We Are Them

by L. K. Samuels

  Hemet often resembled a cemetery. Hardly anybody graced the streets of Hemet on the weekends. Who could blame them? Downtown on Saturday night was quieter than a one-horse ghost town. Most residents rolled their wheelchairs to mobile home parks with a cup of pea soup in one hand and a bingo board in the other. Visitors often describe Hemet as the “Black Hole of Southern California,” except our town pushed you out instead of sucking you in.

  “Well, actually,” I said, “there was some excitement the other night. A massive explosion sent flames shooting across the sky. Very beautiful.”

  “Sure!” Rant spat out her reply with the venom of a cobra. “Stop badgering me!”

  “You would have enjoyed it. Very eerie and disturbing. It felt as if something had changed. Something important.”

  Rant looked away and raised her right eyebrow, appearing deep in thought. “I did sense something last night.” She walked a few steps, stopped, and tilted her head to one side. “It was a strange sensation. Like something had taken hold of the world, and wouldn’t let go. That something terrible was coming our way.” She shook her head. “I must have drunk too much Slivovitz.”

  “Well, it was not that crazy.” I felt like laughing but dared not. She did not take kindly to criticism. Besides, Rant’s past predictions were rarely indicative of future events. A 90-day weather report was more accurate.

  Not long after Rant holstered her Glock, Tommy came beckoning at my door. He did not knock. He never knocked. He swung open the door with gusto, as if he just concluded an impressive magic show, and now demanded a round of applause. In no time, Tommy rushed past Rant, entered the kitchen, and plopped down in a wooden chair right next to me. “What’s up?”

  “The usual.”

  “No, Bro!” Tommy quickly radiated the room with his infectious smile. “Anything can happen. Nothing is ever constant in the universe. You have it all wrong. You need to open yourself to a universe brimming with infinite possibilities. You must expand your brain by immersing yourself in creativity.”

  I shook my head. Tommy probably had just read another strange science fiction novel. There was no reason to try to counter his fantasies. He has been that way since I befriended him at Mt. San Jacinto Community College. Tommy’s sheer idiocy proved that college night classes bring out the strangest bat-crazy people. Then again, Tommy had taken several pre-med courses and passed with flying colors.

  “Okay, what do you need now?” I asked with a straight face.

  “Oh, the usual. I have ten more banana boxes to store.”

  “Not here!”

  “Just ten small, tiny weeny ones. Mostly engine parts.”

  “For your vehicles?”

  “No, they’re for a Mercedes-Benz.”

  “But you don’t have a Mercedes-Benz.”

  “Well, yeah, but someday I might.”

  I took a deep breath and held it, waiting for a sigh of relief to calm me down. I should have never allowed the camel’s nose into my tent. Now his entire bulky body laid claim to my abode. Maybe I should post a sign outside advertising a few storage spaces still available. Sometimes I wondered if he wanted a good friend or just a good place to store his stash of worthless junk. He still had 60 big banana boxes stacked against the wall in the garage.

  “You have so many already. Just let me add a few more and…”

  I thrust my hand in front of his face to stop him from talking. “No more. That’s it.”

  “I could make a list of all the boxes and their contents.”

  “Really? How long would that take?”

  “Well…ah…” Tommy struggled to find the right words. “Not too long.” He shrugged his shoulders and uttered in a weak, broken voice. “Maybe three or four weeks.”

  This was sheer madness. Last year Tommy had secretly stuffed an uncountable number of banana boxes in my attic, which almost collapsed the living room ceiling. Luckily, I saw the ceiling cracks before they could cause a mass extinction of the Crane family. I had temporarily installed 4x4 beams in the living room to prop up the ceiling.

  He had also secretly stacked his cardboard boxes in the third bedroom. For a time, I could not even open up the door to experience the horror in living color. Finally, I had to rent a self-storage unit for most of his rubbish. I guess you could say that Tommy was the junkman’s best friend. Yet, in spite of his huge, unending collection of stuff, he still dumpster dived behind the commercial buildings late at night. If I had rented the massive storage unit he had first requested, there would be no need for any city garbage trucks.

  Tommy was not just Hemet’s most famous hoarder par excellence. He also collected old Volkswagen bugs jam-packed with highly valued rubble of questionable worth. His mobile storage units were scattered across the city, usually parked in outlying public streets. His mostly non-operative vehicles did not go unnoticed. The police regularly impounded them. Sometimes when Tommy was low on funds, I would bail out his hobby. I felt more like a banker than a loyal friend, but it only took a few minutes before I would give in to his dire pleas for help.

  I stared at Tommy. “I desperately need a beer.”

  Without hesitation, Tommy pulled out a six-pack from his large knapsack. They were usually some strange-but-cheap foreign beer from Trader Joe’s. He pulled open the beer can tab, reached over and handed me a cold one.

  “So, what’s also up?” Tommy asked.

  I turned to Tommy and spoke softly. “Well, like always, Rant predicts doom for Hemet because of last night’s fireball.”

  Frowning, Rant stared at me with a cold, icy look. She turned and started to rummage through the refrigerator searching for something edible. Find nothing appealing, she leaned against the wall and pulled out a small paperback book from the bookcase. She began to read.

  “Wow! Really! Awesome, man!”

  Tommy opened his beer can and lifted it up to celebrate. We toasted to limitless money and more storage space.

  I wanted to up the ante on celebrating the future. “How about toasting to the new millennium?”

  “You want to welcome the new millennium?” Tommy’s face soured. “No, that’s not appropriate.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s so disappointing. Our future is not futurist.”

  I lowered my jaw. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  “By now, we should have had a large space station established on the moon. Hey, remember the 2001 movie? I mean, we’re very far away from that destiny. We don’t even have regularly scheduled flights to the lunar surface. How can we study the mysterious monolith? And where is the spaceship that was supposed to orbit Jupiter? No flying cars, no space fleet. What future? Very disappointing, man.”

  “Well, then let’s instead toast to surviving the Y2K bug.”

  Tommy suddenly cheered up. “Yeah, that’s something to look forward to. But we’re still all going to die.”

  I patted Tommy on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, that’s almost a haft a year away. Who needs computers, TVs, or electronics? All that is required for life is an ample supply of cold liquor. Right?” Of course, that loony proposal called for another round of crashing our beer cans together and spilling some on my checkerboard linoleum floor. “Besides, Rant thinks that the strange explosion in the sky foretells another streak of bad luck.”

  Rant could not help but listen to our idiotic gabfest. She strolled in front of us, stopped, and peered down. “You are the biggest losers in the universe.”

  I raised my hand to object. “Hey, maybe the galaxy, but not the whole universe.” I was starting to feel the effects of the beer.

  “Why?” Rant tapped her fingers on her thigh.

  “Well, I’ve never been to the universe. I think we’ll stay with something local.” Tommy just loved my joke line, but Rant was losing her patience.

  Rant sniped in her usual irritated tone, “It was just a feeling. That’s all. Grow up and get over it!” She eyed Tommy with open disdain. She often chided my drinking buddy as an
aging hippie who never grew up. . I had to smile. I considered Tommy as my secret weapon against Rant, sort of my Kryptonite to Rant’s paranoia and anxiety.

  “There’s a rumor,” Tommy said, eyeing Rant, “that the fireball could be seen from as far as Utah. Utah! Boy, that’s really far, I mean farther than any universe. Right?” His nonsensical assertion was an attempt to incite the wrath of Rant. It fizzed. Rant refused to play along.

  Now it was my turn to stir the pot. “You want to hear about a really potential disaster in Hemet!” I said in an effort to keep the conversation from drifting back to the holocaust or freaky skinheads. “Big Al at work wants to make commuters take the Ramona Expressway. All for efficiency’s sake. Now is that crazy or what?”

  “You’re not serious?” Rant looked down at me, appalled.

  “Hey, it’s Big Al. He’ll forget all about it by tomorrow. Anyway, we should all take a more efficient shortcut to our destination. You know, save a little money on gas.”

  “He’s totally a control freak.” Tommy grabbed another beer, leaned back, and chugged it in one long gulp. “They’re dangerous hombres.”

  “Yeah,” I added, “If you want to control people just sow fear and anxiety. Works every time. And if an obsessive-compulsive jerk takes charge, well, he can convince almost anyone to do a swan dive over a 60-foot cliff.”

  “Yeah, like in Western movies,” Tommy said. “Just shoot some guns in the air. Cows will trample people, knock over chuck wagon, or terrorize a town. I think I saw that in an old John Wayne movie.”

  “He’s not serious?” Rant interrupted Tommy’s overview of Western movie lore. “Come on! Big Al was just bluffing.”

  “Oh, I think he is just looking for something to do,” I said as I reached into Tommy’s knapsack to retrieve another beer. “Big Al is mostly wind and whine.”

  “Hasn’t he done enough?” Rant almost shouted. “I mean I heard him advocate for more eminent domain seizures. And more disarm-the-victim laws. We have a right to defend ourselves.”

  Listening to Rant, one might think that Hemet was a high crime area, comparable to East Los Angeles. In truth, crime was not much of a problem. It is difficult to rob a 7-11 and flee the crime scene in a two-wheel walker. Still, the Hemet police were rather slow in making their appearance.

  With a sober face, Tommy stood and stretched out his arms. “Rant is right. This is serious. You cannot control where people travel on the public street. We have a right to go where we want to go. Right?” Tommy looked at me with his big puppy eyes.

  I decided to take a different approach. “Well, if it is for public safety, I suppose you could, with enough state and federal funds. I mean, with enough hard cash, you could construct a bridge to the Australia. But it is a stretch to use police power to enforce who travels where. That kind of talk is utter lunacy.”

  “They have the power to do anything,” Rant raised her voice. “Haven’t they empowered armies to oppress minorities?” Rant was curt. She always got back to the subject of anti-Semitism and Nazi atrocities. She acted as if we were still fighting World War II. Maybe that was why she had enrolled in self-defense courses at the local community college. She was ready to fight any oppressor. Now she just had to find one.

  “I mean the city could provide maps and advice to people to find the more efficient driving routes,” I said. “We could start up an educational program with workshops and seminars and put out press releases. Create community awareness. No big deal.”

  “Wouldn’t that create more jobs for city workers?” Tommy asked.

  “Sure,” I replied.

  “Where’s the money going to come from?” Tommy asked. “Like, I mean, they never give me a raise.”

  I had to hold in a laugh. Tommy’s performance was not good enough to command any salary. Of course, I held an extremely biased opinion about his work skills; I was his good friend.

  “I thought the city was strapped for funds,” Rant said. “They keep saying they have no money. Where will it come from?”

  I had the perfect answer. “It’s simple. We get city officials to go around and steal anything not bolted into the ground—you know, trash receptacles, kids swing sets, inflatable pools. All the expensive stuff.”

  “Don’t they do that already?” Tommy›s grin widened.

  “You should know,” I said.

  “Like, for sure!” Tommy started his little comedy act. “I see them at midnight; they’re the ‘Morlocks of Hemet’ Creatures of the night. They steal dogs and campfire pits. Beware of the dumpster divers! They will take your banana boxes.”

  It was not very funny, but Tommy’s childlike charm compensated for his lack of timing and humor.

  Actually, it was pathetic, considering that he worked for the government, too. Of course, for Tommy, “work” was too strong a word to describe what he actually did at City Hall. He was in my Planning Department, but spent his time at the front desk trying to explain zoning and building codes. Everyone, even the old-timers, had to struggle to decipher our unintelligible codes that accumulated more pages than the Bible.

  Tommy was no exception; he could become as befuddled and confused over the simplest questions from the public. When frustrated, he would drag a real city planner to the counter to explain our outdated, contradictory, and complicated rules.

  “You tell Big Al.” Rant finally reached for a beer. “Tell him that I will never follow his road advice.”

  “Even if it is a better route?” I asked.

  “I don’t care. I do what I want. And as long as I don’t harm anyone, what’s wrong with that?”

  Rant’s philosophy always seemed plausible until the particulars came into play. She hated taxes and governmental agencies, calling them coercive. She would almost growl when anybody had a kind word for a politician or bureaucrat, which had me softly tiptoeing around her hard-core ideals. Usually, her anger was reserved for the system of rulership, not the people caught in the middle, like me. Still, I had a feeling she would have loved to funnel all the government people into the nose of a rocket bound for Mars.

  Before we could delve deeper into crazy talk, Sarah walked through the door and briefly interrupted our intense debate. Like always, she would say her customary “hello” to everyone and retire to another room. For some strange reason, I felt an urge to follow her into the living room. Usually, I reigned over a kitchen inhabited by intoxicated multitudes. But this time I sought out the meek and sober.

  “How was your day?” I asked.

  “You’re asking me about my day?” Sarah stared at me.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “You have never shown any concern before. Never.”

  “Never say never,” I paused. “So, how are you?”

  Sarah stood there for a moment. She looked perplexed, unable to figure out what to say next.

  “Oh… I guess I am fine. Yes,… doing well, I suppose.”

  “Want to do something?”

  “Just us?”

  “Sure. We’ve done that before. Gee, I think we have at least once or twice.” Now I was beginning to question my own memory. I could not recall the last time I asked her out.

  “We could go to a movie,” I volunteered.

  Sarah looked down and softly bit her lower lip. “Ah… You know I don’t really care for movies.”

  I nodded. “Right. Well, what about dinner at some nice restaurant?”

  Sarah sneered. “You know that I’m allergic to most foods.”

  I felt like I was talking to some old, crippled woman in a nursing home—no alcohol, no high-calorie foods, no sudden movement, and no fun. She might as well live in a plastic bubble so that our world would not contaminate her small, sterile environment.

  At first, she frowned, but soon nodded in agreement. “I suppose I could find something to eat at a restaurant.”

  “Great!” I was finally going out on a date with my wife. She had decided to leave the Bat Cave for a little food and excitement. I did not know
if I could contain my excitement.

  “But only if I pick the restaurant,” she stipulated.

  “Sure,” I said knowing full well that she had no idea where to eat. She always made her own lunch and dinner and generally hid from the consuming masses.

  I kicked out little Ms. Rant and crazy Tommy. Of course, I did it with diplomatic finesse by asking them if they wanted to come along. I already knew the outcome beforehand. Rant avoided public places like the plague, unless surrounded by her band of close and armed friends. As for Tommy, he hated refined “dead foods” found at most eating establishments. Of course, I had to take a little dig and offer to buy him a big bag of French fries. That got him out the back door fast.

  We finally agreed on an Italian restaurant—the Butterfly Café—which I had frequented when I attended San Jacinto College. After arriving at the restaurant, Sarah took considerable time choosing something to eat and settled on a Cobb salad. I went for the lasagna. The evening was surprisingly enjoyable.

  “So, how is it going at work?” Sarah asked, actually showing a good deal of interest.

  I glowed with a smile. “Not much. Same old bull crap. Except for one strange curiosity. Big Al wants to tell residents which streets to drive to get to their destinations. Now,… how crazy is that?”

  Sarah laughed. “You’re kidding.”

  “No, it’s true. Of course, nobody is going to listen to such drivel.”

  “Are you so sure?”

  “Trust me, Al’s big idea will be gone like the wind in a flash.

  “You mean the big windbag will soon be deflated?”

  “Precisely!” In sheer delight, I reached out and cupped my hand over Sarah’s forearm. She reciprocated, leaning over to plant a sweet kiss on my cheek. What a great evening. We talked late into the night. Her eyes twinkled and my spirits lifted to new heights. It was magical; it was stimulating. What was happening to us?