From: dbriggs Newsgroups: alt.ql.creative Subject: QL: "Farm Boy" - Part Six Date: Sun, 26 Jan 1997 21:16:22 -0800 Organization: IDT Message-Id: <32EC3A26.4F27@mail.idt.net> Nntp-Posting-Host: ppp-6.ts-1.yon.idt.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Chapter Six Sam was seated down in the kitchen with his mother, sister and girlfreind eating the supper that Kelly's mother had made for them. The imagingh chamber door opened up behind Sam, and Al peered hungerily onto the food on the table. "You're eating Mrs. viaggio's baked ziti! I would reconize it anywhere. Her ziti was the best in the entire Bronx." "It's really yummy," Katie complimented. "It's really yumola," Al complimented at the same time as Sam's little sister. Kelly let out a smiling giggle. "What are you laughing at now?" Katie asked. "It's just your comment reminded me of something someone I knew when I when I was your age always said," she told Katie. "He always thought my ma's ziti was 'really yumola' and 'the best in the entire Bronx.'" At the sound of Kelly saying the word, "yumola," Sam looked up at al and let out heartly laugh. The other people looked at Sam. "Laughter's contagious sometimes," he stated, *espeicailly when I'm laughing at almost the same thing she is.* "Albert - that's the guys name - always seemed to show up around my family's apartment around supper time everytime my ma was making it. I think he was able to smell it all the way from his neighborhood, sometimes." *I think he's still able to smell it,* Sam joked to himself, *except now it's all the way from the future.* Sam's father walked through the door into the kitchen. He looked at what his family was eating for supper. "Great. Italian again," he said grealy disappointed. "Why do we have to eat this for? I have a American stomach. I'm supposed to eat meat and potatoes." "John, some on and tury it," Mrs. Beckett coaxed. "It's really good, and Kelly's mother made it special for us." "Kelly, next time tell your mother to make some good ol' fashioned American food. Will you?" "Honey, just try a little bit of it. If you don't like it, I'll make you something later," he wife said. "Mom, you don't need to," Sam said. "I'll make a nice salad for him later." He hoped that this time he could change his father's eating habits away from fatty and harmful foods, so that he would not die of a heart attack. "Great! My son wants to feed me rabbit food." "Dad, maybe you should start eating healthier, so you'll live longer." "Ziti and pasta are healthy," Kelly said. 'I know a man from my old building who lived to be a hundred-and-eight, and he practically lived off pasta." "Actually, I think he was even older than that," Al said. "What a crab! Imagine the way your father is acting right now a hundred times worse and nonstop." "My mom's ziti is vegetarian, too," she told her boyfriend. "Now, my family wants me to eat Italian rabbit food," Mr. Beckett said. "Honey, just try it," Mrs. Beckett said. "Fine, but only because Kelly is here right now," he said. He walked over to the refridgerator and took out a bottle. He sat down at the table, spooned a small portion of the ziti onto his plate from the casserole dish. He then poured the contents of the bottle on top of his ziti. The two Italians looked outraged at waht Mr. Beckett had done. It felt like a total insult to Italians everywhere. "That's disgusting!" they said in unison. They looked at sam tryig not to look at the concoction of mess that his father was eating. "Your father just put ketchup on baked ziti!" "Ketchup and tomato sauce are the same thing," Sam's father answered. "No, they aren't!" the Italians stated. "They both come from tomatoes," he said irritated. "If you want me to eat this, I don't want to hear any of your comments. Ok. Kelly?" "Yes, sir," she said. "That's the second most digusting thing I ever saw done to a good dish of pasta," Al said motioning to Sam's fatehr. "Thefirst worst was what my second - or was it my third - wife did. She used to take all of the leftovers from the fridge - potatoes, turnips, whatever was in there - and dump it into her pasta. Then, she made me watch her eat it. It's still enough to make me want to spew." Sam finished eating. He laid his form down, and brought his empty dish over to the sink. Being excused, he motioned to Al to come follow him outside. Sam knew that his father was usually watched the news right after supper, so he knew that he and Al could be alone outside to talk. "I never thought that I would be a part of the subject of conversatio around your dinner table in Indaina," Al said as soon as thetwo of them walked outside. "I think it was only because we had a special guest tonight." "Who? Me or Dodger?" "You actually knew Kelly growning up," Sam affirmed. "It's amazing!" "Yeah," he answered. "It's really a samll world." "I think that life sometimes is really like a small town, just like Elk Ridge," Sam commented rememebering how close everything and everyone always seemed to be in his hometown. "Everybody just seems to be interconnected with everybody, even when they don't even know each other yet." "Smallville, USA," the Bronx said not amused as he looked around out onto his surroundings. Somehow, though Sam felt that his friend totally agreed with his analogy. Al looked through the window behind him into the kitchen. "I'm surprised you didn't have seconds," he said as his mind turned to supper. "I'm stuffed." "I always used to have seconds," he said. "Sometimes, I even had thirds or fourths. Isn't Mrs. V.'s ziti great? It used to be the best in the Bronx. I guess now it's the best in Elk Ridge, and probably in all of Indiana. I wish I could taste it again." Sam was really amazed at al's crazed reaction over Mrs. Viaggio's baked ziti was. "If you could choose between Kelly and the ziti. What would you choose?" Sam asked Al trying to find out the extent of his friend's food feelings. "Really delicious food or a really hot babe," he said trying to figure out the two options. He thought hard about it for about a minute, and then he said, "I'll chose both." : = Ladies and gentlemen, it's a tie, Sam joked. "You really don't know?" : = "I do know. I can't live on ziti alone, and one could really work up an appetite 'studying' with Dodger," he said ribbing his friend. : = "I think there is something bothering her," Sam said. "She told me that she has something on her mind, and I feel that it is a big something." Al pressed a few buttons on the handlink, and studied the display. "Well, Ziggy is coming up with nada. It's probably only some little high school thing, anyway. It's probably nothing to worry about. Tina always seems to overreact to little things, and I think I remember Dodger always seeming to overreact too. Don't worry, Sam." Sam began to walk inside, but decided not to and walked back to where al was standing. "Al, when you were younger did you write to Kelly?" Sam questioned remembering the letter he had just read a short time before. "I think I did," he answered. "I used to tell her all about some stuff that was going on, but only the clean stuff. You probably wrote to Katie, when you were in college. It was almost the same thing between Dodger and me." "I thought so." Sam looked around at the familiar surroundings of his family's farm around him. He knew that inside the house his family was giong through the same routine they did almost every night in 1970. His father was in the den watching the news on television watching the gory scenes that wre happening in the military conflict Sam's brother was fighting in. Sam's mom was in the kitchen washing dishes. Katie was most probably in her room - actually Tom's old room, which she got when he left - doing her homework. Everything was just like it was a evening that Sam lived long ago. It was the same evening that he was living once again. This time though, he knew exactly what was going to happen to his family. He knew that everything will not always stay peachy keen as it was on this June evening in 1970. He was back home again, and he felt helpless. He knew what was going to happen to his family, but was unable to do anything about it to stop it from happening. He knew that his father was giong to die of a heart attack in 1972d. He knew that his little sister was going to marry a abusive alcoholic when she was seventeen. He managed to save his older brother, Tom, from gettint killed in a traitor's attack duing the war, but only because he leaped into Vietnam when everything was happening. Sam wished that he could save all of them from what he knew, but he dared not. He knew that even if he tried he would not suceed. What was the use? He knew what the use was, but life is a two-way street. He could talk all he wanted and tell them their fates, but it would not mattter if they do not do something to prevent it. He tightly closed his eyes blocking out all of the painful memories. He listened to the sounds around him. Teh same sounds he heard many years ago. A few calls from birds that flew overhead. The sounds of the dairy cows and otehr animals down in the grazing feilds and the barn. Teh faint notes of the Beatles song, "Get Back," coming out of his siter's room. He tood a long deep breath. He smelled the same smells that he once did growing up. The nature smells from the barnyard and the feilds, and from the blooms in his mother's garden. He smelled family smells, such as the deliscious smells of homecooking coming from the open window in the kitchen. He let the sounds and smells around him take him back to the joyous days of his youth. The Teenager opened his eyes for the first time. He looked at the sights around him. At the outside world in front of him. The cows grazing in the fields. The wind shifting the stalks of seed corn andgrains in the feilds. The bright multicolored sunlight spotlighting everything down below, as if God was saying how beautiful the Heartland was. He turned to his right, and saw a older man who seemed out of place for their surroundings. Yet, although the boy did not remember much about what his future might bring, he knew that the man standing next to him was his best friend. He remembered all that he knew before about him. Somehow, everything now flet very far off and not within Sam's reach. He looked out on to his surrounding again - out towards nature's majesty and towards his house, family's majesty. He felt that he lived this evening once before, although he did not know when. Kelly's words echoed in his head. *'A person could relive the same experience twice. Maybe, a person could relive a certain night, or maybe a period of time even loger than that, such as a day or even a few days.'* "Deja vu." "Whatcha say Sam?" Al asked curiously. "Deja vu," he repeated leaning against the side of the house. "That's what I feel like I'm going through right now. I feel like I'm living the exact same experience twice." "You are." He looked directly at his friend. "I am?" the Teenager asked quizically. "What do you mean I am?" Al looked at Sam leaning against the wall with the expression of youth's curiousity. He was ging to say something, but finally decided to brush everything aside with the excuse that his friend remembered everything, but was just thinging with the wrong brain. "Just forget it, kid." "Al, do you believe in deja vu?" Sam asked. "Kelly and I were talkig about it before, because it was in one of the letters you sent her. You said it happened to you." : = "I certainly don't remembering it happening," he answered. "It probably means absolutely zippo. I was probably jsut talking about a date or going out with my ol' buddies. Something along those lines." : = "You probably know better than I do." "And, about that girlfriend of yours, her problem is probably zippo too," he said before walking though the door of light. Is Kelly's problem just "zippo" or it something a whole lot bigger than Al supposes it is? Read Chapter Seven to find out. Monica : Note: From now on, when Sam acts like his younger self, because of the merging brain, he is refered to as the Teenager. : Picture should be of Sam in seed corn field.