Switcheroo

by Robert Lewis Clark

  “Run,” I whispered to Briana. I pushed her in front off me toward the exterior exit entrance from the gymnasium. We burst through the door into the blinding sunlight. The door slammed shut behind us. As we ran through the cracked parking lot, I heard a familiar crackling sound over the noise of my pounding heart and rasping breath.

  We reached the grass of the adjacent field as the sound changed to the sort of monstrous crackle you hear right before you hear thunder. It grew louder in an exponential spiral. I grabbed my ears and fell to the ground. As I lay there sweating and bleeding from a gash on my head, I thought that the sound had become even louder. But that was simple shock, the sound was gone; nothing, silence. My chest was a hornets’ nest of pain and my ears were numb. I couldn’t even hear my own panting.

  “Are you dead?” Briana asked. She sounded hopeful.

  “No, just stifled.”

  I sat up slowly and leaned forward, head between legs.

  “I guess I am glad you are not dead. You smell like a dumpster in July, though.”

  I guess my three days at sea followed by running from a interdimensional implosion had me smelling pretty ripe.

  “You should be happy. I have a cell phone and I can get us out of here.”

  “I can walk ten miles,” She announced. She did not want me to feel needed.

  “And in which direction would you walk ten miles?”

  Briana Forsyth broke off and looked across the parking lot.

  “Uh, you need to see this.”

  She took a couple steps forward. Then she broke into a jog and headed back across the vacant parking lot.

  I stood. About halfway across the parking lot the pavement ended. Briana had stopped running and was looking down. I shuffled over to the edge and looked down, too. We were looking into a huge hole. The old gymnasium - gone. Part of the school’s rear wing – gone. It was not like the crater left by a meteor strike or an explosion. It was as though a giant ice cream scope had swooped down leaving a gargantuan semi-spherical hole. I leaned forward and my gaze dropped to the bottom. In the shadows of some roof debris, I could make out a dusky little Ford Ranger.

  The door opened. A figure. Fred Smithey?

  “Mother of Pearl, where am I?” he screamed.

  Chapter 48

  Later, I found out Fred had been trying to pull the truck onto the car carrier he was towing when the teleportation system activated. Kim had been watching from her car in the Bell Buoy parking lot. They were stunned when Fred and the Ford Ranger disappeared. As they watched open mouthed, a huge portal opened, spewing out an eighty foot tall semispherical slab of earth with an old school gymnasium on top of it. For a grand moment the whole thing just sat there. Then, with nothing to support the soil, it collapsed with a deafening crash.

  Dirt, debris and dust flew out in all directions flattening trees and partially covering Kim’s car. The Captain carefully dug her out and helped her into the lobby of the Bell Buoy Seafood. The lobby smelled like a hot canvas sneaker full of sardines, but it was air- conditioned. The shock of what she had just seen acted to combine fear, raging third trimester hormones and Fred’s presumed death had her in tears. Later, with the knowledge that Fred was still alive, she was still crying because she was alone in South Carolina with no money or credit cards.

  Back in Tennessee, the blast created by the teleport-gone-wrong outside Oakridge had created quite stir. We heard sirens shortly after the big bang. They sent five county squad cars, two fire trucks and two ambulances, none of which were needed. What we really needed was a winch. Fred Smithey kept yelling at me. The sides of the huge hole were too steep to climb. He stopped yelling for a moment to answer his cell phone.

  “Will you please stop yelling at me?” I said to him through my cell phone. He transferred his unintelligible screaming to the phone.

  “You teleported. I’ll explain later. A tow truck is on the way with a winch. Get into the truck after it is hooked up. They’ll pull you out.”

  “Where’s Kim?”

  “She wasn’t in the truck?”

  I called Kim’s cell phone.

  “Rust, I need you to get me outta here!”

  “Calm down,” Wrong thing to say today, especially to a panicky pregnant lady. I was picturing her buried under eighty feet of earth and debris. “Are you trapped…hurt?”

  “No, I’m stressed out. There was an explosion and Fred is gone. Now I’m in a stinky seafood barn and I am being attacked.”

  “Who is attacking you?”

  “Realtors and property developers. The land next the Bell Buoy was swampy low land. Since the explosion filled in several acres with soil, they are all yelling at each other and me about who will get to develop it. They think I know the owner. This stress can’t be good for the baby!” Neither can slurping virgin drinks in a smoke-filled Orby’s or doing God-knows-what with Fred Smithey in my bed. Again I was reminded I had to get to JC Penney’s for new sheets right away.

  “I need you to stay with the truck, Kim. I’ll pay you.”

  “There ain’t no truck anymore,” She sobbed.

  “Oh, it’s there somewhere. Just wait there and when they find the truck tell ‘em it’s yours.”

  While the Edisto Island authorities worked on digging the truck out, I told Kim to go to Piggly Wiggly and wait at the Western Union office. I would call her after I wired her some money to get the truck back.

  I looked up and a uniformed officer was approaching.

  “Well, that truck is being pulled from the hole along with the screaming guy. Father, I need to take a statement from you,” he said, whipping out his note pad.

  “I’m not really a priest.”

  “Okay. I can’t arrest you for that since you told me up front. Is it a Halloween costume?”

  “No, it was a dumb disguise,” I sighed.

  “Well, what caused this big hole in the ground?”

  “Well, where do I begin? Fred was four wheeling and fell into a biiiiigggg hole.”

  “Father, or uh, Sir, Stratton called from Knoxville and filled me in. We know there was an explosion or some seismic event. Things will go better if you just tell us what happened.”

  “Ok, well let me start from the beginning…”

  About ten minutes into my story, the man says, “So where are these bad guys?” Meaning Partee, Kendrick and Slink.

  “They’re in South Carolina.”

  I gave the name and address of the Bell Buoy. “They were most likely killed in the blast, though.”

  “Right.”

  He stepped away after that to get a statement from Briana. His final look toward me was one normally reserved for door-to-door salesman or street corner preachers.

  Chapter 49

  The city smelled like a coffee pot left to burn all night. No, wait a minute. That smell was coming from my kitchen. I wandered into the kitchen and turned off the smoldering coffee maker. I sloshed some ice cubes and water around in the blackened pot.

  It had been two weeks since the implosion at Oakridge. Most of the pain from my various injuries sustained during the escapade had abated. I was back to working for Joel Axeman at LISA again, but not working as hard. I was getting reacquainted with Bandit and trying to get my life and house back in order.

  When I finally called her, Mother had explained to me that her therapist told her to deposit the accumulated rent checks. He told her that by not treating me like a grown up she was enabling my shortcomings. I told that was psycho-babble bullshit, and told her to slap the bastard for me the next time she saw him.

  I had bought new linens for the master bedroom at Target. I had kicked Fred over to the guest room and tried to establish some ground rules about when Kim could visit.

  Since I had located Georgie Parker, Willie Crandle had sued for child support. She was all set to start receiving monthly payments from Georgie, but for now she was complaining to anyone who would listen about her swollen feet, her swollen belly and a myriad of other discomforts. />
  Fred was turning into a great friend. His wife was divorcing him, he would lose his job at Pinkerton as soon as his sick time ran out, and he was in love with a girl who was pregnant with someone else’s baby. A friend in need? He had been a great help to me, but Knoxville had not been a great place for him. Or had it? He had been a middle-aged man with a boring job, a loveless marriage and nothing to look forward to but the Sunday newspaper.

  The Mr. Coffee was unusable, I found my old French press, put water in the kettle to boil and hit the shower. I returned to the kitchen to an ear splitting whistle from the kettle.

  “Rust, will you make that stop?” Kim yelled from the den; more ear splitting. I hadn’t noticed before, but now I could hear the sound of the TV coming from the den - Judge Judy. Kim was violating one of the rules I had set for Fred. She would only come over when he was there. After tanking up on coffee, I dressed and tried to sneak out the side door.

  “Rust, would you rub my feet?” Kim whined. I could almost hear her pouting. Fred was out doing field work for me, leaving me to deal with the whiny woman who was about ready to pop. I cut through the den to the front door. She was lounging on the futon with the dog.

  “Kim, I gotta go. Here’s an icepack,” I said as I tossed her the frozen, blue bag.

  I could still hear her talking loudly to me as the front door closed behind me. I was leaving her alone in my house. I did not know where her mom lived. I did know her middle name or shoe size. I was slipping; I needed to tighten up or maybe just lighten up.

  I lowered myself into the Tarjetta and headed to my Mom’s. Yeah, I could have walked but it was the week before Thanksgiving. The weather had turned cold. Plus, I had sworn off exercise in order to make my upcoming New Year’s resolution to lose weight more meaningful.

  This would be Tammy, Grandma Tuttle and little Hannah’s last day at Mom’s house. Ruby was cooking lunch with Grandma Tuttle. It would be sort of an early Thanksgiving and also goodbye. They would be missed especially baby Hannah. I had invited Wendy Forsyth and Briana. I was trying to smooth things over with them. Grandma Tuttle’s house had been repaired. Tammy was now flush with cash since she had sold her ‘discovery’ and received her first advance against royalties. This would be a leisurely day.

  I was thankful. Not everyone was doing as well as I was. When the emergency crew was cleaning up the wreckage of the old gymnasium on the giant mound of earth next to the Bell Buoy parking lot, they could hear muffled screams. The collapsed gym building was sort of the sheet-metal whipped cream atop an earth sundae lying in a hot fudge bog. The cherry on top was a small pickup truck. Kendrick and Slink were found in the bed of the truck, alive. Partee was found under the truck, apparently unconscious. It seems when the whole mess materialized and the gym began to tremble violently, the three of them realized they needed to take cover. Two jumped in the truck bed. Partee, unable to jump because of his mangled knee, dragged himself under the Ford Ranger. He survived the fall in the small space there.

  Detective Stratton was able to have Slink and Kendrick arrested by the locals. Partee pretended to be unconscious and then was able to charm his way out of the ambulance by bludgeoning a cop and a paramedic with a pair of defibrillator paddles. He was last seen hauling ass in a stolen police cruiser.

  Crackling leaves blew along the boulevard in the wake of the Tarjetta as it cruised through Sequoyah. I pulled into Mom’s driveway and up to the large house under its umbrella of mammoth oak trees.

  I parked at the back of the line of cars that were here for this luncheon. I eyeballed the vehicles. The Pontiac Parisienne with the faded off-white paint and genuine fake wood side panels was obviously Grandma Tuttle’s. The sensible Mercedes sedan was probably Andrew Chandler’s. The giant yellow Hummer had to be Tammy’s. There was a black Lincoln I did not recognize. That was definitely a bad sign.

  The door was opened by a very tall fellow in a suit; I assumed he was the driver of the Lincoln.

  “Good day, Sir.”

  “Hello, uh. I’m Russell Stover, they call me Rust.”

  “I am Mr. Smith, Andrew Chandler’s houseman.”

  “I didn’t see you when I visited him recently.”

  “I’ve just started today, Sir,” he smiled. He was nice enough; I was going to have to nickname him Lurch just based on his height and occupation.

  Mr. Smith saw me in and I moved through the towering hall toward the center of the house. I crept into the kitchen and gave Ruby a big hug.

  I could tell by the delicious smells that Ruby was getting along great with Grandma Tuttle. She was at the stove stirring a pot.

  “Everyone is in the den watching Hannah,” Ruby said, as she handed me a glass of white wine. Well, the wine would help me stay smooth with Tammy and Wendy in same room. At least it was a big room. Maybe I could keep them separated. Probably wouldn’t matter since I had gotten Wendy’s daughter kidnapped and Tammy viewed me as milk past its date.

  The short hall from the kitchen opened into the large main room that mother calls the den. It has a quad of sofas surrounding a jumbo coffee table in the middle. Little two-year-old Hannah was kneeling at the coffee table playing with a red plastic barn and animals. She would moo like a cow and then giggle. Andrew Chandler and my mother sat behind her, watching her approvingly.

  “Russell, you’re here.”

  Mother stood and came over, touching my sleeve as she kissed my cheek. “I have had the best time with our guests while you were out of town. I hate to see them go.”

  Andrew Chandler was sitting on the next couch sipping his glass of red wine. He stood and nodded as I approached. We shook hands.

  “Capital job lassoing those trucks for us, Rust,” he spoke quietly. “You really earned that finder’s fee. I have been working with a group of investors and have already helped Tammy launch a corporation based on this new technology. She has been wired a handsome advance and she will derive royalties from the profits of the new company.”

  “What will be the focus of the new firm?”

  “Long term, we will try to replicate the technology to manufacture transporting stations. It will be called InstaHere.”

  “InstaHere?”

  “Yes, that was actually Tammy’s idea. ‘InstaHere, Here instantly’ is our slogan. You see?”

  “I guess so,” I smirked.

  “Anyway, we will offset research costs in the near term by shipping from LA to New York.”

  “I get it. Park one truck in LA and one truck in New York. But how much can you move, the trucks are so small?”

  “Oh, we will construct a warehouse in each city so we can move a large volume by swapping them. The devices will be removed from the trucks and installed in the warehouses. The interior shell and all the cargo and people will be transported.”

  “People, too?”

  “They’ll have to sign a waiver. It’s perfectly safe though, as you know.”

  “Yes, but I’m still not sure if I’m me.”

  “Of course, you’re still you,” Andrew smiled.

  “And what about Billy Madison?” I said, remembering the troubled inventor.

  “Oh, he also received a cash advance and a share in the future royalties. I hear he started a business in Ohio called Looptown? Sells yarn and such for crocheting and knitting, I gather,” Andrew’s brow furrowed. “Bit of an odd one, that fellow.”

  Then his eyes glazed over. “Listen, I need to tell you something. I know you must have noticed that I am fond of your mother. I have always been concerned that she might think that I was after her money, you know.”

  “You do pretty well yourself.”

  “Well, I have my government retirement and some assets. But, with this new company I can amass a real fortune. With this new financial security, I finally have the courage to ask for your mother’s hand in marriage.”

  I felt a little faint. Andrew Chandler was so much nicer to me than my father had been. But in the warped vision of my mind’s eye, this was all wr
ong on every level. I was hoping for a platonic marriage for the two of then, complete with separate bedrooms, maybe even separate houses.

  “That’s awesome. But, you don’t need my blessing.”

  He smiled nervously; the skin of his face had the patina of an antique oil painting as it stretched over his skeletal cheek bones. “I hope that after some time and thought we will have your blessing. By the way, here is your finder’s fee.”

  He placed a crisp sealed envelope into my hand and went to sit by my mother. The two of them watched Hannah play at the coffee table. They seemed so content, smiling at Hannah and then at each other. This made me shudder, though it shouldn’t have.

  The doorbell rang. I stuffed the envelope into my jacket pocket and headed that way. I was too slow. Andrew Chandler’s new man-about-the house was holding the door for Wendy Forsyth. Wendy’s light brown hair framed her face as she smiled at me. Mr. Smith took her blue parka, revealing a black sweater that hugged Wendy’s curves. As she stepped in I locked eyes with Briana. From the look on her face I gathered she had not forgiven me for my role in her abduction. The scowl she gave me would have soured all the milk at Kroger’s.

  Wendy refused wine, and asked for tea. I went to the kitchen and got a coke for Briana and an iced tea for Wendy. When I came back to the den, Wendy and Briana were sitting with Mom and Drew Chandler and everyone was laughing at Hannah. Briana had softened a little bit just from looking at Hannah playing. I handed out the drinks.

  “Where’s Tammy? Everyone else is here and ready to eat.”

  “She called earlier. She’s on her way.”

  Just then we heard the loud growl of a V-eight motor in the driveway. I walked toward the entry hall. Mr. Smith was holding the door open. Tammy was sliding out of a mega-shiny new coupe. Sun sparkled off red paint and racing stripes, huge chrome wheels glistened. She walked to the door, tossing back her black hair. She was wearing only a tight shirt and jeans. She should have been wearing a jacket in the fifty degree air.