Terry Bisson - Bears Discover Fire

It was 4:59. Mr. Manning and the EPA rep were still working out the details of the quarterly pollution payment plan, which meant I would have to work late, whether I wanted to or not.

Of course, I would get paid overtime.

Finally, at 5:59, the papers were signed and I headed home. The stairs were crowded but the elevator was almost empty. Lots of people are afraid to take the elevator, after the terrifying incidents of the past few weeks, but just knowing the inspection certificate is on file in the building superintendent’s office (even if we’re not allowed to see it) is enough for me.

The expressway was bumper-to-bumper with the big-finned fifties replicas that are popular now that leaded gasoline is available again. It warmed my heart to think of all the ethyl-penalty bucks going into the HEW budget. I knew it was helping to pay for the remedial education of my deranged, learning-dislocated, double-dyslexic little boy, Tiny Tim.

I drove only half listening to the ads and to Howard Stern, who was back on the air (his station had apparently purchased another obscenity authorization). I was tired and didn’t really feel like listening, so I turned it down as low as it would go, longing for the day Big Bill and I could afford a car without a radio.

But it’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness, so I concentrated on the beauty of the many-colored cars crawling through the magenta-tinted air. The carbon penalty fees have certainly eased the tax burden on working wives like me.

Traffic was slowed almost to a crawl near the airport. At first I feared it was another crash (which can tie up the turnpike for hours) but it was only a set of landing gear that had worked loose and fallen onto the highway. This was happening more and more lately since the Federal Aeronautics Board had started selling maintenance waivers to the airlines to augment the FAB retirement fund.

I was glad to see the lights of our peaceful suburb, Middle Elm. My pleasure was spoiled a little (but only a little) by the cross burning in the park. It looked like the KKK had purchased another bias license—not as expensive as actual violence permits. The lynching last week must have cost them a pretty penny (if you can use the word “pretty” for such a grim event).

It was almost nine when I pulled into the drive. I knew I would be in trouble, so I hesitated at the door as long as I could—until I started to gag on the stench from our next-door neighbor’s pigpen. It’s a terrible odor, but what could we do? Mrs. Greene had paid her feces fees, and the money went to lower our property taxes, after all. Plus, her animals were not eaten but tortured to death for science, and I knew that these animal experiments were helping improve the quality of life of my terminally-twisted, pus-encrusted, semi-psychotic son, Tiny Tim.

Barbara (I will not call her Babs!) was in her doorway, waving a rubber glove, but I didn’t wave back. Not to be snotty, but I hate it when ordinary people take on the airs of giant corporations.

“Where the hell you been, bitch!” Big Bill muttered. He took another swig of gin (ignoring the label, which said, WARNING, DRINKING MAKES SOME PEOPLE ACT UGLY). He grabbed my ass, and when I pulled away he made a fist like Ralph Cramden (don’t you love that old show?) and pointed not toward the Moon but toward his framed wife-beating authorization certificate hanging on the wall over the dinette table, next to our marriage license.

Ignoring his antics, I put the chicken in the oven, slamming the door quickly against the smell. I wondered how old it was but there was no way to tell. The expiration date was covered by an official USDA late-penalty override sticker, and it’s against the law to pull them off, like mattress tags.

Where was Tiny Tim? Just then I heard automatic-weapons fire (everybody has a permit these days) and he burst in the door; or rather, rolled in, his face all bloody and his wheelchair bent out of shape.

“Where have you been?” I asked. (As if I didn’t know! He’s had to travel through a bad neighborhood lately, ever since the town floated a bond issue to buy a permit allowing them to bypass the handicapped-access laws.)

“Got mugged,” he said, spitting broken teeth into one clawlike, grasping little hand.

“Who did it?” said his dad. “I’ll kill them!”

“They had their papers, Pop!” whined our bruised, battered, blubbering baby boy. “They whipped it out and waved it in my face, and then it was whack whack whack!”

“Poor kid,” I said, trying not to look at him. Never a pretty child, he looked even worse than usual. Instead, I looked out the window at the sunset. They say sunsets are better now than ever, now that pollution is controlled.

Certainly they are colorful as all Hell (if you’ll pardon my French)!

“God damn them every one,” Tiny Tim said, wrinkling what was left of his little button nose. “What’s for supper, chicken again?”

And that’s the end of my story. If you don’t like it, fuck it.

Please direct any complaints to the New York office of the National Writer’s Union, Plot Department, where my Climax Bypass Permit Number 5944 is on file. Fee paid.

When it comes to property, even old folks move fast. Edwards hadn’t been abandoned for more than a year before the snowbirds began moving in. We turned the pride of the U.S. space program into a trailer park in six months, with Airstreams and Winneys parked on the slabs that had once held hangars and barracks.

I was considered sort of the unofficial mayor, since I had served in and out (or up and down, as earthsiders put it) of Edwards for some twenty years before being forced into retirement exactly six days short of ten years before the base itself was budget-cut out of existence by a bankrupt government. I knew where the septic tanks and waterlines had been; I knew where the electrical lines and roads were buried under the blowing sand. And since I had been in maintenance, I knew how to splice up the phone lines and even pirate a little electric from the LA-to-Vegas trunk.

Though I didn’t know everybody in Slab City, just about everybody knew me.

So when a bald-headed dude in a two-piece suit started going door to door asking for Captain Bewley, folks knew who he was looking for. “You must mean the Colonel,” they would say. (I had never been very precise about rank.) Everybody knew I had been what the old-timers called an “astronaut,” but nobody knew I had been a lunie, except for a couple of old girlfriends to whom I had shown the kind of tricks you learn in three years at .16g, but that’s another and more, well, intimate story altogether.

This story, which also has its intimate aspects, starts with a knock at the door of my ancient but not exactly venerable 2009 Road Lord.

“Captain Bewley, probably you don’t remember me, but I was junior day officer when you were number two on maintenance operations at Houbolt—”

“On the far side of the Moon. Flight Lieutenant J. B. ‘Here’s Johnny’ Carson. How could I forget one of the most”—I searched for a word: what’s a polite synonym for “forgettable”?—“agreeable young lunies in the Service. No longer quite so young. And now a civilian, I see.”

“Not exactly, sir,” he said.

“Not ‘sir’ anymore,” I said. “You would probably outrank me by now, and I’m retired anyway. Just call me Colonel Mayor.”

He didn’t get the joke—Here’s Johnny never got the joke, unless he was the one making it; he just stood there looking uncomfortable. Then I realized he was anxious to get in out of the UV, and that I was being a poor host.