Grower's Market

by Michael Baughman

  The blood pounded in his temples and he was hot and then cold and shivering and suddenly hot once again. His abdominal muscles cramped painfully and he retched violently and then leaned back pressing his back hard against the packed dirt. Sitting that way he felt sealed into a hot, wet, dark, quickly shrinking world and he knew that the paydays in Germany were the happiest times he’d ever had.

  GANDER AND KID KENTUCKY

  Gander and Kid Kentucky were cousins who became hit-and-miss placer miners and after more than four years of nothing but miss they burrowed into the earth at this remote place. Deep into the mountainside in an ancient streambed they uncovered rich deposits including large nuggets of gold. The very first thing they did as rich men was replace their patched and stinking clothing and their sweat-stained hats and shabby boots. Two days after their return to their claim they were murdered by a roving band of seven Indians. The Indians never touched their gold and didn’t even know about it and wouldn’t have cared about it if they had known. They stripped the two men bare and were so happy with their loot that they didn’t take time to mutilate the bodies. Weeks passed before Gander and Kid Kentucky were finally laid to rest by a preacher and his son in unmarked graves a short distance down the mountain from the mine.

  EVERY LITTLE THING

  Early the next morning in calm clear weather Rainbow headed south.

  Eighteen miles from the Bird of Prey where a Forest Service road met the two-lane county road she picked up two hitchhikers. They were the same young couple that had visited the homeless shelter while Stones was sanding chairs in the early morning the day before.

  When the boy and girl lifted their backpacks into the back of the van they looked at Uncle Sam on an air mattress underneath a red blanket.

  “That’s my husband,” Rainbow explained. “He’s disabled. He’s asleep now. He travels better when he sleeps so I gave him some valerian this morning. Where you two headed?”

  “North once we hit the freeway,” the boy said.

  “Thanks for stopping,” said the girl.

  “I’ll get you to the freeway,” Rainbow said, “but once we hit the freeway I’m heading south.”

  Back in the van the girl sat in the middle and the boy by the window on the front seat. All of them were slim so there was more than enough room. They knew they would soon part company and never see each other again and as often happens on the road they talked openly.

  “You carrying weed in here?” the boy asked.

  “No,” Rainbow answered. “What makes you ask?”

  “It smells a little like skunk.”

  “This van’s been used for weed,” Rainbow said. “Not by me though. But I guess I’m used to the smell.” She wanted to change the subject. “Where are you two headed?”

  “North,” said the girl.

  “Pretty far north,” said the boy. “Where there’s even less people than here.”

  “We’re meeting some friends,” said the girl. “We plan on living off the grid, completely.”

  “The civilized world’s a mess,” said the boy.

  When they passed a small pond close beside the road a flock of wood ducks rose from the water and scattered in different directions through the trees.

  “If you don’t mind me asking,” the girl said, “what happened to your husband?”

  “The war,” Rainbow answered.

  “Shit!” the boy said. “See what I’m sayin’ about the world? We’re getting away from all the shit, that’s all we want. We’ll grow our own organic stuff, no more poisoned food. We’ll get to breathe some really fresh air. No more crappy jobs for lousy pay. We got it all planned out.”

  “I have some friends up there,” the girl said. “Kids I went to high school and college with. They’ve got a kind of commune going. It’s not that structured. It’s loose, but it’s a lot like an old-time commune. Twenty-two people are there already. Sometimes the guys work part-time for the Forest Service, collecting seed cones from Douglas firs and stuff like that. But nobody works full-time. Nobody works more than they have to.”

  “I took off on my own when I was about your age,” Rainbow said. “It’s scary at first but you can make it. With a little luck you can.”

  “Where’d you run from?” asked the girl.

  “Texas.”

  “Sounds like a good place to run from,” said the boy.

  “Want to hear some music?” Rainbow asked. “Bob Marley?”

  “Sure,” said the girl.

  “Cool,” said the boy.

  Rainbow inserted the disc and they drove on through the trees. It was only ten more minutes to the freeway.

  She pulled onto the shoulder just short of the on-ramp. After the boy and girl took their packs from the back of the van Rainbow handed the girl two fifty-dollar bills. “Good luck,” she said.

  “You sure?” the girl said. “That’s a lot of money.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Thank you!” said the girl. “It’ll help us get started!”

  “Thank you very much!” said the boy.

  Rainbow thought about how Sunbeam had tried to escape the messed up world the boy had named by traveling north to this place and she wished the young couple luck farther north.

  She felt almost peaceful once she was on the freeway headed south. The traffic was light and she stayed safely in the slow lane except when she had to pass a semitruck laboring up a hill. She had dug up her cash wrapped tightly in plastic and stored in coffee cans near the trunk of a sugar pine about a quarter mile up the hill across the road from the Bird of Prey. The secret place was what she called her land bank and now she could escape with more than enough money to resume life in a pleasant town where they had a school with a nursing program. For now that was as far as her plans for the future could go.

  The fat deputy was alive and so was Sunbeam and she would be all right back at the Bird of Prey at least for now. Stones had survived and there might be others. There was a lot of wild country out there where everything had happened and no one knew exactly what had happened yet. It was likely no one would ever know exactly.

  Half listening to Bob Marley, Rainbow thought about the fantastic force and unknowable power responsible for this fascinating mess of a world and all its transitory life.

  On a long hill she passed one of those huge rigs loaded down with ten or a dozen shiny new cars. Were they Fords or Chevys or Volkswagens? She didn’t know the difference and couldn’t tell which and didn’t care. Her van rode high enough so that as she passed the truck Rainbow glimpsed the ponytailed blond woman about her age who was driving.

  Rainbow eased back into the slow lane ahead of the truck and glanced in the rearview mirror at Uncle Sam riding feet-first and laid out on his back atop the air mattress and covered up to his neck with the clean red blanket. The next rest stop she remembered should appear inside two or three miles and Rainbow would stop and park in the back of the lot where the trucks parked and would give Uncle Sam water and food if he was awake and seemed to want it. Then she would clean him and change his pad and talk to him and maybe he would blink his eyes.

  She would take care of Uncle Sam for as long as he lived or as long as she did. There was no way she could know but from what she could sense Uncle Sam seemed all right about the move. After she talked to him she would lock the van with the windows cracked and walk a few laps around the rest area for fresh air and exercise. Inevitably there would be panhandlers and she would smile and hand each of them a five-dollar bill. Or a ten. Or a twenty when she knew for certain one was a vet. Veterans Day would be here soon.

  Bob Marley’s signature song began.

  In the back of the van Uncle Sam sensed the rhythm and hum of tires on the smooth road underneath them but he couldn’t hear Bob Marley.

  “Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce,

  special orders don’t upset us . . . ”

  That was all Uncle Sam would ever hear anywhere.

 
  Michael Baughman, Grower's Market