There was an article in the paper this morning about the school district spelling bee. It reminded me of something that never happened. It might have been a dream I had, several years ago.
In my dream (if that's what it was), one of my daughters was in the spelling bee. She was standing on the stage, at the microphone, with her number hanging around her neck, and the black stage curtains behind her.
The moderator said "Calzone." BUT THE MODERATOR PRONOUNCED IT WRONG. She pronounced it American style, with the soft Z and the silent E. Stupid Americans. My daughter glanced at the moderator and then looked at me in the audience, a look of confusion distorting her face.
I shrugged my shoulders and cocked my head at her, with my hands in the classic Italian, "what do you expect me to do?" gesture. What else could I do, right?
She asked, "Definition, please."
The moderator said, "An Italian pastry made with pizza dough and stuffed with meats and cheeses."
My sweet daughter paused for a moment. Then she looked me in the eye and said confidently: "Call-TSO-nay. C-A-L-Z-O-N-E. Call-TSO-nay." SHE CORRECTED THE STINKIN' MODERATOR.
She nailed it. And, come to think of it, so did I. I raised 'em right.
You may now roll your eyes.
Endnote: It could have been any of my daughters. Or my sons. That's how cool they are.
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Monday, February 2, 2015
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Ray Bradbury, the Martian chronicler, is gone
Ray Bradbury, one of the masters of science fiction, passed away Tuesday night, at the age of 91. The writer of The Martian Chronicles has gone on to his next adventure, and I hope it's everything he imagined it would be.
When I call him a "master" of the genre, it's only because I can't think of a more superlative word.
Bradbury's style was different from most other scifi writers. The others delved into the machines, the technology of scifi, and often into the politics or the social implications. Bradbury, instead, climbed into the minds of the characters in his stories. The machines and everything else were there, but only as props for the real story, which was happening inside the heads and hearts of living, feeling human beings.
My favorite Bradbury short story was "All Summer in a Day," about a children's school in an earth colony on Venus, and a tragic event that happened there on the one day when the clouds parted for an hour so the sun shone through. "All Summer" was first published in 1954, republished in one of the many Bradbury anthologies in the 1970s, and is now available for free online.
I first read "All Summer" as a teenager. When, as a young father, I moved my family to Oregon, we experienced a sample of the weather Bradbury wrote about in "All Summer": nine continuous months every year of overcast skies, and day after day of endless rain. When the children were sitting inside one day, lamenting the rain that kept them from playing outside, I remembered "All Summer." I dug the anthology out of a box in the garage, looked up the story and read it to my children. It became a family favorite.
(My daughter took the book with her when she married, to read to her own children. I didn't mind a bit. Everybody should read Ray Bradbury to their children.)
Bradbury cited Edgar Rice Burroughs as one of his influences, telling the New Yorker magazine that he memorized all of Burroughs' Tarzan and John Carter stories when he was a boy. Yet Ray Bradbury himself was an influence on two — no, three —generations of writers, in both science fiction and other genres.
Stephen King once channeled Ray Bradbury beautifully. In his short story "The House on Maple Street," published in his collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes, King weaves the story of a dysfunctional family with an abusive stepfather and a house that is growing a spaceship in its innards. King insists that he was inspired by an illustration created by fantasy artist Chris Van Allsburg (in whose book, The Chronicles of Harris Burdick, the story is also published). But the voice in the story, the interactions between the characters, the exploration of their minds and their psyches, and the role played by the technology in the story, is clearly influenced by Ray Bradbury.
In a discreet homage to the master storyteller, King gives the children in the story the surname "Bradbury."
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Yet Another Modest Proposal: A Flat Income Tax
The two best books Tom Clancy ever wrote were The Hunt For Red October and Red Storm Rising. Okay, so the latter of the two was a collaborative work between Tom Clancy and Larry Bonds, but Bonds has written some pretty good stuff himself, and so it's no surprise that the collaboration bore good fruit.
Clancy's fiction post-Red October fell more and more into the "potboiler" category: something the author wrote to keep the fire going under the pot in the kitchen so he could keep eating. Even then, some nuggets of value kept appearing in his product line, and as he established a solid reputation as a writer of the techno-thriller, he acquired an amazing - even fantastic, even unbelievable - amount of credibility. Not bad for a fiction writer.
Even so, his novels kept growing. I mean, they got longer. His publisher had to go to thinner paper and smaller fonts (no, I'm not kidding) to keep the books to a manageable size, and reading them became somewhat of a chore, as Clancy's text devolved into Dickensian (or maybe Dumasesque) exposition. However, this penchant for lengthy exposition, combined with his fantastically acquired credibility, allowed his characters to stand in for Clancy - to stand on his soapbox for him and preach his gospel to the world.
Where am I going with all this, you ask? What does all this have to do with a flat income tax? Ah.
In Executive Orders, Clancy begins with the premise that nearly the entire federal government - all three branches - have been demolished in one terrible stroke, leaving an unelected (think Gerald Ford) President in charge of guiding the country safely through a constitutional crisis and rebuilding the federal government. It's Clancy's chance to write an essay beginning with the sentence, "If I could start with a clean slate and rebuild the U.S. government, I would ..." and thus a would-be potboiler becomes a political treatise.
One of the things Clancy advocates for in his book, very strongly, is a "flat tax." The idea isn't new, and it didn't originate with Tom Clancy. It's an idea I've toyed around with for a long, long time. Politicians bring it up once in a while, but they usually get laughed at for their simplistic views or shouted down by all the special interests who benefit from the status quo. In Executive Orders, Tom Clancy gives his character (and therefore himself) a bully pulpit from which to argue for a "flat tax."
There are many other names for it, but a "flat tax" is basically this: figure out how much money you made last year, and send your share of it to the IRS. There are no deductions, no exemptions, no credits, no shelters or dodges. Everybody pays the same share, a fixed percentage of their income, and the percentage is the same for everybody.
Let's say the percentage is 8 percent. Then a day laborer who makes $10 per hour, or about $10,000 per year, pays $800 in taxes, while the ousted president of Hewlett Packard, with a severance package of $28 million, pays $2,240,000.
Every penny of it. No hiding it in other investments, in charitable contributions, or elsewhere.
Having a flat tax will make it easier for the federal government to figure out a budget, because they will know more accurately how much money they will collect in a given year. It will make it easier for the American taxpayer to figure out how much tax they owe, since the work can be done with a handful of 1099s and W-4s and a pocket calculator, in about an hour, without the aid of accountants, tax lawyers or investment advisers. It will make it easier for taxpayers to be honest, as it will simply be harder to cheat. And it will also make it easier for politicians and bureaucrats to be honest, as taxpayers will have a clearer idea of how much of their money Uncle Sam really wants, and what he wants to do with their money.
It will not penalize the low-income worker for making too little, and it will not penalize the high-income worker for his success. At the same time, it will ease the current burden on the middle-class worker, the poor sucker who is called upon to pay increasingly more than his fair share of the tax bill.
Finally, simplifying the tax code like this takes the power out of the hands of the politicians, the special interests that they serve, and the thousands of bureaucrats tasked with enforcing the current tax code - bureaucrats who are not accountable to the American taxpayer in any way and are nothing more than overhead, a hidden and increasingly unbearable burden on the back of the American taxpayer - and puts the power back where it belongs, in the hands of the people, the American taxpayers.
Executed correctly, a flat tax will be revenue-neutral as far as the federal government is concerned, meaning that the IRS will collect no more and no less than it would have collected under the old tax code. But it will be a boon for American workers and businesses alike, as they will spend less time and money worrying about their taxes and paying people to figure their taxes for them.
Executive Orders was written in 1996, and like Debt of Honor which preceded it, EO appears to have predicted some of the events and crises of the early 21st Century. Much has been written about the flat tax since 1996, and much was written about it before 1996. The flat tax seems like an idea whose time has come, even if it's still not politically palatable. If you want a summary of all the issues facing adoption of a flat tax, EO is a good place to start.
Clancy's fiction post-Red October fell more and more into the "potboiler" category: something the author wrote to keep the fire going under the pot in the kitchen so he could keep eating. Even then, some nuggets of value kept appearing in his product line, and as he established a solid reputation as a writer of the techno-thriller, he acquired an amazing - even fantastic, even unbelievable - amount of credibility. Not bad for a fiction writer.
Even so, his novels kept growing. I mean, they got longer. His publisher had to go to thinner paper and smaller fonts (no, I'm not kidding) to keep the books to a manageable size, and reading them became somewhat of a chore, as Clancy's text devolved into Dickensian (or maybe Dumasesque) exposition. However, this penchant for lengthy exposition, combined with his fantastically acquired credibility, allowed his characters to stand in for Clancy - to stand on his soapbox for him and preach his gospel to the world.
Where am I going with all this, you ask? What does all this have to do with a flat income tax? Ah.
In Executive Orders, Clancy begins with the premise that nearly the entire federal government - all three branches - have been demolished in one terrible stroke, leaving an unelected (think Gerald Ford) President in charge of guiding the country safely through a constitutional crisis and rebuilding the federal government. It's Clancy's chance to write an essay beginning with the sentence, "If I could start with a clean slate and rebuild the U.S. government, I would ..." and thus a would-be potboiler becomes a political treatise.
One of the things Clancy advocates for in his book, very strongly, is a "flat tax." The idea isn't new, and it didn't originate with Tom Clancy. It's an idea I've toyed around with for a long, long time. Politicians bring it up once in a while, but they usually get laughed at for their simplistic views or shouted down by all the special interests who benefit from the status quo. In Executive Orders, Tom Clancy gives his character (and therefore himself) a bully pulpit from which to argue for a "flat tax."
There are many other names for it, but a "flat tax" is basically this: figure out how much money you made last year, and send your share of it to the IRS. There are no deductions, no exemptions, no credits, no shelters or dodges. Everybody pays the same share, a fixed percentage of their income, and the percentage is the same for everybody.
Let's say the percentage is 8 percent. Then a day laborer who makes $10 per hour, or about $10,000 per year, pays $800 in taxes, while the ousted president of Hewlett Packard, with a severance package of $28 million, pays $2,240,000.
Every penny of it. No hiding it in other investments, in charitable contributions, or elsewhere.
Having a flat tax will make it easier for the federal government to figure out a budget, because they will know more accurately how much money they will collect in a given year. It will make it easier for the American taxpayer to figure out how much tax they owe, since the work can be done with a handful of 1099s and W-4s and a pocket calculator, in about an hour, without the aid of accountants, tax lawyers or investment advisers. It will make it easier for taxpayers to be honest, as it will simply be harder to cheat. And it will also make it easier for politicians and bureaucrats to be honest, as taxpayers will have a clearer idea of how much of their money Uncle Sam really wants, and what he wants to do with their money.
It will not penalize the low-income worker for making too little, and it will not penalize the high-income worker for his success. At the same time, it will ease the current burden on the middle-class worker, the poor sucker who is called upon to pay increasingly more than his fair share of the tax bill.
Finally, simplifying the tax code like this takes the power out of the hands of the politicians, the special interests that they serve, and the thousands of bureaucrats tasked with enforcing the current tax code - bureaucrats who are not accountable to the American taxpayer in any way and are nothing more than overhead, a hidden and increasingly unbearable burden on the back of the American taxpayer - and puts the power back where it belongs, in the hands of the people, the American taxpayers.
Executed correctly, a flat tax will be revenue-neutral as far as the federal government is concerned, meaning that the IRS will collect no more and no less than it would have collected under the old tax code. But it will be a boon for American workers and businesses alike, as they will spend less time and money worrying about their taxes and paying people to figure their taxes for them.
Executive Orders was written in 1996, and like Debt of Honor which preceded it, EO appears to have predicted some of the events and crises of the early 21st Century. Much has been written about the flat tax since 1996, and much was written about it before 1996. The flat tax seems like an idea whose time has come, even if it's still not politically palatable. If you want a summary of all the issues facing adoption of a flat tax, EO is a good place to start.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Fiction: "Transported"
I wrote this short story in 2007, when I was working at a computer company in Fort Collins. I hope you like it. If you do, vote for it at the end of the story, and forward the link to your friends.
Longs Peak is a 14,256-foot mountain, located on the eastern edge of the Front Range in Northern Colorado. It's a regional landmark, and a popular climbing destination during late summer and early fall. On busy days, the summit trail is an endless, multi-colored pilgrimage of nylon parkas and windbreakers. Now, for the story:
Jeff stood at the window and looked out of the office. This was the fun part of living in Colorado: the Rocky Mountains were always outside your window, just a few miles away. The not-fun part was that he spent 40 hours a week working in an office in the city, wasting the best daylight hours working for The Man, instead of climbing around in the mountains.
It wasn't the best day for looking at the mountains, either. Low, grey clouds hung over the city, which was unusual -- and depressing -- for a summer day. Fortunately, the clouds thinned towards the west, and he could see the summit of Longs Peak in the distance, the snow mostly melted from its flanks. It looked like a good day to be on Longs, except that he was stuck here in the office.
He sipped his coffee and tried to focus on the flanks of the mountain, where he knew the trail wound around. He said to himself, "Boy, what would it be like to be up there right now, instead of here in the office?" He took another sip of his coffee. His heart ached for a moment, longing to be on the mountaintop.
Suddenly, with the cup of coffee still to his lips, the view changed. In an instant, the window had disappeared. The office was now a six-foot granite boulder, and he was perched on top of it. He started coughing on his coffee, as the stuffy indoor air he had been breathing was instantly replaced with cold, dry, mountain air. His shoes slipped as they found purchase on the new surface under his feet, and he looked around him, first with curiosity and then with increasing unbelief and amazement.
He recognized the terrain, and the panoramic view. He was on top of the mountain! Only seconds before, he had been in the office, and somehow he had wished himself here!
He looked at the coffee cup in his hand, and then at the khaki pants and polo shirt he was wearing. He felt a moment of nausea. If this wasn't cognitive dissonance, then nothing was. He shivered as the wind brushed his bare arms and cut through his thin shirt. "Maybe I should have wished for a parka, too."
"Wait a minute, this has to be a hallucination. I'm still in the office." Reaching out with his coffee-free hand, he slowly turned in a circle and tried to feel for the office walls. As he came back around, he noticed two people puffing their way towards him. They were outfitted the way he thought he should have been for this fantasy. Both wore black nylon pants. One had a red North Face windbreaker, and the other had a yellow Columbia parka. They carried backpacks, obviously full of whatever you need to complete the pilgrimage from the parking lot to the summit.
Even behind their mirrored sunglasses, he could tell that they were as confused as he was. As they came to the boulder and dumped their packs on the ground, one of them looked at him and asked, "Dude, how do you get up there?"
"I dunno." What else could he say?
The other asked, "Where's yer coat and yer gear?"
"I don't have any."
"You mean you walked all the way up here, dressed like that, with nothin' but a cup of coffee?"
"No."
"Whaddaya mean, 'no'? Where's your stuff? Seriously, howdja get up here?"
"Honestly, I dunno. I'm an accountant at a computer company in Fort Collins. Two minutes ago I was sipping this coffee in the office and --"
He was interrupted with a wave and a dismissive "Whatever." Both the gesture and the word indicated a combination of bewilderment, disbelief and impatience. North Face and Columbia hunkered down on the lee side of a small rock wall, to get out of the wind and celebrate with Gatorade and granola bars.
Still holding onto his coffee, he scrambled down from the boulder and started walking across the summit. The summit of Longs Peak is a plateau, about the size of a football field, strewn with boulders and broken rocks. Cairns, small piles of rock built up by climbers, mark the spots where trails end at the edge of the summit plateau. He started heading south, towards the cairn that marked the incline known as the Home Stretch.
"Hey!" It was the red North Face. "Where're you goin'?"
"Down," he replied without looking back.
"Waitaminnit! You can't go down like that!"
"Why not?"
The yellow Columbia chimed in, "Yeah, why not? That's how he got up here."
"What time this morning did you start?" That was North Face again.
"I told you, five minutes ago I was in my office in Fort Collins."
North Face muttered an obscene expression of disbelief.
Jeff stopped. With his free hand, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his cellular phone. He was not surprised to find that he had good reception up here. More than once, he had reached the summit of a mountain, only to observe a fellow climber pull out a cellphone, speed-dial someone, and announce, "Hi. Hey, we made it. Yeah, I'm calling from the top." It was the 21st-century climbing ritual. Even Everest climbers did it.
Instead of calling home, he called the office. "Hey, Jackie? It's Jeff. Yeah. Do me a favor, will you? Go into the back and look in my office. See if I'm there. Yeah, I'll wait."
He stopped and looked at the two climbers. He wasn't sure whether to grin or not. Besides, it was cold and he was shivering, and the others were still catching their breath. Jackie was back on the phone.
"Yeah, I'm still here. Not in my office, huh? Hey, did you see me there this morning? That's what I thought. How long ago? Okay, good. Look, would you mind sending me an email saying that you saw me at that time? Yeah, I know it's a weird request. Humor me."
There was a pause, as Jeff's co-worker wrote a note to herself. Then she asked him the question most often asked of people on cellular phones. He chuckled nervously as he formulated his answer.
"Well, I don't know, but it looks like the summit of Longs Peak. No. I have no idea. One minute I was standing at the window, sipping my coffee, and the next thing I know, I'm on top of this mountain."
Three other hikers had climbed over the edge of the summit plateau. The one in the lead had already dumped her pack, and was gasping noisily as she rocked her body slowly back and forth, trying to get more oxygen into her lungs and thence to her muscles. She was close enough to him, and her gasping had quieted down enough, that she had heard this last exchange from Jeff.
"You don't know how you got here?" she asked him.
He held up a finger, begging her to pause while he finished the conversation. "Okay, Jackie, look. I'm gonna take a picture with this phone and send it to you, okay? I'm wearing the same clothes you saw me in this morning, and you should be able to recognize the coffee cup in my hand. I'll see you in a few hours, I guess. Bye."
He pressed the disconnect button, set the cup down, and fumbled with the phone until he got the camera going. To his latest interrogator, he said, "I think I wished myself up here, but I don't know how to wish myself back down."
She looked at the crepe-soled shoes on his feet. "It looks like you forgot your ruby slippers."
If he hadn't been feeling so confused, and she so oxygen-starved, they might have laughed at the joke. As things were, it did get a snort and a couple of smiles.
Jeff asked her and her companions, and North Face and Columbia, to pose with him at the summit boulder. Without a photograph, nobody was going to believe this story. He balanced the phone on another rock, set the self-timer and ran around to get into the picture.
It was a strange photo. It showed the summit boulder, with the USGS benchmark glinting in the morning sun. Seated in front of the rock were five climbers in cold-weather gear, with their packs at their feet. Behind them, the ridges of the Front Range stretched northward. To the northeast, peeking through holes in the low clouds, could be seen the lakes and reservoirs, and some of the streets, of the city of Fort Collins. And seated in the front of the group of climbers was a middle-aged man in tan pants and a green polo shirt, clutching an empty coffee cup, with a confused smile on his face.
Jeff crouched behind a low rock wall, and fumbled with the buttons on the phone to send the photograph to his co-worker. By now, a dozen climbers were on the summit, most of them having started around midnight. It would be another three hours before it got crowded up here, as the 3:00 a.m. pilgrims finally made their way to the top.
He borrowed a fleece vest from one well-equipped climber, and a windbreaker from another, in exchange for his business card and a promise to return the gear if they called him at work and asked for them. His shoes would have to do for footwear. He'd read of someone doing the climb in cowboy boots once. Then he walked over the edge of the summit plateau and started down the Home Stretch, still holding his coffee cup.
The other climbers, hiding from the wind and sunning themselves on the southeast side of a long granite shelf, watched him go.
North Face said, "Dude. I saw a guy playing a French horn up here once. He'd rigged straps to the case, like a backpack. His friends videoed it. I'll bet you can find it on YouTube."
A girl climber one-upped him. "I saw a string quartet up here once. Two girls in long black dresses, two guys in tuxes. One of the guys had a cello. I don't know if they climbed up here or came up on pack mules. But they had a professional video crew with them."
Columbia answered, "Yeah, but I'll bet those people weren't up here at 8:30 in the morning. This dude was by far the freakin' weirdest thing I've ever seen up here."
"Freakin' A," said North Face, as he took a long, slow pull on his Gatorade.
Copyright 2007 Ray Depew. All Rights Reserved.
Longs Peak is a 14,256-foot mountain, located on the eastern edge of the Front Range in Northern Colorado. It's a regional landmark, and a popular climbing destination during late summer and early fall. On busy days, the summit trail is an endless, multi-colored pilgrimage of nylon parkas and windbreakers. Now, for the story:
Jeff stood at the window and looked out of the office. This was the fun part of living in Colorado: the Rocky Mountains were always outside your window, just a few miles away. The not-fun part was that he spent 40 hours a week working in an office in the city, wasting the best daylight hours working for The Man, instead of climbing around in the mountains.
It wasn't the best day for looking at the mountains, either. Low, grey clouds hung over the city, which was unusual -- and depressing -- for a summer day. Fortunately, the clouds thinned towards the west, and he could see the summit of Longs Peak in the distance, the snow mostly melted from its flanks. It looked like a good day to be on Longs, except that he was stuck here in the office.
He sipped his coffee and tried to focus on the flanks of the mountain, where he knew the trail wound around. He said to himself, "Boy, what would it be like to be up there right now, instead of here in the office?" He took another sip of his coffee. His heart ached for a moment, longing to be on the mountaintop.
Suddenly, with the cup of coffee still to his lips, the view changed. In an instant, the window had disappeared. The office was now a six-foot granite boulder, and he was perched on top of it. He started coughing on his coffee, as the stuffy indoor air he had been breathing was instantly replaced with cold, dry, mountain air. His shoes slipped as they found purchase on the new surface under his feet, and he looked around him, first with curiosity and then with increasing unbelief and amazement.
He recognized the terrain, and the panoramic view. He was on top of the mountain! Only seconds before, he had been in the office, and somehow he had wished himself here!
He looked at the coffee cup in his hand, and then at the khaki pants and polo shirt he was wearing. He felt a moment of nausea. If this wasn't cognitive dissonance, then nothing was. He shivered as the wind brushed his bare arms and cut through his thin shirt. "Maybe I should have wished for a parka, too."
"Wait a minute, this has to be a hallucination. I'm still in the office." Reaching out with his coffee-free hand, he slowly turned in a circle and tried to feel for the office walls. As he came back around, he noticed two people puffing their way towards him. They were outfitted the way he thought he should have been for this fantasy. Both wore black nylon pants. One had a red North Face windbreaker, and the other had a yellow Columbia parka. They carried backpacks, obviously full of whatever you need to complete the pilgrimage from the parking lot to the summit.
Even behind their mirrored sunglasses, he could tell that they were as confused as he was. As they came to the boulder and dumped their packs on the ground, one of them looked at him and asked, "Dude, how do you get up there?"
"I dunno." What else could he say?
The other asked, "Where's yer coat and yer gear?"
"I don't have any."
"You mean you walked all the way up here, dressed like that, with nothin' but a cup of coffee?"
"No."
"Whaddaya mean, 'no'? Where's your stuff? Seriously, howdja get up here?"
"Honestly, I dunno. I'm an accountant at a computer company in Fort Collins. Two minutes ago I was sipping this coffee in the office and --"
He was interrupted with a wave and a dismissive "Whatever." Both the gesture and the word indicated a combination of bewilderment, disbelief and impatience. North Face and Columbia hunkered down on the lee side of a small rock wall, to get out of the wind and celebrate with Gatorade and granola bars.
Still holding onto his coffee, he scrambled down from the boulder and started walking across the summit. The summit of Longs Peak is a plateau, about the size of a football field, strewn with boulders and broken rocks. Cairns, small piles of rock built up by climbers, mark the spots where trails end at the edge of the summit plateau. He started heading south, towards the cairn that marked the incline known as the Home Stretch.
"Hey!" It was the red North Face. "Where're you goin'?"
"Down," he replied without looking back.
"Waitaminnit! You can't go down like that!"
"Why not?"
The yellow Columbia chimed in, "Yeah, why not? That's how he got up here."
"What time this morning did you start?" That was North Face again.
"I told you, five minutes ago I was in my office in Fort Collins."
North Face muttered an obscene expression of disbelief.
Jeff stopped. With his free hand, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his cellular phone. He was not surprised to find that he had good reception up here. More than once, he had reached the summit of a mountain, only to observe a fellow climber pull out a cellphone, speed-dial someone, and announce, "Hi. Hey, we made it. Yeah, I'm calling from the top." It was the 21st-century climbing ritual. Even Everest climbers did it.
Instead of calling home, he called the office. "Hey, Jackie? It's Jeff. Yeah. Do me a favor, will you? Go into the back and look in my office. See if I'm there. Yeah, I'll wait."
He stopped and looked at the two climbers. He wasn't sure whether to grin or not. Besides, it was cold and he was shivering, and the others were still catching their breath. Jackie was back on the phone.
"Yeah, I'm still here. Not in my office, huh? Hey, did you see me there this morning? That's what I thought. How long ago? Okay, good. Look, would you mind sending me an email saying that you saw me at that time? Yeah, I know it's a weird request. Humor me."
There was a pause, as Jeff's co-worker wrote a note to herself. Then she asked him the question most often asked of people on cellular phones. He chuckled nervously as he formulated his answer.
"Well, I don't know, but it looks like the summit of Longs Peak. No. I have no idea. One minute I was standing at the window, sipping my coffee, and the next thing I know, I'm on top of this mountain."
Three other hikers had climbed over the edge of the summit plateau. The one in the lead had already dumped her pack, and was gasping noisily as she rocked her body slowly back and forth, trying to get more oxygen into her lungs and thence to her muscles. She was close enough to him, and her gasping had quieted down enough, that she had heard this last exchange from Jeff.
"You don't know how you got here?" she asked him.
He held up a finger, begging her to pause while he finished the conversation. "Okay, Jackie, look. I'm gonna take a picture with this phone and send it to you, okay? I'm wearing the same clothes you saw me in this morning, and you should be able to recognize the coffee cup in my hand. I'll see you in a few hours, I guess. Bye."
He pressed the disconnect button, set the cup down, and fumbled with the phone until he got the camera going. To his latest interrogator, he said, "I think I wished myself up here, but I don't know how to wish myself back down."
She looked at the crepe-soled shoes on his feet. "It looks like you forgot your ruby slippers."
If he hadn't been feeling so confused, and she so oxygen-starved, they might have laughed at the joke. As things were, it did get a snort and a couple of smiles.
Jeff asked her and her companions, and North Face and Columbia, to pose with him at the summit boulder. Without a photograph, nobody was going to believe this story. He balanced the phone on another rock, set the self-timer and ran around to get into the picture.
It was a strange photo. It showed the summit boulder, with the USGS benchmark glinting in the morning sun. Seated in front of the rock were five climbers in cold-weather gear, with their packs at their feet. Behind them, the ridges of the Front Range stretched northward. To the northeast, peeking through holes in the low clouds, could be seen the lakes and reservoirs, and some of the streets, of the city of Fort Collins. And seated in the front of the group of climbers was a middle-aged man in tan pants and a green polo shirt, clutching an empty coffee cup, with a confused smile on his face.
Jeff crouched behind a low rock wall, and fumbled with the buttons on the phone to send the photograph to his co-worker. By now, a dozen climbers were on the summit, most of them having started around midnight. It would be another three hours before it got crowded up here, as the 3:00 a.m. pilgrims finally made their way to the top.
He borrowed a fleece vest from one well-equipped climber, and a windbreaker from another, in exchange for his business card and a promise to return the gear if they called him at work and asked for them. His shoes would have to do for footwear. He'd read of someone doing the climb in cowboy boots once. Then he walked over the edge of the summit plateau and started down the Home Stretch, still holding his coffee cup.
The other climbers, hiding from the wind and sunning themselves on the southeast side of a long granite shelf, watched him go.
North Face said, "Dude. I saw a guy playing a French horn up here once. He'd rigged straps to the case, like a backpack. His friends videoed it. I'll bet you can find it on YouTube."
A girl climber one-upped him. "I saw a string quartet up here once. Two girls in long black dresses, two guys in tuxes. One of the guys had a cello. I don't know if they climbed up here or came up on pack mules. But they had a professional video crew with them."
Columbia answered, "Yeah, but I'll bet those people weren't up here at 8:30 in the morning. This dude was by far the freakin' weirdest thing I've ever seen up here."
"Freakin' A," said North Face, as he took a long, slow pull on his Gatorade.
Copyright 2007 Ray Depew. All Rights Reserved.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
