A Kingdom of Our Own

Chapter Twenty Four - The American Dream

“Why on Earth do you want to stay in this village? The entire place is stuck back in the Stone Age.” Dalton found himself asking Skandar one late-summer’s afternoon, while they were busy harvesting crops. The weather was just as hot and unforgiving as it had been in mid-summer and unlike a month before, the skin on the back of Dalton’s neck was red and peeling.

It was not an easy life those first few weeks in the community. It was no ordinary summer vacation, eating junk food and watching movies late at night, long days relaxing under the fan. This was work and more work – a routine that took up nearly every daylight hour. In Portland they’d done pretty much as they’d pleased, hanging out with friends on weekends and playing baseball on the fields across from their houses. Here things were different.

“Precisely! It’s perfect!” Skandar exclaimed, eyes widening with a bright excitement about them as he uprooted a cabbage and held it tightly in between his muddy hands.

“Look around you Dalton. How did America get this way? Land of promise? Land of opportunity? Go on welfare, get free money, get hooked on drugs and turn to crime. Why do people put up with it? Why do they keep on coming? This place is a poor man’s nightmare! Buy junk, sell junk, eat junk – consumerism at its best. At least that’s one thing the Amish people have come to realise here, even if the idea of a God is stupid.”

He turned to Dalton to check that he was still listening and then with a finger raised in the air angrily, he continued in his rant:

“We eat when we’re not hungry, we drink when we’re not thirsty and we throw away everything that’s useful. Why sell a man what he wants? Sell him what he doesn’t need! Pretend he’s got eight legs and two stomachs. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!”

Dalton continued to nod in agreement, but was no longer listening. He guessed his Godfather had a point, but his great passion and need to relate almost all conversations to politics was sometimes tiring. He loved Skandar dearly, but was it too hard for him to talk about what’s on at the movies now and then, or who his favourite pitcher in the Majors was? That was all he asked.

                                                   *

One night later on in August, sometime after one o’clock, Harry Simpkins awoke struggling with his bedclothes, gasping and moaning into the darkness. He was utterly terrified. He felt half-suffocated and near paralysed with fear. It was as if a heavy stone lay on his chest, slowly squeezing him to death and he wondered if he could be having an anxiety attack. He reached out for his bedside lamp, desperate for light, but then realised there wasn’t one. He wasn’t at home anymore. There wasn’t any power.

I’m not in Portland, he thought. I’m not in the restroom. I’m safe, three hundred miles north, near the secluded town of Waterville. No one will find me here.

See! The same dark green curtains pulled across the same square window and the same bookshelf half-filled with old, fading paperbacks. No blood. No body. No gangsters.

But the terror still clung to him, like the stigma did to victims of the plague and his heart went on thumping. The dreams kept coming back. Every night without fail – more disturbing and lifelike than the evening before. As he’d already been in this position on many previous occasions, he knew from experience that there would be no more sleep for him on this night. How could he possibly sleep after what he’d just seen?

He held his hands tightly together, praying for it to be daytime. When it was light all his troubles seemed to evaporate into nothing, allowing him to function and get by like any other normal human being. That was all he wanted. Not a Hollywood mansion or a flash car, just a sense of normality and personal security. Not to be an outcast or fugitive for once.