Farmboy - The Novel is a Dream Machine Site The Dream Machine --- The Imagination of the World Wide Web

That wordless melody echoed around his mind while he did his morning chores. He was returning to the house for breakfast when something made him stop. A slight motion had caught the corner of his eye. He swept the fields with his gaze, trying to locate the elusive movement.

"Probably just a deer.", he thought. Then, reconsidering, it occurred to him that this might be just the time to test his new found prowess with a rifle. A deer in his freezer would make good eating next winter and would also boost his prestige with the local men.

So he went into the house to fetch and load the M-1. He put only a single cartridge into the weapon, knowing that if he missed the first shot, the deer would easily get away. As he was about to go back out into the barn yard, he saw something a lot more serious than a deer eating his corn. Two men were creeping up the fence line along the garden toward the house.

"Shit!", said Michael to himself. The men were black, which definitely placed them as outsiders. Also, it was clear they had seen him and knew he was in the house. He went back to get some more ammunition and then considered.

"If those men are armed and are sneaking up on me, I'm in big trouble.", he thought. He ran around inside the house, peering out each of the other windows to see if there were others, perhaps surrounding the house. He didn't see any, but knew that didn't mean there weren't others. He thought of calling his neighbors, but knew they would get here long after the intruders had reached the house. Sweat was forming on his upper lip and his hands began to shake.

"Get control of yourself!", his thoughts begged. "You've got to handle this yourself."

Finally, he moved. Without really thinking, his gun pointed at the ground, he walked into the barnyard in full view of the advancing men.

"Don't shoot! Don't shoot!", they shouted. "We don't mean you no harm." They raised their arms above their heads and continued, "We just looking for something to eat. We drove all day from Chicago and ran out of gas and we ain't got no money."

Michael kept his gun pointed downward, but motioned for them to come closer. Their straightforward approach had eased his tension a bit, but he remained wary.

"Just the two of you?", he asked. As an afterthought he added, "You aren't carrying weapons, are you."

"No, sir! No, sir! The shit's really coming down in Chicago and we just split as fast as we could. Didn't have no time to take nothing.", one of the men blurted out in a tone so plaintive that Michael knew he was telling the truth. These guys were actually more frightened than he was! He made a quick decision.

"Come on in. I'll make you something to eat and you can tell me about it.", he said, beckoning them to come up to the house. "And put your arms down. I'm not going to hurt you.", he added. They were still holding their arms over their heads like prisoners.

As soon as they got into the house, he put the gun back in its hiding place in the computer room and joined them in the kitchen. He told them to take a seat and proceeded to make a big lunch from the copious leftovers he had in his refrigerator. He gave them a couple of beers and all of them started to relax. Within fifteen minutes they had eaten and began to tell their story.

Their names were Charles and Mookie and they were cousins. The stores in their neighborhood had run out of food on Monday. They lived in a working middle class neighborhood on the south side of Chicago that was completely black. At first, people had remained calm, since they had grown used to shortages of food and other supplies this past year. Until Wednesday, everyone had made do on stockpiles and the few bags of food that came in from friends and family in other parts of Chicago. But then someone reported that police were setting up barricades at the boundaries of the neighborhood and weren't allowing anyone in or out.

All hell broke loose. People gathered in the streets and began to make bonfires. Those who had guns were bringing them out, shooting them in the air and talking trouble. Some organized squads of armed men to try to break through the blockades. This is how Charles and Mookie got out. They "borrowed" their uncle's car, which had nearly a full tank of gas. Driving without lights, they followed one of the armed bands to a barrier and when the group engaged the police in a gunfight, they slipped out around a smaller barricade on a side street that was unguarded.

Once out of the neighborhood, it was relatively easy to escape Chicago. They had a couple more harrowing episodes with nervous cops, but their drivers licences were clean and they were allowed to continue on at each checkpoint. When confronted at the Wisconsin border, they managed to convince the police that they were going to visit relatives in Racine. Mookie actually had some distant relatives there, but he didn't know where they lived or how to get in touch with them. So they stayed on country roads and just headed north and west. They ended up, out of gas, just outside Michael's farm. They were sneaking through his fields looking for food. Unfortunately, being city born and raised, they didn't know what was edible and what wasn't. They were trying to get close enough to steal a chicken and maybe some gas. They had spent what money they had at a restaurant somewhere between here and Chicago and were scared out of their wits. They hadn't seen any people of color for the last hundred miles. The white people they had spoken with didn't strike them as particularly friendly. They said they felt lucky that they ended up at Michael's place. To himself, Michael noted how right they were!

Neither stranger could shed much light on the big picture of what was going on. Mookie started to give his opinion about how white people were about to sell all the colored people in the world down the river. After a nervous glance from Charles, he thought better of it and changed the subject.

By then, they had eaten, finished a bottle of beer each and told their story. Then they seemed to become more aware of just where they were and became visibly nervous. Michael saw this and asked them where they intended to go. Charles said that they hoped to get to Denver, where they had friends. Michael offered them some gasoline, which they gratefully accepted.

He drove them to their car with a ten gallon can of gas in the back of his pickup truck. The car, out of everything but fumes refused to start at first. A little gas in the carburetor cured that problem. Soon, they were on their way once again. Despite feelings of guilt, Michael had to admit to himself that he was glad to see them go. Their panic, barely concealed, had been infectious. He wondered how long it would be until the troubles in the city boiled over into the country. The next invaders might not be so friendly, or so scared.

This thought stayed with him for the rest of the afternoon. Since the sun was still shining, he worked the until early evening in the garden. He found himself, glancing up and scanning the horizon every few minutes, despite the fact that he never saw much of anything. A bird here, a grasshopper there.

By the time he ate supper and settled down to watch the evening news, his tension was palpable. The headache he didn't get because of his moderation the day before was replaced by a version brought on by his tension. Nor did the news help out.

Some pictures of CIS troops cracking heads in Kiev were shown at the top, but the voice over announced that Western corespondents had been ordered out of Ukraine for "security reasons."

Next, reports from South America took up a few minutes. Pollution alerts to the West dominated the weather report. Noticeably absent was any mention of unrest in the United States itself. Michael couldn't remember a single word about Chicago on the news all week. Unless Charles and Mookie had been handing him an elaborate snow job, something very spooky was going on. And what about the incident with the armed intruders earlier that week? They too had come from Chicago. He found that this lack of news was even more troubling than the bad news they were reporting.

He was no longer paying much attention to the TV when the phone interrupted his thoughts. It was Martha wondering what he was doing that evening. To her surprise, he quickly told her he wasn't doing anything and invited her over. He felt like he didn't want to be alone. Maybe Martha could mellow him out.

After she arrived, he quickly filled her in on his encounter earlier in the day. Martha thought he had been very foolhardy to invite the strangers in without checking them out further. She wondered aloud if he had some kind of death wish. Michael attributed these comments to Martha's "natural" prejudice against black people. She had, like Randy, been born and raised in this area.

"At least you didn't refer to them as 'niggers'", he growled without thinking.

"What's that supposed to mean?", she snapped back.

Remembering why he had invited her over, Michael quickly got control of himself and apologized. "I'm sorry, the incident left me a little tense." he offered. "Besides, Randy Carlson's bigotry got to me the other day."

Martha was an old friend of Randy's. They had gone to grade school and high school together. "What does that mean?", she asked with her voice rising. There was a definite accent on the word "that".

Michael tried to explain about the events of Wednesday, but the more he said, the deeper the hole got that he was digging himself into. By the time he had gotten around to explaining about the firing range at Spencer's farm, her forehead had a deep frown.

"It seems to me, Michael, that Randy and the others were just being a little more careful and sensible than you. After all, those men weren't planning on having a picnic!", she said.

"Oh, shit,", thought Michael, "how am I going to get out of this?!" Aloud, he nodded and said he supposed she was right and excused himself to pour them a couple of drinks. When she came over to his house she usually drank Jack Daniels neat with him. Tonight she asked for a beer chaser. And so it went.

They finally had sex. Or, at least, they tried to after calming down with a few drinks, but it was terrible. Everything that could go wrong, did. Martha, more than a little tipsy, stumbled on the stairs on the way to the bedroom and twisted her ankle. Michael scratched her back unhooking her bra strap. Then he caught his leg in his underwear as he was removing his trousers and kicked her in her sore ankle.

He had a hard time getting and maintaining an erection. The two of them fumbled around for a half an hour but finally gave up. Both of them were extremely unsatisfied, but neither wanted to beat the dead horse of their passion. Michael fixed yet another drink for them. It was more of an anesthetic than a euphoric and finally they fell asleep.

During the night, Michael dreamed he was lost in a deep forest. The leaves on the trees were a vivid purple color and were shaped more like alien animal limbs than leaves. He was calling out for someone who he felt was with him. But no name entered the dream and no one ever answered his calls. The dream seemed to go on forever.

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