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I'm in.
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Oct 7, 2021 05:07
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 07:45 |
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Mover The Mover’s brakes squealed, a high and pained sound that carried through the mountain behind the driver’s cabin. Aken gripped the wheel tighter. It took, in his estimation, about three hours to meaningfully decelerate two hundred million tons of moving rock just enough to handle the one-degree decline fifty miles ahead. The massive vehicle groaned onward at a half-mile an hour clip. He spat out the cab window before erupting into a spasm of cough. “Fuckin’ air intakes.” The wind whistled around the cab in response. The isolation out here, miles of grassland both before him and ahead of him, was crippling. He’d allocated a daily scream, a concentrated bestial bellow at poo poo pay, his B.A. in Roman civilization, poor working conditions, shoddy equipment, unsympathetic bosses, his minor in Latin, an objectively topheavy payscale, low tire pressure, the layered bullshit of sedimentary rock, an eastward course of sunchoked day driving, probably coyotes, one degree inclines, one degree declines… Aken screamed long, mournful, and wobbly. He checked his watch, only partially sated. It was just a bit after noon. He sighed. The scream was getting earlier. Then, in the distance, he heard something new, something he hadn’t heard for hundreds of miles. A voice in response. “Hey!” He scrunched up in the cab, cupping his hands around his ears and focusing over the onerous roar of the Mover’s engines. “Hey!” Definitely a voice. He unbuckled his safety harness and got up, then climbed the ladder to the roof of the Mover and looked back over Scott’s Bluffs, currently located near its home in western Nebraska and moving ever so slowly, almost imperceptibly east. Aken squinted into the sun. His mouth went drier as he saw a small cluster of dots, scrabbling down the sloping back of the bluff toward the cab of the Mover. He rushed back down the ladder and to the driver’s locker. He pulled out a large binder and began flipping through it. “Hey! You!” It was closer now. He flipped to the letter ‘S’. It should have been there, somewhere between ‘storm safety’ and ‘strait crossing’, but of course it wasn’t. What to do with a stowaway? “You! I saw you coming outta that cab! I want to talk to you!” The words were clear now, cutting through the wind. Aken gripped the ladder, unsure whether to climb or stuff himself into the driver’s locker. He did not enjoy confrontation. Confrontation peered into the driver’s cabin. The man was old but well-kept, his beard knotted into several thin braids. Aken gave a weak wave. The man glared at him. “You. Driver man. Up here.” Hostage to concern, he climbed up the ladder. It wasn’t just the man on the huge, flat roof of the mover, but a gaggle of men, women, and children. Aken was at a loss for words, so Rothfuss continued. “What in the everloving gently caress is this?” Aken wasn’t sure where to begin. “It’s a Mover,” he said. “Not the truck, dummy. I mean this whole thing.” Aken still wasn’t sure what the man was getting at. After all, the facts of the situation seemed obvious. He stared at braid-beard, who was working himself up into a real mess. “Don’t just stare like some kinda’ heifer and don’t play stupid. You tell me why the hell you’re moving our home!” Aken held up one finger and disappeared down the ladder. He emerged a moment later holding the job contract binder. “Uh, well, Mr., what was it?” Braid-beard tapped his foot. “It’s Rothfuss.” “Well, Mr. Rothfuss and, I presume, clan Rothfuss, we at Albion Logistics have been contracted for the movement of one…” Aken checked the binder. “Scott’s Bluffs, from the state of Nebraska to Illinois, in pursuit of a debt collection claim. All information herein is to be considered sealed and binding.” Aken frowned. Like his boss used to say, “they pay for the thing and we move the thing.” Not an official company slogan, but close enough. Still, the personalization of the whole business was making him fairly uncomfortable. Rothfuss stepped back in shock. “You’re moving the bluff? They told us all that roarin’ and dynamitin’ was to lay down water lines! You’re moving the bluff?” He repeated the phrase a few more times, dumbfounded. Aken groaned internally, then went over the company line. “Albion Logistics is not responsible for the contrivances, arrangements, and suppositions of its locational contractors, sir.” The words sounded hollow, awful. He wasn’t even sure how a company could not be responsible for its own contrivances. Rothfuss looked over his shoulder. The children were tugging on one of the Mover’s smokestacks. The metal cylinder swayed unsteadily. He looked back to Aken. “Okay. You’re moving the bluff. But no one got in touch with us. We’ve been livin’ on the bluff for generations, three entire generations! We’ve got four cabins, a water wheel, and Jonas is building a putt-putt!” Aken surveyed the three generations of Rothfuss milling around the top of the mover. It seemed more Manifest Destiny than an ancestral right to land, but Rothfuss’ argument had shaken him a little. Reluctantly, he looked back to the contract binder and flipped to the red-lettered ‘disputes and claims’ tab. He sighed and read the company line again. “Albion Logistics considers the ‘land’ referred to herein as all inanimate and animate carbon, including flora, fauna, and all structures, improvements, and notions not specifically named.” His mind wandered. Something of the inverse of Rome’s relocation deal with Carthage after the third Punic, about 140 BC? No, must have been closer to 150. Rothfuss had begun to stamp his foot and wave his hands in the air, furious. Aken was deep in thought now, some reptilian instinct to avoid a coming struggle. Probably the ‘freeze’ out of ‘fight’ and ‘flight’. He faintly recalled telling an old college professor that you “couldn’t like, own a mountain, man”. Rothfuss grabbed his wrist and jerked him back to reality. “Well, we refuse. I speak for the Rothfuss family and we demand you turn this thing around, right-quick!” Flustered, Aken flipped to the very back of the binder and pulled out an orange envelope labelled ‘non-binding contingency gratuity’. He peeked inside. Aken decided not to offer Rothfuss the stack of chain buffet coupons. He set the binder down and looked at the old man. His voice was pensive. “I can’t do that, Mr. Rothfuss. They’ll…” What would Albion do, exactly? Fire him? Somehow hold him responsible for the wage-based replacement of two hundred million tons of bluff? Lock him out from driving a smelly, lovely Mover? He studied Rothfuss’ face. Tears were beginning to well at the corners of the old man’s eyes as the Mover ground ceaselessly forward. Aken shrugged and disappeared down into the cab. There was a sudden clanking, a din of grinding gears, and a belch of smoke from the stacks on the roof. The children scattered. A few moments later, Aken climbed back up onto the Mover’s roof. He sat down on the edge, looking over the waving grasses. Rothfuss walked over and sat next to him. “Look, Mr. driver, I know you feel like this is out of your hands, it’s just…” The old man trailed off as the Mover began the hours-long process of coming to a stop. Aken’s voice was soft, barely audible over the decelerating engine of the Mover. “You can’t, like, own a mountain, man.” Rothfuss nodded in understanding. He was silent for a while, then smiled wide and gripped Aken by the shoulder. “So fella, how ‘bout some putt-putt?”
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Oct 9, 2021 03:57
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