The Train to Emeryville - Part 2

     The Flying Burrito Bar was a small spot close to the residential part of Emeryville.  As they walked in, Penny noticed that there were only three small tables, two of which were occupied by people in conservative suits and dresses.  A large white and red board listed some fifty combinations of burritos available, all vegetarian.                             Tim said to her, “What kind of burrito do you want?”

Penny shrugged.  “Something with real beans.  Surprise me.”

“Okay,” Tim said.  “Mom, the usual?”

Jane nodded and set her satchel on the floor next to the chair she sat in.  Penny sat next to her placing her satchel against the wall behind her.  Tim went to the counter and ordered with a few gestures and then paid, standing close to where the food was delivered.  A man in a green suit stood next to him, also waiting.

Penny was caught up watching the professionals who were getting a quick bite, or perhaps a power lunch.  Jane lightly touched her arm and drew her attention.  “Do you find my son attractive,” she asked.

Caught of guard, Penny lied.  “I haven’t really thought about it.  We just met.”

“He’s in need of getting laid,” Jane said and glanced over at Tim.  “I don’t suppose I could persuade you to sleep with him.  How about fifty dollars?”

Penny, shocked, merely shook her head.  “Do I impress you as that kind of girl?”

“Oh, honey, don’t be upset,” she said.  “I didn’t mean anything by it.”  She placed her hands folded on the table.  “So, fifty?”

Penny pulled her chair and started to stand.  At that moment, Tim returned with the burritos.  “I got you a bean burrito…”. He looked at Penny.  “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing dear,” his mother interjected.  “I was just enquiring whether or not Penny here needed some money.”

Penny, upset and turning red, said to Jane, “I don’t need your money!”  She grabbed her backpack and headed to the door.  She thought, what total assholes.

Tim put down the burritos and followed Penny.  He hurried and caught up to her just outside the restaurant’s door.  He reached and caught Penny’s arm.  “Hey, my mom is a little rough around the edges.  Don’t be offended.  What did she say?”

Penny took a deep breath.  “She asked me to sleep with you for fifty dollars.”

“Oh,” he said.  “She has Asperger’s syndrome.”

Penny pulled her arm away.  “What?”

“I should have warned you.  She has a problem behaving appropriately.  Penny wasn’t that offended, just a little shocked.  She had learned about Asperger’s when she went to nursing school.  

“Look, I’m sorry.  Try to understand; she says and does inappropriate social things, particularly with new people.  I would never let her do something like that.”

Penny found Tim’s soothing behavior to be unusual given what she knew about him.  He impressed her as a rough and tough Marine; he was showing a softer side to her, which she found attractive.  “I know what Asperger’s is,” she said.  “You could have warned me.”

“It’s totally my fault; I should have never left her alone with you.  Come back in and eat with me, please.  Just don’t say anything to my Mom.  She won’t understand.”  

Penny warmed to him.  “All right, but I’m not sitting next to her.”  They walked back into the restaurant.  Penny sat next to Tim across from Jane and pulled her burrito platter over.  Jane was halfway through hers and didn’t seem to realize that anything was wrong.

“Mom, Penny is a nice girl.  She would never accept money for something like that.”  He took a bite out of his burrito.

“Well, I was just trying to be nice to your girlfriend.  She seems like a nice girl.”  She gave sparkling smile to Penny.

Penny was fascinated with Jane’s behavior.  Now that she knew about her condition, her interest in clinical psychology took over.  She had dealt with various conditions in soldiers during her time as a medic in Iraq, mostly PTSD.  In her experience, mostly these people needed understanding and someone to talk to.  

Penny finished her burrito and stood and wiped her hands with a napkin.  “I should be going,” she said.

“Can I have your number,” said Tim.

Penny considered for a moment.  “Let me have your phone.”

He gave it to her and she programmed her name and number into his contacts.  “There,” she said, “Call me if you want some company.”  She left, walking through the restaurant door and into the street.

“Will do,” said Tim, to no one in particular after she had gone.

The Train to Emeryville

A new story started 9/25/2021

 

    When the clock struck twelve noon, the blue and white BART shuttle from San Fransisco landed in Emeryville, California leaving a young woman, Penny Lopez, standing on the platform.  Beach blond, petite, and thin-waisted, she wore jeans and a medical uniform top, as if she were about to enter surgery in outpatient facility.  She stopped walking toward the gate to the parking lot and set down her satchel, which was stuffed with water, clothes, and snack bars and had a North American Union Flag on the flap.   She smelled the clean scent of shuttle fuel and the exhaust; and although she didn’t mind a little dirt, the station lacked the cleanliness she’d come to expect in her life.  

Tim Slater saw the girl come into the terminal where he was waiting for his Mother’s shuttle from San Jose.  Intrigued, her watched her fumble with her satchel while she looked for something, something apparently carefully stashed since she was removing clothing to get to it.  He wondered what she was doing coming to a nothing town like Emeryville.  Her apparent disorganization offended him; he required a high order of organization in all things.  For that matter, the terminal offended him: the sticky floors, the noisy traffic, and the two people behind him discussing oral sex.

Jenny walked down the platform steps and then sat cross-legged on the ground of the terminal, her satchel in front of her.  She examined her communicator with concentration; she couldn’t be lost, she thought, but it had been many years since she had come down here, and her sense of direction was notoriously poor.  She looked for a landmark on the communicator readout for Emeryville, hopefully, one that she could see from the elevated shuttle lobby.  

Tim thought about talking to her.  She looked interesting; her hair was straight and went to mid-shoulder; her bulge at the bust was not pronounced but could be said to be as petite as her build, she wore hiking boots, which, when considered with the blue jeans, indicated she might live in the Sierra’s.  Tim, felt a familiarity with her; and he decided, after some deliberation, to talk to her.  He walked across the lobby, and he tried to approach her in a non-threatening manner.

“Hi,” Tim said as he came up to her.  Up close, she had several beauty marks; one was on her cheek and several were on her neck.  Her eyebrows were plucked and her nails neatly manicured.  Tim thought she looked well-kept, not an itinerant hitchhiker at all.  She looked up at him with a friendly smile.

“Just get to town?” he asked.

She took in Tim; he had on his best pair of Dockers and a plaid wool shirt that he wore on cool days like today.  He was big; a hulking specimen who had an appearance of a wrestler.  His hair was shoulder-length, neatly combed, and freshly washed so that it had a sheen when the sunlight hit it.  She looked him over and paused at his left arm, which was missing.  Instead of a stump, he had a prosthetic arm, which was attached at the elbow.  He noticed the look, and felt uncomfortable and a little defiant, just as he did when anyone said anything about his artificial arm.  Her eyes paused on it for a beat too long.

“What?” Tim said.  “Haven’t you ever seen an artificial arm?”

“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean anything; my brother had one.  Where am I?” she asked.

“Emeryville, California, population 31,899,” he said.   He had a scowl on his face.

“Oh good,” she said.  I was afraid for a moment I was in Oakland.”

“You may wish you were in Oakland.  There’s nothing much happening here.”

“I’m here to visit my Uncle.  You from here?” she asked.

Tim scratched the scar on his chest, and said, “Glided up from Modesto, yesterday.  I’m here to pick up my Mother; she should be here any minute.  I don’t live here anymore, but I come back to see my parents.”  She smiled at him, and the smile highlighted her beauty, which he found increasingly appealing.  

“Your brother is a vet?” he asked.

“Was.  He died three years ago.” Her shiny disposition became dull all of sudden.

Tim pulled his hair behind his left ear.  “Happens to the best of us.”

“Well, he’s at peace now.”  Her sunny disposition came back.  “He was never happy after he came back from Iran.  You might say he was troubled.”

He felt his thoughts swing to his own troubles; he lost track of where he was for a moment.  For a second, he felt the fear come back and sit with him, patient, waiting.  He struggled and succeeded in coming back to the present, just as Dr. Davis had suggested.  “I served in Iran; three tours.”

She looked at him, long and with respect, and then said, “I was an Army Corpsman in Iran.  My Uncle is a veteran too.  Afghanistan.”

“Well I guess the Army is okay, but it ain’t the Marines.”

A silence descended on them, and for a moment Tim couldn’t think of anything to say.  It was nice to talk to someone for a change instead of sitting alone in his apartment in Modesto, where he worked as a librarian.  A quiet job, he sometimes went nearly the whole day without saying anything except occasional directions to find a book or an article on the computer for a visitor.  Modesto was a flat town in a flat valley, the big valley, which had become almost a majority hispanic town.  Not only did few people talk in the library, when they did, chances were it would be Spanish they spoke.

He had become a librarian at the suggestion of Dr. Davis, who thought the environment would be a good one for overcoming his PTSD.  Because of his influence, he had, with some difficulty, earned his Master’s degree in Library Science from San Jose State University School of Library and Information Science.  The move to Modesto was a necessary one because they had offered him the best job.  Also, he couldn’t live with his mother anymore and her overly kind manner.  Nothing irritated him more than kindness.

“My name’s Tim, Tim Slater.”  He held out his hand. 

She took it and said, “Penny Lopez.”

Tim paused, and then said, “Do you need a ride?  My mom’s shuttle should be here soon.  I have a transport is in the parking lot.  Are you here by yourself?” he asked.

She hesitated, she didn’t trust him to know whether to trust him or not.  She moved away from him, stood, with the satchel between like a protective barrier.  She thought that he looked okay, artificial arm and all, but she remembered the vets at the Oakland Vet Center that were there when she had brought her brother in, and most of them hard to be around, even dangerous.  She hesitated; she had only recently split from her boyfriend, Sam, in their hometown of Nevada City, and her feelings were still pretty raw, even more like live wires discharging high voltage.  This man appeared to be okay; besides his appearance, he seemed to genuinely want to help her.  They were both vets too, and it would be unseemly to brush him off.

“Sure, I could use a ride,” she said, standing and putting on the backpack with a practiced motion.  “Want to wait over there?” She pointed to the bench by the concession machines which was empty.

They sat in the shade, the day being warm but not hot.  She set her pack at her feet, and said, “So, Tim, what do you do?”

“I’m a librarian.  I work for the Stanislaus County Library system in Modesto, thirteen branches and growing, that is if they pass the latest bond issue.”

“Do you work at all of them?”

“Just the main branch in Modesto.  I mostly work with the computers, helping people with the databases and other computer applications.”

Penny sat close to him, next to his artificial arm, which he pulled back so it didn’t poke her in the ribs.  She said, innocently, “I’d think it would be difficult to work with computers with only one hand.”

He reddened, saying, “I’m not handicapped.”

She put her hand on his shoulder, and said, “I didn’t mean it like that.”

She was beautiful, he thought, and he wondered about her life and whether she was married.  He looked at the train schedule on the wall and figured they had at least fifteen minutes before his mother’s train got there.  

She reached into her pack for a bottle of water.  “Thirsty?” she said.

“No, a little hungry though.  I was going to take my mother to lunch when her shuttle gets here.”

She sipped the water, a ventured a glance at him.  He was handsome in a rugged sort of way; he had acne scars on his cheeks, which contributed to his overall rough look.  A large-sized Harrison Ford.  Kind of touchy though.  She felt a certain animal attraction to him; he was the opposite of Sam, who was as gentle as an afternoon breeze; his lack of rough edges had ultimately made her lose interest in him.  Tim had that brute appearance that she found attractive in men; even if they were a little too rough, a little too sharp around the edges.

“Want to go to lunch with us?” he asked.

Surprised, she considered.  Tim saw that she had dimples, which became apparent as she considered his request and gave her a cute appearance.  “My uncle said he wouldn’t be home until 3 p.m.; I suppose I could eat.  He glanced at her.  “Actually, I’m pretty hungry.”

“Good,” Tim said.  “I know a great burrito place downtown.’

Penny put the water back in her pack.  Tim stood and went to look up to find the shuttle.  She carefully looked him over when he stood in profile.  His build attracted her, as did, strangely enough, his artificial arm.  She had worked with lots of soldiers who had lost limbs, and she felt their loss almost more than they did, which was probably due to the empathy she inherited from her mother.  For her, the lack of a limb made no difference in a man, except when the loss affected them mentally.  She wondered if this was the case with Tim.

He returned and said,  “I think I see the shuttle,” he said.  “Let me help you get your pack on.”  He helped her get it into place, and together they stood on the platform as the train arrived.  After stopping, his mother got off and spotted him.  They walked toward each other.  Penny stayed where she was.

After greeting each with a hug,  they came back to where Penny was.  “Mom, this is Penny.  She’s here to see her uncle and I invited her to lunch.”

“Call me Jane,” she said to Penny and offered her hand, which Penny took lightly.   She examined Penny with a critical eye, frowning a little when she took her hand back.  “You’re not a local girl, are you?” she asked with a chilly voice.

“No,” Penny said.  She smiled, her disposition was sunny and warm.   “I’m from the foothills.  Nevada City.”

Jane looked Penny up and down.  “That explains the boots, I suppose; don’t they sell dresses in Nevada City?” 

“Mom, be nice,” Tim said.

“I am being nice,” she said, sounding a little hurt.  “I just think young women should dress appropriately and not look like they are going backpacking in the Rockies.”

Without further comment, Jane said, “Where’s the car?”

The Patriot War, Chapter 1

This is a novel I wrote in the 2000's and never published.  I guess I didn't want to go through the hassle of getting an agent, etc.  I've decided to publish it here in case anyone wants to read it.  I'll try and make regular posts of the chapters every two weeks or so.  Please note that the manuscript has not been edited, so there may be some typos.  DL

The Patriot War

Chapter One

Scott Melville liked nothing better than hunting deer.  He had learned from his uncle who was a masterful stalker of deer and every other thing that walked on four legs.  His uncle had a saying: The point of hunting was not the kill, it was having the patience required to get the kill.  Scott understood patience; he understood that it took patience to wait for the quarry to move into place, to feel safe, to think it was unobserved, then the kill was an easy pull of the trigger.  Try to kill a deer to soon, try to kill anything to soon, and it would get away.

Ed Beasely, a short man with a limp from the war, sat next to Scott in their deer stand, and would never understand patience.  Ed was more interest in gossiping and discussing the habits of women and other people than in hunting.  He was tagging along with Scott, and Scott had to let him because the deer stand was on his property.  It consisted of a clearing in the forest with a crumpled, rusted 1957 Chevy Bel-air four-door hard top, which was painted green and black, camouflage style; there were dead oak leaves on the roof and small bushes on its side.  The stand had been there forever, built by Scott’s uncle before the family sold the land adjacent to their farm to the Beasley’s before the war.  Since the setting sun was behind them, it would be in the eyes of the target deer as it looked toward the car.

“Patricia Owens has expressed an interest in you,” Ed whispered.
“That so?” Scott didn’t need another girlfriend.
“Yeah, she told my sister that she’d ball you in a moment.”
Scott could care less. The air downwind smelled of smoke, which hung in the air like fog but not as thick, a reminder of the war in the hills around the farm near Oroville, in the Sacramento valley of California.  The sunset, orange and gold over the Coast Range to the west, was behind him.
 “Maybe you should take an interest in her,” Scott suggested.
“She likes army types.”
“You were in the FDF.”
“Apparently I don’t look like an army type.  And my limp is not exactly an attractive feature.  Still, I have given the matter some thought.”

 Scott mouth remained a thin line.  He crouched in the front seat of the Chevy with his 30-06 deer rifle, the barrel of which rested near the opening of the blown-out windshield.  Rain had rusted the floor and door panels of the car.

The August heat smothered him.  Sunsets should be cooler, he thought.  The red dust of the Sierra foothill summer lay thick on everything, and the evening sunset was even more colorful from recent volcanic activity at Mount Lassen, an active volcano ninety miles to the Northeast.

“So the word is they are paying big for information on collaborators,” Ed said.
“That so?”
“Two books of gasoline ration stamps.  Think of all the food you could trade for with those.  Cigarettes even.”

Scott would like to have a cigarette.  He hadn’t smoke since he came back from Utah.    While he watched the seconds tick away on his Federal Defense Force watch, a parting gift from his commanding officer, he kept careful eye on the brush in front of him.  Scott had a rugged look, brought on by the deprivations of the war; he had rough skin that was pulled tight over muscles.  This made him handsome to many women, but Scott, by and large, had never made women a priority in his life.  His muscular build, medium height and relaxed demeanor had won the heart of more than one girl; but the army had always been first in in his life.  A family could wait as far as he was concerned.  That was changing though, since he had been medically discharged and was technically out of the fight.

His sniper unit, the Heart Breakers, had the highest kill rate of any unit in the FDF.  He had worked with three spotters in his two-and-a-half-year stint and had survived them all in the fierce fighting around Salt Lake City.  Leaving only after being forced out on a medical discharge—a psych discharge—he was still there in spirit, killing the damn rebels and making the country safe again for loyal citizens.  He would have stayed there forever if they had let him.

He felt one of his headaches coming on; they started as a pain in the middle of his head like he had drunk cold soda too fast, then the tingling in his arms and legs would start.  His vision would blur and sometimes he flashed back to his days in Utah, good days up to the point of the attacks in the Wahsatch Mountains.  He snapped a smelling salt capsule and put it under his nose.  It helped; the pain began to recede and soon he felt normal.

“How’s life with Sue?” Ed asked.  “I’ll bet she is a handful in bed.”  Ed chuckled.
Scott remained silent and fixed his gaze on the bushes around the clearing.
“You don’t talk much do you,” Ed said.

“Talk scares away the deer,” Scott said.  He brushed brown hair away from pale blue eyes, never taking his gaze from the clearing.  Satisfied that no deer were close, he took out his topographical map of the area around the clearing and studied it.  The deer scats, rubs, and tracks he had found on his reconnaissance of the area that morning were carefully marked in pencil; the trail as seen from the top of an oak tree.  His map had been folded and scribbled over many times, worn through on the edges, yet still usable, more so than any others to which he had access.  He had cultivated this hunting spot for many years before he left for the war, leaving hay and salt here on a regular basis, and being careful not to take too many bucks, lest they become wary.

“Well, getting a deer is not everything,” Ed said.
“What’s the point of coming out here if we don’t get a deer?”  Scott said.

Ed sat back in the driver’s seat of the car.  The steering wheel had long been taken out.  His rifle rested in his lap.  When the deer came, Scott thought, he wouldn’t be able to get his rifle up without scaring them.  The black-tailed deer he was after, a sub-species of mule deer, were common in the open areas around Northern Californian forests in August, and the racks of the males were as big as bicycles; the male deer dropped these large racks from January to March. They liked to eat the poison oak that grew in the foothills, the allergen content so annoying to humans bothered them not at all.  The deer were mostly black in color and they hung out in clearings around forested areas.  They used to be seen routinely from cars driving on rural roads when there was gasoline and regular petrol deliveries to the local convenience stores.  With the war in its third year, the deer and the convenience stores had both disappeared. The cars were also gone, gasoline having long since becoming scarce and reserved largely for agricultural production and military use.  For meat, there was little else to eat but deer and rabbits.  A single black-tailed buck, active at dawn and dusk, would provide enough venison to feed Scott and his father for several weeks.

A thunderous clap echoed overhead as two F35 jets broke the silence on their way to bomb the resistance positions around Feather Falls above Lake Oroville.  Scott watched them fly by, considered this, and then returned his gaze to the clearing.  The war had left him behind.  He was bitter about this, but now there was nothing he could do about it. He only wished he could get back into the war.
He saw movement in the manzanita brush; he pointed his gun and removed the safety.

“Is that…” Ed said a whisper.
“Quiet now.”  Scott looked into the scope, putting the reticle at the point where he saw movement.  As he watched, a buck with an eight-point rack wandered into the clearing, occasionally sniffing the air and grazing on the hay he had left.  As he followed the deer in the scope, it scraped its antler against an oak tree.  A doe followed him out, and then another one.  Scott realized he was looking a month’s venison.  His mouth watered.

“Shit,” Ed said, and moved his rifle toward the windshield
Scott fired, then quickly reloaded with the bolt action, and fired again.  He got two of them, a buck and a doe, the third one escaping before Ed could get his rifle up. He put his rifle down, crawled out of the Chevy.  A nice afternoon’s kill.

    “Damn, you nailed them.  Big sucker isn’t he?”  Ed now spoke with a normal voice as he crawled through the windshield.  “You gonna give me some right?”
    “Shhh.”  Scott listened to the wind; there were no sounds of other hunters or soldiers waiting to jump his kill.  They would be in for a surprise if they did.  Venison being as valuable as it was in this time of food rationing, desperate hunters could do some stupid things.  The doe was dead, the buck thrashed about, disabled. 
    “You hear that?” Scott said.
    Ed listened. “No.”
    “There’s a jeep or truck coming up to your house.”
    “No shit.”  Ed turned and listened.  After a minute, he heard it.  “Sounds like a jeep.”
    A jeep meant that the FDF was in the area and probably heard the shots.  They would take the deer and throw them in the stockade for hiding firearms if they came up.  Although they were fairly isolated, Scott couldn’t rule that out.  He decided to chance it.  They needed the meat.  “Help me hang these deer.”
    Ed and Scott tied up the hoof of the deer and drug them over the the oak tree by the car, which had hooks in it for this purpose.  On the count of three, they lifted the bucks legs up and hung them so the deer was inverted, rack down toward the ground.  Scott drew his hunting knife and cut the throat of the deer.  Blood gushed out and onto the ground.  Next they hung the doe.
    Scott listened.  No engine noises now.  Maybe there wasn’t a jeep. 
    They waited until an hour after dark before they decided it would be safe to get Ed’s tractor to haul the carcasses back to his barn.  There they could dress the deer out and split up the kill. 
    “I’m glad I got me a certified FDF sniper to hunt with.  You never miss, do you Scott?”
    “No, I never do.”