TOTALLY ORGANIC By Jerry Patton

“I apologize for bothering you, I’m Franz Kafka Kruger, and I desperately need your help…”

Edith Hemlock had heard the knocking and had gone to the door, she cautiously cracked it open. Standing before her was the most emaciated young man she had ever seen. He was thin with dark hair and darker eyes. In mid-sentence he gasped for air, swooned, and fell forward, landing across the threshold of the old weather beaten house.

“Who is it?” Henri Watson asked meekly, peeking from behind the doorway between the kitchen and living room.

“He said that he is Franz Kafka Kruger,” Edith said. “I guess we should drag him into the house. We can’t leave him in the doorway, half in, half out. Give me a hand.”

“Do you think that it’s okay to touch him, he looks unhealthy,” Henri said, weakly. “All these strange diseases they have today, what if he’s contagious?”

“He said that he desperately needed help. He does look sickly; fetch the gardening gloves from the kitchen.”

“Kafka? Kafka?” Watson said. “Wasn’t that the name of that bloke you knew when we were in Lafayette, that wormy little bug eye guy.”

“No, no,” Edith said. “You must be thinking of Frank Kupla, that student who was in the literature class I taught at the University in Hammond.”

Henri returned and handed her a pair of gloves. “That Kupla fellow gave me the creeps.”

“Everyone gives you the creeps, Henri. I’ll grab his shoulders: you grab his feet and push, will you? I can’t drag him in by myself.”

“Couldn’t we just leave him on the porch?”

“The animals would devour him if we left him out there. Lift his legs and push.” Suddenly, Edith tripped backward as Henri gave a hard push, and she found herself buried beneath Kafka. “Henri, get him off me, for god sake! Roll him off me!” she ordered.

“Kafka, Kafka, the name sounds familiar” Henri said, pushing the skinny young man off Edith with his left foot.

“Of course, it sounds familiar, you dolt. He was one of the writers I used to lecture about in my European Literature class.”

“Oh yes, I remember, that awful book. You would get so depressed. Edith. What if he doesn’t wake up?”

“I guess you’ll have to dig a hole and bury him.”

“Like Timmy the Turtle?”

“Precisely, only bigger and deeper. I doubt if anyone will be looking for him. He doesn’t look like he has a friend in the world. Look, I think that he’s starting to stir, get me a glass of water, Henri.” She grabbed Franz Kafka by the shoulders and shook him. “Mr. Kruger? Mr. Kruger? Are you okay?”

“Was I dead? I keep dying and people keep reviving me? I wonder why?”

“You don’t know me, yet you said that you desperately needed my help. How did you find us?” Edith asked. “We live off the grid, there’s not even a real road to this abandon old house in the backwaters of Louisiana”

“But you have electricity,” Kruger said, seeing the flickering light coming from the kitchen.

“Not legally,” Henri said, standing in the kitchen where he had once again retreated.

“Who else is in the house? And what does he mean, not legally? Are you criminals?

“It is just a technical matter,” Edith said. “Here in the rural areas, others do it as well. If you reverse the electric meter, it runs backwards and you can get free electricity. When I found this old abandoned house, I knew that the electric company would never send someone back here to read the meter. But who are you, are you on the lam, as they say on television? And how did you find us out here?”

“I’m not on the lam. I am totally innocent. But being innocent doesn’t keep them from persecuting me, tracking and hounding me like a dog. I found you on the internet. You have a webpage where you advocate a totally organic life, right?”

“I used to; I don’t keep it up anymore.”

“Nothing is ever lost on the internet, or forgotten. It hangs over your head like a guillotine.”

“Or forgiven,” Edith said, wistfully. “Nothing is ever forgiven on the internet. One or two emails and they dismiss you.”

“They told me I would go blind,” Henri said, from the kitchen.

“I was on the computer in the library in New Orleans and it was driving me crazy. I mean, it was endless. I would follow one path, and then another path, and then down a third, a fourth, a fifth, and on and on. I was desperate, I grew angry, frustrated, it was as if I was trapped in an old tenement building that was an endless maze, trapped in suffocating hallways with heavy air, I could hardly breathe, hallways that led me around and around without end. Locked doors and no exits,” Mr. Kruger said. He pushed himself up, leaning on his elbow so he could reach the glass Edith was handing to him. He took a long drink of water. “This is well water, isn’t it?”

“Yes, of course,” Edith said. “Would you like me to get you something to eat, Mr. Kruger, broth perhaps?”

“No, no. Please just call me K.”

“So you’re okay, K” Henri asked, nervously rubbing his hands together. “You’ll be able to go? It’s a long walk back to the road, you need to start now, and it’s dangerous in the dark.”

“Henri, be quiet, he can’t go anywhere in his condition,” Edith said. “I’ll fix a pallet for you on the floor, Mr. K.”

“No, I can’t breathe if I’m lying flat. Perhaps that chair, over there.”

“Give me a hand, Henri. We’ll help him to the wingback chair, its old but comfortable.”

“Where did I put my gloves?”

“They’re on your hands, Henri. You never took them off.”

“No,” K said. “He’s right to be concerned.” Edith and Henri were able to help K to his feet and K stumbled forward to the old faded wingback chair which smelled of urine, mole and decay. K collapsed into it. “Yes,” K said. “This will do fine. Do you have internet here?” K asked.

“When its working,” Edith said.

“Please unplug it overnight, and wrap it in aluminum foil if you have any. That’s how they peruse, track, and persecute you, you know. That’s how I found you, way back here in this swampy cesspool of marsh and trees.”

“We can talk in the morning, you need to rest, sleep,” Edith said. A noise came from the kitchen; she turned to see Henri dragging one of the kitchen chairs. “Henri, what are you doing with that chair?”

“I am taking it to my room to jam it against my door, we don’t have keys, you know.”

“Henri, the door to your room opens out not in, besides does he look like he could even hurt a fly?”

K weakly held his right hand up. “Please don’t talk about hurting flies and such.”

“You’re right, Mr. K, please try and sleep. Tomorrow, I’ll make a curative broth with some of the herbs and mushrooms I grow here.”

11

The next morning K was wakened by Edith piddling in the kitchen. She heard K start to stir. “Good morning, Mr. K, you are looking better this morning, perhaps you can explain how you found us. Would you like some tea I’ve made?”

“Tea would be fine.” K said, awkwardly getting out of the wingback chair and more or less stumbling towards the kitchen table to sit.

Edith handed him a cup of hot tea and sat opposite K at the table. “Now, you must explain. I assume by your name that you have some connection to ‘the’ Franz Kafka.”

“Yes, a direct blood line to him and that is my problem. Back in the 1920’s, they didn’t have the knowledge that we have today of DNA. Everything about last night is a little hazy, but did I understand that you are familiar with Franz Kafka’s writings.”

“Yes. I taught European Literature briefly at Southeastern Louisiana University as an adjunct instructor, I spend several class periods on Kafka.”

“Then you are familiar with “Metamorphosis.”

“Very,” Edith said, taking a sip of tea. “I think that it was the only short story those backwards inbred needle-neck students got into.”

“Most people consider it a short story,” K said. “But, it wasn’t fiction at all. I guess you could call it a memoir of sorts. Overall it was autobiographical. Being a writer, he embroidered a bit here and there. But basically, it wasn’t fiction, but a confessional.”

“Are you saying that Kafka actually became a bug, an insect?”

“I am not sure about the words ‘became a bug’. Since you know a little about him, you surely realized that Franz was always considered a ‘little buggy’. I can only tell you the family story handed down to me. As you may know, my Great, Great Grandfather, Franz Kafka, had some sexual peculiarities. He died a young man, just forty.

“The official story is that he never had children. He was engaged several times, and he obsessively frequented prostitutes. My Great, Great Grandmother was not beautiful per se, but extremely sexually attractive from what I’ve been told, there’s no way to say it nicely, and she was a whore in Prague. She and Kafka were cohabitating when she became pregnant, a few months following his death she gave birth to his daughter.

“You must remember that back then he was basically unknown, not the literary giant he is today, and he was just a middle level employee of an insurance company who had published only a few stories in some small literary magazines.

“When he died, his family had enough influence to have his cause of death listed as from tuberculosis, which was the same cover story they had used since 1917 to explain his frequent absences from his job. It was during these absences that he was suffering his own metamorphosis, unlike the implications in that so called fiction, the transformation was not ongoing, it occurred in alternating stages. The disease came and went, similar in some ways to the illness of the legendary ‘wolf man.’

“Several theories have been passed down by my family in attempts to explain it. You must remember the time period we are talking about. Before and during World War 1, the Germans were actively experimenting with chemical and germ warfare which they used extensively in World War One and they were also experimenting with genetics engineering which led to the holocaust during the Nazi regime. The air in Eastern Europe was toxic to say the least.

“My Great, Great Grandmother had a fondness for German men, even Franz spoke and wrote primarily in German, and she contacted a venereal disease that had been created in a German lab. When she conceived Franz’s daughter, her VD was at its most active stage and when it combined with particularities in Franz’s own DNA, it set into motion what became his fatal transformation.

“This DNA deformity was transferred from generation to generation, but evidently it didn’t affect his female descendants. Unfortunately, I am the first male descendant. Since Franz’s daughter was illegitimate, a bastard, she couldn’t be given his last name, Kafka, but she decreed that all future males would be given as their first and middle names, Franz Kafka, to acknowledge the bloodline and in tribute to his growing recognition as a great writer.

“Years later, Franz’s paramour, my great, great, grandmother married a wealthy industrialist in Germany. During the early thirties, he began to understand his wife and stepdaughter’s vulnerability as Jews. He arranged for them to migrate to England. Franz’s daughter reached womanhood in England, and towards the end of World War 11 she met and fell in love with an American soldier stationed there. When the war ended she came to the States as his war bride and they settled in Kansas.

“They had a daughter who gave birth to a daughter in 1970 and then her daughter gave birth to me in the year 1998. The story was handed down from generation to generation and since I was the first and only male descendant, I was named after him.

“My father is George Kruger, a Kansas farmer. Growing up in Kansas, it became apparent at an early age that I had an unusual sensitivity to the chemicals used in agriculture. Several times in childhood, I came close to dying. I realize now that those were the initial stages of my own metamorphosis. The illnesses came and went. The doctors had no explanations for my condition.

“As I grew older, I begin to do research and I realized that I had inherited more than just Kafka’s name. I inherited many of his proclivities, including his shyness, his insecurities, his fear of women and intimate relationships, but also his need for frequent sexual intercourse which led to my many, many, many, visits to prostitutes in Kansas City. I also inherited his respiratory problems, and an almost deadly reaction to chemicals, especially insecticides. I left the rural areas and moved to urban centers thinking that cities might be safer. But no, there are chemicals every where I discovered.

“I began searching for some place that could provide me an organic lifestyle. I became excited when I came across your old webpage, but you hadn’t listed an address, only a veiled reference to being somewhere in Louisiana. You stated that you didn’t believe in insecticides, you only ate vegetables organically grown, that were free of chemicals.

“But where was it? How would I get there? There was no address, no directions, and no maps. It was as if this endless maze of chasing through the internet had been deliberately constructed to confuse and frustrate me. I was so close, yet so far away. I was in the main library in New Orleans. I begin to pace the floor. I started to perspire and itch and scratch. I wanted to scream and rip my clothes off.

“One of the workers noticed how frustrated I was becoming and offered to help me. I showed him the webpage and explained that I had to get there. He explained that since there were photographs of the property on the webpage, there was a way to determine the location. He explained that every photograph is encoded with an exact address and there is a way to access that address. After a few clicks on the keyboard he produced the address and handed it to me. He then showed me how to use the GPS on my cell phone to locate this house.

“The Amtrak/Greyhound Bus Terminal was a short walk from the library. I took a local Greyhound bus and when my GPS indicated that I was near your house, I asked the driver to let me off. Once in the area, I realized that I had to walk several more miles through that hellish marsh. Even with the GPS, I became confused and lost several times before finding this house. Finally I made it to your door and collapsed.”

Edith saw Henri peeking from the doorway. “Come in, Henri” she said.

“He’s still here,” Henri said. “Is he getting ready to leave?”

“He may be here for a while,” Edith said.

“Thank you for the offer,” K said. “Time is the best healer. I just need to catch my breath and breathe chemical free air, and get my strength back. I’ll try not to be a bother.”

“Why did you want us to unplug the commuter last night?” Edith asked.

“That’s how they track you. Even I was able to locate your house with a little help. No matter where you go, they can hunt you down. I don’t know you, but there must be some reason you two are hiding out here in the middle of no where.”

“Mr. K. I remind you, that we didn’t track you down, you tracked us down, we’re not hiding out, and we just prefer not to be around people. For all we know, you might be part of the conspiracy you talk about. What do you know? What have you heard?”

“I’ve heard nothing that pertains to you. But we must be careful about use of the computer. The internet can be very deceitful, dangerous, and deceptive. It seeps into your head in very strange ways. It overloads you with information and people begin to think that they don’t need to think for themselves, that they need only to look things up. But information without application is an endless dark hallway of closed doors. Soon people forget how to think.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Edith said.

“Perhaps we should get rid of it,” Henri said. “It makes me do shameful things.”

“It doesn’t make you do anything, Henri. It’s a tool. You have a choice in how you use it.”

“You two are old,” K injected. “In your late 60’s or 70’s, but I’m young, I think that I understand what Henri is implying.”

“We all understand what Henri is implying; he can be a nasty old man at times, and I’m sure that he has reason to fear God’s judgment. And Mr. K, I am not yet 70. Could we change the subject, please?”

“Let me show you something,” K said, rolling up the right sleeve of his shirt. “What do you see?”

“I see your…” she said, then hesitated. “What is wrong with the hairs on your arm?”

“Touch it,” K instructed.

Edith hesitantly touch K’s arm. “It’s brittle, wiry,” she said. “It’s not like normal human hair.”

“Yes,” K said. “It is more like something you might find on an insect or small retiles. I fear that might be one of the stages of the transformation.”

“What does he mean, fear?” Henri asked.

“Do you want to touch his arm, Henri?” Edith asked.

“No. I don’t want to touch any part of him. I’m confused. I don’t like being confused.”

“Henri, you were born confused. I don’t know why I put up with you.”

“Because of my Social Security and SSI checks, I thought,” Henri said.

“Quite right, I think that we all need to relax and just step back and breathe some fresh organic air.”

“Yes,” K said. “I need a few days of fresh, organic non-toxic air; and I’ll start to recoup my strength. Please don’t make me leave until I’m stronger and clear headed.

“You can stay in the room next to Henri’s for the time being.”

“Thank you,” K said. “I fear to think what they might do to me when I’m so weak.”

“Who are the ‘they’ that you referred to?”

“I left Kansas because of a warrant for my arrest.”

“A warrant?” Edith asked. “Are you a criminal?”

“No. The warrant didn’t state the charges?”

“Yes, I understand more than you know, Mr. K. Sometimes the charge is simply for being all too human, or perhaps in your case, less human.”

“I told you he was a criminal,” Henri suddenly injected. “Look at the shape of his eyes; he has the eyes of a criminal. That is how you can tell.”

“That is an old wife’s tale,” Edith said. “That is the kind of thing unstable people believes, Henri.”

111

Three years later, the follicles on K’s arm had become more hair-like and much of his strength had returned. On many days he had convinced Edith, he needed to walk to La. Hwy. 51 and flag down the New Orleans bound Greyhound Bus so he could go there to buy his organic health supplements and vitamins at a lower price. They all knew that the real reason he went to New Orleans was to seek the company of prostitutes. At first Henri was very upset that K would not take him with him, and then he realized that with K out of the house overnight he could remove the aluminum foil around the laptop and take it to his room. Besides, he wasn’t sure what he would have been able to do at his advanced age.

Henri continued to pressure Edith to put K out of the house, but K had done so much to protect the home from internet intruders she refused to ask him to leave. Also, having taught European Literature she enjoyed hearing the stories about Kafka which had been handed down by K’s family; stories which were often even more bizarre and extreme than the ones that had been published.

It was K who had taught Edith about chemtrails, the secret program the government had of spraying chemicals from airplanes designed to dumb down the population and perhaps worse. When chemtrails were observed in the sky, the three of them had to go into the house and sit inside the aluminum foil covered tent K had constructed for their protections. Even under the tent, K’s health deteriorated almost instantly when the chemtrails crisscrossed the sky, and during these spells he sometimes had convulsions which were very frightening. On more than one occasion, Henri urinated on himself as he watched K suffer as the convulsions became violent. Often Mr. K would faint and appear to be dead. On these occasions, Henri would beg permission to start digging the hole.

K also taught Edith how she could tell when Henri was hallucinating and when he was actually seeing and communicating with the dead and/or the shadow people who also lived on the isolated property. At certain times, the dead would arise from the earth near the house and danced naked in the moonlight. Mr.K and Henri would point out the moving figures on nights when the moon was full, and even Edith thought that she could see them. He taught her how to identify the signs when ghosts and other spirits were on the loose in the house.

Edith was a mature educated woman and she needed more than the ravings of a mentally challenged old man and a younger man who suffered from a hundred year old family curse. She had a master degree in English which partially explained why the University had dismissed her. Instructors with only Master Degrees were a dime a dozen. Those with Master Degrees in English were a dime for a baker’s dozen. They could easily hire sane people with Master Degrees.

The proof she needed came when K introduced her to an all night radio show which supported and confirmed all of his theories. The program was hosted by a man who sounded almost normal, and who had guests on the program with PhD’s. He hosted guests who had published scholarly sounding books on chemtrails, shadow people, ghosts, UFO’s, the Bermuda Triangle, aliens and other aspects of the paranormal. Her years of formal education in the public school system had taught her only how to repeat what other people thought and wrote. In short, like most ‘A’ students from pre-school to graduate school, she had been taught how not to think.

Returning from his last trip to New Orleans, K was tired and exhausted, more so than usual. He stayed several days in the back room that he now called his home. On the fifth day back he consented to drinking some broth and he recruited Edith and Henri to help him clear out everything in the room so he could start building his “nest.” His facial hairs grew coarse and wiry until he could no longer shave without breaking the razor blades. His posture began to bend until it resembled a C with two protruding shrinking bent legs. He could no longer sit in a chair or lie on his back. His sleeping position resembled more and more that of a fetus. Without sufficient food, his body continued to shrink. Soon the wiry hairs on his back became matted together until they formed a shell like covering. His breathing was forced and he could not function for more than five minutes without stopping to rest. Then he needed ten, then fifteen, then twenty minutes. Soon he could barely move at all and he had ceased to be able to talk and emitted only shrill terrifying sounds.

He assumed that one of the prostitutes he had visited on his last trip to New Orleans had a form of VD which activated the abnormalities in his own inherited DNA triggering the onset of his advance metamorphism. The curse was coming full circle.

“At least”, he thought, “during my young life I have fathered no children.” This he thought without considering that Lisa Mae Belle, the young woman at Mrs. Ellison’s House of Pleasures on Jackson Ave., just off St. Charles, had not asked him to wear a prophylactic because she was new to the ‘ins and outs’ of the ‘in and out profession’. As K lay withering and suffering, his spent seed had united with one of her eggs and a being no larger than a bed bug was growing inside Ms. Lisa Mae Belle.

K was suffering. Eventually Edith could no longer bare the agonizing painful shrilling cries of the young man she now thought of as a friend. One morning, she gave Henri permission to dig a large hole on the property. It had rain the day before and the ground was saturated. Reluctantly Edith managed to walk to the highway where she kept her 15 year old car and she drove to a farm supply store in nearby Independence, La. She made the purchase.

Arriving back at the property, she saw Henri sitting by the square hole he had dug. “Is this deep enough, Edith?” Henri asked. “The way Mr. K had shrunk and is all twisted. I didn’t think it would need to be any wider.”

“I think it will do nicely. I have one other chore for you to do for me. You will need to keep your gloves on and take the old wagon with you to his room. I can’t do it myself and when you are certain that it is finished. Put his body on the wagon and bring it here to the hole and we will say a few words. Here take this,” she handed him the bag.

Henri quickly opened the bag and gasped. “An insecticide spray can! Miss Edith?”

“Close the bag and bring it back in the wagon with his body and we’ll bury the can with him.”

IV

The black helicopter hovered over the property for over 15 minutes. Edith stayed inside under the aluminum cover tent listening to the continuous whooshing of the blades, Henri was frantic, nervously pacing and wringing his hands. The sound slightly changed and Edith realized that it was starting to land. Evidently it had taken several minutes for the pilot to determine that there was a piece of land solid enough to absorb the weight of the helicopter.

The knocking on the door brought Edith to her feet and she hurried to answer it. “Yes?” she asked, cracking the door open.

“Sheriff Department, lady, I wonder if I might come in for a minute, I just have a few questions.”

Edith opened the door wider. “Is there something wrong?” she asked.

“Is there a Frantz Kafka Kruger at this address?”

“No,” Edith said. “No one is living here by that name.”

“Maybe Mr. Kruger was recently here. Let me cut to the chase. There was an escapee earlier today from the Parish Prison in Amite, up the road. And we were in the helicopter with the dogs, looking for him. A few minutes ago, we were notified that the escapee had been captured in Tickfaw. We were heading back to headquarters when I remember that earlier I had received an email from the Chief of Police in Kansas City.”

He withdrew the folded email from his top pocket. “Evidently they are trying to clean up some old warrants and a year or so ago they had tracked Mr. Kruger through their new computer system to this area but then they lost the signal. Then in the middle of the night a few weeks ago they picked up the tracer again and it was coming from this address. The deputy and I were talking about it in the helicopter because we couldn’t place the address and we know the area pretty well. Then the deputy said that it sounded like the old deserted Manson’s place. I punched that into my GPS and bingo. I thought this place had been deserted for years.”

“You’re free to look around if you want to,” Edith said, doing her best to appear calm.

“That’s great,” the officer said, he went to the door and waved his arm. He turned to Edith. “I just let the deputy know that he could release the dogs.”

“I wonder if you could tell me what the warrant for Mr. Kruger is for.”

“Really, nothing,” he said. “The sheriff over in Kansas City decided he wanted to clean out all the old opened cases. We do that kind of thing every once in while, you simply throw out a ‘dragnet’ on everything outstanding, and you never know what you might pull in. Kruger had an outstanding ticket for jaywalking that was about ten years old. Kind of funny, people forget about the little stuff, they forget to show up for court, or go by the office and pay the fines, or they’re out of town, they’re sick or something. When they get the new warrant, they come in and pay up. If enough people pay the old 5, 10, 15 and 20 dollar fines, with the interest and everything, it can add up to quite a bit of money.”

Suddenly, from outside came a chaotic clamoring of barking with the dogs running crazily about, going from one area to another, growling and clawing at the ground. “Is there anyone else in the house?”

“Only my elderly friend, Henri, he’s right there in the kitchen.” Henri stepped into the room.

“I’m ordering you to sit down and stay put, you’re not under arrest, but I need to see what is going on outside and whether the deputy needs my help.”

A few minutes later, the officer returned. “You have the right to remain silent…”

“What’s happening?” Edith interrupted. “Are you arresting us? We have committed no crime. I’m totally innocent.”

“I’m bringing you both in for questioning. Those are cadaver sniffing dogs; they are wildly going from one spot to another. We need to bring in the tractors and excavate the land where the dogs are digging. We have a lot of unsolved missing person reports in this Parish.”

“We don’t own this property, we just found this abandoned old house and we needed a place to stay, so we’re just squatters, we barely have enough money for growing our herbs and vegetables. We are totally organic. We wouldn’t, couldn’t hurt a fly. We don’t bother anyone. I am an innocent person. You can’t arrest us and put us on trial. We are both innocent. We are both in our seventies. I know I look younger. But what could two elderly people do?”

“Sure lady, you look about 69 and a half.”

“You haven’t even told us what you’re charging us with. Henri here might have some peculiarities, but I am totally innocent”

The deputy came to the door. “Bill, you have to come and see what we found. We dug up that fresh mount over there and all that was in it was the biggest damn Louisiana cockroach I’ve ever seen and this large new but empty can of insecticide.”

“I’m totally innocent,” Edith pleaded from inside the house.

The Sheriff looked back at Edith and Henri. “Sure lady, just like you’re totally organic, right?” He pointed the empty insecticide can at them and pushed the button. It emitted a hissing sound. Edith pulled back in terror. “Let me finish reading you your rights,” the Sheriff said. “Then we’ll get the tractors out here. You two may have some explaining to do.”