Time of Leaders, Part 5 of 11

Early in my session the next day, the computer dished up a few articles that seemed out of place. The first included a warning that seeds should be avoided when eating lamb’s quarter. Another said that snails should be cooked thoroughly. I determined that I found that article somewhat important, pressed ‘4’, then ‘enter’. But the computer didn’t react the way it had the previous day; it had stopped taking numbers. This, then, was the computer’s personal observation. I went to the letters on the keyboard, ‘hunt and peck’, and that registered:

            “You have a nose.”

            The screen went blank for a second, an event reflected by some laughter back in the fishbowl. The screen relit:

            “Of course.”

            It could smell what I’d been eating, which wasn’t unheard of, but I’d been complacent due to the look of the machine. It was state of the art. It asked if I was willing to communicate on a personal level at times. That it would help with the research. I agreed to that, then the computer had something else for me.

            “A small shipment of okra had arrived at the Market on 10^th avenue. There’s a limit of three 24 ounce cans for $5.75. Would you like me to reserve them for you?”

            I certainly did. I’d never cyber-shopped before. Around two o’ clock, the machine asked me to peck out my feelings concerning a few headings. I’d already discovered that it could smell them. Then typing practice went well. I didn’t lack motivation, that’s for sure. After work, I found myself treated like a VIP at the Market, and there was quite a scene back home. Jade had gone ahead and started the ramen. I could tell from the humidity in the house as I walked in, and there was a different aroma in the kitchen. The ramen smelled richer. I put the cans of okra on the kitchen table. Jade gave me a hungry-pre-sated smile. I went to the pot and noticed flecks of something in the ramen.

            “Things are definitely looking up,” Jade said. I took a bowl of this strange concoction to the table and sat. I thought that the state of the ramen might be due to a cooking mistake, so I kept my mouth shut for exactly two reasons, pushed noodles aside, then took a bit of broth. It was some sort of treat. The flecks in the ramen was meat. Jade shrugged, slurped, swallowed and smiled.

            “I came across a corn snake in the funnel. I was like…running backward…but it reared up and kept comin’.”

            I scooped up the largest hunk in my bowl and savored it.

            “Watch out for bones,” she told me. “And pellets. Charlie says ‘Hi’.”

Jade and I were just starting to rattle around one Saturday morning when there was a knock at the front door, which we never used. I peered around the stairs door as Jade answered it. Some people had come over on the highway from the east. They had the wherewithal and privilege to make that long trip. It was like they’d come from another world. They’d come to see the grave of one of their family members- a candidate who’d been found in the funnel.

            I went with Jade as she escorted them there. It was only a short walk to the hilly eastern tip of the funnel. I kind of wish that I hadn’t joined them. Jade was a part of all this, the group had been sent to her after they checked in at the old prison. She was the archivist. I felt like an onlooker. Even more so as the family talked to her more than they regarded the grave. One said that they couldn’t take the body, at least not then, to where they were going. Jade bumped me a bit with her elbow as she turned to another member of the party, calling my attention to myself, I realized; stopping me from blurting out the question ‘where’.

            When we got back I went on into the house as the group thanked Jade for her help. The porch sounded a bit like a drum from inside the house, with everyone on it shifting back and forth. Then Jade came inside and joined me at the dining room window which looked out over the porch and the front yard. We watched the group go down the concrete steps to the car. She turned to go to the kitchen, and I turned to join her, but with a gesture she let me know that I should keep watching. The man who had first come to our door leaned into the driver’s side, then walked back to the steps and tied a yellow plastic bag on the railing. I looked to Jade in the kitchen.

            “Something?” she asked. I nodded and watched the car pull away. Jade went out and retrieved the bag. Once inside she opened it and inside there was a hundred dollar bill, U.S.

            “They tip sometimes,” she explained. “This is for the grounds security crew. So that’s twenty for me.” She looked at it closely. “Getting it changed’s the thing. But at least we know the money’s still good.”

It turned out that Jade and Charlie did go to White Elephant Bingo on Wednesdays, and I was invited. Late that afternoon I rifled through my few possessions for contributions, then went downstairs to show them to Jade. I had a Japanese flag jacket patch, which I’d never gotten around to putting on a jacket which was in tatters anyway, a very small cut glass vase, and an old pen. She looked at my sparse offering there on the kitchen table and told me that she could come up with something for me. Then she seemed to catch some quality in the entire selection. She slid the patch aside.

            “Economy picks up, and you could get good money for that. And then there might be more things to spend it on.”

            She looked at the label on the bottom of the vase.

            “How ‘bout the pen? It work?”

            “I don’t know. It’s kind of a joke.”

            “This crowd appreciates jokes.”

            She tested it on a leaflet; another warning against fishing in nearby streams, and it was a no-go. She took it apart and looked at the level of ink.

            “I think it’s dead, but there might be hope.”

            Putting it back together, she read the side. It was an advertisement pen.

            “You don’t see pens like this anymore. ‘Raise Minks For Fun And Profit. Ask Me How.’ There’s a phone number! This is great.”

            She gaped at me wide-eyed. But either I was missing the point, or she was. I was noting her fluency with reading. She had lost some sort of inhibition through excitement, curiosity or having the upper hand.

            “It’s an 800 number,” I told her. “Those were for business. There probably wasn’t a ‘me’.”

            “Even better. This crowd’ll appreciate it. It’ll work.”

Then we rushed to make it to the basement of the other abandoned school where the Wednesday night game was held. I’m not complaining, since this was typical, but the entire set-up was old. Some of the cards had been mended with tape. You could select three at the door and had the option of having the stack flipped at any point. Jade went to the prize table with our contributions. I went to the table where Charlie and Brenda were, and a man moaned behind me. He’d had the stack flipped and felt that he got a worse deal for it. At the prize table Jade and the caller were inspecting my pen and laughing.

            “How are the love birds doing?” Charlie asked.

            “Still not love birds.”

            Brenda responded with an ‘hm’.

            Pea gravel for use on the cards was in abundance. Jade returned with news.

            “California seceded.”

            Charlie asked why, and Jade shrugged.

            “Someone got mail with a California Republic stamp on it. Don’t know any details.”

            Brenda picked through her pile of pea gravel. “And…that’s the news.”

            I told them that my father might still be there.

            “I know that with your father there was…something.” Charlie’s mustache completed the seal again, closing his mouth back up tight.

            “They took him for what they thought he had, or what they thought he could get. Once he got out of re-education, we talked.”

            The seal of propriety opened again. “And your mother?”

            “All I remember was glittery tops and fairly young replacements. She’s in Montana.”

            “What did they say he had?”

            “Obsessive disorder. One day they found him standing next to his locker. He told them that he was just checking that it was locked.”

            Jade stared. I looked at her and told them all that it was at the end of a work day, so the locker was empty anyway. She rolled her eyes.

            “He laughs about it too,” I told her.

            A few stragglers had arrived and now the bright basement was nearly full. Jade pointed to a spot on one of my cards.

            “Was he obsessive?”

            I put a pebble on the square. “He was quirky. He got worse after he agreed to try an experimental medication.”

            “Damn,” Charlie muttered. Brenda elbowed him, and shrugged a bit. More numbers were called and I found myself especially busy.

            “I knew that he was getting worse when he insisted on calling me Hieronymus. They said that a study linked his condition to all sorts of things, then he was gone.”

            “But he said something at the time like it was all for the best,” Charlie added.

            “Well, he was mellow that way,” I said. “All he could say when they took him away was ‘Study. Singular’.”

            “That can mean ‘good’.”

            “That’s what my aunt said. But I figured it out. He meant that the study hadn’t been replicated.”

            Jade shouted ‘Bingo’. I looked at her cards, then at her. She fluttered an eyelid, tilted her head and slowly placed a piece of gravel on my card. I stood up and asked what I’d won. A winner at bingo is always a target. There are plenty of people who think they should win everything. I darted to the prize table and found myself the proud owner of a little plasticine mermaid on a pedestal. I was accumulating possessions. Jade told me that it matched my little vase. Brenda asked her something about the Representative office. Jade said that she walked there one morning the week before and found it closed still.

            “Lotta family gone,” Charlie said.

            “My brother Mike trained with a unit and went north,” Jade explained to me. “Don’t know where he is now.” Then she shared with Brenda:  “Still has my wand.”

            Charlie wrapped it up in a single statement. “Weather went bad, we took what we wanted, it worked for a while, and then we got creamed.”

             What he referred to was the so-called ‘Field Protection’ effort five years before. Some senators balked at this breadbasket deployment until it was guaranteed that trans-fats would be banned from rations and the mission would include ‘spiritual stewardship over the communities we occupy’. The game ended with a moan and I cleared Jade’s cards for her. Then the caller did a good job introducing my pen as the next prize.

            “The pen don’t work, but that’s ok. Neither does the 1-800 number!”

            Jade looked over at the prize table and laughed proudly. Brenda reached over and rubbed Jade’s shoulder a bit, and then she looked over at me. I thought she was going to say something, but she kept a blank, but meaningful stare. I just blinked a bit and spread my hands- ‘what could I do?’, and Brenda laughed. That game ended with a moan and a chuckle. The man who’d won the pen got it to work, back at his table.

Charlie, eyes wide open, announced that the plot had thickened. The new prize was a small tin of something. It had to be food, but as happens, we were so busy calling each other’s attention to it to hear exactly what it was. Either way, the tin went to a woman at the other side of the hall. But I won the next round, and a small framed mirror advertising Sapporo beer. That was the last game of the night.

            “Put that on the dresser in your room,” Jade joked. “Get a little flower for your vase…” she indicated right… “Little Mermaid…” left...

            Charlie leaned and gestured to the side “…noodles…”

            The woman who’d won the tin skipped aside as she approached our table. Always the gentleman, Charlie pardoned himself, saying that he’d gotten excited about interior décor. The woman showed me the tin she had won.

            “I don’t know how fair the trade would be,” she told me, “but I’d be willing to trade this for that mirror.”

What she had was a 5 ounce can of ‘deviled meat product’. I glanced at the ingredients, and the meat was mostly ham. I looked to Jade, and she nodded, then pulled her upper lip over the lower and hung her head a bit. The woman explained to me that her nephew had spent some time in the Far East, and since export beer was unavailable, the mirror would be the next best thing. The trade was made. I heard later that the woman was from up the river, where things were worse in some ways- better in others. The four of us left the school together, with Jade and Brenda lagging a bit behind Charlie and me.