer into letting him take a cab ride home instead of taking a cop ride to jail. The deal for that favor was the ownership of the .410.

  Clendon called every person he had ever had lunch with at the Kiwanis club, and asked for work at Taylor's furniture store, or Green's shoe store. He could have broken ground for a new First Baptist Church with the number of people who said they would like to help him with a job, if they only could.

  Clendon's wife Melody was good as long as she thought he was making a lot of money, and at first she thought he did. They had met while dancing at a redneck bar when they were both very drunk. She was one-fourth Creek and proclaimed that she wasn't hung up about sex "like you white people." After Cobbco axed him, she headed for Houston with a banker who specialized in repossessing oil and gas properties. She left behind a notebook which Clendon found in her dresser. In it she'd written the names of several men, including the banker, and had made notes on how they kissed, what they looked like, what they did to her, and so forth. One evening Clendon stripped himself naked, leaned against his full-length mirror, and stared at his face, his eyes, his arms, his chest, his belly, his dangling penis and balls, his legs, and his feet, and sipped at his Jack Daniels bottle.

  After nearly a year of hanging on, going from one temporary office job to another, he felt like a junked Cadillac. One person called him back-- Brooks Boyd. Clendon had roomed with him at the University of Oklahoma for two years. Brooks had been an All-State quarterback in high school, but stuck his foot in an electric fan the summer before his sophomore year at OU. It ended his football career and gave him a small limp. He stayed pissed about his foot and his ruined career for a long time.

  At OU, Clendon had an American history class with a girl named Shelley Symmes. He spent most of his time looking at her and not taking notes. He dated her once and she accidentally slammed the car door on his hand. He acted like it was nothing, but after he dropped her off, he went to the student health center and had four stitches. X-rays proved negative. A couple of days later, she came up to him after class.

  "If you really like someone," she said, "I mean, if you're really interested in someone, and you're not sure if they like you or even know you, what do you think you should do?"

  "Tell that person exactly how you feel," Clendon said. "If the person says 'get lost,' you're no worse off than you are now. But if the person says 'hey, let's dance,' then you have a new life."

  Shelley smiled and flashed her silver-blue eyes.

  The next evening Brooks told Clendon that he'd meant this "really smart chick named Shelley, who said she was in your history class," and that he was going out with her Saturday night.

  After college, Brooks married her and they moved to California. About once a year, he wrote Clendon a feverish letter about his good life on the coast. In return, Clendon had called him a few times. When Clendon married Melody, Brooks sent him a leather cat-o'-nine-tails whip for a wedding present, with a note that read, "Provide your own chains."

  Brooks called on a hot September night. Clendon's air conditioner had broken, his lease had a week to run, and he had $40 in the bank. Brooks offered him a job at Brooks's new company in Los Angeles, Boyd-Tek, and sent him a plane ticket. Clendon packed away his few personal relics in storage, and sold his '71 Chevy Nova. The night before he left, he burned all his Cobbco business cards.

  * * *

  His birth certificate read Clendon Thomas Lindsey, but Clendon's parents called him Hank, because they had wanted to name him Edward Henry, and thought that they had. Clendon's older brother, Louis, who was then 14, had been entrusted to fill out and file the birth certificate. Louis wrote the name Clendon Thomas Lindsey on the birth certificate but never told his parents. Clendon Thomas had been an All-American halfback at the University of Oklahoma, and he was Louis's hero.

  When Clendon started school, his parents wrote off for his birth certificate, but there was no Edward Henry Lindsey born on his birthday, or any other day. The health department did find the birth certificate for Clendon Thomas Lindsey. Clendon's parents kept calling him Hank. Louis began calling him C. T. Everybody else called him Clendon.

  His father farmed wheat and hogs until Louis was killed in Vietnam. Then his father took to bed and told everyone that he was going to die soon, too. He had been in bed ever since, except to sometimes stroll the farm aimlessly while wearing only stained khaki britches. Once a year he went into town and signed lease papers so other farmers could grow wheat on his land.

  Clendon decided he had to go out to the farm before he left. His mother greeted him and led him into the dim, dank bedroom, where his father lay in bed watching Family Feud without the sound.

  "Hank, what the hell are you going way ov'ere for?" his father demanded. "Ghee-yawd DAY-umn, son."

  "Are you offering me a job?" Clendon asked.

  "Watch out for those goddamned city people," his father said. "They're always in a rush, and most of them don't even know where they're going."

  Clendon thought he saw his father's eyes twinkle for the first time since Louis had been buried. When Clendon started to leave, his father rose from bed and followed him outside.

  "Another thing," his father said. "Remember one thing that my granddaddy Lindsey always told me. 'You can't tell anybody anything. They have to find it out for themselves.'"

  Clendon's mother gave him a bloom from the peace rose in her garden.

  "Come back and visit us, Hank," she said.

  "I promise," he said.

  At the country cemetery, the Bermuda grass looked and smelled freshly cut. Clendon scattered the petals from the peace rose on Louis's grave. Across a barbed wire fence, an oil rig thump-thumped in a field. A hawk looking for field mice circled around the rig. There was no shade and even with the wind it was too hot to stay long.

  * * *

  Two hours into the flight and 34,000 feet below, a dark river uncoiled across the desert, disappeared into mountains, and meandered into Clendon's dreams, where he landed in the dark river and was swept downstream and sucked under. He had fought sleep for twenty-four hours, and thanks to the three whiskeys he had drunk on the plane, he lost. No fear of flying: a fear of dreaming.

  The man sitting next to Clendon woke him up.

  "You okay? You were kicking me, so I woke you up," the man said. "You were groaning and talking in your sleep about 'full buckets.'"

  Clendon smacked his mouth and tried to think.

  "Sorry. Can I buy you a drink when we land?"

  "No, thank you. I don't drink liquor and my wife is picking me up. My name's Bill Krayder. I manage children's shoes at Montgomery Ward."
/>
  Bill held out his hand and Clendon shook it. In his other hand, Bill was clutching a paperback book entitled The Shroud of Turin. The picture on the cover showed the shroud with its faint, strange image of a long haired, bearded man's face. The blurb stated that the face scorched onto the shroud was proof of Jesus's miracle resurrection.

  The stewardess leaned over, professional concern sculpted on her rouged face.

  "Are you having a problem?"

  "No."

  "Then please buckle your seat belt."

  The jetliner was on its final glide path. The Los Angeles grid-sprawl flattened out to the horizon and reflected a white light that made Clendon squint. Brown lumps of mountains emerged from the smog shroud covering the city. The dirty beige smog appeared to have dark streaks scorched across it. After Clendon stared at the streaks for a minute, a familiar face began to emerge. He rubbed his eyes but couldn't get it to go away. The face on the smog shroud began to smile. Clendon blinked at the face, wondered about his own imagination, and decided he needed to buy a good pair of sunglasses upon landing.

  The plane dropped and Clendon reached for the airsick bag. His face felt drained white and he stared into the bag until the plane leveled off, dropped its wing flaps, and wound down its engines. It crossed over a freeway and then landed hard.

  * * *

  Brooks Boyd met him at the airport. Clendon hadn't seen Brooks in almost six years, but Brooks had barely aged-- now only a slight wrinkle at his eyes, but still tall and athletic with flowing blond hair and overflowing confidence. He also still had a slight limp.

  "Clendon Lindsey!"

  They squeezed hands in a hard grip.

  "You look goddamned good, Brooks."

  "I know. How's the weather back home?"

  "Ninety-four degrees and sprinkling. Nice suit."

  "Made in Milano. You'll be wearing a suit like this in a few months." Brooks jerked his head toward the crowded escalators. "I saw Dolly Parton in here a couple of weeks ago. Keep your eyes open-- " His eyes darted around and his head radared back and forth.