Brad Ferguson - The World Next Door (A Short Story)

Jess told me today his sugar beet crop seems to be doing pretty well.

Time was when nobody could get anything at all to grow, much less something as tricky as sugar beets, so Jess deserves a lot of credit and itll be awful nice to have real table sugar again, the white, grainy stuff you could buy at the store. (What was it called? Dominoes? Something like that.) Were all sick of maple sugar, and the women say you cant cook with it, except for ham and we dont have any pigs around here anymore. It surprised me a little last spring, when the town decided it wanted real sugar so bad, it allowed Jess to turn two acres over to it. Jess raises some of the best corn in the county, and we need all we can get the eating kind and the drinking kind, both. But sugar is calories, too.

More dreams last night, the crazy kind a lot of people around here have been having. Didnt sleep all that well myself. Doc says its more wish-fulfillment stuff than anything else, like right after the war. I dont know; these seem different. I remember them better, for one thing. I hardly ever remember dreams at all; now I can remember whole bits of them colors and smells, too. In fact, in last nights dream I was watching color television, but I forget what was on.

A singer named Wanderin Jake came through today; hes from the Albany area. I wrote his news on the chalkboard at Town Hall, and the mayors wife fed him well. The news: There were floods in Glens Falls last month, eleven people dead; theres a new provisional state government in Rensselaer (that makes four that I know of, if that preacher in Buffalo hasnt been assassinated yet); the governor in Rensselaer wants to send a state delegation to next years American Jubilee at Mount Thunder; and theres been no word from an expedition that set out six months ago from Schenectady, bound for the atomic power plant at Indian Point to see if it can be made useful again. The party is presumed dead.

Wanderin Jake led a sing-along in the square just after sunset tonight, and we had a good time, even though there wasnt much on hand to picnic with and wont be until we get the crops in. With this climate, we cant harvest until maybe late October, and only then if were lucky and theres been no rain from the south.

Today I remembered that it was Domino sugar, singular. There was a jingle about how grandmothers and mothers know the best sugar is Domino, which is how I remembered it. Its strange how those jingles come back to haunt you. Twenty-one great tobaccos make twenty wonderful Kings. Let Hertz put you in the drivers seat. I like Ike, you like Ike, everybody likes Ike. And you get a lot to like with a Marlboro.

The town got together tonight to discuss what, if anything, were going to do about the American Jubilee. No decision, of course weve only talked it over once but the thrust of tonights meeting was, the hell with Rensselaer and the governor there, just like we said the hell with the governors in Buffalo, Syracuse and Watertown. What if Rensselaer decides to tax us? We dont have the crops to spare for taxes, and our town has been doing a good job of hiding away nice and quiet in these mountains.

I also asked if we were going to be doing something about getting me a new typewriter ribbon. The mayor says he wants typed minutes he says they mean were still civilized and a going concern, and hes not wrong about that but Ive been re-inking this same damn ribbon for more than ten years, and its got big holes in it, especially at the ends where the keys hammer away before the typewriter catches its breath and reverses the ribbon. Im also running out of ink. I said Id be willing to go with some people into a big town like Tupper Lake to see if theres a few ribbons left in the stores there, but the mayor said he cant spare the people; theres bandits all over the place and it would be dangerous to go into a big, empty town like Tupper. He said maybe somebody could make a new ribbon for me. I said fine, but where are you going to get a long piece of cotton thats not falling apart? If Im going to be town scribe, I told him, I have got to have something to scribe with.

At least we dont have to try and make paper, which I think would be impossible. The old schools still got a lot of paper in it. The Hygiene Committees been doing a good job of keeping the building free of vermin, so the paper should last. If I dont have a newspaper anymore, at least I have this journal and the Town Hall chalkboard, so Im still a newspaperman.

Another meeting on that Jubilee. Half the town now seems to want to do something send a representative, hold a picnic, whatever. Maybe they think Camelots going to come back. The other half agrees (with me) that the Jubilee is just an excuse to blow the Presidents horn for him, and that if it hadnt been for the war, the President would have been out of office in 68, maybe even 64. Giving him a toot for still being in office is an unnecessary reminder of the war, and maybe even a reward for having half-caused it.

I wonder who the ass-kisser was that came up with the idea for the Jubilee? Some general in charge of public relations? At least we know it wasnt a congressman. If weve lost a lot, we at least got rid of the goddamn congressmen.

Jess, the fool, went out in a pouring rain today to check on his beet crop. The poor idiot. At least the winds were from the northwest, up Montreal way. Its pretty clean up there; maybe Jess is okay, but weve got no way to check. Jess wife is frantic. I dont blame her. I also wonder if weve lost that beet crop, not to mention his corn and everyone elses crops, too. Damn, damn, damn.

Funny thing happened. I was talking to Dick LeClerc this morning, just passing the time at his trading post. Dick mentioned he hasnt been sleeping well lately. He says he had a dream last night in which hes in his store, but its not the trading post. Its bigger and cleaner, for one thing, and there are electric lights and freezers and shopping carts, like in those city supermarkets from before the war. The thing he remembers best from the dream is his cash register. Its a little white thing, he says, but it had funny numbers on it green, glowing ones, made up of sharp angles. The thing hardly made any noise at all, except for some beeping whenever you hit a key and you really didnt hit keys, but numbers on a pad that felt like a thin sponge. Dick says when he woke up, he was real disappointed that he didnt still have the cash register in front of him to play with. Thats just like Dick; Ive seen him fool with a rat trap for hours, trying to make it work better. Hes always been one for a gadget.

Another weird dream. (I feel a little guilty about using up ribbon and ink recording all these dreams, but I think its important.) This time I wrote down what I could of it before I forgot. Couldnt remember much, anyway. I was back at the paper and there were a lot of people around, people Id known for years (but havent ever met, waking). There was all kinds of stuff around the office. Electric lights (no, fluorescent lights; they were different) and a few desks had typewriters better than this one, but most of the desks had little TVs on them except the TVs didnt show pictures, but words hundreds of little green words on a dead black screen. Maybe Dick LeClerc planted this in my head with his tale of the cash register with the little green numbers on it. Crazy how your mind works.

Jess is still okay, his wife says. His gums look good, and bleedings one of the first signs. He didnt get the shits, either, and he hasnt been particularly tired.

Another singer showed up today, and getting two in just over a month is really unusual, because were so hidden away here. His name is Elvis Presley, and he came into town this afternoon with a couple of what he called backup men a guy with a guitar and another guy with a small set of drums that didnt look too easy to carry through these mountains.