EQUITABLE (drawing)

HABITS (cartoon)

A woman once asked, 

“Are you willing to be executed when a new baby is born so the growth rate stays at zero?”

I answered several days later in an i-should-have-said-moment, 

“No. I'm willing to use birth control until you die so my new baby will not add to the population.”

Michael's Lake Tahoe Trip (8 page short story)

Bye

December, 2025

Sacramento, California

On the wall above the front door, the security monitor showed opposing three-quarter views of the neighborhood baker, Thistle, waiting outside. Answering the doorbell, Michael could see she carried a small square pastry box tied with string. Once a month for the past year, she had delivered a warm peach beehive dessert to him. Over the year, the quality of the peach and pastry dough had fallen. This time, Thistle explained the peach had been reconstituted from two dried halves, her source for fresh peaches was gone.

“I can’t depend on my coop anymore – members are vanishing to one or another survival commune. And I’m sorry, but this will be my last delivery, Mr. McGrue, the streets are getting too dangerous. Sometimes I feel foolish to stay, but locking myself in a cage just never seemed a good; it’s like prison, and I just won’t go.”

Michael ignored her commentary,

“I’ll enjoy it, Thistle, thank you. I won’t be seeing you in January then?” She shook her head. “Well, here. I have your payment and something I made for you, you’ll like it.” Michael opened a drawer in the desk near the door, selected a pinwheel of colorful hemp-paper triangles, and handed it to Thistle along with her payment of two pints of home-brew bubble-wrapped to withstand travel in her wire basket.  “Use the zip tie to cinch the pinwheel to your handlebars.” From the open door, Michael watched her attach the pinwheel, blow to make it spin, and then ride off, turning to wave and ringing her bicycle thumb bell twice. He stepped out to the sidewalk just to watch Thistle shrink by distance until she leaned into a left turn, pinwheel spinning, and disappeared behind the garbage pile. He waved even though she was out of sight. Then, Michael heard a commotion, a crash perhaps, definitely shouting, more shouting, and a scream – a woman’s scream, gun fire, then silence, –

“Wait! Was that a bicycle bell?” he wondered. Suddenly, in panic and empathy for Thistle, he ran into his house, grabbed the rifle beside the desk, ran outside, then stopped in confusion. He had left his front door wide open; he had to close it before running down the street and around the corner to find the commotion, to find out if Thistle was hurt or attacked. That need to lock the front door, that need to protect his belongings from an unknown thief, that learned caution broke his panic and determination. The pause stripped the moment of valor. Overwhelmingly sad, he bowed again to the fear for one’s safety and comfort overriding the civil and proper impulse to intrude, stop, and even punish random acts of violence. He closed his eyes, leaned over using the rifle as a cane, and rested his forehead on his fist gripping the barrel muzzle; the proximity of his brain to the path of a bullet was not lost on him. This increasingly unkind, ungentle, and groveling existence was becoming intolerable. He despised himself for not wanting to know if Thistle was the object of that clamor, for wanting to freeze that last memory of her blowing on the pinwheel. He accepted Thistle would not come to his house again; her departure was just one more farewell.

For months now, Michael had receiving final farewells.  Many acquaintances had gone away; before leaving, they would urge him to join them, they would be so excited about the promises of militia protection and warehouses of provisions, enough to last years, and he would refuse for reasons similar to Thistle. Other friends departed without notice; Michael would notice a green bulb in their porch light at night, signifying the house was vacant and available for squatters. The green light was a common farewell moment. Another sign of a departure was finding keys left in the ignition of a friend’s car. A rush of goodbyes - the weekly obituaries on the local webpage of GoneNotForgotten.org.

In the midst of these not-so-good goodbyes were unexpected arrivals. The neighborhood seemed to have more cars abandoned at curbs and in driveways, more strangers strolling through, more trash piled on the islands of roundabouts and the bump-outs of intersections. Michael supposed many of these new people were cohabitating with neighbors, maybe distant relatives home to roost and conserve family resources, maybe friends – extended families gathering in support. Michael also had the suspicion many of these strangers were stalking the neighborhood, cataloging assets, envying a backyard garden, noting the extra cord of firewood stacked under a carport, and noting the weakness of a home, like an unbarred window or a backyard wall not topped with glass shards.

New Year’s Day, Winter of 2025-2026

Sacramento, California

Weeks later, New Year’s Day, Michael fixed himself a special brunch. From the back porch cold cabinet, he collected a fresh egg, the remnants of real butter, and the last two slices of Thistle’s now-stale loaf that had cost him a dozen dried blueberries.  He lit the front-right gas burner, blew out the match, and stared a moment at the ring of hot blue teeth. He remembered camping along the Truckee River with Elaina and the kids and the white gas camp stove. A small pool of liquid gas primed the stove by heating the fuel line, so when turned on, gas vapors combusted in a ring of hot blue flames. Michael usually lit the priming fuel with a match and the flash of fire would burn the hair off the back of his fingers and hand, presenting a poor example of adult behavior for the young twins, so he lost his stove lighting privileges. Elaina had purchased a propane lighter pistol with a long silver barrel designed for lighting barbecues. In the hustle of setting up camp one night, Michael had begun to light the stove with a match, but Elaina had scolded him and, while searching through plastic tubs of camp supplies for the propane pistol, had repeated for the kids her lesson of using the right tool for the job. Then, with a flourish of pride, she aimed the pistol and pulled the trigger, once, twice, three times, while the eyes of her family watched. Even Danny had quit teasing Patty, attracted by the clicks, anticipating with the others a burst of light and flame. Again and again, Elaina had aimed and clicked, now looking at the lighter as if betrayed, now shaking the handle near her ear to see if it’s empty, now firing in rapid succession, click, click, click.

“Shoot it again!” Michael had yelled with mock desperation and horror, “It’s not dead yet!” How beautifully Elaina had laughed, laughed so hard, her extended pistol arm went limp, dropped to her side, and her body resigned to gravity so lightly, kneeling on the dust and pine needles, shoulders shaking, Patty giggling, and Danny dancing around the stove shooting with his finger as an instant replay, clowning to delight the hungry. Even their dog, Zanadoo, had sat barking joyfully. Michael remembered exhaling in the manner of one who knows a job won’t get done unless he does it, and after a flash of match to fuel, the odor of singed hairs had wafted across the campsite.

This memory took only as long as whipping the egg. He wet each side of the bread in the batter, and when browned in the buttered skillet, he added more butter, then syrup made of brown sugar, water, and cinnamon. Michael ate the meal straight from the pan, as he usually did, to save on the amount of dishwashing in his day.

A hot mug of chicory warmed his hands as Michael idly contemplated the many heartbreaking contrasts between those family days of enjoyment, buoyed by a pursuit of happiness (a tricky pursuit, sure, life being full of the unexpected, but all and all, the lows make the highs, as they say) and these solitary days without family, without Zanadoo, but crowded with strangers, with random violence, survival communes, rotting garbage, and the high probability of a nasty and lonely death. Finding the comparisons unhappy, he wandered into the abstract exercise of finding someone to blame. The media’s grasp of the last two decades never amounted to more than detailing the symptoms of governmental mismanagement – resource pollution, rationing, too little corporate oversight, too much official brutality – mismanagement being itself a symptom of too many desperate people. The media deserve a share of the blame. The many hungry people (hungry for a house, heat, as well as food) were a source of fabulous profit for the few capityrants. Capityrants were decidedly to blame. Michael remembered Dr. Joan Fennel who coined that word for tyrannical capitalists playing a king-of-the-hill game with no rules, really; legislation existed only as an obstacle to mount and take by force.

Michael spent another few minutes remembering Joan, a big loss to him. Only friends knew her term for tyrants of capitalism, it never caught on. Her conviction that our children’s future was at risk from corporate negligence never caught on, primarily because the media and politicians were owned by capityrants, not physicists. Colleagues had sought to imbue computers with artificial intelligence, but Joan claimed these nano-nerds were looking in the wrong binary system; artificial intelligence already existed at the national level in the politicians spawned by the two pandering political parties. Joan would have agreed that President Carney was a fine example of artificial intelligence.

Michael could hardly believe almost fifty years had passed since Joan’s trial testimony about the MD diet pill, Supple&Slim, causing brain damage in unborn children. The trial ended with a bribe-settlement in return for a gag-order and MD not at fault. Joan’s testimony had made Michael get down with his bad self and spray high-tech political graffiti on the streets below the 60-story national headquarters of MD Corporation, whose tagline was “There IS a doctor in the house.” He had transformed his car into a dot matrix road writer, with seven 12-volt valves, a big pressure tank of paint, and an old Texas Instruments keyboard. He wrote “THE DOCTOR IS A QUACK” in three-foot capital letters. He wanted to circle the entire block with the graffiti, but on the third leg, he was arrested. The cop said she agreed with him, “But being right doesn’t mean you can break the law. Right can’t buy you outta jail, you gotta be rich.”

After rinsing out his mug, Michael turned on the radio to hear a voice of some kind, but the news was not new, so turned it off. He went outside, locking the door behind him. The cool air made him wish he’d worn a coat, but that was a comfort he knew to do without. A person in public with a coat or gun or bicycle or bag (even a bag full of trash) might be regarded as worth the risk of violence; reports of these muggings were more and more common. Safest to walk around in only tightie-whities, the aura of insanity had always been and still was effective against malice. Michael squinted at the bright haze masking the sun. A movement in the tall bushes at the side of Mrs. Chindmer’s home caught his attention.  The chill of seeing a stranger peering into her living room window shivered his brain and panic rushed Michael’s breathing. He wanted to get his rifle but thought this guy might actually shoot first. So Michael called out, “Hey, why are you there? What are you doing?” The man turned and stared at him, didn’t run, and worse, the two kids at his side did the same, just stared, coldly. No one waved or said “Hi.” Without a word, the trio walked slowly down the street and never looked back. Michael pulled the last piece of dried meat from his shirt pocket and chewed slowly, watching the strangers until the roundabout pile of garbage blocked his view. Michael swallowed, shook his head, and asked himself, “What are you doing?” This question of dismay went unanswered but caused him to start walking, determinedly.

As he walked, he mentally ticked through a bucket list of targets and quickly had a list too long to be practical. The President should be pardoned for sheer stupidity but really that’s his fault; Senator Lympid is a son of a bitch; that radio talk show host what’s-his-name; the televangelist in Florida; the mayor; those justices who prided themselves for being strict-constructionists and yet still read between the lines of the Constitution to find corporations actually are people, making corporate-king-of-the-hill the only game on the planet. Michael added them to his list even though they were already dead; they deserved posthumous assassination for ripping the rug out from under a democracy of, by, and for the people, and for ending a human’s right to fair and equal treatment, a right that had begun to be extended to dogs, cats, wildlife, air, land, and sea. By the time he circled the block and returned home, Michael knew the name at the top of his list, the name to start with, the economist, Paul Falkner. At his terminal, he websifted for information and discovered the family still owned their infamous lake estate.

The Falkner family compound, on the west shore of Lake Tahoe, included a stone mansion at the edge of the water with a built landscape of stone patios, walls, paths, quays, and boat houses. The mansion was on the foundation of Vikingsholm, a historic structure built in 1929 that Paul tore down to build a 10,000 square foot granite 3-story castle. Steep pine covered slopes rose behind the castle sited on an alpine meadow at the west end of Emerald Bay. Access to the estate was only by air, a helicopter pad was built over the razed stone “tea house” on Fannette Island. Falkner isolated the bay from the rest of the lake with a steel net, like those made to hold back landslides along highway grade cuts; the steel cable net extends across the mouth of the bay and from dappled surface to the bay’s silt bottom. The lake shore road that traversed the granite mountain side about 500 feet above the compound had been a public road, but after Falkner helped solve California’s debt crisis by buying all public rights to the bay and the shoreline for ten miles north and south of the compound, large yellow machines made rubble of the highway pavement. Michael knew this part of California, before he and Elaina had camped in the area, he had spent summers on the lake, traveled that road, hiked that slope, stone-hopped Eagle Creek Falls from road above to shore below, and had backpacked up Eagle Creek to the desolate granite-domed wilderness from which, with an eagle’s eye, the Pacific Ocean could be seen.

For the offense of laying privileged claim to what otherwise is a bit of heaven on earth, Falkner was a waste of good food and deserved a bad. For the offense of creating a dog-eat-dog human existence with inhuman, uncivil policies that pleased capityrants, he deserved the scorn of ordinary people (and the scorn of animals, insects, plants, water, air, and land if these had scorn to heap). For the offense of working his magic over ten administrations and watching his mantra of growth gobble up resources (basic stuff needed for peaceful existence) fast and faster, and so spawning brutish greed that inflicted an evil mortgage crash reducing property values until an owner’s best hope was that the property burn to the ground, (One property owner insane with Falkner’s greed set fire to his underwater apartments for the insurance money, and in the early morning blaze, injured and killed many – including Elaina, the twins, and Zanadoo.) for this offense, Falkner topped the bucket hit list.

Capityrants, following Falkner’s advice, had prevented the emergence of science and empathy by using violence, fear, and ads. Violence included but was not limited to wars; fear included but was not limited to scapegoating some innocent minority; and advertising brainwashed people with soothing promises of technological solutions from corporations working hard on behalf of all people. Michael had no power to disarm the military machine, no saw to cut the planks of scapegoating, and no money to refute the advertising blitz. Michael did have a rifle and recent training at one of the many local gun clubs started by survivalists. He was a good shot. Michael’s New Year Resolution:  Just, fucking, do it.

Of course, as usual, “do it” took longer than he expected - over two weeks, and during those days Michael often questioned his New Year resolution and each time was surprised that every fiber of his body agreed, Do it now!

Ever since that trial about the MD Corporation diet pill, Michael imagined a judicious assassination could set things right. The MD CEO was shot dead by a road sniper, and immediately, all bottles of Supple&Slim were removed from store shelves. Unsolved still, Michael believed the killing was by some parent whose baby was injured by Supple&Slim, a warning to the next CEO, only fear of death could explain the recall. Then in the 1980s, Michael heard news of a Japanese manufacturer of tryptophan, a safe supplement. Production line quality test results signaled a few batches to be contaminated. Not wanting to lose profits, the president authorized the sale of those pills. Consumers suffered reactions ranging from flu-like symptoms to total paralysis. Michael had watched the news over the years to see if anyone took revenge; he learned the company president retired, not in disgrace but with a golden parachute; he never heard of any retaliation. During this time some Hollywood vigilante movies had dark heroes that bombed an offending industrial facility, but Michael believed property damage was useless shat CEO cares about a fire covered by insurance? The MD story was a fable with a moral: What good is greed if you’re dead? Michael wanted to believe that his New Year resolution would leave the world a better place, but he knew it was only revenge.

January 17, 2026

Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, California

As daylight waned, the terminal screen hazed a brighter blue, and Michael clicked on the button to erase the user interface, leaving the web available to the next resident. He replaced the porch light with a green bulb, pinned a paper pinwheel to a wood chopstick and tacked this to the porch eave, and shouldered his backpack and rifle. He reached in, turned on the porch light, and closed the front door, leaving it unlocked. The night streets were empty, the cool darkness cloaked his departure; he was wearing a navy blue wool cap, a flannel-lined hunting coat, jeans and boots. He had dyed the backpack fabric black and stained the rifle stock ebony. In the sleeve of the right arm he had sewn a propane pistol lighter so the silver barrel extended to his palm; he hoped this glint of silver up his sleeve would convince anyone intending malice that he possessed a ‘dandelion’ – a compressed-air gun that strapped to one’s forearm and shot a spray of miniature poison darts that reduce a human to a quivering jelly bag –the dart gun was probably urban legend, but Michael wanted  every advantage if a spotlight turned on him, and anyway, the lighter would come in handy for campfires. “No more burning the hairs on my hands,” he thought.

He peered into the windows of parked cars as he walked, and through the window of a pickup, he saw keys in the ignition. The truck started right up and the dash gauges  registered good oil pressure and a quarter tank of fuel, enough to get him to the lake. His uneventful, non-stop journey was a series of goodbyes, memories of earlier trips, the deep snows of Donner Summit before the warming, the sound of snow chains rattling on ice, the tall forests of pines before the logging, the sound of the Stellar jays above camp, and between these memories, the recurring astonishment that each mile traveled through the now desolate clear-cut moonscape of granite was a mile closer to his revenge.

The pavement was treacherous; pothole repairs had not been high on government budgets for a long while. After three hours of spine-jamming non-stop driving, Michael was happy to park off the road south of the town of Tahoma. He walked the last fifteen miles, following the rubble road’s line of power poles. At sixty-six, Michael was a slower bag of bones than a younger man, but he had two things going for him that a younger someone would lack; patience and no expectation of, or desire for, survival. After some hours, he found the old paved walking path that led from the road down to the estate and shore. The Falkner’s had no reason to destroy this old public trial; they probably used it themselves to hike up from the estate for the spectacular views of their private bay. Michael paused to look at the view in the starlight, the glimmer of the night sky in the water and the patches of white snow on the steep north-facing slope across the bay. He took a sip of water, the last drops from his pack bottle. He scanned the mountain terrain for any movement of deer or bear or coyote, he had hoped the private forest would have become a wildlife sanctuary over the last decade, avoiding the losses from unregulated hunting and poaching common everywhere else. This worried Michael, who was counting on a bear – coyote, at least.

As he began the easy stroll downhill, something else worried Michael; he was beginning to shiver, full-body shivers. “Hypothermia and dehydration, I need water,” he thought and looked for any snow. The nearest snow was high above him on the south-facing scree slope of the ridge high above. Heading down to the lake shore was comforting, but near the lake, the trail traversing easterly sharply turned back south and west in plain sight of the castle. The alpine meadow was lit from house to lake by several large security lights on a pole above a small utility building with a large fuel tank on stilts at its side. Michael realized the faint humming he had been ignoring was the sound of a gas generator.

“Off-the-grid?” he wondered, “Bringing fuel in by helicopter? Not likely.” Shivering in the shadows, Michael realized if he never saw the white-haired economist, he could shoot holes in the fuel tank and bring the winter cold down upon Falkner. “It’s the winter of our disconnect,” Michael silently misquoted Shakespeare and vowed to shoot that tank full of holes, after Falkner. “I should put some holes in that chopper on the island, too. Water, water first,” he spoke aloud, then hushed himself, “I’m coming unglued.”

Leaving the path and hiking steadily downhill and east through the pine cover until a safe distance from the lights and shrouded by night, Michael picked his way across the open beach of granite boulders where no trees grew. The largest boulders screened his movement from the estate as effectively as the pine forest, but progress was difficult, climbing around, between, and over the massive rocks. He slipped a few times, lost balance, and became cautious. Distracted by being just ten steps away from a drink of water, Michael stopped watching his feet, and his left boot slipped in a crevice wedging his foot to the east, throwing his torso south, and twisting his knee west. The pain made him cry.

Shivering uncontrollably, he lay on his left side, his cheek on a cold granite pillow. His right arm and leg were free but that freedom was of no use; with his left arm wedged under him and his left foot stuck, he didn’t know how to get out of this position. He found the pill bottle in his coat pocket, snapped the cap off against a sharp stone edge, and shook three pain pills into his mouth. Unable to wash them down, he let the bitter medicine dissolve in his mouth. Quickly calm eased him, and Michael relaxed, gave in to the shivers, and closed his eyes. He recalled a Jack London story where the protagonist freezes to death in the Yukon - a death described as gentle because after the violent shaking, the numbed mind goes to its happy place, and Michael had read research listing sensations of hot tropical sun often reported by survivors of near-freezing-to-death trauma. The teenager Michael had read this London tale, and over years, the story had set like concrete, if he had the choice, his life would end not in a hospital, nor by gunshot, nor overdose, or car “accident”, but on a mountain ridge where he would warmly freeze and be found by bear or buzzard. Michael conjured up island sand and sun shimmering water, then woke to daylight.

Early morning he surmised, but an awful stench of something like rotting fish dragged him out of his reverie. Then he realized he was being dragged, something was tugging at his leg. He tried to raise his head and look when he heard a loud huff and snuffle as his torso rolled and rocked back. This twisting brought a sharp pain from his knee, but also allowed him to see the bear. “Don’t play dead,” he thought and closed his eyes. Guided by many abstract rehearsals of this moment, Michael waggled his good leg; and immediately felt his thigh gripped, lifted, pulled. A loud gunshot, out of the blue, and his leg dropped. Another gunshot, the bear’s weight crushed him, fur against face, the stink, passed out, then woke to voices, and this worried him. The bear had been a welcomed visitor Michael expected. Now strangers trespassed on his life, so he played dead and listened.

“Okay, the noose is set. Start away slow.” said a man, surprisingly near. Michael heard a motorboat revving and the bear’s weight shifted, dragged off his body.

“Cut! Stop! . . . Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Shut it down! There’s a man here! . . . Yeah, looks like we interrupted the bear’s breakfast. Holy chaos! What? . . . I’ll check. . . . He’s got a pulse and two broken legs looks like. . . . Okay. . . . Not much, an empty water bottle and some dried food. He won’t need that anymore. . . . Why? He’s good as dead, and we aren’t a damn hospital! Falkner won’t want another mouth to feed. . . . Yeah, I say, fuck him, coyotes will feast tonight.”

Michael heard the motorboat depart, the sound of it another final farewell to long gone summer days of chattering across the rippled lake in a speed boat owned by the father of the bikini girl at his side – “So young!” he thought, then realized the man didn’t take his rifle, “Must be under me.” He began to imagine salvaging his revenge; lifting his head, he scanned from castle to Fannette Island’s big helicopter like a sitting duck. “I may not get a shot at Falkner,” he thought, “but I can shoot the fuel tank and the chopper. Leave him cold, soon as I get my arm free, just need a short nap.”

Michael was of happily warming himself by the roaring flames of the fuel tank and generator house. The flames heated his hand turning this way, then that way. His cheek was glowing, oddly, suddenly burning; cold air blasted his back teeth. His arm jerked violently, something tugged his lower jaw, tugged his ear and scalp. In the moment Michael passed away, he felt Zanadoo licking his face.

End