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June 22, 2005
Fiction, Pt. 2
Here's a continuation of what I started here.
Tom Miller’s telephone was ringing on the wall of his kitchen. His wife was at work and Tom was choking down the last of his toast 10 miles away in Clareton so the phone kept on ringing. As the phone rang most of the ostriches were still running. A few had stopped at Mark Bendel’s deer pond to drink but the rest had continued across the pasture and into a corn field. The corn was fairly tall at this point in the growing season but the bouncing heads of ostriches could be seen moving down the rows. The two birds that had decided to follow the highway north to Clareton were now running alongside the road, causing the heads of the few drivers who traveled that highway to turn rapidly as they rushed by the gawky creatures.
Mark Bendel cursed Miller, his damn birds and his technophobia as he closed his cell phone and watched the ostriches disappear into the corn field on the far side of the section. Bendel had been bugging Tom for at least a year to get a cell phone, but Tom had refused. He didn’t want to mess with all that new stuff, and besides, he didn’t want to be too easy to reach. Miller had said, “I call people when I need to. They don’t need to call me unless I’m at home.” Bendel flipped his phone back open and dialed the county sheriff’s office.
As the two rogue ostriches slowed to a trot alongside the highway, they caught the eye of Billy Macek who was drenched with sweat, trudging down a row of soybeans and hacking at the roots of weeds with a machete. He’d seen the ostriches before, right after Miller had acquired them. Everyone in a three county area and some from south of the Kansas border had driven by the new home for the birds when he’d gotten them, adding to what was known as Miller’s Menagerie. Tom Miller liked to speculate in non-traditional livestock. He had 6 bison in a field behind the ostriches, the beginning of a catfish farm in two ponds, 4 peacocks which strutted around his yard, 3 geese, 4 ducks, a llama and three alpacas. He’d tried to breed the llamas and alpacas for wool, but one llama had died and the alpacas hadn’t yet bothered to produce offspring.
“Yep,” Billy thought, “must be part of the magerie’s broke loose.” He hollered at the other two boys who were on the weed cutting crew with him but they were on the far side of the field working along a stand of cottonwoods. Billy wiped the muddy blade of his machete on the sole of his work boot and gazed back toward the highway wondering when Mr. Hagemeier would be there to pick them up.
Posted by Half-Cocked at June 22, 2005 10:39 PM