Where Have All the Pear Trees Gone?

Carson awoke with a sufficiently severe migraine that he knew immediately he was too sober to face the day. He wasn’t sure what he needed to do first, however: pour another scotch or turn off the… he couldn’t think of curse words bad enough for the blanking alarm boring through his skull which had finally awakened him. It wasn’t his alarm clock because he knew he hadn’t set it. So, he decided on the scotch until he could figure out from what part of the room the noise was coming.

“Wow,” he thought. “If I can keep myself from dangling a preposition when I first wake up, I’m clearly not drunk enough. Better make it a double.” The effort required to conjure such self-destructive humor made his head hurt worse, so he decided to stop.

He couldn’t find the bottle he wanted (it was on its side on the floor next to the couch where he’d been sleeping), but he couldn’t find the source of the alarm, either. Until, that is, he sat down at his desk to ponder both questions. There it was, coming from his laptop.

He lifted the lid & immediately his facility monitors opened. Something had happened with one or more of his buildings, but he was having difficulty finding which one as his eyes were still bleary.

There it was, second from the bottom on the right-hand side. Was that the only one? He touched the icon & the alarm turned off as the warehouse cameras came up. Once his eyes cleared & could focus, he began to discern what had happened. Product had been thrown everywhere & lay in jumbled heaps on the floor. The west end of the building looked as though the mountainside had used it as a punching bag. The southwest corner of the roof had been torn loose & pealed back & that end of the building was buried in snow & debris. At the same time, at least half of the building had been torn from the foundation & the metal walls bent & twisted at odd angles.

His guess: avalanche. While he was still watching, the roof began to sway, seams pop open, until finally the whole roof gave way & the feed was lost in a crush of ice & snow.

“One building down, only twenty-three to go,” he said to himself, lifting his empty glass as though offering a toast to a fallen comrade. He turned off all the alarms, got up & went to make himself a pot of coffee. He’d decided that might be better than the hair of the dog which had bit him.

As he pulled his bag of gourmet blend out of the cupboard (he was particularly fond of Cameron’s® Southern Pecan), he wondered if the storm would claim this building. He doubted it as this one was sturdy & not quite in any avalanche zone—the only one, unfortunately. It might bury a floor or two—maybe even three if the storm ended up being as bad as they think it could be—but it wasn’t going to bring it down.

By the end of the week there was a very good chance it would be the only building he owned still standing. Yes, he was both owner & tenant, but not for long. Before the snow cleared, he would be in default & the bank would own it unless his lawyer figured out a way to keep that from happening. Ah, even if she did find a way, it would only forestall the inevitable. He didn’t want to prolong things. He just wanted to be done with it.

He poured his cup of coffee & headed for the lobby. On the elevator he wondered what would happen if they lost electricity right then. “The generators would kick in & any elevator in motion would complete its journey before shutting down,” he reminded himself, not sure whether that knowledge provided any real comfort.

He arrived at the lobby to find it well-lit. He was thankful that maintenance had remembered he would be staying through the storm & hadn’t turned off the timers. He didn’t think he could find the switches in the dark. The large windows winding all the way around the first floor of the building looked like walls made of Styrofoam. They were completely covered by snow which meant it had to be approaching twenty feet deep. Of course, it would be drifted against the building, but not likely evenly or on all sides. And he couldn’t find a single window that wasn’t covered as he wandered around.

He sat down in one of the overstuffed chairs, sipped his coffee, & picked up a magazine from the table next to him. It was one he’d read before, but he didn’t care. He set it back down. He didn’t feel like reading anyhow.

He stared at the windows. He knew that if anything gave way in this building it would be them. Of course, that wouldn’t affect the structural integrity since they weren’t load bearing. “But imagine if they did give way right now,” he thought to himself. “What an ending!” He could see the headlines: “Owner of Fourteen Story Office Building Dies Buried in Avalanche of Snow in the Lobby of His Own Building”. Okay, at least part of that would have to be moved to a subtitle or simply included in the story. He wasn’t an editor. But what a story it would make.

Naturally, someone would notice that there were only thirteen stories to the building & try to make something of that. But who puts a thirteenth floor in one of their own buildings & makes it their office/home away from home? It had to be fourteen.

He thought about what was beneath the snow out there. Normally he would be looking at beautiful dwarf Comice pear trees laden with ripening fruit at this time of year. There would be a full basket of them right now on the front desk if the receptionist hadn’t been told to take them home for her family. The landscaper he’d hired had done a beautiful job with the place. Now Carson kept hearing an old protest song from his youth as he thought, “Where have all the pear trees gone, long time passing? Where have all the pear trees gone, long time ago?”

He finished his cup of coffee. The windows hadn’t broken. He hadn’t been buried in snow & he hadn’t died. Maybe the elevator would get stuck on his way back up to the apartment & they would find his mummified corpse when the snow finally cleared. “Nah,” he thought, “mummification takes longer than that.”

Back in the apartment he poured a second cup of coffee, went over to his desk & opened his laptop again. “Let’s see what the damage is now,” he said under his breath. The feeds from two more cameras were gone.

He spent some time surfing the web for news about the storm or anything else going on in the world. One site reported that Bigfoot had been seen tearing up a ski resort & climbing on some of the lifts. Who knew he (or she) even liked to ski?

At one thirteen in the afternoon, he lost internet service. All he had left were the direct feeds from his remaining buildings. He managed to stick with coffee & orange juice until just after four when he simply had to have a gin & tonic. By then, five more feeds were gone.

At five-o-seven, he suddenly remembered he hadn’t had anything to eat all day. “And with all this food I’d made sure was stocked up here. How silly of me!” He pan-fried a steak, medium rare, smothered it with onions & Worcestershire sauce, slapped it on a plate, grabbed a fork & steak knife, & hauled it back to the desk where he already had a Tom Collins waiting. (You may have noticed, he liked to switch things up a bit.)

Once he had finished with his meal, he walked over to the east window to get a better look at the storm & anything else he might be able to see out there. The snow was amazing, still coming down & blowing with a fury he’d never known before. He could see no more than a few feet through the blizzard, nothing of the town.

He plucked a pear from his dwarf Comice (yes, he liked them so much he had one planted right in the middle of the window where it would get the best sunlight, supplemented by an array of broad spectrum grow lights). As he bit into it, he thought, “So sweet & tender you could eat with a spoon.” Juice dripped from his chin onto the carpet. He didn’t care. He wouldn’t be there much longer. Then it would be someone else’s problem.

Around nine the lights flickered & he heard the generators kick on. “Electricity is out,” he kept his commentary running. “That means no more automatic timers on the lights or anything else. And I don’t know where most of the switches are. Guess I’d better find my flashlight if I’m gonna do anything besides stay right here. Generators will last for two days, no more than three. After that it’s gonna get cold.”

He walked over to the bar, grabbed a bottle of vodka & thought, “If it’s gonna be like Siberia around here, I might as well drink like it. Besides, I already had my steak. Nothing like liquid potatoes to clean the palate.” He sat down on a bar stool, didn’t bother with a glass, & just began drinking straight from the bottle.

Around two in the morning, he picked himself up, slid off his stool, & made his way back to the desk. Only two feeds remained, beside the one for this building. He folded the lid & turned back to the window. He loved that tree. He loved that view. He loved both views. He even loved the snow, despite what it was doing to him.

He put his shoes back on, still wearing the same clothes he’d worn for the last forty-eight hours. He found his way to the closet, fumbled with his boots, hat, gloves & coat, then closed the door. He took one last look around the apartment & said, “Good night,” tipping his hat & closing the door behind him.

He turned his flashlight on & shone it around his office. He loved this place. He loved the people with whom he worked, really for whom he worked to provide jobs, security & good lives. He was going to miss each & every one of them no matter what they thought of him. He took one last look around, said goodbye & closed that door.

He walked over to the elevator & pushed the down button. He stood there for maybe twenty seconds before remembering they wouldn’t be working until the electricity was restored. The generators weren’t set up to power them. He pounded his forehead several times with the heel of his hand for being so stupid as he headed toward the stairs.

He stopped on each floor, going to the window to discover whether there was anything he could see. When he got to the third floor he watched at the window for a long time. He knew what was below him.

He turned the latch, removed the screen & opened the window. He was surprised by how easily it moved. The wind, however, tore right though him, driving his hat from his head. Slowly he turned, looked at his cap on the floor, then walked back & retrieved it. Holding his hat on his head with one hand, he climbed on the window’s sill.

He stood there for a minute, maybe two, watching the storm rage before him, no longer feeling a thing.

Then he stepped out into the snow.