Barren Fields

 

 

 

 

Barren Fields

The Last Blade of Grass Book II

 

Robert Brown

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright 2015 by Robert Brown


 

CHAPTER 1

 

Shell Beach, Louisiana.

Eight Months Before the Plague.

 

“Hello. You got JeeJee’s Airboat rental.”

“George, this is Maggie. Maggie Roach.”

“Hello Maggie, what can I do for you?”

George is an educated man. He was born and raised in Louisiana in a family that was considered old money. His education growing up was of a dual nature, as it was with most of the very wealthy. He was sent to the best private schools, and along with other educational requirements, he was taught to speak impeccable English in the proper manner according to those with money. Having power and influence in this state required those who want to fit in to have an unblemished Louisiana Southern drawl, with the usual French words or catch phrases thrown in at the right times. George had his accented speech for business and his proper speech for his closest friends.

Maggie’s husband, Keith, had become one of George’s friends ten years earlier, when they were working together at one of the shipping docks along the Mississippi River. Keith was in charge of safety and maintenance at a loading facility, and George was a new manager coming in to inspect the facility and do hands-on learning of the whole operation.

George was working as a manager but was actually the owner’s son. There was no part of the family’s holdings that a son or daughter could run or manage later in life without direct experience in those business operations. The children learned early in life they had to earn their place in running the business or accept a smaller cash inheritance and have no controlling interest in the companies when the parents died.

George took that to heart and spent his evenings during college and the years after getting his degrees working on family fishing boats, at small oil refining plants, and at the shipping docks where he met Keith. George had plenty of scars from the difficulties in working at the various family businesses, and each scar gave him a profound sense of respect for the employees that he would one day call his own. He received his biggest scar on the third day working with Keith. That day Keith should have been home during his day off but went in to work because a storm was wreaking havoc on the docks and loading equipment.

Keith’s arrival to work that day put him in the unique position of having saved George when a secure line broke causing it to snap in George’s direction. The line embedded itself a foot into the concrete wall of the warehouse they stood next to. If George wasn’t pulled out of the way, the line would have cut right through him.

The scar he received was from taking a step back after being saved and falling on a large bolt at the base of a support beam. George knew he was lucky to be alive. Since that time he and Keith had become friends, and they made it a habit to go fishing or watch a New Orleans Saints football game.

“George, I need a safe place to go with Keith. We’re getting out of town.”

“Can’t stand the rioting anymore?”

“I wouldn’t call it rioting, George. It sounds like a warzone out here. Keith’s son, Eddie, called to tell him it is some kind of plague.”

“And you want to move, Maggie?” he asks, ignoring what must be embellishments of their situation.

“I have to get out of here, George. Keith won’t leave without me, and if he stays here we’ll both die. I can hear the shooting from the city at my window, and it’s non-stop. Please, George!”

Maggie is sick. She needs oxygen, and any stress of travel could end her life, which increases the seriousness of what she is asking. Maggie has only one lung remaining and doesn’t qualify for a transplant because she has cancer.