The Bureau of Dreams to be Continued by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

The Bureau of Dreams to be Continued

Page 488

At home, his mother didn’t yell. She just looked at him for a long time and said; “You’re not wrong. But they’ll always say you are.”

This dream sometimes manifested in a mythic, surreal fashion. He was called Little White Drum, not because he made noise, but because he held it. Every day, he walked into the schoolyard of Dark Valley Elementary, where the wind wore a hoody and the swings whispered names he didn’t choose. The other children; black as the ace of spades, bounced off him like rubber balls, laughing as if gravity were a joke.

Little White Drum didn’t cry. He collected the bruises like marbles, storing them in his backpack next to his lunch and his grandmother’s folded prayers.

One day, the sky turned sideways. The bell rang backwards. And in the corner of the playground, behind the tetherball pole, a metal garbage can shimmered like a knight’s helmet. It hummed. It called him by his real name.

He lifted it; not with anger, but with rhythm. The can became a drum. He struck it once, and the sound cracked the clouds. He struck it twice, and the earth blinked. On the third strike, one