Harlan County Horrors Read Online Free Page B

Future in Apples”

    Earl P. Dean
     
    Earl Patrick Dean is a computer programmer working in
Lexington, Kentucky. He holds a BA degree in that field from
Transylvania University and holds graduation certificates from The
Institute of Children’s Literature. He is a past member of the
Online Writing Workshops on Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror.
Earl is active in several writing groups in the greater Lexington
area. He reads, writes and collects science fiction and fantasy and
has attended conventions in Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, and
Virginia. He is a University of Kentucky basketball and football
fan. Visit his author site at
epat02.typepad.com/clamped_planet.
     

W hen the aliens came to Salvation, they came
as a dark wave rising out of the peaty soil somewhere on Hiding
Mountain. They adjusted their form in order to work with us, but
never lived here as far as I know. From that work we discovered
apples. We people of Salvation work in the squimix midges every
day, digging out the apples and showering them under our garden
hoses. It’s come to be our way. Apples sell. We need the money from
outside because our town is small.
    My
daddy’s name is Ken and my brother took Patch for his after his eye
was out. One morning they left the house to work in squimix after a
breakfast of sausage and eggs; this part tells what happened to
Patch. An awful lot more followed this, all tied up in knots. I
know it all to the point where my daddy lets off. I tell it so
maybe I can gain some closure.
    It
started at midday.
    Their legs were half-buried in the squimix, with the tops of
their waders on up sticking out of the midge. Small flies swarmed
over their heads, as was usual. Patch pulled his apple-grapple out
of the midge, removed the skewered apple and dropped it on the
conveyer. He re-sank the apple-grapple and leaned on it, watching
the apple he’d dropped as the conveyer pulled it under the shower
down-line from his assembly crew. That’s how we’d come to work it
by then. The apple fell in a packing chute.
    “ How have we gone on like this for three hours?” Patch
said.
    Dad’s smile soured. “You know I don’t think about break. This
here is man’s work; the only time when I’m glad I don’t need sleep.
The day will come when I get some medicine. But it’d better not
affect my work.”
    Dad
says Patch laughed hard and slipped. I imagine he did slip, that’s
all I can manage. Sliding off the apple-grapple, he fell under the
midge. The one thing the aliens warn you about: squimix on your
skin is a killing sin. Daddy talks softly about it, but I know how
he screamed. He did not think, just took off his rubber gloves and
wiped his hands over Patch’s face. He had to do it; the gloves
slipped. He screamed. The squimix on Patch’s face etched a river
through my daddy’s heart.
    It
did no good.
    My
brother died from the pain.

    Brant Allen, their foreman and our neighbor, ran out of his
office trailer to see what was screaming. Before he got to the
midge, he’d come to approach at a sidelong trot like a horse
changing gait. Looking off, yet near to retching, he gave Daddy the
talk under his breath, led him to the office trailer.
    The
office trailer was not too cramped inside. I’d been there on
several occasions. Mr. Allen led my glassy-eyed daddy to a chair
across from his own and the metal desk that straddled a crescent
moon’s space between them. Brant stepped around the desk and sat,
clawing through his oily hair.
    “ You ready for this?” Brant said.
    If
you worked in squimix, you knew what this was.
    “ I’ll let the Didagens examine me,” Dad said, “to learn why
the squimix didn’t kill me when I wiped Patch’s face, and to prove
that I’m able to work this job—I’ve got to if I can; I won’t have
my daughter, Ann, working such risk.”
    Why
Daddy didn’t want me working in squimix is plain. But I have always
wondered if his big hand pounded the desk, or his belly popped out
the shirttail