Yup, another double-issue episode!
Contents
Thursday, December 8, 2011
“Did you guys know the ramp fell down last night?” Lily asked wide-eyed, standing with the other girls at the big window in the Laurel Room. The rest of the breakfast crowd was either filing out or still eating. “I was going to the bathroom when it happened. I heard it!”
“I heard some of them talking about it when I was eating breakfast,” said Caitlin. “I guess some of the grownups are gonna pull it off the street —”
“There they go,” said Ashley, watching the boys cross the parking lot and walk toward the house where the preacher and his formerly homeless friends had set up.
“What is wrong with them?” Lily said, shaking her head. “When we don’t have school or gardening or stuff, they’re following that crazy lady everywhere!”
“Yeah,” Caitlin said. “I mean, I don’t go following Cody everywhere —”
“Only with your eyes,” Lily giggled.
“Do not! And you better not tell anyone I said that!”
“Good thing,” Ashley said. “His wife’s got a gun!” She and Lily laughed.
“At least they’re nicer now,” said Caitlin, trying to find a less embarrassing subject. “Sheldon especially. He used to be a real creep-o, and Ben would go along with it.”
“It’s still stupid,” said Lily. “Do they think she’s gonna marry both of them or something? She’ll be real old when they grow up.”
Ashley shook her head. “I think she’s a witch.”
Caitlin gave her a curious look. “She doesn’t look like a witch.”
“What, you think she’s gonna wear a pointy black hat and carry a broom?”
“I can see it,” Lily said. “It’s like she put a spell on them. But it’s probably just the boy-girl thing.”
“She is pretty,” Ashley said. “When she doesn’t try to look like a bag lady, anyway. But you’re pretty too, Lily, and they never acted that weird around you.”
“I’m not that — hey, look. They’re coming back.” Lily pointed. Sheldon and Little Ben slipped back inside, saw the girls, came their way.
“What do they want?” Caitlin looked disgusted. She crossed her arms and glared at the boys.
Ben and Sheldon stopped about eight feet away, looking uncertain. Sheldon had his hands jammed in the pockets of his jeans; like all the kids’ clothes, they were a little baggy and he might have been holding them up (Lily stifled a giggle at the thought). Ben looked at his own hands, clasped together in front of him. “Hi,” he said at last.
“Hi guys,” said Ashley. “What’s up?”
“Um… can you come with us?”
“Why?” Caitlin gave them both a suspicious glare. Neither of the boys looked at her.
“To help out,” Sheldon said, staring at a spot near Ashley’s shoes. “Ah — the preacher said it will do them some good to meet some more people.”'
“But why us?” Lily said. “Why not some of the grownups?”
“She— they said they’re used to having us around, but not the grownups yet. So they want to see if more kids won’t upset them. If it works out, I guess she’ll ask Kelly and Cody next, and then the adults.” Sheldon glanced at Caitlin.
“Just Kelly and Cody? That’s weird,” said Ashley.
Ben shrugged. “She never talks about Sondra. She talks a lot about Cody, like he’s gonna be king or something. And she talks about Kelly some, and some of the grownups. I think she doesn’t like Sondra or something.”
Maybe the crazy lady isn’t so bad then, thought Caitlin. That’s not very nice… but I can’t help it. “Okay, I’ll come,” she said, stepping forward. “But if this is some kind of trick…”
Ashley and Lily looked at each other, then joined Caitlin. “We’ll come too,” said Ashley. “But Caitlin’s right. This better not be a trick.”
“It’s not,” said Ben. “Come on.” They turned and headed back to the “shelter,” the girls following and glancing at each other on the way.
They had no idea what to expect, once they arrived, and were a little surprised at how normal it seemed. Two men sat at the dining room table playing checkers, another read a book in a recliner in the living room near the window. The last man sat in an overstuffed chair, watching the room and rocking back and forth a little. A Christmas tree stood proud in the bay window; of course it had no lights but ornaments glittered in the morning sunlight. Patterson greeted the girls: “Welcome to this house.”
“Thanks,” said Ashley. “Um… what are we supposed to do here?”
“We’ll let you tell us,” the preacher laughed. “Maybe you should start by having a look around? Something might come to you.”
The girls shrugged and filed into the living room to check out the tree. There were no presents, but all the kids wondered how the presents part of Christmas was going to work this year, when anything anyone wanted was lying around for the taking.
“Hey, girlies,” one of the men said, leaning forward in the overstuffed chair. His eyes glittered in a way that worried Caitlin. “You —” Suddenly, Delphinia floated between them and was gone… but the man stopped and shook himself. When he turned to the girls again, the disturbing light in his eyes was gone. “You… come to help out too?” he finished.
continued…
Showing posts with label novel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label novel. Show all posts
Monday, October 04, 2010 1 comment
Monday, September 27, 2010 2 comments
White Pickups, Episode 54
Thursday, November 24, 2011
“I’ll have to say, this is one of the more unique weddings I’ve ever performed,” said Patterson, standing on the steps above the pool. The two couples — Sondra and Cody, Tim and Sara — stood at the bottom, flanking the preacher. The wedding party consisted of Ashley and Lily as flower girls, Max and Cleve as best men, and Tina and Jennifer as bridesmaids. The brides wore white, or at least cream-colored, dresses they found in Laurel; Tim and Cody looked decidedly uncomfortable in their found suits, but the layers did keep the late November chill at bay. The rest of the community spread across the area between the stairs and the pool. “But it gives me hope as well. After all that has happened in a few short months, there are people ready to commit themselves on this Thanksgiving Day not only to each other, but to the defiance of doom. By joining themselves in holy matrimony, they signify to us — and to the world — that the human race isn’t finished yet. Not by a long shot.
“But all the same, this is still not a step to be taken lightly. These couples have committed themselves to each other as best they could, when there was no clergy, but today they make it official — not only in the eyes of the community here, but in the eyes of God. And so, without shame or reproach, if any of you is uncertain in any way about joining yourselves in holy matrimony, speak now.” Nobody spoke. “If there exists among those of you present, any reason these couples should not be joined, speak now or forever hold your peace.” Again, silence, except for a sigh from Caitlin (or perhaps Kelly).
The ceremony went on as ceremonies have forever, even with rings — Tina knew of a jewelry store near the mall; it had been looted but Cody and Tim found plenty of modest wedding rings. Finally, as the grooms continued to kiss their brides, Patterson grinned and said, “As our couples have agreed to join their surnames as well as themselves, I present to you: Tim and Sara Karsten-Petro, and Cody and Sondra Lucado-Sifko!” The others cheered.
“Reception’s inside!” Johnny bellowed; everyone cheered again and followed the wedding party up the stairs.
As people started filling their plates, and Sheldon and Ben debated the best way to filch a beer or two without getting caught, Delphinia floated through the crowd with that eerie grace. She walked to the big window overlooking the pool and removed her Braves cap; again that shimmering blonde hair flowed down to her shoulders as she spread her arms, silhouetted against the window. Few saw that, but when she began to sing, everyone stopped and turned:
For a long moment, no one spoke, no one moved. Some said later that they’d heard harmonies, as if she sang in multiple voices. Ben and Sheldon gaped, their attempt at minor delinquency forgotten. Delphinia herself broke the silence: “Let the feast begin!” and the brides and grooms resumed filling their plates.
“Excuse me,” a small voice reached Delphinia, smiling upon the party. She looked down; Sheldon and Ben looked wide-eyed back up at her, wringing their hands. “Is there anything we can do for you? Would you like a plate?”
She gave them a blissful smile. “Why, thank you. That would be very kind.” They scurried away to join the line.
Patterson sidled up to Delphinia. “Were they bothering you? Is everything okay?”
“On this day,” she said, turning the Braves cap in her hands and watching the line, “all is love. All is light. All is laughter. Those boys will grow to be fine young men, and loving husbands to their wives. We shall mold them.”
“We?”
“Of course.” She donned her cap but left her hair and hood down, and turned to watch the sun break through the clouds and dazzle the puddles on the pool cover. Patterson watched her watch the water for a moment, then left to congratulate the newlyweds and greet the others.
“Um,” one of the boys said a little later, “we brought you your plate.” Each of them offered her a plate, heaped with food.
“Wonderful!” she said. “Let’s find a table, and ask the good reverend to join us. I believe you brought enough for us all!” She led them to an empty table, and waved Patterson over as he turned to look a question at her.
continued…
“I’ll have to say, this is one of the more unique weddings I’ve ever performed,” said Patterson, standing on the steps above the pool. The two couples — Sondra and Cody, Tim and Sara — stood at the bottom, flanking the preacher. The wedding party consisted of Ashley and Lily as flower girls, Max and Cleve as best men, and Tina and Jennifer as bridesmaids. The brides wore white, or at least cream-colored, dresses they found in Laurel; Tim and Cody looked decidedly uncomfortable in their found suits, but the layers did keep the late November chill at bay. The rest of the community spread across the area between the stairs and the pool. “But it gives me hope as well. After all that has happened in a few short months, there are people ready to commit themselves on this Thanksgiving Day not only to each other, but to the defiance of doom. By joining themselves in holy matrimony, they signify to us — and to the world — that the human race isn’t finished yet. Not by a long shot.
“But all the same, this is still not a step to be taken lightly. These couples have committed themselves to each other as best they could, when there was no clergy, but today they make it official — not only in the eyes of the community here, but in the eyes of God. And so, without shame or reproach, if any of you is uncertain in any way about joining yourselves in holy matrimony, speak now.” Nobody spoke. “If there exists among those of you present, any reason these couples should not be joined, speak now or forever hold your peace.” Again, silence, except for a sigh from Caitlin (or perhaps Kelly).
The ceremony went on as ceremonies have forever, even with rings — Tina knew of a jewelry store near the mall; it had been looted but Cody and Tim found plenty of modest wedding rings. Finally, as the grooms continued to kiss their brides, Patterson grinned and said, “As our couples have agreed to join their surnames as well as themselves, I present to you: Tim and Sara Karsten-Petro, and Cody and Sondra Lucado-Sifko!” The others cheered.
“Reception’s inside!” Johnny bellowed; everyone cheered again and followed the wedding party up the stairs.
As people started filling their plates, and Sheldon and Ben debated the best way to filch a beer or two without getting caught, Delphinia floated through the crowd with that eerie grace. She walked to the big window overlooking the pool and removed her Braves cap; again that shimmering blonde hair flowed down to her shoulders as she spread her arms, silhouetted against the window. Few saw that, but when she began to sing, everyone stopped and turned:
Love and joy, life and light
Witness to God’s power and might!
Sorrow, gloom, turn away
Celebrate this glorious day:
Lift your heart, feel the joy
Man and woman, girl and boy
Empty house, empty halls
All be filled by children’s calls,
As we make the world new
With the help of God so true —
Love and joy, life and light
Witness to God’s power and might!
Winter comes, cold it be,
Then spring — rebirth — glory be!
Summer, fall, moon and sun
Seasons in their courses run.
As we learn what is real,
Earth shall in her slumber heal
Love and peace unto you
Until all is made anew!
Love and joy, life and light
Witness to God’s power and might!
So rejoice, children true
Love endures, and is your due!
On the day you must part
Hold this joy close to your heart —
Though your heart wants to break
Healing pours from heaven’s lake.
For all will be made new
In heaven we will find you!
For a long moment, no one spoke, no one moved. Some said later that they’d heard harmonies, as if she sang in multiple voices. Ben and Sheldon gaped, their attempt at minor delinquency forgotten. Delphinia herself broke the silence: “Let the feast begin!” and the brides and grooms resumed filling their plates.
“Excuse me,” a small voice reached Delphinia, smiling upon the party. She looked down; Sheldon and Ben looked wide-eyed back up at her, wringing their hands. “Is there anything we can do for you? Would you like a plate?”
She gave them a blissful smile. “Why, thank you. That would be very kind.” They scurried away to join the line.
Patterson sidled up to Delphinia. “Were they bothering you? Is everything okay?”
“On this day,” she said, turning the Braves cap in her hands and watching the line, “all is love. All is light. All is laughter. Those boys will grow to be fine young men, and loving husbands to their wives. We shall mold them.”
“We?”
“Of course.” She donned her cap but left her hair and hood down, and turned to watch the sun break through the clouds and dazzle the puddles on the pool cover. Patterson watched her watch the water for a moment, then left to congratulate the newlyweds and greet the others.
“Um,” one of the boys said a little later, “we brought you your plate.” Each of them offered her a plate, heaped with food.
“Wonderful!” she said. “Let’s find a table, and ask the good reverend to join us. I believe you brought enough for us all!” She led them to an empty table, and waved Patterson over as he turned to look a question at her.
continued…
Tuesday, September 21, 2010 4 comments
White Pickups, Episode 53b
Contents
They skirted around the ramp, still in place but beginning to show signs of wear. As always, with observers present, the trucks had paused in their mindless self-destruction. The newcomers gawked at the sight while Tim explained it to Patterson. “Glory to God,” Patterson said, “they can be destroyed. Though it be the work of generations, the land may yet be clear of this pestilence.”
Nearly everyone in Laurel turned out to catch a glimpse of the newcomers. A few even cheered, making some of them nervous. As Patterson explained later, “They’re not used to people watching them — in a friendly manner, anyway. Give them a little space, a little time, and they may yet adjust.”
At supper in the Laurel Room, the newcomers mostly kept to themselves, sitting together in one corner and watching the others. They exceptions were Patterson, working the room and introducing himself to everyone; and one of the woman, tall, pale, and thin, dressed in a worn grey cloak and baseball cap. She quietly walked around the room with an unexpected grace, stopping at each table and looking over the people, sometimes speaking a few words.
“You must be the original inhabitants,” Jeremiah said, sitting and offering his hand to Cody, Tina, Sara, Kelly, and Sondra. “Jeremiah Fortune Patterson is my name. That’s a mouthful, so you can call me anything you like.” Cody grinned.
The woman in the cloak approached the table. She gave Cody a long look, then glanced at the others before returning her scrutiny to Cody. He began to fidget; Sondra glared at her and slipped her left hand under the table. Kelly wasn’t sure if Sondra really had her gun with her, but despite the possibility of gunplay at close range, she found herself suppressing a laugh — Sondra was so dramatic —
“You got a problem?” Cody asked finally, crossing his arms and glaring at the woman. The preacher began to say something, but she spoke first.
“Thus says the Oracle,” she said, slipping back her hood and removing her cap. A cascade of striking blonde hair poured down and flowed over her shoulders. None of them had noticed just how blue her eyes were before. Kelly suddenly remembered a woman at a Celtic festival she and her mom had attended last year; she looked like this woman, and had danced while playing the fiddle… it seemed so incredible, and they both moved with a certain kind of grace. “Though you be brought low, be true to what is right. You will be raised up, and become the Abraham of the new age, a father of nations.” She fell quiet and continued to watch him.
Cody continued to stare a moment, then relaxed. “Father of nations?” He grinned and put an arm around Sondra. “That makes her the mother, right?”
The woman glanced at Sondra, then squeezed her eyes shut. Her face became a mask. “The Oracle saith not,” she said, and walked away.
Cody turned to Patterson. “What in the — the heck was that all about?”
“I don’t know. She’s always been a bit strange, even by the measure of homeless folk. She gives her name as Delphinia — just Delphinia, no last name. She’ll say things from time to time — I’ll tell you about it later — but I’ve never heard her say anything like that.”
“Spooky sh– stuff,” Cody said. “Hey. I’d like to talk to you after you get settled in.” He rubbed Sondra’s back, it felt wooden and he looked at her. She continued to watch Delphinia, the protective anger now mixed with worry. “Sondra? You okay?”
She slowly let herself relax under Cody’s gentle backrub. “Yeah,” she said. “Blondie just spooked the hell out of me is all. Don’t know why — she’s just a crazy woman, right?”
“Perhaps,” Patterson said, “but it’s impolite to refer to people that way.”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“She might agree with you, though. Or more likely she would ignore you. But I think your friend here wanted to talk to me? Now is as good a time as any.”
“This concerns her too,” Cody said. “Let’s step outside.”
“Very well.” They rose and left.
Tina watched them go, and sniffed. “I smell… a wedding.” She smiled.
“Yeah,” Kelly said, her face a mask like Delphinia’s.
Tim and Sara looked at each other. “Wanna make it a double?” Tim grinned.
“Now you call that a proposal?” Sara laughed.
“Why not? It all comes to the same thing — you and me, forever.”
“Now you’re talkin’.” They rose and followed the others outside.
continued…
They skirted around the ramp, still in place but beginning to show signs of wear. As always, with observers present, the trucks had paused in their mindless self-destruction. The newcomers gawked at the sight while Tim explained it to Patterson. “Glory to God,” Patterson said, “they can be destroyed. Though it be the work of generations, the land may yet be clear of this pestilence.”
Nearly everyone in Laurel turned out to catch a glimpse of the newcomers. A few even cheered, making some of them nervous. As Patterson explained later, “They’re not used to people watching them — in a friendly manner, anyway. Give them a little space, a little time, and they may yet adjust.”
At supper in the Laurel Room, the newcomers mostly kept to themselves, sitting together in one corner and watching the others. They exceptions were Patterson, working the room and introducing himself to everyone; and one of the woman, tall, pale, and thin, dressed in a worn grey cloak and baseball cap. She quietly walked around the room with an unexpected grace, stopping at each table and looking over the people, sometimes speaking a few words.
“You must be the original inhabitants,” Jeremiah said, sitting and offering his hand to Cody, Tina, Sara, Kelly, and Sondra. “Jeremiah Fortune Patterson is my name. That’s a mouthful, so you can call me anything you like.” Cody grinned.
The woman in the cloak approached the table. She gave Cody a long look, then glanced at the others before returning her scrutiny to Cody. He began to fidget; Sondra glared at her and slipped her left hand under the table. Kelly wasn’t sure if Sondra really had her gun with her, but despite the possibility of gunplay at close range, she found herself suppressing a laugh — Sondra was so dramatic —
“You got a problem?” Cody asked finally, crossing his arms and glaring at the woman. The preacher began to say something, but she spoke first.
“Thus says the Oracle,” she said, slipping back her hood and removing her cap. A cascade of striking blonde hair poured down and flowed over her shoulders. None of them had noticed just how blue her eyes were before. Kelly suddenly remembered a woman at a Celtic festival she and her mom had attended last year; she looked like this woman, and had danced while playing the fiddle… it seemed so incredible, and they both moved with a certain kind of grace. “Though you be brought low, be true to what is right. You will be raised up, and become the Abraham of the new age, a father of nations.” She fell quiet and continued to watch him.
Cody continued to stare a moment, then relaxed. “Father of nations?” He grinned and put an arm around Sondra. “That makes her the mother, right?”
The woman glanced at Sondra, then squeezed her eyes shut. Her face became a mask. “The Oracle saith not,” she said, and walked away.
Cody turned to Patterson. “What in the — the heck was that all about?”
“I don’t know. She’s always been a bit strange, even by the measure of homeless folk. She gives her name as Delphinia — just Delphinia, no last name. She’ll say things from time to time — I’ll tell you about it later — but I’ve never heard her say anything like that.”
“Spooky sh– stuff,” Cody said. “Hey. I’d like to talk to you after you get settled in.” He rubbed Sondra’s back, it felt wooden and he looked at her. She continued to watch Delphinia, the protective anger now mixed with worry. “Sondra? You okay?”
She slowly let herself relax under Cody’s gentle backrub. “Yeah,” she said. “Blondie just spooked the hell out of me is all. Don’t know why — she’s just a crazy woman, right?”
“Perhaps,” Patterson said, “but it’s impolite to refer to people that way.”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“She might agree with you, though. Or more likely she would ignore you. But I think your friend here wanted to talk to me? Now is as good a time as any.”
“This concerns her too,” Cody said. “Let’s step outside.”
“Very well.” They rose and left.
Tina watched them go, and sniffed. “I smell… a wedding.” She smiled.
“Yeah,” Kelly said, her face a mask like Delphinia’s.
Tim and Sara looked at each other. “Wanna make it a double?” Tim grinned.
“Now you call that a proposal?” Sara laughed.
“Why not? It all comes to the same thing — you and me, forever.”
“Now you’re talkin’.” They rose and followed the others outside.
continued…
Monday, September 20, 2010 No comments
White Pickups, Episode 53a
Contents
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
“People!” Palmer yelled into the radio. “People hiking up the freeway!”
“Stand by,” Sara said. “And don’t yell.” She let go of the mike button and looked over the balcony, where most of the community was still at breakfast. “Cleve! Palmer says there’s people on the freeway!”
Sally’s voice cut through the answering hubbub from below: “Well, they invited them here, right?”
“No,” Sara shook her head, thinking Cleve woulda killed them.
“Not enough folks left to be choosy!” Sally snapped. “Tell ’em to bring ’em here!” Everyone started talking at once.
Cleve’s police whistle cut through the commotion. “Look: we’ve been expecting to find other people,” he said. “We’ve talked about it, what to do — now it’s time. Sara: tell ’em to come back. Tim can take me out there, we’ll have a chat with the newcomers, and if things check out we’ll bring ’em here. We can take care of things if they get hostile — right?”
Nobody objected. “Okay,” Cleve said, “get your acts together and we’ll see what happens.”
“Where’d they go?” Tim asked nobody, looking up and down the freeway from the overpass. The trucks, and the usual debris, were the only thing on the road on either side. “We weren’t gone long enough to lose ’em — even if they turned around, we should still be able to see ’em.”
Cleve looked around, then down. “They might be underneath us.”
“Ah!” Tim smacked his forehead. “Yeah, that could be. Let’s roll down the off-ramp and have a look.”
“Yeah,” Cleve said, and thumbed the mike button. “We think they might be underneath the overpass. We’re about to check it out.”
They coasted down the on-ramp, looking over their shoulders as they descended. They made room for a truck to pass them on the right, then cut across the apron to the shoulder — and braked quickly and dismounted as several people under the overpass stood to face them. They all looked wary, except for one who stepped out to greet them.
“I believe I know you two,” he said, a short bald man in a frayed overcoat. “You stood against a mob who would sacrifice your enemy.”
“Jeremiah Fortune Patterson!” Cleve laughed. “How could I forget a name like that!” Cleve and Tim holstered their pistols and stepped forward to shake the preacher’s hand. “How’ve you been? Who’s your friends?” He gestured toward the others, watching from the shadow of the overpass.
“Well enough, under the circumstances. As for my companions, they are my flock, those who have heeded the call to find a new dwelling place. As they are the homeless, they also might say one place is as good as another.”
“The call?” asked Tim.
“Indeed. Now I consider it disrespectful to open one’s Bible and and point to a random verse, as if one were consulting an oracle. But random phrases have been much on our minds lately, and when put together…”
“A prophecy?”
“Perhaps. Judge for yourself: ‘Behold, the city has been made desolate.’ ‘Come out of her.’ ‘I will bring you to a new place, where you may dwell in peace.’ There are others, but you get the idea: get outta Dodge.”
“So you’re the Moses of Atlanta,” Cleve chuckled. “Hey… you think any of those dreams from about a month ago had anything to do with it?”
“Ah… did we share a single dream that night? It must be true. A great Evil is loose in the world, and what is to be done…” He shrugged.
“Yeah. Where are y’all headed?”
Jeremiah gestured to his companions; they stepped forward: four men, two women. “In the words of the personal ad columns: ‘Street preacher and homeless flock seek to join non-judgmental community.’” He grinned. “It may take a while for them to get used to living in a community once again, but God will bring the healing as He sees fit.”
“Have you seen any other groups?”
Some of them shook their heads. “A few individuals,” the preacher said. “No organized groups.”
Cleve thought a second. “Well, there’s plenty of room where we’re at — we’ve taken over most of the townhouses in our subdivision. There’s a few left, but your flock might be more comfortable in a house. Maybe a halfway house of sorts. Once they get used to the rest of us, they can move into the townhouses if they want. I can’t speak for all of us, but we’ve been expecting to find other people and one of our older ladies asked why Tim didn’t invite you to our place right away.”
Tim nodded. “We’ll put it to a vote, but I don’t think anyone will object. Then you can get a meal and pick out your new places, right?”
“God’s blessings upon you and your community,” Jeremiah said. “Lead us to the promised land.” Cleve grinned and picked up the mike.
“Hey.” One of the “flock,” a black woman, called to Cleve. “You were a cop, weren’t ya?”
“I quit a year before the trucks,” Cleve said. “You can’t still smell bacon after all that time!” Cleve was playing it light, but Tim could tell by now when his friend’s defenses came up.
She half-laughed, half-cawed. “I thought I recognized you — you busted me!”
“What?”
“Yeah.” She broke from the others and moved to walk beside Cleve on the other side of his bike. “It’s you, awright. It was a year ago spring. I was out on the street, starvin’, and I needed money for food. I never turned no tricks before, but I figured one time would be okay and I could eat for a few days —”
“And you offered it up to a plainclothes cop,” Cleve shook his head. “Y’know, I kinda remember that now, but not what came of it.”
“Oh, I got eleven months at the county jail,” she said. “Which wasn’t so bad. I got to eat and I still didn’t have to turn no tricks. I got out and ran into Preacher Man back there, and he did what he could for me. Then them trucks came along…” she shuddered. “That’s some voodoo right there. I figured I’d rather starve than climb in one, y’know?
“Anyway. My name’s Elinaeya. You can call me Elly. And this time, I ain’t sellin’ nothin’.”
“Cleve Isaacs,” he grinned. “Good thing too, I’m the closest thing to a cop we got where we live. Don’t make me bust you again!”
She let that boisterous laugh loose once again. “How much longer?”
“Couple miles. It’s a short bike ride, but kind of a long walk.”
continued…
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
“People!” Palmer yelled into the radio. “People hiking up the freeway!”
“Stand by,” Sara said. “And don’t yell.” She let go of the mike button and looked over the balcony, where most of the community was still at breakfast. “Cleve! Palmer says there’s people on the freeway!”
Sally’s voice cut through the answering hubbub from below: “Well, they invited them here, right?”
“No,” Sara shook her head, thinking Cleve woulda killed them.
“Not enough folks left to be choosy!” Sally snapped. “Tell ’em to bring ’em here!” Everyone started talking at once.
Cleve’s police whistle cut through the commotion. “Look: we’ve been expecting to find other people,” he said. “We’ve talked about it, what to do — now it’s time. Sara: tell ’em to come back. Tim can take me out there, we’ll have a chat with the newcomers, and if things check out we’ll bring ’em here. We can take care of things if they get hostile — right?”
Nobody objected. “Okay,” Cleve said, “get your acts together and we’ll see what happens.”
“Where’d they go?” Tim asked nobody, looking up and down the freeway from the overpass. The trucks, and the usual debris, were the only thing on the road on either side. “We weren’t gone long enough to lose ’em — even if they turned around, we should still be able to see ’em.”
Cleve looked around, then down. “They might be underneath us.”
“Ah!” Tim smacked his forehead. “Yeah, that could be. Let’s roll down the off-ramp and have a look.”
“Yeah,” Cleve said, and thumbed the mike button. “We think they might be underneath the overpass. We’re about to check it out.”
They coasted down the on-ramp, looking over their shoulders as they descended. They made room for a truck to pass them on the right, then cut across the apron to the shoulder — and braked quickly and dismounted as several people under the overpass stood to face them. They all looked wary, except for one who stepped out to greet them.
“I believe I know you two,” he said, a short bald man in a frayed overcoat. “You stood against a mob who would sacrifice your enemy.”
“Jeremiah Fortune Patterson!” Cleve laughed. “How could I forget a name like that!” Cleve and Tim holstered their pistols and stepped forward to shake the preacher’s hand. “How’ve you been? Who’s your friends?” He gestured toward the others, watching from the shadow of the overpass.
“Well enough, under the circumstances. As for my companions, they are my flock, those who have heeded the call to find a new dwelling place. As they are the homeless, they also might say one place is as good as another.”
“The call?” asked Tim.
“Indeed. Now I consider it disrespectful to open one’s Bible and and point to a random verse, as if one were consulting an oracle. But random phrases have been much on our minds lately, and when put together…”
“A prophecy?”
“Perhaps. Judge for yourself: ‘Behold, the city has been made desolate.’ ‘Come out of her.’ ‘I will bring you to a new place, where you may dwell in peace.’ There are others, but you get the idea: get outta Dodge.”
“So you’re the Moses of Atlanta,” Cleve chuckled. “Hey… you think any of those dreams from about a month ago had anything to do with it?”
“Ah… did we share a single dream that night? It must be true. A great Evil is loose in the world, and what is to be done…” He shrugged.
“Yeah. Where are y’all headed?”
Jeremiah gestured to his companions; they stepped forward: four men, two women. “In the words of the personal ad columns: ‘Street preacher and homeless flock seek to join non-judgmental community.’” He grinned. “It may take a while for them to get used to living in a community once again, but God will bring the healing as He sees fit.”
“Have you seen any other groups?”
Some of them shook their heads. “A few individuals,” the preacher said. “No organized groups.”
Cleve thought a second. “Well, there’s plenty of room where we’re at — we’ve taken over most of the townhouses in our subdivision. There’s a few left, but your flock might be more comfortable in a house. Maybe a halfway house of sorts. Once they get used to the rest of us, they can move into the townhouses if they want. I can’t speak for all of us, but we’ve been expecting to find other people and one of our older ladies asked why Tim didn’t invite you to our place right away.”
Tim nodded. “We’ll put it to a vote, but I don’t think anyone will object. Then you can get a meal and pick out your new places, right?”
“God’s blessings upon you and your community,” Jeremiah said. “Lead us to the promised land.” Cleve grinned and picked up the mike.
“Hey.” One of the “flock,” a black woman, called to Cleve. “You were a cop, weren’t ya?”
“I quit a year before the trucks,” Cleve said. “You can’t still smell bacon after all that time!” Cleve was playing it light, but Tim could tell by now when his friend’s defenses came up.
She half-laughed, half-cawed. “I thought I recognized you — you busted me!”
“What?”
“Yeah.” She broke from the others and moved to walk beside Cleve on the other side of his bike. “It’s you, awright. It was a year ago spring. I was out on the street, starvin’, and I needed money for food. I never turned no tricks before, but I figured one time would be okay and I could eat for a few days —”
“And you offered it up to a plainclothes cop,” Cleve shook his head. “Y’know, I kinda remember that now, but not what came of it.”
“Oh, I got eleven months at the county jail,” she said. “Which wasn’t so bad. I got to eat and I still didn’t have to turn no tricks. I got out and ran into Preacher Man back there, and he did what he could for me. Then them trucks came along…” she shuddered. “That’s some voodoo right there. I figured I’d rather starve than climb in one, y’know?
“Anyway. My name’s Elinaeya. You can call me Elly. And this time, I ain’t sellin’ nothin’.”
“Cleve Isaacs,” he grinned. “Good thing too, I’m the closest thing to a cop we got where we live. Don’t make me bust you again!”
She let that boisterous laugh loose once again. “How much longer?”
“Couple miles. It’s a short bike ride, but kind of a long walk.”
continued…
Monday, September 13, 2010 2 comments
White Pickups, Episode 52
Contents
Saturday, November 19, 2011
“Hey cat,” said Cody, walking up the steps with Sondra in the evening gloom. Shady mewed at Sondra, then leaped off the top step and into Cody’s arms. He laughed and stroked the purring grey kitten.
“That’s Kelly’s kitten, right?” Sondra scratched Shady’s back, watching Cody.
“Yeah. He keeps slipping out in the evenings and waits for me here on the steps to take him home. It’s like a routine now.”
“Hm. He really likes you.”
“Yeah, me and cats have always gotten along,” said Cody. “I guess we’re both like, let us be who we are. We know each other that way.”
“Kindred spirits, I think that’s called.”
“Did he get out again?” Kelly asked, climbing the steps behind them. “I should have named him Houdini!”
Sondra looked toward the hallway, then at Kelly. “He just gets out?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s like he can be sleeping with Cheddar in the laundry in the afternoon — and the second me or Mom open the front door, he’s gone! Then he waits for Cody.” She took Shady, who looked resigned to the situation. “He really likes Cody. God knows why.” She grinned. “’Scuse me.” She slipped around them and down the hall.
“What is it?” asked Cody, watching Sondra watch Kelly depart.
“Nothing.”
Cody would admit he knew next to nothing about girls, but even he knew (from experience with his mom) when Sondra said Nothing like that, there was something. He also guessed she would be moody the rest of the evening, and maybe tell him what he’d done wrong after he’d forgotten it ever happened. He nudged her to get her moving, and they took the short walk to their door. Down the dark hallway, Kelly stepped into #202.
“You know, we ought to string some LED lights in these hallways,” said Cody, just to break the silence. “We usually have enough juice to run a few, at least long enough for everyone to get inside for the night.”
“Hm. What about those yard lights with the little solar panels, like we have marking the path to the johns?”
“Hey… good idea. As long as everyone remembers to bring ’em back out in the day.” They stepped inside. Sondra immediately veered to the love seat and cranked her windup flashlight with more vigor than usual. The grating whine of the little generator followed Cody into the kitchen, where their cooler sat. Groping in the near-darkness for one of his last cans of beer, his hand first found the wine bottle. He stopped and thought a moment.
Sondra glanced up from her book without really wanting to, as Cody came back. He had a mug and glass in either hand.
“Something to drink.” He put the wine glass on the end table where she could reach it, then sat in the lounge chair opposite with his mug. “You wanna talk?”
She sighed, put down her copy of Virgin of Small Plains, took up the wine glass. “It’s not you, Cody. Sorry.”
“What is it, then?”
“You really don’t know.” She was not asking.
“As Johnny would say, not a freekin’ clue. Well, I added the freekin’ part, but anyway.”
She crossed her arms, wine glass in hand alongside her face. “How long has her kitten been ‘getting loose’ and greeting you?”
“Uh… Shady? I don’t know… oh. You know what? I think he did it the first night we moved in here.”
“Uh-huh. A strange coincidence, don’t you think?”
“I dunno. You know how cats are. Sometimes they don’t accept that they’ve moved right away. Sometimes it takes a couple months.”
“It’s been a couple months.”
“What… you think Kelly’s been letting him out? Why would she do that?”
Sondra sighed and took a long drink. “I don’t know, Cody. But it just doesn’t add up for me.”
“Shoot. It’s not like Kelly’s interested in me or anything.” Sondra just looked at him, and Cody gaped. “Do you really think…? No way! Just no way!” He looked toward Kelly’s end of the townhouses and glowered, curling into a prickly ball.
“Back when it was just the three of us, and even after we brought Tim and Sara back with us, I thought she was nice looking, sure. A little preppy maybe, but I didn’t know if there was anyone else our age left. You know what she told her mom? Word got around.” Sondra shook her head. “She said she didn’t want to date me even if I am the last guy on earth! But even before, I knew. She looked at me like, like I was… what is it…” He waved his free hand for a moment. “Necessary evil. That’s the vibe I got from her, she thought they had to have me around but she didn’t want anything to do with me. And that’s fine, I’m used to that…” he flapped his arm. “No way.”
“What about now? How does she look at you now?”
“I dunno. I haven’t looked at her much since I met you.”
Sondra snorted, then laughed. She stood, crossed the three steps to Cody’s recliner, draped herself across his lap, and pulled the lever to lift the footrest. “You know: for someone who thinks he doesn’t know much about girls, you sure know the right thing to say.” She kissed his forehead.
“What, the truth?”
“Don’t ever change, Cody.”
“I won’t.” He grinned. “You either. We can be ourselves forever.”
After a thorough kiss, lasting several minutes, involving much tongue and more than a little groping, Sondra sat up gasping. “I wanna read a little while longer before we go to bed, okay? I’m getting into some of the good parts.”
“We were just getting into some of the good parts here.” Cody grinned and reached under her loosened sweater, stroking her breasts one more time. “What’s it about?”
“It’s a mystery. A girl turned up dead in Bumfuck, Kansas, and the townies all tried to hush it up. It’s like twenty years later before anyone gets around to figuring out what happened.”
“Sounds more interesting than what my mom used to read. Those trashy romance books with the steamy covers, you know?”
“Yeah. There were a bunch of those laying around my old place from before my mom took off.” She climbed off the chair. “This one’s pretty good. Maybe you’d like to read it when I’m done.”
Cody laughed. “My mom used to say the only books I ever picked up had a spaceship on the cover. That’s not completely true, but…” He shrugged. “Whatever. I guess I can run back and grab my PSP, it should be charged up enough for tonight.”
“What are you playing?”
“Zombie Hunter 3. I might finish it tonight, probably tomorrow. Unless you read a long time.”
“No… I won’t be reading too much longer. Maybe an hour.” She settled back into the love seat. “Hurry back, okay?”
“Sure. Hey… I love you.”
“Love you too.” Sondra grinned as he slipped out, then went back to her book. Pretty Little Kelly might be after Cody, but he refused to believe it and didn’t seem to care even if it was true. A certain tension, that she didn’t even know had been there all this time, seeped away.
continued…
Saturday, November 19, 2011
“Hey cat,” said Cody, walking up the steps with Sondra in the evening gloom. Shady mewed at Sondra, then leaped off the top step and into Cody’s arms. He laughed and stroked the purring grey kitten.
“That’s Kelly’s kitten, right?” Sondra scratched Shady’s back, watching Cody.
“Yeah. He keeps slipping out in the evenings and waits for me here on the steps to take him home. It’s like a routine now.”
“Hm. He really likes you.”
“Yeah, me and cats have always gotten along,” said Cody. “I guess we’re both like, let us be who we are. We know each other that way.”
“Kindred spirits, I think that’s called.”
“Did he get out again?” Kelly asked, climbing the steps behind them. “I should have named him Houdini!”
Sondra looked toward the hallway, then at Kelly. “He just gets out?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s like he can be sleeping with Cheddar in the laundry in the afternoon — and the second me or Mom open the front door, he’s gone! Then he waits for Cody.” She took Shady, who looked resigned to the situation. “He really likes Cody. God knows why.” She grinned. “’Scuse me.” She slipped around them and down the hall.
“What is it?” asked Cody, watching Sondra watch Kelly depart.
“Nothing.”
Cody would admit he knew next to nothing about girls, but even he knew (from experience with his mom) when Sondra said Nothing like that, there was something. He also guessed she would be moody the rest of the evening, and maybe tell him what he’d done wrong after he’d forgotten it ever happened. He nudged her to get her moving, and they took the short walk to their door. Down the dark hallway, Kelly stepped into #202.
“You know, we ought to string some LED lights in these hallways,” said Cody, just to break the silence. “We usually have enough juice to run a few, at least long enough for everyone to get inside for the night.”
“Hm. What about those yard lights with the little solar panels, like we have marking the path to the johns?”
“Hey… good idea. As long as everyone remembers to bring ’em back out in the day.” They stepped inside. Sondra immediately veered to the love seat and cranked her windup flashlight with more vigor than usual. The grating whine of the little generator followed Cody into the kitchen, where their cooler sat. Groping in the near-darkness for one of his last cans of beer, his hand first found the wine bottle. He stopped and thought a moment.
Sondra glanced up from her book without really wanting to, as Cody came back. He had a mug and glass in either hand.
“Something to drink.” He put the wine glass on the end table where she could reach it, then sat in the lounge chair opposite with his mug. “You wanna talk?”
She sighed, put down her copy of Virgin of Small Plains, took up the wine glass. “It’s not you, Cody. Sorry.”
“What is it, then?”
“You really don’t know.” She was not asking.
“As Johnny would say, not a freekin’ clue. Well, I added the freekin’ part, but anyway.”
She crossed her arms, wine glass in hand alongside her face. “How long has her kitten been ‘getting loose’ and greeting you?”
“Uh… Shady? I don’t know… oh. You know what? I think he did it the first night we moved in here.”
“Uh-huh. A strange coincidence, don’t you think?”
“I dunno. You know how cats are. Sometimes they don’t accept that they’ve moved right away. Sometimes it takes a couple months.”
“It’s been a couple months.”
“What… you think Kelly’s been letting him out? Why would she do that?”
Sondra sighed and took a long drink. “I don’t know, Cody. But it just doesn’t add up for me.”
“Shoot. It’s not like Kelly’s interested in me or anything.” Sondra just looked at him, and Cody gaped. “Do you really think…? No way! Just no way!” He looked toward Kelly’s end of the townhouses and glowered, curling into a prickly ball.
“Back when it was just the three of us, and even after we brought Tim and Sara back with us, I thought she was nice looking, sure. A little preppy maybe, but I didn’t know if there was anyone else our age left. You know what she told her mom? Word got around.” Sondra shook her head. “She said she didn’t want to date me even if I am the last guy on earth! But even before, I knew. She looked at me like, like I was… what is it…” He waved his free hand for a moment. “Necessary evil. That’s the vibe I got from her, she thought they had to have me around but she didn’t want anything to do with me. And that’s fine, I’m used to that…” he flapped his arm. “No way.”
“What about now? How does she look at you now?”
“I dunno. I haven’t looked at her much since I met you.”
Sondra snorted, then laughed. She stood, crossed the three steps to Cody’s recliner, draped herself across his lap, and pulled the lever to lift the footrest. “You know: for someone who thinks he doesn’t know much about girls, you sure know the right thing to say.” She kissed his forehead.
“What, the truth?”
“Don’t ever change, Cody.”
“I won’t.” He grinned. “You either. We can be ourselves forever.”
After a thorough kiss, lasting several minutes, involving much tongue and more than a little groping, Sondra sat up gasping. “I wanna read a little while longer before we go to bed, okay? I’m getting into some of the good parts.”
“We were just getting into some of the good parts here.” Cody grinned and reached under her loosened sweater, stroking her breasts one more time. “What’s it about?”
“It’s a mystery. A girl turned up dead in Bumfuck, Kansas, and the townies all tried to hush it up. It’s like twenty years later before anyone gets around to figuring out what happened.”
“Sounds more interesting than what my mom used to read. Those trashy romance books with the steamy covers, you know?”
“Yeah. There were a bunch of those laying around my old place from before my mom took off.” She climbed off the chair. “This one’s pretty good. Maybe you’d like to read it when I’m done.”
Cody laughed. “My mom used to say the only books I ever picked up had a spaceship on the cover. That’s not completely true, but…” He shrugged. “Whatever. I guess I can run back and grab my PSP, it should be charged up enough for tonight.”
“What are you playing?”
“Zombie Hunter 3. I might finish it tonight, probably tomorrow. Unless you read a long time.”
“No… I won’t be reading too much longer. Maybe an hour.” She settled back into the love seat. “Hurry back, okay?”
“Sure. Hey… I love you.”
“Love you too.” Sondra grinned as he slipped out, then went back to her book. Pretty Little Kelly might be after Cody, but he refused to believe it and didn’t seem to care even if it was true. A certain tension, that she didn’t even know had been there all this time, seeped away.
continued…
Monday, September 06, 2010 2 comments
White Pickups, Episode 51
I can’t let this go without saying: Happy Birthday, Mason!!!!
Contents
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
The maul bounced with a hollow thunk. “Dammit!” Cody snarled, glaring at the marks in the wood.
“You wanna hear a trick?” Johnny gave him a sympathetic smile.
“I’m ready to try just about anything.”
“Okay.” Johnny touched the piece of tree trunk, about an inch from the edge, where the darker outer wood met the yellow center. “Hit it right about there. Work your way around the edge of these bigger pieces, hit ’em along the grain. Once it’s smaller, you can split it down the middle.”
Cody shrugged, took aim, swung. This time, a slab of wood about six inches wide and an inch thick split away with a satisfying tearing sound. “Ahhh,” he grinned at Johnny. “I should’ve thought of that myself.”
“I did a lot of splittin’ when I was your age. Before I was big enough to swing a go-devil, I was picking up what got split and stackin’ it. So I got to see how it was done up close before I ever had to do it myself.”
Cody turned the piece and split off another slab. “Where’d you grow up?”
“White County, outside of Cleveland. Cleveland Georgia, that is.”
“I figured. So how’d you end up down in Atlanta?”
“Long story.” Johnny wrestled a whole piece into place. He swung and hit it right in the middle: whack! it split most of the way apart.
Cody goggled. “How did you do that?”
He shrugged. “It had a big crack in the middle. If you hit it just right, sometimes they bust like that. It’s worth a try, anyway… if it don’t bust, you can always work around the edges. Anyway… I grew up around a bunch of narrow-minded people. Lots of times that happens, you grow up like them too, but it didn’t happen to me. Thank God.” Johnny finished breaking the wood apart then knocked off a piece from one of the halves. “And maybe it had to do with my granddad. He used to say, ‘It don’t matter if we don’t like how they are, it’s America and they got a right to be that way. And if you look at it from their side, they prob’ly don’t like how we are either.’ That stuck with me.” He turned the second half and broke it apart with two well-placed strokes. “Lots of people never get over the notion that anyone who’s not just like themselves ain’t normal, somehow.”
“Tribalism,” said Max, from the other side of Johnny.
“Yeah. So anyway, when I went to UGA, I found out just how different some people could be. It didn’t faze me, ’cause I remembered what Granddad said and I made some pretty good friends that I wouldn’t have wanted to take home to visit… for everybody’s sake. Matter of fact, I think Max there was finishing his last year when I started my first. Not that we ever met.
“Anyway, I majored in business. My folks really wanted me to learn a trade — you know, like an electrician — but I had a four-year scholarship. I compromised. I figured I could at least manage some kind of contractor business… the money would be better and I wouldn’t have to do real work for a living.” He laughed.
Cody hit his wood a little off-center and it split partway open. He pried it apart, using the maul to separate the slivers holding it together. “Yeah, I know what you mean. My dad probably would have gotten along with some of your neighbors. I decided a long time ago I wasn’t going to grow up to be like him. So I was kind of an outcast at school, and that described what friends I had too.” He split the remaining pieces. “But you ended up in Atlanta anyway. Roll me another one down here?”
“Yeah, I got into computers when I was in college. I saw that was the coming thing, and so I took some classes so I could at least understand the nuts and bolts of that business.” He looked around, then rolled a piece with a protruding branch off to one side. “That one’s for the hydraulic splitter. Those knots can be about impossible to break through by hand. Don’t tell Tina, but I was working for her number-one competitor. Here, try this one.”
“Hey, I had my eye on that one!” Max grinned.
“Me too!” Charles said from farther down. Kelly, who was helping her dad, walked down to Cody.
“What’s the big deal about that piece?” she asked, looking at the wood. It had a crack in the middle; Cody turned it to line it up with his swing.
“Maybe it’s gonna be an easy one,” he said. He hit the crack dead on; it split partway, snagging the maul.
“Ha! Some easy one!” Kelly grinned.
“No problem,” Cody said, pushing down on the axe handle. “It got started.” He worked the maul free and took another swing; this time, it split nearly all the way apart. “Ha! Me Ogg the Caveman! Oook oook!”
Kelly laughed. “Let me try that. Dad won’t give me a chance.” Cody shrugged and handed her the maul. “Wow… this thing’s heavy.”
“Let it do the work,” Johnny said. “Don’t try to power-drive it through the wood. It’ll do the job for you. Besides, you’ll have a better chance of hitting what you’re aiming at. And aim for the edge, about an inch in.”
Kelly nodded and raised the maul, let it drop, knocked off a chunk.
“Oook! You Klogg the Cavewoman!” Cody grunted. Kelly grinned and swung twice more, then leaned against the handle and panted.
“I think Klogg is out of shape,” she gasped. “This is a workout!” She pulled off her sweater and tied the sleeves around her neck; the tight t-shirt underneath showed a hand above and below a squashed basketball, with CAN’T DUNK THIS! printed over it.
“Yeah, why do you think I handed it over so quick?” Cody grinned, looking over the t-shirt.
“What’s going on?” Sondra said, walking up. Her voice was light, but Cody saw something flash in those dark eyes.
“Johnny and me were showing Kelly how to split firewood,” Cody said. “Um… you wanna try?”
“Sure.” Kelly passed the maul to Sondra and took several steps back. Cody thought Kelly looked both amused and a little wary at the same time… and why does Sondra look pissed?
Sondra looked at the big piece, hefting the maul. She raised it and brought it down hard with a yeaah! About a third of it tumbled away; the bigger piece fell over. The others goggled, even Johnny, then Kelly shrugged and rejoined her dad down the line. Sondra looked at Cody and laughed. “That felt kinda good,” she said. “Get some circulation in this stupid arm.” She stood the big piece back up and split it twice more, with less force. “Yeah.” She handed the maul back to Cody and picked up an armload of split wood. “Now me carry wood back to cave.”
Cody watched her go, admiring her backside for a moment before turning to Johnny. “You got any idea what that was about?”
Johnny gave Cody a wary look. “Not a clue.” But he thought: I think Sondra’s just a weeeee bit territorial.
continued…
Contents
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
The maul bounced with a hollow thunk. “Dammit!” Cody snarled, glaring at the marks in the wood.
“You wanna hear a trick?” Johnny gave him a sympathetic smile.
“I’m ready to try just about anything.”
“Okay.” Johnny touched the piece of tree trunk, about an inch from the edge, where the darker outer wood met the yellow center. “Hit it right about there. Work your way around the edge of these bigger pieces, hit ’em along the grain. Once it’s smaller, you can split it down the middle.”
Cody shrugged, took aim, swung. This time, a slab of wood about six inches wide and an inch thick split away with a satisfying tearing sound. “Ahhh,” he grinned at Johnny. “I should’ve thought of that myself.”
“I did a lot of splittin’ when I was your age. Before I was big enough to swing a go-devil, I was picking up what got split and stackin’ it. So I got to see how it was done up close before I ever had to do it myself.”
Cody turned the piece and split off another slab. “Where’d you grow up?”
“White County, outside of Cleveland. Cleveland Georgia, that is.”
“I figured. So how’d you end up down in Atlanta?”
“Long story.” Johnny wrestled a whole piece into place. He swung and hit it right in the middle: whack! it split most of the way apart.
Cody goggled. “How did you do that?”
He shrugged. “It had a big crack in the middle. If you hit it just right, sometimes they bust like that. It’s worth a try, anyway… if it don’t bust, you can always work around the edges. Anyway… I grew up around a bunch of narrow-minded people. Lots of times that happens, you grow up like them too, but it didn’t happen to me. Thank God.” Johnny finished breaking the wood apart then knocked off a piece from one of the halves. “And maybe it had to do with my granddad. He used to say, ‘It don’t matter if we don’t like how they are, it’s America and they got a right to be that way. And if you look at it from their side, they prob’ly don’t like how we are either.’ That stuck with me.” He turned the second half and broke it apart with two well-placed strokes. “Lots of people never get over the notion that anyone who’s not just like themselves ain’t normal, somehow.”
“Tribalism,” said Max, from the other side of Johnny.
“Yeah. So anyway, when I went to UGA, I found out just how different some people could be. It didn’t faze me, ’cause I remembered what Granddad said and I made some pretty good friends that I wouldn’t have wanted to take home to visit… for everybody’s sake. Matter of fact, I think Max there was finishing his last year when I started my first. Not that we ever met.
“Anyway, I majored in business. My folks really wanted me to learn a trade — you know, like an electrician — but I had a four-year scholarship. I compromised. I figured I could at least manage some kind of contractor business… the money would be better and I wouldn’t have to do real work for a living.” He laughed.
Cody hit his wood a little off-center and it split partway open. He pried it apart, using the maul to separate the slivers holding it together. “Yeah, I know what you mean. My dad probably would have gotten along with some of your neighbors. I decided a long time ago I wasn’t going to grow up to be like him. So I was kind of an outcast at school, and that described what friends I had too.” He split the remaining pieces. “But you ended up in Atlanta anyway. Roll me another one down here?”
“Yeah, I got into computers when I was in college. I saw that was the coming thing, and so I took some classes so I could at least understand the nuts and bolts of that business.” He looked around, then rolled a piece with a protruding branch off to one side. “That one’s for the hydraulic splitter. Those knots can be about impossible to break through by hand. Don’t tell Tina, but I was working for her number-one competitor. Here, try this one.”
“Hey, I had my eye on that one!” Max grinned.
“Me too!” Charles said from farther down. Kelly, who was helping her dad, walked down to Cody.
“What’s the big deal about that piece?” she asked, looking at the wood. It had a crack in the middle; Cody turned it to line it up with his swing.
“Maybe it’s gonna be an easy one,” he said. He hit the crack dead on; it split partway, snagging the maul.
“Ha! Some easy one!” Kelly grinned.
“No problem,” Cody said, pushing down on the axe handle. “It got started.” He worked the maul free and took another swing; this time, it split nearly all the way apart. “Ha! Me Ogg the Caveman! Oook oook!”
Kelly laughed. “Let me try that. Dad won’t give me a chance.” Cody shrugged and handed her the maul. “Wow… this thing’s heavy.”
“Let it do the work,” Johnny said. “Don’t try to power-drive it through the wood. It’ll do the job for you. Besides, you’ll have a better chance of hitting what you’re aiming at. And aim for the edge, about an inch in.”
Kelly nodded and raised the maul, let it drop, knocked off a chunk.
“Oook! You Klogg the Cavewoman!” Cody grunted. Kelly grinned and swung twice more, then leaned against the handle and panted.
“I think Klogg is out of shape,” she gasped. “This is a workout!” She pulled off her sweater and tied the sleeves around her neck; the tight t-shirt underneath showed a hand above and below a squashed basketball, with CAN’T DUNK THIS! printed over it.
“Yeah, why do you think I handed it over so quick?” Cody grinned, looking over the t-shirt.
“What’s going on?” Sondra said, walking up. Her voice was light, but Cody saw something flash in those dark eyes.
“Johnny and me were showing Kelly how to split firewood,” Cody said. “Um… you wanna try?”
“Sure.” Kelly passed the maul to Sondra and took several steps back. Cody thought Kelly looked both amused and a little wary at the same time… and why does Sondra look pissed?
Sondra looked at the big piece, hefting the maul. She raised it and brought it down hard with a yeaah! About a third of it tumbled away; the bigger piece fell over. The others goggled, even Johnny, then Kelly shrugged and rejoined her dad down the line. Sondra looked at Cody and laughed. “That felt kinda good,” she said. “Get some circulation in this stupid arm.” She stood the big piece back up and split it twice more, with less force. “Yeah.” She handed the maul back to Cody and picked up an armload of split wood. “Now me carry wood back to cave.”
Cody watched her go, admiring her backside for a moment before turning to Johnny. “You got any idea what that was about?”
Johnny gave Cody a wary look. “Not a clue.” But he thought: I think Sondra’s just a weeeee bit territorial.
continued…
Tuesday, August 31, 2010 2 comments
White Pickups, Episode 50b
Contents
In the end, they got plenty more help than they needed: just about everyone came out. Those who didn’t come to pull came to watch, and none of them would be chased off. Ms. Sally and Ms. Katie (and Stefan in his wheelchair) watched over the kids, Rita let Sondra go but stayed with Big Ben herself, and they were the only ones left behind.
Cody and Johnny tied four ropes to the framework, then tied knots in the rope for hand-holds. Nearly everyone brought gloves, for the chill as well as protection. They assigned four people to each rope, and Johnny, Palmer, Max, Charles, and Tim took up positions at the bottom. “Pull!” Johnny yelled, and the ramp began scraping across the pavement. “Wait! Wait!” Johnny waved everyone to a stop, then ducked underneath and jacked it up. “I guess we’re all anxious to try this out, huh?” Laughter from the others.
“It might work just as well that way,” Cody muttered to Sondra, Tina, and Kelly, sharing one of the inside ropes. “It won’t be as easy to get up the slope, but if something happens it wouldn’t slide back much either.”
Johnny’s cry, “Pull!” cut off any response, and everyone hauled away. The ramp rumbled up the hill; this time the extra help kept it going. The onlookers cheered as it climbed the incline up to the street. As the people at the end of each rope neared the street, they stopped and hauled on the ropes, creating some bunching-up — but the ramp was already up the steepest part of the driveway. Johnny dropped the jacks again; Cody untied the ropes and took his place with the men.
“We’ll need to turn it a bit before we get it in the road,” Cody said, pointing at the bottom of the ramp. “It’s not straight.”
Johnny nodded and raised the jacks again; they straightened the ramp, waited for a break in the traffic, then pushed it into the street; Johnny quickly dropped the jacks and everyone backed up to watch.
They only had to wait a minute: a truck rounded the corner from Satellite Blvd., climbed the ramp, and went over the top. The front of the truck dropped, smacking the pavement with a flat THUD, then it slowly went tail-over and landed on the cab and bed with a crunch sound. Many cheered; others gasped.
“One less of the fuckers,” Palmer said. “That one’s for you, Stef.”
Another truck rolled up the ramp and nose-dived into the pavement; the first truck caught and held it, tail pointing almost straight up. More cheers. A third truck climbed the ramp, braked, and ended up caught on the ramp hanging partway over; a fourth stopped at the bottom of the ramp. After a moment, it backed up, waited for oncoming traffic to clear, and went around.
“Looks like they’re routing around a road hazard,” Cleve said. “I guess the show’s over. At least we nailed two of ’em and trapped a third.” The onlookers, and many of those pulling the ropes, decided there was nothing else to see; they turned away and walked or biked back to Laurel.
“A lot of effort to take out three trucks out of… however many,” Tim said, “but worth it.”
“We’ve learned a thing or two, I think,” Charles said. “We know the trucks can be tricked. Maybe we can come up with a way to take out more of them.”
“Yeah, like run a road over the edge of the Grand Canyon,” Cody said. “I’m not sure if the world would run out of trucks or the canyon would fill up first.”
“Good point,” Charles said. “Maybe we should duck inside and talk about this for a few. This wind is starting to cut right through my sweater.”
They turned toward the QuickFill, and seconds later heard another THUD-crunch — they turned back to see one truck on its cab and a second truck climbing the ramp, dropping off the end and then falling onto its side.
“What the…” Tina said for all of them. “What happened?”
“It’s like the other trucks disappeared as soon as our backs were turned,” Tim said. A third truck climbed the ramp and landed atop the other two. “It’s not the same, the first pile only had two trucks and neither one landed on their side.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Charles said. “Everyone turn away. Don’t look at the trucks.” Shortly after they turned: THUD-crunch. “Don’t look!” A few seconds later, they heard another truck climb the ramp and THUD-crunch to the pavement. Charles nodded; they turned. They had heard two trucks go over, but only one lay shiny-side-down in the street.
“Huh,” Charles said. “It’s like a reverse quantum effect — instead of requiring an observer, this requires no observer. Come to think of it, did anyone ever see a car change into a pickup?”
Everyone shook their heads. “So they are disappearing?” Kelly asked.
“I think so, hon. They’ll jump the ramp, crash, and — as long as nobody’s watching — disappear.”
“And they’ll keep doing it,” Cody grinned. “Well… I’d say this was well worth the effort, then.”
continued…
In the end, they got plenty more help than they needed: just about everyone came out. Those who didn’t come to pull came to watch, and none of them would be chased off. Ms. Sally and Ms. Katie (and Stefan in his wheelchair) watched over the kids, Rita let Sondra go but stayed with Big Ben herself, and they were the only ones left behind.
Cody and Johnny tied four ropes to the framework, then tied knots in the rope for hand-holds. Nearly everyone brought gloves, for the chill as well as protection. They assigned four people to each rope, and Johnny, Palmer, Max, Charles, and Tim took up positions at the bottom. “Pull!” Johnny yelled, and the ramp began scraping across the pavement. “Wait! Wait!” Johnny waved everyone to a stop, then ducked underneath and jacked it up. “I guess we’re all anxious to try this out, huh?” Laughter from the others.
“It might work just as well that way,” Cody muttered to Sondra, Tina, and Kelly, sharing one of the inside ropes. “It won’t be as easy to get up the slope, but if something happens it wouldn’t slide back much either.”
Johnny’s cry, “Pull!” cut off any response, and everyone hauled away. The ramp rumbled up the hill; this time the extra help kept it going. The onlookers cheered as it climbed the incline up to the street. As the people at the end of each rope neared the street, they stopped and hauled on the ropes, creating some bunching-up — but the ramp was already up the steepest part of the driveway. Johnny dropped the jacks again; Cody untied the ropes and took his place with the men.
“We’ll need to turn it a bit before we get it in the road,” Cody said, pointing at the bottom of the ramp. “It’s not straight.”
Johnny nodded and raised the jacks again; they straightened the ramp, waited for a break in the traffic, then pushed it into the street; Johnny quickly dropped the jacks and everyone backed up to watch.
They only had to wait a minute: a truck rounded the corner from Satellite Blvd., climbed the ramp, and went over the top. The front of the truck dropped, smacking the pavement with a flat THUD, then it slowly went tail-over and landed on the cab and bed with a crunch sound. Many cheered; others gasped.
“One less of the fuckers,” Palmer said. “That one’s for you, Stef.”
Another truck rolled up the ramp and nose-dived into the pavement; the first truck caught and held it, tail pointing almost straight up. More cheers. A third truck climbed the ramp, braked, and ended up caught on the ramp hanging partway over; a fourth stopped at the bottom of the ramp. After a moment, it backed up, waited for oncoming traffic to clear, and went around.
“Looks like they’re routing around a road hazard,” Cleve said. “I guess the show’s over. At least we nailed two of ’em and trapped a third.” The onlookers, and many of those pulling the ropes, decided there was nothing else to see; they turned away and walked or biked back to Laurel.
“A lot of effort to take out three trucks out of… however many,” Tim said, “but worth it.”
“We’ve learned a thing or two, I think,” Charles said. “We know the trucks can be tricked. Maybe we can come up with a way to take out more of them.”
“Yeah, like run a road over the edge of the Grand Canyon,” Cody said. “I’m not sure if the world would run out of trucks or the canyon would fill up first.”
“Good point,” Charles said. “Maybe we should duck inside and talk about this for a few. This wind is starting to cut right through my sweater.”
They turned toward the QuickFill, and seconds later heard another THUD-crunch — they turned back to see one truck on its cab and a second truck climbing the ramp, dropping off the end and then falling onto its side.
“What the…” Tina said for all of them. “What happened?”
“It’s like the other trucks disappeared as soon as our backs were turned,” Tim said. A third truck climbed the ramp and landed atop the other two. “It’s not the same, the first pile only had two trucks and neither one landed on their side.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Charles said. “Everyone turn away. Don’t look at the trucks.” Shortly after they turned: THUD-crunch. “Don’t look!” A few seconds later, they heard another truck climb the ramp and THUD-crunch to the pavement. Charles nodded; they turned. They had heard two trucks go over, but only one lay shiny-side-down in the street.
“Huh,” Charles said. “It’s like a reverse quantum effect — instead of requiring an observer, this requires no observer. Come to think of it, did anyone ever see a car change into a pickup?”
Everyone shook their heads. “So they are disappearing?” Kelly asked.
“I think so, hon. They’ll jump the ramp, crash, and — as long as nobody’s watching — disappear.”
“And they’ll keep doing it,” Cody grinned. “Well… I’d say this was well worth the effort, then.”
continued…
Monday, August 30, 2010 1 comment
White Pickups, Episode 50a
Contents
Friday, November 11, 2011
They built the ramp in the QuickFill parking lot — twenty feet long, eight feet wide, four feet high — using lumber and plywood purloined from a nearby home improvement center. They built it sturdy; Johnny realized that it would be too heavy to carry long before they completed it, so they mounted hydraulic jacks in the framework and built around them. Most of the adults helped with at least part of the project, but Johnny and Cleve were there nearly constantly, even sleeping in the QuickFill one night when darkness snuck up on them.
When the last nail was driven on a sunny, windy, chilly early afternoon, Johnny, Cleve, Cody, Tina, Kelly, and Tim were there. Johnny ducked under the ramp, raised the three jacks, and they rolled it sideways across the parking lot. The ramp wobbled, but rolled without scraping the pavement. Johnny dropped the jacks and said, “I guess we need to test it. The trucks gotta weigh what, three or four thousand pounds? How are we gonna get that much weight on it?”
“The six of us together might weigh a thousand pounds,” Cody said. “Let’s all climb on and see what happens.” He scrambled up the ramp, slid a little, and crouched. “Careful, it’s a bit slick,” he said. “You think the trucks will lose traction on this thing?”
Tim stepped onto the ramp, and pushed with his boots. “I’ve got pretty good traction,” he said. “But I’m wearing hiking boots instead of tennis shoes… you know, when this thing gets rained on, it will be slick.”
“Could we tack something on it?” Kelly asked. “I don’t know, maybe cut up some old tires and lay the treads on it?”
“Hey,” Cleve said. “You know how they’d put those grates down where they did construction? I bet if we got some sturdy wire mesh, we could just nail it in the tracks and there wouldn’t be a problem.”
“How about those rain gutter covers?” Tina said. “Were there any left after you guys put them on the townhouse gutters?”
“Three or four boxes,” Johnny said. They’re in one of the storage rooms in the clubhouse.”
“I’ll get ’em,” Tim said. “I’ll have ’em back here faster than anyone else can.” That was true; everyone was getting used to biking everywhere but only Palmer and Janet could keep up with Tim when pulling a load (Stefan as well, before his accident). Nobody objected, and Tim rode away.
Charles picked up the new radio, pilfered from a ham radio store down Buford Highway. “Tim’s on the way,” he said. “He’s coming to get the gutter guards.”
“Okay,” Sara’s voice came through over a low hiss. “They’re in the clubhouse basement, right?”
“Yeah. QuickFill out.”
“I’ll double-check. Laurel out.”
“What do you think is gonna happen when a truck goes up the ramp, Johnny?” Cleve asked.
Johnny laughed. “You’ve been workin’ with me on this all this time, and now you finally get around to asking me that? Everyone else who helped asked, and I’ll tell you what I told them: I don’t know. I’m hoping it’ll flip over. I guess we’ll find out.”
“Hey,” Tina said, “is Big Ben coming or what?”
“He’s still sick,” Johnny said. “Rita and Sondra have him in the infirmary.” Rita had set up her infirmary in what was once the clubhouse offices; several rooms were well-lit by day and she saw her patients there. An early-season flu bug was working its way through Laurel; Ben was one of eight or ten people who had caught it, but so far was the only one requiring more from Rita than advice. One of the houses in the development yielded up a hospital bed; Ben was likely lying on it now. Johnny was taking a “leave of absence” from helping Rita for the ramp project, leaving Sondra and the kids to help out and learn what they could.
“Doesn’t mean someone else can’t do the camera work,” Cody said.
“I don’t think it matters,” Johnny shrugged. “Let’s just see what happens. Ben writes down everything anyway, we can just tell him what happens.”
Tim returned with the gutter guards, hammers, and tacks; they flattened the mesh pieces and tacked them onto the ramp. Cody walked up again. “That worked. Let’s climb this thing.”
Everyone climbed the ramp, trying to even out the weight between the tracks. “Feels pretty solid,” Cleve said, “but we still don’t add up to a truck.”
“Let’s all jump,” Johnny said. “One… two… three!” They all jumped, coming down nearly at once. Tina stumbled, and Kelly steadied her mother.
“Solid as pavement,” Cody said. “Well, we can either roll it out there and see what happens, or we can get twenty more peeps out here to stand on this thing with us.”
“I’m game to try it myself,” Johnny said. “Anyone object?” Nobody spoke up. “A’right — let’s roll it out there.”
They soon hit a snag: the seven of them were not enough to push the ramp up the incline. Cody cursed and spun around, putting his back to the supports and pushing with his legs, reminding Tina of how he’d pushed the truck out of her garage. She turned and pushed backwards with him.
“It’s not working!” Tim yelled. “We have to let it roll back!”
“Easy!” Johnny panted. “I don’t want anyone getting run over!” They let gravity push them back to level pavement; Johnny ducked underneath and dropped the jacks. “Everyone okay? Good. We’ll need to get some more people to help get this thing up the hill.”
“How?” asked Kelly. “There’s barely enough room for us to push!”
“Get some ropes,” Cody said. “We can have people up the hill pull while we push. That might do it.”
continued…
Friday, November 11, 2011
They built the ramp in the QuickFill parking lot — twenty feet long, eight feet wide, four feet high — using lumber and plywood purloined from a nearby home improvement center. They built it sturdy; Johnny realized that it would be too heavy to carry long before they completed it, so they mounted hydraulic jacks in the framework and built around them. Most of the adults helped with at least part of the project, but Johnny and Cleve were there nearly constantly, even sleeping in the QuickFill one night when darkness snuck up on them.
When the last nail was driven on a sunny, windy, chilly early afternoon, Johnny, Cleve, Cody, Tina, Kelly, and Tim were there. Johnny ducked under the ramp, raised the three jacks, and they rolled it sideways across the parking lot. The ramp wobbled, but rolled without scraping the pavement. Johnny dropped the jacks and said, “I guess we need to test it. The trucks gotta weigh what, three or four thousand pounds? How are we gonna get that much weight on it?”
“The six of us together might weigh a thousand pounds,” Cody said. “Let’s all climb on and see what happens.” He scrambled up the ramp, slid a little, and crouched. “Careful, it’s a bit slick,” he said. “You think the trucks will lose traction on this thing?”
Tim stepped onto the ramp, and pushed with his boots. “I’ve got pretty good traction,” he said. “But I’m wearing hiking boots instead of tennis shoes… you know, when this thing gets rained on, it will be slick.”
“Could we tack something on it?” Kelly asked. “I don’t know, maybe cut up some old tires and lay the treads on it?”
“Hey,” Cleve said. “You know how they’d put those grates down where they did construction? I bet if we got some sturdy wire mesh, we could just nail it in the tracks and there wouldn’t be a problem.”
“How about those rain gutter covers?” Tina said. “Were there any left after you guys put them on the townhouse gutters?”
“Three or four boxes,” Johnny said. They’re in one of the storage rooms in the clubhouse.”
“I’ll get ’em,” Tim said. “I’ll have ’em back here faster than anyone else can.” That was true; everyone was getting used to biking everywhere but only Palmer and Janet could keep up with Tim when pulling a load (Stefan as well, before his accident). Nobody objected, and Tim rode away.
Charles picked up the new radio, pilfered from a ham radio store down Buford Highway. “Tim’s on the way,” he said. “He’s coming to get the gutter guards.”
“Okay,” Sara’s voice came through over a low hiss. “They’re in the clubhouse basement, right?”
“Yeah. QuickFill out.”
“I’ll double-check. Laurel out.”
“What do you think is gonna happen when a truck goes up the ramp, Johnny?” Cleve asked.
Johnny laughed. “You’ve been workin’ with me on this all this time, and now you finally get around to asking me that? Everyone else who helped asked, and I’ll tell you what I told them: I don’t know. I’m hoping it’ll flip over. I guess we’ll find out.”
“Hey,” Tina said, “is Big Ben coming or what?”
“He’s still sick,” Johnny said. “Rita and Sondra have him in the infirmary.” Rita had set up her infirmary in what was once the clubhouse offices; several rooms were well-lit by day and she saw her patients there. An early-season flu bug was working its way through Laurel; Ben was one of eight or ten people who had caught it, but so far was the only one requiring more from Rita than advice. One of the houses in the development yielded up a hospital bed; Ben was likely lying on it now. Johnny was taking a “leave of absence” from helping Rita for the ramp project, leaving Sondra and the kids to help out and learn what they could.
“Doesn’t mean someone else can’t do the camera work,” Cody said.
“I don’t think it matters,” Johnny shrugged. “Let’s just see what happens. Ben writes down everything anyway, we can just tell him what happens.”
Tim returned with the gutter guards, hammers, and tacks; they flattened the mesh pieces and tacked them onto the ramp. Cody walked up again. “That worked. Let’s climb this thing.”
Everyone climbed the ramp, trying to even out the weight between the tracks. “Feels pretty solid,” Cleve said, “but we still don’t add up to a truck.”
“Let’s all jump,” Johnny said. “One… two… three!” They all jumped, coming down nearly at once. Tina stumbled, and Kelly steadied her mother.
“Solid as pavement,” Cody said. “Well, we can either roll it out there and see what happens, or we can get twenty more peeps out here to stand on this thing with us.”
“I’m game to try it myself,” Johnny said. “Anyone object?” Nobody spoke up. “A’right — let’s roll it out there.”
They soon hit a snag: the seven of them were not enough to push the ramp up the incline. Cody cursed and spun around, putting his back to the supports and pushing with his legs, reminding Tina of how he’d pushed the truck out of her garage. She turned and pushed backwards with him.
“It’s not working!” Tim yelled. “We have to let it roll back!”
“Easy!” Johnny panted. “I don’t want anyone getting run over!” They let gravity push them back to level pavement; Johnny ducked underneath and dropped the jacks. “Everyone okay? Good. We’ll need to get some more people to help get this thing up the hill.”
“How?” asked Kelly. “There’s barely enough room for us to push!”
“Get some ropes,” Cody said. “We can have people up the hill pull while we push. That might do it.”
continued…
Monday, August 23, 2010 2 comments
White Pickups, Episode 49
Contents
“So Stef’s gonna be okay,” Johnny told the others, eating a late lunch at a large round table in the Laurel Room. “He and Palmer are moving into #107 so he can get out and around. Palmer and Tim are hunting up a chair for Stef right now; Rita gave them some med supply places to check out. When they get back, we’ll roll Stef into #107 and he can start healing.”
“I guess if there was one piece of technology that still worked, I’d want it to be cellphones,” Rita said, sitting close by Johnny. “I know it’s necessary to make these trips, for sanity’s sake if nothing else, but if both of them had been seriously injured —” She shook her head.
“What about radios?” Cody asked around a mouthful of sandwich (peanut butter and jelly in one of Sally’s rolls). “My dad had a CB rig in his car, mostly to listen to the truckers tell everyone where the cops were.” He grinned at Cleve, who snorted. “He bought an antenna to have one in the house, but the H-O-Assholes wouldn’t let him put it up.”
“Prrrroperty values über alles, mein Herr! Ja wohl!” Johnny gave a Nazi salute, sandwich still in hand. Cody snickered; the others rolled their eyes. “Y’know, now that you bring up the CB, I had an uncle who was into ham radio. He could talk just about anywhere with that setup. Maybe we should look into getting some of those. I remember him saying you had to have a couple different kinds, depending on whether you wanted to talk across town or across the ocean. Maybe we could get in touch with anyone still out there while we’re talking to ourselves.”
“Sounds good — so who’s gonna Google the Yellow Pages?” Kelly grinned. The others laughed; that was a running joke since the first day everyone came together. “Maybe there’s a store or two that sold radio stuff around here.”
“Wonderful,” Sondra said, but with a smile. “More stuff to charge in the evenings. Speaking of which, how are the solar panels doing?”
“Plenty of capacity,” Cody said. “Even with everyone’s stuff charging, it’s still charging the battery until 5:30 or so on sunny days. Then we’re turning on lights anyway. If we get some more panels, we could probably get by without the generators unless we get a bunch of overcast days in a row. Y’know, if we could get one panel for each of the occupied units, we could run some lights at night.”
“Figures,” Cleve laughed. “Tim and Palmer are out on an expedition now, and we’ll have two or three more for them before they get back!” The others laughed with him. “I guess we gotta get those radios though, we might not be so lucky next time.”
Nobody spoke for a long moment. “What I don’t understand,” Rita said, “is what happened to the bicycles. Ben showed me the video where Cody threw a crowbar through the truck out by the gate. If Stef was already off the bike, and he’d have been likely killed otherwise, shouldn’t the truck have simply passed through it without damaging it?”
Sondra nudged Cody. “Um,” he said, “I might have an idea about that. We can check it out after we finish eating.” He popped the last bit of sandwich in his mouth and chewed slowly.
“Well, what are we sitting around here for?” Kelly glared at Cody. “You had this idea, and you weren’t going to share it?”
“Sure I was!” Cody growled around a mouthful of sandwich, crossing his arms and returning Kelly’s glare. “I don’t see why I’m always the one who has to think of these things — I was waiting to see if someone else would think about it.”
“Well, what is it?” Johnny laughed. “You gonna share now?”
“Sure,” Cody said. “I think I stashed the crowbar downstairs. If someone wants to get Ben to video this, we can be done in half an hour.”
Word got around, and once again everyone gathered at the gate. Cody grinned at Charles and took a stance much like his “lecture” stance, with the crowbar behind his back. “Awright, let’s review what we know,” he said, then pointed at the truck with the crowbar. “Shush, you, I’m lecturing here.
“So we know if you touch a truck —” he stepped over and gave it a gentle kick — “or touch it with something —” he rapped the hood with the crowbar — “it’s solid. It’s there. But —” he tossed the crowbar onto the hood and watched it drop through — “if you throw something at it, it goes right through.” He reached underneath the truck and retrieved the crowbar.
“Hey,” Johnny said. “I just thought of something. If we got some ropes with hooks on ’em, do you think we could pull this sonufabitch off the property and roll it into the street?”
“Good question,” Cody said, “but not ger— uh, not relevant to our experiment today. Ben? Zoom in on the front of the truck, just get everything between the wheels in the frame.” Ben fiddled with a rocker switch and nodded; Cody gave him a thumbs-up and turned the pointed end of the crowbar to the pavement, leaning on it like a cane in front of the truck. “Okay, Stef was off his bike, and the truck smashed it anyway. So we’ve thrown things at the truck, but we never leaned anything against it.” He propped the crowbar against the grill of the truck and let it go —
And it stayed in place, leaning against the truck. The others murmured as if Cody had pulled off a spectacular magic trick. Cody himself watched it suspiciously for a moment, then took up the crowbar.
“The truck is solid to other objects if they’re touching a living being — or if they’re touching the ground,” he said. “Y’know, if they ever decide to make trouble for us…”
“Yeah, well maybe we should make some trouble for them,” Johnny said. “And you ain’t the only one around here with ideas.”
Cody grinned. “About time! What’s the plan?”
continued…
“So Stef’s gonna be okay,” Johnny told the others, eating a late lunch at a large round table in the Laurel Room. “He and Palmer are moving into #107 so he can get out and around. Palmer and Tim are hunting up a chair for Stef right now; Rita gave them some med supply places to check out. When they get back, we’ll roll Stef into #107 and he can start healing.”
“I guess if there was one piece of technology that still worked, I’d want it to be cellphones,” Rita said, sitting close by Johnny. “I know it’s necessary to make these trips, for sanity’s sake if nothing else, but if both of them had been seriously injured —” She shook her head.
“What about radios?” Cody asked around a mouthful of sandwich (peanut butter and jelly in one of Sally’s rolls). “My dad had a CB rig in his car, mostly to listen to the truckers tell everyone where the cops were.” He grinned at Cleve, who snorted. “He bought an antenna to have one in the house, but the H-O-Assholes wouldn’t let him put it up.”
“Prrrroperty values über alles, mein Herr! Ja wohl!” Johnny gave a Nazi salute, sandwich still in hand. Cody snickered; the others rolled their eyes. “Y’know, now that you bring up the CB, I had an uncle who was into ham radio. He could talk just about anywhere with that setup. Maybe we should look into getting some of those. I remember him saying you had to have a couple different kinds, depending on whether you wanted to talk across town or across the ocean. Maybe we could get in touch with anyone still out there while we’re talking to ourselves.”
“Sounds good — so who’s gonna Google the Yellow Pages?” Kelly grinned. The others laughed; that was a running joke since the first day everyone came together. “Maybe there’s a store or two that sold radio stuff around here.”
“Wonderful,” Sondra said, but with a smile. “More stuff to charge in the evenings. Speaking of which, how are the solar panels doing?”
“Plenty of capacity,” Cody said. “Even with everyone’s stuff charging, it’s still charging the battery until 5:30 or so on sunny days. Then we’re turning on lights anyway. If we get some more panels, we could probably get by without the generators unless we get a bunch of overcast days in a row. Y’know, if we could get one panel for each of the occupied units, we could run some lights at night.”
“Figures,” Cleve laughed. “Tim and Palmer are out on an expedition now, and we’ll have two or three more for them before they get back!” The others laughed with him. “I guess we gotta get those radios though, we might not be so lucky next time.”
Nobody spoke for a long moment. “What I don’t understand,” Rita said, “is what happened to the bicycles. Ben showed me the video where Cody threw a crowbar through the truck out by the gate. If Stef was already off the bike, and he’d have been likely killed otherwise, shouldn’t the truck have simply passed through it without damaging it?”
Sondra nudged Cody. “Um,” he said, “I might have an idea about that. We can check it out after we finish eating.” He popped the last bit of sandwich in his mouth and chewed slowly.
“Well, what are we sitting around here for?” Kelly glared at Cody. “You had this idea, and you weren’t going to share it?”
“Sure I was!” Cody growled around a mouthful of sandwich, crossing his arms and returning Kelly’s glare. “I don’t see why I’m always the one who has to think of these things — I was waiting to see if someone else would think about it.”
“Well, what is it?” Johnny laughed. “You gonna share now?”
“Sure,” Cody said. “I think I stashed the crowbar downstairs. If someone wants to get Ben to video this, we can be done in half an hour.”
Word got around, and once again everyone gathered at the gate. Cody grinned at Charles and took a stance much like his “lecture” stance, with the crowbar behind his back. “Awright, let’s review what we know,” he said, then pointed at the truck with the crowbar. “Shush, you, I’m lecturing here.
“So we know if you touch a truck —” he stepped over and gave it a gentle kick — “or touch it with something —” he rapped the hood with the crowbar — “it’s solid. It’s there. But —” he tossed the crowbar onto the hood and watched it drop through — “if you throw something at it, it goes right through.” He reached underneath the truck and retrieved the crowbar.
“Hey,” Johnny said. “I just thought of something. If we got some ropes with hooks on ’em, do you think we could pull this sonufabitch off the property and roll it into the street?”
“Good question,” Cody said, “but not ger— uh, not relevant to our experiment today. Ben? Zoom in on the front of the truck, just get everything between the wheels in the frame.” Ben fiddled with a rocker switch and nodded; Cody gave him a thumbs-up and turned the pointed end of the crowbar to the pavement, leaning on it like a cane in front of the truck. “Okay, Stef was off his bike, and the truck smashed it anyway. So we’ve thrown things at the truck, but we never leaned anything against it.” He propped the crowbar against the grill of the truck and let it go —
And it stayed in place, leaning against the truck. The others murmured as if Cody had pulled off a spectacular magic trick. Cody himself watched it suspiciously for a moment, then took up the crowbar.
“The truck is solid to other objects if they’re touching a living being — or if they’re touching the ground,” he said. “Y’know, if they ever decide to make trouble for us…”
“Yeah, well maybe we should make some trouble for them,” Johnny said. “And you ain’t the only one around here with ideas.”
Cody grinned. “About time! What’s the plan?”
continued…
Monday, August 16, 2010 5 comments
White Pickups, Episode 48
Contents
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Rita was showing Sondra and Johnny how to compress a large wound when Palmer burst through the door, scratched, scraped, and hysterical. “Stefan! He’s —” he waved his arms and pointed at the door, panting.
“Calm down, Palmer!” Rita snapped. “What happened?”
Palmer collected his wits and started over: “We were riding up the shoulder of ’85 against the traffic. We started racing and we bumped. Stef went over the guardrail — the bikes —”
“Never mind the bikes right now!” Rita said. “Where is he? Was he conscious?”
“Yeah. I think he broke his leg. I had to run all the way back here.”
“Could be internal bleeding. We need to get to him, stat. Palmer! You can get hysterical later, but you must take us to him now!”
“I’ll get Tim,” Sondra blurted, and ran out the door.
“Good idea,” Johnny said, “Tim can get you there faster.”
Rita finished packing her go-bag as Tim ran in. “Sondra told me what happened,” he said. “I’ll put Rita on the back of the tandem. Palmer, you ride my single. Trailers are already hooked up. Get us there.”
Two mangled bicycles, lying partway in the right lane, marked the spot. Trucks in the right lane eased over to avoid the wreckage. Stefan lay on the other side of the guard rail, feet resting on a pile of gear.
“Did you put him like that, Palmer?” Rita asked; Palmer nodded. “Good, that should help with any shock.” She stepped over the guard rail, legs a little wobbly from the fast pace Tim and Palmer set, and knelt next to Stefan. “How you feeling, Stef?”
“My leg hurts like hell,” Stefan said. “Other than that, okay. The damned trucks keep asking me if I want a ride. As if.”
“That’s good… if you weren’t hurting, I’d be worried.” She pulled the blood pressure cuff and stethoscope out of her bag. “Gonna check your vitals.”
“Still gotta pulse, doc.” Stefan laughed.
“Hm,” Rita said. “BP looks normal, which might be a little high for you athletic types. Pulse is a little high, but strong. I’m guessing you don’t have any serious internal bleeding going on, but we’ll have to get you back to Laurel to be sure. So… do you remember what happened?”
“Yeah. We were riding along, minding our own beeswax, and we got to racing each other. I was a little ahead, riding next to the guardrail, and Palmer and I must have bumped. I don’t remember exactly what happened after that, until Palmer was trying to get me comfy. He was freaking out, and I told him to go get you. I really need to pee.”
“Hm. Better check your leg, then.” She pulled out a pair of scissors. “Hope you don’t have any sentimental attachment to these pants.”
“Nope. Just what’s in ’em.”
“I’ll give you a coupon for a free pair from Town and Trail,” Tim grinned.
“Pair of pants, I guess — you can’t replace the pair I care about!”
“Boys will be boys.” Rita rolled her eyes and cut the lycra pant leg. Stefan grimaced.
“Hey,” Tim asked Palmer, “what happened to the bikes?” He looked over the mangled remains on the fog line. “Looks like a truck ran ’em over.”
“Well, Stef’s bike bounced into the freeway when he went over the guardrail. I guess a truck hit it —”
“If Stef wasn’t touching it, why did it get smashed? Remember Cody’s crowbar trick? If you weren’t touching the bike, it should’ve gone right through without…” Tim flapped his hand.
“If your ankle isn’t broken, we might be able to put you back together,” Rita reassured Stefan. “Your leg’s broken for sure, though. Looks like you’ll be riding a wheelchair for the winter. We’ll find you one.”
“I don’t know,” Palmer told Tim, “and right now, I don’t care. I just want Stef better and riding again.”
“Guys,” Rita called, “I need your help. We need to get Stef’s leg splinted, then get him onto the trailer so we can get him home. I don’t dare give him any painkillers until I’m sure there’s no internal bleeding, so this isn’t going to be fun for any of us. Especially Stefan.”
“Too bad we didn’t think about bringing Cleve,” Tim said. “Wasn’t he medevac in the Army?”
“We’ll make do.” Rita rolled up a cloth. “Stef, I’m not gonna try to bullshit you: this is gonna hurt. A lot. Bite down on this, so you don't lose a piece of your tongue.
“Palmer, you take his arms. Hold his hands, whatever. Tim, we’re gonna lift his leg and put this wrap underneath, then you’re going to pull to get the bones more or less realigned while I wrap it up. I’m gonna sit on his other leg so he doesn’t kick someone.” She straddled Stefan’s good leg and laid the wrap on the other side. “Okay, Tim, don’t pull yet, just lift a couple inches when I say to… ready? Easy up.” Stefan gasped as Tim lifted; Rita slipped her hands underneath, lifting with one and pulling the wrap into place with the other. “Okay, down easy. You okay, Stefan?”
“I guess that was the easy part,” Stefan said around the gag.
“Right.” She touched his ankle and worked her way up. “Good news, I don’t think your ankle’s broken. There’s a lot of swelling all up and down the leg, but it’s broke here.” She touched the center of the swollen area. “I’m betting it’s a clean break, which is really good. It’ll heal without surgery. Now comes the hard part: Tim’s going to pull and I’m going to try to set the break so the bones are together, then I’ll wrap it. With any luck, it’ll stay put until we can get home and I can put a cast on it. You’ll need to not pull back — relax those muscles as much as you can. Deep breaths, all of you… okay Tim, easy.”
Tim pulled; Stefan clamped down on the gag and screeched as Rita worked. At last, “Got it! Okay Tim, ease off and I’ll wrap him up.” She wrapped the leg and secured the splint with a pair of Velcro straps. “How you doing, Stef?”
Stefan was pale. “I’ve had better days. Are we done yet?”
“Well, we have to get you onto the trailer, then off it back at the clubhouse… Palmer? You alright?”
Palmer shook his head in a big figure-eight. “A little woozy. I’ll get over it.”
“Quick, I hope. I need you and Tim to roll Stef onto the backboard, then hoist him over the rail and onto the trailer. You think you can do that? Dropping your boyfriend would be a Very Bad Thing right now.”
“Yeah. I’ll get the board.” Palmer stood, a little wobbly, then stepped over the rail and retrieved the backboard from Tim’s trailer.
Rita looked at Tim. “What about you?”
“I think I’m okay… I’ve seen injuries like this on rides before. Had a lady tangle with another rider once, she went down and broke her wrist. Fortunately, the ambulance could come right up to her back then. We’re kind of on our own now.”
“Yeah.” She turned to Stefan. “You think you could take a little water and not throw it up?”
“Yeah, that would be good.” She handed him a bottle. “I know — sip it. I still have to pee, though.”
“Uh-huh. Maybe you can hold it until we get you home.”
“Where do you want this?” said Palmer, holding the backboard.
“Over here,” Rita stood. “Tim and I are going to roll him on his side, you tuck the backboard underneath, then we’ll put him on the trailer and strap him down.”
With the leg splinted and wrapped, rolling Stefan onto the backboard was easier than expected. Tim and Palmer loaded Stefan on the trailer and strapped him down as best as they could. The backboard, and Stefan’s legs, hung over the end of the trailer. Palmer drained his water bottle, and they started back to Laurel.
continued…
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Rita was showing Sondra and Johnny how to compress a large wound when Palmer burst through the door, scratched, scraped, and hysterical. “Stefan! He’s —” he waved his arms and pointed at the door, panting.
“Calm down, Palmer!” Rita snapped. “What happened?”
Palmer collected his wits and started over: “We were riding up the shoulder of ’85 against the traffic. We started racing and we bumped. Stef went over the guardrail — the bikes —”
“Never mind the bikes right now!” Rita said. “Where is he? Was he conscious?”
“Yeah. I think he broke his leg. I had to run all the way back here.”
“Could be internal bleeding. We need to get to him, stat. Palmer! You can get hysterical later, but you must take us to him now!”
“I’ll get Tim,” Sondra blurted, and ran out the door.
“Good idea,” Johnny said, “Tim can get you there faster.”
Rita finished packing her go-bag as Tim ran in. “Sondra told me what happened,” he said. “I’ll put Rita on the back of the tandem. Palmer, you ride my single. Trailers are already hooked up. Get us there.”
Two mangled bicycles, lying partway in the right lane, marked the spot. Trucks in the right lane eased over to avoid the wreckage. Stefan lay on the other side of the guard rail, feet resting on a pile of gear.
“Did you put him like that, Palmer?” Rita asked; Palmer nodded. “Good, that should help with any shock.” She stepped over the guard rail, legs a little wobbly from the fast pace Tim and Palmer set, and knelt next to Stefan. “How you feeling, Stef?”
“My leg hurts like hell,” Stefan said. “Other than that, okay. The damned trucks keep asking me if I want a ride. As if.”
“That’s good… if you weren’t hurting, I’d be worried.” She pulled the blood pressure cuff and stethoscope out of her bag. “Gonna check your vitals.”
“Still gotta pulse, doc.” Stefan laughed.
“Hm,” Rita said. “BP looks normal, which might be a little high for you athletic types. Pulse is a little high, but strong. I’m guessing you don’t have any serious internal bleeding going on, but we’ll have to get you back to Laurel to be sure. So… do you remember what happened?”
“Yeah. We were riding along, minding our own beeswax, and we got to racing each other. I was a little ahead, riding next to the guardrail, and Palmer and I must have bumped. I don’t remember exactly what happened after that, until Palmer was trying to get me comfy. He was freaking out, and I told him to go get you. I really need to pee.”
“Hm. Better check your leg, then.” She pulled out a pair of scissors. “Hope you don’t have any sentimental attachment to these pants.”
“Nope. Just what’s in ’em.”
“I’ll give you a coupon for a free pair from Town and Trail,” Tim grinned.
“Pair of pants, I guess — you can’t replace the pair I care about!”
“Boys will be boys.” Rita rolled her eyes and cut the lycra pant leg. Stefan grimaced.
“Hey,” Tim asked Palmer, “what happened to the bikes?” He looked over the mangled remains on the fog line. “Looks like a truck ran ’em over.”
“Well, Stef’s bike bounced into the freeway when he went over the guardrail. I guess a truck hit it —”
“If Stef wasn’t touching it, why did it get smashed? Remember Cody’s crowbar trick? If you weren’t touching the bike, it should’ve gone right through without…” Tim flapped his hand.
“If your ankle isn’t broken, we might be able to put you back together,” Rita reassured Stefan. “Your leg’s broken for sure, though. Looks like you’ll be riding a wheelchair for the winter. We’ll find you one.”
“I don’t know,” Palmer told Tim, “and right now, I don’t care. I just want Stef better and riding again.”
“Guys,” Rita called, “I need your help. We need to get Stef’s leg splinted, then get him onto the trailer so we can get him home. I don’t dare give him any painkillers until I’m sure there’s no internal bleeding, so this isn’t going to be fun for any of us. Especially Stefan.”
“Too bad we didn’t think about bringing Cleve,” Tim said. “Wasn’t he medevac in the Army?”
“We’ll make do.” Rita rolled up a cloth. “Stef, I’m not gonna try to bullshit you: this is gonna hurt. A lot. Bite down on this, so you don't lose a piece of your tongue.
“Palmer, you take his arms. Hold his hands, whatever. Tim, we’re gonna lift his leg and put this wrap underneath, then you’re going to pull to get the bones more or less realigned while I wrap it up. I’m gonna sit on his other leg so he doesn’t kick someone.” She straddled Stefan’s good leg and laid the wrap on the other side. “Okay, Tim, don’t pull yet, just lift a couple inches when I say to… ready? Easy up.” Stefan gasped as Tim lifted; Rita slipped her hands underneath, lifting with one and pulling the wrap into place with the other. “Okay, down easy. You okay, Stefan?”
“I guess that was the easy part,” Stefan said around the gag.
“Right.” She touched his ankle and worked her way up. “Good news, I don’t think your ankle’s broken. There’s a lot of swelling all up and down the leg, but it’s broke here.” She touched the center of the swollen area. “I’m betting it’s a clean break, which is really good. It’ll heal without surgery. Now comes the hard part: Tim’s going to pull and I’m going to try to set the break so the bones are together, then I’ll wrap it. With any luck, it’ll stay put until we can get home and I can put a cast on it. You’ll need to not pull back — relax those muscles as much as you can. Deep breaths, all of you… okay Tim, easy.”
Tim pulled; Stefan clamped down on the gag and screeched as Rita worked. At last, “Got it! Okay Tim, ease off and I’ll wrap him up.” She wrapped the leg and secured the splint with a pair of Velcro straps. “How you doing, Stef?”
Stefan was pale. “I’ve had better days. Are we done yet?”
“Well, we have to get you onto the trailer, then off it back at the clubhouse… Palmer? You alright?”
Palmer shook his head in a big figure-eight. “A little woozy. I’ll get over it.”
“Quick, I hope. I need you and Tim to roll Stef onto the backboard, then hoist him over the rail and onto the trailer. You think you can do that? Dropping your boyfriend would be a Very Bad Thing right now.”
“Yeah. I’ll get the board.” Palmer stood, a little wobbly, then stepped over the rail and retrieved the backboard from Tim’s trailer.
Rita looked at Tim. “What about you?”
“I think I’m okay… I’ve seen injuries like this on rides before. Had a lady tangle with another rider once, she went down and broke her wrist. Fortunately, the ambulance could come right up to her back then. We’re kind of on our own now.”
“Yeah.” She turned to Stefan. “You think you could take a little water and not throw it up?”
“Yeah, that would be good.” She handed him a bottle. “I know — sip it. I still have to pee, though.”
“Uh-huh. Maybe you can hold it until we get you home.”
“Where do you want this?” said Palmer, holding the backboard.
“Over here,” Rita stood. “Tim and I are going to roll him on his side, you tuck the backboard underneath, then we’ll put him on the trailer and strap him down.”
With the leg splinted and wrapped, rolling Stefan onto the backboard was easier than expected. Tim and Palmer loaded Stefan on the trailer and strapped him down as best as they could. The backboard, and Stefan’s legs, hung over the end of the trailer. Palmer drained his water bottle, and they started back to Laurel.
continued…
Monday, August 09, 2010 2 comments
White Pickups, Episode 47
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
When Cody and Sondra announced that they were building a shooting range at Cody’s old house, Cleve, Johnny, and Max volunteered to help. They stacked landscaping timbers, scrounged from overgrown flower beds whose owners had long driven off, to build a backstop. Since the patio had an overhang and no screens, they designated the edge of the concrete the firing line. The previous owner of Johnny’s unit must have made a hobby of target shooting, as there were plenty of targets to go with the carbine, and those all came along.
“Don’t flinch like that,” Sondra told Cody. He stood at the firing line, Sondra’s revolver in hand, while the others looked on. He had his head pulled back and his body twisted into an odd angle. “Relax. You’ve got earplugs. It’s gonna make some noise, but so does your music.” She poked his ribs.
Cody lowered the pistol, shoulders shaking. “How can I shoot if you’re gonna make me laugh?”
“You’ll shoot better if you’re not tense. It’s just like that shooter game you were showing me…”
“With a really heavy controller!” They both laughed.
“Okay, now let’s try it again,” Sondra said. “Stand up straight, don’t shy back. Just point, pull the hammer back, and shoot.”
Bang! Cody’s arm snapped up; the target acquired a dark spot — below and to the right of the bullseye, but in the rings. Cleve, Johnny, and Max applauded.
“Not bad!” Sondra kissed his cheek. “Try again. This time, keep both eyes open.”
Bang! This time, the spot appeared below and left, but closer to the bullseye.
“Not bad, first time shooting!” Cleve said.
“Yeah, I’ve played video games,” Cody said. “Same idea, but it feels a lot different.”
“Yeah. Now try shooting twice. Take your time, look straight at your target, shoot. Pull the hammer back while your hand drops back to the target, and shoot again. Sondra, show him what I mean.”
“Sure.” Cody handed her the pistol. Bang — bang, about a second apart, and two holes opened in the target, no more than an inch from the bullseye.
Johnny whistled. “Amazes me each time I see it. Hey…” he stood up, holding the carbine. “I wanna try something. You game?” He wiggled the carbine at Sondra.
“Sure! Soon as Cody does the two-shot.” She passed the pistol back. “Don’t concentrate. Just do.”
Cody raised the pistol. Bang … bang, about two seconds apart. The second hole was in the bullseye.
“That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” Johnny laughed.
“Lucky shot,” said Cody, with a big grin, as Sondra hugged him.
“The only difference between lucky and good,” Cleve said, “is how often you get lucky.”
“Good one!” Sondra laughed. “So what do you wanna try, Johnny?”
Johnny picked up an empty soda can from the table and handed the carbine to Sondra. “Hey Cody, you mind if I use that busted table over there?”
“Sure.” Cody shrugged and took Johnny’s seat, pistol pointed at the floor between his feet.
“Hey,” said Cleve as Johnny hoisted the wobbly table from the corner of the patio and carried it into the yard. “Like this.” He took the pistol, opened the cylinder and laid it on the table, pointing away from everyone. “Now you know it won’t go off.”
“But there weren’t any bullets left.”
“I’ve seen plenty of guns go off that didn’t have any bullets in ’em.” Cleve gave Cody a grim look. “When I was a cop, I had to clean up a couple messes after someone thought a gun wasn’t loaded. You don’t wanna trust, you wanna know.”
A V of geese flew overhead as Johnny set up the table in front of the backstop. He paused to watch them for a moment, perhaps thinking about shooting one, as their honking calls drifted to the ground along with a few leaves. “Okay,” he said at last, jogging back to the porch. “Shoot at its mouth.” The can lay on the table, its top facing the firing line. The mouth made a dark O at the bottom of the larger silver O.
“Hm.” Sondra hefted the carbine. “Hey… this thing is lighter than it looks.”
“Yeah, they make a great huntin’ gun,” said Johnny. “Doesn’t wear you out luggin’ it around and it’s short enough that it won’t catch every stray branch. It’s what I use to bring the meat home. No scope, but that’s better when it gets dark anyway.”
“Nice.” Sondra lifted the gun, looked through the sights, and thumbed off the safety. “Live on the line.”
“It’s a bit loud,” Johnny warned her.
“Whatever.” She took aim. Boom! The can flipped off the table, bounced off the backstop, and tumbled to the ground. “Whoo! Safe on!” She stepped away from the line and Johnny jogged out to retrieve the can.
“Sweeeeet!” he yelled, looking at the can. “Check this out, guys!” He jogged back, can in hand. The others gathered around. He held the can with the mouth end facing them.
“Huh. What’d she do, knock it off the table without hitting it?” Max cocked his head.
“Guess again.” Johnny turned the can around; there was a small hole on the other side near the corner. “Right through the mouth, out the other side — from fifty feet. You can’t get much better than that!”
Sondra grinned and patted the carbine. “I like this thing, Johnny,” she said. “You might have a hard time getting it back.”
“No problem — as long as you do the huntin’!”
“Haha, I don’t like it that much!” Sondra handed it back. “But I’d like to borrow it from time to time, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure thing. I was thinkin’ about seeing if anyone left a deer rifle in one of these houses anyway.”
“Two doors down,” Cody said. “Mr. Henderson was a gun freak. He was always showing off some piece or another to my dad. You’ll find something there, I almost guarantee it.”
As it turned out, Henderson apparently drove off with most of his arsenal. He left a deer rifle and two pistols behind, though.
continued…
When Cody and Sondra announced that they were building a shooting range at Cody’s old house, Cleve, Johnny, and Max volunteered to help. They stacked landscaping timbers, scrounged from overgrown flower beds whose owners had long driven off, to build a backstop. Since the patio had an overhang and no screens, they designated the edge of the concrete the firing line. The previous owner of Johnny’s unit must have made a hobby of target shooting, as there were plenty of targets to go with the carbine, and those all came along.
“Don’t flinch like that,” Sondra told Cody. He stood at the firing line, Sondra’s revolver in hand, while the others looked on. He had his head pulled back and his body twisted into an odd angle. “Relax. You’ve got earplugs. It’s gonna make some noise, but so does your music.” She poked his ribs.
Cody lowered the pistol, shoulders shaking. “How can I shoot if you’re gonna make me laugh?”
“You’ll shoot better if you’re not tense. It’s just like that shooter game you were showing me…”
“With a really heavy controller!” They both laughed.
“Okay, now let’s try it again,” Sondra said. “Stand up straight, don’t shy back. Just point, pull the hammer back, and shoot.”
Bang! Cody’s arm snapped up; the target acquired a dark spot — below and to the right of the bullseye, but in the rings. Cleve, Johnny, and Max applauded.
“Not bad!” Sondra kissed his cheek. “Try again. This time, keep both eyes open.”
Bang! This time, the spot appeared below and left, but closer to the bullseye.
“Not bad, first time shooting!” Cleve said.
“Yeah, I’ve played video games,” Cody said. “Same idea, but it feels a lot different.”
“Yeah. Now try shooting twice. Take your time, look straight at your target, shoot. Pull the hammer back while your hand drops back to the target, and shoot again. Sondra, show him what I mean.”
“Sure.” Cody handed her the pistol. Bang — bang, about a second apart, and two holes opened in the target, no more than an inch from the bullseye.
Johnny whistled. “Amazes me each time I see it. Hey…” he stood up, holding the carbine. “I wanna try something. You game?” He wiggled the carbine at Sondra.
“Sure! Soon as Cody does the two-shot.” She passed the pistol back. “Don’t concentrate. Just do.”
Cody raised the pistol. Bang … bang, about two seconds apart. The second hole was in the bullseye.
“That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” Johnny laughed.
“Lucky shot,” said Cody, with a big grin, as Sondra hugged him.
“The only difference between lucky and good,” Cleve said, “is how often you get lucky.”
“Good one!” Sondra laughed. “So what do you wanna try, Johnny?”
Johnny picked up an empty soda can from the table and handed the carbine to Sondra. “Hey Cody, you mind if I use that busted table over there?”
“Sure.” Cody shrugged and took Johnny’s seat, pistol pointed at the floor between his feet.
“Hey,” said Cleve as Johnny hoisted the wobbly table from the corner of the patio and carried it into the yard. “Like this.” He took the pistol, opened the cylinder and laid it on the table, pointing away from everyone. “Now you know it won’t go off.”
“But there weren’t any bullets left.”
“I’ve seen plenty of guns go off that didn’t have any bullets in ’em.” Cleve gave Cody a grim look. “When I was a cop, I had to clean up a couple messes after someone thought a gun wasn’t loaded. You don’t wanna trust, you wanna know.”
A V of geese flew overhead as Johnny set up the table in front of the backstop. He paused to watch them for a moment, perhaps thinking about shooting one, as their honking calls drifted to the ground along with a few leaves. “Okay,” he said at last, jogging back to the porch. “Shoot at its mouth.” The can lay on the table, its top facing the firing line. The mouth made a dark O at the bottom of the larger silver O.
“Hm.” Sondra hefted the carbine. “Hey… this thing is lighter than it looks.”
“Yeah, they make a great huntin’ gun,” said Johnny. “Doesn’t wear you out luggin’ it around and it’s short enough that it won’t catch every stray branch. It’s what I use to bring the meat home. No scope, but that’s better when it gets dark anyway.”
“Nice.” Sondra lifted the gun, looked through the sights, and thumbed off the safety. “Live on the line.”
“It’s a bit loud,” Johnny warned her.
“Whatever.” She took aim. Boom! The can flipped off the table, bounced off the backstop, and tumbled to the ground. “Whoo! Safe on!” She stepped away from the line and Johnny jogged out to retrieve the can.
“Sweeeeet!” he yelled, looking at the can. “Check this out, guys!” He jogged back, can in hand. The others gathered around. He held the can with the mouth end facing them.
“Huh. What’d she do, knock it off the table without hitting it?” Max cocked his head.
“Guess again.” Johnny turned the can around; there was a small hole on the other side near the corner. “Right through the mouth, out the other side — from fifty feet. You can’t get much better than that!”
Sondra grinned and patted the carbine. “I like this thing, Johnny,” she said. “You might have a hard time getting it back.”
“No problem — as long as you do the huntin’!”
“Haha, I don’t like it that much!” Sondra handed it back. “But I’d like to borrow it from time to time, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure thing. I was thinkin’ about seeing if anyone left a deer rifle in one of these houses anyway.”
“Two doors down,” Cody said. “Mr. Henderson was a gun freak. He was always showing off some piece or another to my dad. You’ll find something there, I almost guarantee it.”
As it turned out, Henderson apparently drove off with most of his arsenal. He left a deer rifle and two pistols behind, though.
continued…
Monday, August 02, 2010 2 comments
White Pickups, Episode 46
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Sondra spun around. “That was a gunshot!” she said. “Not far away, either.” She patted her hip. “Damn. It’s in the unit. Cody! Can you watch the oatmeal for a minute?” She, Cody, and Sara were in the parking lot, cooking breakfast for the community on the permanent grill they’d built from bricks and other construction materials. Patches of last night’s frost still lingered in shady spots, and all three stayed close to the warmth of the coals.
“Yeah, I guess.” Cody checked the pancakes, flipping several, but Sondra was already bounding up the steps. “Someone needs to get Cleve too.”
“I’ll get him,” said Sara. “Tim too. Can you cover my station too, Cody?”
“Aw, hell… I guess. If you move your griddle over here where I can keep an eye on it!”
Cody checked Sara’s griddle, flipped two pancakes, then slipped three of his onto a platter. “Damn,” he said to himself, “I guess I need to learn how to shoot, just so I don’t get stuck watchin’ the freakin’ grill whenever something happens.” He grinned. “At least I don’t have any bacon or eggs to watch out for!” He stepped over and stirred the big oatmeal pot, then scooted the pot away from the coals a little. “Slow you down a little, I won’t have to check on you so often.”
Sondra slapped down the stairs, holster slung over her shoulder, one hand on the pistol to keep it from bouncing around. “Cleve out yet?”
“Up here,” said Cleve, stepping into the open stairwell and buckling his own gunbelt. “What’s goin’ on?”
“I heard a gunshot, off that way,” said Sondra, pointing into the empty subdivision. Cody gave the pancakes a glance, flipped a few and removed two more, then turned to watch. Sara returned, took her griddle back, and checked Cody’s.
“This is how we roll,” said Cleve. “You stay back, thirty feet or better, and walk alongside the houses where you got cover. I’ll go up the street. If we got a hostile, he’ll be watching me. You get in a position to take him if you have to.”
“What’s going on?” Tim jogged out to meet them, carrying his holster.
“Sondra heard a gunshot, thinks it’s inside the fence. I guess we can use the extra backup. I’m putting Sondra on the right side of the street. You take the left.”
“Got it.” Tim buckled the holster. “Let’s go.”
“Be careful, Tim!” Sara called after him, then a little quieter, “Love you.”
Cleve waved them to a halt for a moment, kicking off his shoes. “Too much noise on the pavement.” He started off again, nearly silent in his stocking feet. Quiet, but cold, he said to himself, picking up the pace a little. They moved up the street; dormant gardens and untended houses watched them jog by. Sondra pointed the way at each intersection, hesitating a little more the deeper they went in.
Toward the back of the subdivision, Tim waved them down and motioned the others to join him at the corner of a house. “Hear that?” he whispered. The morning air carried something that sounded like humming or low singing to them.
“Yeah. Okay, show time. Lucado, you go down to the next house and come in from the far side. Petro, you go around the other side of this one. Both of you stay under cover unless there’s more shooting, or until I call you out, got it?” They nodded, and Cleve slipped his shoes back on. “Okay, do it. You got thirty seconds to get in position: now!”
Cleve slipped up the side of the house, counting seconds. He caught a glimpse of motion, and peered out. Someone was there all right, humming to himself in an overgrown backyard, kneeling on the ground. A old military-looking rifle was slung over his shoulder.
“Laurel police!” Cleve yelled, gun out. “On your feet, slow! Keep your hands where I can see ’em and turn around!”
The man jumped. “Cleve!” he yelled, standing and turning. “It’s me!” Johnny waggled his hands on either side of his head.
“Shit, Johnny!” Cleve said, holstering his pistol. “What the hell you doin’ out here, shootin’ and gettin’ everyone riled up?” He called out. “Stand down, y’all! It’s Johnny!”
“Getting us some meat!” Johnny grinned as Tim and Sondra stepped out from behind the houses, pointing at a buck lying in the grass. “A six-pointer. I was about to hang it up and start field-dressing it when you scared the living crap outta me. Laurel police? We got a force now?”
“Sure,” Cleve said. “All of us. Sounds more official, anyway. I figure if we do run into someone, it’ll stop ’em for a second. Sometimes, an extra second is all you need.”
“Yeah. Well, since you’re here, you guys wanna help me get this buck skinned and gutted? There’s enough meat here for two meals for everyone!”
“Aha,” said Sondra. “Tell you what. I’ll leave you guys to that, and let everyone know everything’s okay. Besides, Cody’s probably gonna burn the oatmeal if I don’t get back there.” She turned and jogged away.
Johnny grinned at Sondra’s hasty retreat. “You guys ever skin a buck before?” Tim and Cleve shook their heads.
“How’d that thing get in here, anyway?” Tim asked.
“I came out just before sunup. I was sittin’ up on the roof there —” Johnny pointed at a ladder at the back of the house — “and I watched this ol’ boy take a good long look at the grass over here. He stepped up on that high spot across from here, then he cleared the fence in one hop. I shot him as soon as he landed. Okay, you guys ready to do this?”
Sondra gave Cody a gentle slap on the butt as she jogged back to the grill, puffing a little from the jog. “It was Johnny,” she said. “He shot a deer in the back of the subdivision. Cleve and Tim are gonna help him gut it, I guess.”
“Great!” Cody grinned. “Fresh meat! I hope there’s enough to go around.”
“Enough to go around twice, from what Johnny said. It was pretty big.”
“It’ll be nice to have some meat that doesn’t come out of a can. Hey, maybe you oughtta teach me how to shoot, and we can all do some hunting.”
“Sure. But where?”
“How about the back yard at my old place?”
continued…
Sondra spun around. “That was a gunshot!” she said. “Not far away, either.” She patted her hip. “Damn. It’s in the unit. Cody! Can you watch the oatmeal for a minute?” She, Cody, and Sara were in the parking lot, cooking breakfast for the community on the permanent grill they’d built from bricks and other construction materials. Patches of last night’s frost still lingered in shady spots, and all three stayed close to the warmth of the coals.
“Yeah, I guess.” Cody checked the pancakes, flipping several, but Sondra was already bounding up the steps. “Someone needs to get Cleve too.”
“I’ll get him,” said Sara. “Tim too. Can you cover my station too, Cody?”
“Aw, hell… I guess. If you move your griddle over here where I can keep an eye on it!”
Cody checked Sara’s griddle, flipped two pancakes, then slipped three of his onto a platter. “Damn,” he said to himself, “I guess I need to learn how to shoot, just so I don’t get stuck watchin’ the freakin’ grill whenever something happens.” He grinned. “At least I don’t have any bacon or eggs to watch out for!” He stepped over and stirred the big oatmeal pot, then scooted the pot away from the coals a little. “Slow you down a little, I won’t have to check on you so often.”
Sondra slapped down the stairs, holster slung over her shoulder, one hand on the pistol to keep it from bouncing around. “Cleve out yet?”
“Up here,” said Cleve, stepping into the open stairwell and buckling his own gunbelt. “What’s goin’ on?”
“I heard a gunshot, off that way,” said Sondra, pointing into the empty subdivision. Cody gave the pancakes a glance, flipped a few and removed two more, then turned to watch. Sara returned, took her griddle back, and checked Cody’s.
“This is how we roll,” said Cleve. “You stay back, thirty feet or better, and walk alongside the houses where you got cover. I’ll go up the street. If we got a hostile, he’ll be watching me. You get in a position to take him if you have to.”
“What’s going on?” Tim jogged out to meet them, carrying his holster.
“Sondra heard a gunshot, thinks it’s inside the fence. I guess we can use the extra backup. I’m putting Sondra on the right side of the street. You take the left.”
“Got it.” Tim buckled the holster. “Let’s go.”
“Be careful, Tim!” Sara called after him, then a little quieter, “Love you.”
Cleve waved them to a halt for a moment, kicking off his shoes. “Too much noise on the pavement.” He started off again, nearly silent in his stocking feet. Quiet, but cold, he said to himself, picking up the pace a little. They moved up the street; dormant gardens and untended houses watched them jog by. Sondra pointed the way at each intersection, hesitating a little more the deeper they went in.
Toward the back of the subdivision, Tim waved them down and motioned the others to join him at the corner of a house. “Hear that?” he whispered. The morning air carried something that sounded like humming or low singing to them.
“Yeah. Okay, show time. Lucado, you go down to the next house and come in from the far side. Petro, you go around the other side of this one. Both of you stay under cover unless there’s more shooting, or until I call you out, got it?” They nodded, and Cleve slipped his shoes back on. “Okay, do it. You got thirty seconds to get in position: now!”
Cleve slipped up the side of the house, counting seconds. He caught a glimpse of motion, and peered out. Someone was there all right, humming to himself in an overgrown backyard, kneeling on the ground. A old military-looking rifle was slung over his shoulder.
“Laurel police!” Cleve yelled, gun out. “On your feet, slow! Keep your hands where I can see ’em and turn around!”
The man jumped. “Cleve!” he yelled, standing and turning. “It’s me!” Johnny waggled his hands on either side of his head.
“Shit, Johnny!” Cleve said, holstering his pistol. “What the hell you doin’ out here, shootin’ and gettin’ everyone riled up?” He called out. “Stand down, y’all! It’s Johnny!”
“Getting us some meat!” Johnny grinned as Tim and Sondra stepped out from behind the houses, pointing at a buck lying in the grass. “A six-pointer. I was about to hang it up and start field-dressing it when you scared the living crap outta me. Laurel police? We got a force now?”
“Sure,” Cleve said. “All of us. Sounds more official, anyway. I figure if we do run into someone, it’ll stop ’em for a second. Sometimes, an extra second is all you need.”
“Yeah. Well, since you’re here, you guys wanna help me get this buck skinned and gutted? There’s enough meat here for two meals for everyone!”
“Aha,” said Sondra. “Tell you what. I’ll leave you guys to that, and let everyone know everything’s okay. Besides, Cody’s probably gonna burn the oatmeal if I don’t get back there.” She turned and jogged away.
Johnny grinned at Sondra’s hasty retreat. “You guys ever skin a buck before?” Tim and Cleve shook their heads.
“How’d that thing get in here, anyway?” Tim asked.
“I came out just before sunup. I was sittin’ up on the roof there —” Johnny pointed at a ladder at the back of the house — “and I watched this ol’ boy take a good long look at the grass over here. He stepped up on that high spot across from here, then he cleared the fence in one hop. I shot him as soon as he landed. Okay, you guys ready to do this?”
Sondra gave Cody a gentle slap on the butt as she jogged back to the grill, puffing a little from the jog. “It was Johnny,” she said. “He shot a deer in the back of the subdivision. Cleve and Tim are gonna help him gut it, I guess.”
“Great!” Cody grinned. “Fresh meat! I hope there’s enough to go around.”
“Enough to go around twice, from what Johnny said. It was pretty big.”
“It’ll be nice to have some meat that doesn’t come out of a can. Hey, maybe you oughtta teach me how to shoot, and we can all do some hunting.”
“Sure. But where?”
“How about the back yard at my old place?”
continued…
Monday, July 26, 2010 3 comments
White Pickups, Episode 45
Contents
Thursday, October 20, 2011
The kids talked among themselves, sitting on the front porch of an empty house, waiting for Jason to arrive. They kept their voices low so the others couldn’t hear.
“So Tim’s been staying over since Tuesday,” Ashley said. “I guess he’s gonna be my new dad.”
“Wow, you’re lucky,” Ben said. “You’ll have a mom and a dad. Tina’s nice, so’s Kelly, but…” he shrugged.
“You think they’re doin’ it?” Sheldon asked, smirking. Lily blushed and tittered, Ben and Caitlin snickered.
“Yeah,” Ashley said, rolling her eyes. “They keep it quiet, but sometimes you can hear ’em.”
“That’s why Jennifer moved us out of #107,” Caitlin said, looking up and putting her hands on her hips. “‘Jeez-zus Christ you two,’” she said in a good parody of Jennifer’s voice, “‘it’s not gonna kill you to give it a rest.’ I heard Jennifer say lots of stuff like that before we moved. I guess Cody and…” she trailed off. Nobody spoke for a few moments.
Lily broke the silence. “You still love Cody, don’t you?”
Caitlin blushed behind her freckles. “No I do not!” she bit off each word.
“If he asked you, would you do it with him?” Sheldon leered.
“I don’t know!” Caitlin sputtered. “Maybe when I’m older —” she clapped a hand over her mouth and looked over toward Cody, talking with the grownups across the way.
“We’re gonna move into #116,” Ashley said, rescuing Caitlin. “Me and Caitlin will have a room, and I guess Tim and Sara will get one. Jennifer will get the other one. I think Tim and Sara are trying to have a baby. I heard them talking about it.”
“That sounds cool,” Ben said. “That’ll be like having three parents. Four, if Jennifer gets a boyfriend.”
“Four parents?” Sheldon shook his head. “You’d never get to do anything!”
“We get to do lots of stuff,” Lily said, “and it’s like everyone’s our parents now. We don’t have school like we used to, and this is kind of cool, getting to do real stuff like helping with the gardens. Cody’s teaching us how to skate, Kelly’s teaching us basketball, and we don’t have to worry about getting run over in here. I just wish mom and dad were here too.”
The others nodded, even Sheldon. “When’s Jason gonna get here?” Sheldon asked.
“Sooner or later,” Ben said. “I’m not in a hurry anyway. Maybe he had another dream and it kept him up.”
“Have you guys had any dreams since that one with everybody in it?” Caitlin turned back to the others. “The one where Cody threw his shoes?” The others shook their heads. “Me neither. Not those kind of dreams, anyway. It’s spooky, how we all were in each other’s dreams like that. You think we’ll have more?”
“Why don’t you ask Cody?” Sheldon said, without the leer. “All the grownups think he knows everything about the trucks.”
“That’s just dumb,” Caitlin said. “Why would he know more than anyone else? I mean, he’s smart and all, but he didn’t make ’em.”
“Hey,” said Ben, “here comes Jason.”
Jason looked over the gardening crew: all five kids, Cody and Sondra, Tim and Sara, Palmer and Stefan, and Kelly as the only singleton over age ten. The kids and teens were regulars, pulling gardening duty three days a week as a break from more traditional schooling; the adults were volunteering. Sondra divided her time between gardening and learning what Rita taught about first aid; Johnny was helping Rita as well, but he smiled as he thought about Johnny’s true intentions there. Of all of them, only Jason and Johnny did any gardening before the Truckalypse, but the others were learning. “Anyone remember the motto?”
“Nothing goes to waste,” Ashley said.
“That’s right,” Jason replied. “You pull a weed, or a dead plant, it goes in the compost. If we were mowing grass, it would go too. But we’re gonna be raking leaves pretty soon. Why is that important?”
After a moment, Kelly spoke up: “Grass clippings, weeds, and leaves provide carbon. Kitchen scraps provide nitrogen. You need both to make compost.”
“Right. So why is compost important?”
“It’s like…” Sheldon twirled a finger in a circle. “Stuff comes out of the ground — uh, the soil — and compost puts it back in.”
“That’s not the whole story, but it’s good enough,” Jason smiled at the kids. “And it’s nutrients that come out of the soil, in the food we grow. Well, let’s get started.”
Jason watched the crew, moving from group to group to check on their progress and thinking about how much work they would have to do next year. Even with Ben’s confidence about foraging, and Johnny Latimer’s stated intent to “do some huntin’ now that it’s cooler,” growing enough food — and more important, enough nutrition — was going to take more effort than any of them realized. Before, barely six weeks ago, a crop failure in the garden was a disappointment and meant a few extra trips to the grocery store. A year from now, it might mean starvation and some hard decisions…
Especially with mating couples forming up. Palmer and Stefan couldn’t reproduce, but Jason figured that Cody and Sondra — not to mention Sara and Tim — would be expecting before the winter was out. Johnny and Rita too, if Johnny had anything to say about it. A new generation would be important, but feeding them would be just as important.
“What’s this?” Lily said, picking up something soft from under a tree.
Jason looked it over, then looked up at the tree. “Oh… a persimmon tree,” he said. “It’s a fruit, but you have to wait for a frost before you eat them, or they’ll be really sour. We’ll probably have a frost in the next week or so. Good find — and a good reminder to not look just at the ground. I’ll bet there’s an apple tree or two around, too.”
Lily picked up another persimmon and sniffed. “They smell good,” she said. “What can you do with them?”
“Most people make preserves with them. I guess you could make a pie too, but I’ve never heard of anyone doing that.”
“Oh.” She ran to join the other kids in the garden.
continued…
Thursday, October 20, 2011
The kids talked among themselves, sitting on the front porch of an empty house, waiting for Jason to arrive. They kept their voices low so the others couldn’t hear.
“So Tim’s been staying over since Tuesday,” Ashley said. “I guess he’s gonna be my new dad.”
“Wow, you’re lucky,” Ben said. “You’ll have a mom and a dad. Tina’s nice, so’s Kelly, but…” he shrugged.
“You think they’re doin’ it?” Sheldon asked, smirking. Lily blushed and tittered, Ben and Caitlin snickered.
“Yeah,” Ashley said, rolling her eyes. “They keep it quiet, but sometimes you can hear ’em.”
“That’s why Jennifer moved us out of #107,” Caitlin said, looking up and putting her hands on her hips. “‘Jeez-zus Christ you two,’” she said in a good parody of Jennifer’s voice, “‘it’s not gonna kill you to give it a rest.’ I heard Jennifer say lots of stuff like that before we moved. I guess Cody and…” she trailed off. Nobody spoke for a few moments.
Lily broke the silence. “You still love Cody, don’t you?”
Caitlin blushed behind her freckles. “No I do not!” she bit off each word.
“If he asked you, would you do it with him?” Sheldon leered.
“I don’t know!” Caitlin sputtered. “Maybe when I’m older —” she clapped a hand over her mouth and looked over toward Cody, talking with the grownups across the way.
“We’re gonna move into #116,” Ashley said, rescuing Caitlin. “Me and Caitlin will have a room, and I guess Tim and Sara will get one. Jennifer will get the other one. I think Tim and Sara are trying to have a baby. I heard them talking about it.”
“That sounds cool,” Ben said. “That’ll be like having three parents. Four, if Jennifer gets a boyfriend.”
“Four parents?” Sheldon shook his head. “You’d never get to do anything!”
“We get to do lots of stuff,” Lily said, “and it’s like everyone’s our parents now. We don’t have school like we used to, and this is kind of cool, getting to do real stuff like helping with the gardens. Cody’s teaching us how to skate, Kelly’s teaching us basketball, and we don’t have to worry about getting run over in here. I just wish mom and dad were here too.”
The others nodded, even Sheldon. “When’s Jason gonna get here?” Sheldon asked.
“Sooner or later,” Ben said. “I’m not in a hurry anyway. Maybe he had another dream and it kept him up.”
“Have you guys had any dreams since that one with everybody in it?” Caitlin turned back to the others. “The one where Cody threw his shoes?” The others shook their heads. “Me neither. Not those kind of dreams, anyway. It’s spooky, how we all were in each other’s dreams like that. You think we’ll have more?”
“Why don’t you ask Cody?” Sheldon said, without the leer. “All the grownups think he knows everything about the trucks.”
“That’s just dumb,” Caitlin said. “Why would he know more than anyone else? I mean, he’s smart and all, but he didn’t make ’em.”
“Hey,” said Ben, “here comes Jason.”
Jason looked over the gardening crew: all five kids, Cody and Sondra, Tim and Sara, Palmer and Stefan, and Kelly as the only singleton over age ten. The kids and teens were regulars, pulling gardening duty three days a week as a break from more traditional schooling; the adults were volunteering. Sondra divided her time between gardening and learning what Rita taught about first aid; Johnny was helping Rita as well, but he smiled as he thought about Johnny’s true intentions there. Of all of them, only Jason and Johnny did any gardening before the Truckalypse, but the others were learning. “Anyone remember the motto?”
“Nothing goes to waste,” Ashley said.
“That’s right,” Jason replied. “You pull a weed, or a dead plant, it goes in the compost. If we were mowing grass, it would go too. But we’re gonna be raking leaves pretty soon. Why is that important?”
After a moment, Kelly spoke up: “Grass clippings, weeds, and leaves provide carbon. Kitchen scraps provide nitrogen. You need both to make compost.”
“Right. So why is compost important?”
“It’s like…” Sheldon twirled a finger in a circle. “Stuff comes out of the ground — uh, the soil — and compost puts it back in.”
“That’s not the whole story, but it’s good enough,” Jason smiled at the kids. “And it’s nutrients that come out of the soil, in the food we grow. Well, let’s get started.”
Jason watched the crew, moving from group to group to check on their progress and thinking about how much work they would have to do next year. Even with Ben’s confidence about foraging, and Johnny Latimer’s stated intent to “do some huntin’ now that it’s cooler,” growing enough food — and more important, enough nutrition — was going to take more effort than any of them realized. Before, barely six weeks ago, a crop failure in the garden was a disappointment and meant a few extra trips to the grocery store. A year from now, it might mean starvation and some hard decisions…
Especially with mating couples forming up. Palmer and Stefan couldn’t reproduce, but Jason figured that Cody and Sondra — not to mention Sara and Tim — would be expecting before the winter was out. Johnny and Rita too, if Johnny had anything to say about it. A new generation would be important, but feeding them would be just as important.
“What’s this?” Lily said, picking up something soft from under a tree.
Jason looked it over, then looked up at the tree. “Oh… a persimmon tree,” he said. “It’s a fruit, but you have to wait for a frost before you eat them, or they’ll be really sour. We’ll probably have a frost in the next week or so. Good find — and a good reminder to not look just at the ground. I’ll bet there’s an apple tree or two around, too.”
Lily picked up another persimmon and sniffed. “They smell good,” she said. “What can you do with them?”
“Most people make preserves with them. I guess you could make a pie too, but I’ve never heard of anyone doing that.”
“Oh.” She ran to join the other kids in the garden.
continued…
Monday, July 19, 2010 2 comments
White Pickups, Episode 44
Contents
“Sure,” Tim said, and Cleve took the cheap plastic chair next to Tim; it squeaked a little under Cleve’s weight. “Maybe you’ll have an idea.” He pulled a beer out of the styrofoam cooler and handed it to Cleve. “Not ice cold, but it’s been sitting out here all evening so at least it’ll be cool.”
Cleve stuck the can in the holder on the arm of his chair and scooted the chair around to face Tim. “Red… is this about the dream, or something else?”
“Both, I guess. These truck dreams — everyone’s having the dreams together, right?”
“Yeah, as far as anyone can tell.”
“So if Sara… in the dream…” he trailed off. “I want to believe I’m seeing what I think I’ve been seeing, but—”
“Sheee-it,” Cleve laughed, popping his beer. “You finally wakin’ up?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m gonna tell you something, Red, something I wouldn’t say if you weren’t my best friend. More than that, my brother in arms…” He took a long swig of cool beer.
“What is it?”
“Just this: we both want the same woman, and she only wants one of us. And it ain’t me.”
“So — she —” Tim drained his can and waved his arms.
“Yeah, she —” Cleve waved his arms in mockery, sloshing his beer a little. “But she ain’t gonna wait forever for you to make up your mind.”
“Yeah.” Tim stood, weaving a little in the chilly October air. “Can you believe it’s not even been two months since this all happened? But sometimes, it feels like years. Sometimes I try to think about Rebecca, remember what she looked like, and — and all I see is Sara. Cleve… thanks. I owe you one.” He walked back into the townhouse.
“Damn right you do!” Cleve laughed, not sure if Tim heard. He turned his chair back to the wall and watched the waning moon through the thinning leaves, pushing through a few wispy clouds over the roofs of the houses. “Well, Mr. Moon,” Cleve said, putting his feet on the railing, “I just threw away a long shot at love, but at least I did the right thing by them both. And maybe I’ll get some sleep now.” He hoisted his beer can heavenward then drank.
“Tim? Are you okay?” Sara whispered at the figure at her door.
“Hi, Sara,” Tim said, using the door frame for balance. “Yeah, I’m okay, I guess. I’ve just been doing a lot of thinking…”
“Hi Tim,” Ashley said, peering around Sara. Tim thought her fuzzy pink one-piece made her look even younger. “What’s up?”
“Ashley, I know you don’t want to sleep, but Tim and I need to talk for a minute, okay? Go back to bed.” The girl shrugged and walked away.
Tim smiled. “You two doing okay?”
“Yeah. I think that dream last night’s about the only thing that ever got to Ashley. The girl’s like a rock sometimes, it takes a lot to get her off-balance. Jennifer and I are talking about taking over #116, you know; it’s that three-bedroom place up by the street that nobody wanted. We think it’ll be good to have the girls together, and there’ll be plenty of room.”
Tim nodded. “Sara, I — I’ve been wondering for a while —” he reached for her.
Sara stepped forward and took his hand. “It’s about time,” she smiled. “But from the smell of you, you’ve been doing more than thinking tonight. You come back tomorrow when you’re sober, and we’ll see where we want to go from here.”
Tim’s beer-flavored whew about knocked Sara down. “Oh… thank God. I was hoping I wasn’t just imagining it.”
“Go on back, Tim,” Sara said. “We’ll talk tomorrow.” She kissed his cheek before he had a chance to react, and closed her door.
A nudge brought Tim out of a restless sleep. “Cleve? What’s up?”
“Not Cleve,” Sara whispered. “You better?”
“You mean sobered up? I guess so. You okay?”
Sara sat on the bed. “Yeah. Ashley finally gave up and fell asleep, then I couldn’t rest. I put her to bed and made sure she wasn’t gonna wake right back up before I came up. It’s five o’clock now, I hope that’s okay.”
“It’s always okay for you, Sara. I hope you know that.” He worked an arm out of the covers and reached for her; she took his hand.
“I do now. I kept wonderin’ if you’d ever come around.”
“I was… afraid, I guess. I didn’t believe that you’d go for me, with the other guys around here.” He put his other hand on her back and rubbed up and down her spine.
“Mmmm. You can do that all night.”
“I had something else in mind…”
Sara chuckled and kicked off her slippers, then slid under the covers. “Yeah, me too. But there’s two things I want to make sure we get straight first.”
“Uh-oh,” Tim laughed. I’ve already got one thing straight, he thought, putting his arms around her. They kissed briefly.
“I don’t want you sayin’ nothing about never being with a black girl before,” Sara said. “We all got the same parts, and they all work the same way.”
“Just a different paint job, right?” Tim said. “What’s the other thing?”
“We’re not using condoms.”
Tim laughed again. “I can’t get away from the Catholic women, can I?”
“I’m not Catholic, Tim. But I’ve always wanted children, and with the way things are now… people need to be having kids. Cody and Sondra will probably be having a baby sooner or later; Jennifer moved out of #107 because she got tired of hearing them goin’ at it ’most every night and she didn’t want to have to explain it to Caitlin.”
“Yeah… okay. If it doesn’t work out with us, I’ll still help raise our kids. That’s only fair.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” she said, and kissed him. He returned the kiss, and they wrapped themselves around each other for a few minutes. Sara reached up to unbutton his pajama top; he unzipped her flannel.
“Too much stuff in the way,” Tim said, tugging at the sleeve of her gown. She pulled her arm through, then her other; he pulled off his pajamas. Naked, they came together again, kissing and groping. Tim rolled onto her and thrust inside, trying to be gentle about it; Sara moaned and wrapped around him, pulling him in all the way. They rocked together a long time on the bed, kissing, moaning, gasping, grasping.
“Come with me!” Sara gasped. And he did, hard and deep.
For a while afterward, neither moved, except for the occasional twitch, nor spoke. “I’ve got to get back,” Sara said finally, gently rolling him off her. “I don’t want Ashley to wake up and not know where I’m at.”
“Can I come with you? Ashley will have to get used to me being around anyway.”
She kissed him, then shrugged her robe on. “Why not?”
Tim threw his pajamas on, found his slippers, and followed Sara back to her unit. They made love again, more quietly but just as satisfying, before falling asleep.
continued…
“Sure,” Tim said, and Cleve took the cheap plastic chair next to Tim; it squeaked a little under Cleve’s weight. “Maybe you’ll have an idea.” He pulled a beer out of the styrofoam cooler and handed it to Cleve. “Not ice cold, but it’s been sitting out here all evening so at least it’ll be cool.”
Cleve stuck the can in the holder on the arm of his chair and scooted the chair around to face Tim. “Red… is this about the dream, or something else?”
“Both, I guess. These truck dreams — everyone’s having the dreams together, right?”
“Yeah, as far as anyone can tell.”
“So if Sara… in the dream…” he trailed off. “I want to believe I’m seeing what I think I’ve been seeing, but—”
“Sheee-it,” Cleve laughed, popping his beer. “You finally wakin’ up?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m gonna tell you something, Red, something I wouldn’t say if you weren’t my best friend. More than that, my brother in arms…” He took a long swig of cool beer.
“What is it?”
“Just this: we both want the same woman, and she only wants one of us. And it ain’t me.”
“So — she —” Tim drained his can and waved his arms.
“Yeah, she —” Cleve waved his arms in mockery, sloshing his beer a little. “But she ain’t gonna wait forever for you to make up your mind.”
“Yeah.” Tim stood, weaving a little in the chilly October air. “Can you believe it’s not even been two months since this all happened? But sometimes, it feels like years. Sometimes I try to think about Rebecca, remember what she looked like, and — and all I see is Sara. Cleve… thanks. I owe you one.” He walked back into the townhouse.
“Damn right you do!” Cleve laughed, not sure if Tim heard. He turned his chair back to the wall and watched the waning moon through the thinning leaves, pushing through a few wispy clouds over the roofs of the houses. “Well, Mr. Moon,” Cleve said, putting his feet on the railing, “I just threw away a long shot at love, but at least I did the right thing by them both. And maybe I’ll get some sleep now.” He hoisted his beer can heavenward then drank.
“Tim? Are you okay?” Sara whispered at the figure at her door.
“Hi, Sara,” Tim said, using the door frame for balance. “Yeah, I’m okay, I guess. I’ve just been doing a lot of thinking…”
“Hi Tim,” Ashley said, peering around Sara. Tim thought her fuzzy pink one-piece made her look even younger. “What’s up?”
“Ashley, I know you don’t want to sleep, but Tim and I need to talk for a minute, okay? Go back to bed.” The girl shrugged and walked away.
Tim smiled. “You two doing okay?”
“Yeah. I think that dream last night’s about the only thing that ever got to Ashley. The girl’s like a rock sometimes, it takes a lot to get her off-balance. Jennifer and I are talking about taking over #116, you know; it’s that three-bedroom place up by the street that nobody wanted. We think it’ll be good to have the girls together, and there’ll be plenty of room.”
Tim nodded. “Sara, I — I’ve been wondering for a while —” he reached for her.
Sara stepped forward and took his hand. “It’s about time,” she smiled. “But from the smell of you, you’ve been doing more than thinking tonight. You come back tomorrow when you’re sober, and we’ll see where we want to go from here.”
Tim’s beer-flavored whew about knocked Sara down. “Oh… thank God. I was hoping I wasn’t just imagining it.”
“Go on back, Tim,” Sara said. “We’ll talk tomorrow.” She kissed his cheek before he had a chance to react, and closed her door.
A nudge brought Tim out of a restless sleep. “Cleve? What’s up?”
“Not Cleve,” Sara whispered. “You better?”
“You mean sobered up? I guess so. You okay?”
Sara sat on the bed. “Yeah. Ashley finally gave up and fell asleep, then I couldn’t rest. I put her to bed and made sure she wasn’t gonna wake right back up before I came up. It’s five o’clock now, I hope that’s okay.”
“It’s always okay for you, Sara. I hope you know that.” He worked an arm out of the covers and reached for her; she took his hand.
“I do now. I kept wonderin’ if you’d ever come around.”
“I was… afraid, I guess. I didn’t believe that you’d go for me, with the other guys around here.” He put his other hand on her back and rubbed up and down her spine.
“Mmmm. You can do that all night.”
“I had something else in mind…”
Sara chuckled and kicked off her slippers, then slid under the covers. “Yeah, me too. But there’s two things I want to make sure we get straight first.”
“Uh-oh,” Tim laughed. I’ve already got one thing straight, he thought, putting his arms around her. They kissed briefly.
“I don’t want you sayin’ nothing about never being with a black girl before,” Sara said. “We all got the same parts, and they all work the same way.”
“Just a different paint job, right?” Tim said. “What’s the other thing?”
“We’re not using condoms.”
Tim laughed again. “I can’t get away from the Catholic women, can I?”
“I’m not Catholic, Tim. But I’ve always wanted children, and with the way things are now… people need to be having kids. Cody and Sondra will probably be having a baby sooner or later; Jennifer moved out of #107 because she got tired of hearing them goin’ at it ’most every night and she didn’t want to have to explain it to Caitlin.”
“Yeah… okay. If it doesn’t work out with us, I’ll still help raise our kids. That’s only fair.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” she said, and kissed him. He returned the kiss, and they wrapped themselves around each other for a few minutes. Sara reached up to unbutton his pajama top; he unzipped her flannel.
“Too much stuff in the way,” Tim said, tugging at the sleeve of her gown. She pulled her arm through, then her other; he pulled off his pajamas. Naked, they came together again, kissing and groping. Tim rolled onto her and thrust inside, trying to be gentle about it; Sara moaned and wrapped around him, pulling him in all the way. They rocked together a long time on the bed, kissing, moaning, gasping, grasping.
“Come with me!” Sara gasped. And he did, hard and deep.
For a while afterward, neither moved, except for the occasional twitch, nor spoke. “I’ve got to get back,” Sara said finally, gently rolling him off her. “I don’t want Ashley to wake up and not know where I’m at.”
“Can I come with you? Ashley will have to get used to me being around anyway.”
She kissed him, then shrugged her robe on. “Why not?”
Tim threw his pajamas on, found his slippers, and followed Sara back to her unit. They made love again, more quietly but just as satisfying, before falling asleep.
continued…
Monday, July 12, 2010 3 comments
White Pickups, Episode 43
Contents
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Nearly everyone got a slow start to the morning. Many seemed to simply go through the motions. Cody left a cold Pop-Tart half-eaten on his plate while Sondra stared at an empty coffee cup.
Cody finally shook his head, trying to clear it. “I’ll make you some coffee,” he said. “I might try a little myself.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
He started the camp stove, on an end table under the living room window, and opened the window a crack for air. He put the kettle on and sat back down. “You had the dream, too.” It wasn’t a question.
Sondra nodded, then gave him a thin smile. “I didn’t know you could throw a shoe that far. Remind me to only piss you off when you’re barefoot.”
He grinned, took her hand, and stared at his Pop-Tart.
As it turned out, everyone in Laurel — perhaps everyone in the world — had the dream. Most of them talked about it through lunch, filling each other in on details one or another had missed, then stumbled back to bed for a nap. Last night’s sleep was anything but restful…
The kids were up later than nearly everyone else that night, their fear of another dream greater than their need for sleep. But what kept Tim awake was not the dream itself. He would leave #214, the two-bedroom unit he shared with Cleve, walk up and down the dark and chilly hallway for a while, then return, sitting on the balcony and opening another can of beer. As he was working on his fifth can, Cleve opened the door between the balcony and his bedroom; he wore a black robe over a grey sweatsuit.
“Trouble sleeping, I guess,” he said to Tim. “You wanna talk?”
continued…
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Nearly everyone got a slow start to the morning. Many seemed to simply go through the motions. Cody left a cold Pop-Tart half-eaten on his plate while Sondra stared at an empty coffee cup.
Cody finally shook his head, trying to clear it. “I’ll make you some coffee,” he said. “I might try a little myself.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
He started the camp stove, on an end table under the living room window, and opened the window a crack for air. He put the kettle on and sat back down. “You had the dream, too.” It wasn’t a question.
Sondra nodded, then gave him a thin smile. “I didn’t know you could throw a shoe that far. Remind me to only piss you off when you’re barefoot.”
He grinned, took her hand, and stared at his Pop-Tart.
As it turned out, everyone in Laurel — perhaps everyone in the world — had the dream. Most of them talked about it through lunch, filling each other in on details one or another had missed, then stumbled back to bed for a nap. Last night’s sleep was anything but restful…
They are all seated in a huge stadium. Other people — thousands, perhaps millions — are there too, all of them talking among themselves.
“I think this is everyone,” Charles says to Johnny. “All of us who didn’t drive away.”
The racket is deafening, but somehow Johnny hears him clearly. “Best watch for the bashers, then.”
“Take care that ye not be deceived!” another voice cries from some rows ahead.
“That sounds familiar,” Tim says to Sara and Cleve, seated on either side of him.
“Yeah…” Cleve begins, but a gigantic screen that nobody noticed before lights up before them. Music begins playing. The hubbub dies down a bit, but not entirely.
It’s fast-paced, like an infomercial, but with black and white imagery and a soundtrack straight out of '50s educational films. It begins with a line of white pickups rolling past the camera; the boos in response are good-natured at first.
“Why walk, when you can ride?” the cheery male voiceover says. “Join our survey crew!”
All over the stadium, the boos take on an edge. A forest of middle fingers sprouts from the crowd, swaying in the still air.
“Your friends, your family —”
“Not my family!” Kelly screams, Charles and Tina on either side of her.
“— are all enjoying the freedom of the open road!”
All the kids hold their guardians tight, crying. Sara pulls Ashley into her lap and buries her face in Tim’s shoulder. “Tim!” she cries. “I can still see it!”
Tim puts his arms around them. “It’s okay,” he says. “They can make us watch, but they can’t make us join.” He closes his eyes, but he too can still see and hear.
The voiceover continues, persistent and inescapable over the roar of opposition: “As a valued member of our team, you will be freed from all physical issues, including eating, sleeping, bathroom breaks…” the video cuts to the inside of a truck, showing a series of vistas through the windshield: freeways, suburbia, cities, lakes, wilderness. “You’ll never get tired, never get uncomfortable, never get bored. Your emotions, your addictions, your urges… you’ll be freed from it all!”
Cody steps into the aisle, kicks off a shoe, and throws. It seems like miles, but his shoe sails all the way across the stadium and bounces off the screen. Cody’s area erupts in cheers as he throws his other shoe. A middle-aged man across the aisle stands, turns his back, and calmly moons the screen. More cheers; the man pulls up his pants then he and Cody high-five before sitting down.
Over the raucous jeers, through the averted and closed eyes, the covered ears, the images and sound persist: “Not only the things you see as part of our team, but the experiences of your entire life — even those you have forgotten — will be preserved… giving you the gift of IMMORTALITY!” The word unfurls across the screen as the narrator speaks it.
A large group begins chanting as one, “NOOOOO! NOOOOO!” Others take it up; the roar is ear-splitting but cannot drown out the soundtrack playing in their minds.
Sondra stands and empties her revolver; the bullets strike the screen but seem to bounce off like Cody’s shoes. The air fills with shoes, pocket knives, and other belongings. The roars of protest are impossibly loud. Many men, and even a few women, moon the screen.
The final image shows a single truck, filling the screen. The cheerful music builds to a crescendo; the driver’s door opens as the voiceover concludes, “So why resist? Climb in! Get on board! We’re waiting for YOU!”
Some of them remember, just before waking up, a voice shouting “Our souls, Beliel! And what of our immortal souls?”
The kids were up later than nearly everyone else that night, their fear of another dream greater than their need for sleep. But what kept Tim awake was not the dream itself. He would leave #214, the two-bedroom unit he shared with Cleve, walk up and down the dark and chilly hallway for a while, then return, sitting on the balcony and opening another can of beer. As he was working on his fifth can, Cleve opened the door between the balcony and his bedroom; he wore a black robe over a grey sweatsuit.
“Trouble sleeping, I guess,” he said to Tim. “You wanna talk?”
continued…
Monday, July 05, 2010 3 comments
White Pickups, Episode 42
Contents
Nearly everyone came out to watch, until Cleve and Tim protested. “We only need three others,” Cleve said. “Nothin’ for you guys to see out here anyway.”
“You be careful, Tim,” Sara said, hand on his arm. “We’ve lost enough people to those things already.”
“I’ll be fine. We’ve got big guys to hold our leashes. Besides, it’s Cody doing the hazardous part.”
“Where is Cody?” Sara looked around.
“He and Sondra went to get some rope from his old place,” Charles said.
“Yeah,” Max chimed in. “Maybe they won’t stop for a ‘layover’ or anything.” Everyone laughed at that.
“Nope,” said Cleve, “They know it’s time for business. Besides, here they come now.” He pointed down the street toward Laurel, at the couple biking toward them. Each had a coil of rope slung over a shoulder. Most of the crowd was walking or riding the other way.
Cody and Sondra joined them at the intersection, in the empty lot across from the QuickFill. A “NO PARKING - TOW AWAY ZONE” sign stood above the weeds, a relic from the old world of last month. Trucks went by in all directions, under a sky that promised rain but not right away. The holdouts had a crude barricade, knocked together out of scrap lumber, and adorned with a STOP sign borrowed from inside the development. Cleve, Max, Charles, Tim, Big Ben, and Sara stood around it.
“Here’s the rope,” Cody said, handing his coil to Tim. Sondra handed hers to Max, who hung it on the end of the barricade. She shook her right arm; outside the truck-free confines of Laurel, it tingled and sometimes went numb.
Tim paid out the yellow nylon cord. “Not ideal,” he said, “but good enough.” He cut off about ten feet and wrapped it around his waist and each leg, tying it behind his back and leaving several feet of “tail” dangling. “Homebrew safety harness.” He cut two more lengths and wrapped one each around Cody and Ben, then tied a length of remaining rope to their tails.
“I guess I’m ready,” said Tim, picking up the DSLR camera they found in one of the abandoned houses. He turned it on, checked the battery, opened the flash, and removed the lens cap. He set the focus and exposure, then looked through the viewfinder for a moment. Ben picked up his camcorder and nodded.
“Let’s do this,” Cody said. Cleve picked up the rope attached to Cody, ran it around his back and wrapped the end around his arm; Max and Charles did the same with Ben’s and Tim’s ropes.
“You be careful too, Cody,” Sara said. She and Sondra took up each end of the barricade. “Don’t be no hero.”
“Right,” Cody said. He shook his head, and his hair fell across his face before he swept it back. “If it looks like I’m getting in…”
“Yup,” Sondra said, patting her holster, “I shoot out your legs and hope Rita can fix it. You ain’t getting away that easy!”
The women checked the street, then carried the barricade out. Ben was already recording. They set the barricade at the edge of the intersection, then hurried back to the side of the street. Shortly, a truck rolled up, silent as always except for the hum of tires on pavement. It slowed and stopped.
“Let’s go!” Cody yelled, running out to the pickup while Ben and Tim took up positions at the passenger door. Cleve and the others braced themselves while Cody yanked the door open, tilted toward the interior for a moment, then jumped clear and hoisted both middle fingers at the truck. Tim held the shutter down; the camera kept clicking, although the flash quit after the first few shots. Ben zoomed in and out.
“We’ve got what we’re gonna get!” Ben shouted after a minute. “Let it go!”
Cody kicked the door; it shut with a chuff as Sara and Sondra dragged the makeshift barricade out of the street. As soon as the way was clear, the truck rolled away. Cody sat down in the grass, puffing and smiling as he and the others untied their harnesses. “That went okay,” he said.
“I felt it pull you,” Cleve said, winding the rope. “Dunno how I stood without trying to yank you back.”
“It pulled us too,” Ben agreed. “But it wasn’t that bad. We could have done it without the ropes.”
“Yeah, but who wants to take chances?” said Tim. “Let’s get on back and have a look at what we got.”
Everyone crowded around the big-screen TV in the Laurel Room as Ben hooked up his camcorder, chattering among themselves and peppering Ben and Tim with questions. Cody stood off to the side with Sondra, arms around each other, watching the others. “I don’t have any idea what the video quality’s gonna be like,” said Ben. “It was kind of dark in the viewfinder. But we’ve got the stills from Tim’s camera, and the first few had flash, so we probably got something.”
“Roll the tape!” someone called in the crowd.
“It’s all on a flash card, there’s no tape!” Ben laughed. “But let’s see what we got.”
The video began with Sondra and Sara carrying the barricade into the street, then Ben panned around to watch a truck approaching. The view jumped as Cody shouted “Let’s go!” and Ben and Tim hustled forward to the door. Cody jumped into the frame, yanked the door open, lurched forward for a moment, then jumped back. Ben zoomed in, rocking a little as the truck tried to pull him in —
The screen showed a woman sitting at the wheel and a little boy strapped in next to her. Both were bone white — skin and hair — but from their features, they may have been black before driving off. The woman’s purse lay on the floor in front of the child. Neither turned toward the people outside; the only sounds were the men breathing and Tim’s camera clicking. Ben shouted, the door slammed shut, and Ben once again panned to the women, this time dragging the barricade out of the way. The truck rolled away; several people laughed at Cody giving it the finger one more time before walking off-camera.
Sondra stepped forward to break the silence. “It stands to reason,” she said, raising her right arm. “My arm got bleached when I stuck it in one, why wouldn’t it bleach the drive-offs entirely?”
“They didn’t even look at you,” Kelly said. “It’s like they were zombies or something.” She shivered all over.
“How are they eating?” Johnny said. “You ever see one of them things stop for more than a few seconds at an intersection? Besides the ones waiting for the rest of us, I mean. It’s like they never sleep or nothin’.”
The TV flickered as Tim connected the DSLR. A still frame displayed the woman and her child in more detail. Most of the interior was washed out from the flash. Tim stepped through the next two, to the first photo without a flash. The interior appeared to be a uniform grey, perhaps vinyl, but with no texture.
“You remember it looking like that?” Cody whispered to Sondra. “When you stuck your arm in.”
“No. I was trying to keep it from pulling me in, I didn’t bother looking at it.”
“It seems we’re left with more questions than before,” Charles said. “Well, we’ve learned something anyway. Maybe it’ll turn out to be useful later on.”
continued…
Nearly everyone came out to watch, until Cleve and Tim protested. “We only need three others,” Cleve said. “Nothin’ for you guys to see out here anyway.”
“You be careful, Tim,” Sara said, hand on his arm. “We’ve lost enough people to those things already.”
“I’ll be fine. We’ve got big guys to hold our leashes. Besides, it’s Cody doing the hazardous part.”
“Where is Cody?” Sara looked around.
“He and Sondra went to get some rope from his old place,” Charles said.
“Yeah,” Max chimed in. “Maybe they won’t stop for a ‘layover’ or anything.” Everyone laughed at that.
“Nope,” said Cleve, “They know it’s time for business. Besides, here they come now.” He pointed down the street toward Laurel, at the couple biking toward them. Each had a coil of rope slung over a shoulder. Most of the crowd was walking or riding the other way.
Cody and Sondra joined them at the intersection, in the empty lot across from the QuickFill. A “NO PARKING - TOW AWAY ZONE” sign stood above the weeds, a relic from the old world of last month. Trucks went by in all directions, under a sky that promised rain but not right away. The holdouts had a crude barricade, knocked together out of scrap lumber, and adorned with a STOP sign borrowed from inside the development. Cleve, Max, Charles, Tim, Big Ben, and Sara stood around it.
“Here’s the rope,” Cody said, handing his coil to Tim. Sondra handed hers to Max, who hung it on the end of the barricade. She shook her right arm; outside the truck-free confines of Laurel, it tingled and sometimes went numb.
Tim paid out the yellow nylon cord. “Not ideal,” he said, “but good enough.” He cut off about ten feet and wrapped it around his waist and each leg, tying it behind his back and leaving several feet of “tail” dangling. “Homebrew safety harness.” He cut two more lengths and wrapped one each around Cody and Ben, then tied a length of remaining rope to their tails.
“I guess I’m ready,” said Tim, picking up the DSLR camera they found in one of the abandoned houses. He turned it on, checked the battery, opened the flash, and removed the lens cap. He set the focus and exposure, then looked through the viewfinder for a moment. Ben picked up his camcorder and nodded.
“Let’s do this,” Cody said. Cleve picked up the rope attached to Cody, ran it around his back and wrapped the end around his arm; Max and Charles did the same with Ben’s and Tim’s ropes.
“You be careful too, Cody,” Sara said. She and Sondra took up each end of the barricade. “Don’t be no hero.”
“Right,” Cody said. He shook his head, and his hair fell across his face before he swept it back. “If it looks like I’m getting in…”
“Yup,” Sondra said, patting her holster, “I shoot out your legs and hope Rita can fix it. You ain’t getting away that easy!”
The women checked the street, then carried the barricade out. Ben was already recording. They set the barricade at the edge of the intersection, then hurried back to the side of the street. Shortly, a truck rolled up, silent as always except for the hum of tires on pavement. It slowed and stopped.
“Let’s go!” Cody yelled, running out to the pickup while Ben and Tim took up positions at the passenger door. Cleve and the others braced themselves while Cody yanked the door open, tilted toward the interior for a moment, then jumped clear and hoisted both middle fingers at the truck. Tim held the shutter down; the camera kept clicking, although the flash quit after the first few shots. Ben zoomed in and out.
“We’ve got what we’re gonna get!” Ben shouted after a minute. “Let it go!”
Cody kicked the door; it shut with a chuff as Sara and Sondra dragged the makeshift barricade out of the street. As soon as the way was clear, the truck rolled away. Cody sat down in the grass, puffing and smiling as he and the others untied their harnesses. “That went okay,” he said.
“I felt it pull you,” Cleve said, winding the rope. “Dunno how I stood without trying to yank you back.”
“It pulled us too,” Ben agreed. “But it wasn’t that bad. We could have done it without the ropes.”
“Yeah, but who wants to take chances?” said Tim. “Let’s get on back and have a look at what we got.”
Everyone crowded around the big-screen TV in the Laurel Room as Ben hooked up his camcorder, chattering among themselves and peppering Ben and Tim with questions. Cody stood off to the side with Sondra, arms around each other, watching the others. “I don’t have any idea what the video quality’s gonna be like,” said Ben. “It was kind of dark in the viewfinder. But we’ve got the stills from Tim’s camera, and the first few had flash, so we probably got something.”
“Roll the tape!” someone called in the crowd.
“It’s all on a flash card, there’s no tape!” Ben laughed. “But let’s see what we got.”
The video began with Sondra and Sara carrying the barricade into the street, then Ben panned around to watch a truck approaching. The view jumped as Cody shouted “Let’s go!” and Ben and Tim hustled forward to the door. Cody jumped into the frame, yanked the door open, lurched forward for a moment, then jumped back. Ben zoomed in, rocking a little as the truck tried to pull him in —
The screen showed a woman sitting at the wheel and a little boy strapped in next to her. Both were bone white — skin and hair — but from their features, they may have been black before driving off. The woman’s purse lay on the floor in front of the child. Neither turned toward the people outside; the only sounds were the men breathing and Tim’s camera clicking. Ben shouted, the door slammed shut, and Ben once again panned to the women, this time dragging the barricade out of the way. The truck rolled away; several people laughed at Cody giving it the finger one more time before walking off-camera.
Sondra stepped forward to break the silence. “It stands to reason,” she said, raising her right arm. “My arm got bleached when I stuck it in one, why wouldn’t it bleach the drive-offs entirely?”
“They didn’t even look at you,” Kelly said. “It’s like they were zombies or something.” She shivered all over.
“How are they eating?” Johnny said. “You ever see one of them things stop for more than a few seconds at an intersection? Besides the ones waiting for the rest of us, I mean. It’s like they never sleep or nothin’.”
The TV flickered as Tim connected the DSLR. A still frame displayed the woman and her child in more detail. Most of the interior was washed out from the flash. Tim stepped through the next two, to the first photo without a flash. The interior appeared to be a uniform grey, perhaps vinyl, but with no texture.
“You remember it looking like that?” Cody whispered to Sondra. “When you stuck your arm in.”
“No. I was trying to keep it from pulling me in, I didn’t bother looking at it.”
“It seems we’re left with more questions than before,” Charles said. “Well, we’ve learned something anyway. Maybe it’ll turn out to be useful later on.”
continued…
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