Imagine (standard:drama, 2445 words)
Author: Cyrano	Added: May 04 2009	Views/Reads: 3365/2103	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Fletch Christianson is unable to come to terms with grief. After years under the guidance of his father, under the celebrity of the media darling, he turns his back on his father, on the company, to find his own calling. His calling leads him to Bulawayo,

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Fletch Christianson had reached out to her because she was suddenly 
there, to be loved, to love, and because her needs were different. 
Together they had sworn never to say good-bye, but he was doing exactly 
that. He slugged back more beer, its cold hurting his throat, becoming 
thirstier.  There were tears in his eyes, hard-bitten, held back for an 
eternity.  He had risked their love for something she had never known 
nor understood, but he was pulled by something in his deepest, deepest 
soul. In a sweat wetted stupor he reached for paper and pen, one again 
thinking he could spill his guts out, but as he thought ... he knew the 
ultimate agony. The pen could never speak for the heart. 

Frank Christianson hadn't heard from his son since the funeral. He had
fathered a renegade, a destroyer of fact, and it did not surprise him 
that his son had disappeared. The two had not always seen eye to eye, 
seldom in fact, and were it not for his mother Fletch would have left 
home long before he did. They had words, hard hitting between a man who 
had fought his way, not good enough and not hard enough for his son. 
Fletch would never give in the way his father did. And he told his 
father so. Frank Christianson has spent his life fighting governments, 
sailing the world protesting many environmental issues, buying his 
first Second World War minesweeper, which he then updated and upgraded 
with scientific equipment. Frank started out as a young man with one 
yacht, Paladin, and a heart full of dreams. The organization, ‘Imagine 
Inc' now comprised a fleet of ex-minesweepers, one ocean going tug, and 
its flagship, Harmony, an Italian built catamaran, built with four 
independent sub sea compartments, independent entrances and emergency 
exits. Each of two forward compartments converted into laboratories, 
with large underwater viewing windows, and each of two aft compartments 
housing medical facilities for emergencies. 

‘It's not good news, Frank.' The doctor said. 

He said some other stuff but Frank never caught it. He just knew he had
to walk out of this office on his own two feet and not show how his 
legs were trembling. When he got outside the sun was shining and across 
the street there was a building, a red brick building that seemed so 
red and high. He looked up above the London streets, seeing pigeons 
wheeling round and round in the blue summer sky. He watched them until 
the noise of a London bus passing by brought him out of his daze. On 
the side of the bus, an advertising banner which read: ‘Laugh and the 
world laughs with you.' He stopped for a moment, sat on the bench among 
the hustle and bustle of Euston. Children were running to and fro while 
pigeons flew and fluttered only feet away. Nothing missed his 
attention, nothing, not the old woman sorting through the rubbish at 
the entrance to Euston station; not the woman smoking her cigarette as 
though it might be her last, and who, in this world, would bet against 
it? He could hear things in his head, the dull echo of information 
running round his brain, yet to be deciphered. He'd stepped outside the 
confusion and watched as he saw everything clearly. The kids on the 
small green where he sat on the bench playing with a white paper bag, a 
bag being lifted and swirled around in the twist of London air. How 
they danced and laughed to catch it, their hands high, hoping it might 
just come down to them but instead it just teased them while their 
mother read a magazine and rocked the push-chair that held another 
child, too young to join in the fun.  Frank Christianson, having taken 
on the world and all its stupidities felt a sudden burst of 
inspiration.  The realization that life is given, not just for some 
inspirational idea that life is simply for living, but for invention 
and imagination.  He was aware of this because it was as if he were no 
longer part of the rush. 

Frank Christianson was a man moved by instinctive. It didn't matter to
him at what cost. He never thought of it. He just did it. If you don't 
have to live with that kind of man or love him he's wonderful. However, 
as Fletch knew and understood, he was difficult and complex. People 
could easily like him, the media especially, but he wasn't the kind of 
man to rely on. Whatever you knew about Frank Christianson you didn't 
know enough. Whatever you thought he was doing he was doing something 
else. Frank loved everyone. He enjoyed people most of all and the 
desire to please and help and support other people made his life jump 
through a hoop. He loved it. He was a man easily brought to tears, but 
what you didn't know about him was his determination and the 
viciousness. There was a streak running through Frank Christianson that 
any man should fear. His temper was a problem. When you lit the fuse it 
was going to blow up in a red flare and you didn't want to be standing 
real close. Moods came in like storms. He was unapproachable over the 
slightest thing; cruel at a moment's notice, but when he loved you he 
truly loved you. He loved no man more than his son. 

The night was sick with heat while the early morning, just indiscernibly
less sick. There was no cold water for his shower; only tepid when what 
he wanted was cold, freezing water. Bulawayo is the second largest city 
in Zimbabwe, population under one million, yet Bulawayo has a good 
potential for economic development but has been stymied by lack of 
sufficient water. Fletch understands the city's reliance on five 
surface sources.  Surface sources that compete with evaporation. The 
well field from the Nyamandlovu aquifer in the Gwayi catchment, were 
constructed as an emergency measure during the 1992 drought. It is not 
operational. Alternative water supply sources are far and expensive. 
For over a year Fletch Christianson has been working on an alternative 
solution to make the well field a sustainable alternative for the next 
decade. 

On the bus out to the dam he was at once annoyed by the constant
jabbering of the workers. Many who pick their noses or spit out the 
windows, where no glass exists. The dust is choking. The black skins 
and woolly heads of the workers, the ignorant and primitive nature of 
their friendship has become something he understands and enjoys. A year 
ago his Anglo Saxon nature had him believe that he somehow ruled their 
day, their work, but soon he learned the opposite to be true. He used 
to complain to the driver of the bus, understanding its capacity to be 
thirty-two seated passengers and twelve standing, the number with which 
it began its journey. Yet as the bus drove through Arusha, the driver 
honked the horn. Several Africans came running, boarding the bus. The 
driver jammed them in. He sat them four to a double seat, sitting them 
on each other's laps. But what made him mad was that the other 
passengers did not mind. What made him even madder was the fact that 
the passengers, many leaning out the windows, shouted encouragement. 
Fletch had come to love Africans, heard their stories about the 
brigades, the slaughter, the families that watched their sons and 
daughters, mothers and fathers die slowly from their untreated wounds. 
When the bus pulled up at the farm the young men workers fled into the 
fields looking for Syenite, the dominant rock in the area. It was an 
easily accessible foundation material for the new dam. Fletch 
Christianson was told about the deterioration that had taken place 
since 1990s, vandalism, poor security.  The citizens of Bulawayo need 
to take back what was once theirs, making it a safe venue to relax, and 
for children to play. 

Fletch's first morning meeting was with the explosives experts. ‘Mad'
Max, a German with all the cliché German features, blonde, Nordic, 
arrogant, efficient. 

‘Morning, Fletch. It's another hot one.' Said Max, tying a handkerchief
around his neck. 

‘Like there's different?' Fletch answered, sweating profusely. ‘How's
the training coming along?' 

‘Well, let me put it this way, after two weeks they haven't succeeded in
blowing up the outhouse let alone the side of a mountain. Anyway, this 
arrived yesterday. I missed you before you left. Hope its not 
important.' Max handed him a wire. 

Fletch took the wire from him and exited the shed. He opened it. Its
message was uncomplicated. 

‘I have terminal cancer. Can we talk? Please come home. Your father.' 

Fletch felt his stomach wretch. His father had never requested anything
of him. Their last words were unfriendly, unforgiving, two men hell 
bent on having their way. 

He went back into the shed and sent word for Elewa, site foreman, kicked
and cursed the inadequacy of the compressor. The high ambient 
temperatures put a too big a load on it, reducing its capacity. They 
were still waiting on its replacement. There was no doubt in his mind 
that he'd return home. There were people, institutions; banks, the 
African Development Fund, and the European Investment Bank, all of whom 
he had learned to mistrust.  All who came with money telling they 
wanted to alleviate poverty, but Fletch didn't necessarily see that. He 
saw corporations wanting to make money, and now Japan and China were 
entering the scene, with even greater negative impacts on the 
continent. Fletch Christianson's work was not finished here, but for 
now his father needed him. 


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