Rhubarb
RHUBARB
by M.H. Van Keuren
Copyright © 2012 by M.H. Van Keuren. All rights reserved.
First Kindle Edition: April 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9852155-0-7
Cover Design:
Streetlight
Graphics
Editor:
Little Media
Empire
Written in Montana.
LICENSE NOTES
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DISCLAIMER
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
events either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses,
events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For Dexter and Michael
1985
A shape extruded from a swirling green event, pouring into
real space like a stretching cheetah on a moving sidewalk. The green event
plipped away as queerly as it had popped, leaving a complete and coherent
object drifting with silent purpose on a background of stars—a ship.
The vessel was immense and segmented. Two sections were
nearly identical cylinders of pitted chitin. The third section, the front—or
perhaps the rear—clearly the business end, bristled with antennas, sensors, and
receiver dishes. Bits, certainly involved with propulsion, protruded at
ungraceful angles. In its entirety, the ship could have been a thing of
chthonic wonder, like an unholy trinity of sea cucumber gods, but for the
corporate logo emblazoned on every facet. City-sized renderings blanketed the
principal sides, block-sized versions adorned the lesser edges, and bumper
sticker-sized ones decorated parts that no one but a mechanic would ever see.
It had a history—the logo, not the ship. A four-day
symposium had been held to select the aspect ratio. Two new colors had been
invented for its design. Evolutionary algorithms had been used to breed the
font that would best convey the company’s reputation for quality. The company
behind this logo hired hip young beings on hundreds of worlds to normalize its
name as a verb, an adjective, and an interjection. The marketing department had
been mandated to make customers want to tattoo the logo unironically on their
external surfaces.
At the front—or maybe the rear—of the ship, a single window
the size and shape of a minivan windshield glowed just below an Olympic swimming
pool-sized logo. Inside, a single being ran his tentacles over a wraparound
touchscreen and brought the vessel to a halt. He then coaxed it backward,
slowly and carefully, between a pair of not-entirely-similar vehicles bearing
different logos. A dozen warning icons flashed as one of the ship’s segments
drifted out of alignment, and he had to stop—muttering words that would have
puckered his mother’s suckers, if only he’d known which of the several billion
females had deposited his particular egg on his father’s reef that season—and
pull forward to make another attempt. When he had successfully parked the ship,
the being let out a visible blubber of relief.
Moments later, an airlock door opened near the bottom—or the
top—of the hull, and a secondary vessel emerged, this one about the size of a
whale. It headed directly for one of the chunks of ice for which this region of
space was known. There wasn’t anywhere else to go. The nearest star, though a
significant object in the sky, offered little in the way of light or heat this
far from its significant planets.
As the vehicle approached the lonely berg, its headlights
revealed an installation, bigger than a house but smaller than an airport. At
the tap of a tentacle, a bright white point flared from the installation and
then burst wide, like a toilet bowl filled with electric-blue plasma, flushed
in reverse. The swirling well opened wide enough to swallow ten more whales and
the school buses used to measure their lengths. The vehicle accelerated, even as
a tongue of blue light shot out and sucked it in, extruding it to a single
line. Then the light collapsed into darkness, and the vehicle was gone.
A few minutes later, a semi-trailer—about the size of a
whale, and with sizable chrome exhaust pipes sticking up like a bull’s
horns—rumbled to a stop in a gravel parking lot. It resembled the dozen or so
other trucks parked in the yard or fueling at the diesel pumps, except that its
rear mud flaps featured the silvery silhouette of what appeared to be a squid.
A man climbed down from the cab. He was thick rather than
tall, with an even thicker mustache. He wore grubby jeans, a flannel shirt open
over a Harley-Davidson T-shirt, and a tweed pork pie hat.
Bells jingled as he entered the truck stop. The elderly man
behind the store’s register gave the trucker a manly little wave and returned
to stocking cigarettes. The trucker headed straight for the men’s room. A few
minutes later, he took a seat at the diner counter, grunted a greeting to a
couple of other truckers a few stools down, and plucked a menu from between the
napkin dispenser and the ketchup bottle. Country-western music warbled from a
jukebox in the corner, but something else screeched from a cheap radio in the
kitchen.
“Well, hiya, Glen. Ain’t seen you in ages.”
A waitress sauntered behind him in a mustard-yellow,
knee-length dress with a white apron. She was blond, in the loosest sense of
the word, and wore too much lipstick. He checked out her rear as she walked
past and rounded the counter.
“Linda, lookin’ prettier than ever,” he said.
“Now, don’t you go flirtin’ with me, Glen,” she said. “You
told me last time about that sweet wife and kids of yours back home.”
“Did I?”
“Yes, you did,” she said. “Besides….” She patted her belly.
“What’s that mean?” the trucker asked.
“It means, dearie, that I am going to be a mother. And I
don’t need you ogling me like you just did,” Linda said. Then she winked.
“Well, congratulations, I suppose,” said the trucker.
“So what you haulin’ that’s got you come all the way through
Herbert’s Corner?”
“Oh, you know. A little of this, a little of that,” the
trucker said.
She turned over the cup waiting on a paper doily, filled it
with steaming coffee, and took a pen and pad out of an apron pocket. “Now, what
can I get ya?”
“You got any of that rhubarb pie?” the trucker asked.
“Fresh made this morning,” said Linda.
The trucker ate a buttery Reuben sandwich and french fries
before Linda brought his pie. He quivered a little as she set it in front of
him and then devoured it as if he hadn’t eaten in days. He ate a second piece
with deliberate relish, slicing off tiny forkfuls and taking sips of sweetened
coffee between each bite. He watched the third piece arrive like a drunk
watches his bartender pour. Linda refilled his coffee.
“Can’t get enough of this pie,” he said.
“Best rhubarb pie in Montana,” said Linda.
“Montana, hell. Best rhubarb pie anywhere.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
“You make it?”
“My mother’s recipe,” said Linda. “God rest her soul.”
The trucker paid the check with cash on the counter.
Outside, he adjusted his hat against the wind and sun and rounded the building
toward the yard. Linda was leaning against the wall near the back door of the
kitchen, one forearm across her waist, the other raised, a cigarette between
her fingers. He gave her a wave.
“You have a safe drive, now,” she called.
“Thanks,” he replied, and hesitated.
“I know, I know,” she said. “I shouldn’t be smokin’ with a
baby goin’ on, but it’s so hard…”
“Probably would be a good idea to quit,” said the trucker.
“Hey, Linda, you ever think of selling that pie recipe of yours?”
“Selling?” she said. “What’s to sell? Anyone can make pie.”
“I don’t know. Something about yours. You know it’s kinda
famous.”
“I’ve heard tell,” said Linda. “But it ain’t famous among no
one but you long-haul boys. They ain’t servin’ it to Ronald Reagan in the White
House.” She took a final drag on her cigarette, dropped the butt into a pickle
bucket full of sand, and then shook a fresh one out of the pack. She offered it
to him, but he wrinkled his nose and shook his head.
“Even so,” said the trucker, “seems you sell that recipe and
you’d do all right.”
“I don’t know what there is to sell,” said Linda, lighting
the cigarette with a pink disposable lighter.
“I know some folks that might be interested.”
Linda laughed, blowing smoke out her nose. “Well, you tell
’em to come on up here to Brixton, Montana, and we’ll see what we can work
out.”
Just past mile marker 241 on Highway 360, a white ambience
grew over the crest of the hill, glinting off insects and limning the roadside
weeds like crystals in the moonless night. Maybe, just maybe, Martin thought as
he switched off his high beams. Maybe he’d come over the hill and there’d be a
craft swooping up the road on a blinding shaft of light. He’d slam on the
brakes, skidding his truck sideways like they do in the movies. He’d get out as
the craft stopped directly overhead, and then it would shoot straight up into
the night. The only sound would be the sonic clap as air rushed in to fill the
void. There’d be no time to take video, no time for a phone call. But he’d
finally have a better story to tell than the time he rounded a corner and broke
up two coyotes fighting over a dead snake.
At the top of the hill, the approaching headlights dimmed. A
semi roared by, dwarfing his own truck as it passed. Its brake lights winked
out of sight on the other side of the hill, leaving the night darker than
before.
Martin switched his brights back on and sucked down another
gulp of Diet Mountain Dew. The commercial on the radio ended with a satellite
blip. After a few moments of silence, a familiar crackling static faded up,
followed by a voiceover:
“From Virginia Beach to Yreka, from the Rio Grande to the
Upper Peninsula, from Boston to Yuma, from Sequim to Key West, from Mauna Loa
to Mount McKinley…” Martin unconsciously recited the montage, mimicking the
various voices: “My fellow Americans, ask not…One small step for man…noises
from the room where she died…Back and to the left, back and to the left…nothing
to fear but fear…You want the truth?…Military cover-up…the question is whether
you’re paranoid enough…I deny…disappeared…No comment…totally exsanguinated…they
came in low over the hangar…What are they hiding? What are they afraid of us
knowing?…I want to believe. I want to believe.”
Martin shivered at the final whispering voice. He had heard
that very “best of” show. A woman had called in claiming to be haunted by the
ghost of her husband mouthing a message and holding a ghost baby she didn’t
recognize. Martin sighed, relieved, not for the first time, that his company
truck had no back seat. It was bad enough to be out here alone—no sign of
civilization—without having to worry about a disembodied spirit popping up in
his rearview mirror. They’d find him mangled in the wreckage, eyes wide with
fright even in death, his hair turned white, and a terrible load in his pants.
Thankfully, Lee Danvers did ghost episodes only a couple of times a month. But
seeing a UFO, that would be another thing altogether.