Trump Summons Asteroid

After it struck...

Bella was mad. Again. The truck had dumped another load on her lawn overnight, only a week after she’d cleaned up the last mess.

“I’m sick of it,” she told Melanie.

“Me too,” Mel replied, “And why hasn’t the city done something about this?”

“Corruption,” Bella said. “The rich folks bribe the politicians to get the stuff cleaned off their lawns, and it gets dumped on ours...at night.”

Bella kicked some of the glassy gems away from her driveway. Both ladies were deep in thought. The morning sun lit the sparkling, glittering stones so brightly into what would have beautiful if not for the fact that there were tons of them scattered across all the yards in the neighborhood. Eddie’s dog, a little terrier mix that ran free in the neighborhood, sniffed the edges of the new piles and lifted its leg on them to mark his territory.

“I tried calling someone last week to come pick them up--haul them away, but they all say the same thing—'there's nowhere left to dump them',” Mel said to Bella, who seemed to not be paying attention.

“Hey. . .Bella,” she said, “you hear me? I said no one will haul them away anymore.”

“I heard you… I was just wondering what they might be good for. Must be some use for them.”

The stones were the size of gravel but were clear and shiny, almost like glass. Nice diamonds according to the old standards. But that was before the Great Diamond Meteors, as they were called, hit right after the election.

The first one struck near Washington, D.C. and buried the district in glassy rubble. Cleaning up the mess filled all the landfills in the area, so Congress decided to divide the diamonds among the states, and the states became overwhelmed, so they divided the diamonds among all the residents.

People were ecstatic at first. They felt like billionaires. But the diamonds kept coming in dump truck loads. Soon, the people had nowhere to put all the beautifully worthless gems.

Bella was thinking that maybe they could be used like gravel. “You know, for paths and driveways…or for concrete, maybe.”

Melanie looked at her for a moment, then looked pensively off into the distance. “They’ve been doing that for months now. That’s how we were able to get rid of the stuff before. Some companies were using it to keep sand from eroding on the beaches, some even used it in asphalt for paving roads, but it shines so much in the sun that it blinds drivers. There’s just so much of it that we’ll never use it all up. That’s why we can’t get it hauled away anymore. It’s crazy. Nobody wants the stuff.”

“Yeah,” Bella sighed, “it’s just…I mean…” Bella let out a long sigh. She was staring into the same nothingness that Mel was staring into.

Edie’s kids, from the other end of the block, were throwing the diamonds at the dog. Two other neighborhood kids were using a hammer, trying to smash the diamonds into pieces. Karen, the old woman who lived farther up the street, was out in her bathrobe, hair in curlers, cigarette dangling from her lips, wearing thick reading glasses, holding diamonds up to the light. She had two piles—one pile she wanted to use for jewelry and another, much smaller one, to have hauled away.

“Look at Karen," Bella said, nudging Mel with her elbow and pointing. "She still thinks those things have some kind of value.”

“Hah!,” Mel laughed, “Look at us—paying to have this mess hauled off our lawns, only to get more dumped on them. Remember way back when diamonds were worth money, when people thought they were rich if they had some? It was like that with gold before that guy figured out how to make gold from lead. All that stuff used to be worth money. Now it’s worthless--a nuisance. “

Bella and Melanie stood silent, pondering the piles and piles of diamonds on the lawns.

“It was Germany, I think,” Bella thought out loud.

“What was?”

“Germany--old photos—old photos of people with wheelbarrow loads of money—millions—and all worthless. A single cigarette bought more than the whole wheelbarrow load. They were burning the money to stay warm. And here we are with so many diamonds…and all so worthless. The Germans used jewelry and cigarettes and gold to buy food. And here we are with all these diamonds,” Bella said waving her hand from left to right. “Can’t eat them, can’t burn them, can’t trade them, Can’t give them away.”

“Nope,” said Mel gazing blankly down the street, “Worthless . . . useless . . .”

The dog yelped when a diamond hit it. The kids laughed. Karen focused intently on her treasures. The ladies stood silently for a while, staring—huge piles, glaring, burning the eyes, weeds working through, covering what had once been beautiful lawns.

“‘Come on, you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine…,’“ Mel finally mumbled with a smirk.

“What?” asked Bella.

“It’s an old song my father used to listen to. I was just a kid then, but it had something to do with diamonds.”

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