The Harvest

Joey was a cautious doper. He was wary of drugs, in a strange way, and limited himself to a once-a-week smokathon, usually Friday night. That was why he always showed up at the 7-Eleven Friday nights, buying frozen pies and ice cream. Marijuana, microwave cherry pies, and vanilla ice cream were Joey’s customary vices. After they got to know each other he had invited Beth to join him in the ritual. When she was transferred to the day shift, she did.

Beth herself was careful about drugs. Contrary to her high-school reputation, she was not keen to break the law… or hadn’t been, in those days. But she soon learned that this Friday night dope binge wasn’t the scariest thing about Joey—in a way, it was the least scary thing about him. Joey Commoner in a stoned condition was accessible, in some ways even a little more human. He’d kick back and laugh at some TV movie, and they would feast on reconstituted cherry pie and ice cream until their lips looked rouged, and sooner or later they would make love. Stoned, Joey made love to her. Other times they simply fucked.

So Beth learned to look forward to Friday nights, and would have enjoyed this one except for what they saw on TV.

The rental movie ended and when Joey hit the rewind button the network came back on: a picture of an octahedron unwinding, this one somewhere in Europe.

Beth set aside her 7-Eleven cherry pie, and Joey put down the 1970’s-vintage blue plastic bong he had ripped off from one of his cousins, and the two of them gawked at the screen.

“Holy shit,” Joey said, with what sounded to Beth like a combination of awe and deep discomfort.

Beth, thoroughly stoned, was especially impressed with a close-up still of what the a

It was too much. Joey hit the off button and turned his back on the screen.

Joey was very much into not believing what was happening around him. For instance, Joey did hobby electronics, built hi-fi gear and radios and things, and this had fascinated Beth at first, because—like everybody else—she had Joey pegged as being a little stupid. It turned out he read circuit diagrams better than he read English. There was always a tangle of wire and junk parts in one corner of the basement and often the air reeked of solder. Which was okay; it was interesting. But Beth had come to realize that electronics wasn’t just a skill Joey had—it was a wall, a moat, a hiding place. It shut out everything scary. It even shut out Beth.

And now, scared by what they’d seen on TV, he began to look restless—like if Beth cleared out he might dip another circuit board in aluminum sulfate or something. Fuck, not tonight, Beth thought. She didn’t want to be alone tonight.

That was when the idea of the B E occurred to her.

She thought of it strictly as a means of holding his attention. In the old days Beth had been more or less indifferent to Joey’s attention. Now, suddenly, helplessly, she was hungry for it. Not that there was anyone competing with her; Joey had never shown much interest in other women, perhaps excluding that night with the hooker in Tacoma. What she was competing with was the dense forest inside Joey’s own head. Where he liked to get lost. Where she couldn’t go.

But the cemetery vandalism last month had seemed to keep him interested—so why not a similar adventure? Similar but more daring? Why not a B E, in fact?

She posed the question. Joey looked thoughtful.

“Where?” he asked.

“The Newcomb house,” Beth said. Sudden inspiration. “You know the place? House up on View Ridge with two lawn jockeys in front? Bob Newcomb used to be my father’s boss at the mill. He’s been on vacation since August first. Some place in Mexico. My father thinks anybody who goes to Mexico in August is an idiot.”

“Long vacation,” Joey said.

“They might not be coming back at all.” Because of Contact. But she didn’t say that.

“Two lawn jockeys and a garden with a sun clock,” Joey said.

“That house, right.”

“Stupid fuckin’-looking house, Beth.”

“There might be something inside.”

He shrugged. “What do we want?”

“I don’t know!”

“We can’t fence anything. Do you know how to fence stolen property?” She didn’t. “We could just mess it up. Or take whatever we liked. The stereo.”

“Or cameras,” Joey said, warming to the idea. “Or even a video-camera or something like that. Except if they’re on vacation they probably took it with them. ”

Suddenly he was hooked. Switched on like a light.

There was a well of restless anger inside Joey, and she had tapped it… but it was a strange talent, the ability to wind up Joey Commoner toward petty crime, and something she was only intermittently proud of.

The horse, the spur.

Dangerous, Beth.

Did she really want to do this? Maybe it was an idea that only made sense in dope-logic, one of those smoke-ring thoughts with no real begi

Too late for second thoughts, however. Joey was already putting on his motorcycle jacket.

He drove north along the coast in a misty rain.

The night had turned cool. The motorcycle stitched through valleys of fog, Beth with her visor down and everything blue with rain. Streetlights seemed dim, the white line tentative.

There was no traffic. Since Contact, people didn’t go out so much. They stayed inside, especially in bad weather.

The things in their brains had made them cautious—meek, in Beth’s opinion. Wasn’t it the meek who were supposed to inherit the Earth? { Now is the hour.

Joey wasn’t meek. The sound of the motorcycle bounced around these sodden hillsides like an a

She tightened her grip on his waist and squeezed her thighs around the saddle. Wet face, wet hair, Joey’s leather jacket wet and slippery in the rain.

He drove to the top of View Ridge and killed the engine, r Beth, still stoned, was suddenly absorbed in the view: tumbling clouds and the foggy ocean downslope to the west! Everything in shades of night gray or night blue except the buzzing amber streetlights. A paper flapped on a telephone pole, a wet photocopied a

Joey wheeled his motorcycle down the rain-slick sidewalk, quietly, not talking. Beth felt alternately conspicuous and fog-hidden, paranoid and fuzzily excited. No one seemed to be watching. There were only a few lights in these big hillside houses. But these weren’t normal houses anymore, or at least not normal homes; the people inside weren’t normal. Maybe, Beth thought, they can see us with some kind of third eye. Maybe they don’t need to look.

Joey took the Yamaha up the Newcombs’ long driveway and stood it in the shadows behind the garage. The Newcomb house had a light in it, too, the token light people leave on when they’re out of town, supposed to frighten burglars, who are supposed to be that stupid. Beth followed Joey into the backyard. Nothing but shadows and wet grass here. Smell of lawn clippings, garden loam, rain.