town square

-You want to see the town?

-Yeah, sure, I mean, yeah, very much.

-Ok, let's leave your bike here for now,

I’ve got a couple of cruisers.

The morning air is cool, refreshing,

the mercury is still lazing

at the bottom of the thermometer.

Along the road to town, they pass

houses of various ages and materials,

19th century farm houses,

mid 20th century modern,

early 21st century industrial chic,

a few vacant but most are inhabited.

They all have deep porches though,

whether original or recent additions,

facing the road. Clusters of trees

surround them closely.

There are gardens similar to Red’s

in raised boxes between and behind the houses,

some have shade netting. Bee hive boxes,

chicken coops. Sheds.

Some folks are sipping coffee

on their porches, some are already

working in the cool of the morning

in their gardens. Everyone

turns to look at Red and Mack

as they pass by. They all wave or touch

identical wide-brimmed straw hats.

-Hey Red, Good morning!

-Hey Sally, Bob!

The road passes under

a rusty steel arch with a sign

of cut-out sheet metal letters

that span the street:

H A R M O N Y 

A pair of Mourning doves

coo between the letters

in the trusses.

The buildings are a hodgepodge

of brick storefronts, sandstone masonry,

cinderblock, painted stucco,

weathered clapboard. A toy box

dumped out in a sand box. 

Corrugated steel roofs on some,

red tile on others. Solar panels.

A few are more than a century old,

some middle-aged, some fairly recent.

A dog-eared catalog of styles.

-This is it, welcome to Harmony.

They stop across from what

had once been a manicured

and formal town square.

Ancient Valley oaks shade

the sandy ground, some kind

of sprawling finger grass

covers the ground like Irish lace

or fretwork. Clumps of spinifex

and mounds of flowering verbena

border gravelly paths.

- Used to be turf here, but

we can’t spare the water. The

oaks need a little supplemental

water since the climate got so arid,

so we built a deep watering

gray water system.

-Yeah, looks nice like this.

Kinda wild.

-Think so? just don’t walk

on the finger grass barefoot,

it has some nasty stickers.

The tables and benches

under the trees and along

gravel paths are as eclectic

in style and materials as

the buildings surrounding

the square.

Two men are playing chess

at one of the tables.

They look up for a moment

then turn their attention

back to their game.

-That’s Cyril and Pasha,

they play every morning.

-Cool. I used to play years ago.

Mostly online.

-Were you any good? I never

thought playing online would

be that much fun, you can’t see

your opponent sweat and twitch.

-No, you’re right, it’s not the same.

On the other hand you can always

find a game. Even at three in the morning.

-That sounds kind of sad. Anyway,

here we are, in the heart of our

little village. These are mostly workshops.

That’s the cannery over there, the

distillery next to it. That’s the library

in the green building. It has a big

community room for our town meetings.

Where the sausage of decision making

gets made.

-The what? oh...right.

-Some people live over or behind the

workshops, but the work spaces

are used by anyone who needs them.

Wanna see the carpentry shop?

-Yeah, I’d like to see that. Cool.

They push their bikes across the square

to a quonset hut with continuous skylights

along the arch of the roof and open at both ends.

Work benches, and long counters

with dozens of drawers, shelves

and racks with saws and drills,

mallets and clamps, carpenters’ squares.

A treadle-powered lathe and a chain-driven

mini sawmill sit at the far end of the hut.

A fifty-ish dude with a blue bandana

tied like a headband to restrain

his graying blonde hair wipes

sawdust off his hands on a heavy

waxed canvas work apron.

- Mornin’ Red, nice to see you,

who’s your friend?

-Mornin’, Richard, this is Mack.

-Nice to meet you, Richard.

-Yeah.

-Mack is a carpenter, too.

-Well, more of a cabinet maker actually.

Nice shop you got here. Is that a

treadle lathe I see back there? Must

be two hundred years old!

-Yeah, about that I guess.

Ever used one?

-No, only seen them in pictures.

very cool!

-It does the job.

-Maybe I could try it sometime?

With his eyes fixed on Red,

Richard says to Mack,

-you stickin’ around?

-Maybe, I don’t know, just got

here last night. Had a flat tire

on my bike about ten miles out

and Red was kind enough to

give me a ride.

-That so? Red’s always had a soft

spot for strays? Right, Red?

-Yep. you’re one of ‘em. I still

have a soft spot for you, Richard.

You haven't been by the house

lately to enjoy it.

-Richard grunts, yeah, so anyway

if you’re gonna be around for a while,

I'll you the lathe or any other

...equipment.... you wanna try.

-See you later, Richard, I’m gonna

show Mack the rest of the town.

-Nice to meet you, Richard.

-Yeah. 

To sleep perchance to dream

 The swamp cooler in the window

of the parlor whispers,

-sleep now, peace now, Mack.

-Soon, he whispers back.

In the dim gray light,

he sees a cat pad softly

across the floor.

She jumps up beside him,

sticks her nose close enough

to his face that he can

smell her dinner on her breath.

She pushes her body into the narrow

space between his arm and chest.

Her purrs blend with the soft whirring

of the swamp cooler and Mack slips

quietly into a dream of dreaming

beside a mountain stream.

It’s the summer before starting high school.

He’s dozed off on the short alpine grass

and moss high in the Sierra Nevada

beside a trickling black rock streamlet.

His cheek rests on the book he brought

putting a crease on page fifty nine

that will forever mark the spot.

It’s an empty city street, high noon,

uncomfortably warm but sunless, dull.

There’s a shop, doorless, just a curtain

hanging in the frame. A scent of frying

potatoes, baking bread, coffee, chocolate.

He's hungry and pushes through the curtain.

The cloth is rough, damp. He wakes

beside the stream a cougar is licking

his face. This dream inside a dream wakes

him from his dream on Red’s couch.

The cat is licking his face.

-Hi there, Puss, you saved me

from being a cougar’s dinner.

But let’s try to go back to sleep.

She turns and curls back into

her space beside him, and they

breathe softly, floating down

into the places where

other worlds persist.

Seeds, nuts and local spirits

-Let’s eat Brer Rabbit on the porch.

They carry plates and glasses

back to the front of Red’s bungalow.

-This is really good.

-Not bad, maybe I should drive my truck more often.

Mack peers intently at a strange citrus orchard

across the road. The rows of trees are trimmed

into cubes as square as topiary, flat-topped

with sides straight as a hedgerow. The orchard

is enclosed by chain link fence topped with

razor wire. Security cameras and lights on poles

at regular intervals.

-What are those?

-Oranges. Not ours, they belong to the Corporation.

They are trimmed that way so that they can be

harvested by robots. All the fruit goes to the cities.

-Really? very strange. I thought this valley

ran out of water years ago.

- It did. At least the surface water or enough

from runoff in the mountains. There is

some still in the aquifer, but not enough

for massive fruit and nut orchards.

So the Corporation built desalinization plants

over on the coast and pipelines to deliver

water for the orchards.

-I see. Do you get any water from them?

-Not a drop unless we’re willing to buy it.

Which we’re not. We have vertical axis

wind pumps. They don’t pull up enough

for huge orchards, but it’s enough for what

we do grow, a few trees and lots of crops

that require a small fraction of what

almonds or walnuts need. Sunflower seeds,

peanuts, potatoes. All the seeds from

watermelons and pumpkins too.

-What about meat? I know there's lots

of protein in seeds and beans, and this

rabbit is delicious. Any domestic livestock?

-A few. Chickens of course, but mostly

for eggs. Some of our folks up in the hills

have goats that forage, but we have to 

keep their numbers low so they don’t

eat everything down to the ground.

Because they would. Happily. And if

any of the feral hogs venture into

our gardens, they end up on a spit.

Mostly we save those for special feasts.

-Cool. That sounds festive.

-Yes it is. Everybody celebrates.

We honor all the traditional holy days

from the customs of everyone who lives here.

And that’s quite a few because we’re

a very mixed assortment of faiths and cultures.

But everyone participates in all of them.

-What do you do for income, money

or whatever?

-Don’t need much, as you can see,

we provide ourselves with food and shelter,

our energy is from the wind pumps and solar.

We can take care of most health care things,

we have a clinic and some university-trained

caregivers who have decided they want to live here,

but more serious problems mean a trip or

stay in the county hospital.

Red fills two small glasses with an amber liquid.

-Try some of our local spirits. We sell this to tourists

because yes we do need at least some cash.

So there are a couple of retreat type places

where people who want to experience this

what I guess you’d call lifestyle for a week or so

will book a stay.

There’s a pottery studio that sells to shops

in the cities. A modest farmstand. We have

lots of bees and way more honey than we

could ever eat all by ourselves. The special

ingredient in our local spirits. Like it?

-Mmm. Very nice.

Okra

-So let’s think about

what to serve

with this rabbit.

Do you like okra?

-Yeah, sure,

whatever you want,

I’m not finicky.

-I didn’t ask you

if it’s ok, I asked you

if you like it.

-Yes, if it’s dusted

with cornmeal

and fried. Not so

much in stews.

-Good. That’s what

I’m fixing to do.

Let’s go cut some

in the garden.

Red’s garden looks

like a vacant lot gone wild.

Raised planter boxes

overflowing with a jungle

of tomatoes, squash, beans,

cucumbers, melons

various shrubby herbs.

-Here’s the okra.

cut about a dozen.

I’ll get some tomatoes.

-Do you eat all this?

Looks like enough to feed

a small village.

-Actually it does.

Everyone in Harmony

has a garden like this.

We take what we don’t use

ourselves to the community

pantry. A lot of it gets canned.

-Interesting. So how does it

get distributed?

- You take what you need.

Contribute what you don’t.

It all balances out.

Everyone grows something

of everything. We're diversified.

That way if my melons

get gobbled up by gophers,

I can still have honeydew

or cantaloupe for breakfast.

And if Cyril’s tomatoes

get raided by the crows,

he can still make sauce

for his pasta.

-I see. I’m beginning to see

how you got your name, Red. 

Energy sector

Red sticks the knife into the floor.

-Tell me, mister tyrannosaurus rex,

or do you prefer something gentler,

diplodocus or iguanodon?

What brings you here to our

little corner of the valley?

Mack gazes up at the ceiling

of the porch. It has more of

the helicopter and spider painting.

He sees now that the helicopters

are trapped in a giant web.

-Chance. I am just going

away from things more than

going towards them. I had

no knowledge of this place.

-Making your getaway?

Not very quickly on that

clunker you were pushing.

Doesn’t it have a working motor?

-Yeah, it does when I can

find a place to charge it.

The problem was the tire

going flat. I already used

my last tire patch.

-I see. We can probably

do something about that.

You haven’t said what it is

you’re getting away from? 

Embezzlement? Bad life decisions?

If it was theft, you should have

gone for a bigger score.

Red pries the knife loose

from the floor of the porch,

tosses it down again.

It joins dozens of nicks

in the wood beside her foot.

-Nothing like that. Like I said

I’m a dinosaur, the energy sector

is changing from oil and gas

to nuclear, you know? those

new generation small reactors?

I don’t want to have anything

to do with toxic industries any more.

-Right. That’s pretty much what

our community, the village of Harmony,

is based on. No toxics, whether

it’s chemicals, or energy or how

we treat each other. Interested?

-Yes. So what does that mean?

Becoming a member or something?

-That depends. What do you have

to contribute to the community?

We don’t have much need for

industrial logistics managers.

-I know how to fix things,

mechanical systems, basic electrical,

plumbing, and like I said, I used

to make furniture. More than

just simple tables or cabinetry.

Things of beauty. Is that something

that people in Harmony would like?

-Maybe so, we all know how to do

all those basic system things ourselves,

some folks more than others, we had

to figure out a lot of stuff on our own

when we put the town back together.

Red looks up at the web painted on the ceiling.

-Maybe we could use more beauty,

there’s never too much of that, right?

-Never. Well almost never. Kind of depends

on what you think is beautiful. Some people

like the new cities with their structures armored

against heat waves, hurricanes or floods.

So much exotic metal alloy and 

windows smarter than I was in high school,

tunnels instead of sidewalks.

All climate controlled with the piped in scent

of citrus or the sea, computer-generated

soundtracks of waves or birds,

breeze in the pines. Sensory simulacrums.

Tuned to you with AI! Your childhood favorite scent,

not your neighbor, Alexi.

-Not too much of that around here.

We have the difference between actual

grapefruits, oranges or lemons.

And goat manure. Wet soil.

Bread baking in the oven. Each other.