I was on my Grandmother's farm for the summer when the postman delivered it. The answer came in a white box, stamped with the logo of the US Dept of Agriculture, and a barcode. No name, no address, every farm got one. Grandma had me get a dolly, and we wheeled it to the barn.
What happened after that, what happened everywhere, was a matter of necessity.
The glow of the moon and shafts of sunlight squint through holes and gaps of the barn. The steel machine, with its cleverly packed attachments in place, was now four times the size of its original box. We bolted it to Grandpa's workbench. The worn and sturdy place where Grandpa had fixed most everything, was just the right height to turn the wheel. A revolution had changed farming again.
“Hydraulics changed everything.” Grandpa told me one evening. “What my grandfather did with horses and oxen can be done today by moving just this little finger.” I can still see him hold up his pinky, it was thick, with deep wrinkles and cracks stained with dirt. It looked like the pinky that could wrestle an ox. “Then came fertilizer, mono-crops, it's no way to farm.”
Efficiency increases yield, something I didn't need to know when I would spend only summers on the farm. I helped with chores. Grandma needed help when Grandpa died. The planting, the fertilizing, the harvesting, the farm needed help every day. Our family was on the brink of selling it when the box arrived.
That was the summer I never went home. No one traveled much after that, and I can't remember aunts, uncles, cousins, my parents or sister ever visiting. Grandma and I worked together, following the instructions that came with the machine. We worked together until the November morning when I buried her in her rose garden.
In Nebraska, when no one comes down your lane, or down your road, and the phone is dead and the mail has stopped, the wind gets determined to make you leave. When I took what I produced to the end of the road, I'd wait for the truck with no driver. One day there was a technician on board. He looked at me through the glass and I at him but we did not speak. I had learned there is efficiency in silence.
I learned to work the machine and farm. By mixing the crops I made food pellets, fuel pellets, and vitamins. I grew the seeds they left for me. It is like mowing a lawn. What sprouts should be harvested within a month. I replant every week. Corn grass is less demanding, it can stand a a while longer, let me catch up. I refined how I fed the machine, and delicate spirals define my pellets. Somewhere, someone looked at them and appreciated my work.
The medical truck reports on me to the medical office that follows me and the preventative theory reassures me that barring an emergency, I am ready to persist. In solitude there is health.
I must have been nearly 40, since I was nine or 10 when that summer started, when one day I was outside, preparing to mow, and a vehicle appeared on the horizon, sending up dust from the old county road. It stopped at the driveway of the farm for a moment, then turned towards the house, inefficiently fast.
It was a dusty and foul gasoline powered van. The door slid open. Then the front doors opened, and six people got out. While four of them stretched, two approached me. A man, a woman, it was her I recognized. My mind shuffled playing cards, looking for words. I knew her name, my sister's name. “Janet?” I had spoken aloud, and it must have shown on my face that I had not done that for a very long time.
“It's ok. It's me.” She closed the distance between us and did not stop, but encircled me with her arms. “I'm so glad you're still here.” Her words, so many words, raced across the farm, knocking birds from fence posts, bending the corn grass like wind. She had wasted so much fuel, just coming down the driveway, not to mention the road, my mind reeled.
“Can I get you some food?” They must be hungry. Two pellets keep you fed for five hours. At a sensible rate of speed it was at least that to town,. I started towards the house, calculating that six people would need 12 pellets, 12 more to get them back where they came from, 12 more for good measure. That was more than I ate in a week.
“We're ok, thanks, but no.” She followed me a step or two. “We've come to get you, take you with us.”
I turned back around to them. “I have corn to mow. Where would you take me? Why would I leave here?” I put my hand over my mouth, I was talking too much.
“We're going to where there are others like us. I've stopped taking the pills, and I'm liberated. Come with us.” With her? To where others have gathered to live inefficiently? Where others use more resources than they contribute? She reached in her pocket, pulled out an apple. That was the smell I couldn't place. I must have stared a full minute at its complexities. I hadn't had an apple since... “Come with us.”
She was mentally ill. The man beside her was mentally ill. I had a responsibility. The truck without a driver would just keep going if there were no pellets to pick up. If there were no pellets to pick up, none would be dropped off. I should go with her. Take care of her. When the moment was right I could act on my assessment of her. I'd rather be there when she needed me, sooner than later, by the looks of it, than to stay here while her madness placed her in further peril.
The people at the van looked anxious. The man she was with looked ready to leave. I told her I would need to get a jacket. She laughed, “Let me help you pack some things.” We left the farm that day, and as we drove down the county road, I saw that most of the other farms were fallow. In town, the river had been dammed and people were raking algae from it. We were going too fast, and a policeman tried to subdue us. His vehicle was slower than ours, and quickly ran out of battery. Janet cheered, “It's been like that everywhere.” That's how they had come so far. The van was powered by fermenting fuel pellets, and though much slower than it was when it ran on gasoline, it still outlasted and outpaced every other vehicle. No one ran from anyone anymore. It was an inefficient thing to do.
I took a bite of an apple. I love apples.