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Max

English teacher, Ms. Close

9th grade 2002

The assignment was to creatively rewrite a fairy tale, and I was inspired by the rhythm of an Inca myth.

In the beginning, there was nothing but hill and flat, bay and sea, in the Richmond district, and no living thing walked there. On the first day of creation came an entrepreneur named Kon out of the distant hills of Sausalito to make something of this land. He was unfettered by speed limits, for he personally knew several chiefs of police and of the National Guard, and so could drive wherever and at whatever speed he chose in his streamlined, freshly polished Jaguar XJ8. He drove over the Golden Gate Bridge without a care for mundane traffic laws, and made his home in the Marin Headlands, for the Richmond was as yet uncivilized. He bought the land cheaply, and developed it, setting up houses, corner stores, cultural centers, and parks, and the people came. But the people paid their rent punctually, and began to buy their homes in installments, and looking at the long-term profit projection, Kon was deeply saddened. He evicted all of his tenants, and they fled unto the Civic Center, and lived without the raiments of civilization and with no shelter did they live.

One day came a rich businessman named Pachacamac, who claimed to be the son of the PG&E chairman, and he made his home on the high hills of Bernal Heights. Kon was maddened at this rival intruding on his Richmond, but he lost in the appellate court, and in despair threw himself into the sea from the cliffs of Lands End, and died. The father of Pachacamac, the chairman called on a think tank of genetic scientists who ended the peopleÕs misery by turning them into squirrels gamboling happily through Mountain Lake Park.

Pachacamac soon invited two new tenants into the land, but the corner stores and the houses belonged to KonÕs estate, and Pachacamac had forgotten to provide for them, so they fled unto the Civic Center, and lived without the raiments of civilization and with no shelter did they live. The man died of pneumonia and his wife petitioned the chairman to send aid, which he did, and four days later, she was well enough off to adopt a child whom she loved. Pachacamac waxed wrathful when he learned of this, and he let the child stray until it died of pneumonia.

At the funeral, out of guilt, he planted grass in the Civic Center, and he bought back the Richmond, and he hoped that the woman would forgive him. She gave birth to her own child this time, with the help of the chairmanÕs own doctor, and she named him Vichima. So as not to anger Pachacamac, she raised him in secret, hiding him beneath an arch of ivy on Lake and 11th.

One day, Vichima left on the 1 California for 23rd Ave., so he could see the forest behind the Burke School, and while he was gone, Pachacamac decided that he was making no profit on this venture, and so he once again evicted the woman, who fled unto the Civic Center, and there died of hypothermia. He then invited many more tenants, who moved in and paid their rent. When her son came back, using his transfer which had not quite expired, he swore an oath to avenge her, and gunned down this third race of men in Golden Gate Park. Vichima then asked the chairman to people the Richmond once again, for his birthday, and the chairman accepted, for Pachacamac had wasted his money once again. A first helicopter, painted with a dollar sign, landed on Nob Hill, a second one, glittering like diamond, landed there also, and the third helicopter, much smaller and painted red settled in the Mission, and these vehicles stayed there unmoving for three days. At sunup of the fourth day, a great earthquake shook San Francisco, and the door of the first helicopter burst open, revealing hundreds of multimillionaires, the second one shattered open and inside there were hundreds of young and pretty trophy wives, and the third was ripped open and inside hundreds of thousands of the poor came out. Even so was the Richmond peopled, and not any other way.