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
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