A Kurt Nod

I wrote this as a writing exercise in doing natural exposition and characterization. The ending isn't finished, although I still mean to come back and complete it to really wrap up the learning experience. The setting and characters are heavily, heavily based off of Kurt quo vadis? by Erlend Loe, which I read when I was learning Norwegian. It's a charming book, and a lot of the imagery stuck with me.

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The whine from Kurt's back mounted vacuum was cut off as a wet chunk of earth detached from the forest floor and was sucked part way up the tube. Kurt quickly switched off the vacuum's power just as acrid black smoke started to leak out of the motor's coolant vents.

“Hey Bud,” Kurt shouted over his shoulder into the think underbrush. “Bring a fresh bag around.” There was a rustling as a small, squat figure wearing a cloth cap stumbled into the clearing, pushing a large, rusted wheelbarrow.

“You full already?” asked the newcomer, rummaging through the wheelbarrow's contents and pulling out a roll of plastic canister bags.

“Naw, not quite,” said Kurt. “I just clogged the vac, but I might as well replace the bag now that I'm stopped.” Kurt shrugged the vacuum off his shoulders and onto the forest floor. He flipped a small, recessed handle out of the side of the bulky appliance and started cranking. After a few seconds the crank seemed to catch. Kurt carefully pulled out the bag container, gripping it tightly with both hands. Every muscle in his body tensed as the canister left the vacuum's mass distortion field, and he moved with exaggerated slowness and care as he set the canister down. Kurt quickly looped the excess bag material into a tight knot, heaved it out of the canister, and set it down heavily in the wheelbarrow.

Kurt sighed and collapsed onto a tree stump. “I'm getting' old for this, Bud.” He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the grubby sleeve of his flannel shirt, then pulled the top off the canteen hanging by his hip and took a long swallow.

Bud reached into a pocket in his blazer and pulled out a battered pocket watch. He checked it and frowned. “Four fifteen on the twentieth of September. Are we making good time?”

Kurt shrugged. “Can't really tell. This whole part of the world is a textbook on microclimates.”

Bud sighed. “I'll put together some sandwiches while you unclog the vac.” He slung his backpack to the ground, stretched open the top, and swung his right leg over the lip. His leg seemed to go further down than the bottom of the bag. Bud swung his left leg over the edge of the bag and started climbing down the rickety wooden ladder that descended into an obscure darkness.

As he descended, Bud counted doors set into the canvas walls. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. He let go of the ladder and pushed the door open with a creak. Inside was a small, dimly lit room filled with the smell of smoked meat. Bud shuffled forward in the gloom, pulling down a ham swinging from a beam and setting it on the small table in the center of the room. A dusty jar of pickles, a smoked cheese, and a loaf of pumpernickel bread soon joined it.

Bud wrapped each sandwich in wax paper after setting the second slice of bread on top. When there were four sandwiches in the pile, he gathered them up into a cloth sack he conjured from a pocket deep within his coat. Just as he slung the sack onto his back and was about to open the door onto the ladder, Kurt's voice echoed from above.

“While you're down there, bring up a new motor. This one's had it,” came the muffled call from above.

“Got it,” shouted Bud, closing the door behind him. The calluses on his hands scraped against the splintery wood as he climbed up to a room just below the opening to the backpack. Bud kicked open the door and jumped into the dusty clutter beyond. He skidded to a halt, narrowly managing to avoid an umbrella stand filled with push brooms. Heaps of junk lay piled on tables and hanging from the ceiling in nets. Bud drew a folded piece of paper from his pocket and spread it on the back of the door.

“Vacuum parts, vacuum parts,” he muttered, tapping vaguely on the map. “Aha!” Seemingly satisfied, he folded the map up again and stuck it back in his pocket. He navigated towards the back of the room, picking his way through the detritus to a corner dominated by an oily pile of metal contraptions. Bud squatted down and started picking through the hardware on the floor. Occasionally he would find a part that seemed to please him, and he would add it to a pile next to the canvas sack.

Eventually he let out a heavy sigh, gathered the pile of parts into the sack, and trudged back out into the shaft with the swaying ladder. Swinging himself onto the ladder, Bud climbed up and out of the backpack and flopped onto the forest floor. Kurt was sitting up against a tree, snoring slightly. He started when Bud thumped to the ground and opened a bleary eye on his apprentice. “You find anything?”

Bud nodded. “I've got a motor that's probably good and two we can cannibalize for parts. Also brought up a gravimetric manifold and some plumber's tape.” He reached into the canvas sack. “Do you want ham or pastrami? I made two of each.”

“Pastrami,” said Kurt. He reached forward to take the wax paper wrapped sandwich and then eased himself arthritically back onto the ground. Bud unwrapped his own sandwich and sat down on a rock.

“So I unclogged the tube,” Kurt said, his voice slightly muffled by pastrami and pickles. “But this motor is definitely fried. Didn't cut the power in time.”

“I'll add it to the shopping list,” said Bud.

Kurt made a complicated gesture with his sandwich. “We're burning through parts too quickly. May need to check back soon and see if we can finagle an upgrade. Anyway,” he said, taking a moment to swallow, “you clean up lunch. I'll swap in the temporary motor, then I'm gonna take five. Still worn out from Norway.”

Bud raised his eyebrows. “Do you really have time for a nap?”

Kurt grinned a humorless, ragged grin. “I don't have time not to take a nap. The way the elm blight's been keeping us busy, I'm likely to fall asleep on my feet, crash into something, break the vac, and then we'd be in in real trouble. So you see, taking a nap is the responsible choice.” Kurt pushed himself to his feet and waved a finger at Bud. “By the time you're my age you get pretty good at rationalizing selfish decisions.”

Bud gathered up the lunch detritus and waited while Kurt dismantled half of the vacuum, replaced the soot stained and reeking motor with the least broken looking motor from Bud's sack, and reassembled the scattered parts and cowls. After he slotted the cover back on and screwed it into place, Kurt gave the vacuum a companionable whack and eased himself onto a pile of leaves.

“Jus' half an hour, you hear?” he murmured, his voice already slurring with sleep. “I got too much to do. Too many forests…” Kurt trailed off into silence for a little bit, then started snoring gently.

Bud stared off into the shifting sea of yellowing leaves that was the forest canopy. He drew a grubby deck of cards from a jacket pocket and started a halfhearted game of solitaire. He stopped after a while, sighed, reshuffled, and dealt again. He periodically glanced at the setting sun as he played out the second game in full, then took a look at his watch. With a start he jumped to his feet and rushed off to Kurt's prone form.

“Kurt, come on, wake up,” Bud hissed, shoving his master's arm. “We got to get going again.”

Kurt didn't respond. Bud nudged Kurt's shoulder. “Come on, I gave you forty minutes, you gotta get up.”

There was still no response from Kurt. Bud pushed him even more firmly, and Kurt rolled onto his back, mouth open and eyes closed. Bud paused, startled at the force of his own push, then went completely still. Something was wrong. He very carefully placed two fingers against the old man's neck. For a few agonizing seconds Bud held his breath, his own heart hammering in his chest, and then…

Pulse. Very faint, barely detectable. Bud forced the stale air out of his lungs, willing his nervousness to leave just as easily. A few seconds later he felt another weak pulse, and he slowly withdrew his fingers from Kurt's carotid artery. So the old man was still alive, but in a coma or something. Desperately, Bud leaned right up to Kurt's ear and shouted. “Wake up, Kurt, we need to finish England!”

Bud's sudden outburst startled a small group of birds sitting on the branches of a nearby oak tree. Their sudden, confused take off caused a few more leaves to detach and drift slowly to the forest floor, eventually coming to sit on the top of the thick carpeting already present.

Bud looked over to the newly fallen leaves and gritted his teeth in hopeless frustration. All over the forest, hell all over the country, leaves were continuing to fall in slow, lazy drifts like raindrops into an overflowing reservoir, and his master was hurt or sick or…he couldn't be dying, could he?

Bud checked Kurt's pulse again, desperate to make sure he hadn't imagined those faint heartbeats. The pulse was still there, faint and agonizingly slow, but regular.

Glancing over to the vacuum still propped against a tree, Bud took a deep breath. Kurt had taught him the basics of its operation a while back. For the most part it was just like a normal wet/dry vac, at least as far as operating it was concerned. And Kurt had just slotted in a fresh bag before replacing the burned out motor…

After one last, desperate glance at Kurt, Bud stepped carefully over to the vacuum and gingerly started threading his arms into the straps. He pulled up on a set of buckles to tighten the straps, gave an experimental shake to check that the whole assemblage was snug, and unholstered the wand from the side of the canister. Bud nervously cracked his knuckles and then, with great trepidation, flicked the on switch.

The great roaring “whoosh!” as the vacuum sprung to life almost made Bud drop the wand. The hose and nozzle almost seemed to writhe in his grasp from the onrushing current of air. Bud tightened his grip on the hose and nozzle and nudged it gingerly into a pile of dry leaves.

A gentle smell of woodsmoke filled Bud's nostrils, and the contended sound of fine gravel in a blender rose from the canister on his back. Bud grinned shakily. This wasn't so hard. He'd get a feel for the machine, and then see if he could clear out all the leaves in this sector. That would give him plenty of time to figure out what to do about Kurt. The old man might even recover on his own while Bud was out vacuuming. He should probably leave a note, just in case.

With the wax paper from one of the sandwiches and a small stub of pencil, Bud scribbled a quick explanation of what had happened, tucked it under Kurt's head, and set off across the forest.

Bud soon grew confident in his use of the vacuum. He learned to skim large piles of leaves layer by layer to keep the vac from clogging. Every tree he approached that still had more than a few leaves hanging from its branches he would give a good kick, causing most of the stragglers to detach and spin gently down to earth, where he would suck them up with the howling nozzle. He paid close attention to the vacuum's exhaust. Whenever he smelled earth or fungus, anything at all other than the gentle wood-fire smell of hot, dry leaves, he would switch off the vacuum. He would then inspect the filter and hose, remove any obstructions, and take the opportunity to take a drink from his canteen. He would also shut off the vacuum and clip the wand onto the canister if he had to scramble up or down a ledge. Bud was strong but short, and since he didn't have much reach he needed both arms to navigate the slippery slopes.

The miles flew away under the hum of the vacuum, and Bud's confidence continued to increase. When he came back and managed to get Kurt back on his feet, the old man would definitely be impressed with the job he'd done. It might be enough for Kurt to let him continue on his own for a bit, vacuuming some of the more well groomed European forests. Even though he was fond of Kurt and was worried about his master, Bud couldn't keep from getting excited at the prospect of his being assigned a vacuum and a territory. This was the chance he had been waiting for his whole time as an apprentice.

He was in a very good mood until he vacuumed up a rock.

Bud had been letting his mind drift slightly, daydreaming about having his own vacuum and visiting the Rocky Mountains with it, when a harsh “chunk!” grabbed his attention just in time for him to see the vacuum nozzle resting lightly on a loose patch of pebbles. In the slit second that it took him to feel the rock slamming its way up the plastic hose, Bud's confidence and hope drained away to be replaced with pants-wetting terror. His sweat slick thumb slipped over the power switch, rocking it back into the off position.

He tore the shoulder straps off and let the vacuum drop to the ground. Bud scrabbled frantically at the bag compression crank, hoping that he’d managed to turn the motor off before he’d damaged the impeller. He couldn’t see or smell any smoke coming from the motor, so maybe the rock had-

Whoomf. For a second Bud thought the leaf pile he’d been vacuuming had exploded. He was surrounded by a torrent of leaves, so thick he couldn’t see anything else. The leaves caught in his nose, flowed into his still open mouth, scratched against his ears, lifted his jacket up as if a strong wind had caught hold of it. He cried out in surprise, but the leaves filled his mouth and threatened to fill his lungs. With a desperate exhalation he forced the leaves out of his throat and mouth and closed his lips, breathing only through his nose. But the leaves were too thick, he was swimming in a sea of dry leaves, flowing so fast they almost lifted him off the ground in a giant up rushing current.

The flow of leaves stopped as quickly as it had started. Bud was left staring at a forest covered in a layer of shredded leaves, with more shredded leaves falling like a thick brown snow, blocking out the sun and leaving everything covered in shadow. He stood chest deep in the rustling, dry sea of leaves, his arms resting lightly on the surface.

Bud started trembling as the numbness wore off, and he fought to keep himself from crying. The sheer unfairness of the situation made him want to sob. Why did this have to happen to him? What had he done to earn such horrible, horrible luck? He’d dropped a month’s worth of leaves, many of which would now be blowing away in the wind. The vacuum was busted, and he could barely move. He was-

“What the hell is this?”

Bud was shocked out of his self pitying by a startled exclamation from about thirty feet behind him. Startled, he tried to twist around to get a glimpse of the newcomer, but he couldn’t get enough leverage to push against the sea of leaves.

After a few seconds, during which there was the sound as of feet stepping gently on a slippery layer of dead leaves, a figure appeared to Bud’s left, wearing jeans and hiking boots. Bud looked up into the surprised eyes of the young black man attached to the boots and gave him a watery smile. “Hey there. I don’t suppose you could help me out of this?”

“Sure,” said the man, a little nonplussed. “Just give me a sec.”

He set his backpack down on the leaves and dropped to his knees. He held out his hand to Bud. “I’m Sam.”

Bud reached out and shook. “Bud.”

Sam smiled, the left side of his mouth flickering upwards for a fraction of a second. “I think digging you out is probably safest. If I try to lift you I could sink as well, and the leaves are too slippery for good traction.”

Bud shrugged. “I’m not in a position to complain about the way I’m rescued. I’m just relieved there’s anyone here at all. I didn’t think there was anyone here for miles and miles.”

Sam snorted as he started scooping out leaves around Bud with his hands. “I wish. Maybe ten years ago. Now it seems you can’t find a good chunk of nowhere to get lost in. I don’t mean you,” he added quickly, “just…people out hiking who don’t know what they’re doing, don’t have the right gear, too loud and obnoxious, don’t clean up after themselves. You know the kind I mean.”

“Sure do,” Bud hazarded. He and Kurt had never run into another person while doing their rounds, although they did have to work harder these days to avoid people. People would ask awkward questions if they found a wild, grey haired old man and his apprentice vacuuming leaves in a forest.

As Sam carefully scooped handfuls of leaves off to the side, Bud thought frantically about how he was going to explain himself. Somehow, the truth didn’t seem like it was going to cut the mustard. ‘My vacuum blew up and shot all these leaves into the air.’ He’d keep his story simple, wait for Sam to leave, excavate the vacuum, and then…what? He’d probably broken the impeller, and there wasn’t time to clean everything up on his own. Once the first snow of the year hit he’d be done for.

Sam had cleared away a lot of the leaves right around Bud, leaving him at the bottom of an inverted cone. Bud could breathe and move his arms lot more easily now, and he started helping, although he had to be careful not to accidentally bring more leaves down into the space that had been cleared. After an hour or so, Bud finally had enough clearance to scramble out of the leaves. He and Sam both collapsed onto the leaves and lay there for a while.

Finally Sam pushed himself stiffly to his feet. “We should be heading back soon,” he said, casting a glance over the twilit glade. “Don’t think we can dig your gear out before it gets dark, but we can make it back to the trail head.”

Bud heaved himself off the ground. “Good, good.” He hesitated for a second. “I don’t suppose I could impose upon you for a ride back to civilization?”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Sure.”

“Thank you,” said Bud. “I think I should probably explain a few things on our way there.”

“All right, I think I get the basics,” Sam said hesitantly as he and Bud approached a bumper-sticker encrusted stationwagon. The full moon gave the parking lot an overbright, washed out appearance, and the air was cold enough to cause their breath to gust out in clouds of mist. “The bit that is slightly confusing, however, is why.”

“Why what?” asked Bud.

Sam didn’t respond until he had unlocked the car doors and climbed inside. Bud took great care to mimic Sam’s movements, opening his own door, fastening the seatbelt; he wasn’t very familiar with this technology, and didn’t want to cause any more industrial accidents in one day. Sam was just sitting there with his hands on the wheel, staring off into the shifting, dark green of the forest.

“Why bother,” Sam said after a few more seconds. He twisted his key in the ignition, and the engine grumbled to life. “I mean, sure, there are immortal arboreal janitors who constantly vacuum the forests, and they have advanced technology that can manipulate space and time to accomplish this task, and for some reason they retrofit it into old industrial vacuums, but for fuck’s sake why? Are leaves some kind of religious thing? Do you eat them, or-”

“It’s so that they don’t build up. You’ve got to clean them up, or else we’d all be neck deep in the things. Kind of like how you found me, but everywhere.”

Sam twisted his head over to Bud, his face a strange mixture of bemusement and incredulity. “But like, leaves decompose. They go away on their own. You don’t need people to clean them up.” Sam’s voice matched his expression, as if he were trying to explain things to someone slow of thinking. It wasn’t obvious which of them Sam was trying to explain this to.

Bud shook his head. “That’s just an urban legend. Have you ever seen leaves do this ‘decomposing’?”

“I can’t say that I have, really,” Sam said after a moment’s thought.

“Anyway, are you at all busy tomorrow? And do you have a lot of friends that live close by?” Bud asked. “I hate to impose, but I could really, really use some help right about now.”

“Sure, I guess I can ask around,” hazarded Sam, “but I don’t see what normal people can do. We don’t have magic vacuum parts or special powers or anything.”

“We’ll just need some snow shovels. The canister contains the mass distortion field generator, so we can just detach that from the vac and try shoveling the leaves in by hand. It’s all just one huge pile, so we should be able to clean it all up if we get enough help.” Bud took a deep breath. “Worst comes to worst, we dig up the vacuum, I run hell for leather back to Kurt and our gear, fix it, dash back to the pile, revacuum it all, sprint back to Kurt, and have a heart attack.”

Sam neatly passed a slow moving pickup truck and then settled the car back into the right hand lane. He absentmindedly rolled down a window a crack. The wind whipped and cracked across the opening, cutting the stuffy, cat infused smell of the car with with a cool, moisture laden night breeze. “You in a lot of trouble with Kurt?”

Bud laughed a short, humorless laugh. “Imagine the worst trouble you’ve ever been in. Now double that. Double that again. Keep doing that.”

Sam gave a quick bark of laughter. “That bad, huh? All right, you can crash on the couch. I’ll ask around and see if I can get anyone to help us out tomorrow.”

Bud shook his head. “I’m too wound up to get any sleep. I just need to borrow a notepad so I can make up a list of all the stuff we’re going to need. Just to keep myself busy, really.”