by G M Eppers
“Positive. Bedroom, attic and chimney.” Her eyes stayed on the hayloft. She seemed very tense to me. Tense and focused like a laser beam.
“How do you do that with no depth perception?” Agnes asked.
I didn’t expect Sylvia to answer that. I didn’t see how she could. But Sylvia didn’t even break her gaze. “I still have depth perception. I just use different visual cues than you. Apparently, better ones.” The twins didn’t have a response to that well deserved dig, but I could see them watching Sylvia as if they could learn what her brain was doing by observation.
“You want to go get them, don’t you?” I said.
She nodded.
“Not yet.”
She nodded again, just a single movement of acknowledgement. My tension level reduced a bit. She wasn’t going to go off just because she wanted to. I saw her eyes flicker toward the house every now and then. She was trying to keep an eye on all four of them. That’s exactly what we paid her for. And even with only one eye in use, I was confident that we were getting more than our money’s worth.
Badger had moved away from the crowd, even behind the news cameras, and was sitting cross-legged in the tall grass thumbing his smart phone like he was playing Whack-A-Mole. I went over to get an update on the auction. It was nice to get away from the melee for a bit. “Badger, how’s the auction going?”
“Two more bids,” he said, looking up. “Blather354 outbid Judgemenot14 and Judgemenot14 upped his bid to $550.”
“Is the reserve met?” I really wanted to know what kind of reserve Grundy had set on the auction, but that information was confidential.
“Nope.”
“Got your walkie on?” He nodded and put one hand on top of it as if it were the butt of a gun. His actual gun was on the other side. “Call me if anything changes.”
“There’s a level 3 thunderstorm heading toward the Gulf of Mexico, the Boston Red Sox are beating the Toronto Blue Jays six to two, and Starbucks is adding 15 more stores in Oklahoma.”
“I mean if anything changes with the auction!” Badger was a handy person to have around. It was like having CNN on a Bluetooth surgically implanted in your brain, only he did it all on his smart phone. He was permanently trapped in Helen Keller’s water moment, constantly reaching for new information. Even from where I stood, I could see various tiny windows maximizing and minimizing, including the auction window, so fast it looked like a poltergeist on amphetamines.
“You got it. The auction is holding steady.”
I pulled out my walkie and pushed the button. “Sir Haughty, you read?”
His voice came back. “Yes, Ma’am.”
I looked around, but didn’t see him. “Where are you?”
“Near the silo. I’m discussing things with Cletus.”
“Oh, for –“ I muttered without pressing the button. Sir Haughty was always polite, but politeness and diplomacy were two different things. With another nod toward Badger, I headed back to the silo. I found Sir Haughty standing next to Cletus and five other men of younger ages who I assumed were his sons. The youngest appeared to be about 14 and was the only one clean-shaven. They all had what looked like AK47’s, including the youngest, who was small enough to make the gun unwieldy and particularly unsafe. It made me nervous, on top of my nervous.
“Mr. Grundy, don’t you WANT to know what kind of cheese you have?” Sir Haughty was saying. “I can tell you possibly on sight, definitely with a taste of the smallest morsel. I’m an expert on cheeses.”
“I don’t need no eggs pert,” Cletus told him as I approached. “It’s cheese. Don’t got to know nothing else.” Cletus had several teeth left, about as straight and organized as a hippopotamus’ teeth. They were various shades of yellow and brown, and I could tell why. He spat some tobacco juice on the ground. Given how quickly the government had moved to ban Uber cheese, it was a mystery to me why tobacco products were still legal. They were apparently grandfathered in by virtue of being older than the country itself.
“Mr. Grundy,” I said, putting a supportive hand on Sir Haughty’s shoulder, “we’re not here to arrest you.” I didn’t mention that there were plenty of police officers who would be happy to do it for us once the situation was defused. “We’re CURDS.” I turned and pointed to the back of my vest and gave him a few seconds to read it before turning around again. From a distance, it might have been indistinguishable from CSPD. The fonts were the same size and very similar. “We want to make sure your cheese is safe, that’s all.”
“You’ll take it away. I know how you folks work. You’ll call it that Uber thing even if it t’aint so’s you can have it fer yurselfs.”
I could see we were going to have to deal with some trust issues. One way to do that was to distract them from the mistrust by getting them to talk about something else, preferably themselves. “These are some fine young men you have with you. Are they your sons?”
Cletus looked at me sideways. “Yeah, what’s it to you? You want to take them, too?”
I put my hands up away from my weapons. “No, sir. Just making conversation. Looks like you did a good job with them.” I’m surprised my nose didn’t pierce the silo on that one. “What are their names?”
Cletus hesitated, then pointed at them as he spoke one by one, oldest to youngest. “That there’s Cletus II, Cletus III, Cletus IV, Cletus V, and our youngest Cletus VI.” He didn’t say the ordinal numbers. He pronounced the actual Roman letters instead. I’m surprised he had them in the right order.
Sir Francis Maxwell Haughty IV turned purple. “Are you ignorant, man?” He spouted before I could stop him.
“I think we best keep religion out of this,” replied Grundy.
“Ordinals count generations, not consecutive sons!”
Cletus the first lowered the tip of his gun to point toward us. “Ordinals don’t count nothin’. They’s birds! Who’s ignant now, Mr. British Man? Asides, they as all generated after each other, so don’t go tellin’ me how to name my kids.”
Sir Haughty and I took a step back and raised our hands. “So sorry, sir,” Sir Haughty apologized. “I was taken by surprise by your cleverness.” Ah, so he had heard of diplomacy after all, I thought. But his lips produced an almost imperceptible snarl as if the remark had left a bad taste in his mouth.
At that point, my cell phone began to vibrate in my pocket. “I’m getting a phone call, Mr. Grundy. Is it all right if I answer it?” I asked, before getting permission to reach into my pocket. I pulled out my cell phone and flipped it open. I noticed from the listing that it was Roxy calling. “Hi, Roxy. How’s it going?” I moved a few steps away and turned toward the sign carrying supporters so Grundy couldn’t hear.
“I’ve got a problem,” she said.
Just as she said that, my walkie woke up. “Helena, this is Badger. You read?”
“Hold on,” I told Roxy, and then answered my walkie. “This is Helena, Badger. Go ahead.”
“Something’s going on. The bid just dropped down to $25. Bids are getting canceled, but I don’t know why.”
“Thanks, Badger. I’ll check into it.” I went back to the cell phone, pretty sure that Roxy’s problem had something to do with Badger’s problem. “Okay, Roxy, what’s up?”
“The judge I was supposed to see about the warrant just got hauled away in handcuffs.”
“For Pete’s sake, why?”
There was a moment of silence before she answered. “Long story short, he was high bidder. The FBI has spent the last couple of days tracking down the bidders. It’s only a misdemeanor for bidding, but a felony if he wins the auction, so he was allowed to cancel his bids. It’s still going to take him several hours to get through the system and back to the courthouse. The PD is only across the street, but I’m told there are two other bidders and a hooker in front of him, so he’s in holding for now.”
“Fabulous. Is there any hope for a warrant?” I wasn’t sure any of the Cletuses would honor a warrant anyway, but we did try to stay on
the right side of the law. That was Roxy’s job. Keeping us in line. The tendency to stretch the law for the sake of convenience was strong sometimes. I was pretty sure Roxy could explain the legal ramifications of ignoring such a warrant to Cletus the first, though.
“There’s another judge on duty, but she’s in court right now. The clerk tells me they should be recessing soon and I can catch her in chambers in about fifteen minutes. Can you guys hold the fort for another thirty minutes or so?”
I looked back at Sir Haughty, who had wandered back to the silo and was getting pushed away by the barrel of an AK47. “That’s questionable,” I told her honestly. “But I’ll see what we can do.” I flipped the phone closed and slipped it back in my pocket, and made a quick call on the walkie to fill Badger in on what was happening.
“Yep,” he responded. “Last bidder just went down. They got nothin’. Auction is still open, though. The FBI wants to see if there are any more takers.”
“Thanks, Badger.” His news had given me an idea. I scanned the crowd for Billings and saw him chatting up Agnes and Avis who were waiting on the word to go in from Sylvia, who was waiting on the word from me, or at least should be. On the way, I snagged Sir Haughty and pulled him away from the Cletuses and their rifle barrels. “Come on, Sir Haughty. I’ve got an idea.”
Sylvia’s location was on the way. As we passed I whispered, “Not yet,” into her ear and got another single nod but no eye contact. Birds were chirping and a light breeze carried cicada song, and I thought about what a nice day this would be if I wasn’t on the possible verge of a conflagration.
Once I had Haughty, and Billings, who objected strongly to being taken away in the middle of his conversation, I led them both over to the van. “I’ve got a job for you, Billings,” I said.
“Sure, Mom. What’s up?” His initial disappointment had given way to curiosity and focus, which is exactly how I raised him.
Before I explained things, I also found a news reporter who was about Billings’ size and asked him to join us. I explained that we needed to borrow his suit jacket and offered him $20 to rent it for about half an hour. “Could I get an interview first?” He asked. “Confidentially, I’m kind of running out of things to say.”
“It isn’t really a good time,” I said.
“Then it isn’t really a good jacket…” and he turned to go.
I was trapped. “All right, all right. But keep it short.”
The reporter, who introduced himself as Walter Barbara of WKGB News, motioned his cameraman to start taping. “That’s an unfortunate series of call letters,” I remarked, as he set up.
“Why do you say that?”
“No reason.” I looked at him again and realized he was probably about 25. And journalists in general didn’t care much about old news. They were into new news. I didn’t want to waste time explaining my comment when I didn’t really want to do the interview in the first place, so I just said, “Never mind.”
The light on top of the camera glowed red and Walter Barbara introduced himself to his viewing audience. “I’m here on the Grundy farm with CURDS director…” He’d neglected to get my name.
“Coordinator, actually. I’m Helena Montana.”
“Tell me, Ms. Montana, have you been able to determine what kind of cheese Mr. Grundy has in the silo?”
Walter tilted the microphone toward me. “I’m sorry, but we haven’t gained access to the silo.” Inside my head I was screaming ‘this is stupid!’ But I wanted to use his jacket so I bit my tongue. He wanted some kind of new information, and I really didn’t have much. After all, they’d been here for something like a day and a half and we had only just arrived. “Folks, it’s really important that you make sure any cheese you have has the US FDA CURDS affiliated seal stamped on it. If you don’t see that seal, do not eat it. Not one crumb. And call 1-800-GO-CURDS. That’s 1-800-GO-CURDS. Someone will come right to you to inspect it and take it off your hands if it’s tainted. Every call is completely confidential. Your information will not be sold to any third party including law enforcement entities, and the vehicle used will not be marked in any way, though the personnel WILL identify themselves with a badge and full name. Do not give your cheese to anyone but properly identified CURDS employees. Again that’s 1-800-GO-CURDS. Don’t risk your health or your life on questionable cheese.” It’s a lot of words, but any of us can rattle this off at a moment’s notice in our sleep. It comes in handy when you have nothing else to say.
Walter, however, was not expecting a Public Service Announcement. He had questions. “Will the silo auction be disallowed by eBay?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does Mr. Grundy have any legal grounds here?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a lawyer.”
He sighed and decided to try for something more up my alley. “What does CURDS stand for?”
“Cheese and Uber Rennet Disposal Service. We identify, confiscate and destroy all Uber cheese and cheese related products.”
“Can you tell us more about how Uber works?”
It was my turn to sigh. “There is an ingredient in the cheese making process called rennet. About a decade ago, Dr. Maria Smith tried a new process to make the rennet. This new rennet is supercharged which really enhances the cheese, however it also makes it extremely dangerous. I cannot stress enough how dangerous. Millions have died, as you well know. It was also mass produced and disseminated worldwide very quickly. It has effects similar to heroin, is highly addictive, and totally shuts down the large intestine in a matter of weeks. Toxins build up, leak into the abdominal cavity and cause severe peritonitis. It’s extremely painful and –I’m sorry, Mr. Barbara, but I have no more time. I appreciate the chance to educate the public.” This stuff had been in the news for five years or more. We could just as easily have a special ‘So, you’ve just come out of your coma’ seminar and educate just as many people.
“You’re welcome.” Walter let me step aside while he signed off, then gave his cameraman the cut sign. “Thanks, Ms. Montana. That was a great interview!” I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic.
I gave him a $20 bill and he removed his jacket and returned to the press circle. I handed the jacket to Billings. “Put this on and I’ll explain.”
Billings shrugged into the jacket. It fit tightly over his CURDS vest and could barely button. Damn. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t think it would work without a good fitting jacket. Reluctantly, I had him take off the CURDS vest and toss it back in the van. He had to pull out the keys and unlock it, but he could see the necessity as well. I saw it land on the seat and got a bad feeling. It was followed, voluntarily and wisely, by his riot helmet. This went against every instinct I had. But if my idea worked, we could get to the cheese without anyone firing a single shot. It also helped that the jacket almost matched his slacks so it looked like a real suit for the most part. My son actually looked spiffier than I’d ever seen him. Instead of focusing on the vest in the van, I imagined him in a tux, walking a beautiful woman down the aisle. It worked for about thirty seconds, then my stupid brain went back to the vest. Stop it, I yelled at my brain. Then I explained to Billings and Haughty what I had in mind.
“You sure this will work?” He asked skeptically, after I’d finished. “It kind of assumes a certain level of intelligence and, you saw, didn’t you? The guy has about six teeth.”
I could have explained that the number of teeth was not a direct correlation to intelligence. Instead, I told him. “That’s two and a half more teeth than anyone else in his family.”
“That’s what I mean. He might be too smart to buy this.”
“He had five sons and named them all Cletus,” I said. “Trust me. He’s thicker than the O section of an Irish phone book.”
“George Foreman had eight sons and named them all George,” he countered.
“CLETUS,” I stressed, then said it again and made it two words, “CLE. TUS.”
“Got it. Piece of cake.”
/> I looked around to make sure Nitro wasn’t around to hear that. We couldn’t even supply Nitro with a birthday cake unless it was made out of carrots because of the eggs.
In an aside to me, Haughty added, “Those are the future leaders of America?”
I pointed to Billings. “No, HE’S a future leader of America.” I hugged his chest, which was as high as I could comfortably reach. I would have kissed him if it weren’t for the crowd and the lack of a stepstool.
Haughty, stunned by stupidity, muttered “He named them all Cletus. Every last one. Unbelievable.”
A few minutes later, the three of us approached the silo. Cletus the first was currently talking to another gentleman, also in a reasonably good suit. The man finished up with “Here’s my card. Think about it. Give me a call.” Then stepped away and picked up a ‘Save Cletus’ sign he had left on the ground.
I addressed Mr. Grundy. “Who was that?”
“That there was Mr.—“ He stopped to look at the card in his hand. “Simon Farley. He’s a collector. That ignant man just offered me $5000 for that useless contraption over there.” He indicated the rusty Nordenfelt. “Prolly a con man. Thing ain’t worth the dirt it’s settin’ on.”
Sir Haughty and I exchanged glances. The Nordenfelt was probably worth far more than that, even in the decrepit shape it was in, at least to such a collector. “My advice is to take that money, Mr. Grundy. Certified check, of course. It would at least get the unsightly thing out of your beautiful homestead.” And it won’t come close to paying the legal fees you’ll have after this is over, I thought to myself.
Mr. Grundy nodded approval of my opinion and tucked the card in his shirt pocket.
“Mister Grundy, I’d like you to meet –“ I hadn’t thought of a fake name for him, so I improvised. “Mr. Billings. He’s from eBay. Mr. Billings, this is Cletus Grundy, the owner of the Silo of Cheese.”
“Howdy.” It was mostly ‘how’ and only a little ‘dy.’
Billings stepped forward and offered his hand. Cletus had to lower his gun, but he accepted the handshake. “Have you noticed, sir, that your bids have been removed?”