The Harvest

“Any empty one, I suppose.”

He recalled Joey Commoner’s remark about an ante

“Ocean view?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“I can give you a few addresses.…” Kindle fumbled for his pen.

He spent the next day looking at properties. By mid-afternoon he’d picked one out: A two-bedroom frame house in Delmar Estates, a mildly upscale part of town, overlooking Buchanan and a northerly piece of the bay. The house was empty and unfurnished.

He moved in his single piece of property—the radio transceiver, still boxed. He put it in the middle of the living room floor.

The house had an empty-house smell. He guessed the broadloom had been cleaned before the property went on the market. Maybe the walls had been painted. He breathed in, breathed out.

He had never lived in such a place and never really wanted to… but he guessed a month or so here might be tolerable. Although, at the moment, there was nothing to sit on but the floor.

He drove to the Sears at the nearest mall and found the doors standing open but no one on duty at the cashiers’ stations. What else? He realized with some startlement that he could equip the house with any furniture he happened to like, price being no object. He’d always kind of admired these imitation-leather sofas, for instance. He tried one out, right there in the deserted Home Furnishings department. It was like sitting on a stuffed lizard. Sumptuous but probably sticky in hot weather.

But this was all academic—there was no way he could transport any of this stuff, not at the moment, not without grinding his bad leg down to bloody splinters. He sighed and moved on to the patio furniture. Two folding chairs and a chaise lounge, just about his speed. He tucked them under his arm and carried them to the car.

He went back for fresh clothes—a pair of jeans and an armload of cotton T-shirts and underwear.

It had been a long day and he was begi

It was nearly dusk by the time he arrived back at the house.

Electricity, it turned out, wasn’t a problem. The refrigerator was humming vigorously. He switched on the kitchen lights and began putting away the food.

He noticed the wire shelves in the refrigerator were barely cool, and he frowned and checked the freezer. No frost. Not even a trace. Was that significant? Maybe it was a frost-free unit; Kindle had heard of such appliances, though he had never owned one.

But the refrigerator was humming like a son of a bitch. When he was here earlier… had he noticed that sound?

Maybe not.

Maybe, this afternoon, the electricity hadn’t been turned on. He plugged in the phone and called Ira. “Ira, I found a place.”

“I know,” Ira said cheerfully. “Up on Delmar. I was the listed agent on that property, by the way. Good view. I hope you’ll be happy there.”

“Pardon me, Ira, but how the fuck do you know where I picked to live?”

There was a pause. “The neighbors saw you leave some belongings. We assumed you were moving in.”

“What, you talked to the neighbors?”

“Well. In a way.”

By voodoo telegraph, in other words. “So tell me… did the neighbors also talk to the power company?”

“Well, Tom. Everybody more or less talks to everybody.”

“Well, Ira, doesn’t that more or less scare the shit out of you?”

“No. But I apologize if we alarmed you.”

“Think nothing of it.” He put the phone down in a hurry. Unfolded a chair and sat in it.

He’d forgotten to pick up a TV set. Was there a game on tonight? He couldn’t remember.

Kindle went to the kitchen, where the light was brighter, and unpacked the transceiver. Ungainly object. He tried to read the manual, but it was written in some language only theoretically English. “Do not allow to contact with moisture or heavily wet.” Words to live by.

He guessed Joey Commoner would be able to figure it out.

November was rainy; he postponed the chore of erecting an ante

He ferried down some items from his cabin, mainly tools and books. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire had been sitting where he left it last August and was a little musty, since he’d left the windows open, but still readable. A trudge through Gibbon might not be too bad, given all this rainy cool weather. Then on to Madame Bovary.

The Tigers took the American League pe

He called Joey when the skies cleared for a couple of days.

“Been waiting to hear from you,” Joey complained. “I got a lot of tower parts from Radio Shack. And a beam ante

Kindle gave the kid his new address. “You can transport all that?”

“Took a van out of the lot at Harbor Ford.”

Must do that myself one of these days, Kindle thought. “Are we talking hard physical labor here?”

“Some,” Joey said. “Bring beer,” Kindle said. “You got it.”

Kindle had worked erecting TV towers back in the sixties, and he remembered enough of that experience to temper Joey’s recklessness. He used a power drill with a masonry bit to anchor the ante

They had the tower stabilized and the ante

Joey stood back from his work. “This ought to give us good access to the twenty-meter band, which I guess would be the busiest band under the circumstances, though who knows?”

“I sure as hell don’t.”

Joey had taken off his shirt during the final guying of the tower. As they entered the house, Kindle read the tattoo on his right bicep. Neat blue letters.

WORTHLESS, it said.

“You believe that?” Kindle asked.

Joey shrugged his shirt back on and began fiddling with the back of the transceiver. Kindle cracked a beer, waiting for an answer that didn’t come. This would have been a good time to order in a pizza, he thought, except nobody delivered anymore. He wondered who in Buchanan had eaten the last delivery pizza.

He persisted, “It just seems like a strange thing to write on yourself.”

Joey put his head up from behind the transceiver. “Since when do you give a shit?”

“Don’t get hostile.” Anyway, Kindle’s attention had refocused on the di