The peach sat on the vine, staring out at the sky. The peach had been taped to the wine by an immigrant named Carlos. Carlos had escaped from the modern prison that Mexico had become. One night, he and his two brothers had hid in some trees on an untravelled portion of the American -Mexican border, and had then jumped across late at night.
By an odd coincedence, a border guard happened to be nearby in a black van. The border guard's named was Alan, he lived in New Mexico. He didn't like the name New Mexico, because he didn't like things Spanish. He even refused to eat tacos, despite the fact that he had had them when he was young and enjoyed them.
It had been at Marie Wacos' ninth birthday party. She was originally Mexican but now she was as American as anyone else. Or so they say, she was still discriminated against. For example, at the local supermarket she had wanted to buy a magazine and had been ignored by a clerk.
The magazine was Angry Blood, incidentally. It was a horror magazine of sorts. It wasn't very popular, because it was very stupid. The author's failed to see this flaw in their magazine and could not figure out why it wasn't selling. One time a brave executive named Frank Belwise had said at a brainstorming session in New York, "Maybe the magazine's just stupid." He had been fired. His boss had always disliked Frank because Frank was Slavic. He had left the building sadly, and when some Blue Cross people had bothered him for a donation to their worthy cause, he had punched one of them. He had singled out an Anglo-Saxon and punched his face.
The punched Blue Cross worker had actually fallen to the ground, and Frank had run off. His fellow Blue Cross workers helped him up and told him to take the rest of the day off. Hugh, the injured volunteer, got on the subway and headed homeward. On the subway he had been mugged by a young man who was known as Raven on the street, because he was black and he liked jewelry. Raven had knifed Hugh about seventeen times, then grabbed his large sapphire ring, watch and wallet. He had then moved a few subway cars away. He was really quite happy about this.
Raven left the subway and went to his mother's for dinner. He wasn't without better things to do, but he figured he'd better pay a visit. His sister was there as well, she was a 15 year old girl named Anne for some odd reason. She was a very funny child, although most of her jokes were about lettuce, which most people did not find very funny. She asked to be excused and went down to the school to talk to her friends.
On the way to the school, she stopped by an electronics store to watch the news. She knew the owner would tell her to leave soon because he was white and she was not. It seemed that there was some new strain of disease which caused mental illness within a week. It was fairly contagious and had made a lot of people insane in the Florida area. The newsperson was conducting an interview with one such man, whose named was Gil Sheppard. Gil was thoroughly convinced that all non-white races got a newsletter each week telling them how to destroy the white race. This was untrue. He also believed Ghandi was bribing Queen Elizabeth several thousand pounds on the condition that she set India free.
This was true, of course. Ghandi had bought India's independence with cash, cheap drugs and good lovin'. Most people in India thought he was mainly into passive resistance. Not so. Several people in India knew the truth about Ghandi's little operation. One of them had been educated at UCLA in California, and was more perceptive than most Indians.
Rasji had gone to UCLA because his family was fairly rich. He had been very unpopular at UCLA because he had darkish skin and an odd accent. His family owned a juice factory in California. Most of the employees there were from India. The boss was from Scotland. His name was Brian Graham. He was a racist, incidentally, as were his employers and employees. But he hid it. He was only racist against people with very dark skin, so he didn't consider himself so bad. He had no trouble dating a Hispanic girl named Carletta who he considered inferior. And he did so.
Carletta was from Mexico, incidentally. She worked at the juice plant. She disliked having to work with people from the East Indies. One day, as she was harvesting grapes she found a peach, which appeared to have been taped to the vine. The peach was staring out the sky.