“Tommie, we hope to see you tonight. Dave, can you work until he gets here?”
“Sure.”
“Alice, will you work with him? Long shift.”
“You got it Wally.”
They drove back to the quarry in Alice’s truck, and went on the dragline. The engine hours still read 465 when Dave fired it up. Alice went to make coffee, and Dave went to the forward operating position, and contacted the loaders. They called the bucket down, and he picked up a load. By the time it was up, an ore hauler was ready to take it. He went through his routine, as the ore haulers went through theirs. Pick up at the crane, dump by the crusher, go around the loop to the crane. The over the road trucks came and picked up their rock, and went to the site. Well after dark, they shut down, because the highway was not taking rock anyway. The crusher had a week of rock in front of it. Tommie drove up in a beat up pickup with a bunch of junk in the back. It was a vehicle in Dealer inventory, belonging to Marie’s used cars and trucks. The night crew came on, and Tommie started loading ore haulers. Carmelita came in and turned hers over to the night shift. Dave, Alice, and Carmelita went to Alice’s house.
* * *
“08; Home”
Musical Theme; Lean on Me, by J.J. Cale
Alice parked her truck, and went to the kitchen, to get some drinks. She and Dave had Cuervo Gold, and Carmelita had a Diet Pepsi. Alice sat in her favorite chair, and looked out into the yard in the failing light. Where there had been nothing but weeds, there was a flowerbed like you see in an English Country Garden. White Spirea took the background, with Midnight Penstemon in front of them. Carnations and pinks swept in disorganized masses. Petunias and violas took the mid ground. Honeysuckle snuck up the fence while Kenilworth Ivy prowled over the foreground. Johnnie jump ups took up the slack in the foreground. In the midground were a large number of long spurred columbines. Dozens of flowering groundcovers filled in the spaces between the perennials.
“Dave, this is the most beautiful garden I have ever seen.”
“You deserve it, Alice.”
She held him close, thinking she didn’t deserve Dave or the garden.
Dave’s remodeling ideas continued, including a large but deep pool taking up a lot of the back yard, and meant for fishes. Two bridges crossed it, and pea graveled paths circled it. Flowering cherries, flowering crabapples, and peach trees found homes around it. A small gazebo fitted into one of the back corners. Along one of the sides of the house, a tiny greenhouse, a microscopic potting shed, and a small garden shed slipped in. The greenhouse was built right on the property line, and the next door neighbor had an extension of it. You could sit in a lawn chair in your side and chat with the neighbor on his side. You could go through the door to the potting shed, and chat with the neighbor while you passed cuttings and small plants back and forth. You could move on to the garden shed, and chat with the same neighbor, and pass your weed eater over to him, commiserating with his having died. If you forgot to water, your neighbor would get your nursery stock when he watered his own.
Dave filled the pond, and bought a bunch of baby koi to fill it.
Dave spent his days running the dragline, and his evenings in the garden, his nights with Alice. One afternoon, Tommie told him about something new. “Dave, there is a quarry about 40 miles north. It has a working dragline and a gravel sorter. It’s a kind of lost cause. A borrow pit operation. Got a creek running through. I can get a loader. I know you like fishes. There are some flooded pits. Maybe you could get people to pay a bit to fish in them?”
They looked into it. The current owner was about to go bankrupt, but preferred not to. He sold them the whole operation for 260 thousand. Dave and Alice didn’t qualify for the loan, but a new corporation, A&D Quarry, inc, had magic wands waved over it, and viola! 109 acres, a gravel sorter and a dragline crane. There was even a loader. It was badly treated, but Tommie fixed it up and saved the cost of a replacement. Alice brought the ten wheeler in, and started selling rock right away. When they got to gravel sorter working, she was hauling some real money loads. She could rock your driveway with her own truck, and smooth it out with her own loader, and the rock came from her own quarry.
Dave and Tommie laid out a plan for the watercourse. They would intercept the creek at the upper level of the land, and then settle out the silt. From there, it would be down to the big borrow pit, and they would change the flow so that they could hold on to all the water as long as possible. Carmelita was not happy with Wally, so they took her in hand, making her director of fishing. The settling pond at the top of the flow produced some fish, and so she could charge for fishing there. They were incorporated, so she had a share in the profits. The big pit got stocked with catfish and bass.
Tommie did what he did best, digging holes in the ground. Carmelita bought some rowboats, which she rented at pretty high rates. She could put you in the way of some very big catfish, on a nice quiet lake lots of people wanted to fish.
She drove around the property, selling beer, bait, ice, sandwiches, and tackle.
Dave watched her once with some guys on a point. They said there were no perch in the lake. She took a pole out of the back of the pickup, threaded it up, and put a crappie jig on it. She flicked it out alongside a lily pad, and pulled in a one pound perch. She dropped the perch in the guy’s cooler. “Want this pole? Fifteen bucks, reel, lure and all.”
The guy bought it, and his buddy bought a six pack of Bud.
On a Sunday night, Dave took Alice out on the big pond in the motor rescue boat, a 16 foot Carolina skiff with two 80 hp Yamahas. She could make about 60 knots. They were drinking Cuervo Gold and making about 8 knots. “Dave, are you happy with me?”
“You should not need to ask that, Alice. I am.”
“Is there some kind of thing saying you should be somewhere else?”
“Maybe that is you talking. Everyone wonders if there is something more to life than what they are doing. The hard part is understanding that you have someone so good, that you are so fortunate to have her, that whatever that something that you still want is something you want to go find with her.”
“What is that something?”
“We are on a boat not one percent of Americans could own. We own this lake. How many people will ever get here? Virtually nobody. We are so lucky, I can hardly believe it.”
He cut the motors.
“Alice, this is your world. You have everything.”
“I want something else.”
“I can’t imagine that I have that.”
“I’m not talking about that.”
“Then I don’t understand.”
“It might be that I don’t want consumer goods. I want us to have something more.”
“Let’s reach for it, then.”
There was a shriek and a big splash. Someone had fallen into the water. Dave fired the motors and turned on the forward lights, which were very bright. He turned the boat toward where the splash had been heard, and pushed the throttles all the way forward. The boat jumped up on the step, and ripped across the lake. Dave let down as he came up to a man in the water. It was actually a small girl, but it’s always called man overboard. Alice pulled her aboard. Dave turned on the work lights. They idled the boat over to the shoreline. Alice asked the girl, “Will you be all right to wade in? We will be right here.”
“I’ll be all right.”
She walked up onto the bank.
“We have dry clothes if she needs them.”
“You have done too much.”
“How?”
“You have made my daughter think I can’t keep her safe. Because I can’t swim.”
Alice said, “You should both take a water safety course. We have the numbers for them on the bulletin board. They are not expensive.”
Dave responded. “If you see a threat, and then you don’t do something to counteract it, you’re to blame. You have seen it. Protect her and yourself.”
“So easy for you to say.”
“Let me tell you something. I’ve tried to rescue, probably 100 people, and I lost more than half of them. I got to the right place at the right time, and couldn’t do the job. This motor rescue boat is a huge advantage. I hope it will always be enough.”
“She could have drowned, just like that.”
“But she didn’t. I could have been shot no number of times, but I wasn’t.”
“You are a soldier.”
“No. A Marine officer.”
Dave pushed the boat away from the shore with an oar, and when it was clear, he started the motors, and idled away from the shore. When he was into deep water, he raised the throttles and ran out into the middle of the pond.
“So where were we, Alice?”
“Can we just go back?”
“Of course we can.”
She poured them each a glass of Cuervo. The sun set slowly.
“Those people?”
“They will make it.”
“What’s the worst case?”
“They will never accept that other people can be good and kind. If you don’t, then nobody can ever do something for you. You can never do something for someone and feel like they will appreciate it. You’re stuck in your own little world where nobody cares about anyone else, and most wonderful things people do for others are invisible to you. You will be blind to nobility, kindness, and goodness. You could meet a hero and not know it.”
“Does it really happen?”
“I think it does.”
“Tell me about a hero.”
A paratrooper jumps out of a plane. Thing is, he didn’t have his static line hooked up. A guy jumps out and grabs the static line, and makes the chute deploy. Problem is, this guy does not have a chute. The first guy’s chute deploys, but the second guy takes the ride all the way to eternity.”
“I was hoping for something more upbeat.”
“Can you keep this one secret for the rest of your life?”
“OK”
“You know a Medal of Honor winner.”
“They are listed in books. I don’t.”
“There are secret ones. You get it, but you can’t have it, can’t wear it.”
“You?”
“No. I have some secret medals, but not The Big One.”
“So who does?”
“You absolutely can never tell anyone.”
“Syd.”
“I have some, too. I can go to the Pentagon, and they can be taken out of the safe, and I can look at them, but that’s all.”
“You’re not going to tell me if I guessed right.”
“I’m not. If you speculate, there is no end of trouble that could come out of it, right or wrong.”
They went back to the house.
“Dave, how much time will I need to keep up this garden when it’s all done?”
“Oh, an hour or two a week. If you keep up on a perennial garden, it chokes out the weeds, and it gets easier as time goes.”
“If you neglect it?”
“Then it gets real hard. Don’t ever do that.”
“I want to try to make some spring rolls.”
They went inside. Alice started cutting vegetables, and ran Dave out of the kitchen.
Dave went back outside, and looked at the flowers in the moonlight. He wondered if they would ever mean anything like what they meant to him to Alice. Maybe there was nothing there. He thought he loved her, but the feeling was blunt. There was no thrill in it. It was something wrong with him. He just couldn’t love like he should be able to. He liked her, but he could never give her something that most people took for granted. Not a lack of loyalty or anything like that. But there was something he should feel, and he didn’t. He wanted to just get in the junky little car and drive away, but he had some idea how badly that would hurt her, and he didn’t want to do that. But what could he do? Go in and eat spring rolls and pretend to love her like someone that did not have this missing place inside? What was missing, anyway? A sociopath doesn’t care about other people. He has no conscience. What is it when you feel bad about not caring like you should? He wanted to please her. He liked to kiss her and caress her and make her happy. But was he doing something that seemed like something she wanted, and was not really?
He went back in the house.
“Weren’t you going to let me make these spring rolls?”
“You don’t know how.”
“That’s true. And you do.”
“I do, but that isn’t why I came back in.”
“Something is wrong.”
“Very wrong.”
“You love someone else.”
“No.”
“You don’t want to be with me any more.”
“No.”
“Then it’s not much of much. What is it?”
“I don’t think I feel the right way about you. I like being with you, I care about you, I don’t want some other chick, but there is something I am supposed to feel that I don’t.”
“What would that something be?”
“Everything. Somewhere at the core, something that makes all the difference. I like you, I care about you, but I just don’t think I love you. Whatever that is, it’s missing.”
“You just ripped up a bunch of weeds and put in $500 worth of plants in my yard, and you don’t love me. You did that to please me, but your feelings are not sincere.”
“There is something missing. I don’t feel it somewhere, I don’t know.”
“Dave, you don’t know. That’s right. What have you been doing, reading poetry, all that love for all the ages stuff? Most poets didn’t live to be 30, is how fucked up they were. When you do something for someone, without expectation of getting something out of them, that’s love. When you want to please someone and make that person happy, just because you want to, that’s love. If your feelings are all confused and messed up, that’s love. There is only one reason you can’t just accept that you love me. Do you know what it is?”
“No.”
“You have an off the chart IQ. You are so god damned smart that you fool yourself. You think there must be something more to everything than what you see. Well of course there is, and that is true for everyone. Your problem is you think there must be something behind particle physics, quantum mechanics and relativity. And I suppose there is, but even you are not Einstein. Well, maybe you are. But Einstein couldn’t work out the unified field theory, so the only way you are moving on is if you are smarter than him.”
“Now, Dave, you already passed my love test, so get over here and show me how to make a spring roll.”
It looked really easy when Dave did it, as many things do. A little dab of water would make this stick here. Somehow you were making it hard for yourself, because there was nothing to it.
It all conflicted with the Dave theory of conflict where the problem was an intermediate level of intelligence would cause conflicts that would prevent man from evolving to a higher level of intelligence. Perhaps there was a level of intelligence that would finally lose the desire for conflict, but it had not yet been attained, and if it were, the lower levels would cause mutual destruction anyway.
They made some more. They had made about as many as there was any need for, when the there was a tapping on the door.
“Syd?”
Dave went to the door and let her in. Syd was wearing a jogging suit, black with gold decorations, and black running shoes.
“Am I intruding, Alice?”
“No. I thought you were in Florida.”
“You were in Florida, and now you are in Texas. I was in Florida, and now I am in Texas.”
“Alice, Syd is manic depressive, but she is missing the low gears. She is either manic or extremely manic, which is now. She isn’t dangerous to us.”
“I know Dave from long ago.”
“We were just making spring rolls.”
“If you don’t want me around, Alice, I will leave. But I see a cell tower right over there.”
“Take it easy, Syd.”
Alice got a worried look. “Syd, don’t mess with that cell tower.”
Syd ran out the door, down the block to the cell tower, and ran to the top of it like a squirrel climbing a tree.
She walked around the top of the braces as if she was inspecting the tower, and then came down. She walked back over to the house.
“Made you nervous, Alice?”
“Very.”
“I do this all the time, isn’t that right, Kitty?”
“It’s right.”
“See, Alice, nothing to worry about.”
“It looks pretty dangerous to me.”
“You should see me jump off a boat onto an anchor, and climb the chain and toss a grapnel to the rail and board the ship. That’s dangerous.”
“You’re not supposed to be talking about assaulting ships at sea, Syd.”
“What’s it to you?”
“Could we talk to General Barnes?”
“Yeah! Let’s call him!”
They went upstairs and Dave opened the infamous attaché case. Dave called General Barnes.
“Kitty for big cat.”
“Not in the office.”
“This is a minor problem.”
“Barnes.”
“Kitty with Syd, all the way up.”
“And?”
Dave handed Syd the phone.
“Hey, General Barnes, how nice to hear from you! No. I just climbed a cell tower, it was cool. Dave thinks so. Well, I could. In like 15 minutes? Yeah, up the line. See you soon.”
“General Barnes is calling me in for a conference. They will take me off the roof of your house.”
She went out the window and up onto the roof by a route Dave could not imagine. A black helicopter came by, and dropped a rope. Syd scurried up the rope and into the helicopter, and they were gone. Dave went downstairs.
“Did she leave on that chopper, Dave?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought she was nutty on the boat. But she is flat out crazy.”
“No threat to you.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind having her behind me with an MP-5.”
“Which may only mean that you are also nuts.”
“She’s all right, Alice. She is going back to General Barnes for a tune up.”
“What will he do?”
“Talk her down.”
“How can he do that?”
“He can. That’s what I know.”
“So you don’t get paid for working with this agency that employs psychotics with automatic rifles.”
“We’re not necessary psychotic.”
“But it’s not a career limiting fact if you are. A little while ago, you were wondering if we should be together because you had this odd thing in your head that maybe you didn’t love me the right way, and then your co-worker comes to visit, walks around 450 feet up on a cell tower, and has to be taken to the Pentagon for therapy from a General. I suppose off my roof on a rope from a black helicopter.
“I’ll tell you something, you’re going to have to do some really good caressing and cuddling tonight. You even bought me a fish pond. Just don’t put sharks in it.”
“Don’t be like that, Alice.”
“I won’t. I’m just going to buy a few Nile Crocodiles for my fishpond. And some jumping cholla.”
“I’ll have to get some stray dogs, then. Crocs need to eat, after all.”
“They’ll never get past my cholla.”
“I’ll have them delivered by black helicopters.”
“I saw it. It was black, and it had no tail numbers, Dave.”
“Well, that one.”
* * *
In the morning, Dave got a call on the secure phone. General Barnes asked him to put Alice on, too, so he called her, and put the phone on speaker.
“Dave, Alice, I’m sorry about last night.”
“We’re not mad at you, Syd. We were worried. What if you fell off that tower?”
“That’s awfully unlikely.”
“You need to be careful. If nothing else, don’t do something like that where I might see you fall. That wouldn’t be fair, would it?”
“No. I left my car in your driveway.”
“It isn’t blocking anything.”
“I’m going to sell it. Would you take anything personal out of it, clean? It’s not locked.”
“Sure.”
“Joe is coming to take it to the local dealer as soon as he gets the key. They will have it detailed, and then Los Sombreros will buy it from the local dealer.”
“How does Joe know where we live?”
“We didn’t say, we didn’t ask.”
“How is Wally doing without his dragliners?”
“We both work part time over there. Mutual benefit.”
General Barnes broke in. “Lincoln Seismographic is going to do a little testing at your place. They might want to shoot that third pit.”
“This is legitimate?”
“A kitten got out of a tree. The cat who helped her remembers a favor on Ali Bassa street. Lincoln belongs to the tomcat whose kitten was in the tree. It comes around.”
“Keep Syd out of trouble. She might be a famous actress some day.”
“So silly.”
“You could be. You’d have been much better in Star Wars as Princess Leah. You’re prettier, you have the great hair, and you could do your own stunts, like Jackie Chan. I would believe you beating up those storm troopers because you could do it.”
“Well, we see you, then.”
They hung up. Tommie went to Smithfield Quarry to take a shift on the dragline. Dave loaded Alice for a small job, and she headed out to do it. There were only a few fishermen, so Carmelita watched the crusher while Dave ran the sorter. Alice came back and wanted a load of topsoil. Dave loaded her.
Mick, the night manager, opened the gate and let her out. He walked with a cane, but it would have been a bad mistake to think he was weak. He was a former First Sergeant in the 101st Airborne.
Dave went home to make dinner for himself and Alice. They sat outside near the pond. Dave had rigged some bug zappers about 20 feet above the pond. A bug zapper above water is twice as effective as over land. When a bug is stunned but not killed, it drops to the ground, and often recovers. If it hits water with fishes in it, recovery is not going to happen.
They got a call from Mick. Something was going wrong at their quarry. Dave grabbed a .44 Mag revolver and a Remington 7 mag with night vision. Alice put a .38 in her pocket, and picked up a Springfield 1903. She put her night vision binoculars on her neck, and took off for the 10 wheeler. They headed down the road with Alice driving. The 10 wheeler was easily the most powerful weapon they had, and Alice knew it best.
They came to the gate, and Dave opened it, jumping back into the truck. There were lights down the way, and Dave took Alice’s binoculars to look. There was a cluster of people by the lights. Dave put the binoculars back on Alice. “I don’t know what is happening. There are people around there is all I can tell.”
Dave put the 7 mag on his shoulder. He pulled his .44 mag. They pulled up to the scene, and moved up just behind the lights of the 10 wheeler.
“What the fuck is going on?” Dave asked.
“The guy in the yellow shirt stabbed his girl friend.”
“Get on the ground, yellow shirt. Face down. Spread hands. One funny move and you’re fish bait.”
Police cars came into the scene. “Sir, please put down the gun.”
Dave did so. “Officer, I have been told the man in the yellow shirt just stabbed his girlfriend. Please call an ambulance.”
One of the women there said, “I’m an RN. Please let me give her first aid.”
Dave said, “There is an extensive first aid kit behind the passenger seat of that 10 wheeler.”
Two more police cars came. One of the deputies got the first aid kit, and let the nurse give first aid. The man in the yellow shirt was cuffed and stuffed. The Sheriff came from the second car. “Everyone take a witness, question them. I will do Mr. Cale.”
The ambulance came and took the victim away.
“Dave, what happened?”
“I don’t know. We got a call from my night manager, Mick, so we came down with the 10 wheeler.”
“Why the 10 wheeler?”
“It can win a head on collision with anything short of a semi.”
“You expected trouble.”
“We really didn’t know what to expect. But if my friends are in trouble, I have to come.”
“Did you see a crime committed, or fire at anyone?”
“No.”
“You just tend to draw trouble, like that girl who went up on the cell tower.”
“Sheriff, isn’t it also a fact that you draw trouble, that you are there when things happen?”
He laughed. “It’s my job.”
“Sheriff, not everyone who has things going on around him wants that. You ever been in the military?”
“Marines. In Nam.”
Dave put out his hand. “Captain David Cale USMC retired. Rifle Company Commander in the Gulf War.”
They shook hands. “Semper Fi, Mac.”
“This is your crime scene, Sheriff. Please lock the gate when you are done. We would like to resume quarry operations in the morning if possible.”
“I think it will be.”
Dave handed him a business card. “I doubt I will know anything but if you want to ask…”
The Sheriff handed him one. “Same here.”
Dave walked to the ten wheeler, and Alice drove them away. “Was that male bonding or what?”
“We both want to know what happened, and neither of us can tell the other.”
“We really don’t know what happened.”
“We don’t. What they said, he stabbed his girlfriend. How could he do that?”
Tears welled up in Dave’s eyes.
“Dave, you of all people should know how cruel people can be.”
The night landscape went past him. The moon stood sentry, uselessly watching over meaningless cruelty.
“If she dies…”
“You will do nothing. Let the legal system have a go. It isn’t personal. If it was you, I’d let the legal system try, and if it failed, I would run him over with this truck.”
“It will never work in this case.”
“Then, after the legal system fails, you have someone send a contact number for the Wayfarers to her father, if he can afford them.”
Starlight showed the stark frames of mesquite trees. Pools of light showed pastures. It was too dark for the cones of the eye to work, and everything was black and white. Dave’s mind went back to a road like this, with the shou