[Fiction] The Reservation

John watched the giant rotors twisting lazily in the breeze. There was something peaceful about being out on the wind farm, away from everyone else. There was work to be done, of course; there was always work to be done. Old Mister Gutman had called him out to have a look at his pickup again. Mister Gutman didn't treat his trucks kindly, taking them into all kinds of wilderness. He could afford to, and who would stop him, after all? John wondered if he hunted up there. He knew Mister Gutman owned a carbine because Sam Stalton had sold it to him. Sam was the last gunsmith this side of the city and the Stalton house was renowned for its handcrafted weapons. John liked to work at Stalton Farm. Sam was a kindly soul, and liberal with his wife's chilled iced tea.

Not Mister Gutman. If Misses Gutman had ever made a pitcher of iced tea, it was when she was still a child. Everyone in town said the Gutmans'd be better off moving back to the city but here they stayed, year after year. They'd won the contract to build up the wind farm way back in the hazy days of the town's first legal battles with city officials and they'd changed as the money rolled in from on high. "Yes," Mister Gutman liked to say, "We don't like those city folk, but we'll surely take their money!" Then he would laugh and clap you on the back and probably offer a cheroot or a stogie to take the edge off of his wealth.

Damn, that man was worth a lot of money. Most people in town couldn't afford real hydrogen engines. Electrics, electrics, everywhere you looked. Not Mister Gutman. Of course, he'd torn the fuel line or some such nonsense, probably driving it up a mountain side. When John peered into the darkened barn the Gutmans used as a garage he could see the dangerously explosive super-cooled hydrogen dripping from the undercarriage.