Summer 2009

Interview with the future #27:

Grampa When-we

Unnamed boy, Richfield , late 21st century

By Diana B. Swift

Author's note: I met and befriended this child when I was traveling through what is currently the de-industrializing Great Lakes region, sometime in the late 21st or early 22nd century. When I promised to tell his mother that I'd accompanied him on a scavenging trip, he opened up and started telling me about his life and his dreams. What follows is some of what I was able to record:

My Grampa drives me crazy. I call him Grampa When-we, because hes always goin When-we did this. When-we had that. Blablabla.

See, me and Danny was at the plant yesterday. We go there even tho Mom says we cant because its such a cool place, some a them cars you can still see the old paint on em and if you rub it with a rag it still shines good and we jimmy the doors and you can sit inside and you can just drive, like Grampas always talkin about, turnin the wheel even though it dont turn but you can feel like the wheels is turnin and everythin is going by fast and blurry like when your on your bike, except theres no wind, like Grampa says, just cool air when its hot and hot air when its cold. I could spend all day there, and I even did one time, me and Danny and some a thuther kids when we was spose to be scavengin in the old town but we run off.

Roberto tried to whup me when I come back but I ducked and ran and Mom said: "Leave off Roberto that dont change him none and you know it." So I got away that time, but then for a long time after that Roberto was on me every day like as if he owned me or sumthin. It pisses me off because who does he think he is, he aint my dad! But I just got to let it go. Mom says: “You know you got to help Roberto, or how are we gonna eat? Do you think we can just go down to the Shop-Rite and pick us up a bag of groceries ?” Just like Grampas always talkin about.

I seen that big old building all covered around with grass now that Grampa says they used to go to, with muhnee, which he showed me some too, dirty green paper it was, and says they just put it down on a long table where a lady took it, and then they could just take away whatever they wanted! Dint have to hunt nuthin, or scavenge nuthin, or dig in the dirt for nuthin neither. Now its just rats live there, cuz only things left that aint been scavenged out of there long ago is only fit for them to eat. “How did you have all that muhnee anyway, Grampa?” I says. “Where did you git it?” “They used to give it to me every month,” he says. “I drove them big trucks, dint I? When we had trucks…” See what I mean? Its always when-we this, when-we that! He drives me crazy.

What else me and Danny like to do is go to the main road and see if we can actually see us a car that runs. The Holding Company Presadent of Mitcheegin has one, and oncet we did see him Im sure because he had the guns pointin out the back, and it was big and black and shiny like we been told and it roared like, like—I don't know what, like the wind comin through a door when a storm hits. It was probly about the mos beautiful thing I ever seen. I been looking to see it again ever since, but he dont drive out much cuz Roberto says if it ever breaks down theyll be on him like ants on a apple and thats all she wrote —whatever that means.

But what hes talkin about is the Wolf Packs a course. We got to sweat blood to get us enough bullets to go shoot a cow, but the Wolf Packs has been livin in the hills and gunnin for the Aitch Cee Pee since before I was born probly, and they never seem to run shy of bullets. “It wasnt no Wolf Packs when we had the po-leece and the jails,” Grampa says. “The Aitch Cee Pee has a jail,” I says to him. “That aint nuthin, boy,” he says. “Ever town useta have a jail, when we had towns. We had the County Jail, and the State Perzons and the Fedral Perzons. You even think about hurtin somebody theyd lock you up. Thats what it used to be.” “Even little kids?” “If they done wrong.” “But you always said that everythin was more freed then, Grampa. How was it freed if they was all lockin up the little kids?” “Dont git fresh, boy,” Grampa says. “Or Ill give you a taste of it.” Thing is, I wernt bein fresh, I rilly wanted to know, but you cant git nuthin out of Grampa when he gits like that.

Well, its hard work scavenging, cuz Robertos such a hard-ass and we hafta go farther each time to find anythin, and mos of it we lose anyway if we cant figure a way to find someone to bring it somewheres around where we can pedal the bike-cart to. And truth be told it aint no fun huntin cows and pigs neither. At least I never liked it much. But Sally is the only one still gits to go to school. Mom said: “We can only send one, so we got to pick, and Sally at least puts her mind to it, which you never did.”

She stays in Aitch Cee Aitch Cue in Deetroyt now and she'll be trained to be a Franchise Manager, so Mom says maybe at least weel be able to stay in rooms in the Company Park when shes done with schooling and got her place.

“Oncet we coulda just took this whole home and moved it there,” Grampa says. “How do you like that? They was called mo-bile homes then, an thats cuz we could just pick em up and go wherever we wanted to.” He showed me the old car hook-up hidden under the cement blocks and the thick creeper thats covered it all, and I try to pitcher us driving a house down the road, but it just makes me laugh. Anyway I would rather to have one of them houses like behind the wall in Richfield Franchise, with bricks and big winders, but you gotta be a personal friend of the Franchise Owner or the Aitch Cee Pee hisself to get one a them. Mom says: “You just be thank your Dad left this old tin can behind at least when he run off on us.”

What else I like at the plant is that we found these big old ramps we can ride our bikes along, and they go right down to the lake, and right out over the lake and Grampa says they usedta load them cars onto big old boats like the size of a building and the boats would cross the lake and dump them cars on the other side, and theyd be carried on steel tracks pulled by a gigantic engine all the way to the Oshun if they wanted em to go there. The way they usedta move everthin around! “So whyd they stop, Grampa?” I ast him. “Why cant they move nuthin around like that no more?” “They just ran outta gas, boy!” he said, and he laughed like that was the biggest joke in the world, but he seen I dint git it, so he points to the lamp on the table and he says, “Boy, what happens when theres no more corn oil in that lamp?” “It goes out,” I says. “Well, thats it, aint it?” says Grampa. “No oil, no light. No engines. Nuthin.” “But—“ says I— “Dont but me no more a your buts, boy. Damn, if youd put your butt to work half as much as you put it into to ‘but this' and ‘but that,' we might have ourselfs a decent meal now an agin.”

But see, I know some engines still work. Sally says in the Company Park they got little cars that takes em around without any pedaling, and she says they got buildings with a lot of rooms that they pump hot air into in the winter, so that you dont have to wear no coat, and it aint from a kerosene or wood stove neither. They got lectric light for two hours a day, she says, and they can watch Tee Vee which we saw oncet too—the Company men brought it around one time when I was little so everybody in the Franchise could hear sumthin from the new Aitch Cee Pee and they dint have to say it over agin at every place. But Sally says their Tee Vee is different; its got funny stories on it, with people wearing clothes like from Grampas day.

“I know all about that,” Grampa said when I told him. “I watched all them shows. We usedta watch it 24 hours a day if we wanted to. Watched the Super Bowl ever goddamn year, when we had the football. We done lost all that now. We aint got shit now.” I feel like sayin whats so super about a old bowl anyhow, and we still got the football, we play it out on the land around the dead mall—you aint no kinda scavenger at all if you cant git yourself at least a coupla balls to play with whenever you want to so whats the big deal? but I know it dont make no difference. Grampa When-we just thinks about then; he dont care nuthin about how it is now except compared to then. I guess because then he had sumthin to do and muhnee and all that, and now he jus sits around and cant do nuthin but smoke the cigs that Roberto brings home and cough and blink his eyes that are all red and rub em with his fingers that are all yellow and Roberto whispers to Mom “If he gits rilly sick you know what I gotta do dont you?” but jeez what am I spose to do? I dint make it like that.

I would like to see them funny Tee Vee stories, but Sally says they kinda dont make no sense without you have the rest of it. She says most the stories are about po-leece and cars and muhnee and things that aint around no more. Some have the sound of people laughing fit to kill theirselves in the background but now nobody gits the jokes, like what Grampa said about the gas. Sally just likes to look at all the clothes they had, and the way the women done their hair up that musta taken all kinda stuff to put into it that they dont have no more. She comes back oncet a year now, when the Company men send all the trainees home for a week, and we sit aroun and she tells me how it is in the Company Park . “Do you rilly like it there?” I ast her oncet. “Well, its better than pullin potatoes or sluttin aint it? Which is all a girl can do here. Ho-in or ho-rin, thats what Richfield has to offer.” And she laughs, and I laugh, even though I sort of dont know what ho-rin is but I think I might know.

I tell you what I would rilly like most. I would like to put a engine on my bike and take off down the big Limit-Axes Road that dont have no cars or carts or nuthin on it now and drive myself all the way to the coast to see the Oshun. “A two-day drive,” Grampa says. “Thats all it was oncet. Daynahalf if ya put yer foot down. I seen the Oshun many times.” Here its only the dead plant, and the dead mall, and the empty buildings in the old town with the rats you cant eat, and Roberto takin off his belt whenever I try to do anythin I rilly want to, and Mom sayin: “How we gonna eat if you dont git out there and find us some food?” Last pig we caught I hadta hole it down while Roberto cut its throat and I looked at it in the eyes by mistake and I cant say exactly what I saw there except I dint never want to see it again and I aint never wanted to eat no pig since then. I jus wanna be shut of it all. This place. They say I cant go nowhere, theres nowhere to go, theres the Wolf Packs and the Aitch Cee Pee's men watchin the roads anyhow, but I keep thinkin about how Grampa said it aint so far if you just had a engine that worked.

So Im lookin around every chance I git now, to see what maybe I can put together. I been lookin at the old cars in the plant, see if I can figger how they usedta go. Grampa knows but he wont tell me nuthin, hes just angry alla time growlin about his when-we this and when-we that. That dont speak to me. I cant go back to then. And I cant stay here neither. I got to go ahead. I dont know why I got to see that Oshun, I jus know I do.

And I dont even know what Ill do when I git to it, zackly, but I guess Ill jus have to find that out when Im there.

Diana B. Swift, our roving correspondent from the future, is an avatar, and so her personal information is sketchy. Every so often she journeys Elsewhere, and comes back with a report.