The Color Over Occam

by Jonathan Thomas

  Projecting an air of absurd ease in his starchy uniform, Ranger Metcalfe had beaten me here by a good while, based on Styrofoam plate before him with its remnant grains of rice and greasy streaks. Great! Any awkwardness about dinner arrangements was water under the bridge. Right off the bat, unfortunately, Herb had me up to my neck in discomfort again. He bypassed any niceties and wanted the latest about Wil. Bought myself a moment by hopping up to the bar and ordering a round. Our intrepid host, in standard striped shirt and bandana, carried on apparently unfazed by the dwindling commerce. I belabored the obvious for the sake of friendly small talk. “Slow night tonight.”

  “They’re all slow.” He pushed two IPAs across the bar at me. “They will be from now on. Till that last call one of these days when that’ll be that, once and for all.” He moseyed off and swabbed peanut shells from the bar into a tin pail as if we’d been discussing nice weather. But as he’d said, that was that for now.

  Plunked Herb’s glass in front of him, raised mine slightly in the universal gesture for “Cheers” while I sat down, and commenced evasive verbal maneuvers. “I never literally saw Wil. I don’t have to tell you how antisocial he’s been lately. He was holed up in his bedroom. Locked in, to be more precise. He didn’t want company, and he didn’t want to talk past the point of convincing me he was okay and didn’t need anything. Foodwise, I’d say he doesn’t. His kitchen is pretty well stocked now.” All true, in essence.

  “But he’s not flourishing by a long shot. Did you see what a mess his place is? He can’t really look after himself, can he? I think calling him severely depressed is putting it mildly. What should we do?”

  Herb’s tenacious concern was beginning to make me peevish. I took a big gulp of ale. This wasn’t what I came to discuss at all. However, my brain was adequately limbered up with alcohol to plot a devious route toward my goal. “What can we do, Herb? I’ve never met any of his relatives. No idea how to contact them. And we don’t have power of attorney over him. The burden to prove he’s a danger to himself or others would be on us, and those legal wheels turn pretty damn slowly in any case. There is a more indirect way to help him, though, that might help a lot of other people in the same boat. If you’re game.” Swallowed more ale, peeked over my glass at his reaction. He was waiting on my next words. Reserving judgment. Not balking yet, anyway.

  “Since you don’t work in town, and maybe you don’t live or hang out here either, you might not be in a position to appreciate that more and more people have been coming down with his symptoms. Some unfamiliar pollutant or microorganism must be the culprit, and based partly on things both you and I have observed at the reservoir, I believe the disease is spreading via the city water system.”

  Bone tired as I was of making my case in purely environmental terms, it had become a reflex, and to be realistic, when was the right time to start blabbing about alien invasions? I plowed through well-worn routine, touching on stillbirths, stunted crops, fugitive wildlife, and, on Herb’s own stomping grounds, the shoreside flora that grew rank and then self-destructed into dust. I did venture to invoke the Gorman County meteor of 1882, citing some byproduct of its slow dissolution in the depths as a credible source of the contamination. And why shouldn’t I? The meteor, esoteric or not, was writ indelibly in the historic record. And what harm in streamlining my presentation by tinkering with the fact that the meteor had actually dissolved after a few days in earthly air and rain?

  Scanned Ranger Metcalfe’s body language for preparations to bolt. Instead, he pensively sipped his ale and caught me profoundly off-guard by musing, “The one explanation, then, for all these miseries occurring together boils down to some malignity dormant in the submerged meteor till this summer. Something of extraterrestrial origin. Animate, though not necessarily conscious as we define it. That scenario would even accommodate the corpse-lights you and Wil were chasing.”

  Wow. This seeming epitome of level-headedness had followed my drift further than I’d dared escort him. Of his own volition, and without humoring me. Boldly delving into the actuality of nefarious aliens. Funny, but listening to my own premise in someone else’s voice, it started sounding dodgy. “Well, I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions.” Rhetorically incumbent on me to say so, even if it ran counter to my higher purpose. Or was Herb playing coy about admitting he’d already learned what I had, if not more? Easier for my battered ego to believe that than in anyone intelligent accepting my story at face value.

  All for the well, though. Recruiting Herb might not be the uphill battle I’d been dreading. “Wherever the problem comes from, it’s getting critical. I hate to picture what’ll happen in the span of days if we don’t start coping with it. Wil might have told you I work at City Hall. For Mr. Marsh, in the office of the City Clerk. Every fact about what’s happening is on file there, but the administration’s been stonewalling any move to investigate further and isolate what’s responsible. It’s simply the economy. A request for extra spending is always controversial.” Between what I wasn’t saying, what I was distorting, and the unvarnished truth, this was shaping up as a pretty seamless fabrication. My pride at newfound expertise in spinning a web of deceit had to be wrong, but I didn’t care at the moment. “By going over municipal heads, we can produce some answers and win the public support to overcome bureaucratic inertia. And God willing, save lives and avert catastrophe. But we’ll be shut down if word of this gets beyond my department. Therefore I’m meeting with you on the QT, if you’re cool with that.”

  Herb’s turn now for a leisurely swig of ale and for stalling till the right words occurred to him. Pray continue, his arching eyebrows signaled.

  “Those alleged corpse-lights are extremely relevant. They mark the site of the meteor crash.” Did they, like X on a treasure map? Why not? “Any environmental watchdogs you can wrangle on a state or federal level, we need to send down there in the very near future with camcorders and sampling equipment and their most sophisticated testing kits. And I’m afraid it has to be a night dive, because corpse-lights don’t show up during the day, and we have no other means to nail the location. At the risk of jinxing myself, I guarantee the results will be compelling, and with political pressure from above, the city will have to launch a cleanup, or a ban on tap water, or an application for Superfund status.” Too little, too late for rescuing Occam altogether, but coming across as reasonable was becoming an idée fixe with me. A neurotic bid at proving I was rational despite my irrational statements.

  “This fucking city. Good luck, boys.” The bartender slammed a fresh glass upon the table for each of us. Christ! How long had he been listening at our elbows? How had he crept up on us? A technique he’d picked up in Nam? “Here’s a round on the house. In case I don’t see you again.” He leaned in to remove Herb’s Styrofoam plate and counseled, “Don’t set your hopes too high on City Hall. Those horse’s asses won’t ever wake up. Waste of energy, if you ask me.”

  He straightened up, turned to go. I had to talk fast. “Please, hold on a second. Thanks very much for these.” I gestured toward our freebies. “But don’t you think we’re obliged to do what we can to try saving people?”

  He didn’t pretend to mull that over. “You can lead a horse to water, right? The facts about the reservoir have been around since day one for anyone who cared to ask. The signs right now couldn’t be clearer. At some stage, people have to take charge of their own skins. Every man for himself, in the long run.”

  “Okay, granted, but there’s something else I should have asked you a long time ago. I still don’t know what your name is.”

  “I never said. I’d rather not have anyone looking me up. Especially not these days.”

  “Sure. But one last question. Can I just ask you point-blank, what’s going to happen in this town, ultimately?”

  He didn’t pretend to mull that over, either. “If you have the brains to ask, I don’t need to tell you.” He vamoosed, and to my horror, Ms. Lathrop, formidable henchwoman of that City Collector
asshole Humphrey Westcott, was occupying the barstool directly behind him. She was facing us, cocking her head attentively in the fashion of a mantis. Was she spying on me for her boss?

  Steady now! Herb was saying, “Free beer. That’s always nice.” Doom-laden pronouncements from our nameless barkeep seemed to have slid inscrutably off his back. How much of a regular was Herb here? Or how accustomed to “old Occam” ways at a place like this?

  “One point we ought to address before going on.” With some effort I turned from bug-eyed Ms. Lathrop to laid-back Herb. “What kind of hot water are you in for at work, if you lend me a hand?” Give me credit for some functioning conscience in spite of my machinations.

  “No hot water. I’m vested, I’m union. A lifer. Too much trouble throwing me out for it be worth their while. And why should they? I’m only passing along a request for service from a city office, and acting in good faith that everything’s on the up and up. What about you, though?”

  “I’ll be fine,” I lied for simplicity’s sake. “I’m vested and union too, you know.” More to the heart of it, the workplace shouldn’t long outlast my severance from it.

  Meanwhile, Ms. Lathrop had been staring at me nonstop, and Herb’s lack of comment on the barkeeper’s fatalism was feeling curiouser and curiouser, unless he held the same opinions, derived from his sub rosa wellsprings of knowledge. Would have been a shame had I ruminated on these issues to the exclusion of what Herb was saying. “I’m friendly with the folks at the Water Resources Authority in Boston. They’ve always been prompt and reliable, and they have a dive team on call. Referring to a hazmat complaint about the reservoir ought to light a fire under ’em, but with a caveat to be discreet and set off no premature alarms. You’ll have answers after the weekend.”

  Oh God! That rarest joy, of hearing a wish fulfilled to the letter, had lasted scant seconds when Ms. Lathrop lumbered from her barstool and toward us like an icebreaker through frozen seas. Hairline cracks of worry finally showed in Herb’s sangfroid. As she bent oppressively close, much closer than the barkeep had, her abdominal flesh in sleek paisley blouse sank into the edge of our table and rebounded. She swayed in a brief quest for equilibrium, lacing the air with her usual lilac, mixed with the distinctive reek of multiple B and Bs. News to me that anyone still drank those. Her magnified eyes bore into me through thick lenses as she professed, “You’re the biggest fool in this goddamn town, and about the best person.”

  She said no more, but goggled on and on at me, with an occasional corrective sway. I was at a speechless loss. Was she coming on to me? She’d unerringly chucked a monkey wrench into my inner gears. Couldn’t wrest my gaze away from hers. Were both our expressions equally unreadable? In the fullness of the moment, I noticed some skin-tone plastic attachment curving around and into her left ear. A simple hearing aid, or one of those sleazy surveillance doohickeys, as hawked on late-night cable? At least she presented none of the stupor or discoloration that came of too much acquaintance with the Gorman taste. At length, without a parting word, she disengaged and plodded back to her barstool.

  “I think she likes you.” Herb smiled in assurance he spoke in jest, but I must have blanched fearsomely at the idea, for he swiftly added, “On the bright side, I should be able to charge the expenses from the dive to Parks and Recreation. Much less of a paper trail leading to you. It also means we and not you will get all the glory for saving the town, though I don’t see why you couldn’t incorporate what we find into a future OGAM Chronicles.”

  “Thanks, except the program seems to have been cancelled,” I hedged. No desire to enlighten him in any detail. Better to return the ball to his court. “All the same, whatever paranormal story you wanted to tell me last month at the reservoir, if you want to run it by me now, I’m all ears.” And in no case repeat the blunder of letting line of vision stray into Ms. Lathrop’s territory.

  “All right, but then I have to get going.” Reddening complexion testified that his day had mostly run its course. He stretched, spreading his arms apart into the semblance of a crucifixion or a scarecrow, and his uniform went taut against his bulky torso. In a more abstracted demeanor, he seemed to be addressing his empty glass. “Near the reservoir shore, there’s a house that may be occupied or it may be haunted, where there isn’t supposed to be any house at all. I’ve never seen the alleged squatter, ghostly or otherwise, and neither have the rest of us at the Control Center, though we’ve all heard it tromping along, day and night, including Wil. In fact, I’m surprised he never mentioned it to you.”

  So was I, but good luck calling him out on that now.

  “In any event, it’s a thing that shouldn’t, in any respect, be where it is, and it kind of induces the creeps, and that’s why I was somewhat, say, evasive when you questioned me about a bear or something big in the woods. I didn’t want to risk freaking you out in earnest.”

  I was hankering for another ale, but didn’t dare pull the brakes on Metcalfe’s train of narration.

  “The house is old, possibly hundreds of years old. Between its disrepair and piecemeal renovations over time, hard to tell its age at a glance. But it gives off an aura of being too old, which accounts in part for the gut feeling that it shouldn’t still be standing there.”

  “You’re saying it escaped the deluge somehow when the rest of Gorman County was submerged?”

  “No, no, when the properties surrounding the reservoir fell into state hands and all the buildings were demolished to let second-growth forest take root, that house was exempted for Parks Department headquarters. Afterwards, the Control Center went up where it is today because the old place was too far from where they laid out the ring road, but no one ever got around to knocking it down. It’s just off that cove where you and the apparent bear almost met up, set into the slope above a former road. My own hunch is that a homeless person, in the depths of despair or derangement, is living there. Primarily because we noticed neither hide nor hair of anyone till a couple of years ago, whereas a haunting should have made itself manifest long beforehand in a house from the eighteenth or seventeenth century. And until we’re under orders, we’ve been disinclined to evict someone in such dire straits as to call that shack home. Whoever it is has been so good at covering tracks and avoiding us that it might as well be a ghost. Zero environmental impact that we can find. But I’d be glad to show you the house sometime. Next week, if that works for you.”

  While I agreed unreservedly that it would, he laid his hands palms-down on the table as prelude to standing. Out of the blue, the bartender swooped in with another pair of IPAs. “Looks like your lucky night!” he professed. “Your lady friend sprang for these and then took off.” Lucky inasmuch as the ales were here and she wasn’t? That was the meaning I chose. Yes, I confirmed at a glimpse, her barstool was vacant. Herb’s eyes, in the meantime, were bulging dubiously. One good thing too many was no longer a good thing, they fairly lectured. My thanks to the barkeep were effusive enough for both of us, and I hastened to ask, “Is she here often?”

  He shrugged. “I seen her before.” Away he strode, as if no words more portentous had passed between us tonight.

  To Herb I remarked, “Don’t sweat it. I’ll dispose of these. They’re only ten ounces each.” His frown raised graphic doubts about my competence in traffic if I did so. “I’ll be fine,” I pledged, and pledged moreover to phone him Monday at the Control Center for a progress report on the dive, and to firm up a day for trekking to the house in the woods. As a failsafe, jotted down my phone and e-mail info on a paper towel wadded in jacket pocket since my last burrito here.

  In his absence, I lingered over our complimentary drinks and meditated on the stunning development of Ms. Lathrop’s entry into the ranks of “old Occam.” One more soul who’d never volunteered the time of day, and at the drop of a hat became chummy, conversational, demonstrative. Furthermore, my chronic ignorance of the “real” Ms. Lathrop, political spy or not, rendered extra proof, as if I needed it, of how I didn’t r
eally know my own hometown at all.

  20

  Between me and Monday sprawled a pointedly uneventful interval. Had a feeling I should savor final workdays and weekend of lovely boring tranquility. Yet I greeted the workweek raring to go, itching to find a secluded phone during midmorning break for an update from Herb. Had been clockwatching circa thirty minutes in Permits and Licenses at the same window where the grumpy coot had railed about rotten fish in the reservoir, when Ms. Lathrop, among the missing since her disappearance from the Aviator, materialized wraith-like in my personal space, with only a whiff of lilac as last-instant calling card.

  “You’re wanted in the City Collector’s office.” Her ordinary frosty, sober City Hall monotone. Inappropriate for me to do more than nod and tag behind. Do not, especially, thank her for those farewell IPAs. An interaction from a grossly incompatible other world. As would be any species of small talk now. Smiled mirthlessly at the arrant image of Ms. Lathrop as a valkyrie, devoid of affect after eons on the job, sent to fetch me upstairs. I was stricken numb and couldn’t bring myself to care who, if anyone, was going to sub at my deserted post. Hell, I wasn’t coming back. Fight-or-flight reactions were underway, but that tingling might as well have been in someone else’s throat, that turmoil in someone else’s stomach.

  On the third floor, Ms. Lathrop did an about-face and raised a puffy-sleeved arm toward her open anteroom door. “Go right in.” My mood must have contributed to finding her diction sepulchral. She then proceeded down the corridor to parts unknown, out of earshot, I gathered, of what was pending, which could only have one foregone outcome.