Gone Fishing

Harold was sitting on the seat of his tractor, tuned out, letting the rumble of the engine and the jolting of the suspension move his body without trying to resist, carefully steering the thing back and forth across his field, turning earth. Nobody else was visible for as far as he could see, which was all the way to the horizon; he liked it like that. Harold’s war had been rough, and he didn’t do well with strangers.

He was just making the turn at the end of a row when he saw it come down, maybe half a mile away: something streaking downward, an impression of red, a cloud of dirt where it impacted. Harold resisted the urge to jump off the tractor and burrow into the soft, freshly turned soil; all his nerves screamed “barrage! barrage! barrage!”

But he was half a mile away, and he’d only seen one thing come down, and it hadn’t exploded.

Yet, he reminded himself. Adrenaline was surging through him; he felt queasy and over-alert, staring at the dissipating cloud dust. It hadn’t exploded yet. He shut off the tractor and dismounted, looking carefully around: still nobody.

The whole walk over to where the thing had come down was a fight between his fear -- it’s going to explode! run! -- and his caution -- it could be anything, it isn’t wise to leave it out here without checking it out. The dirt cloud dissipated, and had to keep track of the spot with small landmarks on the almost-featureless plain: a barely-perceptible hillock to the left, a big weird dirt formation to the right.

When he got right up to it, it was easy to spot. It was bright red, and sharply rectangular. The air shimmered a bit above it, like he’d seen on hot days in a desert far away, though the spring morning was cool and comfortable. If he looked close, the shimmer seemed to trail away up into the sky above it, a sort of path. He wondered if it had come down harder and faster than it looked like.

It hadn’t made much of a crater, just sitting there in the soft ground, not even buried. It had landed right-side-up but sort of cockeyed, half in a furrow. He knew it was right-side up because a familiar word was printed in familiar script on the side of the thing: Budweiser.

Harold threw back his head and laughed. He felt right at home; he recognized this situation, also, from his military experience: This was a SNAFU. Somebody had meant to take an ice chest of beer along on  a flight, and had set it somewhere -- on a wing, in a landing-gear bay, somewhere -- and forgotten about it when takeoff happened, and somewhere some Air Force puke was bitterly regretting the loss of his beer.

Well. The Air Force’s loss was Harold’s gain, and not for the first time. He leaned over and undid the latch on the metal ice chest, threw back the lid; it was full of carefully stacked and ice-packed cans of Bud. Perfect. He reached in and grabbed one.

It was perfect, cold and tall. He didn’t drink much, not any more, not because he’d given it up or anything but because the drive into town rarely seemed worth it, but he’d drink this, because damn, it was just impolite to refuse a gift.

Harold threw back his head and laughed out loud. He popped the top, and it foamed out; obviously, being dropped from God-knows-how-high had shaken it up a bit. Somehow, the foam spilling out over his hand made it better.

He raised it in an unspoken toast to the anonymous crew member who’d brought the beer for Harold’s impromptu, lonely field party; then he raised it to his lips and let it pour, golden and cold, into his mouth.

He swallowed.

Something weird -- He could feel the cold beer go down his throat, could feel it in his stomach, and then he was surrounded by a glowing light, as though he was inside a golden fog-bank, all shimmery like heat lines. His hands fell limp, but the beer can stayed at his lips. His knees gave way, but he just fell back onto something soft, holding him upright. 

More than upright: up! He was floating, the toes of his boots leaving the ground and he drifted up into the air like a lost party balloon. 

He wasn’t scared; somehow, he wasn’t scared. He didn’t feel much of anything; that golden glowing fog seemed to have permeated his brain. He felt fine.

He watched as he floated up into the air, following the shimmering line that led up beyond the clouds, into the light, and wondered idly what the fuck was going on.