Jimmy's Sky

Jimmy’s Sky

a short story by Jeff Minton

         

         Jimmy Salvage watched the world spin.  He lay on a blanket in the cold grass with his eyes riveted to a cluster of stars straight above.  If he stared long enough, he could see the Earth’s rotation; he could feel himself turning beneath the fixed points in space.

         Jimmy thought about all this and lost his focus.  The world stopped spinning.  There was only a big motionless sky with a billion holes burnt through it.  Still Jimmy stared, waiting perhaps for something to happen, while nothing ever did.

         No planes blinked red and blue through the clouds anymore.  No sounds of men and their machines ever made it out here, only the trickling of a nearby stream, and the wind.  Jimmy liked that. 

         Sometimes, though, in the deepest part of the night, when his body wanted sleep and his mind persisted, he had these waking dreams that something would happen.  He pictured a neon blue flying saucer zipping down and hovering above him, its massive shape blocking out the stars.  He pictured the moon cracking in half like a yin-yang.  He pictured the sky lighting up in an atomic blaze--and that seemed likely with all the forgotten nukes out there, just waiting for someone crafty enough to find them.  And would it be so bad?  Jimmy thought not, if he could only see it happen before it cooked his eyes.

         He was drifting now, entirely--his head spinning with thought.  A silent pressure-pocket oscillated slowly from his forehead to his solar plexus.  This was from the crap weed he had smoked several hours earlier when the moon was still high, mixed with some homemade cherry wine.  Jimmy closed his eyes and breathed to try to clear his head.  He wasn’t ready to sleep.  He wasn’t ready to wake up and do everything that needed doing.  Not yet.

         When he opened his eyes he saw a thin streak of light against the blackness high above.  He first thought it a trick of his eyes.  Then came another, from what must’ve been a thousand miles west across the sky.  Adrenaline cleared Jimmy’s head.  He watched as the world above animated into something, just something.  Meteorites, from the look of it.  The streaks came regularly like that, every few seconds, for a long while.  They came with such consistency that Jimmy began to lose interest.  The cloud began to collect once more in the space between his skull and his brain.  And then the streaks of light came faster, intensified, showering down in a storm that lit the world around him as bright as a full moon, reflecting silver off the rocky stream to his side, highlighting the tips of the evergreens all around, cutting the black sky into slivers.



***



         Jimmy’s shovel cut into the hard ground; his foot drove it down and he uprooted the last potato plant.  The October wind fought him, stinging his face, watering his eyes, but it carried the sweetness of the pines of the Rockies, and it cleared his sinuses.  The sun was high.  He was four hours into the work, sweating in the cold.  His coat lay in the dirt several rows back.

         Jimmy dropped his shovel and wiped his eyes with his shoulders.  He dug the spuds from the loose dirt with his hands, placing six in a cloth bag that was nearly full.  He tied the bag and tossed it in a pile containing the day’s work.  He counted ten bags.  This made twenty-eight with the other eighteen he had filled over the past five days, which was enough to meet his quota.

         He had woken up with the sun and set out to work before the sky turned blue.  The morning flew by, and now he was finished before he had a chance to complain.  It felt good.

         Jimmy sat catching his breath on the hard ground with his head between his legs.  He collapsed on his back and squinted in the sunlight.  Low in the northern sky a giant fireball flew, just over the jagged line of the horizon.  Its tail of sparks trailed far behind the bouldered head.  It was huge, whatever it was, a comet or an asteroid, and it soared through the sky like a phoenix.  No sound followed it--if so it might have come across frightening.  It was close, seemingly inside the atmosphere, cutting across the sky to shoot out the other side.  Jimmy thought it had to be traveling just faster than Earth, and snuck up on it from behind to share its orbit for a while before moving on.  Or maybe it would sail in for a touchdown, and obliterate what was left of the world.  Jimmy felt a connection with the fireball--stupid as that was--like it was there just for him.  Tomorrow he had to make his dreaded delivery to the Mormons, but just then he didn’t care.  He was alone and sweating and alive on his cold mountain.



***



         By the time Jimmy hauled in the day’s load, cleaned the potatoes and bagged them up again, wiped down his tools, and made it back inside, he was hardly mobile.  His muscles creaked.  His spine pulled everything in his back tight.  His hands contracted into constant half-fists to alleviate the pain of the blisters lining his fingers and palms and the crooks of the thumbs.

         Jimmy stumbled through the living room and hallway to the California king memory foam bed that David and Gale Roves, the previous owners who had retired up here, so lovingly bought before they abandoned their house.  Jimmy figured someone must have talked them into it, or that they had sleeping problems, or that they just put everything they had into a good night’s rest, because this bed was the only thing in the house of particular value.

         Jimmy picked the place largely for this reason.  Not that there were very many people out this way anymore, but even so, it was the ritzy homes in ritzy places that drew attention; that was what people fought over.  No one cared about a tiny log cabin filled with a bunch of average crap in a lonely valley in the Montana Rockies.  The bed was a nice bonus, though, and Jimmy needed it.

         It hurt even to lie there in that absurd bed.  Jimmy felt good regardless.  Not quite as good as he had in the grass earlier looking up at the asteroid, but calm, peaceful, content.  Just a feeling, like there was something to really look forward to, even when there was nothing.  He reached for the pipe he kept on the nightstand, and packed it full of the weed he’d been growing; he breathed it in several times, hot and harsh, then set it down again.  His body relaxed, and a knot formed in the archway at the base of his ribs.  His eyes grew heavy, and his brain sloshed in his head even as he lay still.  That feeling became something else, blurry and unpleasant.

         Jimmy became aware that there was no one beside him.  His muscles screamed to be rubbed.  He remembered the soft and strong hands that once relished in that work--kneading the meat between his neck and shoulders, lightly whisking fingertips down his spine, kissing his lower back and around his sides where it tickled and made him laugh.  He drew in another lungful of smoke and sank into the soft bed.  Tears came to him then.  His eyes burned into his pillow, and his Adam’s apple misfired randomly for a timeless moment that faded eventually into sleep.



***



         Jimmy approached the road-block that marked the entrance to the Mormon community.  They called the establishment Joseph's Gate.  Three men armed with large guns met Jimmy as his truck slowed to a stop--one at each window and one at his front bumper.

         “Glad to see you made it,” the man at his window said.  Jimmy recognized the man’s giant pores and ugly leathery face with the black and gray stubble covering his chin, and that ridiculous gold-studded cowboy hat he wore, but he couldn’t remember his name.  “Mr. Scott’s been talkin’ about payin’ you a visit.  See if you’re still alive out there.”

         “Well, I’m here, and I don’t need anyone checking on me,” Jimmy said.

         “I s’pose you don’t,” the man said.  Harold, Jimmy remembered--that was his name.

         “I reckon you best let me on in here, Harry,” Jimmy said, his voice mocking.  “Don’t want to keep the boss waitin’.”

         Harold gave a hard look, then slapped the roof of the pickup and waved the other two men off.  “Stay a while, why don’t you Jimbo.  No reason to hurry.  I’ll see you around.”  He slapped the roof again.

         One of the other men moved the police car that was blocking the road so Jimmy could get by, and Jimmy shot past them rudely.  The road was all dirt: bumpy and eroded and ill-maintained.  “Jimbo,” Jimmy thought, smiling.  That guy had actually called him that.

         The road wound up around a steep hill, and then down into a large rolling valley surrounded by rocky cliffs on all sides except one, where a stream flowed out to lower ground thick with trees and down to a small lake far in the distance.  The grassy shelf stretched perhaps a mile wide and a little over half that from the steep rise of trees and rock and dirt at the top side of the village, to the jagged line at the bottom where the floor fell away.  Here the Mormons had built up a pre-existing Boyscout campground.  They constructed hundreds of cabins in the same simple style as those they found, so the dwellings were nearly uniform, lined no more than fifty-feet apart and filling the field entirely.  The camp had an unnerving militant look to it.

         There was little attempt made by the Mormon’s to hide their stares.  At least a thousand heads sprinkled throughout the plain turned as his truck rolled along the main road at the center of camp.  He stopped at a sort of community square where they held meetings and dances and fed everyone.  At the very center was a double-wide trailer with the words Joseph’s Gate painted neatly across its width.

         Mr. Scott stood in the doorway.  He was well-groomed and fat, dressed in an off-white tweed sport coat and triple-pleated slacks.  A freshly dyed beard hid his second chin.  He was smirking slightly.

         Jimmy stepped out of his truck.  Mr. Scott came walking toward him.

         “How’s the turn-out this year?” Mr. Scott asked.

         “Where do you want it?” Jimmy said.

         Mr. Scott strolled past Jimmy and grabbed a potato from one of the bags in the truck-bed.  His smell wafted just behind him, a mix of berries and body odor, like he tried to make his own cologne and failed.  “That’s a healthy crop, Mr. Salvage.  You do as well out there on your own as near all my fields put together.  You have quite the thumb for it.”

         “I’m honored,” Jimmy said, grabbing two sacks of potatoes in each hand and starting forward.  He knew where the potatoes went, to a walk-in freezer inside a storage building at the far in of the square.  He had only asked to be polite.

         “Mr. Salvage, I insist you set those bags down at once.”  He flicked his finger and ten women who were standing in the yard stormed Jimmy’s truck.  They kept their eyes down.  Jimmy did not like being around women anymore.  They were insane.  All of them.  He could feel it.  Two of the women stole the bags from his hands.

         “You come on inside and sit down a while.  Jenny’s got some carrot cake and gingersnaps that’ll turn you on your head.”

         “I have my own carrots, and I can bake myself if I want some cake,” Jimmy said.  “I just need my bags and I’ll be heading back.”

         Mr. Scott reached through the truck window and took Jimmy’s keys from the ignition.  “I’ll be inside when you want to talk.”

         Jimmy clenched his fists and exhaled through his nose.  He raised his chin to the sky to hide the scowl that was forming from the people all around.  The fireball was gone, but he could still see it, like a yellow shadow imprinting in his vision, and it helped to ease his nerves.

         Inside the trailer, Mr. Scott sat in a leather recliner, waiting.  A circle of chairs and love-seats and a wrap-around couch surrounded a big rug with an ovoid coffee table at its center.

         “Take a seat, Mr. Salvage,” the man said, upturning his hand, offering Jimmy any chair he wanted.

         Jimmy moved the half-eaten cake on the coffee table to the side and sat in its place in the center of the room.  “What’s this about?” he said.

         “We have some changes coming up.”

         “Great.  Do they affect me in any way?”

         “Indeed they do, Jim.”

         “Then stick with that part,” Jimmy said.

         “Very well.  What do you see right now when you look out the window?”

         Jimmy looked out down the length of the road lined with cabins and saw people in grungy clothes carrying things, working, surviving.  “A bunch of miserable people.”

         Mr. Scott sipped hot tea, and nodded as he did.  “Not my words, but fair enough, I suppose.  You look there and you see men without purpose.  They’re lost, aimless, like bees full of pollen with no hive to bring it to.”

         “Mr. Scott, I don’t want to come off as rude here, but I truly don’t give a damn about their purpose, or your purpose, or anyone else’s but my own right now.”

         “And that is exactly why you cannot guess why.  You see what but you don’t see why, because you, son, are just the same.”

         “Wow.  Thanks for that.  I’ll take my keys back now.”

         “You’ll hear me out first.”

         Jimmy stood up, paced across the room, and sat down again on the couch across the room from Mr. Scott.

         “These men you see got nothing to live for right now.  Same as you, Mr. Salvage.  They make it through their days.  Hell, they prosper.  Look at how we’ve grown.  But it’s not enough.  They’re angry, they’re restless.  It’s only a matter time before they start falling apart like the rest of the world’s already done.  God has put us a whopper of a challenge to us.  He’s taken from us the very reason we go on, and now we have to find a new reason.”

         “I have no God, Mr. Scott.  You know that.”

         “You’re getting off track, Jim.  Call it God, or fate, or the order of things; call it chance if you want.  It doesn’t change anything.  The fact stands that we’re being tested with something no other human has faced.”

         “You know, Thomas,” Jimmy said, accentuating Mr. Scott’s first name. Jimmy sat on the edge of the couch with his elbows on his thighs and leaned into the conversation.  “Believe it or not, I have put some thought into this.  And I know where I stand.  You know the problem with you people.  You gotta think for everyone.  You can’t just leave a man his peace of mind.”

         “And there’s a reason for that, Jim,” Mr. Scott said, voice rising in volume.  “He is a rare man that knows best for himself.  It doesn’t take a God to know that.”

         “I don’t need this from you, Mr. Scott,” Jimmy said.  “I’m not your friend, and I’m sure as hell not your son.”  Jimmy stood and held out his hand.  “I want my keys.”

         “If you’ll sit and open your ears for half a minute--”

         “Give me my keys or I’ll knock your fat ass to the floor and take them from you.”

         “I’d advise against that, Jim.”

         The reality of the situation was not lost on Jimmy.

         “Like it or not your quickest path home is to sit down, shut up, and hear me out.”

         Jimmy sat.

         “Now, we’ve known each other for five years now, come November.  I took you in, and I got you settled out there on your little mountain even when you rejected us.  And for that time we’ve all worked together towards a common goal.  Your part’s been small, I realize, but it is a part.  We came together and we survived.  We did well, and now we’re ready to move on.  The lord is calling us out.  Fire is in the sky.  Our time has come to answer.”

         Jimmy bit his lip.  His face flushed with heat.  Mr. Scott was claiming Jimmy’s fireball.

         “You better answer, then.  Don’t want to miss God’s call,” Jimmy said.

         “That is exactly what we mean to do.  We are heading south to reclaim our holy land.”

         Jimmy held himself from laughing.  “Your holy land, huh?  The great Salt Lake.”

         “I want you to join us.”

         “Okay, so, no.”

         “I’m not asking you to change what you believe.  Only to help us get started.  We’ll need good growers, and strong workers, and there’ll be a fight we need to win before we can start.  And in exchange, you can have your pick of a lot and a house.  Fill it with anything you wish.  Drive any car you want.  You can have your peace, and whatever else you want.  There are plenty of unmatched girls coming of age soon.”

         “No, Mr. Scott.  God no.  I listened to you, and I’m saying no.  No.  I want you to give me the keys to my truck, and I want to leave.  Right now.  Do you hear me.”

         Mr. Scott threw the keys across the room to Jimmy.  Jimmy caught them and made for the door.

         “I’m offering you a family, Jim.  You have a week to decide.”

         Jimmy stopped in the doorway.  “And what if I don’t?”

         “Then you’ll be a lonely man, and that’s the last you’ll hear from me.  You have no further obligation to our community.”

         Jimmy searched for a lie in Mr. Scott’s tiny eyes and found none.

***

         Jimmy drove home slowly.  His foot let off the gas intermittently and the truck drifted with his thoughts.  Something Mr. Scott had said was bothering him, and that was amplified by the fact that something Mr. Scott said could bother him.  The man had accused Jimmy of having no purpose, and Jimmy was having a hard time finding a defense.  He wanted to say to himself, “You’re living with nature, Jimmy, in harmony with the world.  You’re living the quiet life out here not bothering anyone, and you’re doing well for yourself.”  The problem was, that felt wrong.

         Mr. Scott was right about one thing.  They had been challenged, the entire surviving world.  What the challenge was Jimmy didn’t know--no one did.  All he knew is it was hard, and there was no pre-existing wisdom to help him through it.

         When the disease was discovered for what it truly was, some two years after it had started spreading, Jimmy felt a sort of black hole start in his chest.  Sandy, his wife, was pregnant at the time, and the sickness took the baby in its third month of gestation.  It was a virus, incurable, that attacked the reproductive organs.  No other symptoms came with the disease, and it took around six months to manifest, so it spread like wildfire throughout the entire world before anyone knew what hit them.  By the year 2015, the virus ended childbirth entirely, worldwide.  Sandy killed herself shortly after her miscarriage.  Her note said she couldn’t live with the sadness, and there was nothing left to fix it.  Jimmy hadn’t cried.  That black hole sucked away everything.

         Sandy was not alone in her plight.  It was the women that had it worst, emotionally.  Jimmy had not met one who kept her sanity.  The men either did as Jimmy did, and shut down, or they went on some rampage, took a side, and fought against each other until the streets ran with blood.  The world went crazy.  In America alone there were at least twelve divisions of civil war.  Mass suicides became a popular sport.  Terrorism, riots, violence, starvation, illness all rose exponentially as the government broke apart.  It was estimated, last Jimmy heard, before public broadcasting ended, that some eighty percent of the world’s population had died.  That number seemed unbelievable to Jimmy except for the reality of it around him.

         Jimmy, twenty-three at the time, left his family in Boise and ran.  All that were left of them were his mother, his father, his brother, an uncle and his wife, and a few cousins.  His father and uncle had the house boarded and sat with an assault rifle across their laps at all hours of the day.  They talked only of the madness in the world, and surviving through it.  His father killed a man for peeking in through cracks in the boards over the windows.  The man was a scavenger, his father explained afterward.  These people were rumored to go around pillaging and killing anyone in their way, and he had a small folding knife in his pocket to back up his father’s claim.  His mother had taken to constant sewing.  She hardly ate.  His brother, who was fourteen, was beginning to catch on to the militant lifestyle.  It was this that inspired Jimmy to leave.  He wanted to take his brother away, to the mountains, where they could live peacefully, but his father wouldn’t have it.  When Jimmy shouted and tugged on his brother’s arm as if claiming him, he saw down the barrel of his father’s gun.  “You’re with us, or your gone,” he said.  That was five years ago.

         Jimmy pulled into the gravel driveway of his cabin at dusk.  He sat in his truck until dark, staring at a insignificant tree.  What was he living for?  As he walked from his truck to his cabin he saw the first stars glimmering in the sky, and he decided that this was it.  That hope that something would happen, even in his imagination, or just the beauty and wonder of what was out there--what could be out there.  The ability to dream of it.  It was the cold breeze that invigorated him, and the plants that he raised.  It was simple experience, the honor to behold.  Jimmy liked the sound of that.

         He read a book in bed for a few hours that night, about a time when people had babies and got along, and he found himself thinking about his mother and father and brother.  If they were living.  If they were living well.  If things were getting better overall or if people like the Mormons were still fighting for their holy land.  He reached for his pipe but couldn’t find his lighter, and in that pause he threw the pipe across the room, because something was alive inside of him that had been growing ever since he saw those meteorites light up the sky.  And he had been trying to kill it, or maybe that black hole in his chest was sucking at it.  But now it was hot with life, and he wanted it to stay.

         That night he dreamt of an open road.  He was driving fast with the windows down and the mountains behind him.  He followed in the wake of a fireball in the sky to wherever it would lead.