“And here you are, young man. You have been given to us a second time. First, with the truck and now, well, with the truck again.” She indicated with her hand to the tires. “You know how to do this good work, because your father passed that knowledge down to you.” She looked at him as if to say that Stephen would be his brother now. As if they would look out for each other, and she would play mother hen. “So… Do you see?”
She pointed to the tires, ground down to the nubbins. She pointed to a toolbox and a jack that she’d pulled out for them. She pointed to the ruts in the ground and the tires buried in them. “Strong in the broken places.” She clapped her hands together. “Let’s go. Let’s get this done!” The boys grinned. They were laughing to see her happy. She had the kind of smile that made a person happy just to see it.
“Calvin, you organize. Stephen, help him and keep him honest. Do one tire at a time, and do it right the first time. Do you hear me? The first time! Lay it in thick. And tight. Pound it in with a rock… I am going to walk out on the road and keep a watch out. If you hear a shot, any kind of gunfire, hide in the forest and wait for me. Do you hear me?” The boys nodded. And with that, she was gone.
****
Calvin unfastened the green tarp, and then pulled it down from the bed of the truck. He laid it out on top of a small, raised area of grass that stuck up above the snow. The truck, sliding off of the roadway, had dug deep and muddy ruts into the snow, and now the brown ruts were stark against the frozen white. He and Stephen shoveled wet mud onto the tarp until they had a good coating covering the center of the green, maybe three inches thick. Then they walked over to the fence line and anywhere else where the grass grew up through the snow, and they gathered armloads of organic material… grass, straw, weeds, and hay… anything.
Then they did the mud dance.
They stomped on the mixture for five to ten minutes at a time, then Calvin would pull one end of the tarp and then the other to flip over the thick, heavy “dough” that they were making, then they’d stomp it again. As they stomped, they talked and laughed like brothers. They made up a rap called the mud rap, and each one added a verse each time as they stomped heartily in the cold morning.
When the straw and mud were thoroughly mixed, they dumped the whole pile near one of the rear tires of the truck, and then began the whole process again.
This process went on for over an hour, and at the end of that time, they had enough mud/cob mixture to fill the tires.
Next, they jacked up the truck and removed the tires one at a time. Calvin showed them how to use the tire iron as a lever to remove the rubber from the bead without pulling off the whole tire. Then they stuffed. They stuffed and stuffed. And they pounded. Pounded and pounded.
When they could not get another ounce of cob into the tires, they finished, remounted the tire, and went to the next one.
“When we drive down the road, the cob will heat up and expand and fill what’s left of the cavity,” Calvin said.
“Are you sure?” Stephen asked.
“No!”
“You aren’t sure?”
“Nope! I’ve never done this before! I just told you that my father saw it done. It’s supposed to work, though.”
****
“Dude, your mom’s kind of intense,” said Calvin as they were pounding the cob down into the last tire with a rock that they’d found in the woods. The truck had slid down an embankment and down a smallish hill. They both knew it would take all the strength they could muster to get it up the hill, back onto the road, even under ideal conditions. They were working to better their odds.
“Yeah, she is.” Stephen looked into the distance, as if he were thinking of another time.
“What happened to your dad?”
“Oh, he was killed in a subway accident. Years ago. He gave up his life saving this woman he didn’t know. Jumped down on the tracks and lifted her up and…” He split his hands apart, helpless to find the words.
“Yeah, people called my dad a hero, too. He died to keep from hurting someone else.” Stephen looked at him blankly. Calvin continued, “It’s not really the same thing, but it is. Kind of.”
“Yeah, bro. I hear you.”
So, the conversation went on this way. The boys talked and worked. Occasionally, Veronica would come back to check on them, and she would encourage them through the process. She would always mix her little pep talks with object lessons. The boys would listen intently, and, as the sun crept across the morning sky and started to blend into afternoon, they completed their work.
****
The line of military-style vehicles pulled up in a straight edge on a long road that ran through the heart of Pennsylvania farm country. The lead vehicle, an odd looking RV that seemed to have some kind of plated armor that made it, from a distance, look like a spaceship or a dinosaur, pulled into a small rounded driveway. The drivers were driving with purpose toward a destination known, apparently, only to themselves.
They pulled into the small driveway and stopped at a checkpoint on the private driveway. The men driving the military vehicles showed some kind of credentials, and then there was a conference, and then the vehicles proceeded down the drive and dipped along a long winding road that led up to a farmhouse. They pulled in with practiced precision and lined up in beautifully stacked rows. The vehicles were orderly in their performance and worked together as one in a mechanical ballet.
The last few vehicles did not enter the driveway. They didn’t stop at the checkpoint and they didn’t follow the others up to the farmhouse. These few continued down the farm road, heading somewhere else.
****
The RV called ‘Bernice’ was parked behind the farmhouse, and inside the odd-shaped RV sat two men. One of the men looked like a cowboy, and the other looked like a leprechaun. A wee bit, anyway. They got out of the lead vehicle, the cowboy and the leprechaun, and they walked up to the doorway of the farmhouse. From a distance one could make out through the late afternoon haze the cowboy tipping his hat to the person who opened the door. The cowboy tipped his hat, and the leprechaun bowed at the waist. The leprechaun then did a little dipsy-doodle shuffle of his feet as he walked in behind the cowboy, and the door was shut behind them.
****
Red Beard looked at Clive. Red Beard’s real name was Pat, but by now we all know him as Red Beard. That’s what Clive called him, too. The two men found themselves seated in an old-fashioned drawing room. In the corner of the room was a small, simple table with a kerosene lamp. The light was evening out in fine shadows across the floor. Red Beard leaned back in his chair and said, “Let me tell you a story…”
Clive looked at Red Beard. “Tell it.”
Red Beard looked at Clive again. “Well, I think I will…” He gathered himself in order to give the story the weight it deserved.
“There was once this man who started a business. It was a small business. The man struggled. He scrimped and saved. He beat the bushes to find new customers and worked the ice cream socials at the local church. He joined the PTA.” Red Beard paused.
Clive put his hand out, as if to stop him. “But did the tax man get his share? That’s all I care to know.” Clive flashed his best Sam Elliot smile. Red Beard spread his hands out before him.
“Of course. Indeed.”
Red Beard continued. “So, his business was coming down to a crisis. It was one of those situations where sometimes you get the bear,” he paused, “and sometimes the bear gets you… but, in this case, the bear was just about to have the final say.”
Clive put his hand out to stop him again. “You know if you change bear to beer in that story, it still reads the same…?” He chuckled to himself and Red Beard paused.
Again, he smiled. “Indeed, it does.”
“So, the man finally begins to make it,” Red Beard said, “you know? And he hires a sales force. And his tippy-top sales guy – his very, very best – turns out to be a loafer.”
Red Beard leaned over to wh
isper to Clive, as if conspiratorially, “I lean and loaf, at my ease…” He indicated with his hand across the ground… “observing a spear of summer grass…” He acted out the drama, and looked at Clive as if the words spoke for themselves. He wanted Clive to know that he had an eye for such things. He was a loafer, he seemed to say, but practiced and studious about it.
Clive also looked down at his feet, at their feet. He too imagined how lush and green this farmland was, the imaginary farmland under their feet, how valuable it could be.
“So what happened to yer feller? The loafer?” Clive watched as Red Beard came back into his thoughts. Clive had never left his.
“So, this guy’s sales force was incensed. Right? The whole lot of them. As a group. Pissed off. They couldn’t put up with such debasement. Naturally, it did not matter to them that the loafer had the best numbers in the office. How did he get them?! That was the question. And the loafer didn’t help his cause any. He’d spend a couple of hours a day doing his sales calls, and then he’d go across the street to the Y and play cards. He’d gamble all day with his feet on the table. On the table! Can you imagine it?”
“I can!” Clive said.
“So, you can imagine the consternation of the crowd. The business owner hired a consultant. He asked him to solve the problem. The consultant did a month long study of the problem, looking at the business, its productivity, its camaraderie, the social cohesion, morale, and the experience of the layout of the hermeneutical biodegradable whatever, whatever, the whatever… The consultant went through whole shebang, got it?’
“I do have it, sir!” Clive nodded.
“And the consultant came to a final conclusion and put his answer in a one sentence report. Get rid of the whole office and hire ten more like the loafer.”
Red Beard indicated with his hand the lush bounty at their feet. He held up his ragged boots, as if he were looking past them into springtime, as if he and Clive were, at that moment, in a green field with cold beers in their hands, steaks on the grill, kids running through the sprinklers on the lawn. He looked down at his feet and saw them as if lightly resting on the long wispy strands of grass on the lawn of a warm spring afternoon in the ancient green of Pennsylvania.
****
Clive indicated with his hand to the ground. “May I?” he said, with a low sweep of his arm.
“By all means,” Red Beard answered, and settled back in his chair for the ride.
“That’s what we’re doing here,” Clive indicated with his thumb and forefinger to both the time and the place. “We’re firing the lot of ’em. Both the criminals who corrupted capitalism and turned it into a private candy store for cronies, and the democratic socialists who want to steal everything and then run the world their own way. Believe it or not, the fascists are working with the communists. But we’re clearing the decks of the lot of ’em – or at least we’re taking away their power. We didn’t start this war, but we saw it comin’. People won’t get it because they can’t see the whole thing yet. Someday they will, if they live long enough. Maybe they think we’re terrorists or something. They’ll never understand the Luddites until a new world gets built on the old one. They still think the Russians and Americans are goin’ at it, when in reality the powers that be… the industrialists, the banksters, the globalists, and the international socialists are the ones having a go at the people. They didn’t expect us to muddle with their business, but we’re doin’ it anyway.
“We didn’t set off the EMP. The commies did, and they did it with the help and aid of the corporatists and the globalists, on the left and on the right. The old-guard Soviets built the micro-nuke in North Korea while our folks twiddled their thumbs and guaranteed the people there wasn’t a threat. Nope. We didn’t start the fire, but we knew it was coming, and we let it happen because the world needed a re-start.”
Clive rubbed his hands together and pointed at the imaginary field of green under their feet. He nodded his head at Red Beard before he continued.
“But we’re not gonna let ’em do what they have planned. The invasions will never happen. Their forces aren’t going to re-group, because we’ll hit them every time they get started. They can’t see us, and we’re everywhere. We’re a Luddite army, worldwide and not on the clock, and this time we’ve got the best toys. Just the irony alone is worth the expense.”
Clive concluded his story, and, when he did, he looked over at Red Beard, and he saw that the man was riveted.
“You can’t talk to ‘em now, Pat! They all want it back. – the 1% and the 99%. Mind slaves! They want the comforts, and the velvet handcuffs. They want the empire and the tyranny, too! They want the degradation and the mindless and soulless jobs and the promise of a vacation in a tiny camping spot by a poisoned lake, and food genetically modified to last forever and never spoil. They want it all back, Pat, so you can’t talk to them now. In ten years… twenty years… maybe then you can explain what has happened to them. Now? They’re digging roots for calories and figuring out how to drink their pee. You can’t talk to them until the dust settles.”
Red Beard smiled. “Do you think that maybe your plan is a bit hypocritical and… just a tad morally ambiguous?”
“Of course.”
“Okay then.”
“Twain said that history doesn’t repeat itself, my friend,” Clive began. Red Beard held up his hand as if to let Clive know that he would finish the sentence, this time, for him.
“But it rhymes.”
****
Red Beard listened to Clive go on for a while longer. The glow from the kerosene heater in the corner of the room made his beard glow along with it. Its orange hue was set off by the umbered darkening air of the evening. The light began to fade. They both glowed as they sat in the chairs, waiting there in the drawing room. They shared more conversation and were electric with ideas. And ideals. They glowed in their seats.
They felt like… equals.
Neither of them cast a shadow.
****
Veronica and the boys had pushed and pulled for a half hour, but to no avail. This light was beginning to fade, and she knew they could not be out here another night. “We can do this,” Veronica encouraged them. “We just have to find the Archimedean point!” She gave a grunt as she said the last word, lifting up on a branch she had wedged under the bumper, trying to find a solid place in the sludge under the truck from which to gain leverage. The truck bumped a little. Calvin and Stephen heaved just as she did the lift again, and the truck bumped once more. “Okay, boys. I might have found the sweet spot. We just need to put more rocks under the wheel over there,” she indicated with her hand toward the rear tire, “so we can get more traction…” Stephen placed some small rocks under the tire as she lifted on the branch. “And Calvin keep it in low, and give it a little gas …” Veronica paused to make sure both boys were ready. She took a breath.
“And… Heave!”
****
Sometimes in life, the narrative steps sideways. It simply takes a step to the left or the right. Whichever way you want to imagine it. Like when you close your left eye and you see a slightly different world than when you close you right eye. Time shifts, in inches. The world becomes different… but only slightly different.
****
Veronica lifted with all her might. She leaned into the branch and lifted from her knees, from her loins, from her heart. Stephen stood at the back bumper with his mother. He shifted his feet in the sludge and tried to find solid footing from which to push. He leaned his shoulder into the bumper and gave it his all. Calvin jerked his body forward slightly in the bucket seat, as if that would help with the momentum, and gave the truck a little gas.
It caught, just slightly. The truck rocked back just a bit, and Veronica lifted again, getting her shoulder under the branch. Calvin heard the whine and felt the blessed pull of forward momentum. Stephen slipped in the sludge once the tires caught, and in Calvin’s excitement at applying pressure to the gas pedal, the truck
lurched forward and pulled up into the track from the night before.
The truck was on the roadway before Calvin saw the two military vehicles bearing down upon him with frightening speed. He was out of the truck before the men with guns had stopped their vehicles and spread out along the roadside. Stephen and Veronica came up out of the ditch and saw the men standing there and looked at Calvin and he looked at them. The soldiers raised their guns. Calvin stepped into the middle of the road and did a little hop, raising one hand in the air and reaching into his back pocket for something.
A piece of paper.
The guards aimed their guns, and Calvin came out of his little hop, caught himself and stood up taller and held both his hands high in the air. The white paper in one hand, now unfolded, spilled out of his fist like a flag of surrender. He offered it to the guards, and one of them made a little motion toward him, as if to accept it.
“It’s OKAY. It’s OKAY,” Calvin said, with his hands still raised above his head. The men with the guns pointed at him, and then tensed, and then relaxed with Calvin’s next words.
“I’m with Jonathan Wall.”
The gun barrels dropped toward the ground in unison.
****
The stream of life sometimes gathers its force and pushes into the present with an amazing burst of energy. Like a bomb. Or like something plunging off of a cliff. There was a traveler once who had such an experience. His name was Clay Richter. He went for a walk in the country, and stepped off the edge of the earth. He had a strange encounter with an alien force. Not the outer space kind of alien, but the surreal and perfect kind of alien, a mirrored self in a way, a shadowed self. Clay had that strange encounter with this alien self… thisother… and it changed him. He’d had this strange encounter at precisely the moment in time when a revolution was sparked. He’d found a friend in the midst of his trial, an equal, a man named Volkhov. That meeting had changed him.
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