Hob Broun - Odditorium

Ask us where is this there

We say not up our sleeves

We say down in the leaves

The sticks leave their hands like bullets, making phosphorescent trails in the air. Giggling again, the peewees somersault away into the black …

Good cash flow today, an upsurge in the seasonal trade. Kids had been coming in all afternoon to buy water pistols and baseball cards and bubblegum shaped like little running shoes. This kind of brisk selling was a natural mood-elevator for Ray Holstein.

“I know kids,” he said around a mouthful of peanut brittle. “Been in their vicinity near all my life. You expect they’ll get wild when the end of the school year comes in sight. But this, this … You know how much we could do with a minimal lunch counter setup? Those little termites would be in here every day chewing up hot dogs and soda and cupcakes. Dollar here, fifty cents there, ice cream, maybe even some little microwave pizzas. We could double the gross, I’m telling you. I know these kids. You can study them like the weather.”

Tildy came away from the window where she’d been evaluating her reflection with several brown-to-purple shades of lip gloss that had just come in. “Instead of telling me, Ray, you should just do it.”

“Would that I could, Soileau, would that I could. But I’m just the caretaker here and got no right to make any modifications. Follow the plan, that’s all the home office people want from me.”

“And you never get tired of that.”

“Whatever you think, I’m no damn robot, Soileau. I got ideas of my own. Why the hell not? I got a college degree and I read the papers. Just driving along in my car or loading the dishwasher and I’ll get an idea about something. Maybe I’ve been working up to it all along, but it’ll just come into my mind, you know?”

“So you’ve been having ideas.” The way Tildy rocked her head, fingered her throat, made it seem like she was talking about a medical condition. “What is on your mind, Ray?”

Holstein started fiddling with things on the counter, lining them up, pressing down with the palm of his hand. “Sure, make a joke out of it. Everybody’s a skeptic today. Leave town for a few days and your wife assumes you were banging some chick. Tell a kid about work, improving himself, being part of a team, and he laughs in your face.” Crushing the cardboard pop-up display over a tray of disposable lighters. “Everybody’s got a sneer on and they wonder why things don’t work. Maybe if there was a little more faith in people we could finally get out from under all this shit we live with.”

“Ray, you shouldn’t do this to yourself.”

He was heading straight for the milk of magnesia.

She drove home with the windows open and a bottle of beer in her lap. The air was soft, wrapped around her like the finest mosquito netting. She took the long road that skirted the Alafia River, passed quietly humming power lines marching through sand and scrub pine, and it all looked good to her.

Karl had thrown away the pillows in his sleep, kicked off the sheet. One forearm was curled under him while the other twitched spasmodically. He groaned once and opened his eyes halfway.

“Miss me?” Tildy said, changing into pants.

“What … What time is it?”

“Anytime.” She danced toward him, twirling invisible tassels.

He sat up and probed furiously behind the bed; a crackle of paper and he slumped back cradling an envelope. “Yes, baby, we almost there. We gonna be so rich you won’t recognize us.”

Saturday dawned cloudy and cool. By seven thirty Karl had packed his tools — crowbar, pickaxe, three sizes of shovel — into the car, tested the metal detector’s batteries, unplugged its six-inch loop and replaced it with a twelve-incher, going for maximum depth penetration over pinpoint accuracy. He was loaded for bear.

Cautiously, just after eight, he went in to wake Tildy. She had reacted with surprising annoyance to his plan, but this hadn’t flustered him. He’d read the pertinent texts aloud to her, patiently explained the connections he’d succeeded in making between them, the subsequent implications of his dream.

“What is this about?”

“You don’t see how I asked for a sign and it came?”

“This doesn’t make a damn bit of sense,” she’d said fiercely.

“Don’t have to make sense,” he replied. “It ain’t a map, it’s an inspiration.”

Forcing down a piece of raisin toast, Tildy was more despondent than before, and tangled in questions. Had Karl become truly demented, past all hope? Did he belong in a hospital? Was humoring him this way really the kindest choice? And why, when he’d said to her, “You don’t even want to believe in me,” had this accusation been so painful?

By nine they were parked at the head of Gardenville Road, shivering in silence marred only by the idling motor. Karl sat slumped against the dashboard, fists pressed into his eye sockets, communing with who knew what. His lips were moving. A last prayer? Tildy wished she had it in her to say one too.

“Okay, sugar, let’s move out.”

He was so jaunty it made her want to cry.

“Take it nice and slow. I’ll know it when I see it.”

Like an eager dog Karl thrust head and shoulders out the window, investigating the air with an elevated nose. Mist formed on the windshield. They passed a mobile home park, a chicken farm, the ruins of a church or one-room school.

“Hold it. Yeah, back her on up.”

A wedge of sloping roof visible through the trees, a dormer window with three of four panes broken out, a pair of weedy ruts angling out of sight.

“We’re gettin’ real warm. Can you feel it?”

There were signs of recent activity: fresh tire tracks, saplings bent and broken. Karl scrambled out of the car and searched the brush for further spoor. He found a crushed box, the kind used for takeout sandwiches. The mustard splotch on it was still fresh, hadn’t yet completely hardened. A few feet away, pressed into soft earth and disfigured by bootprints, was a paper sign that said: CRIME SCENE AREA DO NOT ENTER. He held it up for Tildy to read. He shimmied and kicked, a dance to celebrate his vindication.

“Maybe we should come back when it’s dark,” she said, wondering if they were being watched.

“Fuck no.” He was yanking her out the door, pawing her up and down. “I been waitin’ thirty-four years for my big moment. I always knowed a man couldn’t live the life of Karl Gables without some damn compensation comin’ to him. Now here I am after thirty-four years and I ain’t about to wait even another five minutes to finally get my end of the seesaw offa the ground.”

This is going to break his heart, Tildy thought, swaying through the ruts with Karl running in front of her, an awkwardly suspended figure in the frame of the windshield. She cut the engine and waited, listened almost hopefully for the crashing footfalls of the stakeout team sweeping down to intercept them before they got any closer. But there was only a faint sandpapering of wind, the overlapping chirps of two birds contesting territory.

“Come on. I need you to help carry things.”

She took a pick and shovel and a canvas sack they normally used for dirty laundry (“the swag bag,” Karl called it now), and followed helplessly along.

The color and texture of driftwood, the house looked like the setting for a Halloween cartoon. The front door dangled on a single hinge; a few scattered wads of newspaper stood out against the spongy darkness, nothing more. Karl ripped up one of the buckled porch slats and dropped to his haunches, studying the heavy skies. He dug around with the stick at the edges of the foundation, crumbled a chunk of earth in his hand, sifted it.