Sit-In At The Alamo

By William F. Wu

Jimmy Mok lives in the Golden Day Sunset Home, in a powered wheelchair. Most of his enjoyment comes from watching old television reruns and movies, but this futuristic facility can be brutal. When the residents rebel and take over, they face hostile police action and Jimmy has to choose his own future between the attack on the home and the assault on the Alamo in the movie he’s watching.

~~~~~ Excerpt ~~~~~

Jimmy sat in his wheelchair in the main hallway, looking around. Every time he turned his head, the tail on his coonskin cap tickled his back. He liked that.

He shifted Ol' Betsy on his lap. Everybody had gone their separate ways for the moment. He wasn't sure what to do.

"Here, Jimmy," said Pauline, walking out of a room down the hall. She was a short, brisk woman with curly gray hair. "Have you seen this?" She handed him a flyer from a stack she was carrying. "We just had these printed up in the main office."

"Mm?" Jimmy accepted it, but he didn't feel up to reading the fine print.

"Oh. Here, I'll show you." She leaned over his chair, pointing to the paragraphs. "These are the demands we're going to make from Fleming. No more orderlies; they're to be replaced by nurses without prod rings. More flexibility in choosing our activities and changing our minds about them. We set our own visitation and curfew hours and we end the segregation of the men's and women's wings."

Jimmy nodded. He liked that part about the prod rings.

"Dinner time," said Barbie, coming down the hall with a big smile. She wore one of the cafeteria staff aprons over her own dress. "You know, Pauline, those demands sound awfully familiar."

"I noticed that," said Pauline. "I think we made a lot of these demands for the dormitories in Ann Arbor once a long time ago."

"You were in Ann Arbor?" Barbie brushed a strand of white hair from her eyes with a dainty little finger. "I was in Berkeley for People's Park. We must be about the same age."

"I guess so." Pauline looked back at her with an amused smile.

"Woodstock," Jimmy muttered, on impulse.

"What?" Pauline turned in surprise. "Were you at Woodstock?"

A tall, stooped man carrying a big piece of posterboard. "Remember this?" He held it up.

Jimmy squinted at it. It was a freshly stenciled red painting of a clenched fist.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Boruma Publishing LLC
• Release date: Dec 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370417094

Book preview

Sit-in at the Alamo

by William F. Wu

Artwork by Linda Cappel

Copyright @ 1992 – William F. Wu

Jimmy Mok fumbled with his left hand for his wheelchair controls, refusing to take his eyes from the three TV screens embedded in the wall in front of him. He didn't want to miss a second of his shows. The controls were still just a jumble of buttons to him, even after many years, but he could always get the chair to respond if he kept at the controls long enough.

The wheels rolled and shifted on a slick, spotless white floor. Golden Day Sunset Home did not tolerate accumulated dust and dirt. His wheels were as clean as the floor.

Hey, Ceesco, he muttered. He got the chair positioned just right and then felt with his right hand to make sure the TV remote was still in his lap. It was.

On the screen to his left, the Cisco Kid was galloping down the road toward Jimmy's left under the opening credits in living color; in the middle, the Rifleman was stalking down a darkened black and white street to the right, about to pull off twelve fast shots in an irregular rhythm that Jimmy once could tap his fingers by to show he had memorized it. Nowadays, though, he couldn't keep up. The show on the right-hand screen wasn't familiar yet, but it was another western that stirred some vague sense of recognition in him.

Jimmy saved up all of his various privilege credits here at the Golden Day Sunset Home very carefully. He spent them all only to reserve these TV sets and his favorite tapes every chance he could. The orderlies were very strict here, so you had to follow the rules exactly.

He patted the coonskin cap on his head. The dangling tail tickled the back of his neck. His toy gun, a replica flintlock of Davy's Kentucky Long Rifle, Ol' Betsy, lay on the floor by his chair. He normally left the cap and gun in his room, but he took them out