Days of Plastic and Yearning

CHAPTER 4:

Officer Mack Justice of the local police department had some questions. A new supplier of heroin had come on the scene, selling purer dope and causing overdoses all over the county. The perps in lockup could be overheard saying that the new folks were dangerous, too, but shut right up when any questions were asked.

So, for answers about drugs, Officer Justice had to go to the only dealer who might talk to him: a hippie goat currently barn-surfing at the De la Vega farm who went by the name Living Deliciously. Living (or “LD,” he’d respond to either) was a kinda-sorta confidential informant in the sense that he’d tell Officer Justice what was what on the D/L; that is, if he wasn’t too high on his own supply or too interested in yanking a police officer’s chain to provide any useful info.

“You holding, Living?” It was sometimes easier to get information out of Living Deliciously if you shook him down a little.

“Officer Mack, you should know that, A, you don’t have probable cause to ask that question, second, I’ve got some constitutional amendment rights that mean I don’t have to tell you, and some number less than six, you aren’t going to arrest me anyway, because you need something.” Oh, this was going to be an irritating one; this was one of those times where it wasn’t clear whether Living was stoned or screwing with him. He’d look Living in the eyes to try to tell, but you couldn’t read anything with those weird goat pupils; all you’d do is make yourself unsettled.

“Fine, Living, fine. I need to know about heroin.”

“That is not my jam, Officer Mack, and there is nothing smack will get you that -- if, hypothetically, I had access to Schedule 1 controlled substances in sticky green plant form -- some of my better bud could not do for you without becoming a drooling, addicted mess. Don’t handle smack, don’t handle oxy, don’t ever sell anyone more than a tab of E at a time, I mean hypothetically. But that stuff, and cocaine, obviously -- not interested in making people more hyped up -- nowhere near it.”

“I got a bunch of new bodies in the cold room at county hospital, Living, full of new drugs from a new place, and although you’ve made it clear that you are the most ethical of street pharmacists-”

“Thank you kindly, officer”

“-you keep one fuzzy ear to the ground about these things.”

“This stuff is out of your league, Mack Justice. You’d do best to steer clear.”

“Try me, Living.”

“Nuh-uh, Officer Mack. You don’t carry a gun.”

“I’ve got one in the car if I need it.” Mack wasn’t going to go into why he went without a sidearm, not with Living Deliciously; he had enough trouble telling the story to the Chief so he could keep the vow he made so many years before in Chicago. The Chief didn’t quite understand, but until recently, crime was low in the county, and it wasn’t like Mack was averse to taking the shotgun out of the patrol car’s top rack if the need arose. He just wouldn’t put a gun on his hip. Ever again.

“You need to pack if you’re going after the Crimson Circle, Mack. And you shouldn’t. No one’s going to back your play, and they are not to be messed with.”

“Who are the Crimson Circle, Living?”

“Okay, that was dumb of me to say, but I like you, Mack. And I’m pretty sure that if they torture you, you won’t give me up.” Living sounded genuinely afraid, something Mack had never heard before, and was thrown off by, especially the way goats have that weird timbre. “So, the Crimson Circle is what happens when some Mexican cartel dudes, some yakuza, some Russian bratva, and some Dixie Mafia types all team up and get religion together.”

“Religion? Like, Jesus?”

“Ha, right, that would be good. Even straight Malverde worship would be good. No, this is Manson-level stuff, Officer Mack. They all decided that Malverde, Sammael the Poison Angel, some Japanese Buddhist death god, and some ancient Russian death god -- they’re all aspects of some common destroyer deity, this nihilist oneness, some sort of non-tentacled Cthulhu who is going to destroy everything. And the best way to live is to be his advance team.”

“What?”

“It’s a freaking death cult, man. They literally believe the world is going to end and probably deserves it, so they deal opioids to give people ‘the easy death.’ But if you get in their way or try to stop them, you get ‘the hard death,’ and from what I hear about the Wilson murder, that’s no joke.”

“Bud Wilson was stabbed in a bar fight gone bad.”

“Did you see the body, Officer Mack?”

“It wasn’t my case, so-”

“So you didn’t. When Officer Jenny saw what happened to Bud, she called Chief Steggs directly, because she had no idea what do with a murder victim who was in so many parts so spread out over the field near McTucky’s. And Chief Steggs is a real fan of doing things without, say, undue attention.”

“You’re saying Chief Steggs covered up a brutal murder by a drug-dealing multinational non-denominational death cult operating in rural Texas.”

“I’m not saying he covered it up, man, Steggs is real people even if he’s got a stick up his butt. He’s probably working the case still. But he’s doing it on the down low, quiet and slow and hoping the Crimson Circle has moved on.”

“But they haven’t.”

“No they have not, Officer Mack.”

“How do I know this isn’t you being paranoid off some bad weed?” The tingle at his hip was back. Sure, the insane stories of a pot-smoking, vaguely employed farm animal sounded like fantasy, and he certainly wouldn’t have trusted any of the talking animals on the streets of Chicago, but the sense that death was near, and the overwhelming desire to draw first and strike against it, told him different. Living Deliciously was telling the truth. Something horrible had come to town.

“I know when I’m tripping, Officer Mack. Is this something you’re going to chase down?”

“You know I have to, Living.”

“Get a gun, Officer Mack. I don’t do violence but you are going to walk that path.”

CHAPTER 3:

Helena De la Vega had married the handsomest, richest man in town. That, and the good fortune of nature, had conspired so that she had been called “the lovely Helena” from high school, probably even as she was at college and grad school, and through to the present, at both society charity events and when she met parents at parent-teacher conferences. 

“Oh, you’re that Mrs. De la Vega,” they’d often say, instead of “how is my child doing in second grade?” “It’s wonderful to meet the lovely Helena.”

When she knew she was returning to her hometown, Helena made sure her Master’s in Education specialized in the needs of communities like hers, but no one seemed to care about the effort. School was important for the smart ones, to be tolerated for the future farmhands and retail workers, and “the lovely Helena” wasn’t expected to improve that condition, but it sure was nice to meet the wife of the richest man in town, especially since he was so much less...was “sinister and evil” too unfair?...than his father. 

Serafin opposed his son’s marriage to Helena only to the extent that Serafin had a medieval monarch’s desire for offspring, and knew, through a knowledge of human nature that he himself did not possess, that Helena was going to want more than just to be a housewife and descendant factory. But it made his son look good to marry someone so pretty, and therefore Serafin was content to be passive-aggressive about the lack of grandsons daily for several years until his pancreas finally, in an act of self-sacrifice for the greater good, decided to turn cancerous and kill him.

Still no grandkids five years on, though. It’s not that she couldn’t or didn’t want, it’s just that...

Well, she couldn’t put her finger on it exactly. It’s not like she’d fallen out of love with Hector, just that there was a distance between them. Hector didn’t seem to notice, with his horse riding and pretending that all there was to farm management was pinching a clump of soil near a row of sugar beets and rubbing it between his fingers while the administrative staff he inherited from Serafin told him whatever the good news was. Bad news was for her, actually; somehow she’d become the executive of De la Vega Holdings a year or so after Serafin died. The old man’s people knew his son’s limitations, and put a piece of paper in front of him to sign, which only confirmed their low opinion of him.

Which wasn’t to say Hector was stupid, or even naive. He was just...selectively curious about the world. He’d been born into a life where he lacked nothing due to no effort on his part, and he liked that state of affairs. Hector was smart enough to know how not to threaten his gravy train; he never over-partied or over-spent or tried to impose a new idea on the business. But if it wasn’t fun, he tended to let that state of affairs roll off of him to get picked up by someone else. And sometimes that was Helena, although she wasn’t sure that Hector was paying enough attention to understand that.

It wasn’t fun anymore. And it wasn’t clear what would make it fun or even not a chore again. Leaving wasn’t really an option; leave wealth and influence and a husband with a six-pack for what? Teaching in a public school somewhere else without those things? Not worth it. 

CHAPTER 2:

Old MacDonald had a farm, and when he wanted to retire 15 years ago, his kids were all happy with office jobs in the big city, so he sold it to Robert Hernandez, who isn’t yet old, except in the eyes of teenagers. 

Robert Hernandez’s grandparents died from spraying pesticides on another man’s farm. His parents worked hard at crummy service industry jobs so Robert wouldn’t have to work on someone else’s farm.

And now Robert was finding that his own farm, the one he intended as the apotheosis of his grandparents’ striving, was going to kill him. 

Not directly -- regardless of what IARC said about glyphosate, his exposure as owner of the farm was low enough that it wasn’t statistically likely to be a problem. And it wasn’t the GMOs -- Robert was skeptical of claims that GMOs were dangerous, although the genetically-altered bipedal livestock he got on discount from a biotech firm that went bankrupt were unsettling to look at and often prone to strange behavior.  His mare Fanny was at least only obsessed with Southern Living, and was therefore great to ask to “artfully” arrange the hay bales around the farm. 

While Robert wished it was a phase created by reading a copy of Jacobin in Barnes & Noble, his pig Gompers was still going on and on about transitioning society to anarcho-communism and “breaking the capitalist wheel.” Well, at least regarding the Hernandez Farm, Gompers would find the wheel broken if the soybeans didn’t come in significantly over average yield this year. 

Robert had not anticipated how, even while doing everything by the book, farming was, as one crop insurance adjuster told him, “the most expensive form of legalized gambling.” Some years he got enough to pay back the seed and fertilizer company loans. Most years, so far, he hadn’t quite, and it was adding up, like his blood pressure. 

He had genetically-modified farm animals doing farmhand work now because he couldn’t afford a human workforce. Fanny was the most reliable, and being a horse did the work of several men, but training them up and keeping them from eating the product took time Robert just didn’t have. If this wasn’t a blockbuster season, Robert would have to sell to Old MacDonald’s son, or more accurately, Philip MacDonald & Associates Agricultural Real Estate Trust #5 LLC. 

Or he could sell to Hector De la Vega. Which, all things told, might be more humiliating.

Hector De la Vega, whose ancestors farmed the same land granted to them by the Spanish crown in the 17th Century. Who now ran an agritourism operation connected to a certified organic farm that had threatened to sue Robert and many of the other neighboring farmers for “GMO drift” as a prelude to offering to buy them out. That wasn’t Hector’s doing, mind you; he wasn’t a clever or cunning man, although he was good with horses and apparently in growing organic sugar beets. It was his father’s people, lawyers and corporate types executing the grasping, ceaseless greed of Hector’s father, Serafin De la Vega, a soulless man now five years dead but no less able to terrorize this small Texas county. If Robert didn’t trust that Serafin always stayed just on the right side of the law, he’d suspect sabotage on the farm.

But as dopily guileless as Hector was, Robert hated to sell him the farm and let Serafin win from beyond the grave. Maybe it was better to sell to the corporate types, let them reinstitute modern sharecropping but deny a dead man some satisfaction.

CHAPTER 1:

There was no jetway at the small Texas airport. Richard Dickstein, Jr., D.V.M. walked down the airplane’s steps into a blast of hot wind. He didn’t want to be back in this small part of nowheresville, Texas. He didn’t want to be working with his father at Hertz & Dickstein Large Animal Medicine.

But due to an unexpected dip in consumer meat-eating habits due to a vegan celebrity chef, the job at Cargill that Dick Dickstein thought he had an offer in hand for had vaporized entirely. Having put all of his eggs into a totally non-egg-laying-animal basket, Dick had no choice to return home to his smug dad and the farm town he hoped he would never see again.

And then there was Meggy. Dick hated that he was so ambivalent about her. They’d been together for what, six years now? And she wasn’t pushing for a ring or even a commitment to propose -- but that just made Dick feel worse. Meggy deserved someone who felt more for her than Dick felt about his new job; that is, better than not having it at all. Dick was comfortable with Meggy, sure, but he couldn’t honestly say there was love there. Dick didn’t even think she loved him so much as wanted a human connection too much to try for better. But maybe that was projection. She seemed happy enough getting off the plane into the wave of sauna air from over the scrubland. She’d quit her job doing some sort of ad sales for an internet company -- not that it was really a job to keep; he could see that it was wearing the edges off of her chipper demeanor -- to follow Dick into cow country.

Dick wondered if this could work, if he could settle down with Meggy and make a life for himself looking after his neighbors’ kids’ farm animals like his dad, with kids and a mortgage and-