JJ in the 21st Century

A Practical Farmer

/ David Ferland / 2 Comments

“What are you doing with all that money,”  JJ’s father asked.
“I’m buying a farm.”
“You’re becoming a farmer?”
“No.”
“Then why would you buy a farm?”
JJ sighed.  “I’m buying a farm and restoring the fields to native forest.  And I’ll live in the house.”
JJ’s father considered this, looking into the distance as if considering a mountain range, though there was only the dining room wall.  There were pictures of the young JJ with combed bangs and clip-on neck ties.  There were pictures of the family at the beach, his mother covered from head to toe against the sun.  She looked  most sickly out in nature, especially in the sunshine.  Not many smiles, JJ thought.  A grim intensity seemed to be the family vibe.  JJ knew the intensity was from the duty of posing and looking like a family without a dying mother.
“Are you doing drugs again?”
“Not yet.  Maybe starting today though.”
“Always so flippant.”
“Dad, things are good.  No drugs, no issues.”
“And no direction.”
JJ rose from the table.  “This has been nice.”  He hesitated but JJ’s father just looked at his hands clasped on the table cloth.  There was always an embroidered table cloth in this dining room, even now, without mom here.  “Y’know,” JJ said.  “Some would say you need to get moving too.”
They were both very still as the words hung there.  JJ expected a caustic remark, or at least a, “Please leave now”.  But JJ’s father was just quiet, looking at his hands.  His jaw was clenched and JJ noticed that his hands were not just clasped, they were gripping one another, fingertips flexing into the back of the opposite hand.  Then his father sighed and there was a loosening, a kind of deflation.  He looked up at JJ and his eyes were moist.
“Your Uncle Joe has been after me to come to Florida and live there.  There’s a condo.”  He looked away.
“I want to help,” said JJ.  “Whatever it takes.”
“It’s not too much.  Your mother always wanted to go where it’s warm.”
“Whatever it takes,” JJ said.  He welled up but would not let the tears come.  Instead, he sat down at the table with his father to talk about the logistics of moving on.

The War Inside

/ David Ferland / 1 Comment

“So I never told anyone this before,” JJ said to Dr. Shay.  “I feel really…really…”
“It’s ok.” Dr. Shay said.
“Really…”  JJ rolled his shoulders, tilted his head from side to side, fidgeted.  “I don’t know.  Stupid.  Definitely uncomfortable.”
“It’s ok.  I’m not here to judge you.”
That’s bullshit, JJ thought.  “I spend a lot of time in this world in my head,” he said while looking out the window.  There was a parking lot, a strip of vegetation scraggly and unkempt, then the Connecticut River, swollen with snow melt.  All that water looking for a way out, JJ thought.
“Well, we have talked about the relentless fantasy and how men in particular…”
“No, not that kind of world.”  JJ said and looked back at Dr. Shay.  “It’s an imaginary world where there is a long war going on.  It takes place on another planet, someplace threatened by take over from, from…others.  But people are holding out, they don’t want to leave though some of them switched sides, or sold out to the enemy for an easier life.  They are hunted down and killed.  I’m one of the good guys.  One of the ones who stays behind.  We wage guerilla war against the invaders and hunt down the deserters.  We live in the mountains, in caves…”  JJ stopped. 
“Go on.”
“I’ve said too much.  They’ll kill me for this.”  He looked at Dr. Shay and smiled.  “Just kidding.  Listen, I know it’s not real or anything.  I used to just imagine it to help fall asleep.  But now I think about it all the time.”
“Why don’t you write it down?”
JJ looked out the window at the river.  Tree limbs rushed by much faster than the water looked to be moving.  They are swept along,  JJ thought.  Will they make it all the way to the ocean?  They’ll probably just get stuck on some dam.  “It’s like I’m the one to make things right.  To bring justice.  In the story.  The elders told me I’m the one to see it through.”
“Can you see it through?”
“Probably not.” 
Dr. Shay looked at JJ and waited for more, but there was no more.  “Is there a reason why you are the one to see it through?”
“Not that I know.”
“Well, maybe that’s where to investigate.  Why are you the special one?  Was it destiny?  Is it just because it makes a better story?  Or is it because you have something hidden, something burning hot down deep inside.”
“Wait,” said JJ.  “Are we talking about real life?”
“It’s all real life, JJ,” said Dr. Shay.  “And I bet if you’re honest with yourself, there’s a hot coal smoldering deep inside.  Beneath the story.  Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”
They were quiet and JJ tried to go deeper.  He looked away from the broad generous face of Dr. Shay and then found a spot, a thermostat on the wall, just past Dr. Shay’s head of wild white hair.  “There’s a lot of murk down there,” JJ said.  “Maybe a damp and smoky campfire.  But no hot coal.”
“It’s a start,” said Dr. Shay. “Now tell me about your family growing up.”

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

/ David Ferland / Leave a comment

            “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.