Artifact 21: Josh Picks Some Beans

With a flat tire, Josh is going nowhere fast. His host feeds him and puts him up, so Josh helps out.

 

 

Josh snapped out of his premonition, finished his last sip of coffee, excused himself, and went outside to find Tom Junior sitting near the truck. 

“So I have a floor jack, a jack stand, and a good set up to get the most pesky lug nuts off,” said Tom, holding up a breaker bar about three foot long.

“Yeah that oughta’ do it, let’s go,” Josh said. “My car is out on the field lane by the highway.” He pointed in the car’s general direction but from his vantage point, he couldn’t see a trace of the car nor barely make out the few cars moving beyond on the highway.

The two men headed out down the field lane with dust flying out behind as they went, both waving to Tom Senior near the garden who headed toward what looked like rows of beans. Josh gazed across the sky reviving his previous forethoughts. The cumulus clouds that Josh had noticed earlier still grew and were getting thick enough to show a little gray in the bases, but then again, the sun still shone brightly and warm. Tom broke his sky-gazing blank-mindedness.

“Any idea the horsepower of your W8?” Asked Tom. “I know they were potent motors.”

“Well, not really. I’ve never had a need or the chance to put it on a dyno, but I guess it would be pretty interesting to find out its horsepower.”

“So it is naturally aspirated, fuel injected I’m sure.”

“Oh sure it’s fuel injected like most everything internal combustion, but I’m also running twin turbos.”

“Wow, how nice, then you must run them, what, vacuum modulated?”

“No, they’re electronically controlled, so I can idle them back to nothing if I don’t need them like all the time on the highway.” Josh thought back to the false alarm train incident and still felt like kicking himself. “Someday I might take it out on the track if I make it back to the east coast.” 

 “So this is a business trip?” Tom asked as they pulled up to the field gate.

            “Sure, it is just one of those opportunities you can’t pass up.” Josh got out of the truck to let them through the gate.  Tom drove through and Josh refastened it wondering why it needed to be fastened but let the thought go. 

“So where is the car?” Tom asked, scanning around.

“Right in that grove of oaks over there.” Josh pointed.

A few seconds later Tom acknowledged that he had spotted it. Moments after that, they drove across the rough ground to stop next to the car. “Nice camo cover, a good way to keep a low profile,” Tom said, checking the silhouette of the car under the cover.

“Yeah, I just don’t like to draw any undue attention especially while catching some sleep. Though the car is rather unusual, unique going down the road and draws all kinds of attention,” Josh said getting out. “I guess that’s understated,” he added with a grin.

He strolled over to car and pulled the cover off the car, front to back.

Holy smokes! Is this thing wild or what?” Tom exclaimed, taking in the flat black, ground-hugging, aerodynamic vehicle.

“You might say that. I know you really want to see the motor so let’s take a look.” Josh said, opening the car door and releasing the hood latch. Tom pulled open the hood and gave a low whistle.

“What a machine, this is a work of motor art. I could do a thesis on this thing.”

Josh smiled. “Please don’t. If the word got out every vintage car collector, hot rodder, and public safety officer would be out to find this thing,” Josh said, pointing at the engine.

“I can understand that because I’d be one of them!” Tom said, and started studying the engine compartment, the turbo plumbing, cooling system, taking in one function at a time.

“Nice ram air set up,” Tom said, running his hand down the polished aluminum tubing that ran down to under the bumper. Tom had to look into the intakes there. This is beautiful work, John.

“Sorry I can’t take credit for the aluminum work. Here, take a look at this. Josh said, turning off a few wing nuts and pulling back the ram air tubes. With the valve covers exposed Tom could see ‘EVATS’ embossed in the three rows of valve covers. 

“EVATS?  I never heard of EVATS before.”

“About a hundred sets of these were made.” Josh said, leaning over the fender holding the RA system aside. “Electronic Valve Actuation and Timing System.”

“Ah, the solution to the cam and valve problems. So why weren’t they ever put into production?”

“Oh you can guess, stricter EPA standards, fuel economy standards, less interest in high horsepower vehicles, so, no more NASCAR, no more Corvettes, nothing to run this motor in period!”

“Just when they got it right, huh?” Tom added smugly. 

Josh just shook his head in affirmation. He set the air system back down into place and tightened down the wing nuts,” He stood and backed a step while taking the enthralled younger man in. “Okay. Let’s get this tire off.

Tom went and dragged the floor jack off the truck bed and slid it under the back of the car. 

“Oh, sorry, I should have warned you,” Josh said, “You have to jack from the side.” Josh pointed along the side of the car as he started to break the lug nuts loose on the wheel.

Tom dragged the jack around and looked under for a place to jack. “There is a jack pad about a foot forward of the wheel well.” 

“What the?”  Tom exclaimed, “The frame is aluminum on this thing and awfully close to the ground!” 

Josh just smiled, nodded and kept loosening the nuts.

“You’ve got some more explaining to do about this thing,” Tom said, working the jack handle as the car slowly rose in short increments.

“Got a few hours? I’ll tell you the whole story later on.” 

Tom positioned the jack stand under the car next to the jack and lowered it slowly on the stand as Josh finished twisting the nuts off with his fingers. They both watched carefully as the stand sunk a few inches into the soft ground, but the tire remained well off the ground. With the last nut off, he pulled the wheel off. Tom scanned the tire, touched the gash, and could only shake his head in reaction.

“Nice brakes too, I see. Let’s see now, eleven inch cross-drilled disks with triple cylinders, and electric emergency brakes�"pretty slick! Mind if I gave the whole car a once over?”

“No, of course not, take your time. Like I’m on no time schedule,” Josh said, but it struck him as he said it that he was indeed on a time schedule. He realized with the missing cargo and flat tire, his delivery appointment no longer had any bearing whatsoever on what he did.

Tom scanned under the car front to back, crawled inside, and went back to the engine compartment. He didn’t say anything verbally but produced a few appreciative nonverbal sounds.

When he finally paused to stand and face John, he simply said, “This is one automotive marvel!” 

“Thanks! Are you ready to head back then, Tom?” Josh asked. 

“Sure, let’s go. I’m going to hold you to your promise to tell me all the ins and outs of this thing,” he said, with thumb back at the car. He gave Josh a hand lifting the wheel into the back of the truck and together they loaded up the tools.

            They drove back to the house and parked next to the house leaving the tire and tools in the truck. The two men walked out to the garden where Tom Senior worked.

“Dad, you need to take a closer look at that car of Josh’s, it’s unbelievable!” Tom said.

“I’ll take a look at it later or tomorrow. So I take it you’re pretty impressed?”  Tom Senior said smirking to Josh while brushing dirt off his hands.

“Really impressed,” Tom Junior, said drawing out the words for emphasis. “I swear that thing must be the fastest thing in the state or possibly the country!”

“That much state-of-art performance, is it?” Tom Senior asked. “Now, I imagine you’ll be talking John into putting it on a dyno to see how much horsepower it puts out.”

“Already been there,” Tom Junior said. “John won’t let on how fast it is or its horsepower estimates, but it HAS to be way up there�"hard to handle up there! Right, John?”

“Yeah, I guess it has that capability to get out of control�"if I let it,” Josh said, knowing not to encourage Tom Junior too much. “Looks like you have your hands full out here,” he said to the elder Tom.

Arching his back, Tom Senior just slowly let out a breath and looked at the sky. “This garden can easily overwhelm me, so I try to focus on one specific job at a time.” Tom’s expression appeared as if he were ready to give up on whatever job he had chosen.

 Josh noticed the look and offered to help, “You’ve been most hospitable to me, Tom. Can I help with something out here?”

“Well, I hate to put you to work,” Tom Senior said gazing at the sky again that Josh notetd. “Are you up to pulling beans?”

“Sure thing, but I don’t know a thing about them. These beans don’t look like normal green beans I get frozen at the Super Mart,” Josh said, while brushing the leaves aside to see the beans dangling from the vines.

“Oh yeah, I take them for granted, but this is the only kind I grow because the yups love the imported varieties, these are Greek style. Anyway, just look for this size a pod with the beans bulging out this much. Pick the ones that bulge out more than that, in case I missed them yesterday. Those are overripe, like this one,” Tom said, holding one up for Josh. “I give them to the neighbor for his goats, they love ‘em,” he grinned.

“Okay, let’s go,” Josh said, and picked up the small plastic basket and went to work.

“Tom and I are going over there to dig some radishes and carrots.”  Tom Senior said, pointing and then picked up the garden fork and another basket and strode off. 

 After a while, Josh thought that this kind work was actually relaxing, a sort of brainless light work getting ‘back to the earth’ type of labor.

His thoughts changed a little when he had a full basket and had finished just a row and a half of the four rows. His back ached from the bending over. He tried to relieve the kink by kneeling on the ground and then shuffled along in different positions. He saw that the two Toms moved right along in their work having hauled out basket after basket of some kind of produce, and he had just started on his second.

             “Hey John, how’s it going?” Yelled Tom Senior.

            “Not bad except for my back not being used to this type of work, but I’m pressing on!”

            “Nature of the job, I didn’t want to talk you out of helping especially today if that storm brews, but you’re doing great, take a break and relieve your aching back.”  

            “Not a chance, I’m going back in!” Josh said, with a flourish, and he put his head down to start pulling again.   

            Josh’s mind turned back to his mission and his missing cargo. How could have missed her taking the box?  He thought back to replay his fuel stop and interaction with Dawn. What do I know about Dawn that could help me track her? She’s a hitchhiker heading west, but to where? She didn’t say exactly where. Is there any way I could find her on the NET? Josh shook his head in contemplations. No last name, no idea what she does, her hobbies, friends, all unknowns. Josh felt defeated�"again, but he kept working.

 Despite that vexing problem, he was relieved that he planned on two extra days for this trip, not thinking that he’d have a mechanical breakdown but just in case he had to take an alternative route. So the breakdown really didn’t bother him too much, but the missing cargo�" He would like to call his West Coast contact on someone else’s phone, like Tom’s, but that would be almost as much of a risk as calling on his own phone seeing he wasn’t leaving this location any time soon. He wished that he didn’t have to explain about the car later on to Tom Junior, but he could steer clear of mentioning his missing cargo easily enough.  He took a deep breath and pulled over yet another bean plant to expose the thick podded beans dangling below. He began picking once again. 

             Josh was just about to fill his second basket when Tom Junior came over. Josh looked up at the young man and then noticed the pile of baskets on the end of the rows on the far side of the garden. 

“Man, you guys are fast,” Josh said, tipping his head toward the baskets. 

             “Oh, I couldn’t do this all the time like my Dad because I’d burn out in no time, so I don’t mind a little bustin’ rear once in a while out here. Most of the time I’m doing research or downtown with Sherri.” 

“Sherri is your girlfriend?”

“I don’t know if you’d call it that type of relationship, but I’ve known her all my life because she was my sister’s best friend so it’s what you call, s comfortable relationship, I guess. She’s taking geriatric medicine at Illinois State so we never see each other until summer and then it’s only once in a while. I’m bringing her round tonight.”

“Sounds good, I’d like to meet her.”  

Tom grabbed another basket and went to work on the next bean row, the last row. For a few moments, Josh watched the young man pick beans amazed at how fast he went along before Josh went back to work himself, trying to pick up his pace despite his throbbing back and lack of picking technique. When they had finished the bean picking, Tom Senior came over and told the two men that it was lunchtime. 

            “Good job John, it looks like you got the hang of it.”

             Josh just grinned and shrugged.  “Well, I’m not as fast as you two, but I kind of like the work, you know?”

“Oh sure, I know. Just the kind of work you wouldn’t want to do for a living?’

“Right,” Josh said. “Ah, sorry about that.”

Tom laughed, “That’s okay, I like it well enough. Come on to the house.”

The men took turns cleaning up with Josh going first so he ended up chatting with Joan in the kitchen while she nuked a few things for lunch in the ‘Science Oven.’

            “So where you heading out west, John?”

The question caught Josh by surprise, and he had to think a few moments. He wondered if his hesitation was as obvious as it felt. “A couple stops really, Colorado, New Mexico, and Southern California. If I have time, that is, after my tire problem. I’d like to go to California first, I s’pose�"seeing relatives there.” 

  “Understand it’s nice there but brutally hot this time of year; they say the summers are getting hotter with global warming still heating up and all that.”

  “I expect 100’s out there at least and then the traffic in LA is still horrible after all these years despite their Rapid Tube Mass Transit System.”

  “At least the smog isn’t quite so bad as it once was, what, back in the 1970’s when they said it was so thick you couldn’t breathe. It helped seeing that California was the first to push for cleaner running cars when internal combustion cars were the only type in town,” Joan said. Josh wondered if she was giving his car a dig, but he let it pass. “So a stop in New Mexico? Did Tom tell you he was in New Mexico for a while?”

“What about New Mexico?” Tom Senior asked walking into the kitchen.

“I was telling John about you being in New Mexico.”

“Oh yeah, while in the Army, I was in the Special Security Force and spent several months in New Mexico.”

             “Any sort of thing you can talk about?” Josh asked, having heard about Special Forces’ actions, which was reorganized for security against terrorism. 

             “My unit’s involvement was written up online, but mostly in the conspiracy tabloids sites like the Inquisitor and Outthere, you know, the ones who like the weird stuff.”

“Weird stuff? You had to provide security or force protection on weird stuff?” 

             “Well, more precisely protect military secrets from weird people,” Tom said rather seriously. You know, the conspiracy fanatics that believe nothing the government or the military does is truthful or on the level.”

             “Like what for instance? I hadn’t heard about this sort of thing.”

             “Hear about that revival from the 50’s about flying saucers and aliens with their alien technology�"wooo, wooo?” Tom joked wiggling his fingers in the air. “Course they think the government scarfed up all that alien technology and reversed engineered it for Silicon Valley to do their thing, along with the military for stealth and hypersonic aircraft.” Tom paused a moment to gaze aside. “But I actually believe some it is still in the hands of civilians who are hanging on to it for their own design or for time to incorporate it into other human technology.” Tom narrowed his eyes and turned toward Josh.

            Not knowing exactly where Tom’s last comment was coming from, a shocking surge jolted up Josh’s back.