Draft #1

...dolls of the children of Time...

This is a segment of a yet-to-be-titled novel-in-progress. Subject to much change. Draft #2 will, of course, be another segment, though it would be a mistake to try to put them together to make sense of them. And draft 3# and #4 and #5…. will follow according.

No sooner had Helen Wilkins placed breakfast of eggs and maple pork sausage on the table, than the phone rang. Tom grumbled while the fork in his left hand held steady the sausage as the knife in his right cut through it. He placed the utensils down and began to stand when Helen said:

--I’ll get it, Honey. You eat up.

The white plastic corded phone had become yellowed by time and hung on the wood paneled wall to the right of the refrigerator. Yellow sticky notes were stuck to the paneling around it. Call Darlene, said one. EPD run 12-20-22, said another. It had been circled a half dozen times. The note curled upward, and the left side had begun to peel from the wood. Helen took the phone off the hook:

--Wilkin’s Cattle.

--Helen, is Tom there? We had another…

--Heavens, Chris. He’s right here, just sittin’ down to breakfast.

--I’m sorry, Helen--I’ll be quick.

--No, no, it’s alright. We can wait. It ain’t like breakfast is much of a family affair these days anyhow.

Chris snorted:

--Don’t I know it.

Tom quickly wiped sausage grease from the side of his mouth with the thin, waxy white paper napkin, leaned forward in his chair, and reached across the veneer table to accept the phone from his wife, the cord splitting the kitchen in half:

--How many is that now? Tom asked. He cleared his throat.

--Good Lord, Tom, I’ve lost count. Half of em’ can’t calf and the one’s that do can’t seem to birthem’ alive. It’s gotta’ be forty or fifty this year alone--dead on arrival. Damnit, Tom, I can’t fuckin’ sleep. The whole god damn barn whales all night. It’s just the saddest thing you ever heard. It ain’t right. The fuckin’ cries. They’re so bad Patty’s got me goin’ to church again like I’m some kinda’ fuckin’ altar boy.

--What’s the USDA sayin’?

--You know they ain’t sayin a damn thing. They’re up to their nose in carcasses. Can’t even figure out how to dispose of em’ all. You see that damn dairy in Indiana on the news last night? Had over 30,000 cows in production. Half of em’ gone dry, can’t calf. If they can’t help them, how they gonna’ help me?

--They can’t offer a single directive?

--They don’t know what to do! Got no god damn idea. They haven’t even gotten with Naab to issue a god damn statement. As if they didn’t know what was gonna’ happen. I feel like a god damn idiot.

--You couldn’t have known how bad it was gonna’ be, Chris.

Tom paused. Well, I knew how bad it was gonna’ be. Lack of diversity such as the likes of this isn’t meant for nature. God didn’t make animals this way. He continued:

--You trusted their guidance.  

--I don’t know what to do, Tom. I knew it wasn’t right, inside me. But I thought, who am I to second guess the geneticists?

Chris inhaled slowly through his nose. Tom could hear the weight of the fat rise, painstakingly, through the wheeze that traveled through the receiver. Chris continued:

--I’m gonna’ lose everything. What’ll I tell Patty? The damn kids? What’ll people do? There ain’t any milk in the god damn grocery store! And there ain’t gonna be!

--There’s only one thing you can do, Chris.

--Enlighten me.

--You have to kill your herd.

     What is Time? It’s so vast it seems not to exist at all. We’ve made our own time: our tiny appointments and winter tomatoes; our little laboratory games. I laugh as we split cells in our cute white jackets, as if we weren’t the dolls of the children of Time and the earth wasn’t their dollhouse. Our entire species has only been on earth for four thousandths of a single percent of earth’s time, that’s two hundred thousand years of earth’s four and a half billion. Our scientists have allotted fifty million years of statistical significance alone, meaning our species’ time on earth only makes up a half a percent of their uncertainty of its duration. And then, there’s us: so small that the calculation of our relevance is imperceivable.  We are nothing. Yet, somehow, despite the vastness of our insignificance, we chain ourselves with constructed significance. Our ego directs our suffering. Its chronic attempt to control nature is a comedy of Time but the tragedy of man. Time will swallow us like it swallowed Samaria and Persia, Inca and Maya, Egypt, and Greece and Rome. It cannot be stopped. The rise and fall of civilization is the human tide. It works in symbiosis with Mama Earth, who herself remains a steadfast disciple of the Sun, who, himself, is a single mortal keeper of the infinity of Time among the two hundred billion trillion others in the universe.

Ray Clarke cast his line into Still Pond, his bare feet squishing even further into the deep silt as he whipped the fishing pole forward. The morning sun had already begun to assert himself. Ray dipped his hand into the water at his knees and brought some up to cool the back of his neck. The hound dog lay lazily in the shade of a mulberry tree just a few feet away on shore. Berries weren’t as sweet this year. Ahquack. Ahquack. What kind of fish did the Nanticoke catch? Am I John Smith or Pentaquod? I don’t know enough of this land to be Pentaquod. But John Smith wasn’t from this land, yet I am from this land. Pentaquod knew little of this land when he escaped to it from the Susquehanna. He learned of this land. And I learn of this land. I was born from the same land as Pentaquod. And so was my mother and so was my father. And so were their mothers and fathers. Ahquack. Nanticoke for sun. There was a nibble on the line. Ray tugged slightly, then let the line slacken. Another nibble. Damn bluegill. He reeled in, slowly, without feeling much weight. Took the god damn bait. But as he reached the end of the line he felt more weight than the two-ounce sinker, which was shortly confirmed by a baby bluegill. Ray removed the hook from the fish’s upper lip. Rather docile little guy, kinda makes me feel bad. Nice snack for a Rockfish though. He put the hook through the bluegill’s flesh behind the dorsal fin and cast it back out as far as the weight would take it. He waded through the water toward the large rocks surrounding the inlet side of the mulberry tree, then wedged the grip in between a few. He reached for the line at the tip of the pole and gave it a good tug to determine its sturdiness. That’ll be fine. Then he climbed up onto the bank and sat in the shade next to the hound dog. He petted her head:

     --That’s a good girl, Roxie. Good girl.

What is Time? Time is our creator. Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years; And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so… But Time was here long before this God was imagined by man in all his significance the God who did not create man in his image but who was created by man in man’s image but way way way back yesterday when this scripture was written the scribes knew of the powerful force of Time the Creator and attempted to harness it to make sense of it, as man does through his stories to lessen the suffering created by the abyss between our existence and the reason for it. Here’s a nice little story to tuck you in at night all warm and cuddly like lulling you into its manufactured Fear not: for am I in the place of God? I will nourish you, and your little ones. Man did not fear before he was exposed to predation. The exploiters. Deoxyribonucleic Acid. Time made exploitation the sugar of our DNA, for it has a nasty sweet tooth.

Chris laughed uproariously before a small coughing fit worked to return him to his senses:

--Kill my god damn herd? Tom, you must be outyer god damn mind.

Tom sighed:

--Your herd is sick, Chris. Genetically. There’s somethin’ wrong with them. Whadduyou think--the USDA is gonna’ get you a software update or somethin’? They’re inbred.  You can’t change that. The only way forward is to stop the line, to begin it again, Chris—the way they used to. Shit, you don’t think I know how serious this is? It's the whole reason I don’t have Holsteins to begin with, or Angus, for that matter. It’s not a coincidence that my cows are healthy…

Tom paused, pushed his breakfast plate aside, removed his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. He continued:

--Damnit, Chris, I’m not tryin’ sound preachy. You just got a situation here that’s worse than any I coulda’ ever imagined. And I don’t have that situation.

--Tom I can’t afford to kill my herd.

--You don’t have a herd, Chris. You have sick cows eatin’ an enormous amount of feed without producin’ anything. Let’s just say that somehow the USDA, or somebody, does get this under control. How many years is that gonna’ take? It ain’t like they’re gonna give you some sort of serum that makes your cows suddenly start pumpin’ out milk and calfin’ again.

--So, I kill my god damn herd. Then what? What the hell am I supposed to do then?

--Make a new one, damnit! You have got to get on top of this! The whole god damn country doesn’t have any milk to drink. Nothin’ to make cheese with. Shit, what about Darlene? Whaddayou think’s gonna’ happen to her? To be perfectly honest, I fear for her maybe even more. She’s gonna’ need some kinda’ security.

--Security? Whudduyou mean by that?

--You think people are just gonna’ be ok not havin’ milk with their cereal, not havin’ cheese for their sandwiches, not havin’ boxed macaroni and cheese for their children, or Dorito corn chips, or Cheez-Its? Not havin’ cheese on their Mac-Donalds burger? Not having ice cream for Christ’s sake? It aint’ like your milk only goes into plastic cartons to give the workin’ family some mustaches at the breakfast table.

Chris set the phone down, buried his head in his hands, then put it back up to his ear.

--What’s Darlene got to do with that? It ain’t like her milk goes to Dorito.

--Her farm store is gonna’ be chaos. They’re gonna’ try to steal her cows. I mean, Christ Chris, the cost of milk is gonna’ be fifty dollars a damn gallon, literally. Farmers like Darlene are in danger. In fact, we best get over there.

--Hold your horses cowboy—you think you may be overreactin’ just a little bit? What do they say--Something about moles and mountains?

Tom screwed up his face:

--Makin’ a mountain out of a mole hole?

--Yeah, that’s it.

--Chris, you needa’ get it together. At any moment the price of dairy is gonna’ skyrocket to catastrophic levels. This situation is untenable! Frankly, they’ll be comin’ after my girls, too.

--You don’t got dairy cows, Tom. Relax.

--What do you mean I don’t got dairy cows? I have pure bred cows of an entirely different genetic line that make milk, when all the other heifers are diseased. You don’t think the geneticists are gonna’ come knockin? I’m worried they’re not gonna’ be knockin so nicely.

--Well, fuck, Tom, I called because, frankly, I thought you’d have some kinda’ wiseman bullshit to make this all go away. I ain’t ready to kill my herd.

Tom looked up and met Helen’s gaze. She could hear Chris going on incredulously through the phone as she leaned her back against the kitchen sink, coffee mug in hand, mouth slightly agape. Tom shook his head.

--Well, Chris, I’m sorry my bullshit is not the kind you were lookin’ for this mornin…

--Damnit Tom, I’m sorry. You know I called because you’re the only one who can fix this. I’m a weak man. He paused. Inhaled. Exhaled. You really think Darlene is in trouble?

--Yes.

--Well, we best be gettin’ over there then.

What is Time? Time is our biological clock. It is our circadian rhythm. I live with Father Sun and Mama Earth, consuming with great appetite what they’ve chosen to provide to me, when they’ve chosen to provide it. The man who speaks of time traverses across the lightness and gorges on its bounty, so he may rest in the darkness without need. He wears a short yet unrefined brown and grey beard beneath untamed locks of similar hues that he secures high behind his head with a band. He procures his clothes secondhand, with practicality being the only necessary characteristic. The clothes are faded, not too big but not fit to form on his nearly formless figure. Jeans, mostly, though in these hot and humid months he prefers light slacks or shorts. A few t-shirts, both short and long, complete his wardrobe, though in colder months he finds protection against chill within a sherpa-lined overshirt. He wears clogs when he must, though prefers the ground on his bare feet with few exceptions. He forages for his food: wild lettuces and clover and primrose and amaranth leaves and seeds and lambsquarters and milkweed and purslane and hibiscus and pepperweed and yarrow and chicory and Aronia berries and beach plum and mulberries and sumac and rosehips and red berries and black berries and strawberries and wood sorrel and stinging nettle and onions and ramps and chickweed and dandelion and garlic mustard and chestnuts and acorns and black walnuts and chinquapins and persimmons and pawpaws and mushrooms and various tubers. He stops at small family farms along the road for eggs, which he cracks into a cast iron pan with foraged greens fried or stewed over a bed of coals. He fishes, mostly for catfish, though sometimes rockfish and largemouth bass and perch and crappies and bluegills and the occasional crab, or stumbles on a small oyster bed. He makes cornbread and corn cakes over the same coals with grain procured from a man named Elias, who also provides him a bit of dryland whole grain rice and ancestral beans. He isn’t in the habit of eating livestock, as he is satisfied without, though as a matter of good living and stewardship he believes in its merits when the animals are cared for in symbiosis with the land. He travels by pick-up truck, by foot, or by boat, wherever he feels pulled. And he has washed up on the Eastern Shore, where he roams free its ponds and rivers and coves and bays and ocean and islands and marshes and meadows and forests. With his camera and his notebook and pen he furiously captures his perceptions by day, then transcribes them to his laptop computer by night to share with the world, as naturally as the tide. He perceives because he opens himself completely to the land, water, and sky. Anything he feels he feels because of Mama, not despite her, and, therefore, his perceptions are nature herself, like a river that carves its bed but not its direction. At times he is still as glass and, in others, he flows with tremendous force. But only a few have ever taken notice of him. He travels through towns, sleeping on their outskirts—either in a small camp or on blankets in his truck bed—for a few weeks before moving on. His name is Abram.