Man Turns Phone Off, Panic Ensues

Rance was working in his garden, enjoying retirement. It was the first beautiful spring day. The sun was bright, the air was warm, a soft breeze blew, the birds sung in ebullience at the promise of the coming season. Rance looked up from the weedy clod he was shaking soil from over the lawn to the distance where snow laden peaks shone purple and white against the blue sky. He breathed deeply of the fresh spring air, the rich smell of dirt, relishing the musical birdsong. A sudden vibration from his pocket and an artificial chiming melody made him jolt, drop the clod and wipe his hands of the damp soil to answer his phone. He had to stand up to pull it from his pocket, at his age standing was a slow unfolding. The melody became louder, more insistent. He saw it was a number he didn’t recognize and, rejecting the call thought that the damned government doesn’t care about its citizens or it would do something about the incessant nuisance that telemarketers are. Where does it end? When every moment of our lives is occupied with rejecting the insignificant and trivial? It seemed to him that all the phone, and its internet brought him was unimportant and trivial. He was returning the phone to his pocket but stopped and turned it off instead. The soft murmur of the breeze, the pleasant heat of the sun and the true, beautiful music of the birds came back in full.

Beatrice, the woman from the auto parts store was going through the items the UPS driver had just left and saw that among them was the distributor Rance had ordered for his boat. Knowing how he loved to get out on the water for a shakedown cruise before the season opened she gave his cellphone a call. There was no answer so she tried his landline thinking it odd he didn’t answer, he always picked up if he was nearby.

Rance had worked in his garden a bit, then, as the season was early yet, he locked his house, there were a couple of neighbors with bad teeth and erratic eyes, ducked under the wire fence in back and walked off down the pasture road towards the shore for a stroll along the beach. It was longer that way than walking to the end of the street and taking the road, but he had time.

Beatrice called again twenty minutes later, Rance might have been in the middle of something. She got no answer. It was strange, he usually called back and drove down right away to pick up his orders. Hope he’s alright, she thought. He might have taken his boat out, even though the wind was going to pick up that afternoon. He might have had a heart attack, he was that age. She knew about his sketchy neighbors, maybe they’d killed him and stolen his stuff to pawn and buy more crack. He was probably ok, but you never know these days what with them coming in over the wall, taking over our country. He could have had a stroke. She called Eunice, the waitress where Rance sometimes went for coffee.

The beach amble had been worthwhile, the breeze was fresh, raising a few small whitecaps. Rance enjoyed the cries of the active gulls, the motionless herons, lap of the waves. Until the helicopter. Some damn fool out in the chop, he thought, could’ve picked a better day to try out the boat. The orange coast guard chopper swung back and forth over the empty water, moving it’s search pattern farther north with the outgoing tide. Rance turned towards home.

Beatrice and Eunice had fired up the phone tree and social networks and in no time it was speculated that Rance was grabbing at his chest having a heart attack or stroke, lying in a pool of blood or under a car that had fallen off a jack, or had been culpably abducted by aliens and was even now being held in a Tijuana prison, beaten, blindfolded. He might have cut off his hand working in his shop and couldn’t dial the 911. He usually answered right away. Somehow the mayor became involved, one of his citizens, however nameless and uninfluential, was imperiled and it was best to be pre-emptive. The mayors pal, a coast guard pilot, had mentioned he was going to be flying practice sorties somewhere today.

Rance was walking up to the turn into his cul de sac when he saw Dan, a man he’d grown up with, in full neon fire fighting gear and helmet standing in the middle of the road to block any traffic. Coming up behind him he said Hey Dan, what’s up. Hey Rance, Dan said, Rance! They both turned just in time to see a couple of burley young fire fighters use a battering ram on Rance’s front door.

It shook out that the cities insurance would cover the door, and other damages. The coast guard search for him was considered good training and the fire department always looked on it as a lark when they got to practice putting on their gear and drive with the gumball machine blinking red and blue flashes. Even the mayor smiled a bit, it was good for a few votes, showing he cared enough about his nameless citizens to put all the powers at his disposal towards insuring their safety. Rance scratched his head but still caught hell for turning off his phone, Beatrice and Eunice were both livid and traumatized, alternatively.  Several people he knew well said they wondered what he was thinking, disconnecting from the world like that.

As a consequence Rance got rid of the damn phone. Now nobody expected him to always be in touch, he saved having to pay the monthly bill, was no longer pestered by telemarketers or lost down the inane rabbit hole of the internet and was that much richer in birdsong and breezes and could unfold from weeding at his leisure.