My Life (part 74)

With things running themselves at the university Sally and I took the ground car to look over what remained of our ranch/farm.  From the air we saw what we expected to see.  The barn and house were still intact.

“They plowed to within two feet of the buildings!” Sally said rolling down her window and leaning out of the car while we landed.  “Flowers, rock garden, chicken coop,” she continued listing things that had been plowed under while I found a place to park.  I planned on parking inside the barn but found it full to the doors with bailed wheat stocks,  I parked on a patch of unplowed soil between the house and barn.  Looking around our old home would not take long, the only place to look was inside the small house.  Inside nothing had been touched.  Sally picked up a sock I had somehow left on the living room floor.  She held the sock with two fingers as far from her body as she could and then tossed it into a basket in the laundry room.  She walked through the kitchen and came back into the living room with her fingers pinching her nose.

“Don’t go in there, we may have left a few things out on the table that should have been put away.  There’s a purple mound of something growing out of your cereal bowl.”

We had left in a hurry and turned everything over to others.  It had seemed to be the right thing to do at the time, and probably was, but this place had become home and it seemed we had done it an injustice.  We went back outside to the strip of grass that survived between the house and the barn.  Colorful Bantam Chickens hunted bugs and seeds in the tall grass.  As we approached the chickens took flight and perched on the ridge of the barn.  They sat on the top edge of the barn waiting for us to leave the area that had become their sole domain.  We sat on the porch swing and watched the birds watching us for a good hour.  And then without discussion we walked to the ground car and headed back to the university.  To this day, in my minds eye, I can still see the purple mound of furry food sitting on our kitchen table.

On the day our package left for the planet Freedom the Earth announced plans to annihilate Oaxion once and for all.  The official protest from the people of Jasper’s World said nothing of our plans to contact the intelligent life we called the Oaxions.   Our effort at communications lifted into space and began its flight to Freedom without being spotted by Earth’s detection array and began its six day journey to the settler planet.  In the room at the university we watched our small space craft make its way as we watched both the Earth and Oaxion for missiles that could end our experiment.  No missiles came.  Our shielding had worked.  Our package of information soft landed on Freedom in exactly the spot we had programed.  Now all we could do was watch and wait.  We had no idea how long the wait would be.  Most of our work force returned to the task of providing food for ourselves and the people of Earth.

Sally and I were jogging alongside a field of tall corn the day the message came.  I was jogging slightly behind her, letting her set the pace and the direction.  At least that was my stated reason.  Sally and I were getting older but she still looked good in her short shorts and tank top.  She may have been watching the pathway but I was just watching her. She slowed the pace and waited for me to catch up.

“I remember doing this while you were still living with us in my father’s old house.  A scrawny, dirty, Earth boy, living in my nice clean home.  Can you imagine?”

“The first thing I did was take a shower.”

“I could just feel the contaminates from Earth coming out of your pores.  One of the reasons for taking you jogging was to get you to clean out your pores but I was still afraid you would damage our nice clean air.”

“Well, I’m glad you got over it.”

“Mostly,” she took off running and I did my best to catch up.  I could hear the signal from her communications pad just before I heard the signal from my own pad.  We both stopped running to look at our screens.

On both our screens a text message scrolled, “a package from Freedom has arrived.”

My Life (part 59)

As Sarah walked off the stage forty foot tall images of her beamed from towers placed among the crowd which allowed people a half mile away from the stage to watch her exit.  The crowd continued to cheer even after she disappeared from view.  And then a small old man leaning on his walker was elevated to the height of the platform. The cheering, clapping and yelling stopped but when five hundred thousand people whispered Henry all at once to each other it was anything but quiet.  Henry Jasper took slow careful steps toward the center of the stage as a upholstered chair with arms was carried onto the stage and placed in the spot Sarah had just spoken from.  Henry’s close friends recognized the chair as the one he sat in while he had his evening coffee in his simple home.  Henry had dressed for the event, his overalls were new and unwrinkled, his boots were black and polished to a glittering shine.  Henry took his time making sure he had a firm grip on an arm of the chair and scooted his feet into proper position before he lowered himself carefully to his chair.  The smile and look of accomplishment on his round face as he adjusted himself comfortably into the soft cushions inspired the crowd to cheer.  Henry waved a hand to let them know that was enough of that but the wave just inspired more cheers.  Henry decided to wait them out and just sat patiently until the cheering died down.  

Without notes or prompter, without any planned speech at all, Henry Jasper began talking, just talking, like he was sitting in his favorite chair in his den.  In the quiet voice of an old man he said, “I never meant to become a king.”  

The crowd chanted, “Henry, Henry, Henry,” for a good sixty seconds before they allowed him to speak again.  

“For some reason I saw the needs of Earth before they became needs and with a lot of help we saved the Earth from starvation before anyone starved.  It’s true, we worked hard but people were dying to save the Earth.  Our jobs were not filled with life and death decisions; unlike those flying fighter planes, or those infiltrating enemy lines, or those who ran to escape clouds of poisonous gases,  our job has been to produce life in order to preserve life.  Not a bad job, if you ask me.”  

The crowd cheered.

Henry closed his eyes and rested a moment until the noise died down, “In my shortsightedness I thought our rescue efforts would be ended about now.  I thought we would be done feeding the Earth and we all would return home about now.”

In unison the crowd shouted, “this is our home,” like, as if, it had been rehearsed.

“I know, it’s my home too.  When it was finally realized that we had not only provided food but we had settled a new planet we looked to a future where the Earth would no longer need us and we would have to survive on more than just agriculture.  Someone, I don’t remember who, suggested we attract tourists from Earth.  It was a pretty good idea and has had some success.  We built places to camp out and costal resorts.  Trenton and Sally have set up a popular, what do you call that thing Trenton?”  Henry looked to where we were sitting just past the edge of the stage, “a dude ranch?” I gave him a shrug and he grinned.  “That’s been pretty successful.  The most successful project of all is the amusement park on the coast not far from here.”  

A cheer and a bunch of foot stomping went up, mostly from university student in the crowd.

“But something unforeseen has happened.”  The crowd went silent.  Unforeseen things were not necessarily good things.  Henry added quickly, “it’s not bad.”  The crowd relaxed.  “We’ve been doing some studies, at least students here at the university have done some studies, I read them,”  Henry paused a second and then added, “I’ve skimmed them.” Some in the crowd laughed a little and some clapped.  Earther’s have decided, for the most part, not to become farmers.  Our studies have come to the conclusion that Earth will remain dependent upon our produce for as long as we are able to foresee.”

Having said what he felt was important Henry started telling stories about how Jasper’s had fought for farmland, stories about old army surplus equipment that couldn’t be trusted, and stories about friendships.  He was no longer giving a speech, he was just an old man reminiscing.  Some of the stories included me.  He mentioned my arriving in a fuel container at fourteen years of age.  It was an old story and most of the crowd had heard it already, luckily he didn’t ask us to stand or anything.  He spoke for well over an hour and not a single person grew tired of listening.  When he stopped and signaled for a little help getting out of his chair people cheered and chanted, “Henry,” the whole time he shuffled off the stage.

The Rat

“I must look like a drowned rat,” she sits down beside me her short brown hair plastered to her head and water still dripping from the spiked by rain ends.

“Because of the tail?” I take a sip of my very hot americano and wait to see if my joke has any effect. All I get is a stare that says I must be deranged.  I get that deranged look a lot, it’s almost as good as a laugh.

“It’s pouring out there.   When is it supposed to stop? she turns and with a bit of tugging places a drippy, light weight jacket on the back of her chair.

I click on the weather icon at the top of my Mac Air, “got about a half inch of dark green left and then it lightens for another half an inch.”

“And?”

“An hour?”

“Can I just sit here that long?”

“I’ll be here at least that long, you’re invited,” I  dispose of the Weather Chanel and re-read what I have written.

“What you writing?” she looks over my arm and starts reading.

“It’s a short story about a cute girl that comes in out of the rain and sits by me in a Starbucks.”

“Just cute, not beautiful?”

“Well, she just got drenched in the rain and resembles a drowned rat so cute isn’t bad.  She probably cleans up pretty good.

Still reading my screen she says, “hey wait, I have long red hair and this girl has short brown hair.  What’s the deal?”

“Poetic license,” she looks me in the eyes and waits for further explanation.  “I wanted water to drip down the strands of her hair but I couldn’t think of a word for long hair bunching up into thick strands so I used spikes of short hair, everyone knows what that looks like.”

“And why brown?”

“The girls in all my stories have red hair I just thought I’d try something different.”

“I suppose I could dye it brown.”

“And cut it short?  The red head skin and freckles would really pop with dark brown hair.” I duck a little and raise my arm a bit in defense.  I take the punch on my shoulder.  “I mean I love you just the way you are, don’t change a thing.”  She gives me a wet kiss on the cheek.

Randy 6 part 5

We sit at a picnic style table that looks like the wooden tables that were outside Jolly Cone a hundred years ago but I’m sure the tables are made of some sort of plastic.  Mac is munching a double burger with cheese and bacon.  Mac’s burger is not real, of course, it’s a holo burger being washed down with a holo coke.  He’s a light eater (sorry the typewriter made me do it*).  I have a real regular Jolly Cone burger with lettuce, tomato and secret sauce (Thousand Island dressing).  Crinkle cut fries are piled into a small white cardboard basket sitting on the table in front of me.  My drink is a hot Americano made using a replicator file supplied by Mac so it is exactly like the Americanos I have at home, or on my ship, or at Cayucos Coffee, or several dozen places around the Galaxy.  I stare to the south down the sixty foot wide length of parkland that is still called Mount Vernon Avenue. 

The first plan was to be a singer.  I have an average voice and in school they gave me some decent training.  In one class we used to all come in and sing a middle c note.  If you can pick c out of the wind you can pretty much sing any written music on key.  But the kind of music I like wasn’t being played on the radio anymore, not that that made any difference to my music career.  My second choice was to be a beach bum.  It’s a wide open field but the beds are often dirty and hard.  Trenton, the barista in Cayucos, has been trying to get me to come live on the coast for years.  Now, for the first time, I consider it.  I could achieve my goal of becoming a beach bum but a beach bum with a nice soft bed and warm showers.  Sally could run Randolph Investigations without me.  Things would most likely run better without me.  In the last few years I’ve made more money than I can count.  All I’d need is a little shack within sight of sand.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Mac asks.

“Where are you going to get a penny?” Pennies were the first coin to be taken out of circulation before all transactions became electronic. 

*author’s note

Mac holds a penny between his fingers and offers it to me.  The penny is holographic, of course, but I look it over closely.  I haven’t seen a penny in a long time.

“I’m thinking we should go back to Cayucos and look around.  Your program is still on file at Duckies right?”

Mac nods.

“We can have dinner there tonight but first I want to look around.”  

Without looking away from his meal, or even taking a single glance toward my home, Mac has my ground car move from the underground parking next to my house and park just a few feet away from us in the Jolly Cone parking lot.

I finish my burger and take a good five minutes nibbling on fries; something about being a  beach bum takes all the hurry out of life.

As the car lifts off I get Sally on my personal pad, “I’m going to be out of town for a while and you can handle everything,”  it’s not a question it’s a fact known to both of us.

“Sure thing my brother.  Anything I should know about?”

“Not much really.  Mac and I are going to spend a few days in Cayucos; at least a few days.”

The fog is not only over the water but it consumes the town of Cayucos.  Drops of water form on my eyelashes as I walk in my personal gray world that stretches to a ten foot circle around me.  A dim dot of yellow says the sun has come up over the coastal range of mountains but the fog plans to stay in charge for several hours yet.  The door to Cayucos Coffee is closed.  A brass bell attached to the top of the door rings as I push the door open.  Trenton comes out of the kitchen with his white baker’s hat on and a full white apron protecting his clothes.

“Randy, bit early for you.  The scones are still in the oven.”   He walks to the counter. He pulls his apron off over his head and brushes his hair with his hand.  “What can I get you?”

“Just an Americano and one of those scones when they are done and I’d like to talk to you a little bit about me living here.”

“Really.  Give me a sec, I’ll call up Mac’s program and let him take over back here.”

Trenton disappears back into the kitchen and I take my place at the table near the front window.  The view out the window may extend a full twelve feet now.  The shops across the courtyard are hidden behind a gray wall.  Mac brings my Americano and sets it on the table beside me.

“So, this is really something you want to do?” Trenton brings his own foam covered drink and sits across from me at my table.

“I’m doing a test.  This fog, for instance, I usually get here after the fog lifts.  Last night was the first night I’ve ever spent here.  I want to get a feel for how life is here before I do something drastic.”

“Like retirement?”

“Like getting away from the PI business, I’m too young to retire, don’t you think?”

“Sure, Randy, you’re like a kid.  How’s Sally feel about this?  It there someone who can step in and carry your load?”

“They stepped in years ago. Over the last five years most of my time has been spent in space.  My last job took me two months of travel to do forty-five minutes worth of work.”

“And that paid?”

“You wouldn’t believe how that pays Trenton.  People with money are crazy.”

“You’re about the richest person I know Randy.”

“Like I said.”

“How can I help?”

“I stayed at the motel last night.  I need a place for about a month and then I’ll decide if I want to try to buy something here.”

“Ninety-five percent of this town is one month rentals.”

“Ninety-five percent?”

“My regulars are people with time shares.  I know a hand-full of owners.  Half the owners of this town live in Bakersfield Randy.”

“How do I find these people to rent from?”

“In about an hour I’ll walk you across the street and introduce you to Matt James.  He’ll give you at least forty choices.”

Mac shows up with two hot scones.  He sets the scones down and takes a seat next to Trenton.  As soon as Mac sits a holo coffee in a paper cup and a holo scone that matches ours materialize on the table in front of Mac.

“Is he certifiable Trenton?”

“Mac?” Trenton knows what Mac means but he’s trying to be polite.

“For wanting to retire from retirement.  I do more than him Trenton and I’m just a bunch of photons.”

“Hey, I’m right here. I don’t mind being talked about but say nice things.” 

After two more days in the motel moving day came.  Two small boxes were moved from my house in Bakersfield.  The house here is furnished and a team comes in twice a week to make sure I don’t get it dirty.  It’s a modern house with all the conveniences but it looks a hundred years old.  Most, if not all, of the buildings in Cayucos have historic preservation requirements but most of the requirements for homes only apply to how the outside of the buildings look.  The one I’ve moved into is made  out of the same plastics my home in Bakersfield is made out of but it looks like weathered wood.  I’ve noticed a few places where the outside trim looks like it needs a bit of paint but it’s required to look like that.  Moving Mac in required the most attention.  Mac took care of everything himself.  I’m not sure what all he did but he had the household computer completely replaced with something that I’m sure could run a medium sized town.  He’s had holo emitters placed everywhere the city’s zoning laws would allow.  I know he can walk to the center of the strip park in front of the house.

Randy 5 part 2

A replicated paperback book lays on the deck of the ship as I lie on the red sofa dressed in boxer shorts and a white tee shirt.   I hold my personal pad above my eyes with one hand.  I had thought the paperback would provide a closer tie with the author, real print on paper, the way this book had originally been distributed.  Instead it made my shoulder hurt and I had trouble keeping it turned to the page I wanted.  I’m thinking of having the holo emitter scroll the words in the air above me so I don’t have to hold the pad but when I do that I always fall asleep.  Mac is lying on a red sofa just like mine.  He produced another holo sofa five feet in front of mine facing toward me.  If I look straight in front of me I see his feet with his clunky leather like sandals.  He could at least take his sandals off if he’s going to lie on a sofa that looks just like the one I have at home on Earth.  At first Mac had a holo paperback, now he is holding a holo personal pad.  For some reason Mac has decided to copy every thing I do.  I haven’t asked him why he’s copying me, I don’t want to know.  I tap the screen on my pad to turn the page and look out of the corner of my eye to see what Mac does.  Mac taps his screen and looks at me out of the corner of his eye.  I bend my knees pulling my feet off the arm of the sofa and let my head slide off the other arm of the sofa so I can be level.  Mac does the same.

“Cut that out!” I sit up and set my pad on the sofa.

“You cut that out!”  Mac says and sits up on his sofa.

“You’re going to drive me crazy.”

“Don’t have to drive you anywhere you’re already there.  You know what you need Randy?   You need a nice run on a beach, that’s what you need.”  As Mac speaks my sofa disappears and I fall to what should be the deck of the ship but turns into nice soft white sand just before I land.  Both sofas have been replaced by warm sand and the edge of an ocean wave laps a few feet away.  The air smells fishy and carries a definite saltiness.  Mac has changed his plaid shorts to a pink and purple Hawaiian design which goes perfect with his orange tee shirt.  I start to complain as I get up from being dumped on the sand but the breeze feels good and I haven’t been exercising near enough.  I start a jog just above where the water hits.  For just a second I worry about my pad and paperback book getting wet.

“Great program,” I say to Mac who has fallen in beside me.  

“Buildings?” he asks.

“A few, maybe a pier?”  A few beach type shops appear where the sand ends.  A concrete pier extends out into the ocean.  “A wooden pier, not as wide or as long.”  The pier changes.

“People?”

“Yes please.”

People fill the sand.  People on blankets.  People tossing balls and flying disks.  People surfing the waves.

“Less people Mac.”

A few people sunning, lying on towels remain.

“This is nice Mac.  Thanks.”  Mac just grins and keeps jogging beside me.  Mac will never get tired.  He will never sweat unless I remind him too.

Randy 5 part 1 (rewrite)

My sister Sally sits behind her white plastic desk in the inner office of Randolph W. Owens Investigations.  Well, she doesn’t so much sit behind the desk as she sits in the center of the desk.  The desk is a semi-circle around her chair and is more of a command center than a simple desk.  Built into the desk are several computer access points, visual screens and three holo disks.  Sitting at her desk Sally has immediate access to any of the twenty-two investigators working on currently open cases.  At this minute a small man, about eighteen inches tall stands on one of the holo disks.  He is just finishing up an update.

“So it looks like there is technological information being leaked but it’s all coming from the inside.  Harvey’s brother-in-law Steve Andrews is selling information to their nearest competitor  Northshore Builders,”  the eighteen inch tall man explains.

“Poor Harvey, looks like we are not going to be able to solve all his problems.  Break it to him gently Mike and be as discrete as you can I’m sure Harvey will be more concerned with his relationship with his sister than the loss to his business, he’s that kind of guy.”

“I agree, Sally, I hate it when a case ends like this.”  The holo man on Sally’s desk disappears.  Sally looks down at her desk top, makes a few notes and then looks over at me.

“Randy, my dear brother.  You’re all packed and ready?”

“I’m packed.”

“Three jumpsuits and a pair of tennis shoes?”

“Two jumpsuits, I’ll just replicate another if I need to.  One to wash and one to wear is all anyone needs.”

“It looks like an open and shut case.  You and Mac will have it all wrapped up in a day or two.”

“After three weeks in space there and three weeks back, Sally.”

“The new ship has complete emitter saturation.  You’re holo friend can go anywhere on the ship you can go.  You won’t even know you’re in space half the time.”

“My holo friend is a computer interface.  The truth is I’ll be all alone in the middle of nothingness for a total of six weeks.  Why can’t they hire an investigator from their own planet or at least one within a few hundred light years?”

“You’re the best Randy.  We’ve already deposited their retainer.  I’m thinking of getting a new ground car.  With the bonus for solving the case you could purchase a decent home.”

“What’s wrong with my house?”

“It’s tiny.”

“I live alone.”

“The new space ship is more comfortable and has just as much room.”

“I agreed to go, I’ll go.  How much longer before they can install that space folding program into a ship like mine?”

“As far as I know the technology is ready now.  Aspire Movement bought all the rights to it and until A. J. Spire thinks the time is right no one gets to use it.”

“There should be a law against owning half the universe.”

“There is, that’s why Aspire Movement is a corporation.”

“A corporation completely in the control of Spire.”

“I’ll send you holos of all the football games.  You and Mac can sit on a holo sofa and watch the games just like you do at home.  You can even have the emitters display the holo of your home, you won’t even know you’ve left Earth.

“I read something about hiber sleep.  Any chance I could sleep for three weeks?”

“From what I read they can get you into hibernation just fine; it’s getting you out that seems to be a problem.”  

Another eighteen inch tall figure appears on Sally’s desk.  She gives me a good-bye and get out of my office wave and then gives her full attention to the lady standing on her desk.

The new ship is twice the size of my old little ship.  A bedroom with a real bed, a privacy room, and the Operations Room is just over twenty feet by twenty feet.  The only real furniture in the Operations Room are two, black, leather like, captain’s chairs that are bolted to the deck in front of the computer console.  The view screen is a good six foot wide.  The door to the Operations Room swishes open.  The first thing I see is the blue ball of the Earth about basket ball sized and growing smaller on the screen above the console.  There is a reddish brown sofa sitting in the middle of the room.  The cloth covered sofa is identical to the one that sits in the front room of my home on Earth; it even has the same worn spot on one of the cushion’s arms (My sister Sally’s programing skills).  A short pudgy man, round faced, red messy hair, wearing a loose fitting orange tee shirt and baggy plaid shorts sits on the sofa, he looks up at me through thick glasses set into clear plastic rims that magnify his green eyes.

“Mr. Randolph W. Owens, welcome to the bridge.”

“Hey Mac,” Mac is my computer interface program.  He looks like he does because one day years ago I told him he could create his own holo image.  Sometimes his shorts have a Hawaiian design but other than that he pretty much always looks the same.  There was a time when he became a lady but it’s not worth remembering.  I plop down on the far end of the over stuffed sofa.

“This is a great ship Randy.  The computer is massive.  Compared to living in your house computer on Earth there just isn’t any comparison.  Watch this.”  Mac’s runs from one wall of the ship across the bridge to the other wall.  “Did I digitalize any Randy?  Not at all right?”

“You seemed to stay very much intact Mac.  I’m very proud of you.  How’s the ship doing?  On course?”

“We’re fine headed straight toward Slavic Prime.  We’ll not straight, we are curving a bit to avoid a bit of a gravity well.  Gravity drive, gravity well they don’t mix that well, so we curve.”

Mac seem perfectly at rest on the sofa with a big satisfied grin on his face like he could do nothing for the entire three week journey without being a bit bored.  One of the reasons for his contentment is that he is very busy inside the ship computer making all kinds of fine adjustments to the ship’s gravity drive, communications array, environmental needs and a thousands other things.  The other reason for his contentment is that he has no concept of time, he lives in this moment, all his activity is focused on the immediate necessity.  He has no longings or goals beyond the task before him.  One of the tasks programed into Mac is to keep me safe and entertained during our three weeks through the vast emptiness of space.

“Want to watch a movie?”  Over the years Mac has become a collector of old flat screen videos and films.  He creates a holo screen like the people had in their homes back then and we usually have some kettle corn or coffee, depending of the time of day we choose, while we watch.  There is no time of day or night in space there is just an endless bunch of nothing.

I decide it feels like it’s late at night and Mac turns the lighting in the ship down, “something in black and white.  One of those silly love stories would be nice.  You have another of those Rock Hudson and Doris day movies?”

“One left Randy but it’s in Technicolor, is that alright.”

“Could you show it in black and white?”

“I could Randy but it would not be the right thing to do.”  

I let Mac have his way, he brings me an Americano because it’s too late for Kettlecorn.   When the flat screen appears it is set into a plastic cabinet that looks like wood.  The walls of the ship become the walls of my home.  A window to the outside displays a late night in Bakersfield, California on Earth.  Mac and I sit on the sofa watching a movie just like we have many times in my home on Earth.  The thousands of gravimetric disks built into the hull of my ship shift from draw to repel with minute adjustments that keep us at maximum speed and on course to Slavic Prime.

A Short Story About My Coffee Guy

Lame!

“Of course it’s lame! I was going for lame. What do you think? I was trying to do it straight? You might be the lame one? Saying I’m lame. Lame on you! That’s what I say. Go sit down. I don’t want to see you up here again. That’s right, go over there and sit. Silly, think about what you said. Go on, sit! There that’s better. Now maybe we can get this thing done. Calling me lame! Who does he think he is anyway? Lame that’s what he is!”

He, Him, His. (revisited part 3)

The problem wasn’t food; the problem was water, there was none. When the looting began he had taken food in foil pouches from camping stores. That food and been taken from him. In the meantime most of the stores had been emptied. A can of beef stew could be found under a display case or once he had found a whole box of spaghetti o’s pushed up against a wall by an abandoned fork truck, and in those days there was still competition by other people, some of them expressed there desperation in violent ways, but most did their best to get along. As the people left they left behind what they could not carry and this became a source of food in abundance. He started the diverse hiding places during this time and if he could remember all the locations there would be plenty of food for a long time. But he had no way to create water. Looking back he knew he should have stashed bottled water. He hadn’t. At first water still came out of the spigot in his kitchen, slowly, without pressure but the water was there. When the water no longer came from the pipes people would form lines at the three giant storage tanks on a hill just north of the city. The water tank gave water for such a long time he almost thought they would continue to do so forever. The lines of people grew smaller and the water continued until the day the water in the tanks no longer reached the outlets. First one tank was declared empty, that day was a boon for food hunting. People had left the town in long lines. The lines shortened and it was a long while before a second tank emptied. Someone unbolted an access point on the tank and six inches of water was found covering the bottom of the tank, with the population greatly reduced over ten thousand gallons of water should last forever but forever is, as they say, a long time. All three tanks were empty now. He searched his own hiding places, not for cans of food now but for soups, and juices, and sodas, anything with moisture, but it was never enough and he accepted constant thirst as a new part of his life.

He remembered a hiding place in a basement after a hard day of finding people in walnut trees and found his way to what had been one of the finer houses in town, a three story redwood sided home, painted white. The entry way was at the center of a ten foot wide front porch that ran the full length of the front of the house, the roof of the porch was supported by six white pillars that stood three stories high. In the olden days he would have never been allowed to approach such a house. Even today he approached carefully just in case someone considered this their property.

“Is anyone here?” he shouted. He leaned into the entryway and shouted again, “Is anyone here?” he waited and listened. The house was empty. He remembered the way to the basement and in minutes was digging through a pile of canned goods looking for some that might contain water. He found a box of kool-aid envelopes and started laughing uncontrollably.   And then he saw the blue tank in the corner of the room.   It was a commercial sized water heater. He had found water in water heaters before, they were more convenient than going to the city water tanks, and most had been drained long ago. He went to the spigot at the base of the tank and as a show of faith he placed a plastic bucket someone had left in the basement under the outlet before he turned the knob. Water. At first it came out dark orange, filled with rust but then it cleared. He set the rusty water aside, he knew from experience it would take the rust several hours to settle. He went up the stairs and into the kitchen of the massive house, found a pot he could boil water in and returned to the hot water heater, one hundred twenty gallons of water, six months of life! In the back yard of the huge house he built a fire in the bar-b-cue and watched the pot come to a boil, tonight he would have tea with his dinner but tomorrow he would have kool-aid.

Wheat #24

A white pick-up truck with diesel tanks and tools followed by a red bailer followed by a red machine that would pick up the bails circled in front of the barn in a cloud of brown dust. Toby spoke to the man driving the pick-up and the driver waved his hand at the red machines. The Bailer started down the rows of cut straw bailing them into cubes followed closely by the machine that picked up the bails and stacked them on its back. Jack was stationed near the barn. He would be in charge of backing the loaded hay into the barn and straightening up any out of place bales. Toby made sure the man running the bailer had his questions answered and then went inside the house for his afternoon nap. It wasn’t long before the barn smelled of fresh blue hay and although ninety percent of the project required nothing physical Jack was covered in sweat with the process of rearranged misplaced bales in the tin roof heated barn. Brushing the back of his hand across his forehead pushed the blue dust into his pores but with or without the blue dust it was good work. Seeing the bales reach the top of the barn and the barn start to fill brought a feeling of accomplishment and worth and while this was encouraged by the dust from the blue wheat stocks the sense of well being was not a product of the wheat but produced by the work itself. The truck backed into the barn and pushed another load of straw tight against the already packed load and drove back out to accumulate more. No bales fell and the stack stood straight leaving Jack time to think about Ellen and about going to college in a few weeks. They would both commute back and forth to the town on the other side of the foothills to the west but she would go to the four-year state school and he would attend the two-year community college. A thirty-mile drive they would both need to make. Jack would like for them to make the drive together but the old brush painted red bike wasn’t going to do the trick. Foremost on his list of things to do was finding something dependable to drive that hopefully would be a bit more attractive than his current mode of transportation. He was lost in thought leaning against the bales of hay when he noticed Toby’s round face grinning at him from the barn’s doors.

“Not working you too hard am I?” Toby asked knowing from experience that the work came when a load fell apart and needed to be restacked. As long as things were done carefully and properly the physical labor could be kept to a minimum.

“Trying to complete a decent daydream here,” Jack replied while walking toward the open doors. It felt cooler out in the sun when the slight breeze hit the coating of sweat on Jack.

“Walk with me. Take a break,” Toby said as he led the way out into the field. It took just a couple of minutes of the hot sun to dry Jack out and then he could feel the hundred degree plus arid air of a day that had not yet reached its maximum temperature. The baler had made faster time and the field was half covered with bales of hay as the second New Holland machine sucked the bales up as fast as it could and piled them on the flat bed behind the driver. Toby and Jack walked into the part of the field that had had its grass removed and stored. Toby brushed the stubble with one foot like it was a beloved pet who had gone through a hardship.

“Not too many years ago we would burn off this stubble as soon as our neighbors had harvested their crop,” Toby said. “The blue and red wheat always seems to be ready to harvest first.” They crunched across the field just walking, not going anywhere. “Now we need to plough it into the dirt.”

“To keep our air clean,” added Jack enjoying the crunch, crunch their boots made.

“The whole town would party if the wind blew in that direction,” Toby said like he was somewhere faraway.

“I remember one of those parties, lots of barbecues on every street. I was just a little kid but I remember going from street to street sampling all the different foods,” Jack said trying to remember more about that day. “It was smoky! I remember wondering why we were all enjoying the out-of-doors on such a gray day until my mother explained the smoke was coming from your field.”

“I’ve always thought of it as a sad thing to do but, would you like to plough it under?”

Jack nodded, trying not to look too eager, considering how Toby felt about it.

“Okay, that’s the plan,” they turned and walked back toward the barn about the same time as the operator of the balewagon turned it toward the barn. “First thing in the morning you can turn my beautiful blue field brown,” the feeling that Toby was losing a good friend took a little of the fun out of the prospect of getting to plough the whole field but Jack could already picture himself bouncing across the field in the seat of Toby’s small tractor leaving the wheat stubble to rot underground.