It is mid August and the once busy and profitable auto shop that sits on the corner of Franklin and Reynolds is springing back to life. The auto bays are lined up with cars to be worked on as a father and son tirelessly fix car after car after car. Chuck's Auto was once again an honest and reasonable place to get old cars fixed up for negotiable pricing. Some customers were jobless and needed a long run down, or even inoperable, car to be fixed to seek employment and opportunities elsewhere. People like this paid what they could and offered services such as laundry, landscaping or cleaning. While working at the shop Charles and his son had been able to barter their services and their home was coming together for the first time in a very, very long time. The front doors, and other doors inside, have been re-hung and fixed of holes and creaks by a gentleman that worked with doors and windows some years back when the market was thriving and has since fallen on hard times like most people unable to even maintain his work truck, now that work was picking up again. A sprinkler system was somewhat crudely installed in the hopes of attracting green grass to invade the field of dirt and dead weeds. The inside of the house saw some of the most improvements with working outlets and lights to holes patched up all around. In the next few weeks there would be new paint inside and outside after Smith was able to bring to life a fleet of abandoned trucks used by a painter. Everything was going well in his life and he was only sad that summer was ending and he had to go back for his second year of high school.
Lisa and Smith spent any extra time they both had with each other, which there wasn't much of at all. Lisa was beginning an Air Force cadet training program that would last until her senior year and transition to active duty afterwards. She was just finishing up a basic training, of sorts, and Smith was working open to close in his father's shop leaving only early mornings or late evenings for them to build upon their already strong relationship. They shared very intimate and personal moments with each other but unspoken held off any physical activities past kissing, but it didn't feel like that created any more tension than normal. It was a dark cool summer night that the two sat on the side of a dock that protruded into the American River that ran through the capitol of the Western United States. The water was chilling their feet as they held each other with the starry night sky hung over them so meticulously and vividly. The dock itself was symbolic of the country they both found themselves in with the old rotted wood patched up with fresh redwood holding such an old structure together, it might appear visually haphazard but functionally very sound and being improved.
"Are we going to love each other forever?" Lisa asked in a very soft loving voice.
"I will love you forever." Smith replies.
"That seemed awfully suggestive to me not loving you forever."
"Maybe you are just over thinking it, or maybe I know how I will feel forever but logically cannot possibly know how you would feel about me forever."
"Now who's over thinking things." She slowly smiles and leans in to kiss him. His lips feel like how heaven ought to. She squeezes her arms harder around his chiseled and extremely defined muscular physique. They lie back on the dock and stare up at the stars, but she can't help but think about how much happier they would be if Smith wasn't so bent on earning his father's affection and could devote more of his time and heart to her. Maybe that was a tinge of jealousy in her thoughts or maybe it was her protective instincts for the person she loves. Either way it felt good being in his arms and any other concerns seemed to fade away from her thoughts.
Soft jazz melodies filled the air and permeated the small, but busy, father and son auto shop. The once cluttered and dismal working space had been cleared out and organized in an efficiently clean looking manner. Parts were alphabetized and cataloged in the back of the shop in a storeroom. However, there were no computers for keeping track of what work was done, or needed to be done, as well as what parts were on hand, needed or used. Had this been any other business they would not likely thrive for very long getting quickly overrun with receipts and job orders, but Smith was able to keep everything in order without even writing anything down. His father knew that wasn't an ordinary skill to possess but didn't question it much, or for that matter talk to him about it, and just enjoyed having a profitable business once again after so many years in poverty. Charles would mostly focus his attention and energy on customer relations and scheduling vehicles for fixing. He felt like he was mostly his son's apprentice then the owner and father. It wasn't like he was a shoddy mechanic, quite the opposite, in this shops former glory he was seen as the best auto mechanic in the whole greater Sacramento area after excelling in a technical school after High School. His father was a very strict military man that was all but forcing him to join right after graduation. But it was his High School sweetheart, Mary, that instilled in him the courage to stand up to his dad and pursue something he would love to do. After the recent wars and the tension between the EUS, being in the military was almost a surefire way to be sent to the border and they both loved California so much. He tries not to think about her, it is hard when everyday he has to look at a child she brought from the other side and he has raised since she died shortly after. How would he ever tell him, he thinks to himself, that he is some other man's son. Some other man that the love of his life cheated on him with. They weren't a perfect couple but he felt they were still very much in love. She had been tested before she went to the EUS and told him the doctor told her she was infertile and nothing could be done. It was the Uterine Lining Virus, UTL, that was rampant in the WUS at the time and severely cut down the birth rate in the country. That was the only reason she had willingly accepted the worker program in the EUS. Economically their country was in the toilet and unemployment had been above 25 percent for a few years with no clear sign of improvement in the future. The EUS had always held open positions for "mutts" doing service work and dirty jobs that none of their sophisticated, elitist society could manage to fill at the volume that it was needed. If they had their way they wouldn't pay them anything but slavery wasn't a viable option. He knew they wanted desperately to have open slavery, everyone knew there was an underground slavery ring all over that country, but without any work in their country they had little choice. More like she gave him little choice, she was very headstrong maybe more than him. He didn't just let her go to a hostile country to help support their cost of living, he pleaded, begged and threatened to no avail. She had made up her mind and that was the end of the conversation for all intents and purposes. It had been years since he had seen her face, although they did correspond frequently in letters, and she sent back almost all the money she earned to help him keep the house and the shop that they owned together. He still can't wrap his head around it. Why would she cheat, when she showed up with a baby that night and he was so happy to see her alive and well, but when he pressed her about she told him it wasn't like that and he wouldn't understand, that she didn't even understand. She said she was faithful and that he would even think otherwise was preposterous, because showing up with a baby after years apart doesn't mean anything if she would have just explained it to him. she promised she would and likely would have kept that promise but she had gotten deathly sick almost immediately after arriving back to their house and his intent was not to interrogate and cast judgment on her while she lay on her death bed. Keep him safe she told him, those were the last words she uttered before she died. That was the only reason why he raised this other man's child all these years, the only reason he didn't take this baby to the nearest orphanage and wash his hands of this whole mess.
It was still early in the morning when Smith found himself waiting outside his school's main lunch room on a particularly chilling October morning a few months into his Sophomore year. The school was the largest in California, and quite possibly the country, serving the major area of Sacramento's residential district right outside the business oriented downtown. There were over seven thousand students enrolled at Palmer High School and it was a pretty advanced school as far as public schools go. It pales in comparison to McGeorge Academy, a private school for the wealthy and gifted that operated outside the normal parameters of school structure. There were no conventional grades for students to progress through, instead they individually assessed each student every trimester and advanced their workload or decreased it accordingly. Every student there would be submersed in a torrent of ideas and courses with the hopes of finding specialties that each student would excel at. Smith knew that Lisa's parents had been trying to get her to accept her invitation to McGeorge Academy since she was eight years old and they were disappointed every time the broached the subject. Smith himself had been given an offer to attend after his athletic accomplishments last year, as a freshman, in numerous sports and activities. All the more shocking of his decline to attend was his decision to withdraw from any physical activities this school year. Both the football and track coaches tried tirelessly to talk him out of it to no avail. Smith felt like something was different about his physique and that no matter how hard he pushed with weights or long distance running he was never able to find his own body's limit. These were some of the things he thought about while waiting for the building he lurked outside of to open up. He would get to school a few hours early every day in order to complete his homework he was unable to do while working at his father's shop or fixing up things around the house. The amount of work never bothered him, both school and in the shop, he just wished he had more time to spend with Lisa. However, the bond beginning to develop between his father and himself is rather priceless. Smith assumes he is so distant to him because his mother died when he was a baby leaving this man to mourn for his wife and take care of a child all by himself.
Later that day Smith walked with Lisa hand in hand down the hall of the science wing at the school. There were these small ten minute increments they enjoyed with each other throughout the school day, since they didn't have any of the same classes this year. Smith would jog over to her class and walk her to her next one with just enough time to sprint over to his before the bell would ring, often with only seconds to spare.
"Why don't you come with me after I graduate, like we talked about?" Lisa asks in a tone of dubious contention.
"My dad can't run that shop alone and I don't want to be sent to the border."
"You don't know where I will be assigned, my father is pulling strings to get me sent to Arizona."
"95 percent of graduates from WASP (West Air Force School for Pilots) are sent along the border. It's not like we can be attacked from anywhere else, strategically it is the most sound placement."
"Shut up." Lisa says through a gorgeous smile as she slyly tilts her head away from him. He grabs her forcefully and pulls her close against him. They have arrived at her next class and they kiss each other passionately ignoring the droves of students hustling past them some gawking, some oblivious to them and their teenage love. Smith stands still as Lisa slips into her classroom and the door shuts behind her, then he runs around the square hallway and makes it to his door and opens it just as the buzzer sounds for class to start. His botanist teacher, Mrs. Rosenthal, knows when the bell sounds for her third period advanced botany class that Smith will be having just opened or just entering the door to her classroom. She is normally very strict about butts in seats at 10:15 so she can begin her lesson for the day, but there was something touching about Smith and his life so far. Almost everyone around had heard about his mother passing away when he was a baby and how distant his father was in his life, likely because of that. Throughout his ascension from Kindergarten to High School, his father never attended any of the meeting to talk about Smith and either his problems or the traits he excels at. Even at mandatory meetings the teacher could never get a full word out of his father, more or less grunts and nods. Reeking of booze and having the appearance of a man that lived in a cave or under an overpass, quite the opposite of Smith's clean attire and manners. The fact that Smith looked like a healthy taken care of child was the only reason child services weren't called anytime a teacher saw who his father was. Almost all of his teachers had the same type of attachment and parental bond with Smith, just like Mrs. Rosenthal. That is why after the bell rang for her Botany class to be over she was curious why Smith lingered around instead of bolting out the door to go and meet his girlfriend. They both make eye contact and give each other a half smile as the rest of the kids file out the door and then Smith approaches her.
"Mrs. Rosenthal, I was hesitant to ask for help with a flower I have been trying to get to bloom."
"Not at all dear, you should always come to me when you need any help at all. Is this one of the Chinese flowers we covered last week?"
"No ma'am. This is something I have been working on outside of school."
Thrilled to hear one of her students is taking an interest in botany outside of class she was very eager to assist young Mr. Smith. He explained to her about a flower that once bloomed around the outside of his house. He was able to identify it from old pictures and found out it was a very rare flower, Cosmos Astrosanguineus or Chocolate Cosmos, that his mother surprisingly was able to keep flourishing far from its original habitat in the Mexico region. The flower was, as its name suggests, a dark chocolate colored flower that has not been known to exist since the late 19th century. Smith talked to his teacher about a museum in Mexico with some of the seeds they believed were unable to sprout that they had in their archives, he was able to persuade them to send him one of them. Smith was able to research methods used to revive a plant from a suspected dormant or immature seed using cloning methods to produce a healthy seed but needed help from his teacher with some of the lab equipment he would need to use. Smith was rather confident he could proceed unaided with the unfamiliar equipment but assumed having a more experienced scientist assist him would increase his chance of success.
After a few weeks working after school for an hour he was finally able to produce several health plants and brought them home and planted them while his dad worked away in the shop on a pickup truck that was given as payment for some muffler work earlier in the year. Smith was hoping that truck would be his when he was able to get his license but he wasn't going to hold his breath over it, finding he gets around just as easily jogging as driving. He had finished planting the thirteen plants that have just begun to emit bulbs that would eventually flower and bring a beautiful color to the newly painted white siding of the front of the house. Smith ran inside and put his overall on and brushed the dirt off his hands and arms from planting, but as he finished zipping up his uniform he heard his dad scream out "What the F.....!"
Quickly and with great agility, Smith exploded out in the front of his house ready to assault or confront whatever person(s) caused his dad distress. Once he exited the front door and turned to look at his dad, there was a burning anger and pain in his eyes that he had never seen before or thought was possible within a human being. He was clenching one of his newly planted Chocolate Cosmos plants in his hand, Smith was still in shock and awe when his dad bounded to him with his right hand cocked back still holding the plant in his fist. The first blow came fast, faster than Smith thought his father was even capable of, and hit him across his left temple. The pain stung into his forehead like he was cut with a utility knife. The blow staggered him back and was immediately followed up by another one before he could regain his footing. Part of Smith told him to defend himself and quickly roll out of the barrage of fists being sent his way, but the other part thought about his dad and his mom and the love she held him with and the love she had for him. He fell back onto the front porch steps with the back of his head receiving almost as much damage as the front of it. Internally he was panicked but calculating, examining the parts of his body that were most vulnerable to attack and defending against the assault the best he could. His defense was working to minimize the damage but a lot of blood was already pouring down the back of his neck from the step that gouged into his skull as well as blood covering his left eye from the first few blows. Curled up in a defensive ball he was still being punched and cussed at by his dad until his arms grew too heavy to lift anymore. Mentally Smith thought he was going to be OK until he tried to move and realized that too much of his body was in total agony and disrepair. Unconsciousness began to take him and darkness slowly flooded his good eye until there was nothing but darkness and the sound of an ambulance siren, then nothing...