I made a total
mess of my life this afternoon. I got myself fired. I’m
probably going to lose my friends when they find out what
happened. Of course, most everybody in my small town probably
already knows about it. Most of my friends work the farms, a
couple of them slave at the mine down Calera way, but they'll hear it
from their wives by tonight. Word spreads quickly when you live
in a small town like Katy. It’s twenty miles to the next town,
Totteville, which is even smaller than Katy, and maybe twenty-five
miles to Gove, with only a few hundred population. It's a good
sixty miles to the closest Wal-Mart and Home Depot off the Interstate.
My good friend
Jerry works in town. He runs the local agriculture station or
ag-station as we call it. He had to give up farming when his
asthma got too bad. I don’t see him as often as I used to.
I miss him a lot. We were more than good friends. We were
family. We knocked off more than a couple cases of bourbon over
the years, a little less since he took ill and his doc told him to cut
back. Elva, his wife, started making sure he did.
Elva's a nice
kid,— well really, I’d have to say she’s a fine lady, even though I
think of her as my kid sister. She can cook up a storm. She
sends me home with casserole dishes, cookies, pies and cakes ever since
my Mary died. With everything I have to do it's a blessing not
having to cook. I get so tired and depressed about being by
myself, alone, sometimes I just eat a cold can of something instead of
cooking myself a proper meal.
What happened
really wasn’t my fault. I mean, how the heck are you supposed to
react when you see a plane crash?
"Ju’ see
that?" I asked old Will when I thought I saw a last shiny bit of
a fuselage go down on the other side of the hill behind the Ahmandsen
place. It looked like it was coming in at a forty-five degree
slant. There’s no way a big jet was going to survive that kind of
plunge. I kept waiting for the sound of an explosion, but it was
a long time coming, in fact,— it never came at all.
"See
what...?" asked Will, looking at me like I was daft then spitting
chaw through the gap between his front teeth. He meant for it to
go over the edge of the apron onto the raw dirt between us and the feed
store. He wasn't concentrating and the brown blob broke up a
little. It hit the post on the right side of the hitch maybe five
feet from the edge.
"Big
plane! Looks to 'a went down." I said, putting my tools
down on the bench.
"Eyes tricked
ya.'" Will muttered. He's not the talkative sort.
"Gonna’ go
see." I said.
"Ron'll be
pissed." said my sixty-five year old mate.
Will’s a
workmate friend; just work, ya' see. He and I’ve worked at
Charlie’s since I got out of school back in fifty-three when I was only
fifteen. I don't think we ever talked more than a few sentences
in a day, but Will taught me the trade. I think I piss him
off because I have a better feel for engines and gears than he
has. I do everything there is to do on John Deere, International
Harvester and Caterpillar farm equipment.
My dad said I
always had a head for what makes machines work. He's ninety-three
now, and doesn’t remember things too good anymore. He doesn’t
know me sometimes when I go by the old folks home to visit him.
He mostly talks at me like I was still living at home before mom died
and I met my Mary. Last time I went to the home, he kept asking
me how I was doing on the 'Model A.' I restored it when I was
sixteen, then sold it to some Kansas City dealer for enough to make a
down payment on a farm after Mary and I decided to make a family
together. That was, maybe, forty years ago.
"Maybe
somebody's hurt!" I yelled at Will as I jumped into my
Jeep. Jeep,— well, he's probably the only all-original,
forties, army surplus Jeep left in the state, except the tires and
battery. I even rebuilt the fuel pump a couple of times.
That's their weak spot, the fuel pumps. The seals were no
good. I used high-silicone seals. That solved the problem
pretty good.
"Ain't a’ gonna
cover fer ya’, Baker!" Will yelled into my dust. He can be
a real shithead sometimes. We’ve worked together damn near fifty
years, since Ike was President, before Charlie’s son, Ron, took
over the business after Charlie died, and the son of a bitch won't
cover for me. Shit, I cover for him all the damn time, especially
when his lumbago’s acting up. Go figure?
‘Fuck it,’
I thought, ‘I'm damn near sixty-five years old, I own my house
and farm, (I rent it because I ain't got no family since my Mary
died) and I got cash in my bank account. Why should I worry about
missing a couple hours pay?’
I’ve only missed
three days out sick since I started working at Charlie’s Garage.
Two of those days was when Mary died in eighty-two. We were
married almost twenty-five years when she got sick and died of
cancer. Mary was a good cook, and I miss her company. We
never had children. We tried for a few years, nothing happened,
so we just stopped trying. I don't think either of us enjoyed sex
all that much, but we were great companions for each other. It
hurt me when she died such a painful death.
I headed down
Main to Terrell Road. I took Terrell Road to the top of the rise,
then took the Carron trail down into the flats where I figured the
plane must ‘of hit. I didn't see any smoke or debris. You'd
think one of those big mothers that fly over all the time would’ve held
lots of kerosene, since it's many miles from here to any airport where
they might land. Kerosene makes a lot of black carbon smoke when
it burns free.
I tried to
remember the look of it as it went down. I didn't see it for
long, maybe two or three blinks is all. I couldn't make out the
wings. Maybe they were sticking straight out towards me.
Jet wings aren't all that thick. Sometimes, they're hard to make out at
that angle; same for the little wings at the back. It was all
shimmery silver, though, like all those big jets.
I don’t remember
seeing a tail. That's what struck me as funny looking. The
plane didn't have a big tail fin sticking up with the airline's symbol
painted on it. I thought that was strange. There was a
plane off of California, not long ago, that lost its tail and dropped
like a rock into the ocean; however, this plane didn't look like the
same kind, one that was long and skinny. This plane wasn't skinny
like the one that crashed off the coast of California. It wasn’t
fat or skinny, just more normal looking. There wasn't any sign of
a crash, no smoke, no nothing. I drove through the flats faster
than I should’ve according to my butt every time it slammed into the
seat frame.
I was about to
give up when I caught a flash of the Sun off something metallic on the
far side of the flats, way over on the other side of the pond and
creek, but there was no smoke. I got my butt over there quick as
I could, being thrown this way and that because Jeep doesn’t have
seatbelts and the springs don't have the strength they used to. I
was thinking, maybe I could get some folks out of the way before it
went up in flames. I made good time, considering. It helped
that the creek is almost dry this time of year.
I found the
plane half buried in a swampy area behind the old orchard, the one the
Ahmandsen family ran for nearly a hundred years. In the sixties
you were able to get apples and cherries from out of state real easy
and a lot cheaper, so the market dried up for local produce.
The plane wasn't
recognizable as a plane. I remember thinking maybe the wings and
tail piece must have got broken off somewhere, because all I could see
was the top half of the fuselage. It was real shiny and
bright. It looked like a long narrow tube, except the way the
light reflected off it, it almost blended into the rocks around the
edges.
When I got
closer I could see there wasn't any damage to the tail. It was
smooth and rounded at the back. It wasn’t even dented.
There were no wires sticking out nor any jagged bits of metal I could
see. It was huge! I reckoned it had to be to carry a couple
hundred passengers, crew, freight and stuff. Some of the bigger
ones have two decks. I mean we aren’t so backwoods we don’t get
Consumer Report. Jerry gets Consumer Report and I’ve had a
subscription to Motor Trend since I can remember. The Denver
Post comes to a family in town, the Harmons. It gets passed
around and sometimes I read it at Charlene's coffee shop on Saturdays.
I drove up a
little rise, where there used to be a dike to keep the orchards from
flooding when the swamp filled from spring runoff. I could see it
was neither a light plane nor a commercial passenger plane.
Furthermore, it didn't seem to have the right shape at all. There
wasn't a discernable front or back you could make out. The plane,
craft, or what ever it was, wasn't a tube and appeared solid. It
was more of an oval shape. Maybe a couple hundred to two hundred,
twenty feet long. There were no windows I could make out. I
couldn't get a feel for how wide it was, but it was no more than half
its length, I’d guess. It was tall, too. That sucker was
taller than the fruit trees. I reckon it was thirty to forty feet
high.
‘Probably one of
them things they test all the time down in New Mexico,’ I thought
to myself. I remembered there was a lot of talk about Stealth
bombers, recently; the ones you couldn't see or hear until they were
right overhead. I heard they scared the bejeezus out of a bunch
of ranchers.
I drove right up
to what I thought was a shiny experimental military jet. I could
see my reflection in it. It was all distorted because of the
curve of the sides, but not wavy like you might think. It was
like looking at myself in a highly polished, rounded, golden
mirror. It wasn’t silver like a standard airplane except when you
looked up towards the top where clouds were. I know it sounds
funny, but that's the impression I got, like I could almost see the
cloud through the metal. This was too weird.
I looked all
over for a door, but there was no seams or breaks in its surface, not
even scratches from where it plowed up the ground. I looked down
the length, and saw no scrapes on the ground, no broken trees where the
thing seemed to have come from when I saw it plunging to Earth.
‘God, let
everybody be okay inside.’ I prayed silently to myself.
"No one's
hurt," said a voice behind me. I couldn't tell if it was a
man or a boy's voice. I turned to look at whoever was speaking to
me and I could see he was too tall to be a boy. I was looking
into the Sun because I couldn't make out his details for a
second. He seemed to visually waver a little, like when you see
somebody swimming under water in the lake or you see heat shimmering on
a hot, dry lake bed. The waves calmed, and I could see him more
clearly.
He was wearing
sandals of some kind and what looked like long grey gym shorts.
He wore a white shirt with no collar, but it didn't seem to be a
T-shirt. The sleeves were longer, down to his elbow, and the
waist was gathered and tucked into his shorts. He looked just
like my high school Chemistry teacher, Mr. Latham. Except Mr.
Latham never had a body like that. Mr. Latham was tall and
skinny. Not painful skinny,— thin, is a better word.
Mr. Latham was a
good looking man. His face was like an actor’s you might see on
television commercials, square chin and clear skin, black straight
hair, blue eyes; sharp eyebrows and healthy looking skin,
especially for a man who worked inside most of his life. All the
girls in school had a crush on him at one time or another. He
left after my first year in high school. I only went one more
year after he quit.
My dad said Mr.
Latham wasn't made for country life, him not having a family and
all. Rumor in school was he met a lady in Sharron Springs who
wanted him there with her, so he moved. I used to think about him
a lot, but I haven't for more than twenty years. Now, here was
this man, almost the spitting image or Mr. Lathem; however, he had the
body of an athlete similar to another friend of mine, Terry Corcoran.
Terry was a
senior when I was in high school. He was on every team there was,
and went to college on an athletic scholarship. He only came back
to town to bury his pa, sell the farm and then went back to
California. We never heard from him again. When he was
still in school, I saw him in the showers a couple of times, all ropy
muscles and fine definition. I remember I got a funny feeling I
can’t describe looking at him. I wanted to touch him, just to
feel him, but of course, I didn't. I was only an awkward freshman
kid with pimples and a voice which broke all the time. Mom was
right, I guess,— I'm kind of homely, not mud-fence ugly or nothing,—
just plain.
"I saw her go
down." I said, “Came to see if I could help." The man's
face seemed to get more solid, less wavy as we got closer. I
could see it wasn't Mr. Latham. He just had one of those faces
you see on television, handsome, white teeth, and clear skin. His
shorts weren't as long as I thought, just mid-thigh, and I must have
made a mistake about how long the sleeves were, because when he came
closer, the sleeves were short enough I could see his upper arm halfway
to his shoulder. He had good muscle development like he worked
out a lot.
"Name’s
Groth," said the man as he stuck out his hand.
"Graham,"
I answered. "Graham Baker." I replied as I shook his hand.
"Do you know
anything about engines?" Groth asked. His eyes were
drilling into mine, like he was trying to see inside my soul, not evil,
mind you,— just intense, like he was hoping for an answer he wanted to
hear.
"Some," I
said, "but I don't know nothing 'bout jets."
"It's not the
jets we have a problem with." Groth said. His smile seemed
genuine. "Won't you come inside out of the heat?"
He turned
towards the plane, and a door opened with an escalator-like ramp
leading up to it. I hadn't noticed it before. I’m sure
there was no door there before because I looked to see if I could find
one; however, the door seemed pretty high off the ground. I had a
strange desire to help. It didn’t matter I didn't know anything
about planes. I never even flew in one, but I always thought I'd
like to.
"What kinda
problem you got?" I asked as we walked the few steps to the
ramp. When I stepped on it, it began to slowly move upward toward
the door, like an automatic escalator in a big office building you see
in movies. Groth looked at me kind of funny as we moved up toward
the door on the escalator. It seemed to move faster. I
could feel it speeding up.
"I think it's
the fuel pump." he said.
"Only one?"
"Yes. Our
mechanic can't get here to fix it before we're supposed to
leave," he said.
"Can this thing
take off if it's fixed?" I couldn't see how,— there was no flat
place for a runway, and it didn’t seem to have wings.
"Yes," he
said.
I felt the
escalator slowing down as we got to the door and went right through it
into a hallway. Groth,— I never thought to ask if that was his
first name or his last name,— steered me into a small room with
doorways on either side plus the one we came through. The door
behind me closed with a silent snap. I would’ve jumped because
I'm usually a little skittish when I'm in new places I’m unfamiliar
with, but for some reason I didn't this time.
"We need to wait
here for a second to equalize pressure," he said.
I looked at his
face from the side. He didn't seem to have any noticeable
whiskers, and his ears,— I thought his ears didn’t have holes for a
minute; however, when I blinked and looked again, they were
there. There was a slight swoosh of air, and a really strong
light came on that flooded the entire room from corner to corner.
It was like we were inside a box made out of light, so bright I had to
close my eyes. There was a series of high-pitched squeals from
somewhere, then the light went down, and I opened my eyes again.
The door to our right slid open,— no, it sort of just
disappeared. I can't figure how to explain the way it
opened. All this new technology stuff can be very strange.
It’s not like it was magic or nothing. When you’re a mechanic you
know technology from hocus-pocus.
"Could you look
at it now?" Groth asked. I'm not sure why he asked, maybe
just being polite.
"Of
course," I said as I followed him down the corridor like they
have on planes but there were no windows. Light was coming from
the ceiling, but not from lights. The ceiling itself seemed to be
a single big light fixture.
"Don't know much
about planes." I added.
"We have all the
technical data." said Groth, "We'll give it to you as you
need it."
‘Yeah,
right!’ I thought, ‘I fix farm engines, and I'm gonna’
learn on-the-job how to fix a modern airplane engine? Ain't no
Cummings diesel gonna’ get put inside a big plane like this,— no way
it'd be powerful enough.’
"Don't
worry," said Groth, "You can fix it."
I knew somehow
he was right. I don’t know how I knew, I just did. I know
that sounds strange, but that's how I felt.
We went into a
big round open space, maybe forty feet across, with low lighting.
There were big screen televisions, those flat models that hang on the
wall, covering the walls all around the room right up to the low
ceiling. They were all switched off. The walls rose inward
towards the center of the room. Where they met must’ve been twenty feet
high. In the center of the room was a dome about ten feet across
with a top part that went way up. As we approached the whole top
lifted to the ceiling. I didn't see any wires.
At first, I
couldn't make heads or tails out of the machinery that was under the
dome. There wasn't any wires; no fuel lines,— nothing. As I
lay my hands on it, it seemed to take shape. It was warm but not
hot. I felt a tingling in my hands and somewhere behind my
ears. It was kind of a pleasant sensation. I imagined I saw
a tiny glass cable that carried all the information to the operating
parts, and an impossibly small tube that led to the combustion
chamber;— no, the tflagonstory from the tank below. The fuel was
liquid but had no odor. I think it was water. How could a
plane engine run on water?
"You see the
problem?" asked Groth.
"Not yet,"
I answered, and I lifted the xylathwor away from the tflagonstory,
exposing the gyrovanothic chamber. I felt inside the batruqan,
and checked the valves for obstructions with the tips of my
fingers. Nothing. Then I took the cover off the interior
filters, and the problem became clear. Somewhere along the line,
they'd picked up some tiny crabs. Their minuscule orange and
turquoise shells littered the entire filter unit chamber of the
batruqan, layer after layer. The second chamber was the
worst. The shells were stuck in such number in the second and
third filter screens they formed an almost solid barrier. That
wasn't the main problem though just a signpost.
The batruqan was
a self-cleaning, back-flush unit which operates every cycle. It
takes maybe a millisecond to run on each filter unit while the others
take up the slack. I ran the cycle, and the handoth arm stopped
mid-way in cycle on the first chamber, reversed, ran another half
cycle, then returned to its housing. It didn't back flush at
all. I knew if the handoth cycle wasn't completed on a chamber,
it wouldn’t recycle, so the other chambers wouldn't get back flushed
either.
I pulled the
filter units, scraped them into the open trash receptacle in the floor,
and wiped out the inner walls with towels dispensed from the
floor. It took only a few minutes to pull the filters and clear
out the muck, then I pulled the entire base of the unit. That's
when I found the problem. The filter unit wasn't seated
right. The smallest bore of unit two had a tiny metal scraping
wedged underneath, keeping the filters a smidgen too high,— just enough
so the hyrandoth arm couldn't swing fully into place for the back flush
cycle to complete.
It took about
twenty minutes to find and fix the problem, another ten to put the
tflagenstory and xylathwor back into place, and a minute or two to wipe
off the engine. I set up the ignition sequence on the screen, and
initiated the auto-qrithinan stabilizer before the hood dropped down
from the ceiling. I still didn't see any wires. I guess
there was some kind of hydraulic lift in the back I hadn't noticed.
There was no
more than a soft whisper from the engine, perhaps the tiniest bit of
vibration under our feet. The big screens snapped to life, and I
was looking at the area around the plane in differing colors. At
one time they were normal, then reds and greens, then grainy speckles
of fluorescent green, then— a color I never saw before. Not a
color,— I can't explain it. It wasn’t a light, it was something
else. A model of the plane hung over the dome of the power unit.
It had neither wings, tail, nor landing gear;— just a silvery flattened
and elongated sphere, like a blob of mercury we used in chemistry lab
in high school for experiments.
"You fixed
it," said Groth. "We knew you could."
"Where is
everybody?" I asked. ‘A plane like this couldn't be
empty,’ I thought.
"I’m
alone. The others are back at the base," Groth said.
"I must go and join them now. You are a good man to give of
yourself and share your talents with a stranger."
I looked at him,
handsome, young, well-muscled and with life ahead of him open and
free. I looked at his chin, and saw the faint stubble of beard
that was missing not twenty minutes earlier.
‘He must have to
shave every few hours.’ I thought foolishly.
Who cared how
often he shaved or how often he showered? My mind led me down a
path I didn't want to go. I'm too old for those kind of thoughts.
"Glad to have
been of help." I said, turning to go.
"About the
bill..." Groth started. He was already taking a step
forward to help me find the way.
"Don't worry
about it," I replied, holding up my hand to wave off his
concern, trying to sound magnanimous, "I didn’t do that
much. ‘Sides, it'll save me some taxes. Just remember to do
something nice for someone else in need sometime."
"I will, you can
bet on it, but you will be paid, believe me." Groth said, with
the first smile I'd seen. It made him even more handsome.
Sometimes I wished I hadn't been born so homely. I didn't
respond, and he gave me a look that made me almost think he might be
looking at me like,— no, stupid thought.
"We'll need to
wait a few seconds to equalize again," Groth said as we entered
the box chamber with the lights. “It might not be so pleasant
this time. In fact some of your body parts may feel slight pain
but there will be no damage done to you. You may trust me.”
I didn’t feel
any pressure changes. Having been through it once before I had no
qualms about it and stood while the lights went up. This time they had
a different effect than the first time. I felt myself getting a
little dizzy then sort of faint. My stomach cramped and
double-cramped like I was passing a kidney stone. I sank to my
hands and knees and moaned with the sudden hurt of my insides. I
wondered if I was in some kind of microwave cooking me from the inside.
I looked for
Groth, but as far as I could tell I was alone in the chamber. The
light was so bright it hurt to open my eyes for more than an
instant. I closed my eyes again and I could tell through my
eyelids the light was pulsing real fast like a strobe. I hurt
everywhere. It was especially bad in my chest and stomach but it
was strongest in my lower abdomen and my groin. It hurt in my
legs, arms, and even the inside of my head. I wondered if my bum
ticker was burning out. Even my damn teeth hurt.
"I apologize for
your discomfort. You'll be through it in a second," came
Groth's voice. "I promise, it will never bother you again."
There was more
of the whistling sound and I sort of blacked out but not
completely. I was vaguely aware of Groth helping me up, stumbling
to the door, holding me up on the ramp, and the escalator whisking me
back down to the dry grass below. The ordeal in the box-chamber
exhausted me physically. I was suddenly terribly sleepy. I
lay on the grass at the foot of the escalator, curled up like a dog on
its rug. There was no more pain. There was almost a feeling
of,--- rapture. I’m not sure what that word means, but it sounds
and feels right.
"Long
life," said Groth's voice from behind me. "Thank you for
your help. You are a valuable person. We won’t forget you.
We love and appreciate you." A shiver went through my body.
I turned my head to look toward the voice except I couldn't seem to
open my eyes for some reason. No man ever said that to me.
Not my dad, not my granddad, nor my hero brother before he got himself
killed in France on D-Day.
I worshiped Brad
when I was little before he went away to fight the Nazis. I never
really believed he was dead. I always dreamed he'd return home
one day, come through the front door and throw me up into the air like
always, and take me fishing for cats in the stream. I knew he
loved me by his actions. He just never told me out loud.
My dad wasn't
much for spending time with us kids until we were old enough to work
the farm with him. Sometimes I thought he had us just to have
workers, but that's probably not fair. He was a good provider,
tithed to the church, and honored our mom. He never hit us unless
we earned it, and never in public. It was always just him and me,
his wide belt on my bare backside, leaving hot, red marks, and a strong
sense of embarrassment about what I’d done wrong. I only got
licked four times with his belt; once, for lying about setting a fire
that burned down the old chicken coop; twice, for back-talking my mom,
and once for,— I can't remember,— but you can bet I never did it again.
My momma told me
she loved me once in a while, and Mary told me several times,
especially toward the end of her life, but nobody’s told me
since. I got that damned chokey feeling inside my head, the one
that usually comes just before I have to blow my nose to keep from
getting teared up when I watch a sad movie.
"Don't,"
he said softly in my ear. "There's no need." I felt his
lips on mine, and I was so grateful for his kiss of friendship and
affection. Then I felt embarrassed and must have passed
out. I mean, a guy just don’t do that to another guy, you know,
but I dreamed, I was kissing him back. I can't tell you why, but
it felt like the most natural thing on earth for me to do. I
opened my eyes, and he slowly pulled back from me, his eyes sparkling
in the bright sun, his lips forming a beautiful smile.
"Look," he
said, his gaze moving down my body.
I looked down,
and I was naked to the waist, and so was he.
I wasn't just
half-naked, I was hard as a rock. Not just my dick straining
under my denim, but my whole body was changed; it, too, was rock
solid. My paunch was gone, the hair on my chest short and dark
like it was when I was eighteen. My muscles were more defined
under my taut skin than they ever were, even then. My hands were
smooth and tan, and my old yellowed nails were gone, replaced with
clear and un-ridged ones. My knuckles were normal size again.
I felt no
wonder, though,— after all,— this was a dream, wasn't it? I moved
closer to Groth. I wanted more contact with him. I can't
explain it. I wasn't that way,— not ever,— but I wanted to
make love to Groth more than I ever wanted anything in my life. I
wanted to feel myself inside him, looking down on him as I filled him
with my love. I wanted to feel his seed boil over in his passion
as I filled him with mine, then make slow, soft love to him as we came
down from the heights of orgasm to share petit mort,— the little death
of love.
I woke to the
call of a crow somewhere near by, and opened my eyes. My clothes
were back on. I was facing towards Jeep, patiently waiting for me
to remount. My head hurt, but only a little, like I had one glass
too many of cheap whiskey before I went to sleep. I got to my
feet too quickly and expected my back to register protest, but I
scraped through somehow.
I turned back
toward the plane, but it was gone. There was a smooth bowl where
it rested. The rock outcroppings were pulverized into the
ground. The trees and brush were gone. There wasn’t a blade
of grass, just the red clay and sandstone. I don't remember ever
using the word 'pulverized' before. Funny how words just pop into your
head sometimes.
Nobody would
ever believe me if I told them what happened to me; certainly not about
the plane. Who knows? It might be a national security
thing, so I decided not to tell anybody. I’d tell them it was
just a weather balloon, probably coming back to earth after several
days on the edge of the atmosphere.
I shook my head
to clear it of my dream, and the longing I felt for Groth's
touch. I could never tell anyone about it. Why, I’d lose
every whit of respect I ever earned in our community, I would. We
don't have big-city problems and things like that out here. I was
taught men don’t lust after other men but that’s sure what my feelings
for Groth felt like to me.
As I drove
slowly back to town, I wondered, ‘How come they didn't just check the
filter themselves? It looked like the tiny crabs had been
gathering for a long time, probably breeding in the tanks, and
gradually clogging the filters. Strange, that the military, a
thousand miles from the sea would have crabs. It took me no time
at all to find the problem. Why didn’t they just look under the
hood? Why the crazy dream? Why put me through that pain?’
I thought back
to the time we got a call to send a tow truck all the way to the
interstate rest area halfway to Salina on account of something that
kept the rest of the tows busy on the other side of Salina.
I heard something about a big pile-up on the interstate, as I
recall. It was a couple of years back when Ron made me go even
though it was Carl's turn to take the tow. When I got there
the car was right at the rest area. The battery was too weak to
turn the engine over. I lifted the hood,— something the husband
hadn't even done,— right away, it was obvious to me what was
wrong. The battery post was covered with fine crystals that
develop when the terminals aren't tight and haven’t been smeared with a
dab of Vaseline. The car hadn’t been able to recharge the
battery. The man could have fixed it himself by just looking
under the hood. I guess it’s just human nature,— if it ain't
broke, don't look, it might break.
The guy was
pissed at me because it took over two hours to get to him. His
wife was pissed at him because he was so dumb he didn't know how to
look after his own Lexus, but the kids were having a ball playing
Cowboys and Indians in the brush. I charged them the freeway rate
instead of the good neighbor rate.
Ron lets us
charge that,— the top rate allowed by the Auto Association, especially
when the customer is an asshole. Then the s.o.b. spoils it by
giving me a big tip just for jump-starting him after I used a wire
brush, some Vaseline, a couple a wrenches and some hand cleaner.
Some folks can boggle your mind.
Maybe Groth was
like that husband, except he was a good neighbor. Maybe he just
didn't know to check the filter on the batruqan. Perhaps the
craft didn't have an idiot light to show the handoth arm was getting
stuck mid-way between cycles. I stopped thinking about Groth when
my scalp began to itch.
‘Must a’ got too
much Sun again,’ I thought to myself. I keep forgetting my
hat. Mary used to make sure I took it with me every time I left
the house, ever since my hair started getting sparse when I was
twenty-five or so. I got a pate shiny as a lightbulb now, just a
fringe over the ears and in back. I pulled up in front of
Charlie's and Ron's car was in his space.
‘Hell to pay
now.’ I thought as I swung out of Jeep. I felt kinda
frisky. I hadn’t felt this good for a long while. It’s been
at least a couple of years since I got all frisky and
coltish. I even abused myself, then took a jog out on Taylor Road
afterwards. That cured me of the friskies real quick because
that's how I found out about my bum ticker.
Andy Johnson’s
been the town doctor since his dad died in sixty-three. He's got
a small surgery in Gove, but he lives on the family piece here in Katy
three miles out on the Westside. That's where they took me when I
fell on Taylor.
Old Thurman
actually saw me fall. He said it was like seeing someone shoot a
sick animal,— one minute they’re up, the next instant it’s on its
knees, then topples over. It was Old Thurman who took me to Doc
Andy. I wish somebody had found him when he went down in his
alfalfa last year, but the vultures were already circling by the time
his old lady Maggie called me when he didn't come in for
dinner. He must have went quick. He was lying on his back
next to the tractor, his eyes closed and his face peaceful. I
forgot how grey the face gets when there’s no blood pumping to it.
"Where the hell
you been?" Ron called out from the open, office door before I
even got halfway there. "You don't leave work in the middle of
the day and just run off like that!"
"Thought I saw a
plane go down at the Ahmandsen place." I said as I got to the
door. "But it was just one of them plastic weather
balloons." Ron was facing the window, his back to me. He
didn't even have the courtesy to swing his fat frame around to talk to
me.
"Well, you'll
have lots a’ time to chase after balloons from now on, old man." he
said with a grunt. "You didn't punch out, so I ain't payin' ya
for no hours since lunch. Here's yer check." He just held
it over his shoulder up in the air and waited for me to take it.
"You firin'
me?" I asked in a controlled voice I didn't recognize. It
wasn't like me to talk down to Ron, but I was. My voice was as
deep as it ever got with no quaver at all.
'You got it,
Baker. I ain't gonna pay nearly twelve bucks an hour to some old
man what drops everything to chase butterflies. I'm bringin' Cal
in for 'bout half what I’m pay’n you startin' Monday." He didn't
even turn his head to look up at me.
Cal is Ron's
nephew. He doesn’t know anything about mechanics. He got
Sara Troman good and juiced, and slipped it to her in the back of his
pickemup truck down by the creek one night. They’re getting
married next week, about five months before the baby comes. Cal
ain’t a bad kid, but he ain't got a lot of solids between his ears, if
you know what I mean.
He was working
at the Calera mine. Ralph, the foreman at the mine, says he's too
damn dumb to operate anything more complicated than a shovel, and
there's a lot of 'Spanics what can do the job better than him.
That’s why he doesn’t go to Calera any more.
It wasn’t
fair. I guess it was fair enough for Ron and his boy. Cal
has to find a way to feed his new family, and blood is thicker than
water. I didn't like the idea of getting fired after nearly
forty-five years at the same job. I have a reputation here in
Katy. I worked hard for my reputation as a decent, hard working
citizen of our community, and I hated to think one act of altruism was
going to destroy it. If I live as long as my dad that may mean
another thirty years or so. I don't want the folks of my town I
love remembering me as the one who got fired from Charlie's.
"Ron, I ain't
missed no time from this job 'cep’n when Mary got buried and when your
dad dropped that ladder on me 'fore you were born. Ain't chu’
bein’ just a little unfair?"
Ron swung around
in his chair and started to yell "You God— " Then he got a real
weird expression on his face, his eyes bugged out even more than usual,
his mouth dropped open, and he looked at me up and down, like you might
look a calf over at auction, but a lot faster.
"Get the fuck
out of here, you Goddamn dirty old man!" he screamed, like he got
stuck in the butt by a unicorn. "Don't you never come here
again. Not like that, not like anything!" He jumped up,— or
as close to a jump as a guy tipping the scales at about the same weight
as a big hog at the slaughterhouse door,— and went to shove at me, but
I reached out with one hand and pushed him back down in his
chair. It ain’t like me to be that assertive. There I go
again with new words.
I looked down,
and saw what Ron was so upset about. My Jolly Roger was hanging
out of my jeans. I guess the buttons must have popped when I was
rolling around in Jeep, and I didn’t noticed. My shirt was open,
too,— all the way to my belly. It was one of my usual denim
shirts Mary made out of my used jeans and ones we bought at the seconds
store in Colby. They were old, but I kept them in good condition,
all twenty or so that were left. There wasn't any reason why the
buttons should’ve come undone like that.
I should’ve seen
a pot belly, grey hairs on my chest, my prong all limp and loose, my
belly scar from the hay-rake that threw a fit at me in
fifty-seven; however, the scar was no longer angry red after all
these years,— just a little pink. That's what I should’ve seen,
but I didn’t. I'm well into my sixties! What I saw was what
I dreamed, at least at first. I saw me at my prime, my dick all
fresh and smooth, even at rest, and my belly lean and muscled. I
blinked, and the old me was back, but something was different. I
just couldn't figure what.
"What’s
a’matter, Son, ain’t cha’ never seen no real man afore? Did it
scare you, little boy? Keep yer fuckin' cool, Ron. It was
an accident from bouncin’ around in Jeep. If’n I’s interested in
flaunt’n myself it ud’ be for somebody a damn sight prettier’n
you!" I said as forcefully with as much dignity as a man might
muster with his dick hanging out naked as a baby possum in a shoe box.
I flipped Roger
back into my jeans, took the check and stomped out the door. I
looked and saw the check was for four hundred thirty-seven dollars and
fifty-three cents. In his haste to chuck me out the door he paid
me for too many hours. I laughed to myself. I felt good
about that. It was Tuesday, and we'd got paid last Friday.
The bastard got confused and paid me for the whole week. Serves
him right. He never paid me a penny for vacation money.
Just in case he
decided to change his mind, I drove Jeep right to the Co-op Bank in
Gove and cashed it. I put three hundred in my bank across the
street. I keep my money in the Wells Fargo Bank in Gove. It was
the First National Bank until it was bought by Norwest Bank and then by
Wells Fargo. I like the idea of banking with Wells Fargo.
They used to run the stages through Denver a long time ago. Beth,
the teller, whose been there as long as I can remember, gave me the
receipt showing my balance, but she didn't say anything about how come
I was there on a weekday. Nobody I know was there. Most of
my friends and neighbors don't bank with them anymore since Norwest
took over and started tightening the noose on the farmers.
"Don't really
need that job, no how." I told myself as I drove the old road
back home. My stocks pay more dividends now than what I get paid,
except they only pay four times a year. That was Andy's
idea. He said I should take some of my savings and buy shares,
'to balance my investments.' I asked him what to buy. I
think it was in eighty-four after Mary passed away, and I had her will
read. She didn't have much, but the will had to be read.
Bill Parker, our town lawyer, told me it was the proper thing to do, so
he read it. He was the executor, the guy who ties up all the
threads of a person's life when it’s over. We all named him as
executor in our wills. He helped us write them when he first came
back to town. He went to college on the G.I. bill to become a
lawyer after he came home from Korea. He got shot up pretty bad
over there.
Mary had a pass
book savings account I didn't know anything about at the Wells
Fargo. I knew she had a little egg money. She kept a pretty
big flock in the two coops. She drove her eggs and the fryer
roosters into Gove every weekday to sell for as long as I can
remember. I thought she spent all the money on feed and stuff for
the house, and the cloth she bought to make herself her dresses and
things on her Singer. She had nearly thirteen thousand dollars in
her account. She stated in her will it was money we were going to
use to travel somewhere when we paid off the mortgage and I
retired. Her egg and chick money built up over time.
I had a total of
ninety thousand with her insurance policy and all, so I had Bill Parker
buy me sixty thousand dollars worth of shares. I paid down the
house mortgage with the rest. That kind of pissed Bill off
because he said I had too much net worth in real estate with the house
and my farm. I told him I don't like owing people money.
You never know when you'll need to beg for money from the bank after a
drought or something.
Andy said he
used Bill Parker to run his investments, and I should too, so when Bill
Parker told me what to buy, I bought five hundred shares of each of his
top five choices. I just let them sit in the account and collect
dividends. That money piling up bought me another hundred shares
every time enough cash accumulated.
I didn't buy but
a hundred shares of one because it was almost three hundred dollars a
share. It was some shirt company; Berkshire something or
other. It never paid any dividends, so I never bought any more
than the hundred shares I started with. Bill said it's still a
good stock because it's worth more, so I should keep it for a while
longer.
All my other
shares were computer companies stocks; Microsoft, Hewlett Packard,
Intel and another company I can’t remember the name. It got
bought by the telephone company. It pays real good dividends
because I got a lot of their shares for five hundred dollars. It
quickly went up in value and the stocks split. The telephone
company traded more than ten thousand of their shares for my original
five hundred dollars. I get books from them every year or
so. I look at the pictures and throw them away. I never was
one for reading much. I used to get forms for the shareholders to
make votes on, but I told Bill to do all that stuff. I didn't
want to be bothered with them. Besides, that’s what I pay him for.
Come to think of
it, I never was one much for writing either, but I sure have covered a
patch this afternoon. The Sun's going down. I guess I'll
put this away and fix some supper. Maybe I’ll try to put down
some more tonight. God, what’ll the town folks think of me when
they find out I got fired? I just don't know. God help me
if they ever found out what I dreamed about.