Walking down a deserted street, where the grass was beginning to sprout, I saw a man in the distance, beckoning to me.
I didn't recognize him, so I took my time ambling his way. He wore a tan trench coat and his black hair was mussed up something terrible. The closer I got to him, the less I liked anything about him. He finally grew impatient at my slow pace and headed towards me, but when he did that I turned around and walked away from him.
"Wait!!" he yelled at me. "Don't go! I have something important to tell you!"
"You can tell me from right there, bub" I said, a good thirty feet away from him.
"Can I come up and whisper it in your ear?" he asked.
"Nope. Stay where you are, or I'll bash you with my coal shovel."
I had taken to carrying a heavy cast iron coal shovel with me whenever I went out for a stroll. Just in case something like this occurred. I waved the coal shovel around my head in a menacing manner.
"Oh" he whined, " this shouldn't be said in public. Not yet. Not now."
"Go ahead" I said calmly. "Spit it out."
"Fudge!" he said. "Guess I'll just have to do it."
He hunched his shoulders together and cupped his hands around his mouth.
"When the time comes, we will strike!" he hissed at me. Then he ran away from me, zig-zagging back and forth across the street like a mad man -- but he was in no danger of being struck by a car, since there were none on the roads anymore.
There was a cop down on the corner who had watched the two of us. Now he came up to me. He came right up to me, the dumb flatfoot. I decided not to assault him with my coal shovel, though I was sorely tempted.
"What did that guy say?" he asked me, keeping an eye on my shovel. I could tell he wanted to write me a ticket or take me to jail for carrying it, but hadn't quite figured out what the charge would be.
"He said 'when the time comes, we will strike'" I told him flatly.
"What did he mean by that?" the cop asked me in a neutral voice.
"No idea" I replied, matching his tone. "Never saw the guy before in my life, and I don't keep track of the time anymore."
I showed the cop my right and left wrists to prove I didn't carry a watch anymore.
The cop's eyes glowed with an unhealthy excitement. Placing his rough red hand on my shoulder, he whispered hoarsely: "He's right, you know. When the time is right, we will strike!"
Then the cop walked away -- too quickly for me to raise my shovel and bean him, which I wanted badly to do after he so blatantly violated my private space.
I took off my violated jacket and tossed it in a nearby trash can. It started to rain. I was getting a chill, so I walked into a nearby drug store, where the glaring neon lights advertised TBH oil at half price. I found a cheap plastic poncho and took it to the guy in the white coat behind the thick plexiglass shield at the cash register. He had a large red button on the lapel of his lab coat, which read
I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING I SHOULDN'T.
I couldn't stop myself. To his query did I find everything, I archly replied: "When the time comes, we will strike!"
He nodded his head, rang up my purchase, wrapped it in a banana leaf, and leaned into the plexiglass until his nose looked like it was made of Silly Putty.
"The new password is 'Chittagong has fallen' he whispered to me. "And ditch the shovel, dum-dum; you want the cops to catch on to you?"
"How much will you give me for it?" I asked him promptly. Because, you see, this was a new age in which money happened in many strange new ways.
"I'll give you a thousand dollars, hard cash, right here and now" he said, pulling open the cash register drawer as he spoke.
When I was back on the rainy deserted street, with my poncho on and a thousand smackers in my pocket, I decided it was time to strike.
So I went home and made waffles, then lay down on the floor for a nap. But when I woke up, the strike was over. We won. But taxes became much higher.
