Free Yellow Mesquite by John J. Asher

little pieces, I'll bet.”
    “What makes you say that?”
    “Those dinky little tubes you bought.”
    “Dinky? Those are one-pound tubes.”
    “I get more than that under my fingernails.”
    “Yeah? I'd like to see some of your work.”
    “Delighted, my friend. Delighted.”
    “When?”
    Sidney shrugged. “Now. How about now?”
    Harley hesitated only briefly. “Sure. Why not.”
    Sidney slowed and turned at the next intersection. He drove streets in residential sections Harley had never seen from the bus, all the time, ranting on about art; about pathetic weekend painters, their briar pipes, their Harris Tweed jackets with the leather-patched elbows, their bourgeois crank-up easels…
    He drove into an alley and turned through an open gate in a chain-link fence. He brought the car to a stop before a triple-car garage apartment. All three bays were jam-packed with junk—bed frames, broken chairs, tables, bicycles, washing machines… The stuff poured out of the open garages and pushed out across the yard.  
    Harley got out. “What do you do with all this stuff?”  
    “Buy and sell,” Sidney said, taking two boxes from the rear footwells.
    “Yeah? Who buys this stuff?”
    “Ah! After the revolution, my friend, these things will be worth more than gold. Grab that other box, will you?”
    “What revolution?”
    “The revolution that's going to sweep this country. That revolution.”  
    Carrying one of the boxes, Harley followed Sidney up the outside staircase.  
    “Money will be useless,” Sidney said over his shoulder. “The barter system will prevail. And that, my friend, is when Sidney Siegelman will be sitting pretty.”
    “So you think we're gonna have a revolution, huh?”  
    “Of course we are.” Sidney set one of boxes on the porch railing, unlocked the door, and motioned him inside. “Set that box right over there on that table.”
    Harley stepped into the room and stopped in astonishment. It looked as if odds and ends of things in the yard had raced up the steps, jumped through a rainbow of color, and stuck themselves on the walls—and in the oddest configurations. They weren’t exactly paintings, or exactly sculptures, but they were certainly no longer just junk, either. An odd thrill shivered through him.
    “I'm going to buy a little plot of ground in the country,” Sidney was saying, “grow my own food. Food, that's what will be of real value.”  
    Harley wasn't listening. His gaze danced over the room.
    “People are going to be pouring out of the cities like rats. They won't have heat or fuel or food.
    Harley walked around a work constructed on a low oak base: a half dozen oblong wooden pieces arranged in a circle on a piece of dark fur. The rounded ends of the wooden pieces all pointed toward an elliptical slit cut in the fur. A steel animal trap was tightly fitted into the slit. It was painted a sloppy red and it was set, though Harley was relieved to see that the trigger mechanism had a small weld so it wouldn’t spring shut. The rounded ends of the smooth wooden shafts were painted different colors: red, yellow, green, blue, all with a slash of black on the end like a watermelon seed. With a jolt, Harley realized they were penises…and the slit in the fur with the trap was a vagina.
    “That piece is called Beaver Trap ,” Sidney said.
    Harley grinned and felt himself flushing.
    “That's real beaver fur.”  
    Harley nodded.
    “And the little pee-pees, they're what the trappers use to stretch beaver skins over.”
    “That's, uh, interesting.”  
    “Yes, indeed,” Sidney said. “I like the duality of it.” Sidney paused in a moment of introspection. “Listen, my young friend. Women fall within two polarities, the mercenaries and the sapiosexuals. There are shades between, of course, but usually women tend toward one or the other.”
    “Sapio-what?”
    “Sapiosexual. Women who are attracted to men for their intellectual gifts, their creativity. Then there are