Fistful of Reefer: A Pulpy Action Series from Schism 8

Harvester Chupacabra

“Now bang it. No, no, right there. Give it a good whack. No, no, with the wrench.” Chancho shifted his grip of the custom carburetor he had built for the purpose of mixing oxygen with methane gas and feeding it into the combustion chamber. “Wait, wait.” He wiped the sweat from his brow, leaving a smudge of grease and manure across his face. “Okay, now.” Muddy whacked the side of the carburetor with a wrench in an attempt to drive it properly into place.

“¡Excelente, mi amigo!” Chancho released his grip on the carburetor and rubbed his hands together. “Bueno, bueno. Now we just need to attach the fuel tank.”

“What, that big barrel of s**t?”

“No, no, not the barrel of s**t, my crude friend. But the barrel on top of it has been filling with methane gas for the last two days. With the ninety degree heat, it should be full by now.” Chancho spit on his hands and rubbed them in the dirt before slapping them together. “Here, give me a hand. It feels so good to get greasy again. You know, to make something from nothing—to give life to a heap of rusty metal.”

The men each took a grip on the thirty-gallon drum. “What are we going to do with it?” Muddy did not share Chancho’s eager confidence.

“Simple. We carry the methane barrel over to the harvester and attach it to the valve beneath the seat. You hold it there while I tighten the straps to keep it in place. ¿Si?”

Muddy sighed. “Okay.”

“Uno, dos, tres.” The two men yanked the drum free from the manure barrel. Half the valve kept the methane gas inside the fuel barrel, but the goat manure was exposed to the air.

Muddy caught a good whiff. “Ug. Manure should not be collected in a single vessel.”

“I don’t know,” Chancho said as the two men waddled toward the eight-foot-tall harvester cannibalized from former farm equipment. “Have you ever used one of those fancy new toilets? I’ve heard you can squat right next to the kitchen without even putting your boots on.”

“Why would anyone want to squat in their own house? Sounds lazy to me.”

“Indoor plumbing, mi amigo. It isn’t lazy, it’s innovation. Soon, you won’t even need to wipe.”

Muddy grunted. “Hmm. I guess that wouldn’t be so bad.”

“Okay, now I’ll help you hold the tank while you shimmy into position. Then I’ll clamp the valves together. No problem.”

“No problem? So I lie down underneath this contraption holding your thirty gallons of fart gas on my chest while you monkey around on top of it?”

“Si.”

“Alright.” Muddy shimmied gradually under the harvester until he held the tank directly below the seat. Chancho clamped the valves together easily and tended to the leather straps meant to hold the tank in place. “Are those straps going to hold this thing? I mean, once it gets going?”

Chancho shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

Muddy shook his head. “You’re riding this thing, right?”

“Absolutely. This is a delicately tuned machine.” He lovingly patted the steering wheel. “¿Listo?”

“You’re the one in charge here. I’m just holding the fart gas.”

“Excelente.” Chancho jumped down. “And you’ve done a fine job of it. But we’re ready now.” He grabbed Muddy by the heels and pulled him out from under the machine.

Muddy stood up and wiped the dust from his backside. “This thing even looks like El Chupacabra,” he said.

“That’s what I call her,” Chancho nodded.

The harvester stood eight feet tall with plenty of clearance. It snarled at them with four sets of teeth made of sickle bars salvaged from an old sugar cane harvester. A ground level sickle bar on each side of the machine matched a higher sickle bar set around four feet, just below the level of the leaves and buds of the cáñamo.

Each sickle bar consisted of a set of lateral moving blades that cut the stalks of the plants, and each one was driven by a pair of cam shafts running perpendicular to them for the length of the harvester. These cam shafts not only drove the sickle bars but stripped the branches, leaves, and buds from the cut stalks before ejecting them out the back into wind rows for field retting.

Each cam shaft, equipped with a series of teeth, rested at the bottom of a funnel-shaped shoot or trough with openings around the shaft large enough for leaves and buds to drop through but small enough to keep the bulk of the stalk inching backward until it ejected. Once the leaves and buds were removed from the stalk, they fell into a canvas sack girdled to both sides of the harvester and bundled in the back. When the sack was filled, it would be removed, emptied and then reattached for the next load. The entire bulk of the machine sat on three large wheels, one in center front and two in the back.

“And you’re sure this is going to work?” Muddy looked back and forth from the machine to the field of cáñamo.

Chancho rubbed his ear lobe, thinking about the smoldering eyes of the rinche and the part of the story he’d failed to convey to his best friends. “It has to.” Then he turned to look at Muddy. “And if it doesn’t, I’ll fix it.” He clapped Muddy on the shoulder, sending a cloud of dust into the air.