Jasper Lilla and The Wolves of Banner Elk

by C. S. Thompson

  “But you don’t think they’re at risk,” confirmed Carol.

  “I don’t, but I’ll explain that later, when Wally gets home from work.” Then she turned her face back to me. “And as for you. You knew I’d be concerned about you working there, and that’s why you didn’t say anything. And I understand why a young man would keep some things from his mother, but not things that have to do with his safety.” She leaned closer still, staring into my eyes. “Don’t you ever, I mean ever, withhold information from me that you know I’d be concerned about.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Thus ended the lecture.

  Twenty

  Vernalisa Questions Wally

  Dinner was Kansas City steak soup, which Maggie made, salad, and fresh bread, which Carol made. Conversation was casual except for those moments, and there were many, when Aunt Maggie shooed Kitty away from the table. Kitty was big enough that she didn’t need to put her paws on one of our chairs to be able to see what was on the table, but she did it anyway. Kitty would put her paws on the edge of a chair and elevate herself above whoever was in the chair, and then she’d pretend to nuzzle that person before taking a survey of the table.

  “Git down,” Aunt Maggie said when Kitty climbed up alongside me. It’s what she always said.

  Kitty would normally respond by looking around the table to see who Aunt Maggie was talking to, but on that night Kitty stared back at Aunt Maggie. They had a stalemate for a while, but no one, not even Kitty, beats Aunt Maggie at a staring contest. So Kitty conceded by snatching half a loaf of Carol’s bread from the table and scrambling out the back door. The large dog door in the back door was still a tight squeeze for Kitty, so when she hurries to get through, it can take her a couple of tries to make it out.

  Once the racket stopped, Mom asked Wally, “How is it going over there?”

  That was my cue to begin collecting dishes.

  “Fine,” Wally said. “So far all I’m doing is taking inventory and setting up the lab for a wheelchair.”

  “Shouldn’t someone else be doing that?” asked Carol.

  “There’s a maintenance guy who’ll do all the construction when it comes time for that, but I’m the one who knows how it needs to be set up for me,” he told her. To the rest of us he explained, “She can be a little too protective of me sometimes.”

  “He feels like he has to prove he can do anything,” Carol explained back. They stuck tongues out at each other

  “I wanted to ask a serious question,” said Mom.

  “Sure,” said Wally, wiggling in his chair at the end of the table to adopt a posture for a more serious question.

  “Would a pharmaceutical company want to find a cure for anything?”

  “Of course,” answered Wally immediately. “But that’s not the right question.”

  “What’s the right question then?”

  “Would a pharmaceutical company invest in finding a cure for something? And the answer is no. It is incredibly expensive to develop a new drug. What we have to do to meet FDA standards is monumental, so a pharmaceutical company has to believe they’ll get their investment back before they start looking at something.”

  “And maintenance drugs are more profitable than cures,” said Mom.

  “Well . . . yeah,” he said, as if it was obvious.

  “How come?” I asked. It wasn’t obvious to me.

  “Because someone who is cured doesn’t need the medicine anymore. But maintenance drugs just manage symptoms, so they have to be taken forever,” explained Mom.

  “You’re making it sound like maintenance drugs aren’t important,” observed Wally.

  “Well, they wouldn’t be important if cures were found.”

  “True, but until cures are found, maintenance drugs make a lot of people’s lives better,” said Carol.

  “I know what Wally does is important,” Mom told Carol. To Wally she added, “I hope you don’t think I’m attacking your work, Wally.”

  “No, not at all,” he told her. But it seemed to me he was under attack.

  “It is an ethical issue I wrestle with philosophically,” Wally said. “Clearly cures are better than maintenance, but businesses are driven by profit, and the way things are, maintenance drugs are more profitable than cures. You can’t expect businesses to not function like businesses.”

  No one responded, so he continued, “There are research labs looking for cures. Mostly they are connected to universities, and they’re funded by grants. That’s the way it should be.”

  “What if,” began Mom, “hypothetically speaking, a drug company found a cure that required little or no research?”

  “You mean, like they were researching one thing and stumbled on a cure accidentally?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that happens sometimes, and if they could beat all the other drug companies to the market, it could be very profitable.”

  “They wouldn’t be tempted to sabotage a cure if they stumbled on one?” asked Mom.

  “I suppose a drug company might be tempted, but not for long. The nature of research is that whenever someone finds something new, you can bet that someone else is on the verge of finding it, too.” Wally leaned forward. “Now, can I ask you a serious question, Vernalisa?”

  “Of course.”

  “Is this really a hypothetical conversation, or does it have something to do with the death of your friend’s husband?”

  Mom nodded. “This is absolutely private information. I want none of this to be repeated. And,” pointing at Wally and me, she added, “I don’t want you two Lion employees to investigate it either.”

  “What?” asked Carol.

  Mom, still pointing at Wally and me, said, “Swear you will leave this alone.”

  Mom waited until both Wally and I nodded our agreement, and then she turned to Carol. “On the day Franz Dietrich died he told his wife he had just stumbled on a cure for cancer.”

  Twenty-One

  First Day of Work

  First-day-of-work nervous is more like first-day-of-school nervous than I expected. Actually, it’s like the first day at a new school minus the bullying. I didn’t have to worry about Phily Dunkin knocking anything out of my hands, but there were so many other ways I could look like a fool that it still felt like the first day of junior high.

  On the way in from the parking lot I stopped at the edge of the circle and pretended to send a text with my phone. I made sure to stand where I was standing when I heard the Dobermans and dropped my phone. Later I was going to Photoshop myself and the T-shirt in. It would be a fake picture, but I had earned the real picture. I just didn’t have the real picture.

  I went to Mrs. Jennings’s office. Reporting to her turned out to be my first stop every day. I guess that made her my boss, but no one ever told me that, and I didn’t see the need to ask either. Mrs. Jennings’s desk sat in the middle of the room facing the door. When I got there the door was open so I could see she wasn’t at her desk before I went in.

  I stood in the doorway and let loose a sigh that was louder than I thought.

  “Are you okay?”

  It was Dixie, Mrs. Jennings’s assistant, whose desk was to the right of the door and out of sight. I didn’t know she was there.

  “Is Mrs. Jennings in?” I asked her.

  “She’ll be right back. Are you Jasper?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m Dixie.” She smiled and pointed at the empty desk, “and she’s Leona. You can wait for her over there.” Her eyes indicated a small couch to my left. “She’s expecting you.”

  Leona Jennings came in before I sat down.

  “He’s early,” said Dixie.

  “That’s okay,” Leona said. “I’ve got your day all set up for you.” She circled her desk and picked up a stack of blue slips of paper. She handed them to me across her desk. “These are the errands.”

  I looked at the blue slips of paper. They were about the size of one of Aunt Maggie’s recipe cards. T
here were only three. The first one told me to pick up an envelope in the warehouse and deliver it to Brett Smith’s office.

  “Do the two on top first,” said Leone. “The last one is a pickup at Office Depot. Do you know where that is?”

  I nodded.

  “You have to get the keys to the Jeep from the security office.” She handed me another piece of paper. It was a diagram of each floor of the building. “You won’t need this for long, but it will come in handy for a while. Any questions?”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She nodded and said, “Good luck.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Dixie told me as I left.

  I wasn’t so sure.

  * * *

  The errands were easy. I went to the warehouse office because I knew I couldn’t go into the actual warehouse. There was only one person in the office, and he was on the phone. He waved me in, glanced at my ID badge, handed me a sealed envelope, and waved me out without interrupting his phone call.

  I took the envelope to Brett Smith’s office. His door said, “Insurance.”

  “Come in,” he said when I knocked.

  Mr. Smith was a tall man with a swimmer’s haircut. He took the envelope and said, “Wait a minute.”

  He sliced open the envelope and took out the document. He turned to the last page and frowned. “He didn’t sign it,” he said.

  I didn’t think he was talking to me so I just waited.

  He stuffed it back into the envelope and handed it back to me. “Take it back.”

  “To the warehouse?” I asked.

  “Yes. Please.”

  So that’s what I did. When I told Leona about it the next day, she said it was okay since I had plenty of time, but there would be days I’d have to tell people that they needed to make their requests through her. I guess that did make her my boss.

  * * *

  The run to Office Depot was my last task of the day. There was a medium-size box of odds and ends. Larger orders, like copier paper, would be delivered. It was great to be in the Jeep without the roof or the doors. My car was a Jeep Wrangler, too, but it was older and the roof and doors were no longer removable.

  When I went to the security office to pick up the keys to the company Jeep, there were two guys there who I didn’t recognize. One, a chubby-cheeked twenty-something with short, dark hair and a scraggly moustache, was sitting on a table just inside the door. “You are Jazz-barr,” he said in a monotone when I walked in.

  “Yes.” I extended my hand.

  He didn’t try to crush my hand with his grip, but I could feel that it would have been easy for him if he had wanted to. “I am Graham Crocker,” he said.

  “I bet you got teased as a child,” I said.

  “No,” he said.

  I assumed he was kidding. Graham Crocker and “graham cracker” were so close that any self-respecting second-grader would have made that connection. But he didn’t appear to be kidding. Nor did he seem the least bit curious about what connection I had made. Maybe they don’t have graham crackers where he comes from, is all I could think.

  “This one here is Quinn Weylin,” said Graham.

  Quinn Weylin was sitting at an adjacent table to Graham’s right. He was watching a monitor that showed what was going on inside the warehouse. Quinn didn’t take his eyes off the monitor, but waved at me over his shoulder. “We saw you coming,” he informed me.

  “We see everything,” added Graham. Then he laughed.

  “I’m supposed to get the Jeep keys,” I said.

  Graham held out his hand and dangled the keys.

  * * *

  After my run to Office Depot I had to return the keys to the security office. As I walked down the hallway this time I looked all over for the camera, but I couldn’t spot it. I was standing in front of the door looking over the frame when the door opened.

  “Jazz-barr. You have the keys.” It was a different guy. He had shoulder-length thin brown hair, medium height and build, no facial hair, and dark brown eyes. He wore a tight dark blue suit with a white shirt and a green tie. He smelled of Axe. “I am Malcolm Fergus. We met before.” He took hold of my hand and vigorously shook it.

  “That is Gavin Lee,” he told me, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb.

  I had to lean to the right to see who he was talking about. This man was sitting in front of the warehouse monitor where Quinn Weylin had been sitting when I picked up the keys. He didn’t acknowledge me.

  “Please,” said Malcolm, holding out his hand. “The keys.”

  I put the keys in his palm.

  He closed his hand, bowed slightly, and closed the door.

  * * *

  I went back to the lab where they had set up a desk for me. I didn’t really need a desk, but it was nice to have a place to go when there was no place to go. Leona had told me that they put it there because Wally had requested it.

  “How was the first day?” Wally asked.

  “Fine.”

  “You don’t look like it was fine,” he observed. “You look like you’re trying hard to figure something out.”

  “I was just at the security office,” I said.

  Wally raised his eyebrows and nodded his head. “Say no more.”

  Twenty-Two

  Wally’s Invitation

  The next two weeks were basically uneventful. By the end of the first week I had pretty much figured out the building and no longer needed the map Mrs. Jennings had given me. By the end of the second week I felt at home most of the time. The security guys were still weird, but they didn’t creep me out as much. I had yet to see Riley’s father in the building, although I was assured that he came in every morning. He was just gone by the time I got there. Mr. Benjamin and I crossed paths a couple of times a week, but he generally just said something he found amusing and moved on.

  When nothing was going on for me, I hung out in Wally’s lab, which was still being renovated. Wally never brought up that conversation with Mom and neither did I, but every time I was in his lab I wondered if he thought about it as much as I did.

  On the second Friday he asked, “How are things going for you?”

  “Great,” I told him, and it was the truth.

  “How are you getting along with Aiden and the boys?”

  “Fine. I’m getting used to them. They’re just real serious,” I said.

  “And real different,” he added.

  “That, too,” I agreed.

  “You haven’t eaten with them yet, have you?”

  I shook my head no. I never considered eating with them.

  “You don’t have school on Monday,” he observed. “If you work all day you can have lunch in the cafeteria. You should come eat lunch with me even if you don’t.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s just funny,” he told me. “They always sit together, and none of them eat anything until they are all together and Aiden takes the first bite. It’s very military.”

  No one had said anything to me about working during the day when there wasn’t school and I wasn’t comfortable enough yet to ask myself, but I wanted to see what Wally found so interesting. “Are you sure it’s okay if I come have lunch with you when I’m not working?”

  “Of course it is. Carol comes every Wednesday. Wednesday is omelet day.”

  “What’s Monday?”

  “Monday is burger day, but it’s no Joy Bistro.”

  Joy Bistro was Wally and Carol’s favorite Boone burger place. Grass-fed beef and Gouda cheese made for a great burger, but at fourteen dollars it wasn’t my regular burger place.

  “I asked Aiden once how they all got together,” continued Wally. “And he just said they were in the war together.”

  “What war?”

  “I’ve got no idea, and even if I knew what war he was talking about I might not know which side they were on.”

  “The serious side,” I suggested.

  Twenty-Three

  Graham Crocker

  Mond
ay came. It wasn’t a holiday, but it was a teacher in-service day, so we had the day off. Riley and her dad had used the three-day weekend to visit her aunt in Colorado. I spent the weekend doing a report on the Spanish-American War. My first draft said, “It’s over. We won. Now we’re friends.”

  I was almost finished with my report Monday morning so I decided I’d head over to Lion and reward myself with a burger and a show. I was not disappointed on either account. The burger was fine. It would have been great if the cook hadn’t sliced the bun so thin that the bottom got soggy from the meat. Wally got a tuna fish sandwich.

  The security guys were exactly as he had described them. Aiden was the last one to get to the table, and no one ate until he took his first bite. As soon as he did, the others wolfed down their food like they hadn’t eaten in days.

  Wally got a call from Carl, the maintenance guy working on his lab tables, so he had to return to the lab. I stayed to finish my fries, which I ate slowly enough to see the whole security meal routine. I’m glad I did, because what happened next was incredible.

  Aiden’s phone rang. I don’t know what he heard, but he stood up immediately. The other five guys stood up right after Aiden did. They were in perfect time with each other, like synchronized swimmers. Aiden still had his phone to his ear, but he said one word, “Warehouse,” which triggered an immediate exit. They left their food. They left their drinks. One of them left a newspaper. Another left a book. Two chairs were knocked over. No chairs were pushed back under the table. I wondered if we were under attack.

  Malcolm, Quinn, and Graham went out the exit at the back of the room, while Aiden, Gavin, and Duncan went out the front. Keeping my distance, I followed Malcolm out the back door and down a flight of stairs. They made their way to the back of the building and out onto the back lot where delivery trucks would come and go. They were looking in different directions when I opened the door. Graham was the only one to glance in my direction. He shook his head no at me.