Clarence (part 1 of 3)

Clarence

"Or should I say 'river',"

Melba Gross, host of 'World and Wants', Broadcasted by Newtopian Public Radio (N.P.R.)

The motion of the car was consistently smooth. Clarence could see the sun brighten his green windbreaker through it and his eye lids.  Mary kept the radio on softly usually with Newtopian Public Radio (N.P.R.). Politically neutral comments were made on politically charged topics from the low, rolling voice of the host, Melba Gross.  She brought up topics that spanned from the internet regulation, the harm of spirits and wines in excess, to the conflict in the Middle East with the rivers. “Or should I say ‘river’,” the host had said once about how the two major rivers in the region, the Tigris and Euphrates, collapsed into each other.  This squeezed the surrounding villages and cities out and into a sudden diaspora. The marshy sub terrain between them had become thoroughly saturated and excavated. Over time certain areas collapsed to form a number of hidden channels and basins of still and sometimes flowing water.  Those basins, Clarence had learned while pretending to be asleep beneath his windbreaker, were major contributors to the final flooding that killed and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.  He also learned that a cup of wine each day provided a sufficient number of a certain type of anti-oxidant although they never said which anti-oxidant.

The next program talked about the many different types of anti-oxidants and a healthy but easy way to consume enough each day.  The not had concerned Clarence since he hadn’t an idea of what anti-oxidants were.  He still liked N.P.R. but his kids did not.  He would see his kids tomorrow.  His wife back in Nearport, Newopia might be willing to make up or she might have another boyfriend, he thought grimly. He prepared for anything. I’m just glad to be a father.  In Newtopia it was illegal for spouses to live apart from each other even if they were divorced if they shared children and the children were under a certain age.  The age limit had changed twice since He and Laura Bradley got divorced.  It switched from the youngest child having to be 18 years before the parents could live separately to 16. And then the Catholic Church and small groups of aristocratic Muslim sects pushed it to be 18 years again.

Flooded Basin between the Tigris and Euphrates