Dopecentury XI --- Smoke Over the Horizon
This short fiction is part of Dopecentury, an experimental project where I attempt to channel the aural aesthetics of Dopesmoker into written text. (Dopesmoker is the legendary stoner-doom metal masterpiece by the band Sleep, of which it is said: “the monotony rarely becomes tedious.”) My plan is to listen to the single hour-long track of Dopesmoker while writing each of these “Dopecentury” entries. And repeat that 100 times. See the Dopecentury project page for more details.
One of those greasy-spoon diners that seem ubiquitous to every town in the country. This one located near the center cross-streets of a humped up little town raised up like a wart near the center of a vast expanse of flatland. Out front trucks (mostly trucks) parked head-in along the slanted spaces that lined the flat facades of the one commercial area for miles in any direction. The diner clung to what little remaining gravity the center of the town had to offer, what with its half-dozen shops and the empty building where the small market had been until the grocery store opened at the edge of town.
The diner got busy early, since many dropped by for their first coffee of the day before going to work in the fields, before the sun had even cracked the horizon. It stayed busy through mid-morning as others came in from the fields for their second or third coffee of the day after putting in an initial effort in the early hours to get ahead of the hotter part of the day. By that mid-morning “rush,” the sun had climbed high enough in the sky to cut away the shadows of the commercial district, and the thermometer was rising steadily.
At the counter, the mid-morning men and women stirred pale coffee with spoons of thin stamped metal always bent here and there after an escapade loose in the deep workings of the dishwasher. Some poked at plates of gray eggs and gray toast that left crumbs in the coffee as it made the journey over the cup from plate to mouth.
—You see that smoke up over the west horizon this morning?
A whistling breath through pursed lips before a slurping sip — this to cool the coffee, even though it was never hot after adding the requisite amount of creamer and sugar.
—Ya, what’s going on over there, you think?
—Search me. I was hoping you’d know.
—Too far off to make out anything. Probably just someone burning brush.
—Smoke’s the wrong color, brush wouldn’t be so black, or reach so high in the sky.
—Building fire you think?
—Something’s burning for sure. Could be out on the highway. Rig mighta caught fire, cooked off.
—Been going for hours and hours now though. Franklin was out in the field before dawn this mornin’, said she saw the smoke soon as there were any light to see it by. You think a truck could burn that long? Naw. Not enough fuel, even a fully loaded truck to burn for more than an hour or two, most.
—Well, then whadya make of it? Train’d derail and burn that long.
—Train don’t go over that way, only runs past well south of here.
—Forest fire ya think?
—Andy, ya dumb shit, you lived here yer whole life, you know there’s nothing but fields that way. There ain’t no woods to burn for 300 miles to the west.
—Ya, it ain’t a forest fire. And the smoke’s too big to be a brush fire.
—Yeah, too big for a brush fire.
—He just said that, moron.
—And Franklin’s no idiot. If she said the smoke was up before dawn, then it likely were.
—What about sirens? Anyone hear any emergency vehicles go out?
—Where’s Travis, he’s on the volunteer department. He’d have the scanner on.
—Or shit, anyone heard anything on the radio?
—I’ve had the radio on in the tractor cab all mornin’. There ain’t been nothin’.
—Yeah, but you listen to that syndicated talk-radio shit broadcast out from the coasts. We need local news.
—Local news has been shit for years now. Person can find out anything they want about any goddamn celebrity and who they divorced, but ya can’t find out crap about what’s going on just over the fuckin’ horizon. Hell in a goddamn handbasket.
—As you say, though, been that way a long time now.
—Might be some kinda hell just outta our view to the west as we speak. What would we know if it?
—Someone outta drive over that way and take a look.
—Yeah, someone.
—Gotta get back out in the field after this coffee though. Tractor ain’t gonna pilot itself.
A rough, thick index finger taps each finger of the other hand in order. —Ain’t brush, ain’t forest or wood, ain’t train, ain’t truck. Still could be a house or building.
—Smoke’s gotta be a mile in the air too.
—Thick, black, greasy stuff too.
—Sure gotta be something.
—House or building. That’s all that’s left.
—Yeah, but who or what?
—What if that shit’s toxic? Might blow over here and poison us.
—Or the crops.
—Pretty thick and black.
—Greasy too.
—Yeah, greasy is the word for it alright. Like it could get all over everything, leave a thick coat of somesuch poison grime.
—Could be, could be. Could also blow out the other way. Might be the next state’s problem by morning.
—Weather usually moves in from the west though.
The bell on the door jingled and another tanned, jeaned, and suspedered man just like the others came in and sat at the bar.
—Carl.
—Boys. Ma’am.
—Seen that smoke up over in the west?
—Yes I did. Came on in here because of it, in fact. I was just out that way. Comin’ back along the state highway, I passed musta been a’ hundred patrol cars, mostly state troopers. They was all lined up along the road where it turns off, and I could see where that smoke was rising up from a whole compound of buildings on fire. I asked one of those guys what was going on and he says they raided a massive dope farm up there.
—Raid? The troopers set the whole thing on fire?
—Naw, the people up there runnin’ the dope farm did. Saw the troopers comin’ or got tipped off or somethin’. Tropper said they had the whole place booby-trapped, set up with incendiary devices — big tanks of gasoline that sprayed everywhere. Said they knew the troopers were comin’ and the people up there set the thing off.
—That’s some crazy shit right there.
—Trooper said their plan mighta worked too. They had musta been two-hundred cops, but no fire equipment. The whole place went up fast and the troopers could do hell-all nothing to stop it without the fire department. Took them at least an hour to even start working on it. By that time, trooper says, any evidence probably burned right up.
—So they’ll get away with it?
—Get away with what? They certainly just burned up their whole goddamn inventory.
—Imagine your whole crop going up in flames…
—They’ll have nothin left after this. Almost make ya feel sorry for them.
—But they ain’t goin to prison.
—You gotta admire it in some way too: burn the whole fuckin’ thing down.
—A last stand.
—Right, a last stand. In some ways I wish I could be so lucky.