Word spread quickly and people soon drove out to trade for my booty of toilet paper. I traded it a roll at a time, after learning it was worth five hundred dollars a roll; maybe more, just because of its exceptional quality. I handled them like they were baby ducks.
I got a generator for two rolls of two-ply, which was my big expenditure. I then bought fifty-five gallons of high octane for one roll. The guy looked at me like I was a lunatic. I bought guns and ammunition, batteries and first aid kits. I even bought a water purifier. I was getting ready to go to ground. The end was near, it had to be. I didn’t want to live in such a world, at least not among these people. My last trade was with a curious little man who offered to shake my hand after we had conducted business. He was short and thin, and he was very old. He had a pair of massive ears that sprouted thick white hair. He smiled at me.
“I have heard about you,” he said, touching his nose with a wrinkled finger. “I can’t smell a thing, haven’t been able to smell nothin’ since I turned ninety. I thought you might like some company.”
I was touched that he would do such a thing. I forced the laptop computer back on the old man, tossing it on the backseat of his Buick. I told him to keep the toilet paper, not that I needed to. The way he was holding it, I may have had to kill him for it.
“Abe Steinman,” the old man said. Thanks for the butt-wipe. It isn’t easy getting old. Listen, my granddaughter was out here with her three girls. Her name is Theresa, do you remember her?”
“Sure,” I said. “She drove into the ditch.”
“She didn’t tell me that,” he commented in a dry rasp. He opened his door and stepped from the car. He was dressed in a nylon button-up and a pair of wide-belled plaid pants, the type I hadn’t seen in generations. “She did say that you had been locked in a closet? Is this true, have you been locked up inside a prison all of your life? Maybe you’re one of those people who forget things all the time? Is that it?”
I shook my head. “I have never been in prison and there’s nothing wrong with my mind. You just have to trust me. You don’t want to know about me.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I am not buying any bullshit today, thank you very much. I want to know everything about you, or I’ll turn you in as being unusual.”
This caught me totally off guard and I stopped to re-estimate the little old man. I knew that he wasn’t joking by the tone of his voice and that I had better win him over, as fast as possible. I pointed to a soda can lying on the shoulder of the road. “Do you see that can?” I asked. “Keep your eyes on it.”
“I can see the damn can. What, do you think that I’m blind?”
“Watch!”
“What, is it going to do tricks?”
Channeling all of my energies into telekinetic thought, I was able to lift the can two feet into the air. I held it there for a few seconds before letting it go. It dropped to the ground with a clink. It wasn’t much, but it did prove to me that all wasn’t lost.
Abe Steinman looked at me with amazement. I really thought I had impressed him. He shook his head, narrowed his eyes and pointed at my mailbox. “Do you see that?” he asked.
“The mailbox?”
“No, I was talking about the empty field of dirt; of course, the damn mailbox. Keep your eye on it.”
The rusted old mailbox was dented and large enough to house small animals. I watched as it began to droop like melting wax. I watched it glob up into a single molten blob and I gasped. The glowing lump slid down the steel pole and onto the ground, as if it had a mind of its own. I stepped back. I stared in disbelief as the whole split into three parts, and nimbly spelled out: Abe.
“How do you like those apples?” he asked me. “Abe… I spelled Abe. Can you do that?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Good. Now, tell me your story.”
I nodded my head in defeat and told him the whole sorry mess. He stopped me many times, demanding more information, just as I had done with his granddaughter. He looked at me with cold eyes and scratched his peeling scalp. “That’s a real bugger,” he said. “Do you mean that in your world, the Natives are still alive? There are still trees?”
“Scout’s honor.”
“And you say that Soliah is somehow behind all of this?”
“I do. I really don’t care who you tell. That’s the truth.”
“You damn well better care who knows. That son-of-a-bitch Soliah is a powerful man. He has real magic, not the cheap kind that spells its own name in steel. You’ll be a dead man if he hears about the way you talk about him. Don’t kid yourself, kid.”
“He stole my woman.”
“Women… do you want one of mine? No, forget about the women. Is that you, Brindle and Sons Demolition?”
I looked over at the tired Ford Econoline where the company name had faded into not much more than a memory. “There was only one son, which was me. Dad had big dreams. Yeah, I’m Brindle. I haven’t done any demolition in…”
“Five years?”
“Right, just like I told you.”
“You never finished the job, did you?”
“You know I didn’t. I lost everything. All I have left is an old crane in the shed and a dozer that couldn’t crawl out of a paper bag. I don’t know what you’re getting at…”
Abe Steinman walked over to me and he put his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t you see?” he asked; his voice crackling like a dry fire. “You have to go back and finish what you started. You can prevent all of this from happening. This, Brindle, is your destiny. You are the chosen one.” Then he got into his car and drove away.
I thought about that for a long time before I finally went to sleep that night.
Odd Whitefeather finally showed up after a week. By chance or design, he drove up on a day when the wind blew hard against the front of my trailer. The sky was overcast and the temperature had dropped. I was dressed in a flannel shirt and blue jeans.
He pulled up in a Cadillac convertible which looked as if he had just driven it off of the showroom floor. He got out of the car and stood with his back to the fender. He was dressed in a suit the color of a fire engine. A white rose was stuck in his lapel and his hair was short and neatly trimmed. He smiled at me.
“I have many wives,” he said, giving me a thumbs up. “You should have taken the deal; it would not have hurt you.”
“What do you mean? I can’t accept any deals from Soliah. That would make me as bad as he is.”
“No, it would have given you a place on the inside,” Odd Whitefeather said, wagging his finger at me. “Like I have done, I have the full run of his home. Did you know that?”
“How could I have known?”
Odd Whitefeather rolled his eyes and shook his head. He was starting to look angry and I wanted to ask him to trade places with me, just to get him back to reality. He didn’t stink, I did. He continued on, telling me about his new boat and his new motor-home. He spent ten minutes telling me about all of the women in his life. He had been allowed to marry one hundred, and he had done just that.
Now it was my turn to shake my head. “It sounds like you’re adjusting to your new life pretty fast. What happened to Dog Breath and Crooked Walker?”
“They are living in town. They do all right. They let people snap photographs of them for five bucks apiece. It is not love, but it is an honest living.”
“How could you allow them to do such a thing?”
“Allow? What do you mean?”
I shook my head. “Okay, but are you still on our side? We have a job to do.”
“I know we have to knock over that big house on Spirit Lake. It would have been a lot easier if we had done that when it was built of wood.”
I smiled for the first time. “I don’t know how we’re going to get it done, but I’m ready to die trying.”
“That is good. You should be ready to die.”
“Thanks a lot.”
The longer I listened to him, the more developed the plan became in my
mind. I could see now what he had meant about being on the inside, but he was there and he promised to help. I had my equipment to worry about and everything was going to need to be reconditioned. I had oil to change, tires to fix, fittings to grease. I had a solid month of work in front of me, providing everything went according to plan. How I could have ever planned on that is still a mystery.
Chapter Sixteen
Brindle's Odyssey Page 24