Idleness is a disease which kills by degrees. It killed my grandfather after the shipyard moved off-planet and he was deemed to old to work in the zero-g manufacturing plant. Fifty-three years of labor ended with ‘thanks for your service’.
He tried to find something else, tried to take up a hobby, but his heart wasn’t in it. He wanted to be up between Phobos and Deimos, doing three weeks on and two weeks off, building the shiny new ships which were heading all over the solar system. If he’d got the job I truly believe he’d have worked until retirement and then gone on another fifty or sixty years like most people.
But at seventy, he was too young to retire, too young to be without purpose.
‘Help me with the harvest, Pompa,’ I said, three months after he’d finished work. My farm is on Geryon Montes, a wedge of slope with engineered trees in bush-orchards that were heading towards maturity and soon, I hoped, a first native Martian cider.
‘If none of these jobs work out, I’ll come over and mess about in your orchard, but I need to get a job,’ he replied. Across the vid-link his smile was genuine, but his eyes were guarded.
‘Sure.’ He couldn’t get his head round an orchard being real work. Food and drink was something you purchased. For him work, real work, was done in factories. Only the work he’d done was now up in orbit.
In these early months pompa was still busy. He chased down every sniff of a job. But it was a lower intensity than he was used to. A whole day chasing work didn’t equate to the mental and physical effort of crawling round a ship under construction, working out where the hull and engine weaknesses would manifest, and thus need strengthened. He felt idle, underused, underemployed.
Mars Manumission was celebrated at mine. The whole family came. Pompa looked less. I couldn’t put my finger on it, and he claimed to be fine. Gramma said she understood me, and it was because he didn’t have work, and hated all the hobbies and pastimes others in his position were filling their time with.
‘What’s he doing then?’ I asked.
She shrugged. ‘I’m out the house nearly thirteen hours most days. He says he’s looking for work. But I tell you this, there’s an ass groove at his end of the couch which wasn’t there a year ago.’
‘I asked him to come help with harvest,’ I said.
‘He never told me. Ask him again,’ Gramma said. ‘He needs to be doing something.’
I did ask him, and he said he probably should, and to call him to arrange it.
Unfortunately our harvest didn’t work properly. The apples made undrinkable cider. Our carefully engineered fruit had a tenth of the expected malic acid. By the time I’d sorted a fix to make this years cider usable, worked out the issue, and how to re-engineer the orchard, it was nearly half-a-year since I’d spoken to pompa.
I called. Gramma answered. When we got to pompa she said, ‘Did you not hear about his hip?’
I hadn’t
‘He’s in his chair,’ she said. ‘I’ll link you over.’
And there was pompa. I’d never seen him reclining. Sitting, yes, of course: At the dinner table; in the control seat of many vehicles. But here he lay back, supine, in loose and undefined clothes which failed to hide how his belly and thighs had turned from taught muscle to softer fat.
‘Gramma says you hurt your hip.’ I said.
‘I tripped and landed bad. It’ll be fine in a week or two. I’m resting it.’
‘You could come to the farm, walk round the trees with me.’
‘Maybe when it’s a bit better. Your cider was nice.’
‘Thanks. I’ll send some more if you want.’
‘Please. It makes afternoon telly more palatable.’
We tried an intervention, the kids, grandkids, and gramma. But he just couldn’t see it. He was still looking for work, he’d be better when his hip was better, the weight would come off when he was working.
I figure he lost track of his purpose as a person, and couldn’t find it outside whatever the image of him inside his head was. He never thought of it as giving up. But that’s what it was. He gave up, became idle, and in three years went from my vibrant active pompa, to ash scattered among my trees.
I miss him.
text by stuartcturnbull, picture by Hans via Pixabay
I loved the story. Pompa was real for me, and so was Mars. Beautifully written.
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