stunned silence draped the crowd, as we all asked ourselves if it had really come to this. Then the spokesman resumed, a tear in his eye looking like a big crystal pillow on the screens.
“I will miss the old shows as much as you, if not more. But we must reconcile ourselves to the inevitable. There is no refuge anymore, for any of us. The Zeiterion Channel thanks you in advance for your continued patronage and understanding.”
Then the comedian turned and left, and the screens filled with the scheduled Zeiterion Channel offering.
But I don’t imagine you want to hear how Hoss came to burn down the ranch with his family inside.
This story owes its existence in large part to my admiration for Michael Bishop’s award-winning novelette from 1981, “The Quickening,” which posited a total and inexplicable sifting and intermixing of the Earth’s populations, and also to my enjoyment of John Calvin Batchelor’s The Birth of the People’s Republic of Antarctica (1983), a somber novel that charts the fate of a boatful of refugees.
I certainly did not improve a heckuva lot on the tropes mashed-up from Bishop & Batchelor with this admittedly slight piece, but the visual imagery of suburbia flooded by Third World unfortunates still strikes me as worth having captured on the page, and unique to my piece.
EVERYWHERE IS NOW
It was a Sunday, and the wife and kids and I were out in the backyard having a cookout when the first of the refugees staggered by.
A black woman with a large colorful fabric-wrapped bundle on her head. Dressed in a long length of ragged cloth. Bare feet covered with some kind of red dust you’d never see around here. Skinnier than one of those waif-models and twice as vacant-eyed. She looked around in a daze, then slowly collapsed right into Lauren’s Radio Flyer wagon, her bundle falling to the patio’s flagstones.
I’ll give my wife credit. She didn’t hesitate a second, despite the oddness of the stranger, but rushed right over to the woman and tried to help her.
“What’s the matter, dear? Are you sick? Are you hurt? What is it? Is there anyone we can call? Are you visiting the Hendersons?”
The Hendersons were the black family on our block, so Shirley was just using common sense. But I had a weird feeling that this was definitely not a common-sense kind of situation.
I moved next to the woman too, and between us Shirley and I lifted her out of the wagon and got her into a resin lawnchair. I noticed she hardly weighed anything—less than any adult I’ve ever known. More like your average twelve-year-old. That kind of spooked me, and made the reality of her presence hit home.
“I don’t think she understands English, Shirl.”
“You’re probably right, Harry. In fact, I don’t think she’s even, well, an American.”
Lauren and Jimmy had inched up silently. My little girl was carrying a glass of Coke, and the boy had a hotdog.
“We think she’s probably hungry, Dad,” Lauren said.
“Well, let’s just see. Offer it to her nicely, kids.”
The kids held out their offerings, and the woman managed to focus on them. She made some kind of complicated gesture that conveyed dignity and respect, then accepted the food. She ate with restraint, but I could tell she was literally starving.
Well, I got kind of choked-up then, what with the kids coming forward like that, so instinctively good, and the woman’s pathetic yet noble response. You can say what you want about kids today, but if you raise them right they’ll turn out okay, and our two were little gems.
Just as the woman was finishing her hotdog, there was a lot of commotion from the street, and the four of us rushed out to see what was happening, leaving the stranger behind with hardly a thought as to what she might get into, which I would never have imagined doing just a few minutes ago.
Junemort Lane was filled with refugees. Dozens and dozens of exotic-looking black people who were obviously
“I will miss the old shows as much as you, if not more. But we must reconcile ourselves to the inevitable. There is no refuge anymore, for any of us. The Zeiterion Channel thanks you in advance for your continued patronage and understanding.”
Then the comedian turned and left, and the screens filled with the scheduled Zeiterion Channel offering.
But I don’t imagine you want to hear how Hoss came to burn down the ranch with his family inside.
This story owes its existence in large part to my admiration for Michael Bishop’s award-winning novelette from 1981, “The Quickening,” which posited a total and inexplicable sifting and intermixing of the Earth’s populations, and also to my enjoyment of John Calvin Batchelor’s The Birth of the People’s Republic of Antarctica (1983), a somber novel that charts the fate of a boatful of refugees.
I certainly did not improve a heckuva lot on the tropes mashed-up from Bishop & Batchelor with this admittedly slight piece, but the visual imagery of suburbia flooded by Third World unfortunates still strikes me as worth having captured on the page, and unique to my piece.
EVERYWHERE IS NOW
It was a Sunday, and the wife and kids and I were out in the backyard having a cookout when the first of the refugees staggered by.
A black woman with a large colorful fabric-wrapped bundle on her head. Dressed in a long length of ragged cloth. Bare feet covered with some kind of red dust you’d never see around here. Skinnier than one of those waif-models and twice as vacant-eyed. She looked around in a daze, then slowly collapsed right into Lauren’s Radio Flyer wagon, her bundle falling to the patio’s flagstones.
I’ll give my wife credit. She didn’t hesitate a second, despite the oddness of the stranger, but rushed right over to the woman and tried to help her.
“What’s the matter, dear? Are you sick? Are you hurt? What is it? Is there anyone we can call? Are you visiting the Hendersons?”
The Hendersons were the black family on our block, so Shirley was just using common sense. But I had a weird feeling that this was definitely not a common-sense kind of situation.
I moved next to the woman too, and between us Shirley and I lifted her out of the wagon and got her into a resin lawnchair. I noticed she hardly weighed anything—less than any adult I’ve ever known. More like your average twelve-year-old. That kind of spooked me, and made the reality of her presence hit home.
“I don’t think she understands English, Shirl.”
“You’re probably right, Harry. In fact, I don’t think she’s even, well, an American.”
Lauren and Jimmy had inched up silently. My little girl was carrying a glass of Coke, and the boy had a hotdog.
“We think she’s probably hungry, Dad,” Lauren said.
“Well, let’s just see. Offer it to her nicely, kids.”
The kids held out their offerings, and the woman managed to focus on them. She made some kind of complicated gesture that conveyed dignity and respect, then accepted the food. She ate with restraint, but I could tell she was literally starving.
Well, I got kind of choked-up then, what with the kids coming forward like that, so instinctively good, and the woman’s pathetic yet noble response. You can say what you want about kids today, but if you raise them right they’ll turn out okay, and our two were little gems.
Just as the woman was finishing her hotdog, there was a lot of commotion from the street, and the four of us rushed out to see what was happening, leaving the stranger behind with hardly a thought as to what she might get into, which I would never have imagined doing just a few minutes ago.
Junemort Lane was filled with refugees. Dozens and dozens of exotic-looking black people who were obviously
Similar Books
