Author: David Ferland

The Sequester Begins

/ David Ferland / 2 Comments

“I’ll make this barn into a basketball court,” JJ said.
            “Why don’t you just keep it a barn,” Lila said.  “Or not buy a farm on the side of a mountain.  Especially since, y’know, you’re not a farmer.”  They were looking at real estate.  Or, rather, JJ was looking at real estate and Lila was looking annoyed.  They were early and the agent hadn’t shown up yet.  Patches of snow in depressions dotted a sodden hillside.  The barn was red and stately with a dirt floor and was filled with yard equipment and children’s toys.  Two red and yellow plastic toddler cars were lying nearby on a twisted heap of garden hoses.
            “I don’t want a barn, I want a basketball court with a roof,” JJ said. They stood just inside the doorway and looked at the detritus of someone else’s life.
            “Why was this all just left here,” Lila asked and kicked at a soccer ball that had rolled down from a toy pile.  There was a large box, an unopened and unassembled trampoline, along a wall.  Maniacally happy children were jumping and laughing in the sunny picture on the box.  “It looks abandoned.” 
            “The guy told me they left quick.”  JJ paused to look sidelong at Lila.  “It’s a foreclosure.”
            “What!”  She turned on him instantly.  “You can’t just occupy someone else’s place.  That’s bullshit and you know it.”
            “Someone else is just gonna buy it.”
            “Don’t give me that.”  Lila was right up close to him now.  When she turned on someone it was like a manager getting in an umpire’s face.  She was small but wanted to show you it didn’t matter.  “Look at all this stuff.  You’ll probably just throw it in a dumpster.”
            “This place is perfect,” JJ tried.
            “Perfect for hiding out, for being away from everyone.  Why do I always have to be the one to keep you from destroying yourself?”
            A car door closed and a man in a sport jacket started toward them from the road, picking his way around the snowy spots.
            “I just want a place for myself.”
            “Reclusive, rich, and selfish is no way to live.”  She turned from him and started back toward the road.  “What happened to you,” she yelled as she walked away.  Lila stalked past the real estate agent without looking.  The agent made to put his hand out but then just turned and watched as she walked away.
            “Is everything ok,” the agent asked as he approached JJ in the doorway of the barn.
            JJ watched Lila open the car door and get in the passenger side.  He thought of their time together and how she always pushed him to be better.  What the hell did she get out of it?  He always felt like her project.  Stubbornness and doing the right thing tugged away inside him and he just looked toward the road.  This is why they stopped seeing each other.  She was always right!  At least about things like this.  Ethical things.  Karmic things.
            “I’ll take it,” JJ said abruptly.  “Where do I sign?”
            “Don’t you even want to see the house?”
            “Fuck the house,” he said and turned to shake the realtor’s hand.

Fracking Sounds Sexual

/ David Ferland / 2 Comments

“Fracking sounds sexual,”  JJ said.  “Like fetish sexual.  Strap the earth down, bring in the high pressure hoses, and frack, frack, frack away.”
            “You need to get a job and stop thinking so much,” Barry said.  He was dressed in pressed Dockers with a sweater vest over a button down shirt.  A sweater vest!  “If we don’t create our own energy then we’ll always be dependent on foreign oil.”
            “There’s no such thing as foreign oil.  There’s no foreign.  We’re all citizens of the Earth!”  JJ shouted this last part.
            Barry looked at JJ.  They were walking in a beach parking lot where mountains of snow had been piled.  No other place to put the snow?  How about a beach parking lot in the winter? Perfect.  Kids were sledding on the pile and tunneling like trolls.  Thousands of rivulets flowed from the heap.  It was 60 degrees three days after the blizzard dumped 2 feet of snow.
            “Just kidding about the citizens of the Earth thing,”  JJ said.  “But I know you have a heart there beneath that sweater vest.  I know you love nature.  Shit, you love my sister so there must be a generous spirit in there somewhere.”
             They turned to walk on the boardwalk leading to the beach.  Near the beach, the boardwalk was blocked by yellow tape, the end hanging four feet above the beach below.  The storm had battered the beach leaving the boardwalk forlorn and dangling.  The stairs that used to descend to the beach were just gone.
            “I don’t think you were kidding about the citizen of the earth,” Barry said.  “I think that’s how you see yourself.”
            “C’mon…”
            “Yeah, you’re kind of afloat on the Earth, no real connections.  And, for a citizen of the Earth, you pick on people an awful lot.  You’d think with all the burkas, dashikis, and tribal garments all over the earth you’d be a little more open.”
            JJ was smiling.  “Don’t forget sweater vests and khakis.  At the beach.”
            Barry looked at JJ and shook his head.  “Always with the little jokes to keep us all away.”
            JJ’s smile faded.  “What’s with the brutal honesty?”
            “Your sister wants you in our lives.  And I can understand that.  But you’re so judgmental, it oozes off you.”
            Two boys in snow pants came running up the boardwalk, took one look at the danger tape and the four foot drop to the sand, then ducked under.
            “Hey, that’s dangerous,” Barry said.
            The taller boy, with red hair wild and wind-blown, looked at Barry and JJ.  Then he looked over the edge.  “It’s just sand mister,” he said.  And they both jumped down and continued running to the ocean.
            “My sister wants someone to blame.  For what?” JJ said.  “And she wants my money.”
            “Yes, she wants your money.  We don’t need the money.  But she has it in her head that you don’t deserve it.”
            “That’s probably right.  Who deserves to win the lottery?  I give that money away every day.”
            “You need a project,” Barry said.  “Have you given that any thought?  Something more focused then just giving it away.  Something that will help others.  Or help the earth.”
            JJ looked at the beach and the kids who were at the water’s edge.  They were daring the waves to catch them, following the retreating surf down then sprinting away from the next wave.  JJ thought of doing the same thing on this same beach years before, shrieking and running with his brother and sister.  He sighed then shook his head to clear the vision.
            “Here’s a project,” he said.  “How ‘bout a fracking den.  Techno music and an assortment of hoses on the wall with different nozzles.  Really industrial, but clean.  Dentist chairs with restraints…”
            Barry shook his head.  “I’m glad you’ve been giving this some serious thought,” he muttered then turned and started back to the parking lot.
            “Lots of shifts and levers.  For positioning.  And smoke machines.  We’ll call it, The Natural Gas Club…” 

Super Bowl Outage

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            “Cyber-terrorism,” Carl said from the couch.  Half the lights had gone out at the Super Bowl.
            “Why is it always terrorists with you?” JJ said, but he had felt a tightening inside when the broadcast stopped.  The post-9/11 tightening.
            “I’ll be right one of these times.”  Carl untangled himself from the nest of blankets on the couch and walked to the bathroom in his drooping boxers.
            “Did you even dress yourself today?” JJ yelled.  On the screen the Superdome looked dim and there was only crowd noise, no announcers.  No Jim Nance.  No Phil Simms.  No explanations.  JJ stood up and started pacing, watching the screen, waiting for riot and flames.  Football players milled and stretched in the Superdome half-light.  Anxious coaches gesticulated and looked toward the ceiling.  JJ thought the Ravens coach looked like an angry fundamentalist preacher as he yelled at some guy about…what?  A power outage?  Same-sex marriage?  Carl returned with a can of beer.
JJ said, “Can you imagine if they couldn’t go on?  What would they do?”
            “Dude, this is the NFL.  There will be no postponement, cancellation, whatever,” Carl said.  “They will harness starlight if necessary.”
            “What if all the lights go out?  How will everyone get out?  Remember last time that many people were in there?  Remember Katrina?”
            “You and the impending disasters.”  Carl looked at the few cold chicken wings arranged on top of the delivery bag from two hours earlier.  He reached out, pulled back, then reached and took one.  It was an unnatural orange.  He brought it to his mouth as his phone buzzed.  Carl put the wing down and looked at the screen.  “Oh shit.”
            “Don’t answer it.”  JJ said as he looked at the screen. First half commercials were being replayed.  “We’re stuck in time,” he muttered.
            “Hello,” Carl said into the phone.  He sat up, alert.  “We’re fine…yeah me and JJ…it’s nothing, just a fuse or something…I know it’s freaky but it’s gonna be ok…no it’s not terrorists.”  Carl listened and looked over at JJ.  “Ok, I’ll be right there…yes really…right now.”  He lowered his voice and turned modestly from JJ and the TV.  “I love you too baby,” he whispered then hung up.
            JJ gaped at Carl.  “What the hell?”
            Carl leaped up from the couch.  “Sorry man.  I’m going home.”  He found some jeans under the coffee table.
            “Right now?”
            “She’s worried.  She needs me. You know we met at the Super Bowl.”
            “I know you met during the Super Bowl.  You told me a hundred times.”
            “No, actually at the Super Bowl.  Super Bowl XL.  In Detroit.”  Carl pulled his shoes on and paused, staring into the middle distance.  “Seattle got screwed,” he murmured.  And then he was up and moving, twisting into his coat, and rushing out of the room.  “I’ll be back for the rest of my shit.”  He hurried through the kitchen to the side door.  “Thanks for the month on your couch,” he yelled and the door banged shut behind him.
            “It was three months!” JJ yelled back.  But Carl was gone.  JJ went back to the couch, balled up Carl’s sheets and blankets, and threw them on the floor.  He sat down on the couch, HIS couch, as the referee announced the resumption of play.  “Let’s go,” the ref said to millions of people with a wry smile.  And the Super Bowl went on. 

The Yeti of New England

/ David Ferland / 1 Comment

“The disease is in your head,” Lila said.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means, what you think about yourself, about the world, is not the way the world is.  It’s not the way you really are.”  Lila looked into the trees as sun slanted through and lit the sparkling snow with a crystalline flash.  “It’s a trap,” she said.
“I feel the trap.  But what does thought have to do with it?”  JJ watched the sun go in as suddenly as it appeared and the snow was frozen and drab under brooding trees.  “This new age shit is not for me.”
“Well, what is for you?”
“Everybody’s walking around talking about being present, being in the now.”  JJ kicked at some frozen snow sending a fist-sized chunk skittering into the trees.  The snow had melted and refrozen several times and was crunchy and abrasive.  JJ thought it was like walking on Pluto.  Except for the sun.  And atmosphere
“What’s wrong with that?  The norm is that we all walk around wishing that things were different, that we had more of this or that, money or power or kids.  We wish things hadn’t happened or wish different things happened.”
“I coulda been a contender!”  JJ yelled into the trees.
“Exactly.”
They walked up the broad path that used to be a road until it was too expensive to maintain.  JJ thought that was an improvement.  Let nature take it back from the cars.  “Hey, here’s a question,” he said.  The sun was peeking through again.  “What are you thoughts on the Yeti?”
“Again with the Yeti,” Lila said.  “JJ, there are no Yetis in Massachusetts.”
“Sasquatch, Big Foot, Yeti.  Different names for different places.  What would a mysterious manlike giant living in the wilderness of New England be called?”
Lila thought and said, “A Yanqi.  With a q and an i because the Pocumtuck named it.”
“That’s terrible,” JJ said.  He smiled then looked slowly into the trees on both sides.  “But you oughta get present to the fact that the Yanqis may be watching us right now.”
They crunched up the snowy path to the old parking lot that opened up to the winter sky and looked out over the interstate, the river, and a grid of frozen white farm fields sectioned by dark rows of trees.

Game Day Decisions

/ David Ferland / 1 Comment

“Google or Apple?”  JJ was staring at his laptop screen.  “It’s like you have to bow at one altar or the other.”
“What are you talking about?”  Carl was on JJ’s couch in his nest of bedclothes, watching the pregame show.  Two months at JJ’s and counting.
“It used to be PC or Mac.  Now it’s like Apple vs. Android.”
“Dude, speak English.  What does all that mean?”
“I want to get a tablet.  So it’s iPads or ones that run Google Android.”
Carl looked at JJ.  “Know what I’m thinkin about?  Football.  Brady vs. Flacco.”  On tv, the pregame blather continued.  Ex-players in suits were arguing about quarterbacks wearing gloves when it’s cold.  Evidently, wearing gloves is a personal statement of values,  perhaps signaling to the opposition that you notice the cold and are therefore less of a man.  “These studio shows are the worst thing ever,” Carl said
“Why do you watch?”
“Because it’s on,” Carl reached for a cheese doodle.  “Just sit the hell down and watch.  It’s the NFL.  It’s everything.”
“Sit on your bed?  Or is that my couch?”  JJ came over and eyed the wadded up blankets.  “I’ll just squat over here.”
A commercial for Apple starring Venus and Serena Williams came on.  They played ping pong with an unseen and dreaming narrator.  Carl said, “That’s not the type of dream I would have with those two.  They are large and very athletic.”
But JJ was thinking that if the Williams sisters appeared in an Apple commercial then….what?
“Dude, here’s one for you while you’re making tough choices.  Ready?”  Carl paused.  “Clutch hall-of-famer Tom Brady, who you refer to as the pretty boy bitch quarterback of the New England Patriots.  Or… Ray Lewis, the born-again, face painting, and ranting pro wrestler parading as a hall-of-fame Ravens linebacker who, by the way, was involved in a double murder.  Choose!”
“Wow,” said JJ.  He feigned deep thought, stroking his chin and looking toward the ceiling.  “I’ll take the double murderer.”  
“That’s what I thought,” Carl said.  “Now you’re interested.”
JJ perched carefully at the edge Carl’s bed nest on the sofa and reached for the cheese doodles.