An Incipient Frenzy

The baby was placed in the walkway, sitting, with his toys and accoutrements stacked around him. He sat there, alone. Someone had decided they didn't want him, so just put him down, like an item in a store she at first wanted but thought better of it.

I am utterly disgusted. I go to the baby, take one of the items stacked beside him, and toss it behind me in the direction of a passel of matrons with strollers and shopping carts. It nearly hits one, who is aghast.

The area is like those grassy winding walkways of military bases. I pick up the infant and begin walking with him. There are now more and more others walking, with babies and carts, and there is some anxiety, an incipient frenzy. I realize the ladies back where I threw the carton have called the authorities, and everyone understands something has happened.

Not an abandoned baby, but a package tossed in anger, that's the trouble. I hurry now. There is a path beside the one leading to the main gate. I tell the baby to please wait on this bench, and I place him on it. I will go and move my auto and be right back. I avoid the gate and enter the lower parking lot. I am exposed to view but unnoticed.

We escape.

But now my companion is a rangy, thin pup, legs like a birdog. He is now cavorting over the trailer back of me. I'm driving a truck now. The pup worries me; he is bounding about back there.

I must work now. The pup is safe, but I've missed something back on the line. It's my old job as a Swiss extruder operator. For some reason, that job I left in 1969 recurs. Here, all my machines are down and one is running good wire, but on a scrap reel.

All I have to do is wind it onto a good reel and sell it. The wire is gray, an unusual color. I must set it up to wind, meanwhile watching the pup I have rescued. The job is going wrong; it always does in my dreams, and mostly back in reality. I worked for nearly twenty six years after that Swiss job, and yet that's the one that comes back most often. I don't know why that is.

I am working at making do with a mess, as always, but at least the pup is safe.