My boots squeak on the snow while I’m walking to the bus stop. People clear their sidewalks, but there’s enough left to tell. And when the snow starts squeaking like that, you know it’s at least ten below zero. Real temperature, not a windchill number.

Nobody is glueing up any posters at these temperatures. There’s still some chalk and spraypaint going. I’ve developed a vague fondness for the Medicare ones.

Vee still climbs onto her bicycle, the big fat tire bike. And off she goes! I don’t know how she does it. That’s too much virtue for me. I stick to the bus.

People at the office are a little subdued. It’s hard to forget how hard life outside would be. If you forget, you’ll remember when you see a squirrel, or one of the occasional rabbits. Even Cooper doesn’t play games with this kind of weather. He seeks four walls and a roof.

* * *

This time of year we make more bean stews and soups and goulashes. I didn’t use to know about soup, but I learned. Also, I drink big mugs of black tea. Vee still needs her coffee.

“Vee, where are my other boots?” My normal pair of boots had picked up snowmelt, and were drying by the heater.

“In the magic closet.”

Sure enough, there they are – under everything else, next to the bags of rice. It’s amazing how much stuff we have crammed into that closet.

Among other things, there are four bags of rice stacked in there, fifty pounds each, with a five gallon bucket and the bag we’re currently using on top. That’s for emergencies. You need an absolute minimum of 1500 Calories to live. That’s one pound of carbs a day. I mean, you’ll go down to skin and bones, but you’ll live.

If things go bad, 200 pounds of rice means, what, three extra months of life for Vee and me? Except that it wouldn’t, of course. There are too many people we’d have to share with. How much would we even try to keep for ourselves? Half?

I don’t know. The only thing I know is that it’s better to have it, than not have it.

Anyway, the rice stays good for years, and we go through it.

* * *

We were in bed, listening to the quiet that comes after a heavy snowfall outside. The smell of coconut potato curry permeated the apartment. I was nice and full, so the smell wasn’t going to keep me from sleeping.

“I like being indoors,” I said.

“Ey!” she said. “Give me more covers. You take it all!”

“That is so untrue. I have barely anything.”

She pulled, and I was left with a bit of sheet and an edge of the cover.

“Sometimes I stay awake worrying,” I said, holding onto my edge with an iron grip, “what would happen if I got sick and couldn’t work.”

“I will take care of you. Only if you don’t steal the covers!” she said.

“And I worry about my parents back in Portland. Everyone gets older. My Dad has had some health problems in the past. What if they need taking care of? I’d have to move back there. Or Evelyn would have to move back. Or else they would have to come here.” The tension on the cover increased, and I tightened my grip.

“How about you,” I asked, “would you move to Portland with me?”

She turned towards me. The tension on the cover relaxed.

“Food service, I can work anywhere,” she said, considering the question. “Maybe it is possible. But I have been in all of the places. Minnesota is best! They should come here.”

“Well, that’s what I think,” I said.

“Bah, everything is fine.” She rolled away, and pulled on the cover again. “Calmati. Go to sleep.”

“What about your parents? Will you go back to Italy if they need help?”

“My brother, you know, he died, because of the motorcycle. My parents, they are not good to me. So now I am here. Besides, my parents, if they need help, they get help. In Italy, it is not so much a problem. Is not like here.”

“That would be nice.” I lay staring at the ceiling. Would I have trouble sleeping? . . . Luckily, sleep came.

* * *

The big lake is frozen deep. Snow blankets the ice, blanketing any sounds. It is silent. The horizon is lost in an icy mist. I am slogging ahead, vaguely worried about the snow maybe melting into the legs of my jeans and freezing me. Well, it’s probably cold enough for things to stay fluffy. But I’m wishing I had my blue nylon gaiters with me. The gaiters cover my pants from the boot to the knee. They’re hard to remember when I set out, though. I only think of them later.

Why did I set out? I can’t quite remember. But I know I have to keep going. If it weren’t for the ice mist, I might be able to see the end of the lake. Nothing is visible, though. The white of the lake shades imperceptibly into the white-gray of the sky, and there’s no border between the two. I’m not worried about that, though. I have my bearing, and that’s good enough. I just have to keep going. When I get where I’m going I’ll figure out where I am. I’m just a little worried about ice accumulating on the cuffs of my pants. Am I worried because I’m not certain I’ll be able to dry out where I’m going? Where am I going, anyway?

Oh, of course, this is a dream. I see that now. So that means I can have my blue gaiters with me in my backpack. I can have a backpack on my back. I stop and put down the backpack. I dig out the gaiters and pull them over my boots. My jeans are dry enough. I feel better about that now. I shoulder the pack, and set out again. Except that I’m not certain of my bearing now. I look around. My footprints fade away in the mist behind me. I turn ahead again, and keep going. But now I’m just a little worried about my bearing.

* * *

Gabe got chewed out because he was a few minutes late.

“I had to carpool with a neighbor. Our car’s in the shop again,” he explained to me in the lunchroom. “It’s something to do with the computer in the car.”

“Cars shouldn’t have computers in them,” I said.

“Of course. They shouldn’t. Or, at least it should be something you can fix it yourself,” he said. “Read it out and reprogram it. You should be able to do that.”

“Fine, maybe a small and simple computer,” I agreed.

“There’s no reason for it.”

“Well, except for locking you in and taking your money,” I said. “They’re not building those cars for you, you know.”

“But I need a car. How am I going to get to work?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be living in the burbs, eh? I think Karl’s got a vacant apartment or two, in one of their buildings . . . Our apartment manager,” I added.

Gabe gave me a why-do-I-even-talk-to-you? look.

“I wish we still had the old van,” he said, switching topic. “It needed serious repairs, and we got rid of it, but now I think it would have been more fixable than the car. It didn’t have any computer problems, at least.”

“Can you buy another one?”

He shook his head. “I’ve been looking. Do you know what a new car costs these days? Or a used car, for that matter.”

“I’ve been seeing more electrics around,” I said.

“Those are even more expensive. And they have twice as many computers in them,” he said gloomily.

“Hey, have you heard about the thing where the manufacturer gets mad at you for some reason, any reason, whatever, and they brick your car?”

Gabe looked confused. He hadn’t heard.

“Those new cars are always phoning home to the mothership. For ‘updates’, you know. Well, sometimes the updates break your car on accident, because those guys are incompetent. But sometimes they brick it on purpose. And then you can’t drive your own car!”

He gave me a disbelieving look.

“For real,” I said.

“The old van didn’t have any of that stuff,” Gabe said. “Just simple mechanical issues. So we decided to go down to being a one-car family. Caroline didn’t like the thing sitting around in the driveway, so we junked it. Now I wish we had it back.” He sighed.

“How does she get around?”

“She waits for me to get home, basically. Logan gets picked up for school, and dropped off. Caroline works part time from home.”

I looked up, but he shook his head.

“There’s no way for her to go full time on that job.”

I nodded.

* * *

Nolan and Cooper are going at it. I don’t have any popcorn, but I do have a beer in my hand.

“You wouldn’t be able to sleep rough, even in the middle of summer,” Cooper said. “You wouldn’t know how.”

“Another fine benefit of fighting for the billionaires,” Nolan said. “Did the recruiting sergeant sell you on that one? Sign up for the GI bill, and learn homelessness skills?”

“I do what I want,” Cooper lectured. “I can do that. You can’t. I can.”

“Good for you!”

“Freedom ain’t free,” Cooper added.

This set off a firecracker under Nolan.

“Oh, right, then, tell me, how much are the billionaires paying for freedom? How much are the defense contractors paying for freedom?”

Cooper’s face was getting dark, but Nolan wasn’t stopping. “No, no, wait a moment, remind me, which way is the money going, again? Who’s getting rich off this?

I grabbed Nolan by the shoulder and shook him.

“Thank you for your service,” I said to Cooper, being about 80% serious.

“That sentiment goes better with a twenty,” Cooper said, and held out his hand.

“Forget it, no contributions,” I said. “You know that. But I’ll get you another beer.”

“Sounds good.”

Nolan started laughing. Cooper shrugged and cracked a thin smile, and I got some more beers and we shifted the conversation onto a different track.

* * *

“You know, what pisses me off about Cooper,” Nolan was telling me later, “is, you see, the only thing he was there for? To make the rich richer. And he thinks that’s worth something! It’s not worth a goddamn thing.”

I think Nolan maybe drinks too much.

“I wouldn’t do it,” he continued. “Not for that. But there’s things I would do it for.”

Talk is cheap, I thought to myself. I didn’t say it.

“You know that tall statue? Down by the Capitol in Saint Paul?”

I didn’t remember. Then I did. “The tall pillar thing? Below the Cathedral?”

“Yes. There’s a statue on top. They made the statue look like the first guy from Minnesota who volunteered for the Civil War. Of course, it’s not for him. It’s for all of them.”

“I didn’t even know there was a statue on top,” I said.

“It looks small from the ground. Anyway, the First Minnesota Volunteers took 80% casualties on the second day of Gettysburg. Suicide charge to save the Union lines.”

“Yeah?” I said. That sounded flaky. I wasn’t sure I was going along with it.

“That’s why I get mad at people who always blame Minnesota. And the guys who were left, they were back in line the next day. On the third day of Gettysburg. Up on top of that ridge they’d saved, right smack in front of Pickett’s charge.”

I leaned back. I get edgy when people are too much into this stuff.

“And they threw those goddamn fuckers right back down the hill. They stopped the goddamn fucking slavers.” He was literally foaming at the mouth, spittle flying in all directions.

“They did it,” he went on. “And we’ll do it, too. If we have to.”

“Sure,” I said.

“If we have to.” He almost seemed to be crying.

Nolan O’Connor could stand to drink a bit less.

* * *

I handed a twenty to the coffee shop owner, but he waved it away.

“We don’t take cash anymore. Cards only. I had another burglary. It seems like it goes together with the political graffiti everywhere.”

I fished around for my credit card. “Sorry to hear about the break in. I dunno if it’s the same people doing the graffiti, though.”

“Seems that way to me,” he said.

I felt Vee’s hand on mine, holding back the hand with the card.

“You sell us to Google? To Palantir?” she demanded of the coffee shop owner. “You take our money and give it to Visa? The End Bosses of our time? You make them stronger?”

He was taken aback. “Most people don’t have a problem with it,” he said.

“Is like a website, puts up a paywall,” Vee continued. “Is gone from internet. It exists no more.”

Now the man just looked puzzled.

She made a wiping motion, as though she were washing fresh bird poop off an imaginary window between them. “You are out of business. You are gone.” And she was out the door before he finished putting together his angry face.

I shrugged, attempted a smile of apology, and followed her out. I keenly regretted one of the very few places in town that used to make a decent americano. But Vee’s not wrong. You can’t afford to joke around with the War on Cash. It’s unfortunate, but true. That coffee shop no longer exists.

* * *

In a place like southern California you get to smell flowers whenever you go outside, all year round. In Minnesota, that’s rare and special.

After the snow melts, there’s a period when the critters that died and froze during the winter thaw out. That smells bad. Vegetation rots. Then things warm up further, it rains, and the worms come out on the sidewalk. Worm day. Now you can smell the deep earth, and that’s a more wholesome smell. The grass starts growing again. Eventually, the dandelions bloom, and then the other plants, the bees are buzzing around, and finally on an especially warm day you might get to smell the flowers. We live in a paradise of plants, but only some of the time.

Vee and I had taken our bicycles up and down the Mississippi, and we stopped at the end of Summit Avenue in Saint Paul, by the World War I monument over the river, because there was an old guy playing the bagpipes a little further along. He wasn’t playing a tune that was familiar to me. It seemed to be a meandering stream of longer and shorter notes. It felt somehow improvised, but also planned, and restrained and restful. I think the style is called pibroch.

We sat and ate our sandwiches on a bench under the monument.

I looked up. “They said they were fighting to ‘make the world safe for democracy’, you know.”

“For democracy!” Vee snorted. “True, for English American banks,” she said. “Do you know, Italy helped them, for that time, against the Germans? But Italy got nothing. Only finance capitalism. And Mussolini. Total disaster.”

Two bicyclists came into view up the path, and then a third one. Guys in baggy shorts. Their bikes were too small for them.

“Those guys,” Vee said. “One time they asked me if I wanted to buy pot. Nasty stuff. They stink.”

I studied them. “The business case doesn’t close,” I mused. “Pot is basically legal. They must be selling harder stuff, too?”

“Even more nasty,” Vee said.

“They probably stash it in the woods along the path. So they don’t have it on them if they get stopped.”

The bicyclists disappeared.

“Businessmen,” Vee said with condemnation.

“Oh, come on,” I took their side. “Can’t you make an exception for small business? How is retail going to work?”

“Still capitalism!”

“Not exactly high finance, though, is it?” I said, laughing. “I bet those guys can’t even get a bank account.”

She gave me a shove, and I almost fell off the bench.

* * *

“I went and picked up an extra fifty pound bag of rice today,” I said, talking to Jorge and Cooper, “but I have got to tell you, you don’t want to go near that Asian grocery store at lunchtime!”

“How so?” Cooper asked.

“There are these terrifying little old Asian ladies. Especially in the morning. They’ll run you down with their shopping carts. And at the checkout they’ll flat out shove in front of you. Even though you were there first. I don’t like that. It bothers me.”

“That’s little old ladies for you,” Jorge said.

“At the first register, I just gave up. I went and got in line at a different register. There was one old guy ahead of me, and another old guy came up behind me, so I thought I was okay. But then the second old guy’s wife showed up and started shoving her things onto the belt ahead of me. I had to literally lie on the conveyor belt with my whole arm and half my body, simply to get to the checkout lady on my turn!”

They laughed out loud, but I was still upset about it.

“It’s like that everywhere in Asia,” Cooper said.

“Well, it’s wrong there, and it’s wrong here,” I insisted. “People shouldn’t behave that way.”

“I think you’ll to have to wait for the old ones to die,” Cooper said. “They’re not going to change.”

“If they want to hurry up and get a move on, that’d be fine with me,” I said.

“You think the kids are going to be better?” Jorge asked.

“Oh sure. They’re not as pushy,” Cooper said. “Except, well, there’s this thing now where they put in their order on some kind of app, and shove ahead of you that way.”

“That’s wrong, too,” I said.

“It sure is!” Cooper agreed.

Jorge started laughing. “You know,” he said, when he caught his breath, “what those kids are doing? Those damn kids are just waiting for us to die!”

* * *

“Park Closed During Construction.”

Vee pushed past the sign and a stack of bricks.

“You sure we should be . . . ” I said.

“Certo. Is public, what?”

“Yes, but they say it’s closed,” I said, following her down a wooded slope. Away from the construction, anyway.

“I am slave, then? Do what they say? No! They can obstacle. Make a big mess, certo. But they cannot close. Closing depends on me. Only if I close myself.”

We came to rest under light spring foliage beside the water. But I wasn’t ready to let this go.

“We have to get along with people somehow, don’t we? I’m sure they’re just saying that because of liability.”

“Liability. Courts. Insurance company.” She was waving her hands for emphasis. “You work for insurance company. Are they good guys?”

I grimaced. “Insurance is no better than the banks,” I admitted. But then I countered: “The City’s doing some temporary construction. I’m sure they don’t want people to hurt themselves. So they ask the public to stay out.”

“Not ask! Threaten! Ticket for me. Ticket for you.” Vee knows about getting tickets.

“And if you protect yourself?” She cocked her thumb, pointed her forefinger at me, and curled it. Then she held the straightened forefinger to her lips and blew the smoke away, like in an old Western movie. I wanted to tell her modern smokeless powder doesn’t work that way, but why bother?

“See, the insurance guy takes the park from me. I am the public! If I can’t go in, then park has been privatized. Away from me. Away from public. Insurance guy stole public park for private gain.”

“If you want to think about it that way,” I said.

“For certain.” She mulled it over. “Nothing is private. Whole world belongs to public. Belongs to me!”

I laughed. “But you’re the one who told me it’s easy to be an anarchist just for yourself. The hard part is letting everybody else be an anarchist, too. You don’t want them moving into your bedroom, do you?”

“Maybe bedroom is private,” she acknowledged. “One bedroom each. You sleep on couch.”

* * *

Radio Portland was on the air.

“THE FROGS WERE DANCING AGAIN.”

“UGH MOM, KEEP IT CLEAN.”

My folks live in Portland, Oregon. Ken and Lori. They’re radio hams, too. Their antenna isn’t any better than mine, though, so we can’t talk single sideband voice from Minneapolis to Portland.

Well, I’ve made occasional voice contact with people on the West Coast who have thirty foot antenna towers and stuff like that. That’s not us. What we do is we talk to each other on the digital segment of the band. In the old days, people used Morse Code for this sort of thing. Now we have digital protocols that do a better job punching through the noise. You run it on your laptop, and it’s like sending a text message in all caps.

“ALL I’M SAYING IS THEY’RE NOT GIVING UP.”

“YEAH, BUT THIS ISN’T THE PLACE.”

I can’t convince Mom to be discreet. Politics isn’t forbidden on the bands, but, dammit, we’re in public. Anyone can hear you, anyone can record you, and your callsign links to your real name. Why would you leak opinions like a rusty metal bucket?

“YOUR SISTER TALKS TO ME. SHE’S NOT TOUCHY LIKE YOU.”

“GOOD FOR HER.”

We also talk on the phone, of course, but talking on the radio is direct. It doesn’t depend on your cellular phone network or your phone plan.

“ALL RIGHT. YOU WERE ALWAYS THE LIGHTNING ROD WHEN YOU WERE GROWING UP. THAT’S HOW YOU TURNED OUT SO SHY. ALL THOSE LIGHTNING SHOCKS. I DON’T BLAME YOU.”

This trickled across the ionosphere a few words at a time, so it took a while.

“LOVE YOU TOO, MOM. HOW’S DAD?”

“STILL GETTING OVER THAT COLD. BUT HE’S BACK AT WORK.”

“HOW’S THAT LOOKING?”

“STILL OKAY. OF COURSE THEY TRY TO MAKE EVERYONE FEEL LIKE THEY’RE ALL ABOUT TO BE LAID OFF ALL THE TIME. BUT THEY STILL NEED HIM I THINK.”

“HOPE SO.”

“HOW ARE YOU AND VEE?”

“DOING FINE. STORMY. AS ALWAYS.”

“I WARNED YOU.”

“NO WORRIES. I SIGNED UP FOR THIS.”

“LOVE YOU. I HAVE TO CHECK ON DINNER.”

“YOU TOO. BYE.”

* * *

The street was wet and we were biking home in the dark. I bike behind, wearing my visibility vest, which is soaked. We struggle up the hill a bit because we have regular bikes. Someone zooms past us on one of those electric bikes, the ones that give you a boost up the hills. A car goes by, a little too close I think, and almost clips him.

No one can really see anything clearly, because the rain is still falling, and the wetness and the raindrops are reflecting everything. I have a flashing red taillight on my bike, but it’s being mimicked by the lights all around me, by brakelights glancing off puddles, and headlights, and by wet leaves on the trees reflecting the streetlights, and the leaves bouncing in front of lights and blocking them, and then revealing them again. The raindrops are sparkling in the air.

That’s all. I just wanted to describe biking at night in the spring rain, with lights blinking everywhere.