Like a Fox on the Run

for a few days of wine, women, and song. After six long hard months of mining out on the ‘Roids, he’d more than earned it, and he didn’t intend to skimp on things.
They were almost home now, the city in sight. Jenny was approaching Monte Sano Mountain in textbook fashion. A lot smoother than he probably would have. Funny how that mountain always seemed to give him trouble.
It was a tad bit strange, especially for a pilot with the skills that Tiger possessed. The mountain offered no unusual navigational hazards. If a pilot stayed at the mandated altitude, he rarely had any issues whatsoever. And yet, several times in the past, Tiger had run afoul of Flight Control for coming in too low over the flat-topped summit. For some unexplained reason, he just seemed to have a problem maintaining proper altitude while passing over. This was an especially irksome issue, since the inhabitants of the mountain were some of the most powerful and influential people in the city. These were the type of people who didn’t take kindly to being caught in the wash of four, massive pulse-drive engines.
Of course, that always meant a deviation citation waiting for him when he landed at the port. Never anything too serious. Besides, as infrequent as his trips back home had become, it had usually long since expired.
That didn’t stop the uppity bastards from trying though. The last time, they came after him full force. One, in particular, had done everything he could to get his license revoked. Hell, some people just had no sense of humor. Just ‘cause I pop a pulse wave, blow out a few windows, and crack some sheetrock, they wanna go and mess with my livelihood!
He smiled, remembering what his Old Man used to say, “Want in one hand and shit in the other … see which one gets full the fastest.” Well, those wine-sipping, pâté-eating bastards could want for eternity. Ol’ Tiger, he might not be rich, but he had him some connections, too. A man didn’t burn rockets for twenty years to all corners of the inhabited system without making a few friends and earning a few favors along the way. Friends with enough clout to keep him flying, no matter how much it galled those little tin gods living up on their wannabe Mt. Olympus. He would be told to get out of town and make himself scarce for a while. And the folks up on the mountain? Well, they would seethe a spell, but eventually they would learn that not even the uber-rich got everything they wanted.
Was a good lesson for ‘em.
As for Tiger, he might be a rebel, but he was no fool. He knew he’d pushed his luck enough in that arena. Old friends will bail you out for only so long before they begin to feel used. And Tiger was no user. Especially when it came to a silly little grudge that went all the way back to his childhood. He knew when it was time to grow up and behave. No matter how righteous and justified he felt it was, it was wasted energy, a cause long lost. But, like many Southerners, he seemed to have an incurable affinity for such well-intended, albeit, misguided efforts.
This cause had been personal, not some bigoted, redneck pledge to an ancient flag he had no real knowledge about and used only to suit his own purposes and prejudices. His cause had been just, this he knew in his heart. They had taken a part of his childhood away. But that’s what these people did. Take. Take, take and take.
Tiger hated them for it. These rich and pampered pricks who only grew fatter and wealthier. They were turning the country, no, the world into a welfare state, all the while hypocritically bemoaning the fact that America was becoming a “subsidized society.” In the meantime, more and more people were being forced onto government assistance as robot labor took hundreds of thousands of jobs from human workers annually now. After all, robots don’t draw a salary. They don’t need to feed a family. They don’t ask for raises or time-and-a-half after forty hours. They don’t need vacation time or health insurance. They don’t complain about the workload and they don’t join unions.
In the last decade, people Tiger had known all his life were simply dropping out and giving up. He found this hard to swallow, and yet, what else were they supposed to do? Go from working for NASA one day to ringing up beer and chips at the corner convenience store the next? That is, if it hadn’t been automated yet. Why would you do that when you could sit at home, draw a check from the government and make more money doing nothing?
Tiger was brought up with the traditional Southern belief that a man made his own way and that he never asked for charity. Like that old song said, if he couldn’t get it on his own, he sure wasn’t askin’ anybody for it. It was a matter of pride. It was about being independent. That was his father’s way of thinking. The Old Man had been brought up that way and would forever subscribe to that point of view.
His “Uncle Mud” had been taught the same values. And yet, when he lost his job to a machine, he never worked another day … ever. He spent the rest of his life, well … enjoying the rest of his life.
It was something that had never sat well with the Old Man, and things were never the same between the two brothers after that. It went against every moral, principal and value his father believed in. And Tiger always felt torn, caught in the middle between two men he loved and admired dearly.
Just another reason to hate those rich bastards!
He sighed in resignation. Still, no matter how many times