Chapter 3

Jeremy sat on a pile of rock that had been dumped in a back yard. He was waiting for the backhoe to finish digging the drainage ditch for which the rock would provide the bottom level of filtering. Despite the ugly gash across the yard, the garden was beautiful. Someone knowledgeable had lavished a great deal of time and attention on the plants.

He remembered an older man with a grey beard and crooked teeth. The man was explaining to him how to cut back a bush to make the plant grow back thicker and fuller. The crow's feet at the man's eyes were deep, but his face was friendly. The memory faded and he couldn't retrieve it.

Jeremy jerked up, wondering if anyone had noticed his woolgathering. But the other men were bored and lazing in the shade, watching the mechanical shovel dip down into the ground again. Who was the old man? Jeremy knew that he had strong, loving feelings for the man, but surely he was too old to have been his father. Maybe his father had been old. Jeremy hit a blank wall. He had no clue about his parents. He grimaced with frustration.

His new straw hat was itchy, but did the job of keeping the sun off of his head. Surely he must have had such a hat back at the farm, but if he had he couldn't remember it. His faulty memory was beginning to frustrate him.

Jeremy was relieved to hear the foreman order them to start loading the wheelbarrow with rock to dump in the trench. Physical labor gave him an excuse not to think. He filled the wheelbarrow again and again.

A load of gravel was dumped over the rocks. Then the foreman had a pickup truck back up to the hole with a load of clay. Jeremy stood in the trench and used his shovel to push around the grayish clay until the top was even. By the end of the day, the trench was filled and resodded.

Jeremy washed his torso and his shirt from the hose before climbing into the back of the pickup for the drive back to the square. The other two men joked crudely about women as they bounced along the roads. They laughed and Jeremy smiled along with them even though he found their conversation stupid.

"You got a girlfriend?" one of the men asked Jeremy.

"Yeah," he said and then realized they were watching him. Jeremy made sure to play the peasant. "She ain't got no tits and we live with her mother." He tried to keep his face plain and innocent looking. "Her mother doesn't like me. We have to fuck really quiet."

The other two men roared at his last statement as if he had said something very funny. One was slapping his knee.

"Maybe you should fuck her mother," he said. "You never know. It might loosen her up."

"I could never get it up. If you saw her face..." Jeremy said, tossing them a bone.

They howled with laughter again. When they finally finished, they asked Jeremy if he wanted to go drinking with them after the truck dropped them off. He declined, saying that he was trying to save his credits by only drinking on the weekends.

He had fifty new credits when the truck drove off, leaving him to find a bus back to Amalia's house. As he was waiting at the bus station for a transfer, he decided that he needed to buy some insurance. An old lady was selling bouquets of flowers and he picked up two bunches.

The neighborhood bus he wanted boarded outside of the depot. As he waited, a bank across the street caught his attention. He didn't recognize the bank logo, yet he was drawn to it. He watched several people stand in line to use the automated credit dispenser (ACD). It fascinated him. They slid their credit card in the slot and punched numbers on the pad. At first he didn't understand what those people were doing until he noticed one man putting paper credits in his pants.

A string of numbers popped into Jeremy's head. He couldn't understand where they came from or what they meant. Feeling foolish, he looked to his right and to his left, wondering if the numbers were posted on the wall or something strange like that. The numbers came again, this time in two strings.

Jeremy's heart started pounding and sweat broke out on his forehead. There was a connection between the ACD machine and numbers behind his eyeballs. He was sure of it. He looked both ways again to see if the bus was coming. There were lots of buses but not his. Taking a chance, he ran to the corner and crossed the street to the bank.

Gathering his courage, he pulled down his hat, tucked his flowers under his left arm and approached an open machine. He pressed the big green button and waited. Words appeared on the screen and Jeremy typed in the first string of numbers. New words came up and Jeremy typed in the second set. A flashing credit sign appeared.

Jeremy hesitated and then typed 5-0-0 on the number pad. A face with a big smile appeared and paper credits fell into the dispensing shelf. Scooping the bills up quickly, Jeremy stuffed the bills in his pants and walked back to the corner as casually as he could muster.

When he returned to the bus stop, passengers were queued for the standing bus. He boarded, almost forgetting to give the driver his roundtrip stub. The man gave him a dirty look and then dismissed him with a look towards the next passenger behind Jeremy.

The credits were a solid lump in his pocket and he was very anxious.

Standing in the aisle and holding the bar above the seats to keep himself steady, Jeremy held on to his two bouquets with a death grip. Every thirty seconds he checked the flowers to make sure he wasn't crushing them because he had no feeling in his fingers. As the bus jolted through the streets, his heart began to slow again. His hands were still sweaty and he thought that his cheeks were flushed, but his calm was returning. By the third stop, he was able to grab a seat. His breathing had returned to normal.

By the time he disembarked, he was able to stand up straight and pull his shoulders back. He forgot about the credits. In the evening dusk, he saw the front garden was vines and succulents with thick meaty leaves of many shapes and colors. Scanning the rest of the street, all of the houses had similar landscaping. To his left was a barrel to collect the rainwater and a pipe that came down from the roof. Unsure of what to do, he knocked at the door.

The mother, Rosa, answered. Suddenly afraid to speak, he simple thrust the first bouquet into her hands. Her eyebrows lifted in surprise.

"Oh," she said.

"Good evening," he finally replied. "These are for you. To say thank you. For letting me spend the night here. Last night." He wanted to smack his head for acting so tongue-tied.

"You should have brought dinner," she said, turning her back and walking towards the kitchen.

"Mother!" Amalia said, rebuking her. "Bringing you flowers was a lovely gesture. At least you could say thank you."

Jeremy stepped inside and handed the second bouquet to Amalia. She smiled and blushed. She gave him a kiss on his lips and took his hand to guide him to the kitchen table.

"Flowers don't matter," Rosa said. "Look at him, Amalia. His hands are clean and he doesn't stink. He didn't work today; he's a lazy bum, just like all of them."

"I washed off with the hose after the job was done. I didn't want to come here stinking," Jeremy said protesting. Seeing no response from Rosa, he dug his hand into his pocket and clutched the big wad of credits. He reached down further for the smaller package of folded credits. He wrestled the fifty credits out and plopped them on the table.