Dean Koontz - Odd Thomas

Driving away from the Porter house, we listened to "Stuck on You," as infectious a tune as ever the King recorded.

Elvis rapped out the rhythm on his knees and bobbed his head, but the tears kept flowing.

IN DOWNTOWN PICO MUNDO, AS WE WERE PASSING A church, Elvis indicated that he wanted me to pull to the curb.

When I stopped the car, he held out his right hand to me. His grip was as real and warm as Penny Kallisto's.

Instead of shaking my hand, he clasped it in both of his. Maybe he was simply thanking me, but it seemed like more than that.

He appeared to be worried about me. He gently squeezed my hand, staring intensely at me with evident concern, and then squeezed my hand again.

"It's all right," I said, although I had no idea whether that was in any way an adequate response.

He got out of the car without opening the door-just phased through it-and walked up the steps of the church. I watched until he passed through the heavy oak doors and out of sight.

My dinner date with Stormy wasn't until eight o'clock, so I had time to kill.

Keep busy , Granny Sugars used to say, even if with poker, fighting, and fast cars, because idleness will get you in worse trouble .

Even lacking Grandma's advice, I couldn't just have gone to my rendezvous point with Stormy and waited for her. With nothing else to occupy my mind, I'd dwell on Bob Robertson and his demonic files.

Cruising away from the church, I phoned P. Oswald Boone, he of the four hundred pounds and the six-fingered left hand.

Little Ozzie answered on the second ring. "Odd, my beautiful cow exploded."

"Exploded?"

"Boom," said Little Ozzie. "One minute all is right with the world, and the next minute your fabulous cow is blown to bits."

"When did this happen? I haven't heard anything about it."

"Exactly two hours and twenty-six minutes ago. The police have been here and gone, and I believe that even they, with all their experience of criminal savagery, were shocked by this."

"I just saw Chief Porter, and he didn't mention it."

"After they left here, the responding officers no doubt needed a stiff drink or two before writing their report."

"How're you doing?" I asked.

"I'm not bereft, because that would be a morally offensive over-reaction, but I am sad."

"I know how much you loved that cow."

"I loved that cow," he confirmed.

"I was thinking of coming over for a visit, but maybe this isn't the best time."

"This is the perfect time, dear Odd. Nothing is worse than being alone on the evening of the day when one's cow has exploded."

"I'll be there in a few minutes," I promised.

Little Ozzie lives in Jack Flats, which fifty years ago was called Jack Rabbit Flats, an area west and downhill from the historical district. I have no idea where the rabbit went.

When the picturesque downtown commercial district began to be a tourist draw in the late 1940s, it was given a series of quaintness injections to increase its appeal. The less photogenic enterprises- muffler shops, tire stores, gun shops-were squeezed to the Flats.

Then twenty years ago, glittering new commercial centers arose along Green Moon Road and Joshua Tree Highway. They drained customers from the shabbier businesses in the Flats.

Gradually during the past fifteen years, Jack Flats has been gentrified. Old commercial and industrial buildings were bulldozed. Homes, townhomes, and upscale apartments took their place.

The first to settle in the neighborhood when few could see its future, Little Ozzie purchased a one-acre parcel on which had stood a long-out-of-business restaurant. There he built his dream home.

This two-story, Craftsman-style residence has an elevator, wide doorways, and steel-reinforced floors. Ozzie constructed it both to accommodate his proportions and to withstand the punishment that he might inflict upon it if eventually he becomes, as Stormy fears, one of those men for whom the attending mortician requires a crane and a flatbed truck.

When I parked in front of the now cowless house, I was more shocked by the carnage than I had expected to be.

Standing under one of the Indian laurels that cast long shadows in the westering sun, I stared in dismay at the giant carcass. All things of this earth eventually pass away, but sudden and premature departures are nonetheless disturbing.

The four legs, chunks of the blasted head, and slabs of the body were scattered across the front lawn, shrubbery, and walkway. In a particularly macabre touch, the inverted udder had landed on one of the gateposts in the picket fence, and the teats pointed skyward.

This black-and-white Holstein cow, approximately the size of an

SUV had previously stood atop two twenty-foot-tall steel poles, neither of which had been damaged in the explosion. The only thing left on that high perch was the cow's butt, which had shifted position until it faced the street, as if mooning passersby.

Under the plastic Holstein had once hung a sign for the steakhouse restaurant that had previously occupied the property. When he built his home, Little Ozzie had not preserved the sign, only the giant plastic bovine.

To Ozzie, the cow wasn't merely the largest lawn ornament in the world. It was art.

Of the many books that he has written, four have been about art, so he ought to know what he's talking about. In fact, because he is Pico Mundo's most famous resident (living, anyway) and perhaps its most respected, and because he was building a home in the Flats when everyone else expected it to remain a blighted zone in perpetuity, only Little Ozzie could have argued successfully before the city building department to keep the cow, as sculpture.

As the Flats became more upscale, some of his neighbors-not most, but a highly vocal minority-objected to the giant cow on aesthetic grounds. Perhaps one of them had resorted to violence.

By the time that I navigated through the jagged shards of cow art and climbed the front porch steps, before I could ring the bell, Ozzie opened the wide door, hove across the threshold, and greeted me. "Is this not pathetic, Odd, what some ill-educated fool has done? I take solace in reminding myself that 'art is long and critics are the insects of a day.'"

"Shakespeare?" I asked.

"No. Randall Jarrell. A wonderful poet, now all but forgotten because modern universities teach nothing but self-esteem and toe-sucking."

"I'll clean this up for you, sir."

"You will not!" Ozzie declared. "Let them look at the ruin for a week, a month, these 'venomous serpents who delight in hissing.'"

"Shakespeare?"

"No, no. W.B. Daniel, writing on critics. I'll have the debris picked up eventually, but the ass of that fine cow will remain up there, my answer to these bomb-toting philistines."

"So it was a bomb?"

" A very small one, affixed to the sculpture during the night, with a timer that allowed these 'serpents who feed on filth and venom' to be far from the crime when the blast came. That's not Shakespeare, either. Voltaire writing on critics."

"Sir, I'm a little worried about you," I said.

"Don't be concerned, lad. These cowards have barely sufficient courage to sneak up on a plastic cow in the dead of night, but they don't have the spine to confront a fat man with forearms as thick as mine."

"I'm not talking about them. I'm referring to your blood pressure."

With a dismissive wave of one of his formidable arms, Little Ozzie said, "If you carried my bulk, your blood rich with cholesterol molecules the size of miniature marshmallows, you'd understand that a little righteous outrage from time to time is the only thing that keeps your arteries from clogging shut altogether. Righteous outrage and fine red wine. Come in, come in. I'll open a bottle, and we'll toast the destruction of all critics, 'this wretched race of hungry alligators.'"