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

"Fuck the pigs!", he whispered, as if they could hear and understand him if he spoke too loudly.

"You too, Bird-Brain!, he murmured louder, for some silly reason caring less what the rooster thought of him than the pigs.

But he could hear the sounds of the restless fowl in between the rooster's toneless outbursts and knew he couldn't remain in bed much longer. He knew the sun was already well into the sky, even though its face was not visible. All the beasts were going to be upset. He could already hear half angry bellows arising from the general direction of the steer's pen. The pigs would occasionally squeal, blaming one another for their insatiable appetites.

"All right, all right!", he said aloud as he stumbled from bed, fumbled into his pants and clumped down the stairs. Microwaved the coffee. Slurped up a hot cup full. Fed the pigs. Fed the ducks and the geese and the chickens. Then the steers. His mood got blacker and blacker until a nostalgic recollection from his distant past burst into his consciousness.

"You fuck with the bull, you get the horn!", were the words. The picture was of this little fat polka dotted demon grinning a Satanic grin. He laughed out loud. More than a little. Maybe this day wouldn't be so bad after all.

He had gotten the expression from a comic book of the sixties called Zap Comix. He used to smuggle copies of it to his bedroom for late night reading when he was a teenager. Later, he said it to his kids when they came to him with whining complaints about one other. It kept him from worrying too much about them killing one another. But it really irritated them. They would always mutter and bitch after he sprang it on them.

He wondered how they were doing. He and Miranda had raised all three of them to adulthood and then cut them loose. This is how both of their families had done it. This is how they did it. The theory was that it is a parent's responsibility to get the children to the age of eighteen alive. If, in addition, they turned out to be healthy and reasonably well educated, so much the better. Thereafter, their fate lay in their own hands and in the winds of destiny.

Actually, both Michael and Miranda had stepped in more often with the eldest, Sylvia. As young parents, they had much more faith in their ability to influence the outcome of their children's lives than they...he...now entertained. Sylvia had the best schools, special lessons in this and that, good grooming, good manners, good clothes. The result was that she dropped out of college at the age of nineteen and got married. She promptly had three children and just as promptly got divorced. Remarried and divorced once again, her adult life, what with the alimony and the lawyers and the courtrooms, played like a daytime soap opera. When she hit thirty, she started to settle down. She went back to school, got a business degree and was now doing quite well. At least, that is what Michael hoped. The last time he had seen her was at Miranda's funeral. At that time, they hadn't talked much about Sylvia's affairs.

John's upbringing was much more detached from parental involvement. Both guardians guarded him less and parented him on an on-call basis. Consequently, he grew up much more self confident and self aware. By the time he was thirteen, he had settled on the honorable and remunerative profession of automobile repair. He stuck to it and by the time he finished high school, he had his future all mapped out. Currently, as far as Michael knew, he was happily married and had two young children. Michael had also seen him and his family at Miranda's wake, but couldn't even remember what they talked about. It hadn't been a good time for reminiscing.

The youngest, Madelaine...or, Pogo, as everyone called her, much to her mother's chagrin...was pampered as only the baby of the family can be. This worked wonders with her. She did very well in school, avoiding most of the pitfalls that lay in wait for modern teenagers. Graduating from high school with honors and younger than most, she went on to college, got a degree in computer science and was now in graduate school at M.I.T.. She had done it all completely on her own, earning scholarships and a teaching assistantship along the way. Michael was really glad of that. After Miranda died, he didn't much feel like working his butt off to put her through school. He didn't have to. She cheerfully informed him that she didn't need him. Needless to say, this gave rise to very mixed feelings. He wondered just exactly what part of computer science she was involved with, but didn't feel comfortable in asking.

All in all, though, Michael was quite satisfied with the results of his parenting. Things hadn't worked out as he had expected when he first married, but then, do they ever? He loved his children very much. When he did see them, seldom as it was, it always filled him with pride and joy, bringing back cascades of happy memories. Except, of course, that last time.

On the other hand, since they had been raised just like he had been, their attention was now focused on their own children. Again, he thought, just as it should be. There were people in this area who saw their children every day, even though the children were approaching middle age. Michael knew that this was all right. Just a different way of relating to the notion of "family". Still, he thought he would go stark raving mad if he had to spend that much time around his own children. So it went.

He had become quite lost in these reveries. Only a cloud of dust appearing on the road leading up to the house broke him out of it. He recognized the pickup as that of his nearest neighbor, Randy, the same man who had sold him the gun. He began to walk slowly back to the barnyard.

By the time he had got there, Randy had helped himself to a beer. Michael kept it for the occasional visit of one of his neighbors. Most of them were beer drinkers in the time honored tradition of Wisconsin. He himself had consumed quite a lot of brew in his youth, but found it too fattening, now that he was firmly entrenched in middle age and fighting a spare tire. Still, Randy had opened one for him and he accepted it without comment.

"Thought I'd stop by and see if you wanted to do a little shooting." said Randy before Michael had a chance to say anything. "Might need to use that sucker one of these days the way things are going."

"What do you mean?", asked Michael.

"Some folks about ten coolees over had some unwelcome visitors a couple of days back.", said Randy. "Coulee" was the term used in this part of Wisconsin for the very small valleys carved by the last of the great glaciers. Everyone measured distance in coulees rather than miles. "They caught some guys from Chicago, niggers I think, stealing food from their fields. Turned them over to the county sheriff, but it seems that some of them were carrying weapons. Handguns and knives."

Michael winced at the use of the term "nigger". There were no people of color other than white living in the area and most of those folks had been born and raised here. It was hard for any outsider to make a go of it here. Michael had enough troubles of his own when he first arrived. Only his advanced education and skill with computers had got him by. Often he helped the locals deal with their small machines. This endeared him to enough people to pass muster. Plus, he looked like he could have been raised here and knew something about farming. If he had been someone of a different race besides coming from the city, he thought it would have been just too strange to be dealt with. At least, dealt with in other than stereotypes.

Randy was going on. "...so, anyway, I thought you might like to go over to Spencer's coulee with me. A bunch of the guys are sighting in their rifles. It will give you a chance to try out that weapon I sold you. Besides, I promised you I'd show you how to use it."

Michael decided he might as well go along. If you turned down too many friendly invitations to take part in local activities it played badly on the gossip circuit. He had been avoiding too many offers, of late, as it was. If he didn't stop putting Martha off, the word would get out that he was gay or something! Besides, the day was still gray and he didn't much feel like weeding the garden . So, he went to the house, grabbed the M-1 and a couple of boxes of shells and climbed into Randy's truck.

On the way over to Spencer's coulee, Randy continued to give his theories on what was happening in the cities. Since he had never lived in one, his opinions were pretty bizarre and Michael didn't pay much attention. Instead, he nodded and grunted now and then. Just enough to let Randy know he was still there and think that he was listening. A long time ago, he had learned that it was always easy to recall the very last sentence that someone said, even if you weren't paying attention. This meant he could and would occasionally make some neutral comment about the last thing that had been said. Miranda would catch him at it, but most people were taken in.

As they neared Spencer's place, the sounds of gunfire became loud and clear. As they drove up to the shooting range Spencer had set up beside his barnyard, Michael was surprised at the number of men who were already there. It also seemed to Michael that they were exceptionally serious. Usually, a gathering of this size would include a couple of cases of beer and a lot of laughing and shouting. Today, all that could be heard was the sharp reports of deer rifles and the low sounds of earnest talk.

Most of the conversation was about the men who were caught stealing the day before. The locals were alarmed that the intruders had been armed and that they had been black. They felt that if they had not been completely surprised by the farmers, someone would have got badly hurt or worse. There was talk of organizing, although nobody quite knew what exactly that would mean. Most of the men were too young to have fought in any of America's wars. A couple of them, who were Michael's age, had been to Viet Nam, but that war had been fought with automatic weapons and helicopters, not deer rifles. Besides, Michael suspected, despite the standard bullshit, most of them had been rear guard, not front line, soldiers.

Michael himself had been a draft "evader", his computer schooling and early marriage exempting him from the military. He hadn't participated in any of the antiwar actions either, preferring to think of himself as apolitical. But, still, he felt like he had avoided an experience that he shouldn't have. And, now, with all the talk of "defending our homes and families", he felt like a definite tenderfoot. He quickly got with the program.

The M-1 turned out to be as easy to shoot as Randy had said. It still had a sling attached to it and Randy showed him how to get into a couple of military positions which made it simple to aim and fire. The positions were designed so that sling was wrapped tightly around his arm and the rifle butt was jammed firmly into his shoulder. Randy showed him how to adjust the sights for distance as well as how to estimate how far away the targets were.

Michael turned out to be a surprisingly accurate shot. Despite his lack of experience, he took to firing a gun quickly and was amazingly accurate. He found that it gave him a sense of power he had never felt before. The fact that you could pull the trigger here, and a hole would appear in a target way over there, was intoxicating. By the end of the afternoon, as the light was getting dim, Michael found that he had not only shot off all his ammunition, but a couple of boxes he had borrowed from a neighbor as well. His rifle barrel was hot in his hands as Randy showed him how to clean and oil it. Taking it apart and putting it back together was a piece of cake for somebody who had been disassembling and reassembling computers for two decades.

When Randy dropped him off back at the farm, he found that he was exhausted. He made himself a small supper of leftovers and fell asleep watching a sitcom on television. When he awakened and dragged himself off to bed at three a.m., he realized that he hadn't touched a drop of whiskey all day. The single beer he had with Randy in the afternoon was his only drink.

"I should probably cut down, anyway..." were his last thoughts as he fell once again into a dreamless sleep.

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