Waste Not, Want Not, Chapter III

According to the map he was to drive for nine miles till he came to the ranch house, which had been remodeled and restored to tip top condition.
As he topped a rise a number of ram shackle houses came into view. Several had smoke curling slowly skyward from their chimneys. No people were in sight but a faint light flickered within each building. They looked well lived in. In the fading sunlight he could make out the outline of two large gardens, each lush with various kinds of crops.
A little further down the road he came by a barn and he could see horses. And he saw cattle here and there as he continued. That wasn’t all. There were fields that had been harvested in recent weeks, some of cotton and of some sorghum, he guessed by the detritus left on scene.
“Squatters!” he uttered to himself. “This surely complicates matters.”
The road wound its way through some large patches of brush and followed a creek bed. The shacks were soon out of sight. Before long he came to the ranch house.
It was a fairly large house, unassuming from the outside. There was a night light on over the porch which was partly enclosed and screened in and ran all the way around the house. The one story structure was raised from the ground on four foot piers and the skirt around the bottom was covered over with wood siding matching the wall exterior. Paul pulled to a stop and went into his new house for the first time.
He was excited and anxious to see the interior. He turned on the light and was pleased with what he saw. The living room was
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large and spacious with high ceilings. The floor was hardwood with a few throw rugs from exotic locales. The walls were adorned with a few of Paul’s many hunting trophies, the head of a lion, shot in Kenya, a jaguar taken in Brazil, an elk from Alaska and others. The wall siding looked like the interior of a log cabin. It was actually 2x6’s which milled down to a half round shape and then installed. There was a large stone fireplace, a big screen TV (of course there was dish outside.) The kitchen adjoined the living room and was well appointed with modern appliances. There were three bedrooms and two baths. All in all, a very comfortable country home.
It wasn’t late so Paul decided to fix something to eat and relax for a while. He was troubled by the people obviously living on the land. “Who the hell are they?” he wondered. “I’ll get to the bottom of it.”
He opened the refrigerator and peered in. Everything he had specified was in there, orange juice, milk, vegetables,, dark Heineken, fruit, plain yogurt and others of his favorite foods. He looked in the pantry and found it well stocked, as was the liquor cabinet. He selected an entree from his stockpile of frozen dinners and popped it into the microwave. From the liquor cabinet he took a bottle of Tanqueray gin and a bottle of Schweppes tonic water and mixed himself a strong drink with a twist of lime.
After he had eaten he sat down in the plush recliner and had another drink and just took it easy. He wanted to get a feel for the place. Though it would soon be Thanksgiving the weather wasn’t cold at all. He had opened several windows and felt a soft, cool breeze blowing in from the south east. He didn’t turn on the TV or the stereo, he just wanted to listen to the silence.
Through the windows he could see the dark shadows cast by
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the many oak and mesquite trees and he listened to the soft sighs as the wind rustled through the branches and stirred the tall grass. The moon was now high in the night sky and sometimes broke through the scattered cloud cover which streamed by at an amazing rate. This alternative silver light and darkness cast an unearthly aspect on the fantastic shapes created by the twisted branches and clumps of leaves.
His mood turned somber as he sat there watching the night sky. He thought about the fact that his family wouldn’t even know where he was. “They really don’t care anyway,” he thought.
He and his wife were long divorced. She had been well taken care of in their divorce settlement, had been re-married and then widowed. She was now quite well off.
His daughter was somewhere in Washington state, living with a worthless boyfriend and a bunch of old hippies. They had been estranged for a longtime but she still received an annual payment from her substantial trust fund. “No, they probably won’t think about me at all,” he thought.
Now his son and he had been close but he was gone too. He had followed in his father’s footsteps and graduated from Annapolis and gone into the Navy as a gunnery officer. “Paul Jr. What a good looking man he had been!” But he was gone, killed in Vietnam on board the cruiser Newport News when it suffered a massive explosion in one of its gun turrets. “That useless goddamn war!” he cursed. Soon he regained his self control. He had already grieved enough for his son and it was long in the past.
Paul didn’t allow himself to feel self pity or maudlin sentimentality for long. He didn’t get where he was by being weak.
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There was no place in his life for anything but self reliance. He scorned religion and practiced a form of social and economic Darwinism in his private and business life. Though he certainly did not think much of far eastern spirituality he did have his own form of meditation, something he had arrived at on his own however, not from any study or TM sessions.
Paul practiced this now as he sat in his easy chair. He harnessed his iron will and shut off his mind, his internal dialogue with himself. He had found that when he did this it put his mind at rest and he opened himself to the world as it existed for him. It helped him to absorb his surroundings, to feel what might be confronting him. He would remain in this state until he either fell asleep or roused himself for some purpose.
So tonight Paul went into his meditative state, he wouldn’t describe it as a trance, and took in his surroundings. Soon he found that he just couldn’t maintain it. “What’s wrong tonight?” he wondered. He felt nervous and apprehensive. “Must be those squatters that is bothering me.” He decided to have a nightcap and take a walk outside. Out on the porch he breathed in the moist night air and stepped into the yard and walked out into the dark.