American States of China

I suppose this story should boast a beginning, and this is a good place to start. I wish my computer still worked; however, an unexpected virus turned it into a gloried black screen. I scribble notes in my diary each hot afternoon just before my nap. My sleeping habits changed for survival purposes. The dark night hours are best for moving and scavenging. Most activities happen during the afternoon, thus keeping a low profile during the afternoons just plain makes sense. Stay away when they play and creep while they sleep will add days to my lives. My story begins November 2020 in my hometown of Marked Tree, Arkansas. My name is George Johnson, the oldest son of Randy Johnson and Francis Johnson. I am fifteen years old, just two years younger than my stepsister Lisa Jones is. My mother married Randy after she divorced Lisa's father. Her father fell into the hands of the law while caught in a Poinsett County wide drug bust. His time was extended because a deputy died in a car crash while attempting to apprehend him. Apparently, the deputies cannot handle the roads as our native hillbillies can. Most of those boys begin training when they are eight years old delivering their moonshine to the elder and drugs to the younger. Fortunately, for our family, my father grew up in a grain store hauling those huge bags of grain all over Marked Tree. When our father speaks, he does not have to open his mouth. One glance in his eyes and the fear of God floods our hearts as we drop to the ground begging for forgiveness. Our father does not waste his words on his children. He tells us what to do and we do it. This is not to say that he does not talk much, because, when he invites his friends to our home, they attempt to solve every problem in the world arguing every minute detail. Most arguments find a solution within a few days, except for the great argument of 2019, which continued for two months. That one was when our county got its first wave of Asian investors. Our two large grain mills went belly-up putting most of this county's workforce in the unemployment office. With so many having most of their disposable income zapped, local families stopped shopping, especially when considering how easy it is to shift back to living off the land. Our stores began to close, with precisely one thing saving most from total disaster. A mystery group called Building a New America purchased the stores and vacant mills for pennies on the dollar. The local banks closed their doors not able to withstand the huge debt write-offs. My father, however, found himself overburdened with much overtime. He works on a large farm and handles their delivery tasks. Because they could no longer sell their grain in the local mills, he has to drive twenty-five miles south of the mills in Memphis. No one can pinpoint the reasons our mills went out of business. Most of our grain and livestock went to Asia; however, China acquired huge sections of Australia, converting this land into an agricultural empire logistically practically in their backyard. Our local economy could not withstand the immediate drain of their cash reserves. Questionable expansions and lack of good decisions provided the energy to burn the life from our economy. Arkansas could have rebounded within six months with a modern company owning most of our commercial establishments. Building a New America updated our technological infrastructure and established markets in Africa for themselves. Our grain and livestock went down the Mississippi River, then through the Gulf of Mexico over the Atlantic Ocean to their receiving ports in Africa. Building a New America trained their local employees, so they could produce according to their needs. For the most part, they were invisible, appearing evidently in letters, emails, and phone calls. My daddy argued with his friends, yet no one could figure out how our town fell and how it came back to life. Employees once more had paychecks, although slightly reduced and increased workloads. Everyone believed this was better than no work and a mass exodus leaving empty homes and destroyed dreams. Jumping back and introducing my immediate family, I possess two younger brothers, Fred Johnson, who is fourteen and Don Johnson, who is thirteen. We also have our baby sister, Julia Johnson, who is twelve. She has enough tomboy in her to keep her three brothers busy and enough charm to keep Lisa, and our cousin satisfied. The final person who lives in our house is Roberta Johnson, who is sixteen. She is the daughter of an uncle who died in a car crash. He had been drinking and lost control of his vehicle. Roberta's mother died during her birth. Roberta gets along fine when all my siblings and our parents. Sometimes Roberta will spend a week with our grandparents who live in a smaller house behind ours. We call their house the little house and our home the sizable house. My father told us that our grandparents raised his younger brother and him in our large house. When our mother gave birth to Fred and Roberta joined us, our grandparents moved into the little house and gave the big house to us. Roberta is the link between Lisa and us, as they always took turns babysitting. With two extremely beautiful hens such as Roberta and Lisa protecting us at school and in our neighborhood, we had all the peace we needed. We did not bully anyone nor did anyone bully us. Lisa and Roberta were dating the two strongest football players in our school. This provided enough muscles to support us, which gave us the confidence to seek our own independence. The summers took all our rural friends into the vast fields laboring to provide and harvest the food for our livestock. I often wonder who really has the better end of this farm deal, the animals who live safe and feed or the humans who struggle and sacrifice serving them denying they were supposed to be the masters over them. The amazement does not stop here; these animals must be fenced, and their freedom restricted as they long to escape the land of the free food and travel into a world filled with predators who do not contribute to the lives they take. Luckily, Marked Tree had plenty of children to play baseball with us. During the summers, we had to resort to charms because the muscles that worshipped Lisa and Roberta were flinging hay and harvesting grain from the fields. They noticed the number of farms decreasing while the size of the fields increases and the size of the farm equipment increase. Production numbers became the talk of the town. Our parents saw an old world fade away as fears abound from rumors that Africa was moving faster into the new modern age.