The shot glass slipping from his hand, it fell down to the redwood steps, one, and two, and rolled onto three fell and shattered into pieces like the sound of small diamonds, not much sound but enough to open one eye of a boiled and alcohol toasted fat man. Mayor Bubba looked with one brown eye across the hot tub to see a man sitting there through the mist of the 110-degree water. The Stolitchnya and the hot tub did wonders for him although his wife nagged him that people have died from this as it messes with a person’s heart rate, causes death and strokes for men even younger than he. But he relaxed here. There was no peace in the house, and the tub sat on a hill overlooking his acres of Tompsons. Tonight was foggy, the Tule had set in with a thickness that was unusual, and coupled with the steam rising from the tub; it was like another planet’s atmosphere breathable but smelling of hot tub chemicals.

The man sitting on the other side of the tub was fully dressed in clothes that looked odd. They looked from the early twentieth century, around the thirties, and although sitting in the same level uprising in the tub, the man was completely clear as the water that surrounded him did not touch him, and he had his legs crossed and arms folded, and his head was down and covered by the brim of his hat.

Bubba as surprised as he was and astonished was thick with vodka, and all he could ask was, “What’s your name?”

“Joad,” the man said without moving.

“Joad who?”

“Tom Joad.”

Bubba had read The Grapes of Wrath and knew his parents came during the Dust Bowl. During that time, 50,000 fliers went out for 5000 picking jobs, but an old jalopy, furniture, parents, and kids came with each of those pieces of paper promising a job, housing, and a new life for the people that had lost their topsoil.

“Whatcha’ doing in my hot tub?”

Nothing. No answer.

“Well at least take your clothes off,” drunken Mayor Bubba said with a snicker, but behind that curled lip was awe and fear, but alcohol was fuel for sarcasm.

“Visiting a relative,” almost no substance of sound waves came from the voice, and the strange thing about this was that nothing moved from this clothed but not wet person in the hot tub.

Mayor Bubba took on that nickname because the use of that appellation calmed and made comfortable the electorate of Reaganville, people descended mostly for those topsoil refugees from so long ago, people who kept their emotions close to their hips, powerfully capable people but folks of no culture and suspicious of anyone with an education and degrees.

Eighty-five languages and dialects are spoken in the San Joaquin Valley, but the only language of power in this valley, where the only culture is agriculture, is Okie. Of the mass of Hispanic influence, the fact that California was part of Mexico not much more than one hundred years ago, the color and style of most of the original housing in the San Joaquin Valley was of Mexican influence didn’t matter in the slightest. Most of the time, Hispanic politicians made it by representing Okie interests. People in Reaganville, if not white, acted white.

Fresno was another story. After district six ceded from Fresno and all people of means came to the newly named Reaganville, Fresno remained multi-cultural and beautifully integrated. Fresno bloomed into a flower of a community that celebrated the multiculturalism that it always had, and white greed and white centrism flew to Reaganville with the speed of the house building, pounding more dust into the already polluted air of the valley.

“Relative?” Mayor Bubba leaned his head forward from a neck soothing jet of 110 degree water and tried to focus his eyes through the mist of fog and steam at the fully clothed stranger, stranger than anything he’d ever seen in his life.

“Yep.” Not much emotion, not much emphasis, not said as a strong affirmation of a family bond, said as if asked if you needed cream with that coffee at Denny’s by a zombie waiter.

The Grapes of Wrath in a Hot Tub was Mayor Bubba. Descended from those hardy souls of topsoil refugees. Born into a family of farmers that somehow ascended above the beatings from accusations that they were Communists when those who had no work were put into camps and hardly housed and fed, the unfortunate that didn’t have one of those 5000 jobs and they struck for something to eat, a job, some shelter, recognition as a union.