Inhabited. Charlie Quimby
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if broadcast from a king-size lawn sprinkler. A rattlesnake of firecrackers. A red thunderbolt shot above the trees, chased by a whistle and a sonic boom. Sporadic explosions, as if drunks on a firing range had vowed to shoot until they each hit a target. To the sound of ripping canvas, a multistage rocket spilled yellow, blue, white and red seed over the hayfield. A concussion seemed to slap the leaves above his head—and then silence. Cardboard flakes drifted down in a scorched cloud smelling of gunpowder, iron filings and burnt toast. Abruptly, a pair of light bars converged from opposite directions, flashing red, white and blue. Pounding feet. The dampened voices of feral types who for the rest of their lives would be hearing: You have the right to remain silent.
One squad nosed into the yard next door, while the other crept along the road, its spotlight licking the row of townhouses. The right-hand spot found the double-track into the hayfield and zeroed in on the trees. Isaac’s hideaway was nearly invisible in full sunlight but the bright sideways shaft might pick up a shiny grommet or mosquito net sheen that would betray him.
As the car crawled closer, Isaac heard the big police pursuit engine panting.
“Police,” a robot voice barked.
No shit.
He knew the routine and wasn’t about to make a mistake. He showed his hands first, rose slowly and groped toward the light, stopped when commanded. Waited until the cop asked for his ID. Slipped the rubber band from the stack in his wallet: bus card, clinic card, library card, identity card. Inserted his finger to maintain its place while the cop passed his Maglite beam over the card and then Isaac’s face.
“This address is downtown. What’re you doing camped way out here?” The address was the Catholic Outreach Day Center mail drop and Isaac was sure the cop knew it.
“I have permission from the owner, a notarized letter says I can be on the property.”
The officer shined his flashlight over Isaac’s setup. He didn’t ask to see the letter. “Trespassing isn’t going to be your problem. You know the people next door?”
“Not really.”
“You see who was shooting off those fireworks?”
“No,” Isaac said. “I was here keeping to my own business.”
The cop stepped into the camp and checked the view toward the road. The brush that provided cover for Isaac worked both ways. Satisfied, he said, “There’s a ban on. The drought, the fires on the Front Range, that’s everybody’s business. Your neighbors don’t give a damn so until we get some rain, you’d be wise to sleep somewhere else.”
The patrol car backed down the path. At one of the townhouses, a front light clicked off and all its windows went dark. Now they knew where he was. Isaac had been warned and outed all at once. He’d thought of Barry’s permission as protection but when did a piece of paper ever stand between him and hurt? He should have learned from the last time never to believe in a letter.
If you weren’t in a shelter, where did you sleep last night?
—Point-in-Time Homeless Survey
July third. Last day of America’s Big Blowout Birthday Sale! at Freedom City. Isaac had tried to get Barry to simplify the banner to Big 4th of July Sale! but Barry wasn’t interested in advice from a set-up man, not even one with a degree in Library Science. Isaac plugged in the blower and the Air Dancer shimmied upward, its green Elastic Man arms grasping for motorist attention, then he checked the anchors on the fat talons of a twelve-foot-tall, starred-and-striped Bald Eagle. Uncle Sam, straddling a rocket like Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove, took aim at the Endoscopy Center across the road. A squeeze of the Patriotic Elephant’s trunk (Barry didn’t stock a Patriotic Donkey) confirmed it had achieved full inflation. High above the parking lot tableau, the store’s signature, a quarter-acre Old Glory, idly curled and uncurled like a bullwhip about to slap some sense into a small country. Passersby might keep passing by, but none could escape noticing something big was going on at Freedom City.
After installing the patriotic figures, Isaac turned to the birthday cake. It was so out of sync conceptually and categorically. America celebrated with fireworks and corn on the cob, not cake and candles. Besides, the pastel yellow, pink and blue frosting clashed with the primary colors in the rest of the display. His opinion wasn’t welcome on that either.
Isaac unpacked the cake, shipped in a carton so flimsy the cardboard seemed not worth recycling. Its beaten fibers imparted a faint odor of the ocean and off-gassing PVC. He set aside the patch kit and rudimentary instructions smudged onto paper thin enough to roll cigarettes. So what if the cake leaked? You didn’t leave a birthday cake up for weeks like you did a Frosty the Snowman. As he pumped the cheap plastic foot bellows that completed the package, the cake stirred and swelled like a drunk trying to get up from the pavement. Isaac wondered what the makers in Guangdong thought about the country receiving these garish totems. Were they mystified that Americans expended their wealth this way? Did they even understand what a lawn was?
Isaac hurried through setting up the hot dog cooker and table so he could be gone before Mai appeared. She barked at him under normal circumstances and so far the big blowout had been a bust. Who was going to buy a flag or an Uncle Sam the day before the holiday? She was hard on Barry, too. Failure and disappointment confirmed her fatalism; today should give her great satisfaction.
“The cops came by last night. They said they’re canceling the fireworks,” Isaac said to Barry. Barry might know if the police had arrested his neighbors.
Barry didn’t look up from his computer where he constantly price-checked competitors he insisted were false fronts for the foreign manufacturers. “The sheriff has another drone—for wildfires or search and rescue, they say.”
On the screen, a deputy prepared to hurl into the air what looked like an oversized hobby aircraft. “National Geographic did that story a year ago,” Isaac said.
“We don’t get National Geographic.” Barry thought it was global warming propaganda from Washington.
Barry didn’t get the paper, either. He only read to confirm his fears. He acquired his news from prepper newsletters and websites that linked to patriot groups who were anti-everything, from immigrants, vaccines and solar power to Obama, taxes and the Federal Reserve. Isaac shared Barry’s distrust of the government but his unease had nothing to do with politics; it was rooted in everyday experience. Barry was convinced he was on a watch list; Isaac had actually been interviewed by Secret Service agents at the Reagan Library. Funny how flag-wavers were more afraid of their own government than Isaac was. He should write that down.
“Instead of a drone, they call it an unmanned aerial vehicle,” Isaac said. “They say they can search for the color of a lost hiker’s shirt or detect his heat signature through the brush.”
“Yeah, right,” said Barry. “Why did this county get cleared so early to fly them? They got that Bearcat armored vehicle, too. And then they flaunt it. It’s a warning shot!”
Barry thought everything was a warning shot. He obsessed about border-crossing terrorists and military troops on domestic maneuvers, the NSA listening to his conversations and the IRS taking his money. He had Mai’s undocumented relatives sewing the Made in USA custom products in the back room and he rented the farm to tweakers because they paid in cash and didn’t complain about conditions, so Barry had some legitimate worries, but when Freedom City was shut down, it would be by Google spies, FedEx planes and brown-shirted UPS drivers knocking at every door.
Isaac had spent his afternoon failing to locate Wesley Chambers. With Wesley’s bike trailer, he could move his camp in one trip. Now that he’d been discovered, Isaac was anxious to clear out, even if it meant going back to the turmoil along the river, something he could consider only because of Wesley’s company, and then only until he found something off by himself. Isaac didn’t mind living alone. Loneliness only sank in when he was around people.
He returned to camp and packed up with the idea he might talk Barry into hauling