Once again, I am making my Monday post do double duty. I have a small gallery of photos from the archive for Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge, and I have a short story I’ve written for the Thursday Doors Writing Challenge. Cee’s topic this week is: Indoor Seating. I think we can find something in the archive for that. The gallery is below the story.
I’m using a photo I submitted for the TDWC, but I’ve taken a little liberty with that photo. There are two versions in use. The one below is a modified version of the original photo, thanks to a little help from PhotoShop. The original version appears in the story where, if I’ve done my job, it will make sense.
The Campaign
Paul Canard raised his glass to his campaign manager and then sipped his bourbon and smiled.
“I think this final push is all we need John. The paper already seems to have forgotten about Mayor Johnson. Once they start sucking up this new stuff, they’ll let him drift right off the page.”
John Chevron finished his beer and waved the empty glass hoping to catch the attention of the waitress.
“Another round, gentlemen?”
“Yes please.” John smiled at the waitress before setting his empty glass on the table. “Paul, I don’t think we should run this set of ads. In fact, I don’t think we should put your family history into play. It might could backfire.”
“Here you go. Another Two Roads IPA and another glass of Woodford Reserve. I brought you each a glass of water, too.”
She returned with a fresh basket of popcorn for the table.
“Thanks Joy.”
“What do you mean, backfire, John. My family put this town on the map. I mean they literally put—this—town—on—the—map! City Hall, the Historical Society, my great grandfather built those buildings with his own hands.”
John laughed.
“Good one, Paul.”
“What? Good one, what?”
“I think you meant to say, he built it with his hired hands. By the time your great grandfather took over the farm, no one named Canard was actually doing any work around here.”
“Don’t try to make me feel guilty about coming from a powerful family, John. Maybe my recent ancestors spent more time behind a desk than the controls of a combine, but they harvested corn and soybeans, just the same.”
“Yes, yes, I know, Paul but they stuck with farming. Maybe you should stick with farming, too. What’s in it for you being mayor? You already own everything of value around here.”
Paul considered that question deeper than any other. That specific question weighed heavy on him. It was true, most of the buildings were owned by Carard Land Management. That brought him income. Income grew into wealth, but it didn’t bring him pleasure and it damn sure didn’t bring him respect.
He wasn’t respected by the state politicians. They invited him to fundraisers and hung around him at social gatherings, but they were after his money, not his companionship. He owned most of the country, but being mayor of the largest town in the county would force them to deal with him, to work with him and to accommodate his legitimate requests. Why should he donate money from his family trust to build a new school? The state should pay for that. A school, a hospital, a wider highway—the state should pay for all of that.
“You okay Paul? You look lost.”
“Yeah, John. I’m okay. You asked me why I want to be mayor. Well, I’ll tell you. I want people to respect me. I want them to see what I can do for this town, not just what checks I can write. That’s all George Johnson does, he drives out to my farmhouse and asks me for money. Then he takes all the credit for making Canville the most fiscally stable town in the state. People love him, and he doesn’t actually do anything.”
John started laughing. “You have two problems Paul. More specifically, you’re making two huge mistakes.”
“And what would those be, John? My two mistakes, just what are they?”
John sipped his beer and fumbled some popcorn into his mouth.
“First, you have no idea how much diddly-work the mayor does on a daily basis. You don’t want to work with these people. You want their respect, but you don’t want to do the mundane things you’ll have to do to earn it.”
“You joke about my great grandfather having people, John. Well, the mayor has people, too. He’s not driving a snowplow, or a school bus. He’s not picking up the trash at the curb. No, he’s just taking credit for the fact that it was done. Most of that credit should be mine.”
Joy was talking to a deliveryman that walked in the bar. She smiled, turned, and pointed to the table where Paul and John were sitting.
“I’ve got a delivery for Mr. Chevron.”
Paul lifted his bourbon and with one finger, pointed toward John.
John signed for the delivery, a large media envelope. He tore open the strip and pulled out one of the posters. He stared at the image at the top of the poster, shocked by what he saw.
Paul grabbed the poster and turned it around.
“What the hell did you do, John? This isn’t the image I sent you.”
“Paul, I uploaded the file you sent me. I didn’t do anything to it. Heck, I wouldn’t know how to do anything to that photo to make it look like this.”
“John. I took that picture at the right time on a perfect day. The sun was shining on those two buildings and the sky behind them was deep blue. A couple of white puffy clouds floated in the sky. How did that photograph generate this image. The sky in this image is angry. Hell, even the trees are gone!”
John sat in silence. He sipped his beer and stared at the poster.
“Do you have something to tell me, John?”
“Paul. I think something supernatural is at work here. I think you should drop out of the race. This…” John held up the poster. “This is a sign.”
“You’re acting like a frightened child. That IS NOT a sign. It’s a mistake, and the printer is going to fix it for free on Monday, and they’re going to ship a new batch of posters via FedEx and we kick this campaign into high gear Tuesday morning. Now, what pray tell is the second mistake I’m making?”
John pointed to the image on the poster.
“That is your second mistake. Your legacy isn’t blue skies and sunshine, Paul. It’s as dark and foreboding as the picture in that poster. Long before your great grandfather had those buildings built, his ancestors stole this land from the Indians. That’s what you’re messing with—that’s your legacy.”
“Stole from the Indians.” Paul slammed his bourbon down. “I’m sick and tired of hearing that claim. First off, everyone stole from the Indians—we stole the whole freaking country from the Indians—it wasn’t only Jeremiah Canard stealing stuff from the Indians. Besides, Jeremiah bought this land. The Indian chief negotiated, and Jeremiah lived up to his end of the bargain.”
“Yeah, but then his son wanted more land, and his son wanted more land, and more land, and within four generations, those Indians were on a train to Oklahoma where what’s left of them live on a reservation.”
“You’d rather have them here? You’d rather see a casino on my land instead of corn and soybeans? Is that the image you’d prefer? My family did this town a favor! Everyone knows it, even the ones who don’t want to admit it. Now, pay the tab and let’s get to the farmhouse so I can call this printer.”
“They’re closed, Paul. They won’t open until Monday morning.”
“I wrote the owner’s home phone on the original order.”
They left the bar and climbed into Paul’s large black SUV. As Paul started to pull out to the left, John stopped him.
“My bike is over there, in the strip mall. Drive through their lot and drop me off. I’ll follow you out to the farm.”
Before they even made it to the strip mall, the wind was growing stronger and the sky was growing darker.
“You sure you want to be on a motorcycle in this, John? Looks like some nasty stuff is headed our way.”
“I’ll take the bike home and grab my car and come back to your place. It’ll only take a few minutes. I can’t leave it here.”
“Okay. I’ll see you at the farm.”
John pulled a one-piece rain suit out of one of the saddlebags. He stepped into it, strapped his helmet on and started the bike. The helmet constrained his view. He turned to look back beyond City Hall. He saw a storm, the appearance of which was unfamiliar to him. It wasn’t a tornado, but it was raising a huge cloud of dust along its leading edge.
He pulled out of the parking lot and ramped the bike up to 70 mph, in a few seconds. The front of that storm was approaching fast. John realized he wasn’t going to make it home. He started thinking about a place that would offer some protection. A concrete railroad bridge crossed a dry wash just before the highway. If he could make it there, he could park alongside the side wall of the abutment. A quarter of a mile before the crossing, he could feel the wind pushing him, and the dirt was pecking at the back of his helmet. The air smelled like a new grave.
He drove under the crossing. As he turned to the right, the wind blew his bike over. He slid across the shoulder. Dirt and gravel surrounded him as he crawled to the side of the bridge. He looked down the road toward Paul’s farmhouse. He could barely make out the shape in the cloud of dirt. He watched as a black object crossed his view in front of the farmhouse. He saw what looked like an explosion, but there was no sound except the deafening roar of the wind. Suddenly there was a much larger explosion. He heard this one, but it was muffled by the wind. A giant fireball rose but only to be blown over into the cornfield by the storm. In a matter of seconds, only the sound of the wind and the dirt pelting the ground remained. The sky was dark, like being inside a cloud of dust. There was no hint of the farmhouse.
Withing a minute or two, the wind stopped. The dust settled and John looked out at a wide channel cut into the flat landscape through what had been the expansive lawn around Paul’s farmhouse. The house was gone, The SUV, lying on its side, was still burning and there was thick black smoke rising from a crater in what had been Paul’s back yard.
“The propane tanks.”
John thought, recalling that Paul had two 1,000-gallon propane tanks buried in the yard.
“Something must have hit them after the storm uncovered them.”
He righted his bike. It was scraped badly. The crash had ripped off one saddlebag, along with the lefthand mirror and signal lights, but he was able to start it. He drove to the farm.
Nothing remained. Absolutely no sign of the farmhouse remained beyond the foundation walls. He stood in awe as he watched water bubbling up into the foundation as well as the crater formed by the propane explosion. Paul’s farm sat on one of the most productive aquifers in the state—his family had tapped that water for irrigation for seven generations. Now it was oozing to the surface.
─●─●─●─
The weather service classified the storm as a derecho. A straight-line storm characterized by intense horizontal wind and rain. Its path covered hundreds of miles, but the wind intensity spiked in the area between the Hog River and the Canard Family farm. The storm tore a trench along its path in that area that was fifteen feet deep and over thirty feet wide. The City Hall and the Historical Society buildings were reduced to rubble and scattered into the corn fields. The trees on the side of those buildings were gone—snapped off near the ground. The only structure remaining at that site was the small building dedicated to Native American History—the trench turned sharply behind that building.
The Canard Family farmhouse was underwater. The foundation was no longer visible, nor was the crater where the propane tanks had been buried. The pond, as it was now being called, was beginning to drain into the trench cut by the storm. Within a few days experts with the US Geological Service expected the pond to be linked to the Hog River, some twenty miles away. According to the experts, there was no going back.
“At this point, the water is going to find its way to the river, and nothing we do is going to stop it.”
All five of my current books are now available in audio book form thanks to Amazon KDP’s Virtual Voice process. The voice is AI generated, but I can honestly say, it’s pretty darn good. The audio books are reasonably priced (all below $7 US) and, if you already own the Kindle version and want to add an audio version, you can do that for $1.99. There is a five-minute sample on the book page for each book. If you’re interested, click on any of the Dreamer’s Alliance book links below the image or on the link below for my latest book.
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