Jason Marc Harris | 31
and Grandpa Shel had told him about that famous radio broadcast of War of the Worlds. Jimmy saw that latest remake of the film in Marfa’s Crowley Theater. Hollywood folks got things wrong. Jimmy saw nothing big could get at him from the sulfurous gash.
After toeing scrunched up debris with his worn boot, Jimmy picked up the intact remnant using his bowie knife and a live oak branch to scissor the thing. He sprayed it with spouting bursts from the old irrigation hose, weathered like sloughed-off rattler skin. That burnt-marshmallow crust crumbled beneath the blast of water. The object looked like an overpriced trinket from Fredericksburg’s Lone Stone Antique Mall, junk art polished to nab tourists in the mood to be fleeced. Hell, he could prettify this thing and jack it up to $150, call it “meteor glass pipe” or “satellite-crash-found-art” and one of those Merlot-sipping yuppies would glom onto it for sure.
We’ve always known the value of parting a fool from his money.
Jimmy pulled off his flannel shirt, wrapped up the tubular object like a swaddled infant, and brought it home to sit overnight on his father’s workbench in the barn.
He raced downstairs into salty thick smoke and the sound of Mrs. Bell’s ham steaks crackling on the lard-slicked pan at dawn. However, he bolted right through the kitchen outside to the barn.
After admiring again his treasure, which gleamed like Abalone chrome if it got hit at a certain angle by the morning light filtering through the dusty barn sash windows, Jimmy came back inside the house. He sat down at the kitchen table to eat his hot plate of heaping fried eggs and ham steaks.
Mr. Bell watched him. “Aren’t you grinning like a fiend today? What trouble you planning?”
“No trouble. I’ll show you.” Jimmy bounced up from his chair and went out to the barn.