Fake Fruit Factory by Patrick Wensink

Author:Patrick Wensink
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Curbside Splendor Publishing
Published: 2015-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

Monday, 12:01 AM

Skeet almost doesn’t need this beer—he is plenty light-headed without help. Moving every combine, tractor, and wagon from his enormous barn was complicated, but the curator knows his new museum is worth the trouble.

His chest buzzes with the excitement of another completed job. Almost complete, at least.

Dyson’s distant church bells chime twelve across the calm midnight air. They are some sort of warning alarm in Skeet’s mind. Ringing a dozen times, informing him life is turning a corner. The bells are the start of a newfound confidence. He has been so unpredictable since his wife died. Janet’s funeral was held at noon about fifteen years ago—twelve bells signaling the start of Skeet’s depression. Now, twelve more chimes help him become someone new, someone proud, someone with purpose.

The barn’s soft dirt floor holds almost every scrap of Dyson Skeet determined worth saving. Artifacts like statues, plaques, even the City Hall photo of Bo Rutili’s inauguration. Personal memories like the public pool diving board that he met Janet on when they were kids; things he knows are important to others, like WDSR’s archive of recordings, especially the Small Town Songbirds’ Radio Hour, and the FruitCo Wreath that David Rutili carved by hand—the last work of masonry he finished before he and his wife died in that car wreck, leaving behind two young boys.

Pride brings a smile to Skeet, watching sparrows flapping and nesting in the rafters. Hay stalks of bedding float down.

Mementos hang on the walls from rusty nails or propped against posts, soaking up the barn smells of motor oil and freshly turned dirt. He uses every bed sheet in the house to protect some undersides. Skeet doesn’t need the blankets, he will not sleep tonight.

Street signs reflect dull and green, each sealing in meaning and memory. He gets an impossible chest tug passing them, thinking they could’ve been forgotten. Or worse, not hold a future memory for someone else. He now realizes it’s his responsibility to do something with all this. That brings the first love chest patters back.

“Skeet?” someone calls from the gravel driveway.

He recognizes the mayor’s voice and takes a gulp of warm beer. The museum’s first customer, he thinks. Someone to recognize my sacrifice. With that, the loneliness of being the only person who gives a damn disappears.

“Mister Brown?” a woman’s voice cuts through the statues and trophies.

“Come in, come in.” He steps outside, into the dark, backlit by barn light. His large head and shoulders atop a filthy checked shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbows and jeans. His warmth is a shock to Bo and Marci. They didn’t expect to find anything out here except some farmer foaming at the lips. Instead, here’s a fairly impressive shrine. Cluttered, but impressive. Like Dyson had a going-out-of-business sale, so many random scraps of municipal property packed tight under the roof.

“Chief said you’d be here, Skeet. So, what’re you up to?” Bo says curiously.

“Doing a job a man like you can appreciate, Bo. Preserving our past,” he says, straightening a yield sign with a million shotgun pellet holes.

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