Merriton

“Goddammit! How many cats you gonna kill before you abandon that thing?!”

James had just put up his first poster board when John spewed his anger. James turned around and his floppy poster board rolled down to the floor. He bent down to reach for the poster. Before he could respond to his brother, Randy asked, “James, is John interrupting you?” The word “interrupting” was tinged with malice and Kevin covered his mouth with his hands again. John looked from Kevin, to James and finally looked at Randy’s cold, angry eyes before covering his own mouth in fear. The scar on James’ lip quivered, “No… I don’t think he is…” John shook his head and waited quietly for James to start.

James set up his poster board again, but the thing rolled down again. He picked it up and just held it in front of his torso like a school child.

“Snow’s a big problem here. You folks probably don’t realize how bad it can get ’cause this winter was pretty mild, but usually we’re buried pretty deep in snow. When the plows come through, they just push the snow to the side of the road and it stacks up deep.”

James pointed at his childish drawing of cars driving between huge walls of snow.

“So, I invented a machine that vacuums up the snow instead of just pushin’ it to the side.”

He pointed at a drawing of a machine on wheels with a vacuum, sucking up snow and the third picture of cars with smiling grills driving on a normal road.

“There were two problems with my prototype design.” James pronounced the word “prototype” as if it was a word he had only heard last week. He looked at John, “There was a risk to any animals or people who might get in the way of it, and there ain’t no truck big enough to haul away the snow from one road, much less many.”

James tried to place the poster board he was holding on the counter, leaning against the cupboards, but it rolled over in half and fell again. James shrugged and left that poster on the floor, picking up his second one. Once again, he held it in front of his body, using it as a shield.

“First, I didn’t want to kill no more cats, so I created this mesh system that moves around so it can gather the snow, but doesn’t ever get big enough to let a cat get in, or a hand.” James rubbed his right hand on his pants and pointed to the poster board at what looked like a bunch of horizontal and vertical lines.

“Then, I created a heating system that turns the snow into water.” He looked at Randy and clarified, “Water takes up lots less space than snow, so a truck can haul a bunch more snow if you melt it first.” He pointed at another childish drawing of the truck with a big hose coming from the front and water coming out the other end into a tank.

“The truck can dump the water into any sewage system or haul it up to the reservoir so that it can be used in the summer.” The final scratching on the poster board showed the truck dumping water into a lake. Next to the truck was a little man with his hand on his hip, smiling. Despite its simplicity, the little man looked a lot like Kevin in his ranger’s hat.

“I talked to the city council Up North and they’re pretty interested in a fleet of trucks like this if I can just make ‘em, so monetization would be for selling trucks like this to cities and counties.” He pronounced the word “monetization” awkwardly.

James dropped his arms and the second poster board hung limply in his left hand. “I have the machine in the back barn if you wanna look at it, but most the snow’s melted here. I could take us up the mountain to show ya how it eats the snow…” The entire group had a smile on their faces and stood up, eager for field trip. “I can take half of ya in my truck. Kevin, can you take the other half?” Kevin eagerly nodded and James steered John to the back barn, whispering, “You’re goin’ with me.”

When James opened up the back barn, everyone was awed. James’ vehicle looked nothing like the clunky drawings on the poster board. Even John covered his mouth before “interrupting” James again. James patted Randy on his back, “Since you’ve been payin’ us every two weeks, I finally had the money to build somethin’ nice. First time I been able to build somethin’ with NEW metal instead of rusty old broken parts.”

Kevin took Randy and Sierra in his ranger truck and James took John and Bree in the behemoth. The drive up the mountain was quick and James led them to a spot that had obviously been cleared with the very machine he was driving. Kevin parked the truck and everyone got out in front of the locked gate. James told them, “Roscoe gave me a key to this part of the park. He told me he didn’t want my machine to hurt the road, but it ain’t like a plow. It doesn’t scrape the ground and the worst it’ll do is leave a little water behind.”

With the gate open, James slowly drove along the narrow road leading to a closed campsite. Everyone watched from the white and powdery sidelines. The snow was a good four feet deep and James’ truck slowly steamed its way through the drift leaving clean road and a thin layer of water behind him. After he had gone a quarter of a mile to where the campsite road turned to gravel, he turned the machine off and jumped out.

“Any questions?”