The Second Intelligent Species: The Cyclical Earth (2 page)

“That’s disgusting. You’re going to catch something from the things you pick up someday. As long as it isn’t rabies I guess I could fix you up. You don’t incinerate them in here do you?” She lifted the grill top again to take another sniff.

“Hey, they won’t cook if you keep lifting the lid.”

She took one more sniff then closed the top. “Since when are you the expert on cooking steaks? How many have you grilled while we’ve been together?”

“I’ve barbequed more than you have, some while you were at work.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.” She stomped off to the house shaking her head.

The only shaking I was interested in was the view as she walked up the hill to the house. Beth looked good in a pair of hiking shorts, even if they were a size or two too small. “Hey, get me a beer on your way out.” Beth was my third wife. Building up a customer base and my devotion to the volunteer fire department in years past took more time than the first two wives wanted to give. I quit the service, but not the job. I made sure I spent more time with this wife. They say a smart man learns from his own mistakes; a wise man learns from the
mistakes of others. I hope somebody has become wiser learning from my mistakes.

Beth returned seconds after I turned the steaks, handed me a beer, and opened one for her.

“Thank you. I’m going to go set a couple of skunk traps after dinner, want to tag along?”

“No, babe. I’m going to pick up the kids so they can spend the night.” Although she was still a young sexy woman of forty-two, she had five grandbabies already.

“That’s okay. I know you don’t like Mrs. Spencer anyway.”

Beth set her drink down. Beer foamed up and over the top, spilling off the picnic table to the ground. “You aren’t going to help out that old bitch, are you? You know how much that family has messed up my life.”

“I’m not doing it for her, I’m doing it for the skunks. I don’t want them killed. I’ll pick them up in the morning. Plus it’s not that old lady’s fault that you decided to quit teaching. That was your decision. We’ve been through this.” I wiped up her mess.

“They didn’t give me any other choice. I’m not going to teach anything I don’t believe is the truth.” Teaching science was Beth’s passion, until she had a confrontation with a few parents about where humans came from one night at a PTA meeting. She refused to deny that Man evolved
from apes and would not teach alternative theories, religious or any other. “If you catch any, make them piss on her front porch.”

“Boy, you sure have a mean streak running through you. Must be the red hair.”

“Kiss my ass, Nick.” When Spencer’s daughter told her kids that God killed the dinosaurs to make way for Man, and their teacher was just ignorant, Beth couldn’t take any more. “Why try to teach the truth when the truth is being stifled? Since NASA fizzled out, nobody cares about science. At least with nursing, I can see results from my efforts.” Her face took on the same color as her hair.

I decided to change the subject. “So how long are the kids staying?”

“They’ll be staying the night,” she snapped “but you’ll have to watch them while I go to work tomorrow.”

“Damn it, Beth, why would you invite them if you’re not going to be here? What am I supposed to do; take them to work with me?”

“Yes, you can. You’re your own boss. They’ll love it. Let them play with the skunks, but so help me if I smell it on them, you will be giving them the tomato juice baths.”

“Never mind. Mrs. Spencer will have to live with the smell a couple more days. I’m sure she’s used to it.” I could handle wild animals, but children
pushed me past my own limits of bravery, and I wasn’t about to have them tag along.

“Oh, one more thing, I lost the same diamond in my ring again, one of the little ones. Can you take it to the jewelers tomorrow?”

“This is the third time. I thought diamonds are forever?”

“They are, but the settings aren’t. They’re insured.” The attention Beth gave her diamonds was rivaled only by her grandchildren.

I couldn’t resist opening the grill cover; it had been almost three minutes. “Two more minutes.” I rubbed my eyes and blindly said, “Get the other food together; I want to eat these while they’re hot. Probably won’t see a real steak again for a long time. I’m not going to want to go back to that other crap. I’m so sick of nugget this and breaded that. They’re feeding us paste. It makes me sick to think of what I’m eating. I can only imagine some slab of flesh being extracted from a vat and placed on an assembly line of grinding and mulching machines, the excess fluids running off and used to nurture the new batch of stem cells for the next sixteen months until it’s their turn to be harvested. The remaining mush would be breaded, baked, and bundled for mass sales: cheaper, eco-friendly, and easy to prepare. One minute in the microwave. Yum, just like Mom used to make.”

The entrée: T-bone steaks marinated in Worcestershire sauce, accompanied by summer squash and portabella mushrooms swimming in margarine. Butter was deemed unsafe and unnecessary, (lovers of French cuisine disagreed). I also made some baked beans from scratch. We had more food than the two of us could eat, and all of it was real.

I clasped my hands and lowered my head to give thanks while Beth was up in the house searching for steak knives. Since we never needed them, I thought I would have time.

“Haven’t we had this argument before?”

I guess she knew where they were better than I did.

“Do you really need to do that in front of me?” she said walking down the hill leading into the back yard.

I didn’t mind missing grace when served Phony Bologna. It was made by man, and to tell the truth I wasn’t all that grateful. “Dear, this meat had a soul. Something died so I can keep living.” I never thought about that until they left no option but to eat the fake stuff. “I feel grateful and humbled to eat this cow and I wanted to thank somebody. You know how much I respect the animals I catch. I haven’t euthanized an animal bigger than a rat in ten years.”

“A: You should be thanking the Yoders, and B: the only reason you don’t kill those stinking skunks, is when you pick one up at Mrs. Spencer’s, you bring it to a woodlot near Mrs. Hampton’s home where you can charge double to get rid of it.”

“It’s called job security, dear. I’ve even named two of them. I can carry Angel, the oldest one, to the truck without the cage, but the customer prefers I move it in a professional manner. At two hundred dollars a skunk, how can I argue?”

Chapter 2

Gluttony and Lust

Times were good and we wanted for nothing, except more time with each other and the kids.

After eating the banned banquet, I chased Beth into the camper, slapping her ass all the way up the rusting steps. For some reason the camper made her horny. That’s where she hooked me, and that’s where she always went when she was in the mood to be naughty. She was giving me all the signs. I could get lucky if I wanted to.

Paying more attention to her behind than to where I was going, I nearly knocked myself unconscious when my head hit the top of the door, (third time this year).

“You did it again, didn’t you?” she said smugly, walking straight as an arrow, stretching her neck to hold her head held as high as she could. “Stubby people don’t have that problem.”

“We have to take advantage of every moment we have alone you know?” I held the top bunk until the stars ceased.

It was unbearably warm again this summer. Beth had been anticipating a vacation with
the camper, but the season was near an end and work schedules seldom afforded us time together and probably wouldn’t. Owning my own business meant never being far away just in case the church had another bat infestation. Neither the Pied Piper nor St. George were as welcome as the exterminator one hour before a wedding, and the new couple was willing to sign over their first born.

I put down the couch/bed to give us more room. Normally it killed my back, but I didn’t expect to spend a long time in it. We weren’t as limber as we used to be.

Beth closed all the shades, while I checked the fridge to see if there was any of my stash left from the party we had thrown last weekend. To my surprise there were two beers, the micro-brewery stuff, not our favorites, but cold. I opened up Beth’s and handed it to her.

She plopped down onto the bed, nearly spilling it. “I really don’t have time for this you know. I have to hang up clothes. The kids might pop in any minute.” She always teased me into begging for it. She would lead me on, and then try to come up with an excuse why we couldn’t play. “You know Sally wants me to help her on her science project.” Sally is her granddaughter, named of course by her Ninny after Sally K. Ride, the first American woman in space.

Her hair caught my attention as it fell on her shoulders and across her breast. Lying on her side generated a cleavage bonanza. The freckles on her breast always enticed me. She loved tanning, even though she knew better. I bitched at her about it, but selfishly liked the way it made her chest look. She put a sticker of a couple of cherries on her left breast; it was the only area on her body that wasn’t tanned. I couldn’t take my eyes off the unforbidden fruit.

She tipped up the beer spilling some down her chin. I watched the beer trickle down her neck and into the vale of her cleavage.

“They had another Down’s Syndrome baby born today down at the maternity ward: a little girl. The parents don’t know yet, the results aren’t in, and won’t be till tomorrow, but I’m sure. She looks like Sally… She wants to build a volcano for the science fair you know?” Beth’s favorite way to avoid sex is to start talking about her grandchildren.

It was my turn to come up with the excuse this time. My lust for her was overpowered by other forces. Thirty years ago, I would never have admitted I was too anything to avoid sex, but for now I was stuffed and couldn’t if I wanted to.

“I wonder who put that idea into her head.”

“She’ll do the work; I’m just going to help her. Do we have any baking soda? We’re going to build
one that erupts and even spills out lava.” Her past skills as a science teacher gave all her grandchildren an advantage over other kids in their class. They were all bright like their grandmother and didn’t need the help, but Beth loved any chance to teach.

“Do you want another beer?” She left the camper and ran up to the house to check for baking soda and vinegar for the volcano. She came back carrying a hamper full of wet laundry. We needed to buy some vinegar.

“Where’s my beer?”

“Oh, I’m sorry dear, I forgot it.”

I wasn’t surprised. “That’s okay.” I watched Beth hang the clothes. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. The tan shorts clung to her cheeks. She stood on her tiptoes to reach the very top of the clothesline. Her red hair fell over her shoulders with all the natural curls that God gave her, though the color had been enhanced by man, or should I say the girl down at The Cut-n-Curl. Only when she dropped a sock or something and bent over, did the view improve. If I were a painter, there wouldn’t be enough red to paint both her hair and the sunset, thanks to the girl at The Cut-n-Curl. “I’m ready to go back into the camper now,” I said, as something caught my eye.

Something distracted me from drinking in Beth’s splendor. I didn’t know what it was I
witnessed at the time. I thought I saw a flash of bright light towards the west. It didn’t last long, and I wondered if I might have imagined it at first. Beth was still hanging up clothes. She didn’t see it. I didn’t mention it to her. I went back to watching her struggle with the laundry. She was too short on one end, and spent most of her time on her tiptoes—fun to watch. “The Orionids are visible tonight, how about we sleep outside and watch them?” Just as she said that, she dropped a clothespin.

“Naked?” The Orionids were some falling stars left by some comet or something like that. I didn’t want to waste time watching the empty sky when I could be watching the ballgame.

“On second thought, I don’t think so. There are too many mosquitoes. I’ll get all bit up.”

“I’ll rub some salve on your bites.” I walked up behind her and gave her the sign that the steak was no longer a problem.

I had been so infatuated with her, I forgot about what I thought I’d seen. My flirtations continued until a distant rumbling put an end to my psychological foreplay: a deep guttural reverberation from the bowels of the earth. It sounded like it was coming closer. I could sense it in my bones, and my heart. I just knew this wasn’t going to be good.

Chapter 3

The Earthquake