“I had the dream in Taos. Two Hopi men had the same dream—two elders. A woman in Acoma had the dream.”

“Four dreams.” Joe nodded, as if the conversation were sane. Listening, Ben went on stirring the can.

Roberto tilted his head up. “Each time they take the gourd to the top of a long ladder and break it open. The ashes fall and cover the earth.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Then let me set your mind at ease. I’ve seen what they’re making, and it’s not a gourd of ashes. Let me get you those bus tickets.”

“There’s more.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“In my dream there was a giant.”

“How about train tickets?”

“As soon as I met you, I knew the giant was you.”

“Roberto.” Joe controlled himself. “Roberto, you’re a nice guy, bright, and I’m sure you’re sincere. But you’re playing medicine man in the middle of a war. Out in the real world, soldiers are dying, cities are burning, women are raped. What they’re trying to do on the Hill is to end the war. You and Ben insist on being buckskin loonies, okay, just don’t include me.”

“Hot!” Ben shoved a tin plate of stew at Joe.

“But the ashes will poison the clouds and the water and the ground and everything that lives on it. All the dreams are the same about that,” Roberto said.

“Sounds like scientific proof.” There were no forks. Joe picked up steaming, gray-green strips of beef with his fingers.

“They will erect a great ladder in the sky. Then, in my dream, a giant climbs the ladder.”

“Not bad,” Joe told Ben. “Starving helps. Just in your dream?” he added to Roberto.

“It’s not that I dream better; it’s that I can concentrate on dreams. Being blind helps. To me there’s not the same difference between day and night, awake and asleep. One leads to the other.”

“Dreams and reality?”

“Two sides of the same thing. Don’t you agree?”

“I would have said the major difference in the world right now is not being awake or being asleep, but being alive or being dead. And one doesn’t lead to the other like a hand to a glove. More like a stump to a glove.” Joe put his plate down. “So don’t dream about a giant on a ladder. Dream about Japan. Dream yourself a hundred thousand dead men bobbing in the water. Dream red beaches, banzai charges, kamikazes, paper cities and B-29s. Put a meter on your dream. One million dead, two million, three. See, I don’t mind you dreaming; I just mind easy dreams.”

Well, I’m a bad guest, Joe thought. A pall had fallen over the dinner party. Ben looked as if he was choking. Either he was choking or he was angry.