Dawn of Revelation

by A N Sandra

  July 6th, Blythe, CA

  Bud and Danica sat up late at the kitchen table, drinking beer and trying to joke the situation away. Ben and Twilight went to the chicken coop. The sound of the Firebird filled the garage and Joshua came tripping up the back steps.

  “What’s wrong?” Joshua asked the second he was fully inside the kitchen door.

  “Randy sold the quarry,” Bud told him. “We’re going to have to relocate.”

  “No way.” Joshua couldn’t take it in.

  Danica rolled her eyes and let Joshua know that Bud wasn’t kidding.

  “We can’t leave our house—” Joshua started to protest. “We’ve lived here forever. Twilight can’t change schools—”

  “We’ll sleep on it and see if we can figure something out,” Danica said.

  Bud wouldn’t have had any hope at all, but the box in his pocket had made some good things happen.

  “Are you all still awake?” Twilight and Ben came in the back door.

  “So are you,” Danica pointed out.

  “We had some research to do,” Twilight said. “We can start a rural business and stay here, I think.”

  “Twenty acres isn’t big enough to farm,” Bud said.

  “We can figure something out,” Twilight said. “I’ll show you what I found out in the morning when you’re not so tired.”

  “She means drunk,” Danica rolled her eye at Bud. “But we’re not drunk. We should go to bed though. Things will seem better in the morning.”

  Bud didn’t see how that could possibly be, but he had put away a whole twelve pack and wasn’t in a position to argue with anyone. Unlike Danica, he was pretty sure he was drunk. He stood up and followed Danica to bed, and the room swayed just a little bit. The box had let him down and he almost dropped it in frustration when he took off his shirt, but somehow his hand steadied and he put it in the drawer of his nightstand.

  “What are you doing?” Danica asked as she slid into bed. Bud noticed that she had her makeup on, something she never did, but he didn’t point it out. In the morning she wouldn’t care about the ruined pillowcase.

  The sun came peeking around the closed blinds and woke Bud up. Danica was still asleep beside him, her blonde hair tangled about her face. There were very few days in Bud’s adult life that he was up after the sun on a weekday. He lay still and listened. Someone was doing something in the kitchen. There might be coffee. He thought he could almost smell it but he didn’t feel great after all the beer he drank the night before.

  “It could be worse,” Bud reminded himself. Two years ago, he had gotten carried away at a Super Bowl party and paid for it the whole next day. He felt a little foggy, but fine otherwise. “I should be upset.” he told himself, poking his emotions with his thoughts. “I’m never going back to the quarry. I will probably never get another job that good in my life.”

  Strangely, the thought didn’t cause him panic or distress, and Bud sat up, shocked to see that the clock read seven twenty-three. The shamefulness of sleeping so late on a weekday that wasn’t an actual vacation day caused him a small amount of discomfort.

  Looking down at Danica with a small smile, Bud wondered when the last time he had gotten up while she slept was. Probably when Twilight was a newborn. Danica had stayed in bed a few times while Bud got his own breakfast. She was still so sound asleep that it was hard to tell she was breathing. As soon as Bud made sure she was, he went to the kitchen.

  “Hi Dad!” Twilight was standing at the stove. “I made pancakes!”

  The pancakes were full of chocolate chips, blueberries and bananas and whatever shape they were, they certainly weren’t round.

  “They are very good,” Ben announced from his spot at the kitchen table. “There’s coffee all ready for you.”

  Bud hadn’t even considered that over the past few weeks Ben had become part of their family, and when the Hendersons had to relocate, Ben would be homeless again. He picked up the mug that he normally drank from. Rachel had given it to him last Christmas because it had a handle shaped like the shovel of a backhoe. Bud decided that after he finished that cup of coffee he would never drink from it again. Any reminder of the quarry was unwelcome.

  “Can you listen to my plan?” Twilight asked Bud as soon as she saw he had polished off a decent amount of coffee. He nodded, and she slid a plate of pancakes his way.

  “These are great!” Bud announced after his first bite.

  “So, there are loopholes you can use to stay here,” Twilight told Bud. “The most important one is that if you start a business that meets an unfilled need in this area, we are golden.”

  “But what would that be?” Bud wondered. His second bite of pancake was as good as the first. Danica’s genes must have helped Twilight make them.

  “You have a commercial driver’s license!” Twilight exclaimed. “There aren’t enough truckers hauling hay and cattle around here! It’s perfect! All you have to do is buy a semi and get a lawyer to do some paperwork.”

  “Listen to her,” Ben advised. “My sons tried to fight Urban Relocation and the judge never listened when they got to court. We should have done a similar work around.”

  Bud had another big bite of pancakes and more coffee. He did have a commercial license, though he only had to move equipment from time to time. It had never occurred to him to be a truck driver. Until the last few years he had too many children at home to consider such a thing. He didn’t even like to drive that much. But to keep his home he’d learn to love driving. He’d become the most passionate driver on the road.

  “Those pancakes look funny,” Joshua entered the kitchen, shirtless, looking like he could use more sleep.

  “They’re really good, though,” Bud told him. “Have some! I think we’re going to be okay and stay here after all.”

  Whether it was the power of the box, or the need of the situation, Bud found a semi for sale in great condition that afternoon online. Using almost half of the two-month severance check from Randy, Bud made a down payment on the truck and picked up jobs almost instantly with local farmers hauling hay. A lawyer specializing in Urban Relocation handled all his paperwork and somewhere Susan was gnashing her teeth that the Henderson family had avoided Urban Relocation.

  The new-to-him truck made Bud feel surprisingly new inside. It was a gorgeous sapphire blue and had a big bed in the back to sleep in on long trips. When he first got in he remembered being a small boy and unwrapping a beautiful yellow Tonka truck on his birthday. He’d run right to the sandbox with it, forgetting his aunt and uncle and grandparents, just enjoying the satiny smooth yellow metal, putting sand in the back, and driving it around the yard.

  “What are you going to paint on the door to show people it’s yours?” Twilight wanted to know.

  “Bud Henderson Hay Hauling?” Bud pondered.

  “No,” Twilight looked at him with deep pity for his under-active imagination. “I’ll figure it out, and you make an appointment to get the door painted. I’m going to make you some shirts for your new business too.”

  “Great,” Bud told her. “I’m sure they won’t be boring.”

  Danica grinned, happy to see Bud happy, and Bud was proud of his family. They had endured adversity and turned it into triumph in a matter of days. Of course, hay wouldn’t need to be hauled all winter, and Bud wouldn’t work much then, but he might find other things to haul. Danica was working at the Maxi Mart despite all his objections, putting away money for the winter. Joyce paid Danica a lot more than minimum wage, which was fair since Danica took care of the store the way she took care of her home and kids. Joyce could truly relax and be comfortable at home while Danica worked. Since Blythe was full of summer tourists Joyce could afford to pay Danica well for the time being. Winter will come, Bud told himself, but he couldn’t bring himself to worry about anything.

  Driving the truck was fun. It wasn’t as loud as the quarry and Bud got a subscription to an audio book club and listened to books as he drove. He also liked
to talk to the farmers, and the work outside securing loads and working in farmyards instead of the monotony of the quarry.

  “Bumper crop this year,” Matt Everson said as Bud shook his hand over a freshly cut load of grass hay.

  “The market is really good,” Bud said.

  “The Hollister Foundation is buying lots of meat for the winter,” Matt said. Matt was wearing calfskin work gloves and his face was weatherworn even though he wasn’t thirty-five. “They’re driving the price up.”

  “What do they need it for?” Bud wondered out loud. He had quit listening to the news since his ivory box was always with him. The news caused disharmony and the box kept him in perfect harmony.

  “Their grocery stores fill the vouchers for groceries people get at the Urban Relocation Centers. They keep people fed and people stay put.”

  The idea that people were simply like sheep and would stay wherever they were fed bothered Bud greatly, but lots of things about the Hollister Foundation and Urban Relocation bothered him greatly and there wasn’t much he could do.

  “Are you saving lots of breeding stock?” Bud wondered to Matt.

  “Some, but when the price is this good I have to sell. Both the cattle and the hay.”

  Bud, who liked making money himself, couldn’t argue with such logic. In agriculture a person has to make money while the money is there to be made. Buy low and sell high were the only way to survive a farming life. Doing those things might seem easy to someone who had no experience in agriculture, but in fact those aspects of farming were complicated.

  “I sold all my breeding stock,” Reg Lockhart told Bud the next day as Reg’s two adult sons loaded the truck with hay. “I don’t need it anymore.”

  “You don’t?” Bud couldn’t understand. The Lockharts had been cattle ranchers and hay farmers in the valley for more than a hundred years. That was like saying a jeweler didn’t need diamonds.

  “I’ve got a contract to grow grass hay for the Hollister Foundation next year that will pay off every debt I ever had,” Reg said. “They’re trying a new blend of native grasses in their hay. I’m going to get paid a bundle even if it doesn’t grow. They’re sending the seed this week and we’ll get it planted so it can winter.”

  It seemed to Bud that the Hollisters were buying cattle and sheep and domestic animals of all kinds at an alarming pace. The animals were being slaughtered and processed, giving work to people who had been relocated to urban centers at the edge of agricultural areas. Bud thought it was almost as if they didn’t want domestic animals to exist anymore, because he couldn’t understand where next year’s meat was going to come from. The Midwest is full of open range and feed lots. The grocery stores will be full of food next year. If they are open.

  “They are getting the earth ready for their own plan,” Ben said when Bud commented about his worries at a family meal.

  “They have a plan for the whole earth?” Bud asked. How would Ben know what the Hollister’s real plans were? Bud felt a little exasperated. Ben was a mysterious, elderly Native American man who had pet falcons that were never far from him. He had an ivory box like the one Bud had, that might have changed his life, but at the end of the day Ben was more ordinary than not. He went to church with Danica for goodness sake. It was crazy to think that Ben knew that the Hollister Foundation was getting the entire planet ready for a different plan.

  “They have a plan,” Ben confirmed. He put even more butter on his corn. He slathered butter and mayonnaise on all his food and never seemed a bit heavier for it. If Bud had done that, Danica would have casually moved the butter away from him, but Danica adored Ben and indulged him completely. “They want the earth to be the way it was in ancient times. Before there was our kind of time. Time was different then.”

  “How do you know?” Bud pressed.

  Twilight, Danica, and Joshua tried not to stare at Ben. Mostly they looked at their own plates with eyes darting toward him. That was more annoying to Bud. Whatever he’s going to say, they’ll take it as gospel truth, Bud thought to himself. Even if it’s religious babble.

  “My dreams,” Ben said, right before he took a bite of corn. He chewed the corn and stared into a space that no one else at the table could see into. “I must have dreamed in my life, but I didn’t know it. Now I know my dreams. They are more real than my wife was, or my sons are. My sons left me, but my dreams remain.”

  “Just because you remember your dreams doesn’t mean they are true,” Bud contributed.

  “I dreamed of all of you last winter, before I left Clearwater,” Ben pointed out. “Are you true?”

  Even Bud had to smile.

  “I’m not sure if we’re true but we are real,” Bud said.

  “Exactly.” Ben reached for his third piece of corn.

  Were the Hollisters going to change the world? It was hard for Bud to know. His world had changed more since the day he found the ivory box almost two months ago than he could have believed. He didn’t work at the quarry, Back Pasture, Joshua’s band, had exploded in popularity. Ben had been added as a new family member and many small things that couldn’t be counted had changed. The idea that the world would go back to ancient times couldn’t be right. Humanity evolves, Bud told himself. We can’t go back… we have to go forward. Besides, the Hollister Foundation was gathering people up in cities to evolve the way people lived. Bud didn’t approve of it entirely, but his corner of the world had been cleaned up. From the mentally ill getting help, the elderly living in hospitals, to the countryside being beautified… It didn’t make sense…

  “On the Dark Web there are people who say that the vaccination chip is going to kill people instead of making them healthier,” Twilight offered.

  “What are you doing on the Dark Web?” both Bud and Danica demanded to know at once.

  Twilight was calm in the face of their outrage.

  “I’ve been getting on it for a long time now. You didn’t really believe I got suspended trying to give people snow days, did you? Mrs. Galloway wouldn’t admit I used her computer to get on the Dark Web.”

  Danica looked fiercely at Twilight. The whole table was quiet.

  “We don’t have the resources to keep you out of trouble,” Danica told her. “I wish I could send you to a convent school and let them teach you prudence.”

  “You threatened Rachel and Jael with convent school for years,” Twilight said, airily. “The whole internet is scrubbed so clean by the Hollister Foundation you can’t find anything good on it anymore. I had to go on the Dark Web to find out what’s really going on in the world. How do you think I figured out about avoiding Urban Relocation? You couldn’t even ask that question on a message board on the regular web.”

  “The free porn is gone,” Joshua agreed sadly.

  Both Bud and Danica faced him with angry looks. Joshua went back to eating without saying anything else.

  “There’s no news that isn’t good for the Hollister Foundation, there is nothing on the internet that has two sides anymore,” Twilight insisted.

  “That doesn’t mean you should be poking around where you could get arrested,” Bud said firmly.

  “I’m careful,” Twilight insisted. “Ben helps me be careful.”

  Now everyone turned to Ben.

  “She needs to know that the Hollisters are really not okay,” Ben said calmly.

  “What are you doing to help her?” Bud asked incredulously. Was Ben a computer guru? A scripture-quoting computer guru?

  “I just sit by her and give her silent help,” Ben answered. Which Bud took to mean that Ben brought his ivory box into the chicken coop and Twilight used its calming power to help her think clearly to avoid making mistakes. “She needs to be able to find the truth.”

  “The truth is that the Dark Web is a scary place,” Danica spit out. She looked like a cornered animal, her eyes flashing.

  “You don’t need to worry about me!” Twilight insisted with a shrill edge.

  Danica got up from the table,
pushing back the little food on her plate and walked outside to cool off. Bud let her go and Twilight and Joshua wisely cleaned up the dishes with no complaining. When the kitchen was clean Danica was still on the back porch with her nose in a book that Bud suspected she wasn’t reading. He sighed, took a bottle of beer from the fridge, and headed out to his area behind the outhouse wishing for one of Hump’s Havana Specials.

  “Dad?” Bud wasn’t settled when he heard Twilight behind him. He jumped a little, even though he wasn’t hiding anything in the dirt like he sometimes did. His stomach dropped. Never once in all his years of parenting had a child needed anything enough to track him down to this spot. Bud didn’t even answer, he just looked at Twilight, knowing he wasn’t going to like whatever she was going to say.

  “Ben said I should come talk to you,” Twilight said, and Bud could see that she didn’t want to. She was only there because Ben made her come. He tipped his head, mirroring how she often did to him, to let her know to go on. “I have been on the Dark Web for a good reason. I’m not just playing around. I’m being an activist.”

  “Damn it!” Bud exploded. He was so hot with anger he could have hit her for the first time in her whole life. Being an activist on the Dark Web was a great way to get someone locked up in prison with no chance of finding them again. The US had been changing in the last few years. Being an activist was not safe.

  “I know… I know you’re mad… Ben has been with me since he’s been here, and I’ve found ways to cover my tracks. I’m not going to get caught… I don’t know how, but somehow being around Ben makes me smarter… I promise.”

  “Then why would you do something so stupid?” Bud demanded. Her claims of safety were almost certainly not true. He loved her so much and she was risking her life, for what?

  “They took away Miah’s older sister Kaitlyn last fall.” Twilight started to cry.

  “Kaitlyn went to college last fall,” Bud said reasonably. Miah and Kaitlyn were the children of one of his football teammates. Jack Jorgensen wasn’t a great guy and Bud hadn’t been friends with him in high school, but they weren’t enemies. They always said “hi” and talked a minute if they ran into each other somewhere.