Chapter 10 chapter Ten

After Jeff finished his eggs and bacon by sunrise, he scrubbed the dishes and soaked the frying pan.The pitched-roofed white house has a small balcony where he usually enjoys a cup of coffee.But it was late today, and he had too much to do. He put a down jacket on over his flannel shirt and stepped outside.In the third week of May, the air is still shiveringly cold, and the last frost of the year fell the night before.After nodding to the pile of stones where old Smith was buried, he strode toward a freshly plowed cornfield, staked and ready to be planted.Smith has been cultivating the land by himself since he settled here in the 1880s, just like Jeff.He was told that Smith became seriously ill after the accident and died unnoticed for weeks.The people who bought the land at tax auctions had never grown anything; they sold the land as soon as they found a small gold coin that Smith had hidden in a cast-iron pot.The old man seemed to have a secret of his own.

Jeff poked with the toes of his boots in the thick black topsoil where he was planting his first field of corn this afternoon, an early variety of sugar gold corn.The soil is fertile California volcanic soil rich in minerals.He scorned the people who lived here long ago, who left their land fallow and took Sowester.Smith's gold, to leave the Cove Farm for the joys and comforts they didn't deserve.Land like this needs to be cultivated, and the land returns fresh food worth far more than gold coins.This is a contract between man and the land, an agreement made on the plains of Mesopotamia 10,000 years ago.Jeff was convinced that to abandon a good piece of land was to break this ancient, almost sacred vow.

He continued on past a small field that was about to grow asparagus; at least two years had passed since the first planting, and it was time for the first harvest of the two-year crop.The frost in late spring didn't seem to affect their growth, and Jeff thought that the frost would make the asparagus stalks a little more brittle.He knelt beside the spring water flowing through the land, took two handfuls of cold mountain spring water and drank it.While drinking, two German brown trout swim past.He decided that if the cornfields were planted and the asparagus watered by nightfall, he would bring a pole and catch some trout for dinner.

The sun continued to climb into the sky, illuminating the tops of pine trees on the raised hills of the Southwest Porpoise Ridge.Jeff walked along the spring's winding uphill path, stopping every twenty feet or so to clear debris from the waterway and unblock clogged sump tanks and delivery pipes that depended on crop irrigation. He bought the place nine years ago, just a few weeks after the plane nearly crashed while traveling to Honolulu.He hadn't seen Shara since that day at the side of the smoking runway.To be honest, since that summer, he hasn't seen anyone very often.The nearest neighbors who settled here lived in Turtle Pond, about three miles east along an old carriage road.The only road in and out of Jeff's place is a zigzag mountain road that is often washed out by rain.From November to January every year, snow, rain and mud make the road across Marble Creek difficult, and he has learned to stock up on winter supplies.

The rest of the time he tries to be alone.Every week he would drive to the small town on Montgomery Creek, do some shopping at the store, or have the pickup serviced at the Shell gas station with only two pumps.He had largely given up drinking, but if he had a good run, he celebrated with a beer and dinner at Fork Point or the Hut.Forked Point was owned by the McGuinnesses, a very friendly family; his wife, Eleanor, ran the Shasta County Library branch from the big, bummed house in town.Jeff sometimes casually chats with either of them.Their son, Joey, who was a few years younger than Jeff, had an insatiable intellectual curiosity about the outside world.But the family never pried into Jeff's privacy, never too deeply asked why he chose to live a life of isolation.Joey helped Jeff set up a short-wave equipment on the Cove Farm, and except for occasional chats with the McGuinitz family, the radio became his only connection with civilization.

In this remote part of Northern California, the residents were mostly loggers and Indians, neither of which Jeff had contact with.A few hippies or back-to-the-landers came in shortly after he moved in, but most stayed short.Cultivating this land is much more difficult than they imagined, and it is not just about growing marijuana to make the lotus farm continue. He believed that abstinence was the most difficult thing to achieve during these years of isolation from the world, for reasons beyond his imagination.With Shara and Michel, he had come close to fucking sex for sex's sake. For a while, he felt as if he could live a sexless life without problems, and was even amazed at how easily he could eliminate the need for it.But soon, he was unpleasantly struck by how strong his need for human touch was.This loss tore him every day, haunting him day and night.Sometimes he dreamed of a woman touching his cheek, or of holding her head around his breast.The woman who appears in the dream may be Judy, Linda, or even Shara; but more often it is just a faceless, abstract female figure.

Every so often he would wake up from the dream with intense sadness and realize something familiar: to moderate this deprivation would be to risk further betrayal, and the sure end would be total annihilation.He could no longer face these two kinds of deep pain.A better way is to let the soul die slowly, bit by bit, and lonely. His back started to ache from bending over to clean the irrigation system, so he sat down by the spring.Far to the north, halfway through the scrub forest to Oregon, the formidable white cone of Mount Shasta towered over the horizon like a sleeping god, so the nearby Indians believed.

He chewed some beef jerky, and took a handful of cold spring water to swallow the food.His new home was right on the ridge of the moody Cascade Mountains, halfway between Mount Lassen and Mount Shasta.To the north is the remains of a large prehistoric volcano that once erupted into Crater Lake, past Mount Hood, and further up into Washington state, Mount St. Helens rumbles quietly, at least for now.Seven years later, it will explode with rage, as it did three times before; Jeff remembers the event, and only he. He is in the grip of the mighty force of nature that can destroy a mountain, restore it, and destroy it again, again and again, like a child playing with sand.What is the use of knowing such a thing?Even if he does understand, even if only partially, the human intellect may not be able to accept this knowledge with any degree of clarity.

Jeff wrapped the leftover beef jerky wrapped in cellophane and stuffed it into his jacket pocket.The sun is high overhead and it's time to start planting this year's corn.He followed the mountain spring and descended the mountain the same way, never raising his eyelids to look at the snowy peaks of the high mountains in the distance. Want some peat moss?Is there enough stock? It would be enough to buy another few hundred pounds.Jeff said.Then you need forty gallons of carbaryl. The store owner was sympathetic and added the pesticide to the purchase list.Yeah, watch out for corn moths this season, don't you?Old Charlie in Buckeye.Reynolds had lost three acres of crops.

Jeff nodded, murmuring agreement in the most polite way he could remember.Going to Redding once every two years for a large supply is the only chance he has to meet strangers. What do you think of the Arabs, and look, the gas lines here?the man asked.Never expected such a thing to happen. I think things are getting better and better.Jeff said.Give me one of those big boxes of beef jerky too, the spicy one. Never expected such a thing to happen.If you ask my opinion, Nixon should drop an atomic bomb on the Arabs instead of negotiating with them.Does he think he hasn't gotten into enough trouble here?

Jeff glanced nonchalantly at the posters and notices tacked to the back of the cash register at the supply store, hoping the man would soon realize that he had no intention of getting involved in politics.The notice said the Sheriff was going to auction off someone's foreclosed property in Burnie; Strange things, it looks really out of place with the environment.It was a blue-black poster with the night sky as the main landscape. Above the semicircular moon, a wave of phosphorescent light cut across the sky.Below the poster is written in thin golden font: Xinghai. What is this for?Jeff asked, pointing to the poster. Shopkeeper Wen turned to look in the direction he was pointing, then stared back at Jeff, frowning in disbelief.Boy, do you live in the mountains?You haven't seen "Star Sea" yet? what is that? Heck, that's a movie.The last movie I saw before this one was, I think, The Good, The Beautiful, but I definitely won't miss this one.Three or four months ago, the kids took my wife and I to Sacramento to see it.We've seen it twice so far, and now that Redding's theaters are out, maybe we'll see it again.I haven't seen such a good movie, so I won't cover you. Popular movies? popular?The man laughed out loud.People say it's the greatest fucking movie ever made.I heard that the box office has soared to over one million dollars, and it is still in theaters.I didn't expect such a thing to happen. That's impossible, and no film has ever grossed that much before Jaws, which won't be released for over a year.Jeff had never heard of a movie called Star Ocean, and he was especially sure in 1974.The movie blockbusters of the year were "Chinatown" and the sequel to "The Godfather." What is the movie about? If you don't know, then I don't want to spoil your enjoyment of the movie.Cascades is showing it, you should go see it and go back.Definitely worth the delay, don't cover you. Jeff was a little curious about it, something he hadn't felt in years. The store owner quickly flipped through the "Redding City Chronicle and Discovery Report" with his thumb.The photo on the front page is Kissinger embracing Yitzhak.Rabin (Annotation: Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel. In 1974, US Secretary of State Kissinger visited the Middle East and Israel, shuttled between Israel and Arab countries headed by Egypt, and contributed to the final ceasefire of the Fourth Middle East War.).Found it, the next movie time is 3:20.He glanced at the big clock that hung on the wall at the back of the shop.I can keep your order here if you want.You can still get home before dark after watching the movie. Jeff smiled.What's the benefit of getting kickbacks from the theater? I told you, I don't usually care much about movies, but this one in particular.Go ahead, I'll crate all your stuff and it'll be straight into the van when you get back. In Reading City on Tuesday afternoon, the queue to see "Xinghai" was longer than a block.Shaking his head in surprise, Jeff bought a ticket and joined the waiting line.Moviegoers ranged in age from blinking six-year-olds to taciturn couples in their seventies wearing ragged work pants.From the muffled conversations around him, Jeff knew that many people had already seen the movie more than once.The attitude of the people is as if they are attending a religious gathering together, and the worshipers are walking slowly towards the beloved altar with a quiet and joyful mood. The movie is as good as the store owner claims it is, and so much more.Even in Jeff's eyes, this movie is several years ahead of the times in terms of themes, visual images, and special effects.It's like an undersea version of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, but with the warmth and humanity of Chuv's best films. The film begins with an elegiac look at the ancient connection between humans and dolphins, and then expands the mythic connection to a wise and philosophical alien species who long ago established a relationship with the spiritual mammals of Earth's oceans. connect.According to the plot, before humans are ready to join the galactic family, the alien species assigns the cetaceans in the sea to be the benign caretakers of humans.But towards the end of the twentieth century, the dolphins learned that the alien species, human mentors from the Cygnus 4 nebula, who had been expected to return to Earth for thousands of years, had been wiped out in an interstellar cataclysm.So at this moment, the dolphins told human beings about their existence and their great stories with mixed feelings of joy and deep sorrow.This is the first time that creatures on earth are truly united, and the souls on land and in the sea form a hand-in-hand community. But in the cold and barren space, they are more lonely than ever, because of a benefactor that humans have never met. Has disappeared from the world forever. The film deftly conveys an unbearable irony when it finally hopes to reveal a moment that is also lost, with sophistication and insight that is rarely seen in film.Jeff found himself weeping with the rest of the audience in aching ecstasy as his years of self-exile and detachment were shaken in two hours. And the movie is new from start to finish.Assuming it had appeared in any of his past lifetimes, it was impossible for Jeff to be ignorant of this work of art, which by any measure was excellent and successful. When he saw the list of contributors to the film, he was as surprised as he was watching the film.The director is Stephen.Spielberg wrote and produced Pamela.Phillips creative consultant and special effects supervisor is George.Lucas. How can this be?Spielberg's first movie, "Jaws," hadn't even started filming yet, and George.Lucas would be two more years away from releasing "Star Wars," which would revolutionize the film industry.But in any case, the most puzzling and curious thing is who is Pamela.Phillips? I don't care what the cost is, Ellen, except time.I want you to make an appointment for me, I will see her next week. It's not that easy, Mr. Winston.Those people had their own little class system, and now that woman was at the top.Half of the screenwriters and producers in Hollywood want to squeeze in I'm not going to sell her, Ellen.I'm a businessman, not a filmmaker. There was a long silence on the other end of the line.Jeff knew what the agent was thinking, and it had been nine years since he last spoke directly to a client.What kind of businessman does that make him look like?Jeff.Winston was a recluse, a recluse, and he only appeared once at the San Francisco brokerage house, in 1965, where he deposited a large sum of money.He lived in the woods, and occasionally he sent a secret message instructing them to buy large quantities of some dubious or foolish stock in his name.But, but What's my stock worth now, Alan? I don't have the information at hand right now, sir.Your stock account is quite complex and very diverse, it may take a few days to Approximate numbers are fine. Then, considering possible changes like I said I wanted a rough estimate, a number that just pops out of your head.Tell me now. The man gave in with a sigh.About 65 million US dollars, plus or minus about 5 million.you know i didn't put Yes, I know.I just want to make sure you understand what we're talking about.We're talking about a guy who has a bunch of money to invest, and another guy who's in an industry that's all reliant on new money coming in.Is this understandable? Of course, sir.But let's not forget that Miss Phillips' company is now flooded with new money from the proceeds of that film, which may not be her top priority right now. I am sure she will recognize the long-term value of my interest in her.If that doesn't work, try something else.Don't you know anyone who's in touch with the film industry? Well I think Harry from our Los Angeles office.Many of Greenspan's clients have relationships with film studios. Then tell him to call to ask for some favors, and use whatever contacts he has.There was a polite knock on the door of Jeff's hotel suite. A message for you, sir.Brooks Brothers suits (Annotation: The oldest surviving men's clothing brand in the United States, famous for its quality and American classic design, many celebrities and political figures have been its loyal customers for generations.) people come to measure for you. I have to hang up, Alan.Jeff said into the microphone, you can find me at the Fairmont when you get this sorted out. I'll do my best, Mr. Winston. be quick.I'm very reluctant to move the account elsewhere, after all these years. Star Ocean Studios had offices in a two-story white stucco building just south of Pico, in a drab strip mall between MGM and Twentieth Century Fox.The office reception area is dominated by white and blue, and a movie poster, the size of a billboard, hangs behind the reception desk.Other walls are decorated in an eclectic mix of abstract art and underwater photographs, and a large, Spanish collage-tiled coffee table houses six books that reflect the film's themes: Intelligent Life in the Universe, Dolphin Mind", "Human Biological Computer Programming and Metaprogramming".As he waits, Jeff flips through a stack of colored discs of Jupiter from the first Pathfinder mission. Mr. Winston?The petite, brunette, friendly receptionist smiled professionally at him.Miss Phillips can see you now.He followed her down a long hallway past half a dozen offices with their doors open, and everyone he saw was talking on the phone. Pamela's spacious office is the same blue and white as the reception area, but there are no movie memorabilia on the walls, no pictures of Pollack paintings or photos of dolphins.The office has only one visual theme, which is repeated in a dozen or so morphing patterns: mandalas, wheels, circles. Good morning, Mr. Winston.Would you like some coffee or juice? no thanks. That's it, Natalie.Thanks. Jeff took a good look at the woman he had been waiting a month to meet.She was slender, about five feet ten inches tall, with a wide mouth, a round face, lightly powdered, and thin blond hair cut into boyish bangs that fell to her forehead.Jeff was thankful that he was wearing a custom-made Brooks Brothers suit; Pamela was business attired, with a fitted gray suit, a high-necked fuchsia top and matching low heels.Apart from a small gold brooch in the shape of concentric circles pinned to the lapel of his suit jacket, he did not wear any jewelry. Please sit down, Mr. Winston.I think what you want to discuss is whether you have an opportunity to invest in Xinghai Productions? He hit the nail on the head, neither procrastinating, nor intending to make small talk.She's styled like a working woman in the '80s, but it's 1974. Yes, you are right.I think I have some spare funds that can Let me get straight to the point, Mr. Winston. Please call me Jeff. She ignored his attempt to get closer by calling each other names and continued to finish the sentence.My company is privately funded and completely independent.I agree that this meeting is just a courtesy to a friend, if you want to invest in the film industry, I'm afraid you are in the wrong place.However, if you wish, my attorney will draw up a list of other production companies that may What I'm interested in is Xinghai Production, not the industry. If Xinghai's stock goes public, I'll have your broker receive an application form.That's when she got up from behind the desk and held out her hand, intending to send him away. Are you not at all curious about my interests? I'm not particularly curious, Mr. Winston.Since the movie was released in December, it has attracted a lot of interest and attention from all walks of life.My own energies are currently being invested in other film projects.She reaches out again.so if you don't mind i'm in a hurry The woman's attitude made the situation more difficult than expected.He had no choice but to go straight in. How about Star Wars?he asks.Is your company involved in the production of Star Wars? She narrowed her green eyes.Rumors of an upcoming film, Mr. Winston, are circulating in town all day long.If I were you, I wouldn't take the gossip I hear by the mansion poolside seriously. Jeff figured he might have to show all his cards. What about Close Encounters of the Third Kind?he asks.I'm not sure Spielberg would want to make this movie now what do you think?It may look a bit like a follow-up work of "Xinghai". The anger in her eyes hadn't subsided, but other emotions were mixed in now.She sat back in her seat and gazed at him cautiously.Where did you hear the title? He looked back at her with the same calm eyes, avoiding the question.Still, ET, he went on and on, which is a completely different film.I don't see any conflict between the two films.Of course, Raiders of the Lost Ark is the same, completely unrelated movie.Although its first sequel really sucks.Maybe you could talk to Spielberg? All her attention was now on him.Her fingers were caressing her throat nervously, and there was no expression on her face other than shock. Who are you?Pamela.Phillips asked in a low voice.who are you? interesting.Jeff laughed.I've been meaning to ask you the same question.