by William Bebb
CHAPTER 8
Charlie Farro & A Sign From God
The low riding moon was bright as Charlie Farro drove his battery operated scooter along rows of his plants- stopping briefly every couple of feet to inspect the buds and trim those that looked ready for harvesting. He cared for his medium sized plot of marijuana like a nervous father who tried to do everything he could to have his children grow up to be a success, albeit children he would eventually smoke or sell off.
Charlie enjoyed his quiet peaceful existence. His trailer was cleverly hidden in an out of the way corner of the park and no one ever came to visit. For him, it was close to paradise on Earth.
The original road that led to his personal version of Shangri-la was overgrown with decade’s worth of plants and trees. A narrow winding path he occasionally took to visit Hector and his other associates in the trailer park was just wide enough for his scooter and he liked it that way. Hector was always interested in purchasing Farro's marijuana and was happy to go into town for him and buy things that Charlie occasionally wanted or needed.
Colonel Lester was right when he called Charlie a hermit. Mr. Farro would have laughed and agreed wholeheartedly with the old man's assessment. Charlie enjoyed being self sufficient and loved being alone.
People are no damn good, was his motto and he believed it with all his heart. He heard Cha-ka hooting in the garden and smiled to himself as he drove his scooter thru a wide shallow creek that ran through his compound. Smiling up at the moon as the scooter's wheels rolled over the rocks in the water he felt life couldn't get much better.
The only thing that slightly concerned him was the almost continuous screaming drifting from the trailer park over the last few days. While it was just half a mile away he wasn't worried- just a bit concerned and considerably annoyed by the nonstop noise. His six foot tall chain link fence surrounding his compound was well hidden from the park itself and he'd been living on his own for the last few decades. Except for an occasional visit from Hector, no one ever came to visit. He believed in himself and enjoyed the life of solitude. His few acres of 'paradise' legally belonged to the trailer park, but he never told the Remlap’s when he had his trailer brought into the little hidden section of the valley back in 1987.
No one knows I'm here, and why should they? He thought. His home was totally off the grid. There were no phones, no power lines, and no TV filled with what he considered to be crap masquerading as entertainment. He drove his scooter next to the trailer and gathered the power cords that connected to his solar panels on the roof and hooked them to the charger.
Grunting loudly, he lifted his prosthetic legs off the scooter and grabbed his wooden staff with his left hand and made his way over to the porch next to his trailer. The porch had a large homemade lounge chair constructed out of two by fours that was situated right next to the front door. There was a hammock made out of tough nylon netting strung between the trailer and a flag pole. His old somewhat tattered flag featured a large green marijuana leaf on a white background.
Several old discolored plastic jugs were scattered near his lounge chair. Most of them were empty, but they all reeked strongly of urine.
After setting the basket of marijuana buds on a table made out of a large old wooden cable spool, Charlie opened his jug of home brew whiskey and had a sip. He hummed tunelessly while hanging the freshly picked buds on a fishing line with wooden clothes pins. When they dried out, he would store them in some large plastic bags. His shed was almost half full and he planned on seeing Hector soon to do some trading. After hanging the last of the buds, he went to the other line and removed the dried out ones. When he finished collecting them, he sat slowly down in his lounge chair and looked in his basket of buds. It was a good haul and he inhaled the aroma while leaning back in his lounge chair and stared up at the moon. After a few moments he rolled a joint, lit it, and inhaled deeply.
Charlie was feeling old and tired.
As he smoked he wished himself a happy birthday. Most people his age would consider it depressing to be celebrating another year of life alone in a dark deserted canyon, but he smiled slightly.
Long ago he decided that people weren't worth a damn as a rule and planned his future so that he'd have as little contact with them as possible. Before he found this place he'd told those few friends he had, his plan for life- it was as simple as it was ingenious. “I’m going to find a little piece of land where no one ever comes, build a fence, grow what food I need and just enjoy a life of solitude.”
They'd laughed and said he sounded like he wanted to be a hermit.
Charlie would just smile and nod his head as he meticulously made his plans.
He wasn't stupid then and still wasn't, even decades after he secretly had his trailer delivered and set up at night. Having hired day laborers to install the fence around his small kingdom, he felt safe and secure. He planned to spend the rest of his life alone- well, alone except for his two friends.
He bought Skynyrd back in the 1990s. It was a cute Burmese Python weighing only twenty pounds. The snake was only six feet long when Hector delivered it to his trailer, but Charlie was uncertain precisely just how long or how much it weighed any longer. Skynyrd was a good friend who earned his keep by devouring rats and rabbits that would occasionally invade Farro's garden. The snake didn't even chase or try to eat Charlie's only other friend, Cha-ka, any longer.
Oh sure, the snake liked to play games with both him and Cha-ka sometimes. But Charlie knew how to tickle the python with his prosthetic arm's metal pincers in a way that always made Skynyrd behave. And Cha-ka always scurried away when the snake was in a 'hugging' mood.
Cha-ka was a Capuchin monkey Charlie had gotten a decade earlier. She was very sweet and loved to eat tomatoes from the garden and also enjoyed smoking marijuana with him, from time to time. The only problem was sometimes she loved to wander away and explore the neighborhood.
That bad habit often made Charlie worry when she disappeared sometimes for days at a time. But, as he smoked his joint, he saw the monkey curled up in her basket under the stereo by the front door of the trailer.
Sometimes he liked to think of himself as a modern day Adam from the Garden of Eden, only without an Eve. If he ever thought too hard about lacking a woman he'd just remember all the trouble they'd caused him throughout his life and be thankful to be alone. The only thing Charlie remembered with clarity about the Garden of Eden was the fact that it was paradise until a woman came along and fucked it all up.
He tried to relax but couldn't.
His mind lately had been filled with disturbing thoughts of rabbits and screaming neighbors.
It was almost like an invasion of rabbits in Charlie's paradise and the situation seemed to be getting serious. Having always grown vegetables, in addition to his marijuana, he'd gotten used to the occasional rabbit intrusion. However, over the last few days an alarming number of rabbits had been invading his garden.
They’d feasted on and eradicated his tomato plants and then moved on to his corn, which he used to make whiskey with a homemade still. Generally, he liked the rabbits because without their frequent visits he would have been forced to become a vegetarian decades ago- a thought that made him feel nauseated. In the course of an average week his snares might catch three or four of the long eared meals, yet ever since the neighbors decided to take up screaming as some sort of social activity he'd been swamped with rabbits. His snares caught nearly a hundred in just four days, but the worst part was the way the little furry farts had terrorized his garden without mercy.
Saturday, they ate all his tomatoes and some of his corn. Sunday, they had nearly devoured almost all his corn and moved on to attack his beloved marijuana plants. He never realized rabbits could get stoned on marijuana until yesterday when he went out and found over a dozen of them scattered around the garden in a dazed nearly comatose condition. On the plus side, that made snapping their necks easy but the loss of two fully grown pot plants still infuriated him.
He
was sure it was all related to whatever shenanigans the Mexicans were up to, plus their incessant screaming, that was forcing the rabbits to migrate. Plus the screams made getting mellow nearly impossible no matter how much pot he smoked.
“There's only one answer for annoying neighbors,” he said, turning on his stereo and cranking the volume to its highest setting. Pulling out his favorite album, he smiled, set it on the turntable, and flipped the power switch.
The collection of rugged outdoor speakers in his garden hummed as the record began spinning on the turntable and after a few hisses and pops Lynyrd Skynyrd began playing Sweet Home Alabama. The small hidden valley echoed with the sounds of classic rock and those rabbits that hadn't gotten stoned by feasting on marijuana plants bolted away but, after growing accustomed to what they perceived as just noise, soon returned.
Charlie was stretched out on his homemade wooden lounge chair, fondly remembering the concert he saw Skynyrd at back in 1974. He felt the years melt away as his little moonlit valley was filled with the sweet sounds of classic southern rock.
Private Charlie Farro came back from the war missing both legs below the knee, his right arm from the elbow down, plus a testicle, but that night at the concert he felt more happy and alive than ever before.
Almost everyone at the concert was getting high and drunk and Charlie was no exception. As the music went on he, noticed a little brunette girl with an incredibly sexy body and how she energetically moved and shook it as the concert went on that evening.
She was friendly and moderately stoned and sometimes would dance her way around Charlie sitting in his wheelchair. Her smile was the nicest thing the man had ever seen. When the concert ended, she staggered her way back over to Charlie and explained how she lost track of her friends.
Always the gentleman, Farro offered to give her a ride back to his hotel. When she agreed, he drove his specially equipped van back to his hotel in less than twenty minutes with her giggling and enjoying a large joint all the way there.
As the old hermit stared blearily through his barely open eyes at the moon shining into his garden, Charlie tapped his old metal prosthetic arm that ended in a pair of chrome pincers in time with the music. He softly sang along (badly off key) as he remembered how things had gone that night once they made it back to the hotel.
She was an adventurous and energetic girl who enjoyed trying new things. Like having sex with a triple amputee, for example. She let him do things with her that he'd only read about in magazines and both of them had a great deal of fun.
The first bad part was the next morning when they laid naked together in bed watching cartoons and smoking a breakfast joint. It began when she asked about his missing testicle.
The landmine he stepped on in the war took the right one, he lied, but left behind the potent one.
She giggled as she got out of bed and started getting dressed.
“Where you going?” he asked while Bugs Bunny outwitted Elmer Fudd once again, on the hotel's color TV which had been thoughtfully chained to the wall. (It was a 'classy' hotel)
She smiled, leaned down, and kissed his forehead as he sat up in bed. “You're sweet, Chuck, but you know it was just a one night kind of thing, right?”
“Do you have to go today? Now? We could just goof off and have some kicks, and maybe come back here tonight for an encore performance,” he said looking at her as Bugs Bunny loudly chewed on a carrot and asked, “What’s up, Doc?”
She pulled on her torn blue jeans without responding. Turning off the TV, she looked at him with a contemplative expression.
He noticed for the first time as she looked at him that her eyes were a sparkling bright blue.
She was still topless and broke the silence asking, “Chuck, tell me the truth. You're not falling in love with me, are you?”
In love? He rolled the words around inside his head while glancing between her beautiful breasts and almost equally gorgeous eyes, but didn't say what he truly felt. He said what he thought she wanted to hear. And not a day had gone by since then that he didn't wonder if he should have told her the truth.
He laughed and said, “Come on, baby, I'm not some love sick puppy. I just thought we could have another groovy day of fun unless you've got somewhere you need to go. If that's what’s got you uptight, it's cool. I can dig it.” He looked over at his wheelchair and added, “Love? No way, I'm not falling in love with you. I just like you a bit. You're a pretty cool kid.”
She slipped on her t-shirt that had the words Free Bird airbrushed over the front and looked momentarily troubled before saying, “Okay Chuckles, one more day.”
The day was warm and everything felt right with the world as they went on a shopping spree. He had been receiving disability payments since getting back from the war and hadn't spent much money, aside from the custom equipped van. It was retrofitted with brakes and accelerator controls on the steering wheel. Almost as good, was the new quadraphonic stereo system he had installed. The van also had two carrying cases full of great eight track tapes. It was truly one sweet ride.
After she gotten him to buy her quite a few new outfits, they drove to the beach late in the afternoon. He watched her change clothes in the back of the van.
She slipped into a new bikini he'd bought for her, and Charlie felt like the luckiest man in the world.
At least he did until he got his wheelchair out and sat in the parking lot watching her run across the beach with her beautiful long hair flowing back in the sea breeze. He sipped on a beer as she chatted with some other kids that were close to her own age.
After his third beer, she finally looked in his direction and gave him a brief furtive wave when none of the other kids were looking. Charlie was a patchwork of emotions as he watched her play on the beach. Sometimes he was furious with God for having left him legless with only one arm and unable to play with his new girlfriend. Then on those occasions she'd give him a concealed wave, he felt lucky to be alive and with a beautiful sweet young woman who cared for him. Eventually, he got back in the van and listened to his quadraphonic stereo while watching her run and play.
He woke up when she knocked on the window smiling at him.
She came back just before sunset smelling of marijuana, sand, sweat, beer and though he tried to dismiss the thought- she also smelled strongly of sex. He pushed the disturbing idea away and agreed to let her drive the van back to the hotel after she begged to try. Charlie gave into the request as her eyes sparkled with the reflection of the lasts rays of the setting sun.
They got back to the hotel, ordered a pizza, and she showered and tried on some of her new clothes for him.
He liked all of the outfits, but his favorite was the bright red silk teddy nightgown he bought for her.
They ate pizza, drank beer, cuddled in bed, and on the television watched a movie about giant, murderous, rampaging, bunny rabbits called Night of the Lepus. She got excited upon recognizing an actor named DeForest Kelley who was in the movie. After it was over they smoked some more weed and she rambled forever about the Star Trek television series and how it was an “absolute travesty” that it had been canceled.
After another thirty minutes of meaningless talk he finally leaned over and kissed her.
She flipped off the light and they had a nice, albeit much too brief, exchange of bodily fluids then she kissed him on the cheek. It was a brief and somehow cold, almost indifferent, feeling kiss to Charlie.
In the dark room as trucks could be heard roaring down the nearby interstate, she said she was just really worn out from all the goofing off she'd done on the beach. She then rolled over on her side to get some sleep.
“You think we could do some things tomorrow?” he asked hopefully as she laid facing away from him.
“We'll see, Chuck,” were the last words he ever heard from her.
When Charlie awoke the next morning she was already gone and had taken everything, except the TV that was still chained to the wall and his wheelchair. She did le
ave a brief note behind that was now framed under glass and hanging on the living room wall of his trailer. He kept it as a reminder never to trust anyone again. The note read-
Chuck,
I wish I could tell you I'm sorry for taking your van and everything else, but I need them so I can't. I will thank you though. You're the nicest and most trusting man I've ever met. And, I know things will work out for you in life. Just one bit of advice, DON'T BE SO TRUSTING! Sincerely yours,
B. D. B.
At least she was kind enough to leave him enough weed to get high while he wept the day away. It was the worst day of his life even including the day he stepped on the landmine. At least then the medics gave him morphine for the pain. Marijuana just couldn't compete with that stuff when it came to the agony of a shredded heart.
Back in his version of the Garden of Eden, Charlie eventually dozed off as the songs kept playing and didn't notice the screams growing much louder and closer while he dreamed of a little blue eyed brunette that he still thought about nearly every day. Usually, he wondered what she would have done if he'd said “YES” when she asked him if he'd been falling in love with her. In his dreams they lived happily ever after, together.