"Yeah, but I cover a lot of ground. See a lot of things. I'll bet that's why they want to talk to me. They're just looking for eco-freaks."
"Yeah, maybe you're right. It's probably that.” She nods slowly, trying to make herself believe. “Those enviros, they don't make any sense at all. Not enough water for people, and they want to give the river to a bunch of fish and birds."
Lolo nods emphatically and grins wider. “Yeah. Stupid.” But suddenly he views the eco-crazies with something approaching brotherly affection. The Californians are after him, too.
* * * *
Lolo doesn't sleep all night. His instincts tell him to run, but he doesn't have the heart to tell Annie, or to leave her. He goes out in the morning hunting tamarisk and fails at that as well. He doesn't cut a single stand all day. He considers shooting himself with his shotgun, but chickens out when he gets the barrels in his mouth. Better alive and on the run than dead. Finally, as he stares into the twin barrels, he knows that he has to tell Annie, tell her he's been a water thief for years and that he's got to run north. Maybe she'll come with him. Maybe she'll see reason. They'll run together. At least they have that. For sure, he's not going to let those bastards take him off to a labor camp for the rest of his life.
But the guardies are already waiting when Lolo gets back. They're squatting in the shade of their Humvee, talking. When Lolo comes over the crest of the hill, one of them taps the other and points. They both stand. Annie is out in the field again, turning over dirt, unaware of what's about to happen. Lolo reins in and studies the guardies. They lean against their Humvee and watch him come back.
Suddenly Lolo sees his future. It plays out in his mind the way it does in a movie, as clear as the blue sky above. He puts his hand on his shotgun. Where it sits on Maggie's far side, the guardies can't see it. He keeps Maggie angled away from them and lets the camel start down the hill.
The guardies saunter toward him. They've got their Humvee with a .50 caliber on the back and they've both got M-16s but they're slung over their shoulders. They're in full bulletproof gear and they look flushed and hot. Lolo rides down slowly. He'll have to hit them both in the face. Sweat trickles between his shoulder blades. His hand is slick on the shotgun's stock.
The guardies are playing it cool. They've still got their rifles slung, and they let Lolo keep approaching. One of them has a wide smile. He's maybe forty years old, and tanned. He's been out for a while, picking up a tan like that. The other raises a hand and says, “Hey there, Lolo."
Lolo's so surprised he takes his hand off his shotgun. “Hale?” He recognizes the guardie. He grew up with him. They played football together a million years ago, when football fields still had green grass and sprinklers sprayed their water straight into the air. Hale. Hale Perkins. Lolo scowls. He can't shoot Hale.
Hale says, “You're still out here, huh?"
"What the hell are you doing in that uniform? You with the Calies now?"
Hale grimaces and points to his uniform patches: Utah National Guard.
Lolo scowls. Utah National Guard. Colorado National Guard. Arizona National Guard. They're all the same. There's hardly a single member of the “National Guard” that isn't an out-of-state mercenary. Most of the local guardies quit a long time ago, sick to death of goose-stepping family and friends off their properties and sick to death of trading potshots with people who just wanted to stay in their homes. So even if there's still a Colorado National Guard, or an Arizona or a Utah, inside those uniforms with all their expensive nightsight gear and their brand-new choppers flying the river bends, it's pure California.
And then there are a few like Hale.
Lolo remembers Hale as being an okay guy. Remembers stealing a keg of beer from behind the Elks Club one night with him. Lolo eyes him. “How you liking that Supplementary Assistance Program?” He glances at the other guardie. “That working real well for you? The Calies a big help?"
Hale's eyes plead for understanding. “Come on, Lolo. I'm not like you. I got a family to look after. If I do another year of duty, they let Shannon and the kids base out of California."
"They give you a swimming pool in your backyard, too?"
"You know it's not like that. Water's scarce there, too."
Lolo wants to taunt him, but his heart isn't in it. A part of him wonders if Hale is just smart. At first, when California started winning its water lawsuits and shutting off cities, the displaced people just followed the water—right to California. It took a little while before the bureaucrats realized what was going on, but finally someone with a sharp pencil did the math and realized that taking in people along with their water didn't solve a water shortage. So the immigration fences went up.
But people like Hale can still get in.
"So what do you two want?” Inside, Lolo's wondering why they haven't already pulled him off Maggie and hauled him away, but he's willing to play this out.
The other guardie grins. “Maybe we're just out here seeing how the water ticks live."
Lolo eyes him. This one, he could shoot. He lets his hand fall to his shotgun again. “BuRec sets my headgate. No reason for you to be out here."
The Calie says, “There were some marks on it. Big ones."
Lolo smiles tightly. He knows which marks the Calie is talking about. He made them with five different wrenches when he tried to dismember the entire headgate apparatus in a fit of obsession. Finally he gave up trying to open the bolts and just beat on the thing, banging the steel of the gate, smashing at it, while on the other side he had plants withering. After that, he gave up and just carried buckets of water to his plants and left it at that. But the dents and nicks are still there, reminding him of a period of madness. “It still works, don't it?"
Hale holds up a hand to his partner, quieting him. “Yeah, it still works. That's not why we're here."
"So what do you two want? You didn't drive all the way out here with your machine gun just to talk about dents in my headgate."
Hale sighs, put-upon, trying to be reasonable. “You mind getting down off that damn camel so we can talk?"
Lolo studies the two guardies, figuring his chances on the ground. “Shit.” He spits. “Yeah, okay. You got me.” He urges Maggie to kneel and climbs off her hump. “Annie didn't know anything about this. Don't get her involved. It was all me."
Hale's brow wrinkles, puzzled. “What are you talking about?"
"You're not arresting me?"
The Calie with Hale laughs. “Why? ‘Cause you take a couple buckets of water from the river? ‘Cause you probably got an illegal cistern around here somewhere?” He laughs again. “You ticks are all the same. You think we don't know about all that crap?"
Hale scowls at the Calie, then turns back to Lolo. “No, we're not here to arrest you. You know about the Straw?"
"Yeah.” Lolo says it slowly, but inside, he's grinning. A great weight is suddenly off him. They don't know. They don't know jack. It was a good plan when he started it, and it's a good plan still. Lolo schools his face to keep the glee off, and tries to listen to what Hale's saying, but he can't, he's jumping up and down and jibbering like a monkey. They don't know—
"Wait.” Lolo holds up his hand. “What did you just say?"
Hale repeats himself. “California's ending the water bounty. They've got enough Straw sections built up now that they don't need the program. They've got half the river enclosed. They got an agreement from the Department of Interior to focus their budget on seep and evaporation control. That's where all the big benefits are. They're shutting down the water bounty payout program.” He pauses. “I'm sorry, Lolo."
Lolo frowns. “But a tamarisk is still a tamarisk. Why should one of those damn plants get the water? If I knock out a tamarisk, even if Cali doesn't want the water, I could still take it. Lots of people could use the water."
Hale looks pityingly at Lolo. “We don't make the regulations, we just enforce them. I'm supposed to tell you that your headgate won't get opened next
year. If you keep hunting tamarisk, it won't do any good.” He looks around the patch, then shrugs. “Anyway, in another couple years they were going to pipe this whole stretch. There won't be any tamarisk at all after that."
"What am I supposed to do, then?"
"California and BuRec is offering early buyout money.” Hale pulls a booklet out of his bulletproof vest and flips it open. “Sort of to soften the blow.” The pages of the booklet flap in the hot breeze. Hale pins the pages with a thumb and pulls a pen out of another vest pocket. He marks something on the booklet, then tears off a perforated check. “It's not a bad deal."
Lolo takes the check. Stares at it. “Five hundred dollars?"
Hale shrugs sadly. “It's what they're offering. That's just the paper codes. You confirm it on-line. Use your BuRec camera phone, and they'll deposit it in whatever bank you want. Or they can hold it in trust until you get into a town and want to withdraw it. Any place with a BLM office, you can do that. But you need to confirm before April 15. Then BuRec'll send out a guy to shut down your headgate before this season gets going."
"Five hundred dollars?"
"It's enough to get you north. That's more than they're offering next year."
"But this is my patch."
"Not as long as we've got Big Daddy Drought. I'm sorry, Lolo."
"The drought could break any time. Why can't they give us a couple more years? It could break any time.” But even as he says it, Lolo doesn't believe. Ten years ago, he might have. But not now. Big Daddy Drought's here to stay. He clutches the check and its keycodes to his chest.
A hundred yards away, the river flows on to California.
[Back to Table of Contents]
Plumage From Pegasus: Grow Old Along with Me by Paul Di Filippo
"James Patterson has taken the plunge. So have Carl Hiaasen, Alexander McCall Smith, Neil Gaiman, Alice Hoffman and John Feinstein, among many others. And now it's Mary Higgins Clark's turn: she becomes the latest bestselling adult book author to try her hand at children's books. Next spring she'll publish her first picture book, Ghost Ship: A Cape Cod Story...."—"Mary Higgins Clark to Become Children's Author,” Publishers Weekly Children's Bookshelf, August 11, 2006.
* * * *
Progeria Press is proud to present its line of quality Young Adult books for Spring 2007. As always, we strive to live up to our slogan: “You're never too young to grow up fast!"
All books recommended for Grades K-8, and available through the Stochastic Book Club for Precocious Youths.
* * * *
The Corridor Showcase Atrocity Exhibition, by J. G. Ballard. Sixth-grader Travis, a student at Ronald Reagan Elementary School, receives the assignment of filling the showcase outside his classroom with educational materials. He assembles a surrealistic multimedia presentation documenting fifty years of information overload, paranoia, psychotic consumerism, and sexual fetishism. Not only does he receive an “A” from his teacher, Mr. Jack Kennedy, but the school's principal, Marilyn Elizabeth Monroe-Taylor, becomes his lover, serving as a fatal succubus and psychopomp.
* * * *
Wading Pools of Lust, by Samuel R. Delany. In a fantastical city of polymorphous perversity, a young orphaned brother and sister under the tutelage of a debauched sea captain who might very well be the Devil himself experience a wide range of drug-fueled sexual adventures. (NOTE: repackaged text is identical with Delany's adult novel, Tides of Lust, with the legalistic faade of juvenile characters being referenced as “one-hundred-and-twelve years old” removed throughout.)
* * * *
Deathbird Fairytales, by Harlan Ellison. Narrated by the corpse of the author's little dog, these various tales illustrate the emptiness of the moral universe, the malign antipathy of the Judeo-Christian God, the treachery and self-servingness of mankind, and the traumas associated with growing up in the Midwest in the 1940s.
* * * *
The Littlest Black Dahlia, by James Ellroy. A serial killer is abducting and horribly mutilating spelling-bee contestants, and little Tiffany-Amber Lexicon appears to be next in line for ritual slaughter. Unfortunately, there is no escape for her, and she is subsequently defenestrated, excoriated and excruciated, all while demanding that those terms be used in an exemplary sentence.
* * * *
A Lunchroom Unknown, by Philip Jos Farmer. When a meteor lands in the backyard of ten-year-old Wally “Wold” Newton, his normal maturation is accelerated and he is transfigured into a priapic figure whose exploits in satyriasis both confound and amuse his classmates.
* * * *
Bedtime Pot Stories, by Paul Krassner. Famed iconoclast and Yuppie founder Krassner provides a companion volume to his 1999 anthology Pot Stories for the Soul. Dozens of middle-school correspondents reveal their initial encounters with smoking marijuana, including humorous stories of busts, school expulsions, bad deals, munchies, unintentionally hilarious newscasts, and parental ignorance.
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Camp Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon. Boy Scout Tyrone Slothrop discovers that his odd upbringing has endowed him with a prophetic sensitivity to incidents of bullies administering “Indian sunburns.” His talents are co-opted by the elite and Machiavellian clique of Scouts at Camp Gravity's Rainbow, and Slothrop is soon overtaxed into evanescense. PARENTAL ADVISORY: caca-eating scenes included.
* * * *
Playground of Night, by John Rechy. Pre-teen Richie Youngman feels compelled to haunt the school-bus parking lot, offering to do homework for money. He experiences a major embarrassment when, in front of a large afterschool crowd, bad boys steal his belt, causing his pants to fall down and thus revealing that he's wearing Powerpuff Girl undies.
* * * *
Last Bikepath to Brooklyn, by Hubert Selby. Discovered in Selby's papers after his 2004 death, this novel chronicles the adventures of the blithely nave Tralala, a young girl of eleven whose newspaper-delivery route takes her into a rough neighborhood where tips are nonexistent and gangs of rival newspaper boys await to ambush her and subject her to multiple noogies.
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Cosmic Capgun Trigger, by Robert Anton Wilson. A child's primer on hallucinogenic mushrooms, brain reprogramming, Masonic rituals, Mayan calendric apocalypses, Discordian philosophy and anarchist culture-jamming. Sample exercises in monkey-wrenching the dominant paradigm are provided, as well as pointers on going underground.
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If these titles have intrigued you, be sure to visit the Progeria Press website and register for e-mail updates. You'll learn in advance about such future offerings as The Lost Girlhood of Ramona Quimby, by Alan Moore and Beverly Cleary; Lord Horror's Guide for Making Friends, by David Britton; and Behold the Easter Bunny, by Michael Moorcock.
[Back to Table of Contents]
Kaleidoscope by K. D. Wentworth
K. D. Wentworth says her current projects include a western fantasy for young readers and a pair of books she's co-writing with Eric Flint. Her charming new story owes its origin to a neighbor's escaped German Shorthaired Pointer, but we're hopeful that the rest of the story is more fancy than fact.
* * * *
After she took early retirement at fifty-two from her job at the university library, Ally Coelho's life ran along like an old car, occasionally missing on one cylinder or the other, but in the end, usually getting her at least close to where she wanted to go. Of course there were disappointments, especially in the relationship department, but she made do with whatever came along until the universe started amusing itself by playing dice with her life.
It had begun with a stray dog that bounded past the front yard when Ally was on her knees, weeding geraniums. The day was golden June, the temperature already climbing toward the nineties. Her auburn hair clung to her perspiring face like the calyx of one of her flowers.
The dog was a sleek German Shorthaired Pointer, lean as a racing hound and panting from the day's heat. Ally lured it with a bowl of water and then examined its tag, which revealed its name was
“Sadee.” She phoned the owner, who drove over in a silver van and collected it with many expressions of gratitude.
That was how it had happened. But she also knew that the dog had merely glanced at her with freedom-crazed eyes, then careened off into the street where a Ford Tempo had knocked it into the gutter. That time she'd checked for a tag and called the owner, too, who had arrived with two weeping boys, eleven and nine, to collect Sadee's broken body in an old blanket for burial.
Both scenes played in her mind like dueling movie trailers. She remembered the boys’ beaming faces when they hugged their retrieved companion and their tears as their mother picked up the pointer's carcass.
It wasn't one or the other. Somehow, it was both.
She knew she could resolve the question of which memory was real by calling the family, who lived less than a mile away, and asking after the dog, but she feared the answer. As long as she didn't inquire, the pointer might very well be frisking in its backyard, digging holes and playing ball. If it was buried under a tree somewhere, she did not want to know. So she didn't even drive past the dog's house, hoping to catch a glimpse. She just tried to put the whole matter out of her mind and worked on dividing her hostas for replanting.
But then her young friend Melinda, a former coworker from the library, called to say she and Carl, her longtime beau, were finally getting married. They would have a huge ceremony at the Methodist church and then leave on a wedding trip to Scotland. There were rings to buy, invitations and music to be selected, the perfect dress to be found. It was all joyous and anticipatory, as though Christmas and Thanksgiving both had arrived in June.
When Ally got up the next morning, though, she also knew that Carl had been transferred to Rio and not asked Melinda to go with him. Instead, he had said it was too far to carry on a long-distance relationship. They had best agree just to be friends. Melinda was inconsolable and no longer answered the phone.
Ally felt she must be going crazy. Both time lines ran in her mind, equally valid. Surely one of them had happened first, but when she tried to remember which, they danced through her memory, woven together and inseparable.
FSF Magazine, May 2007 Page 9