6.17 / Science and Fiction Issue

I Hope We Have a Hammock One Day

Really, truly, I do. Have I told you? My father cut down the twin pines today. The tall, thick pines that were supposed to support our hammock. One fell over the south barbed wire fence, but it didn’t matter because the south fence (all the lengths of it) needed to come up to make room for the new Huxley airstrip.

Did I tell you about the airstrip? Huxley ran out of land again. Maybe this go-around, their CEO suggested to the board of directors that it would be wise to buy, buy, buy. And now we are all out of land. They took the Garland Cemetery, too. The one we used to hide in. We used to spoon there, do you remember?

If you asked what they did with the bodies, with your should-have-been mother-in-law, I would tell you I don’t know. (If you were anyone else, however, I would just say Huxley left them beneath the dirt and poured asphalt over the top. It is much, much cheaper to leave things as they lie, these days.)

Sometimes, I agree with the notion. That way, at least we have a chance to remember things as we loved them, to go back to things as they were.

I went to my father and asked him about the twin pines. Why did they have to go? And the north forty acres? Our house? Why couldn’t Huxley build around?

Like a child, I ask him childish things. I whine like a child, and if anyone could hear my whining, they would think me a child, too.

He gave me the same answer he always gives when he doesn’t have an answer, when he doesn’t know what else to say.

“Because I love you.” And: “It was for the best.”

Huxley is hiring again. Scientists. Engineers, metal workers and janitors. Even botanists, no professional experience required, they say. A thousand employees a day, but you probably already knew that. Father told me I should try to get on with them, but I couldn’t imagine landing jets on top of mom and grandma.

“What will you do for money?” he said. “Grow your tomatoes?” Plump, red, real tomatoes, yes, yes, yes.

I told him there would be plenty time to think about it now that he’s sold the land, probably for a fortune.

And then he disappointed me.

Who said anything about selling?

Just me. Because I am like a child and I am living in the past. A past that was OK, at best: no machine guns, no crowd control or riot shields. I am sensible enough to remember as much.


My father and I both moved to Plano. I75 belongs to Huxley International. Allen and Richardson are no longer metropolises, but spaceports. In Frisco, they recently opened the first public Climber. A 60,000 mile ride up a carbon nanotubular tether. Father says the rich are coming from miles around to pay their way into space.

“What’s up there?” I say, every time he brings it up.

“Mars and Luna,” he answers. The solar industry, he says, sometimes, with a capital S and a capital I. He takes my child-qualities too seriously.

What I mean is: What is in space that is not already on Earth? Where have you gone, William? Or do you prefer that I call you Mr. Willy-the-Pooh? Or not anymore?

Answer me this-and for once in a Mayan calendar, take me seriously: Where Have You Gone. And what is there in space that is not on Earth?


Do you remember the song we listened to in the Garland Cemetery? It was about noon. A hot, quiet noon. Honeymoon flies rampant, bulging and bursting from the heat. And every so often, the explosive thud of transports overhead, the crackling of trees falling acres away, pulled off on lines and boxes.

I brought my first portable radio, and you brought A Rush of Blood to the Head. We listened to the Scientist over and over and over. You blew soft lyrics into my ear: You don’t know how lovely you are. Always the same line, you’d start from there and go. Every time, cold, prickly goose bumps.

You curled your arms around me and we lay in the dirt. Not on top of a grave, not on top of your should-have-been mother-in-law. We called each other odd. Odd for believing we were being romantic.

And to be honest, I wasn’t sure what romance entailed. I had been taught by film and Cosmopolitan all my life, but like religion I wanted to know for myself, to learn on my own-and there was nothing anyone could do or say to sway my growing opinion of kissing above the rotting dead. I wanted you to sway me. When the batteries died, like batteries used to, we stayed there, me rubbing your veiny arms, your veiny arms squeezing my flat chest.

You whispered, low-voice breaking:

I’m just a little black rain cloud,

Hovering under a honey tree.

I’m only a little black rain cloud,

Pay no attention to little me.

You might have thought it worked on me. That it appealed to my deepest, innermost child. But I loved you for it. You stopped being a man and forgot humility and put your lips to my ear and sang the song, just like my mother used to.

And it has been such a long time ago, that I don’t even know how it ends. The song, I mean. Not our spooning. The spooning ended in sex (past tense), the same as our sparring. In the woods, at least. Nowhere near mom or grandma.

When I got home and my father saw the dirt and sap on my shirt and shorts and skinned knees, he took off his belt and hit me on the face, my arms, my legs, my ass.

“Don’t cry,” he said, forehead turning purple, wrinkles and lines deepening. “Don’t cry.” My father used to get so angry he would repeat himself without realizing it. He would mutter profanities and strike and curse and call me names that would make my mother turn over in her shallow, airstrip-covered grave.

“Big girls don’t cry,” he said. “I thought you were a big girl.” He flung me onto my purple and white patched bed sheets. My still-small body bounced. He pulled my shorts down to my ankles and hit me over and over.

Would you be ashamed of me if I said I cried? Not because it hurt, not because my father’s leather-imprinted name burned my soft, sticky skin. You had already made me numb. I cried for you. Because I knew we would never see each other again.

Please Will, tell me: Did my father call you that night? Did he tell you never to follow me to class again? Did he tell you never to try contacting me again? I wish you would tell me. I believe he did. And I believe you might have respected his anger more than you loved your soul mate.


Regardless, we kept close contact, over the years, but never in person. You sent emails from a fake address-the one with a girl’s name and an underscore followed by a meaningless four-digit number.

You wrote about the hurricanes in Miami and Biloxi and New Orleans. The burning of Mecca, the looting of Musée du Louvre in Paris. You have lived everywhere. Too many places, I thought. I think.

My father says this a lot, but it doesn’t concern you: “Nobody has a home anymore. The easiest, most economical way to live is by moving around.” And now he says this because he wants me to feel better about Portland. (Yes, we are a long, long way from Atlanta.)

“The problem with people back in my day-” he starts, because he believes this, he simply knows it is true, and he thinks his days were so much harder than my own: “-is once you were done with school, you had to find a job. But no one wanted to leave home.” He sniffs, blows and coughs because he keeps a sinus infection. “No one’s going to find work at home,” he says. “It just isn’t possible anymore.”

He says he was kicked out at seventeen. By his own father. Because that’s life. He dropped out of high school, probably. My father won’t tell the fucking truth, ever.

Get on with Huxley, he says again and again. They have an evolving department of botany. Or join the military, he says.

Huxley and the military own the world. I don’t want a part of it. I haven’t found what makes me happy yet. (The future of humanity probably won’t have much to do with it.)

The other day I drove to the Turtle Creek mall in Seattle. It’s the first mall I’ve been in since moving for the eleventh time.

There was a sporting-goods store, and they sold hammocks. Big hammocks that can wrap around you like a cocoon.

My hands fumble with price tags now more than they used to, when no one is looking. Do you know how much a hammock like that costs? Guess.

Two hundred dollars.

A canvas-like material, probably too hot for the summer, anyway. It’d probably dry rot after absorbing a little of my firecracker sweat.

Hammocks are too, too expensive. I don’t know why we ever talked about getting one.


Today, my father told me Huxley International is merging with Korean Air. To save the economy. To collaborate in technology more efficiently.

Most of the west coast and Hawaii has been sold to China, Russia, and Germany. Also to save the economy. So we are moving again, soon-to Richmond, I believe-to escape communism.

I try telling him that if I could be communist and happy, I would. Nothing about our freedom to roam (or to vote) has brought optimism.

“Now’s the time to do it, baby,” he says, rattling loose change in his pockets. And I know what he means.

And I tell him every day: I do not want to go to space. I do not want to go to Mars. I do not want to wrap the moon in thick, mile-wide solar panels.

I do not want. Ever.

When he asks what I want, I momentarily think of you. But then I think of Atlanta and the twin pines that used to stand in my back yard. The same ones he cut down himself-to make Huxley’s purchase a better deal.

You and I stood under those trees, looking up at the fiery brown straw. It was fall. Or they had been struck by lightning. Or both. The surrounding brittlegrass was covered by their dusty, broken cones.

I asked you: How does a hammock work? Is it hard to get comfortable?

“Easy,” you said, and you told me exactly:

1-sit as though you will sit in a chair. Put your back to the hammock.

2-reach behind you and spread out the hammock before turning.

3-turn and lay back, but never feet first. I’ll get in before you. Don’t worry.

You touched my waist when you spoke. When you spoke, you spoke softly, like sexual secrecy. When I asked, How Do You Get Out of a Hammock, you said: We’ll think about that later.

And you kissed the peach-fuzz on my neck, just below my ear, astride my hairline. I had thin, blond hair at the time. Since, it’s been almost every color I can think of. Sometimes, more than five colors at once. I would send you a picture, but I’m sure you wouldn’t get it. You stopped receiving my emails ages ago. (This I assume is correct, for why shouldn’t it be?) And as far as I know, you’re galaxies away, now. Or just on Mars. I heard on CNN that they have terrible service on Mars. But don’t worry, they’ll make faster, better-quality satellites eventually. People always come through, in the end. Always.


It rains in Richmond, and then the sun comes out and it scorches. I have a tan, now. It doesn’t go well with my pink hair. I promise to shave it completely if the weather doesn’t stop changing.

My father found a job working metal at Huxley. Nine skyscrapers have been commissioned all over Virginia. Two belonging to Korean Air. Which, as I mentioned before, is also Huxley. I doubt my father will be paid a fortune to build.

We are living on the seventeenth floor of the most languid apartment building in Woodland you have ever seen. Do you remember those foreign films we used to watch together? The ones based in Sweden, or Finland-the ones where the cities were in such a shape that we promised we would never fly to Europe-that’s the shape the Crown apartments have fallen into. They look as though they are part of a communist nation. Tight, angular cement structures surrounded by a hundred blast resistant walls. My father comes home, sits on our breadcrumb-covered futon and drinks and sleeps.

I think about his health, his vertigo, and imagine him dangling from the skeleton of a building, face hidden behind a dark, reflective welding mask.

“You’re going to fall down one day.”

“I’m not afraid of heights,” he says.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I’m not afraid of anything,” he says.

I told you before that I don’t trust a fucking thing he says. And I don’t believe a man who believes everything he hears on television. CNN, Fox News, C-Span even-it’s as though they’re talking specifically to my dad, hoping he will become a part of the hoopla that is the new Eastern United States. He buys water when they say buy water. He buys duct tape. He pulls his money out of dying things. He puts it in Huxley. In Korean Air. He tips the guards at the front desk, and they do not say Thank You. He hates the idea of communism but he is slowly becoming a part of it, himself. (I don’t care about this. But my father, worse than anything, is a disintegrating hypocrite.)

I ask him about it. He laughs.

“It happens all the time when you get old,” he says.

William, I’ll be honest with you. There’s no real point in leaving my father. I feel ugly. Not physically, but mentally and spiritually as well. I think about you every day. About Atlanta. The twin pines and the cemetery. And Weenie-the-Pooh.

I looked up the lyrics to the song. The one you whispered in my ear. It isn’t the same anymore. Not even when read aloud. Write me sometime. It’s such a simple thing to do, really.


Will, it’s been a long time since I’ve thought of you. But you’ll have it in your heart to forgive me, won’t you? A lot has happened since we moved to Richmond.

Number One: I bought a 38 Special off the black market. With my father’s money, of course. I figured he wouldn’t need it, soon, anyway.

Number Two: I waited for the commercials, flicked the lights on and pointed the gun at him. His eyes grew to the size of golf balls.

Number Three: You know that thing he used to do when he was upset? Not the rape-in-disguise part. The other part. The one where he would mutter and repeat nonsense words and call me names. That. You remember. He didn’t do that thing, this time.

Number Four: I pulled back the hammer. It rubbed a blue mark on the tuft of my thumb. I had never shot a gun before.

Number Five: I still have never shot a gun. I wanted to. I swear to God I did. But I think you kept me from it. I thought of a little stuffed bear holding a balloon, floating up the side of a tree in search of honey. I might have laughed a little. I might have cried a little. I can’t get the damn song out of my head, now.

We both jumped when an outgoing passed over the complex. Richmond has a new spaceport, did I tell you? My father said you’re probably working for Huxley. Or Korean Air. Or both.

Because I asked the thing I’ve wanted to know so long: Did you call Will the day I came home with dirt all over me?

He answered in his calm, I am Fatherly way, “Yes.”

“What did you say to him? What did you say to him?”

“I told him it wouldn’t work.”

“What wouldn’t work?”

“The two of you.”

I think what my father meant by this was, He, and You. The two of you could never have worked out, I agree. And I left it at that. I didn’t want to listen to him reason anymore. He probably doesn’t even remember why he thought we wouldn’t work.

So, anyway, I left my father, finally. Like religion, it just snapped, there was no in-between logical consideration. People with too much logic lack so much ambition. I brought a heavy pot full of smooth, fat tomatoes with me. Delicious with bread and mayonnaise and a little pepper. You can come find me, now. You can stop hiding.


This apartment is a very nice apartment. I’m only on the eleventh floor, this time. The guards carrying AK-47s in the lobby nod or smile when they see me. I didn’t want to go too far from my father, so yes-I’m still in Richmond.

And I hope it won’t disappoint you to know that I work for Huxley, now. I prefer them to the street. I see their orange and black emblem, their eagle, every day before going into the Copton lobby, where I’m a receptionist. It’s a very nice building, and I am very sorry that I ever had anything against the company. I suppose it is the inevitability of adjustment I hate most.

But that’s very human of me, isn’t it?

Did you know they do drug tests every twelve days in the Copton building? And on average, Huxley International/Korean Air drug tests occur at least twice a month.

You didn’t know about their drug examinations-unless you work for Huxley or Korean Air. They are a very professional company. So I don’t blame them for paving over grandma and your should-have-been mother-in-law.

When I come home to my cozy eleventh floor apartment, I go out to the balcony where there are cactuses, tomatoes, green onions and pepper plants growing on shelves. I have taken very seriously to the growing of things. Because I should have a full-time hobby. Most adults do, so I understand. And I have a hammock now, too. Blue. From one end of the balcony to the other. I get in just like you told me to, one step at a time, turn and lay back. Never feet first, of course. The last of that song, which I hum on evenings as I swing gently left and right, goes something like this:

Ev’ryone knows that a rain cloud

Never eats honey, no, not a nip.

I’m just floating around over the ground,

Wondering where I will drip.

I’ll email you the full thing to your real address, the original one. If you are living on Mars, or operating the drive aboard the Frisco counterweight, it might take a while to receive. I’ll attach photos, too. I kept my hair. It’s thin and flat and blond now. It sticks to the back of my neck, just like you remember.

Did I tell you it rains nearly every day in Richmond? It drizzles over my new, blushed tomatoes, just on the threshold of bursting. I should be happy on days when the sun comes out, its jagged rays pelting through an almost non-existent sheet of ozone. But when it rains, it feels too good to fold the hammock around me, like a cocoon. I remember asking how to get out when I’ve finished resting. You said: We’ll think about that later. I promise, Will: it’d be much easier done with the two of us.


Garrett Ashley is currently an undergraduate at the University of Southern Mississippi, and hopes to get into a good writing program in the near future. There's a special place in his heart for science fiction, social and near future. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in LORE, Foundling Review, Word Riot, Pear Noir!, decomP and Bartleby Snopes, among others. Sometimes he vents frustration of rejection via video games.