Authors: Alan Black
TASSO STAYED hidden in the back of the trailer until the whole rig was well clear of the building. He climbed the rails and was about ready to jump to the ground when he realized the drop was about twenty feet. He was stuck in the back and would have to remain there until the driver got to where he was going.
Tasso breathed a sigh of relief when the driver pulled into a side lot. The lot had a dozen tractor-trailers scattered among a wild assortment of wagons, pickups, shuttles and trailers. With a hiss, the tractor-trailer settled to the parking lot’s flat surface. He climbed out of the trailer and dropped to the ground. He hoped security was still looking for him inside and he stayed hidden among the vehicles in case someone was looking outside.
He knew he hadn’t done anything wrong. He was well within the painted lines on the floor. He didn’t touch anything. He didn’t throw anything. He hadn’t even farted, so why did they chase him? He was upset at being run off, but he wasn’t going back inside to find out what he was supposed to have done wrong. Still, if the city wasn’t going to be any more pleasant than this, he couldn’t get back to his canyon any too fast to suit him.
He reached the edge of the side lot making the short walk to the parking lot where he’d left the flitter. Standing straight, he walked along a sidewalk as if he was where he belonged. He reached the flitter without incident. Tasso slammed the door behind him and let out a ragged sigh of frustration. He looked at the time hack on the GPS. Noon was rapidly approaching and he hadn’t eaten since lunch yesterday.
“I’d better get a move on and get to Uncle Bruce’s place,” he told himself. “I don’t want to spend Grandpa’s hard earned money on food.” He looked around and knew he was too far into town to be able to hunt his own lunch. He didn’t know where or how to buy lunch. Did he stop, get raw food from someone’s house and cook it up by campfire? Were there stores where he could buy food? He didn’t even see any wooded areas to collect firewood, except a thin row of small trees surrounding the processing facility.
His grandfather had always taken his own food when he hauled their chiamra into town. He said trying to buy a meal in the city was akin to robbery. Tasso decided he could always eat a couple of potatoes raw if he could figure out how to get a couple of potatoes without being robbed.
He flicked the on switch, but the engine didn’t start. He tried again. Nothing happened. Climbing into the back, moving the cushions out of the way and crawling in next to the engine, he popped open the compartment. The repaired tie rod had fused against the engine block. He could see where the tie rod hadn’t been perfectly straight. A slight bend in the tie rod rubbed against the engine block causing friction heat. When he’d stopped, the heat welded the piece in place.
Tasso closed the engine compartment. He’d have to walk from here. The walk would do him good. He was starting to build up a high rage level over the events of the last few days. When his grandfather got on his nerves, he’d go for long walks into the ravines and canyons around their place. That was if he could go for the walk before Grandpa realized he was angry about something. When Grandpa recognized the real cause of Tasso’s anger, the old man would give him the rock hammer and send him off to clear more rocks on the valley floor making room for more chiamra or another garden for Earth vegetables. Breaking rocks was back-aching work, but it helped him burn off more anger, resentment, and annoyance than climbing over, around, and through the endlessly twisting gullies on their property.
Uncle Bruce could bring him back out to the processing facility when he had the tools to fix the flitter. He wanted to leave the engine compartment open, but he couldn’t. He felt as if he was leaving a job undone. After he closed the compartment, he put the cushions back in place, sliding the toolkit and the emergency flashlight in their place under the front passenger seat.
He slipped Grandpa’s shotgun into his small bag of personal items and extra clothes and pulled the GPS from the flitter console. He’d need the GPS to find his uncle’s place. He struggled with himself to not slam the door closed in irritation, but he knew the machine wasn’t at fault. He coded the locks on the flitter door and began walking, following the GPS directions.
The day was pleasant and clear. He slipped his arms through the straps on his bag, eased it around to his back, and shifted it a couple of times until the shotgun stopped poking him in the ribs. He smiled without humor and picked up the pace. Thinking that the day was tailor-made for a long walk, he decided it would be nice to bump into the Lamonts right about now. Meeting them would burn off more energy than any ambling stroll.
He whistled tunelessly in time with his swinging arms. Grandpa always told him to ‘cut it out’ when he started whistling. He almost looked around, but realized Grandpa wouldn’t be there. He whistled louder and walked on, occasionally glancing at the GPS to ensure he was moving in the right direction.
He was amazed at his speed as he was moving at a little over eight kilometers per hour. Of course, back home he would have been going round rocks, over ravines, uphill and down, and generally struggling to keep to a straight course. A quick mental time-calculation told him he should be at the address by mid-afternoon.
“3:15,” he said with a laugh, estimating his arrival time, if he didn’t delay along the way or slow down much. He punched the ETA query button on the GPS. It read 4:34. “Ha! We’ll see about that.” He picked up his pace a bit more.
The industrial area gave way to row after row of rundown houses, neglected cottages, and dilapidated shacks. The nice concrete sidewalk abruptly ended, followed by cracked rock paths with huge gaps of dirt. Tasso liked the dirt gaps. Something about walking on good dirt felt more right than smooth, clean concrete.
Everyone he saw on the street watched him, but no one smiled or waved. No one questioned his right to be where he was or where he was going. Many of the people were sitting or lounging in front of their houses. Tasso couldn’t imagine why they were just sitting when there was still enough light to work. Most of the homes had small patches of dirt requiring maintenance. He wanted to shout at them to get busy, go get a job, or plant a garden in the dirt instead of sitting on it. He held his tongue and walked on. Grandpa always said his place was to tell Tasso what to do, Tasso’s job wasn’t to tell anyone else what to do.
A couple of boys his age interrupted his hike and his grief-laden thoughts about his grandfather. They were standing arm-in-arm, completely blocking the path. He nodded politely and started to walk around them, but they moved in a practiced slide-step sideways that continued to block his way. The two boys grinned at him, but said nothing. The boy on the right held out his hand, palm up.
Tasso decided he didn’t like town any more than he liked Lamont’s Landing Day celebration. Someone damaging his flitter made him angry. His conversation with Dougall Lamont made him angrier. His meeting with the Lamont parents made him even angrier. Security chasing him out of the processing plant when he hadn’t done anything wrong made him ready to chew screws.
“What?” He spat at the two.
The boy on the right said, “Well, look at the upcountry
tuechter
.”
Tasso figured the boy was Bog-Irish. He didn’t know what a Bog-Irish was, but Grandpa always said they were more trouble than they were worth. He also didn’t know what a tuechter was, but it sounded like an insult.
Tasso bit back a retort, knowing it wouldn’t have been much of a retort anyway. He said, “If all you want to do is look, then kindly get out of my way and you can look at me as I walk on past.”
The boy on the left said, “I don’t think so, cousin. You have to pay the toll to use our sidewalk. What do you have in the bag?”
Tasso hadn’t seen any notice of toll charges and didn’t see any reason to pay one. He would back up and walk around the toll area. He turned to go, but the boy on the right grabbed a strap on his pack.
“Whoa there, cousin. You’re on our sidewalk and you have to pay.” He tugged on the pack, but the straps held it tight to Tasso’s back. Tasso shrugged, shaking the boy’s hand off the pack.
The other boy grinned, “Yeah, let’s see what this upcountry bastard’s got that’s worth carrying around.”
Tasso felt his rage start to bubble over. He held up his hands in surrender. He took a step back and slipped the pack off his shoulders. The boy on the right held out his hand to take the pack, but Tasso dropped it on the ground at their feet.
Righty leaned down to pick up the pack. Tasso grabbed the back of his head, shoving the boy’s face into his rapidly rising knee. The boy’s head jerked upward to meet Tasso’s elbow jabbing into his jaw. Righty dropped to the dirt, blood gushing from his mouth and nose.
Lefty looked startled. He clenched his fist and reared back to swing a roundhouse punch, targeting Tasso’s nose, but Tasso’s blood was on fire. Years of breaking rocks fueled his muscles, dodging swift stobor was like a lit match to his well-developed reflexes, and his anger threw accelerant on the resulting fire. He jabbed a stiff fist four times into Lefty’s face, pushing his knuckles deep into the soft flesh. Tasso quick-punched him once in each eye, once square on the nose, and finally once in his mouth for calling him a bastard.
Lefty dropped to his knees, crying like a little baby. “Mama, he hit me!”
Tasso was going to hit him again, but stopped at the word mama. He wanted his mama too, but he couldn’t call for her. He was still angry, but here on the ground was the result of letting his anger loose. These two boys, not much different from him, were now bleeding and hurt because he couldn’t control his temper.
People started coming out of everywhere, rushing up to the hurt boys, patting at the blood, calling for more help, calling for the police and calling for a doctor. There wasn’t anything in his backpack worth hurting someone over, yet in a fit of rage that had little to do with these two boys, he’d hurt them beyond measure.
His grandfather was right. Walking away was best. He grabbed his pack, shouldered it, and walked away from the burgeoning crowd. There were shouts for him to come back, but he ignored them and kept walking. He was out of sight and sound of the commotion before long. He kept walking and deviated from his straight path to Uncle Bruce’s, making a few random turns. He wasn’t going to make it easy on anyone if someone tried to follow him.
He walked more blocks than he could count before his heart stopped racing and his breathing grew calm. He’d hurt those two. All he was fighting over was some spare clothes and Grandpa’s old shotgun. Sure, they’d called him a bastard, insulting his mother, but they weren’t like the Lamonts. These two city boys said it as a general taunt, not spitting it out as a hurtful truth.
‘Grandpa was right’ almost became a mantra as he walked away from the damage he’d done to two boys who hadn’t deserved it. The words repeated in his head with each step. Grandpa was right. Grandpa was right. Grandpa was right.
He hardly noticed when the rundown houses gave way to nicer homes and scattered businesses with concrete sidewalks. He spotted a café and turned in to the parking lot. He knew what a café was from having read about them in books, mostly from reading references concerning software installation in manuals giving him a ‘café’ options selection, so he’d had to look up the definition in a dictionary.
He wasn’t sure how a café worked, but he was hungry. He saw men and women coming and going. He saw them sitting at tables eating. He couldn’t see anyone getting unprepared food. Someone brought them already prepared meals. He couldn’t see where anyone was going to cook the meals.
He wanted to stand and watch until he could figure it out, but he was on a deadline if he was going to beat the GPS ETA. He spotted a sign by the door. He was shocked when he read the pricing for a hot dog or a hamburger. He didn’t know what a hot dog or hamburger was, but it must be high cuisine at that price. He saw a listing for stew, a very familiar item. Grandpa made stew once a week from all of the leftovers. Stew wouldn’t take very long for him to cook once they showed him the kitchen.
The price next to the stew nearly made him gag. The menu said it would cost two credits for a small bowl and three credits for a large bowl. Even with biscuits and drink included, that must be what Grandpa meant when he said getting a meal was like robbery. The price for a bowl of leftovers would put a serious dent in his cash. He had to make the cash last another twelve months until he harvested his next chiamra crop. He was getting hungrier by the minute and the smells coming from the café weren’t helping.
He shook his head. There was nothing to do but walk faster. He was sure Uncle Bruce would have something to eat or show him where he could get it for a decent price.
The sun was shining in the mostly clear sky. The temperature was warm and pleasant this side of the McWithy Range. The air was still until suddenly he heard the roar of a mighty rushing wind. He looked around, but the tree leaves fluttered only a little bit. No one else seemed to think anything of the noise.
He froze. There in the sky, rushing upward was a spaceship. Tasso couldn’t tell how big the spaceship was as the distance didn’t provide any frame of reference or perspective. It looked so big it wouldn’t fit in their canyon. White clouds were streaming down its sides. There was no sound except for the rush of the wind. Tasso stood and watched it until the spaceship was a small speck high in the sky and the stream of lower altitude clouds began to dissipate in the heat of the day. High in the sky, the clouds twisted and turned, not knowing which way to turn as they tried to follow the spaceship. He knew the winds in the upper atmosphere were pushing the clouds around, but he was going to have to get public access on the net to find out what made the clouds.