the rich bitch kpete meets franksolich

[franksolich]

introduction  the rich bitch kpete meets franksolich is of course a work of fiction, but only somewhat so.  Six of the ten years—although not necessarily consecutive years--during the first decade of this century, northeastern Nebraska was pummeled with Noahian deluges and submerged by vast flooding; some sort of 120-year climatic cycle that has spun regularly since the beginning of time.

The experiences of kpete and franksolich are taken from real-life people and events of those years, a few years ago.  The descriptions of franksolich’s appearance and conduct are exactly as I am.  The descriptions of kpete’s appearance and conduct are somewhat speculative, being based upon her persona on Skins’s island—but although only speculative, I believe it’s pretty much accurate.

The characterization of kpete’s attitude about, and treatment of, franksolich might seem as exaggerated, a little harsh—surely it can’t be that bad, the way Democrats, liberals, and primitives think about “handicapped” people--but I assure readers that if franksolich ever hit dead-center of a bull’s-eye, this is it; this is exactly what they think of us.

I would know; it’s been my life.

What it is, is that it’s only a veneer—but oh, a very thick veneer--of unease, discomfort, contempt, hate; which further inside is craven anxiety and fear and anger that we might be better people than they are.

the rich bitch kpete meets franksolich has turned out a monumental work, surely longer than anything else I’ve written here on conservativecave, other than the story of one of my great-grandfathers, and another story about the best boss I ever had.  It may even be longer than one, or both, of those.  I dunno.

Enjoy; this is dedicated to my good friend, one of my best friends here on conservativecave, Revolution.

[franksolich]

the rich bitch kpete meets franksolich.  The property caretaker and franksolich were standing out on the back porch, looking over to the river about two hundred yards distant.  The rain was pouring down, and both were using umbrellas to cover themselves from it.  Once in a while, one or the other peered through a telescope mounted on a railing, so as to see the angry, swollen waters better.

“Well, what do you think?” franksolich asked the caretaker, a wizened scrawny little older man with a bug-eye.  “You’ve lived around here all your life, and grew up in this very place, and there isn’t anything you haven’t seen, of the river.”

“Well, boss, I’m still thinking,” the caretaker said.  The caretaker called franksolich “young man” when he—the caretaker, not franksolich--was sober, and “boss” when he was drunk.  “It’s going to get close, but it’s not going to be as bad as ’49 was.  Close, but not quite.”

He straightened up and looked around.

“You’re okay; I’m thinking it’ll get about that far,” he said, pointing out a certain tree about fifty yards from the house.  You’ve got everything you need here to last it out, no reason to head to town.

“Town’s getting jammed up as it is, people coming from all directions, being settled in churches, everybody’s homes, the schools, city hall, the county jail, the pavilions out at the fairgrounds.  I dunno where they’re all coming from; it’s getting to be like Omaha there.

“A lot of them are people I’ve never seen before, with blue-state license plates; the jobless, the homeless, the dispossessed, wandering around until happy days are here again, next January.

“I think you’ll be fine, boss, staying out here.”

“What do you suppose the neighbor’s doing?” franksolich wondered; “of course, he lives further inland, but the water’s going to flood his pastures.”

“Oh, he’s fine,” the caretaker said; “his wife and the kids went to the big city before this started, and once it started, he told them to stay there, and he’d stay and take care of things at home. 

“It was a good thing too, because his older brother and his family decided it was best they leave their own place, and went to his to wait it out.  I’m sure it’s bedlam there, nine people jammed into five bedrooms.”

“Any special instructions?” franksolich asked; “anything I should do but haven’t thought of yet?”

“No, just turn off the power to the annex, where the four bedrooms are, and the garage—you don’t need them anyway.  I’m guessing, though, it’s inevitable the power’s going to go out.”

“It hasn’t ever yet,” franksolich reminded him; “despite that the poles and wires were put up way back in the 1940s, and never replaced, and all the blizzards and floods and storms we’ve had here since I’ve lived here.”

“There’s always a first time, but yeah, I suppose; your gift of barakah, where something bad’s supposed to happen, but never does.

“But if the power does go out, you’re still good.  The water pump of course then won’t work, but you’ve got 10,000 gallons in storage, so you’re not going to want for water.

“And there’s the natural gas for the water heater.

“Your natural gas is fine, better shape than most people’s.  Nothing’s going to happen to your natural gas.

“The telephone might go out too, but that won’t bother you.

“Later this afternoon, the winds are supposed to speed up, and by tomorrow’ll probably be 50-60 mph, with occasional gusts of 75-80 mph, according to the weather forecast. 

“It’s not only going to be wet, but a little breezy too.

“Your internet, being by antenna, I dunno.  It depends on whether or not the water tower in town stays up or goes down—and if it goes down, the rest of us with cellular telephones are out of luck too.

“It’ll be just like you say,” he continued, grinning; “panic-stricken herds of people running around like chickens with their heads cut off, all upset and bent out of shape because they can’t communicate with each other.

“It’s going to knock down some more trees, but that’s okay; there’s too many trees out here as it is, crowding you in.

“If I were you, the only thing I’d be real worried about is the roof; other than that, you shouldn’t have any other problems just sitting here and waiting it out.”

to be continued

[Skul]

You're early. I expected at least a week. 

[franksolich]

You're early. I expected at least a week. 

OSC was unproductive this afternoon, and I sought to be doing something productive, so I got started on this.

But as OSC's the priority here, with this being a fill-in, posting of new chapters might be a little erratic, but I'll try to get at least one up each day.

[franksolich]

continued

“I’m sorry, missus,” the tow-truck driver said to kpete, they standing on the side of the highway next to her motor vehicle.  This was two miles north of franksolich and the caretaker, and sheets of rain were descending from the skies here, too.

He scratched his head.  “I’ve never seen this sort of car before, and there might be some trouble, getting a new part, from Omaha or Kansas City…..or Tokyo.”

“This is definitely singular,” the state patrolman said.

The neighbor had found kpete in distress, and called for the tow-truck, after which the patrolman had swung by, to see what was going on, and if anything else was needed.

“Uh huh,” the tow-truck driver said, turning to the patrolman.  “We’ve got all sorts of cars up here, a 1937 Rolls-Royce, a 1952 Rolls-Royce—“

“—the ‘37’s down in Florida,” the patrolman interrupted him.  “It’s owned up here, but it’s down in Florida, because it’s got a stainless-steel body, and the sun might fade it.”

“And I’ve worked on the Aston Martin One-77—“ added the tow-truck driver.

“Yeah, and the old geezer barrels it down the highway at 25 mph,” the patrolman contributed.

“And there’s the Ascari A10 around here,” the tow-truck driver continued; “it was one of the first off the assembly-line, and has all these bugs that are still being worked out—er, that I’m still trying to work out.

“Also the 1935 Auburn 851 Speedster that’s locally-owned, but damn, I’ve never seen a car like this one; she must’ve taken out a loan from Fort Knox to buy it.”

“The guy who owns the 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder gets his original parts at the auto salvage yard in the big city,” the neighbor broke in.  “Maybe you can find what you need there; they got hundreds of junked vehicles there.”

“The highway to the big city’s being shut down as we speak,” the patrolman illuminated the assembly; “the bridge is weak, and might go any minute now.”

“Well, missus, I’ll haul it into town,” the tow-truck driver said, “and make some telephone calls about it, and somehow it’ll get fixed.  I’ll do my best, but it’s going to take some days.  Usually we have overnight delivery from as far away as Chicago, but as you can see from the rain, we’re having some other sorts of problems here, and so it might take longer, maybe five or six days.”

kpete was incredulous.  “FIVE OR SIX DAYS?  FIVE OR SIX DAYS?”

“The floods,” the patrolman tried calming her down.  “And the worst is yet to come, in a couple of days.”

“FIVE OR SIX DAYS?  FIVE OR SIX DAYS?  Where am I, out in the middle of the Gobi desert, or on the moon, that it’ll take FIVE OR SIX DAYS?” kpete shrieked.  “FIVE OR SIX DAYS?

“I can’t stay around here FIVE OR SIX DAYS.”

“Well, ma’am, you have no choice,” the patrolman told her.

kpete got angry.  “Do you know who I am?  Do you know who I am?  I can’t stay around here out in the middle of nowhere FIVE OR SIX DAYS—“

“But ma’am, it doesn’t make any difference who you are,” the patrolman interrupted.  “You’re stranded here, with a whole lot of other people.  You can’t get out.”

“Oh no, no way,” kpete shrieked.  “Here, let me call my husband in San Diego, and he’ll tell you who I am, and that this is no fit place for me to be.”

“You’re free to call your husband, ma’am, but I fail to see what good it’ll do you, or him.  You’re here, and you’re not going anywhere.  You can’t get out.  Feel free to call him, and talk about anything you want with him, but it’s not going to change anything.  You’re stranded here, and nowhere else to go.”

kpete blew a gasket.

After she calmed down, the patrolman said, “Okay, ma’am, I’ll take you into town, and try to get you set up in one of those temporary shelters they got for outsiders caught here.”

“Good luck at that,” the tow-truck driver interrupted.  “They got those places all lined up, all set up, but they had only enough for 700 extra people in town, and last I heard, there were about 900 more huddling out in the rain, waiting for a place to open up for them.

“And the town—it’s only got 854 people,” the tow-truck driver said to kpete, “well, they have only enough food to feed a thousand, maybe fifteen hundred, extra.  I’m sure that by tomorrow, everybody’s going to be dining on rice that’s salted-and-peppered, nothing more than that, and maybe only half a cup per person.

“And water as the aperitif; we got caught by surprise, by this sudden change in the weather, and nobody was ready for it.

“I’m sure people are going to even be sharing cots, and blankets, sleeping in shifts, and that one’ll have to take a number, to use the sanitary facilities.”

kpete didn’t believe it.  “Take me to a motel,” she ordered the patrolman, “and please be sure it’s at least a first-class one, with a five-star restaurant attached.”

The patrolman, the tow-truck driver, and the neighbor looked at her with incredulity.

“There’s no motel in town, and if there were—“

“I demand to be taken somewhere with a private room, and I’m not using a common bathroom.

“It’s immaterial, ma’am, what you want.  You can’t go back east, you can’t go up north, you can’t go down south.  And the highway west was just closed ten minutes ago,” the patrolman advised.

“We can take you into town, where they got all sorts of shelters set up for people stranded here, but that’s it.  No other choices.

“You have to take what’s there, even if it means sharing a blanket with someone on cots set up in the high school auditorium where 200 are sleeping, and share a two-stooled restroom with the other, roughly, 100 women, there.

“There’s plenty people right now, ma’am, who wish they had at least that.”

kpete huffed.  “You have no idea who I am—I don’t mingle with the hoi polloi, uncouth peasants and dirty workingmen.

“Ewww,” she grimaced.  And shuddered.

“I won’t put up with it.  I won’t go.”

The patrolman looked at the neighbor, and thought of something.

“Hey, isn’t franksolich at home?”

The neighbor blanched.  “Yeah, he is, but don’t give him any idea I suggested it.”

“Okay, ma’am,” the patrolman said.  “I’m going to take you to a private residence, where you’ll have all the personal comfort and privacy you need.

“It’s a little iffy, only fifty yards outside the evacuation zone, but you’ll be taken care of no matter what; you’ll be with a nice guy, one of the nicest guys one can ever hope to meet.”

“And with the manners and style of Amy Vanderbilt or Emily Post,” the tow-truck driver said.  “He even uses linen napkins, and an oilcloth tablecloth, he won’t use at all, it having to be Belgian lace.

“He keeps the cleanest fingernails in the county, even after spending the day stacking wood.”

“Well, it better not be some wretched hovel,” kpete snapped.

“I tell you what, ma’am,” the patrolman said; “if the Queen were here, and saw the way the town is right now, and saw his place, she’d tell you his place is Buckingham Palace.”

“Be sure he doesn’t get any idea I suggested it,” the neighbor said.

to be continued

[franksolich]

continued

“Now, ma’am,” the state patrolman said as he and kpete started off in the cruiser, “he’s only two miles down this road, but because what’s going on, it’s going to take fifteen or twenty minutes to get there, given that much of the road’s already gone, and we have to cross fields to avoid the water.

“But to set your mind at ease, let me tell you about franksolich.

“He’s not only a credit to people like him, his own kind, but to humanity in general—“

“No,” said kpete, alarmed; “if he’s one of those people, you might as well turn around and take me right back to the highway, leaving me there.  I’d rather stay out in the rain, than be with one of them.”

The patrolman looked at her, mystified.

“You know,” she said, “one of those people, who like Skittles and Colt 45.”

“Oh,” the patrolman said; “no, he’s not one of those.  We have some of them up here, about half who’re retired law-enforcement and military, who got tired of the crime and corruption and congestion of blue cities, and moved here, because it’s more peaceful, and the people friendlier.

“The other half, the younger half, are nearly all truck drivers, who bring home paychecks that would make union teachers in Wisconsin green with envy…..but trucking’s harder work and demands more skill.”

kpete sighed with relief; franksolich wasn’t one of those.

“But I thought everybody in Nebraska were farmers or cowboys,” she said.

“No, not them,” the patrolman said.  “I think that after working for Democrats for 300 years, they kind of lost their enthusiasm for agriculture.”

kpete thought of something else, and got alarmed again.

“He’s not one of those other people, is he?  I notice you have a lot of those other people here.”

“Up here, ma’am, we call them Texans,” the patrolman illuminated her.

“They were here as long as 500 years ago—although in the earlier days, maybe only a dozen or score of them—long before anybody came to Nebraska from the east.

“Before even the Mayflower.

“But no, ma’am, he’s not one of those other people, either.”

Reassured, kpete attempted to reassure her chauffeur.

“You know, really, I have nothing against those other people; in fact, three of them work for me.

“There’s Hector, the gardener, Maria the cook, and Rosalita who cleans the house.

“They’ve been with me for years.

“But that doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes have problems with them,” she added.

“They’re always asking for more money, as if I’m made out of money.  They each get ten dollars an hour, straight cash, paid every day.  To me, that seems enough, if not generous, because they’ve hardly got anything to spend money on.

“They’re always asking for more time off, as if one day every two weeks isn’t good enough.  I don’t know what they need time off for, because they don’t have anything else to do anyway.

“And as for fringe benefits, such as medical or dental care, well, the taxpayers of California take care of that already.  And I give them one fifteen-minute lunch break every day.

“And Hector can get forgetful sometimes; when he’s hot and thirsty from working out there, he’ll come to the back door and ask for a glass of water—and so has to be put back in his place, directed to the garden hose outdoors.

“I don’t want him in the house; you’d think that him being told once, he’d remember it.

“And Maria, who claims to have some sort of water problem, whines when I tell her she has to get in her car and drive down to the convenience store on the corner, to use the bathroom there.  But really, I don’t need her messing up my bathrooms; Rosalita has enough to do as it is.

“Rosalita herself is another sort of problem.  I’ve never caught her up to anything, but because she is who she is, she has to be up to something, and before she leaves at the end of the day, I search her purse and inside her bosom, to be sure she’s not stealing.”

kpete sighed.  “If you can get out of it—some of us can’t, they’re necessary evils—don’t ever have servants.”

The rain was slamming down in sheets, and so one couldn’t really see the house as it was approached.  The cruiser gingerly pulled up to the front of the house, but as the caretaker’s car, and franksolich’s car, were both right in front of the front porch, the patrolman decided to drive on the lawn around the house to the back porch, so kpete won’t get wet stumbling in the downpour.

“What is his kind?” kpete asked, just before the cruiser was parked.

“Well, he says he’s half central European-derived, and the other half British-Isles-minus-Ireland, but most generally agree that on the outside, he looks Welsh, in a Charles-Dickensian way.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

continued

As kpete scurried up the steps to the back porch, blinded by the rain, she nearly collided with the caretaker, who was reaching down to offer her an umbrella.

She stopped and stared.  No.

This was a wretched old wizened little man with a bug-eye, a manual laborer.  And drunk too.

If this was franksolich, she was going back to the highway.

The caretaker however introduced himself, offering her his hand, which kpete ignored.

“franksolich is out there,” the caretaker said, pointing in the misty distance towards the river.  “He’s putting up golf-course flag poles every twenty-five yards or so from the river, to mark the progress of the water towards the house.  I don’t think they’re going to hold—the wind’s sure to blow them away--but he wanted to put them up anyway, insisting that well, maybe some of them’ll hold.”

While kpete kept looking to the west, the caretaker chatted with the patrolman, getting the details, which he promised to pass on to franksolich.  Then the patrolman honked, and left.

Slowly franksolich began emerging from the greyness of the fog and the rain, an indistinct figure that appeared tall, slender, and much younger than the caretaker.  As he got closer, to kpete he looked nothing more than as someone from out of British East Africa circa 1920, a tan bush-helmet on his head, a tan shirt, and tan shorts, beating the bushes.  Or lashing primitives, even.

But when he came up the steps to the back porch, she noticed he was barefooted.

Ewww, she thought, but she didn’t have much time to think, because he immediately extended his hand, “good to meet you, madam, but I’m sorry under such dreadful conditions.”

Then she really ewwwed.  kpete was not a woman ignorant of other people, and immediately grasped, from the way of his voice, that franksolich was deaf.  A mistake of nature, an imperfection of humanity.

He took off his bush-helmet, brushing back his wet hair, and kpete cringed.

He wasn’t only deaf, but he was absent ears.  Not only a mistake of nature, but a grotesque weird monster.

kpete remembered back to her younger days, when she was still a working-girl and hadn’t yet met a rich man to marry; dealing with such people as children; children who sucked their thumbs, children who were hostile to touch, children who threw inexplicable tantrums, children who made strange noises, children who stank and weren’t housebroken.

And dumb as rocks, all of them, these half-humans.

She turned, hoping to see the patrolman still there in his cruiser, but he was already gone.  Good God, she thought, alarmed; I can’t be in a dangerous place like this with a cripple; he's more of a danger to me, than help.  There’s nothing this freak can do for me, but what he might do to me…..

“Probably you’d better call your husband, to let him know where you’re at,” franksolich suggested.

Grabbing a slip of paper, he wrote out his name and the address.  “And here’s the telephone number here, too, but it’d probably be better if he called you at your cellular telephone, because this telephone’s probably going to go out any time.”

kpete handled the slip of paper gingerly, as if it were someone’s used tissue-paper.

When kpete walked inside the house, into the kitchen from the back porch, she stopped, stared, screamed, and fainted, collapsing right down there on the floor.  franksolich picked her up as if a rag doll and carried her into the bedroom, much like something from the Pieta.

“I guess she was floored by how clean you keep things here, boss,” the caretaker said.

“I dunno what she expected,” franksolich replied; “maybe dirt and bugs and mice and stuff.  I dunno.”

The caretaker looked at the closed bedroom door, and then at franksolich.

“Well, boss, this is it; gotta go before I get flooded in here too.  I’ve seen you in all sorts of situations, and you’re going to coast through this as slick and easy as a pig sliding on ice.  I’ll be back to clean up the mess, when it’s all over.”

Then, “boss, God have mercy on your soul.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

continued

kpete came out of her faint a few minutes later, startled to find herself on a bed, and gratified that she still wore her plastic raincoat, so as to insulate her from germs and vermin.  It was apparent the bed had just been changed that day, but one couldn’t be too sure the uncouth lout had cleaned thoroughly.

A cat walked across the floor.

kpete clutched her pearls and paled, in her mind seeing flocks of fleas hopping-and-dancing all over the carpeting. 

Looking around, she spied folded-up plastic neatly stacked on the floor of the open closet.  Upon inspection, they looked to be about window-size, and so she took one, resolving to carry it around to place between her body and anything on which she sat or laid.

She went into the kitchen, but he was not there.

Fortunately, there was not much to inspect in the kitchen.  She looked at the silverware and took a fork, so as to gauge the quality of his cleanliness.  Looking between the tines of the fork with the naked eye showed nothing; no built-up crud or coating, but still, she took a white napkin and ran it in between the tines, coming up with…..a still immaculately-clean white napkin.

The water glasses were crystal, and spotless, as if just from the glass-blower’s.

Well, I don’t know, kpete thought to herself; it all looks clean, but it can’t possibly be clean.

She walked out into the dining room and found franksolich sitting at the computer in the alcove between that and the living room, soaking wet.

“I might lose the internet any time now—it comes here via antenna—but until that happens, I’m desperate to know what’s going on in the world outside.

“While you were in there, I was out moving the car up to high ground.”

Reluctantly trying to be cordial, kpete asked, “They have tornadoes here in Nebraska, don’t you?

“Where is the door to the basement?”

“There’s no need to worry about the cellar,” he told her.  “There’s no tornadoes in this storm, only sheets of rain and high winds. 

“And besides, the cellar has a dirt floor, and’s dark and damp; you might not be comfortable down there.”

He briefly thought of mentioning snakes and rats in the cellar, but God compelled him to not be jocular.  The cats had actually kept it pest-free for years, and while it did in fact have a dirt floor, the water-heater and the furnace were sitting upon high concrete pedestals, in case it ever flooded.

“And besides, the safest place in a house during a tornado is usually the bathroom, not the cellar.

“If you’ve been around tornado-devastated areas, seeing just frames of roofless houses still standing, you’ll notice that most peculiarly, the interior bathroom’s still intact, like a vault sitting on the foundation of a bank that’s been blown up.

“When tornadoes are sighted around here—although I’ve never seen one in my life; slept through them, but never seen one—the cats head for the bathroom.

“But that’s irrelevant in our situation; there won’t be any tornadoes.

“We’re okay up here, where we can see things.”

to be continued

[obumazombie]

Clutching pearls in one hand, and a sfork in the other.

[franksolich]

Clutching pearls in one hand, and a sfork in the other.

By the way, I need to point out something, as this is still early in the story.

Don't wait with baited breath for any sex or nudity in this story; there isn't a speck of that in it.

Those of us who've seen pictures of the kpete primitive know why.

She's so cold, so frigid, she makes Svalbaard in January seem like Algiers in summer.

[franksolich]

continued

“That’s very curious,” kpete remarked, trying to make small talk, as she carefully placed the plastic sheet on the dining-room chair before she sat down. 

“That china teapot there; what’s special about it?”

“Oh,” said franksolich; “it’s just an ordinary English teapot, domestic crockery, from probably just before the first world war.  It’s junk now, but I still keep it, to remind me.

“It used to belong to George Bernard Shaw.”

kpete grimaced.

He’s such a fool, such an idiot, she thought; how could such a person have something that was once owned by a famous writer?  He probably didn’t even know who George Bernard Shaw was; probably just grabbed the name at random somewhere.

“Okay,” she said, “but are you sure it didn’t belong to Queen Mary or Lord Asquith or Helen Taft?”

“No, it used to belong to George Bernard Shaw, who poured tea from this very teapot.”

This is ridiculous, kpete thought; he reminded her s-o-o-o-o much of a retarded child who once handed her some crumpled-up aluminum foil, and insisted it was a “precious jewel.”  And the idiot child couldn’t pronounce words any better than this idiot did.

She thought she’d play the game.

“How did it happen, exactly, that you, of all people, ended up with George Bernard Shaw’s teapot?”

“It was given to me,” franksolich replied.

“George Bernard Shaw gave you that teapot?” she chortled.

“No, he died long before I was born.  A friend of his gave it to me.”

“Oh,” said kpete.  “And this friend told you it’d been George Bernard Shaw’s?”

This guy was simple, really simple.

“It was during my second trip to England, when I was 18, and I met someone who’d been a minor literary luminary in London circles during the 1920s.  He was very old; he looked a hundred, but was only about 85.  I got to know him, and before I left a couple of months later, he told me he wanted me to have it, George Bernard Shaw’s teapot.”

What a child, and an especially stupid one, she thought.

“Well, he said it belonged to George Bernard Shaw,” she rebutted, “but maybe it actually belonged to Wallis Warfield Simpson or Virginia Woolf or the Duchess of Norfolk?

“One needs proof, a chronology of ownership, for such things.  Otherwise, it might as well as come from a second-hand store.”

“I have provenance,” he said, coldly.

“Yes, yes, sure, sure, an old man, perhaps senile, told you so.”

“It’s more than that; if it was important to me to prove it to you, I’d insist you stay around until things are open again, and I’ll show you the documents from the archives.  They’re kept in town in storage, not out here.

“In fact, if you want, after the storm’s over, and after you’re back out in California, I’ll get notarized photocopies of it all, and mail it to you, certified mail.

“There’s a letter from the ancient gentleman to me, in 1979, describing to me how he’d ended up with the teapot himself, at some sort of picnic, where someone accidentally put the teapot into the wrong wicker-basket.

“He wanted to return it, but George Bernard Shaw told him to keep it; such teapots were a shilling and threepence, quite common and quite cheap, so not to worry about it.”

“Oh, so the old man wrote that to you,” kpete sneered.

“Not only that,” franksolich responded; “he also sent three photographs proving it.”

“Two were amateur photographs from the 1920s that he had, one with George Bernard Shaw and G.K. Chesterton, this teapot on the table next to them, and the other with Mrs. Patrick Campbell, pouring tea from it into George Bernard Shaw’s cup.

“The third was a page torn from Tatler, where an article about George Bernard Shaw had appeared in the early 1920s, with a photograph of him, this teapot at his elbow.”

Now somewhat mystified, kpete asked, “Well, why is such a valuable artifact ‘junk’ now?”

“It’s cracked,” he said, “on the side facing the wall.  It’s unusable.”

“Is that why the old man gave it to you; it was a piece of junk and he didn’t have any need for it?”

“No, I cracked it myself.

“I was still just a kid, and not especially bright.  I wanted to impress a girl, serving her tea out of George Bernard Shaw’s teapot, and without thinking, I poured boiling water into it.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

continued

kpete sat there, wondering how she might yet escape from this creature, when the neighbor came inside the house, both he and franksolich having to use all their muscle to pull the front door shut from the wind.  His boots were mud-crusted; the whole front yard a sea of bottomless mud by now.

kpete sourly grimaced; oh, him.

“The bridge finally went down,” the neighbor announced.

franksolich looked at him, stunned.  “The bridge is out?  The bridge that was built to withstand a 500-year flood, the bridge that didn’t even tremble the last time, when water was already running four feet over it?

“No way.”

The neighbor looked at him, sadly.

“Gone.

“That was everybody’s last avenue of escape to higher ground, to the big city, to the outside world.”

franksolich lit a cigarette, to think.  “The water’s not going to rise this high, and so I’m staying where I’m at; being a nice guy, one of the nicest guys one can ever hope to meet, I don’t want to add to the chaos and confusion out there; I’ll just stay out of everybody’s way.  The caretaker says it’ll look as if the river’s reaching the house, but it won’t; he figures at its peak, it’ll still be the half the length of a football field away.”

“Right, and that’s what the sheriff said too, and told me to tell you.  You’re safe where you’re at, and you’ve got enough provisions here to last a 40-day flood as it is.  He’s already got too many on his hands, and he can’t handle any more; the town’s packed like Calcutta.

“I’m going back home to hunker down; is there anything you need?”

“Solitude,” franksolich said, thinking of his guest.

“Can’t do that,” the neighbor said.  “She’s safer here than she is anywhere else.

“What I meant was, is there any thing you need me to take, so as to save it?

“Money, papers, documents, family treasures, valuables, keepsakes, items of sentimental value?  Like in case the roof gets blown off and water spills on everything?”

Nope, franksolich said.  “Remember, all my legal stuff is with my partner west of here, in a safe, all my valuables are in a bank in town, and all the family heirlooms and archives are locked up in storage in town, and the water’s not going to get anywhere near town.

“And the car, well, it’s already on high ground, as close to the top of the William Rivers Pitt I can get it.

“I’m good; I’ve got nothing out here that would break my heart if I lost it.”

Ooops, he suddenly thought.

“The cats.  I don’t want the cats here in this dread hour of mortal peril.  They run around and stuff, and they might decide to run outside the house and try to learn to swim.  One can’t control cats, and so best they be someplace they can run around uncontrolled but still be safe.

“Your place, just like last time.”

So franksolich went around collecting the cats—they were all there—and gave them one at a time to the neighbor, who rushed outside in the blinding rain to stuff them inside the cab of his pick-up truck.

As the neighbor was holding the last cat, ready to leave with it, he looked at franksolich.

“Well, old buddy, old friend, old pal, partner, this might be the last time we see each other—“

“—until it’s all over,” franksolich abruptly added.

The neighbor looked at kpete, who was now standing at the other end of the living room.

“God have mercy on your soul,” he quietly murmured to franksolich as he turned and left.

to be continued

[obumazombie]

As I recall George Bernard Shaw was in favor of eugenics.

[Bad Dog]

As I recall George Bernard Shaw was in favor of eugenics.

Quit *****footing around here.  When does the chainsaw come out?

[franksolich]

continued

kpete, now sitting on the couch in the living room with the plastic sheet between her body and that piece of furniture, looked at franksolich and asked something she’d been meaning to ask for a while.

“You’re deaf. 

“You can’t hear.

“Why is it you don’t use sign language?”

franksolich bristled.  “I use sign language only with other people who can’t hear.

“For hearing people, I find it condescending, demeaning, degrading, when they use it, as if I can’t understand what they’re saying.

“As long as I can see them, I can figure out what they’re saying.  I’m not clueless, after all.”

kpete arched her eyebrows, but it was obvious that’s all he was going to say about it.

Instead, he said, “Okay, it’s late.  The winds are going to start tonight, and after that, the real deluge.  We might as well hit the sack, you in the bedroom, and I’ll take the couch out here.  Sleep as late as you want, no point in trying to do anything else.  All we can do is wait it out.”

kpete went into the bedroom, and shut both doors.  As they didn’t have locks on them, she placed the back of the two chairs from the kitchen underneath the door-knobs.  She laid the plastic sheet on the bed, and deliberated whether or not to take off her raincoat, and decided not to.

Some time before midnight, she was awakened by a hub-bub coming from the dining room, and peeked out the door to see what it was.  franksolich was standing there, talking with three very wet men.

As seen through the picture-window of the living room, there was a vehicle outside, in front of the porch, its motor still running.  It had an odd configuration of headlights, and because the vehicle was black, and it was dark outside, it resembled a fantasy-flying-object that had just landed.

One of the three men was, obviously, the county sheriff, given his uniform.  The second one was wearing a hooded cape, much like that of fishermen off the coast of New England during the winter.  The third one, the youngest, was dressed in ordinary clothes, but all three were dripping water.

franksolich introduced them to her; of course, the sheriff, and the second was the county attorney, and the third, a volunteer fireman from town.

“In Nebraska, unique among the fifty states, the county attorney’s also the county coroner, and one of his jobs, during times of natural disasters, is to find out who’s where, and to go out looking for them when things are blown over, if they're missing.”

He neglected to illuminate kpete that the volunteer fireman worked as a special security technician at the nut-house in the big city.  He was small, but he was especially adept at subduing people who’d gotten out of control, from insanity…..or hysterics.

The volunteer fireman was paying close attention to kpete as the sheriff explained the situation to her.  “We’re making one final call—after we’re gone, nobody’s going to get through to here, for two, three, days—to be sure you’re all set and safe, and to ensure you’d rather stay where you’re at, than being taken into town.

“Town is a mess, ma’am; too many people, too few resources to deal with them.  Crying infants and children, worried mothers, and men indignant that they’re powerless, impotent, against the weather.  Some of the bunks are triple-filled, and the food’s socialist-labor-camp swill.  There’s people standing in line who’ve been waiting two, three, hours to use a restroom.

"And we're rationing toilet paper, three one-ply squares per person, as we're running out.

“I can take you there, but in my professional opinion, ma’am, you’re better off where you are, out here with him.”

kpete didn’t like that idea at all.  “But surely there’s evacuations getting people out.”

“They were planned,” the county attorney said; “about suppertime, the governor ordered the state national guard to send helicopters up here, to take out the weak and the vulnerable, carrying them over to the big city.

“There’s not that many helicopters around—we’re a pretty small state, not much call for them—and it was decided to take out only all children under the age of 5 years, and all ancients over the age of 80 years.

“We’re assuming everybody else in between can take care of himself.

“The helicopters got up to the big city, and one of them took off.  It took him an hour and a half to get here, 45 miles.  Because of the wind and the lightning, he had to dodge things, and at times fly only a few feet above ground or water, being tossed about by the wind and some near-lightning strikes.  He took off with two squalling 3-year-olds protesting at being separated from their mothers, and a near-comatose 92-year-old. 

“It took him two hours to get back to the big city, and his cargo was all sick and puking and out of control.

“’Unless someone’s actually dying there,’ he said, all shook up, ‘no way in Hell am I going back.  I’ve flown over hostile fire in Kuwait, in Serbia, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, but that wasn’t nothing compared with this.

“’What I saw was a whole lot of uncomfortable and ill-tempered people, but I didn’t see anybody there who’s in any imminent threat of life.  They’re just uncomfortable, that’s all.  And so unless someone’s actually in danger, I’m staying right here.’

“All the other pilots, who knew him, agreed, and so that was that.  As long as nobody’s actually dying, they’re not coming back.  They’re on call, waiting it out at the cocktail lounge of the bowling alley, but they’re not budging unless they’re really needed.”

The sheriff looked at kpete. “I can take you to town, but in my professional opinion, ma’am, you’re better off where you are, out here with him.”

Before she could say anything, yea or nay, the sheriff turned to franksolich, as if the matter had already been decided.

“Why do you have the ark on top of Mount Ararat?” the sheriff inquired.  “By the time the water ever got that high, you’d’ve been washed clear down to Arkansas.”

“I dunno,” franksolich said; “I just had it in my head to get everything to the highest ground possible, and yeah, sure, that was a little extreme on my part, but at any rate, it’s not hurting anything having the car way up there.”

“Okay, it looks good, you’re all set to wait it out,” the sheriff said.

The three men started walking back outside, the volunteer fireman assessing kpete one final time.

The sheriff, touching franksolich on the elbow, whispered, “You can handle it, but man, God have mercy on your soul.”

to be continued

[franksolich]

continued

The next morning, kpete was standing in front of the main picture-window of the living room, looking at the rain coming down from the other side.  It had been raining cats-and-dogs the day before, but now with the winds that had come up during the night, and more-concentrated clouds, it was raining elephants.

“Why is that?” she asked, when noticing franksolich awakening on the couch, and sitting up.

franksolich looked at her, still half-asleep and confused.

“Why is what?”

“The foliage where your car’s parked on top.  Everywhere around this house, the yard on all sides, is nothing but water and mud and foliage floating away—it’s like a moat—but whatever’s on that hill, still stands straight and firm.”

“Oh, that,” franksolich replied, but held his tongue until he could “frame” a response.

“The soil’s just different there,” he finally admitted.

“But how could that be?” kpete asked; “dirt’s dirt, and it’s all filthy.”

“It wasn’t there naturally,” franksolich said, with a sense of trepidation this conversation was going to places better not gone to.

“How did it come here then?” kpete persisted.

“There was a big barn next to it, from 1875 until 1950, when it burned down, the biggest barn in the county, probably the biggest barn in the whole of northeastern Nebraska.”

“And?—“ kpete was dogged.

“Well, the barn burned down, and that stack of dirt next to it stayed here,” franksolich responded, futilely attempting to frame an appropriate response.

“The dirt came from the barn?”

“Well, it came from whenever they cleaned out the barn.  Seventy-five years, and maybe about sixty generations of pigs, produced a lot of ‘stuff,’ and that’s it.”

Alas, kpete grasped the euphemism.

“Why doesn’t it stink then?” she asked.

“Well, 137 years of Nebraska winters froze it, and 137 years of Nebraska summers baked it, and that’s more than enough to sanitize, sterilize, something, no matter what it is.”

Figuring he’d lost, franksolich added, mischievously but truthfully, “The topmost layer’s a year or two older than you are; it’s harmless, but as the nutrients are still in it, it makes a good fertilizer.”

Then, hoping to end the conversation, franksolich abruptly walked into the kitchen to make coffee.

kpete came in a few minutes later, her cellular telephone in hand, a puzzled look on her face.

“I’m trying to call my husband, but my telephone won’t work.”

Panic rising in him, franksolich looked for reassurance; “But you already called your husband.

“Yesterday.

“Right?

“When I told you to call him?”

Her expression betrayed that she hadn’t.

franksolich dashed into the dining room and picked up his own telephone.

“Dead,” he announced.  “The telephone lines are down.”

He turned on the computer, to check the internet.  Gone.

“Well, my telephone line’s down, and the antenna for the internet and your telephone, on top of the water tower in town, must be down too.

“Well, there’s no way you’re going to get to call your husband now,” he announced.

kpete wanted to scream.

“I told you yesterday to call him, but n-o-o-o-o-o-o.

“In situations like this, you have to do certain things right away, in case something happens that you can’t do it later.  You should’ve listened.

“But don’t sweat,” he reassured her.  “The state trooper yesterday afternoon got your name and address and telephone number, and since we’re now—temporarily—classified as incommunicado, stranded but safe, I’m sure somebody from there’ll call your husband in San Diego, to tell him where you’re at, and that you’re okay, but it’s going to be three or four days before everything gets sorted out.

“I’m sure it’ll be enough to comfort him; all he has to do is wait, nothing more.”

kpete wanted to scream.

“HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON, IN THIS GODFORSAKEN PLACE?” she shrieked.

“THERE’S NOT EVEN A RADIO OR TELEVISION HERE.  We’re cut off from the world.

“HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON?”

franksolich ignored kpete’s tantrum, as he’d discovered a crisis of greater importance, shaking a package empty of cigarettes.

“Damn,” he hissed.

kpete looked at him.

“Those were the last cigarettes I had in the house,” he explained.

“I’d picked up two cartons yesterday morning, but because I tossed them in the back seat of the car, I forgot all about them.  They’re still in the car.

“I’m going to have to go get them; I’m a wreck.”

Then he suddenly thought of something.  “We don’t know anything about what’s going on.  This storm was a surprise; only two days ago, meteorologists had forecast a ‘20% chance of light rain,’ and even yesterday morning they were still insisting ‘maybe a little bit of rain.’

“Well, by mid-afternoon, we all knew how wrong they were.

“Last I knew, the front was stalled right on top of us, unable to go any direction, and that it’d last four days.

“Well, we’ve got no radio or television, and you can’t call anybody and the internet’s down.

“The car has a radio.  We can find out what’s going on there.”

“Good,” kpete said; “you can go get your cigarettes and find out from the radio at the same time.”

Uh, no, franksolich said; “You forget. 

“I can’t hear a radio.

“You’ll have to come with me, to listen.”

“Oh no,” kpete said indignantly, with unrestrained vigor. 

“I’m not going to climb a mountain of pig shit to get to your car to listen to the radio.”

to be continued

[obumazombie]

It's quite entertaining seeing people squirm when they are faced with doing something they consider to be beneath them.

[franksolich]

continued

franksolich, indifferent about the matter, got ready to hike out to get his cigarettes.  He took a canvas knapsack and nested two plastic garbage bags inside of it, one bag inside of the other.

“It’s soaking wet out there, and soggy cigarettes are no good,” he said.

She looked for him to put something on—he was still wearing the same shirt and shorts he’d been wearing the day before; he’d even slept in them—but all he did was pop out his contact-lenses and put on a pair of eyeglasses, tying them around the back of his head.

“No shoes?” she asked.  “Nothing on your bare feet?”

“The water and mud’s ankle-deep, if not more, out there, and shoes would be ruined.

“I can’t walk well in boots, and besides, I look stupid in boots.”

“No hat?” she asked.

“A hat the size of a circus-tent wouldn’t keep me from getting wet, so no point in it.”

Out on the front porch, just before going out into the rain, he stopped to get a “fix” on where he was, and where he wanted to go; a straight line, but somewhat angled to the northeast, at whose end was the fog-shrouded William Rivers Pitt, about a city-block-and-a-half away, the car on top barely visible.

Then he ventured out.

He was walking backwards, his face with the wind and rain, rather than into it.

The wind was strong; kpete had already seen the downed trees surrounding the house, and heard things flapping, crashing, against the outer walls.  The blades of a lilliputian Sandhills windmill, built decades ago to water the gardens, spun so rapidly one could barely see them.  The three picnic-tables that had been scattered about the front yard were now even more scattered, and overturned in the mud.

The very tall pole, a light on top which served as a beacon for travelers on the highway two miles north, was down, snapped at its base.

An old country-school bell that was mounted on a brace in the side yard, swayed in the wind, incessantly clanging.

And down poured the rain, in sheets, in gusts, in bursts, in steady drumming.

He made it to the base of the miniature Jungfrau, after which he disappeared from sight, walking around it rather than up it.

to be continued