Luna City IV: Chronicles of Luna City

By Celia Hayes and Jeanne Hayden

Welcome to Luna City, Karnes County, Texas … Population 2,455, counting a new arrival from Alaska. Change is in the wind, what with plans for an expansion of the neighboring Mills Farm spa and resort by the corporation which owns it. Meanwhile, a catastrophic fire has forever altered the appearance of the Age of Aquarius Camp Ground and Goat farm, where former celebrity chef, Richard Astor-Hall (previously known as Rich Hall, the Bad Boy Chef) – still on the run from his former life – is wrestling with his commitment to the community as a member of the Luna City Volunteer Fire Department… and his attraction to Miss Kate Heisel, the star reporter for the Karnesville Daily Beacon. Drastic changes are in store for many other Lunaites as well, in this fourth installation of the Chronicles of Luna City

• Language: English
• Publisher: Celia Hayes
• Release date: May 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386806264

Celia Hayes

Celia Hayes works as a restorer and lives in Naples. Between one restoration and another, she loves to write. Don't Marry Thomas Clark reached #1 in the Amazon Italian Ebook chart.

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Luna City IV

A Continuing Comic Diversion

By

Celia Hayes

& Jeanne Hayden

GA Logo - Long version

San Antonio, 2017

Copyright © 2017 Celia D. Hayes & Jeanne Hayden

Cover design credit: Alex of 3iii’s Graphic Studios. The fire engine on the cover appears courtesy of the Giddings Volunteer Fire Department. Chapter heading illustrations are derived from photographs taken by the authors in various locations.

Published by Geron & Associates

A Division of Watercress Press.

2017

Dedication

Thank you to the readers who love the series, and demanded a further chronicle of events, lives and loves in Luna City. To my family, friends and the memory of those who have gone before. Semper Fidelis!

Jeanne Hayden

The Luna City series is dedicated with affection to those residents of small to medium-sized towns which have not only welcomed us over the past half-dozen years, but have also served as an inspiration, in telling us stories which are woven into this continuing chronicle: Fredericksburg, Boerne, Bulverde, Beeville, Goliad, Gonzalez, Comfort, Richmond, Junction, San Saba and Harper, to Giddings, Llano and Lockhart, Richmond, New Braunfels and Kerrville. Thank you all for your continuing inspiration!

Celia Hayes,

San Antonio, 2017

Table of Contents

Luna City & Environs

Luna City Town Square

Cast of Characters

Up in Smoke

In the Offices of the Karnesville Weekly Beacon

Gone Home

A Castle of Straw

Winter 2017 Newsletter

Signs and Portents

Ala Carte With Quartermayne

Ashes, Ashes, All Fall Down

A Troop in Need

Raising the Castle

A New Direction of Mills Farm

When a Plan Comes Together

A Whole New Age

Eat for Two

Uncle Harry’s Naughty Weekend

With His Foot in His Mouth to the Kneecap

Rivers Run Through It

The Rain it Raineth Every Day

Cattle Call

Disruptions and Eruptions

High Water

Dramatic High-Water Rescue

Safe Ashore

A La Carte With Quartermayne Heads South

Table For Two

Luna City & Environs

Luna City Town Square

Cast of Characters

––––––––

Up in Smoke

Come on! Move it! Jess commanded, as she thrust her cellphone into the depths of her briefcase-handbag. Behind the counter, the switchboard was lighting up like an old-fashioned pinball machine and Sergeant Gonzales settled her headset and returned to her more urgent duties. I’ll drive you all back to your place – but hurry! And when we get there, don’t do anything stupid, ‘kay? We’ll have it all covered – and I promise, we’ll try and save what we can!

Be careful, Babe! Joe Vaughn shot over his shoulder as he dove for the front door of the Luna City Police Department HQ. Chris had already beaten him, with his teenage medic-apprentice on his heels, leaving the ambulance stretcher marooned in the middle of the waiting area. Gunnison Penn lay supine and abandoned on it, his mountainous buttocks crowned like the Alps with a wad of white dressing instead of snow.

Hey! What about me? he shouted, his flushed countenance reflecting an expression of more than his usual irascibility. That vicious beast bit me! It has rabies, I’m certain ... I demand...

Take two Motrin and drink plenty of water, Chris replied. Sorry, pal, we got us a for-real emergency. We’ll get back to you as soon as ...

Azúcar does not have rabies! Judy Grant sobbed. You hit him first! And if he catches anything horrible from biting your nasty ass ... you will never be welcomed back to the Age of Aquarius, and that’s a promise!

Look, Mr. Penn, Azúcar had all his shots ... Now come on, Judikins! Sefton Grant had his infuriated spouse by one elbow, but it did not prevent her from belting Gunnison Penn across the head with the woven Andean peasant bag which served Judy Grant as a purse.

Did I do that? Judy spat as Richard caught her other elbow. I’m so sorry – and I hope that hurt!

Mrs. Grant, Richard begged, Compose yourself, let us fly away home – your house is on fire ... hell, why does that call a nursery-rhyme to mind?

Can we move it? Jess demanded through tight-clenched teeth, and they were all through the narrow front door of the Luna City PD’s offices, moving at speed towards Jess’ bare-bones little yellow Jeep Wrangler. With Richard’s assistance, a curiously resolute Sefton stuffed his still-sobbing spouse into the back seat – which left the front passenger seat to Richard. Jess spun out of the joint Luna City PD/VFD parking lot in a screech of brakes and a spray of gravel, a short length in the wake of Luna City’s two pumper-trucks, all ablaze with lights.

The winter sun had barely slipped below the horizon, the sky the bleached color of a sea shell – it was still light enough to see in the light twilight. Jess and her little yellow Wrangler joined the cavalcade of lights and motors, burning up the raddled, rut-ridden road which was the turn-off into the Age of Aquarius Campground and Goat Farm, raising a storm of dust barely detectable against the massive column of smoke rising from the glade of oak trees where the Grant’s yurt burned.

Jess slid her Wrangler into a slap-dash halt some distance from the pumper-trucks, in the driveway which had formerly been the lane between the campground and the Grant’s eccentric compound – the yurt, and other outbuildings.

I’m sorry, she said, over her shoulder to the Grants. It looks pretty well gone ... it was nothing but framework and felt and all that, wasn’t it?

Yup, Sefton replied, with remarkable stoicism, considering that it was his family home of four decades going up in roaring red and yellow flame. Now that Jess had turned off the engine, Richard could hear it plain – a sound to turn bowels and soul to jelly, the full-throated, blast-furnace roar of fire, fire well-along. I ... we built it – we can watch it go, Judikins.

Stay here, Jess commanded. She had already gone around to the back of the Wrangler, yanking an assortment of heavy clothing out of a duffle-bag and pulling them on over her street clothes. Richard noted, out of the corner of his eye, that a half-dozen other new arrivals to the scene of catastrophe were doing the same. We’ll try and save the other shit and the trees ... Richard – I’m counting on you, don’t let Sefton and Judy do anything stupid.

Only things, Judy Grant replied – remarkably stoic after her previous hysteria, although her cheeks still glittered with fresh tear-tracks. There are only things, Jess ... don’t let anyone risk their life for materiel things.

I know – don’t fret, Jess said, as she pulled a massive helmet over her head, and pulled the face-mask down over her countenance. At a determine jog she went off towards the gathering of similarly-clad figures. Richard soon lost her among the bustle of volunteers, made anonymous in form-concealing gear and helmets, deploying hoses from off the back of the pumper-trucks in a manner which suggested much practice.

It had rather surprised him to see that bystanders among those camped at the Age had also turned too, with a couple of garden hoses and a number of buckets – a valiant but fruitless effort, which that straggle of old Aquarians gratefully yielded to the better-prepared and equipped members of the LCVFD. A handful of them – sweating and soot-stained joined Richard and the Grants, attended by the Grants three very excited dogs.

Sorry, man, the first of them said, when he could be heard over the roaring fire and the vociferous dogs. He looked about the same age as Sefton, save being a little cleaner-cut than the latter, who looked like a younger and less run-to-seed Willie Nelson We did what we could, but it went up like a torch.

No sweat, Bigbee, Sefton Grant shrugged, still amazingly stoic. Any idea how it started?

The sweat-lodge, I guess, Bigbee replied in a plaintive voice, as Judy embraced the dogs. We thought the fire was out, when all the ruckus started ... I swear to you, man – Rickover and Daisy, they grabbed some of your stuff from inside, though. You got insurance, so at least you can start again, make the ol’ commune HQ even trippier than before.

Sefton cleared his throat. We don’t have any insurance, Biggs ... well, not on the yurt and our personal shit. Only on the van, ‘cause it’s required. You remember, all this wasn’t built to code, ‘r anything like that. We winged it back in ’68 and we been winging it ever since. Judikins, she wanted to live lightly on the land, ya remember.

Well, damn, Sefton ... Bigbee shook his head. How you gonna rebuild, then? You gotta live somewhere, man. Can you swing it out of pocket?

Prolly not, Sefton shook his head, his countenance more lugubrious than ever. We make just enough from the place to scrape by, pay the sales taxes ‘n permits an’ all, keep the place running.

Sorry, man, Bigbee digested this unfortunate intelligence. Real bummer, having to start all over. Can your kids help?

They got their own lives, man, Sefton shook his head. I can’t ask that of them – they’re stretched as tight as we are, with their kids going to college an’ all. We’ll figure out a way ... he heaved up a deep sigh, which turned into a cough on a drifting wisp of smoke, and Bigbee thumped his back.

Look man, you can crash with Wanda an’ me in the RV tonight, but we gotta get back to College Station by Christmas Eve. We’re doing Christmas dinner with the Dean and his family, or we’d stay longer. Ya know, you could come and crash with us for longer, just to get your head straight...

No can do, man – not with the dogs, an’ the goats an’ hens an all. It would kill us, to walk away leaving the place unattended, Sefton answered. The critters need us. But thanks for asking. He fetched up a deep sigh from the very depths of his soul, and added. We’ll get by ... us country boys always do.

Judy was crying again, kneeling on the tumbled ground with her arms around the dogs – those three large mutts of undetermined lineage, all of whom had chosen the Grants as their personal and much-adored humans after being dumped in the countryside by previous owners. Our paradise is ruined, Seftie, she sobbed. That awful man – he was the harbinger of war and discord! He spoiled everything – it’s all his fault!

The dogs pressed close to her or Sefton, shivering and whining in distress – Richard viewed them with faint loathing. He was not particularly an animal person and Judy’s display of emotion vaguely offended him, his upbringing being of the old-school stiff-upper-lip persuasion, no matter how far he had fallen from that ideal in employing strategic temper tantrums as a form of theater. Sefton’s uncouth stoicism was rather more acceptable to Richard. He was loath to admit that he had become guardedly fond of them both, or at least progressively less annoyed with their eccentric conduct and overt social familiarity. Somehow, he could hear the voice of his aged Gran, chiding him for being a snot in thinking he was above them, somehow. The Grants had been very kind, over the last year and a half, renting him the Airstream made cozy by the efforts of the Gonzales/Gonzalez clan, presenting him regularly with fresh eggs in exchange for the bucket of vegetable scraps and peelings that he brought daily from the Café – scraps upon which the Grant’s flock fell with avid greed. The way that the chickens could scarf down peelings – especially of fruit was a source of never-ending amusement to Richard. And Sefton’s unparalleled homemade mustang-grape wine ... for a continuing supply of that ambrosia, he would forgive much. He might even absent himself from the old Airstream, and give it over to them for an indefinite period – it was theirs after all, and if they needed a place to stay ... he could always go stay with Chris.

After ten or fifteen minutes, it appeared that the combined efforts of the fire department volunteers were bearing fruit – in such a brisk and efficient manner that he could hardly credit the evidence of his own eyes. But the roaring flames had been doused in a protest of sizzle and gouts of steam thrown up as a last protest. One stream of water from the hoses now turned on the nearest of the scorched trees, while the other turned on the black-cinder remains of the yurt as if to say, ‘now, stay out, you bastard!’. There was a definite slacking of