As Wind in Dry Grass Read online

  As Wind in Dry Grass

  H. Grant Llewellyn

  Copyright 2010 by H. Grant Llewellyn

  Smashwords Edition

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  ISBN: 978-1-4659-5599-9

  Printed in the United States of America

  Revised 2012. Second Printing.

  Front cover is a detail from Garden of Earthly Delights

  by Hieronymous Bosch

  For You know who…

  Behold, he cometh with clouds...

  and all kindreds of the earth

  shall wail because of him...

  Revelations: 1; 7.

  This is a work of fiction and as such, none of the events depicted here are real, nor is the author suggesting they should be, plausible as they may seem to some and desirable as they may be to others. The characters and plot are entirely the product of the author's sick mind and any resemblance to person's living or dead is purely coincidental. There are references to well-known public figures and there are other references to events, incidents and material that are part of the public record. If these depictions vary from accepted "reality," it is solely for the purposes of dramatic construction and certainly not meant to impugn anyone's otherwise sterling reputation or dispute a deserved place in history. No deceit can disguise the truth for ever, a warning from the Gods the author notes with gratitude and humility.

  Finally, the author further suggests that no one try any of this at home.

  The phrase crowd crystal and the analogy of fire and crowds on page 156, are borrowed from Elias Canetti's, Crowds and Power.

  The poem on Page 126 comprises the opening eight lines of T.S. Elliot’s, The Hollow Men

  PART 1, CHAPTER 1

  Karl Ogle had been cutting hair in Provost for fifty years. At the moment, Larry Brinkman was sitting in the chair, the smell of hay strong on his clothes. It reminded Karl that winter was really here because the farmers were drawing hay down from the mow to feed their animals and the smell stuck on them. You can smell the change of season in Provost.

  Karl clipped away at Larry's silver ducktail, absently thinking about Christmas, a time of year he found particularly irritating especially when he thought of his wife’s family coming to visit.

  There were half a dozen others seated around the small shop, their heavy coats and boots making them look bigger than they really were. This was where certain men had come to catch up on things and shoot the bull for almost half a century. This entourage was composed of older men in their sixties and seventies, men who had grown up in Provost and gone to school together and many to Vietnam and then returned here to take up where they left off and plant their feet on the soil where they would be buried.

  It was at Karl Ogle's barbershop that the remnants of that generation met to catch up and have their political opinions reinforced and find out who had prostate troubles.

  Ogle looked out the window and watched Albert Smythe park his Ford on the square and climb down. He was wearing an old leather jacket and a wool cap and he hunched his shoulders against the lightly blowing snow as he crossed the square to Baker's Hardware.

  Larry Brinkman also watched him and let out a snort.

  "There's one crazy bastard who doesn't even know there's a recession on," he said.

  "Like an Amish," someone said. They all turned and watched the snow slanting against the glass.

  "Recession's over, Howard, or ain't ya heard?"

  "Ya, that darkie in the White house said so. I heard it on the news."

  "And they never lie, neither."

  "Niggers or newspapers?"

  "Sonofabitch is going to spend fifty million on his election party next month. Fifty million, dollars, I'm talking - not pesos."

  "He ain't done so bad. Looking back to oh nine I didn't think I was gonna crawl out from under this one."

  "I could still use a bailout, by God. If I pass the hat you think you boys could donate so I can buy a Mercedes?"

  The television bolted to the wall changed from some moronic talk show to the news and Ogle unmuted it with the remote.

  "Only two days until Christmas and for the first time in four years it looks like it's going to be a winner! Our reporter Andrea Sanjay-McDonald has more..."

  "See what I mean?" Ogle said. "The Jews are selling fifty dollar rag dolls again so we're gonna be okay."

  "Fifty dollars! Hell, I wish I could find one for fifty dollars. When was the last time you bought a rag doll?"

  This remark settled in him because he hadn't finished his Christmas shopping and he knew that things, all kinds of things - anything, in fact - would be almost impossible to find by tomorrow night and then he’d be up against it when he got home.

  "WalMart been just about cleaned out."

  "I think Smythe's got the right idea. He just lives up there on that hill with them dogs and a cow and don't participate in anything."

  "You ever been up there?"

  "I brung him three loads of gravel, this summer. It's quite something. Hardly knew that piece of land was up there.

  "Me and my brother used to hunt rabbits there in the forties."

  "He's got himself quite a setup," I hear.

  "Well, he don't have to buy much, that's for sure. He's got the greenhouse and all that fuel he makes."

  "Chicken wagon. That's what they call him. You can smell him coming."

  "Can't see it, myself, what with diesel down the way it is. Must cost him as much to make it."

  "He ain't worried about, money, that man."

  "I heard there was a human woman lived there for a while with him when he first got here but he run her off and then took up with that nanny goat and he ain't never looked back."

  The room filled with pleasant, male laughter.

  At Baker's Hardware Store, Albert Smythe was rummaging through a box of odd plumbing parts, checking each one carefully before reluctantly discarding it or putting it into a cardboard box Lee Baker had provided for him.

  "You finding what you need. Albert?"

  He looked down the isle at Lee Baker taking inventory.

  "I'll be all right," he said.

  "You doing anything for Christmas?" Baker asked after a while.

  Albert ignored him, pretending not to have heard. He retrieved half of a three quarter inch union, two half inch nipples, not too badly galled and a couple of street elbows.

  "What you working on now, or should I even ask?" Baker spoke. He was standing beside Albert, smiling, watching him.

  "I'd have to kill you if I told you, Lee."

  It was a repeating joke between them but they never seemed to tire of it. Albert's reputation as an eccentric inventor was vastly out of proportion to anything he had ever done, but it seemed to suit everyone to keep up the fiction that he was either a mad genius or a terrorist who would one way or the other turn up on the CNN evening news.

  "You going anywhere for Christmas?"

  "Na," Albert said. It was not an invitation to further conversation and Lee Baker took the hint and drew away to count washers in a bin.

  Several local contractors entered the store and drew Lee's attention.

  They all greeted Albert when they saw him and cleared a path for him as he headed for the cash register.

  He signed the bill Lee presented to him and left.

  He could hear the sudden burst
of laughter as the door sucked closed behind him.

  The snow had picked up in the last few minutes and he was nearly blind crossing the street.

  "White Christmas," he muttered, climbing into his truck. It took him four tries before it started in a cloud of black smoke. The biodiesel was already starting to gel. He should have changed over to fossil fuel already but he had been working on an anti-gel that solved the waxing problems as well as the pour point of the fuel and wanted to try it out. He could tell it wasn't working. He would probably get home but he'd have to drain the whole fuel system and replace it with regular diesel for the winter.

  "Shit," he said, turning on the radio.

  It was just after eight thirty a.m. Eastern time and the day was doubly dull from the snow sky and parallax of the planet.

  He had a three-mile drive. It would normally take him about six minutes including the wait at Provost's one stop light but he was fifteen minutes just getting through the square to Highway 61. Typically, no one was prepared for the sudden snowstorm moving in on the Ohio Valley and cars were already turned contrary to the roads and spinning their tires.

  He threw the truck into four-wheel drive and managed to skirt a knot of automobiles by driving halfway up the sidewalk and running a red light.

  The police chief, Morgan Finney watched him and frowned but he was too busy trying to sort out the altercations already on his plate to bother with Albert.

  Albert waved and passed through the intersection onto the highway.

  He was immediately alone on the road.

  The radio people kept saying "white Christmas" over and over again, licking their corporate chops at the relief a sudden increase in consumer spending could mean.

  "White Christmas, White Christmas," they brayed, no matter what station you turned to.

  After three years of grinding recession that had cost ten million jobs and the near demise of the American banking system, a Christmas retail plum pudding was not going to escape until every drop of sauce had been drained from it.

  Albert reached out to turn the radio off when it went dead on it's own for a few seconds. The pickup filled with static.

  Then the voice broke in, that mid-Western pilots voice, that neutral, confident, serious voice of authority with its grave fatherly frown.

  "We interrupt this program for a special news bulletin."

  There were some extraneous sounds as a news conference of some sort in the process of assembling began to broadcast.

  The voice of Deanne Ray Stewart, head of Homeland Security suddenly came through in mid-sentence.

  "-No, we have no idea who was responsible at this time. All we know is that several transport trucks exploded on the bridges into Manhattan about twenty minutes ago. There have been reports-"

  Her voice was interrupted by the distant, muffled sound of an explosion. The room appeared to go silent.

  "Excuse me," she said and apparently left the platform.

  A reporter jumped in to fill the dead air space.

  "As you just heard Homeland Security Secretary Deanne Ray Stewart, reports have been confirmed that at least six transport trucks and possibly more exploded on the bridges going into Manhattan this morning...uh, George Washington bridge, Triborough bridge, Queensborough bridge, Williamsburgh bridge, Manhattan bridge-"

  He was interrupted by shouts and mayhem behind him somewhere.

  Then the radio went dead.

  Albert was concentrating on the increasingly thick snowfall that was blanketing the highway. He was down to a crawl, snow whipping across the road in sheets and ramming itself against his windshield.

  The news had registered with him, but he had to get home before he could actually think about it.

  The strobe of a snowplow approached him, it's amber sweep light catching on the crystals. The plow passed, throwing waves of snow onto the shoulder and the storm folded in behind as if it had never been.

  A high-pitched repeating signal came from the radio, a sound he recognized as a weather warning.

  "Right on time," he muttered.

  "This is an emergency broadcast. Do not adjust your radio or television. All commercial radio and television broadcasts have been temporarily suspended. We repeat: Do not change the station you are listening to.

  "A state of emergency has been declared in the following areas: The states of New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.

  "All transportation facilities-"

  The radio went dead again, this time, Albert suspected from a downed power line or tower as the wind had jumped to about forty miles an hour.

  He almost missed the turnoff to his own road. The trees had sheltered his winding, thousand foot driveway that climbed a hundred feet from most of the snow, but there was still almost a foot to plow through. Fortunately the truck held on until he was able to park it a hundred feet from the house.

  Even the dogs had taken shelter and no one greeted him.

  Albert knew the power was off as soon as he got out of the vehicle. He could hear his generator growling in the shed and saw the plume of smoke coming from the steel chimney. The automatic start-up switch had functioned properly, at least. He hunkered against the snow and made his way to the shed door. When he opened it the noise rolled out. It was a twelve-kilowatt diesel generator with a twenty-horse power Chinese engine he'd reconditioned himself. Two steel tanks held almost six hundred gallons of biodiesel, enough to run the system at full load for two months. It was overbuilt like everything else he did. His total electric load was less than half the system output to start with and power was never down for more than a few days, but Albert was an extremist. In his pursuit of the mythological condition of "total independence," he worked almost exclusively from the worst-case-scenario paradigm and having no other responsibilities of the practical or emotional nature he was free to indulge his apocalyptic fantasies.

  Albert didn't work, that's all people knew. He lived off something, most likely the proceeds of crime or perhaps he was funded by White Separatists or Arabs. Maybe he was an FBI plant, sent as a magnet for local nut jobs. In any case, he paid cash for everything except at the hardware store where he ran up a bill each month. He used so much hardware he didn't want to bother with money when he was caught up in some creation or development. He had no visible means of support, no local bank account and no television satellite or cable, which was particularly disturbing.

  He had driven truck for twenty years, living in the back of a series of Peterbilts and Freightliner Classics, his expenses minimal and his good record and long experience earning him premium runs and pay. He bought property in various parts of the country and resold it, accumulating over time enough money to pay cash for his twenty eight acres in southern Indiana and for everything else he wanted. He had no investments - never had - except in land and equipment. He chose to forgo interest on his money and instead, kept it in cash in the house. Hidden around the property in various locations, was almost $200 thousand, half of it in gold coins he had purchased when it was around four hundred dollars an ounce.

  There were rumors, of course, about the vast fortune he kept hidden in his basement but Provost was no different from any other small town. What people couldn't determine through evidence they made up and so for every individual who promoted the idea that Albert Smythe had cash stuffed under his mattress, there were two others who knew this was not true: the money was kept in an old septic system, packets of thousand dollar bills wrapped in plastic and submerged in waste water. This excluded those who said he had actually used it for insulation in the barn and the special few who claimed to have seen him dancing naked by moonlight like a demented Satyr in a shower of gold coins and paper notes. He never responded to any suggestions, questions or jibes. The more misinformed they were about him, the happier he was.

  He seldom left his property except to shop for a few groceries or purchase hardware for one of his gadgets. He had erected a large green
house, which he heated all winter with the same biodiesel that was keeping his lights on in the current blackout. He had a cow named Bolivia and three goats. Half a dozen dogs of various dimensions, breeds and dispositions wandered the property, though he laid claim to none but his shepherd, Ludwig and he traded a half dozen chickens food and shelter for eggs. They seemed content with the arrangement. The two donkeys seemed to live here by choice, but kept to themselves, sadly watching everyone from a distance.

  Albert had lived alone now for a quarter of a century. First, all those years in the truck and now here. He was forty eight years old, five feet ten inches tall, lean but hard from labor and he still had all his hair. He had no artistic talent that he knew of. He could not draw, sing, dance, rhyme or fiddle. He was not even particularly talented with those things he pursued. Albert actually thought of himself as the invisible man. Unless someone was formally introduced to him, people forgot his name and face almost immediately. If they couldn't link him to something specific, a deal or an argument or a bill, he was forgotten as quickly as last year's snow.

  He had vague memories of growing up with two older sisters who must be in their late fifties by now, neither of whom he had seen or heard from in more than twenty years. He thought about them occasionally, but it was no more than a momentary curiosity. His father, an affable man who sold insurance and showed a benign interest in his family, died at his desk when Albert was twenty. Three people came to the funeral other than immediate family. His mother moved to California and remarried. There was no bitterness. There wasn't anything, not even a longing for something that wasn't ever there. Albert's family dissolved and was gone without a trace.

  His first "real" girlfriend was a homeless woman who lived in a tent in a Los Angeles Home Depot parking lot. He delivered to Home Depot and saw her tent pitched on the dirty grass near a chain link fence. He offered her a cigarette while he caught up his log books and she climbed into his cab and sat down beside him in the truck, uninvited.