The Harvest

“You just have to know what you’re looking for.”

He was startled by the voice, and he turned thoughtlessly on the axis of his left foot. A flare of pain sizzled up the leg. “Ouch, goddamn it!” He steadied himself on a steel rack. “Who’s there?”

It was Joey Commoner.

Joey came out of the shadows behind the cash counter. He looked like a hood, Kindle thought, but not a dangerous one. The kind of suburban white kid who dresses like a drug dealer but doesn’t know any. He stood with his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket and an unreadable expression on his face.

“Knew you’d show up,” Joey said.

“You were waiting for me?”

“What you said at the meeting last night…”

“What about it?”

“Figured you wouldn’t know what you wanted.” Kindle glanced again at the relentless racks. Kid had a point. “So are you here to help or did you just want the fun of watching?”

“You need a transceiver,” Joey said. “Show me one.”

Joey pushed away from the counter and sauntered over to a wall display. Yet more big black boxes. Some of them had microphones attached. Joey said, “How much are you pla

“Do you see anybody behind the register?”

“We’re ripping this off?”

“Not exactly. I talked to the owner. He says we’re welcome to take anything we want.”

“What, for free?”

“No money down, no monthly payments.”

“Shit,” Joey said. “That’s weird. I knew these people weren’t human.” He turned his attention to the stock. “So we want the best, right?” He put his hand on a huge rig. There was a Japanese brand name on the face of it, next to more knobs and technical graffiti than Kindle cared to look at. “This is a three-hundred-watt transceiver. They come more powerful, but I don’t think we need it.”

“You know ham stuff? How come you didn’t say anything at the meeting? Save me the trouble?”

“I don’t know much. Mainly theory. I know how radio works. I never got a license or anything.”

“One up on me.”

“Uh-huh. Probably we could use an ARRL Manual, too.…”

“Which?”

“The book on the rack over there? Looks like a phone book?”

Kindle considered his leg. The ache, which never ceased, was cranking up toward real pain. “Tell you what… I’ll carry the book if you carry that machine.”

“It’s a transceiver. Or you can call it a rig.”

“All right, Christ, it’s a transceiver. Can you carry the fuckin’ transceiver?”

Joey smiled. “Should have brought your wheelchair.”

“Smart-ass.”

Joey rooted in the stockroom for a boxed unit with a manual, then loaded it into the trunk of Kindle’s car. “I appreciate the help,” Kindle said. “You’re not done yet.”

“No?”

“Think about it. You want to be a radio station. So you need more than a box. You need—”

“An ante

“Could figure it out.”

“They stock ’em here?”

Joey nodded. “But we should come back with a truck or something. We’re talking about maybe a big beam ante

“Why don’t I just go home and let you take care of it?”

Joey backed up. “I didn’t volunteer for this.”

“No, hey, I didn’t mean it that way—”

“I mean, fuck you if you want me to do your job.…”

“No—”

“Just wanted to help.”

“So help.” Kindle slammed the trunk shut. “Let’s not stand here in the pissin’ rain. We’ll come back with a truck. But maybe tomorrow, all right? My leg hurts.”

Joey gazed at him. “You broke it?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“Fell down a mountain.”

“Uh-huh,” Joey said. “You look too old to climb a mountain.” Kindle sighed and took a pen and notepad from his shirt pocket. “Write down your phone number. I’ll call you about the ante

“Told you I’m not doing your work for you.”

“You don’t have to work, goddamn it, you only have to point.”

“I just like the electronics.”

But Joey wrote his number down.

There was a baseball game on TV that night. There had been a long hiatus after Contact, then the season had picked up where it left off. The World Series would run into cold weather, but with all these domed stadiums Kindle supposed that wasn’t a problem.

He had watched all these games. Everything else on TV since Contact had been bizarre and kind of frightening, even such laudable events as the relief flights to the Third World. The food flights had been good, but they had also been operated with scary precision. There was something u

Now the relief flights appeared to have stopped; the implication was that the refugee populations of the world had found some new way to get along… or had “discorporated,” a word Kindle remembered from his youth. Feeding the poor had been a stopgap effort, a bridge to that great unspoken mysterious mille

But baseball went on. The NBA hadn’t started a new season, football was finished, but a decision had been made in some telepathic congress: The World Series would be played out come hell or high water.

Maybe in Spain it was soccer, or in Russia it was hockey or chess or whatever the hell they played over there, but games still mattered. According to Matt, there were still Little League games being played in Buchanan, even some pick-up football on the high school field. Whatever it was people were turning into, they still liked to get out on the turf and chase a ball.

He hadn’t followed baseball since the 1978 World Series, the last time he’d owned a TV. The Yankees took the Dodgers that year, as Kindle recalled. Things had changed since then. He didn’t recognize names. Everybody looked too young. But he had watched the season progress on his hospital Sony, and he was determined to see the end of it.

Tonight it was an AL game, Detroit at New York. He thought Detroit looked good for the Series. He thought it would be a Detroit/Chicago Series, and his money was on Detroit.

The Tigers would take the Cubs, and then Kindle would pack up his possessions and move on.

He spent that night at the hospital, but he wasn’t sick enough to stay longer and he didn’t intend to. It was a charmless place at best. At the same time, it seemed pointless to move back to his cabin. He could get all the isolation he wanted much closer to town.

In the morning he phoned the local realty office. No one answered, but Kindle was ready for that. He knew a guy who worked there, or used to, a guy named Ira who sometimes hired his boat for fishing trips. Kindle reached him at home. Ira’s voice had the detached, bemused quality Kindle had come to expect from a Contactee. Kindle identified himself and came to the point: “Just a question, Ira, seeing as you’re in the business: Are houses free?”

“What do you mean… you want to buy a house?”

“Nope. I just want one. Yesterday I wanted a radio rig and I got one for free. Can I have a house?”

There was a pause. “Well.” Thoughtful. “I know of some empty properties. If you move in, I don’t suppose anybody will mind.”

“You’re shittin’ me!” Kindle couldn’t contain himself.

“Beg pardon?”

“Christ, you’re serious! I can move into any fuckin’ house?”