Cockeyed

by Richard Stevenson

  I sneezed some more but managed to wipe the tears from my eyes long enough to get out of the Crafts-a-Palooza back door and slam it shut. I got my car going and barely missed the Dumpster behind Subway. As I pulled around to the front of the strip mall I could make out through the blur of tears the Palin book tour van and the Lincoln Town Car cruising out of the parking lot and onto the highway.

  Back at McDonald’s, I went into the lavatory and washed out my eyes and sneezed some more and cleaned myself up as well as I could with a fistful of napkins I had grabbed.

  Outside, the book van, its sign removed, had left for the drive back to Albany, but Marylou was waiting and looked worried about my well-being and appearance.

  “Donald, you look like Olivia De Havilland in The Snake Pit.

  Is Hunny going to have to have you committed?”

  “I didn’t find the so-called lockbox. Or anything else. I was attacked by crates of potpourri. The Brienings might as well have had a rottweiler in there.”

  “A little potpourri goes a long way. I have a quarter of an 184 Richard Stevenson

  ounce or so in a Burmese lacquer dish in my Palm Beach boudoir, and it is more than enough to clear my sinuses after a long day of doing charity work.”

  My cell phone went off, and it was Hunny.

  “Donald, girl, how did you make out snatching the lockbox?”

  “I’m sorry to say that I wasn’t able to find it. My information turned out to be too vague, and I didn’t get lucky.”

  “Oh, well, rats. Antoine didn’t have any luck either. Mom and Tex weren’t at the Lake George Super 8 either, and the desk clerk wouldn’t tell them who was staying there. They checked the Silvery Moon again also, and they are all heading over to Cobleskill now to meet Quentin and the other Rdq boys who are on their way to Crafts-a-Palooza. They’re going to perform an exorcism on the crafts store, they said. I told them not to bother, really. But they wanted to help out in the way they know how.

  And what harm is there in it, anyways? They should be over there any minute now if you want to watch.”

  ChAPteR twenty-seven

  Marylou rode with me in my car, and we parked along the highway about a hundred yards from the crafts store. Hungry and worn out, we had picked up a couple of Big Macs and a bottle of water at McDonald’s and sat and ate while we waited for the show to begin.

  “Oh, I’ve never eaten one of these before,” Marylou said.

  “This time of day I am generally pecking at a ladylike nibble of fois gras.”

  “Are you enjoying your burger?”

  “It tastes predigested. As if it had been marinating in someone else’s stomach chemicals.”

  “If you say that, you are arguing with success.”

  “I wasn’t criticizing, just pointing out.”

  We chatted for a while about Palm Beach life and about the Saratoga social scene during the summer racing season. Marylou reminded me that Rita Van Horn had also been an aficionado of the race track, and this gave me an idea as to where Hunny’s mom and her friend Tex might have been spending recent days, if in fact it was her old pal from Texas who had carried Mrs. Van Horn away to parts unknown.

  At seven nineteen, the Radical Drama Queen convoy arrived.

  The strip mall lot was nearly empty, except for three cars in front of Crafts-a-Palooza and four or five down at Subway. There were no cops around. The Brienings apparently had not reported the fake Sarah Palin book event, and they must not yet have discovered that the lock on the back door had been broken and their desk and files rifled.

  Shoemaker’s little Fiat led the way, and it was followed by what looked like a twenty-year-old Ford Econoline van, and then Antoine’s Chevy Malibu with the twins and two of the Rdq boys in it.

  186 Richard Stevenson

  “Well, won’t this be fun!” Marylou said.

  “Yes, and if you want to join the party, go ahead. I think it’s better if I stay out of it to minimize the chances that the Brienings will connect this with Hunny.”

  “I hate to go dressed like this. But I don’t want to miss out either. So tood-lee-oo, Donald. I’m sure I can ride with the Rdq ladies if it becomes necessary to beat a hasty retreat. And if Clyde and Arletta recognize me as Sarah Palin’s publisher’s rep, I’ll just tell them I’ve gone all mavericky like my boss.”

  Marylou had another swig of water and then strode across the tarmac to the Rdq crew, who were out of their vehicles now and were decorating themselves with objects they were lifting out of a number of what looked like burlap sacks. The August evening light was weakening now, but the parking lot lights were coming on automatically and I had a clear view of the proceedings.

  The exorcists dressed themselves not in Christian priestly garments but in feathers and what appeared to be fresh vegetables.

  Some wore pole bean vines with the beans dangling, and others cherry tomato vines. A couple of the Rdqers draped themselves with floral wreaths, daisies and day lilies and cosmos and zinnias.

  One wore a vest that seemed to have thousands of M&M candies glued to it. Two wore the saffron robes of Buddhist monks, and it was they who brought out from the van several sets of drums and some smaller objects that were too small for me to identify from my vantage point.

  Antoine and the twins were in attire that was normal for them.

  Antoine wore jeans, a big Mexican blouse and his long rhinestone earring. Tyler and Schuyler were in shorts and T-shirts with big pictures of bare feet on the front, in anticipation perhaps of their careers as podiatrists.

  Shoemaker himself, in his Brooks Brothers shirt and Jack Wrangler necktie, had a bullhorn in hand, and it was on his apparent signal that the group formed an arc around the entrance to Crafts-a-Palooza and immediately began drumming and chanting. I could hear ringing and tinkling too, and I soon saw that many of the exorcists were ringing Buddhist prayer bells and CoCkeyed 187

  somebody had a triangle and another cymbals. Davenport the astrologer appeared with a conch shell and began to accompany the various percussionists with mournful lowing sounds from his sea horn.

  The men swayed back and forth in front of the crafts store, and as they did so people began to trickle out of the store and out of Subway to see what was going on.

  It was then that Shoemaker lifted his bullhorn and began to recite: “We freemen of all colors of the spectrum, in the name of God, Ra, Jehovah, Anubis, Osiris, Tlaloc, Quetzalcoatl, Thoth, Ptah, Allah, Krishna, Chango, Chimeke, Chukwa, Olisa-Bulu-Uwa, Imales, Orisasu, Odudua, Igzeahbeher, Kali, Shiva-Shakra, Great Spirit, Dionysus, Yahweh, Thor, Bacchus, Isis, Jesus Christ, Maitreya, Buddha, and Rama do exorcise and cast out the evil which has taken hold of Crafts-a-Palooza and of its human-form proprietors Clyde and Arletta Briening. Clyde and Arletta are inhabited with demons of greed and incredible rotten meanness, and in the name of all the gods of the universe and the municipality of Cobleskill and the state of New York, we cast those satanic entities OUT! OUT! OUT!“

  Now the drums began to beat faster and the bells to clang and jingle, and as the exorcists swayed with the rhythm of the percussionists, they all shouted along with Shoemaker, “Out! Out!

  Out! Out! Out, demons, out! Out, demons, out!” Davenport blew on his conch shell, and now many of the RDQ men began to repeatedly lift their arms heavenward, as if to hoist the strip mall into the air. Plainly they intended to levitate Crafts-a-Palooza, and make it shake its evil spirits out of the structure, the way the thousands of National Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam protestors tried to shake the demons out of the Pentagon in the fall of 1967.

  I spotted no evil spirits spurting through the roof of Crafts-a-Palooza into the evening sky, but I did see several customers exit and trot toward their cars, and they were followed outside by Clyde and Arletta Briening. The Brienings stood goggle-eyed outside their store’s front door. Clyde had his glue gun in 188 Richard Stevenson

  hand, and Arletta brandished a cell phone that she seemed to be barking into.

&
nbsp; Some people ambled down from Subway to watch the spectacle from a distance, and others pulled in off the highway.

  Some of the exorcists kept up the chant of “Out, demons, out!” while others took up a new refrain now, “Hari, hari, hari, hari, rama, rama, rama, rama, Krishna, hari Krishna, hari, hari, rama, Krishna.”

  Now a flashing cop car pulled in, a local Cobleskill cruiser with a lone officer at the wheel. He moved slowly toward Crafts-a-Palooza, apparently puzzling over this probably unprecedented scene outside a Cobleskill strip mall. He halted thirty or forty feet from the exorcists, left his flashers on, got out, paused, then walked toward the Brienings.

  The Rdq boys kept up their drumming and clanging and chanting and their so-far unsuccessful attempts to cause the mall to rise shuddering into the air.

  As the cop spoke with the Brienings, another vehicle pulled in, a van. A man with a videocam got out and immediately began recording the occasion. I guessed he was the local stringer for one of the Albany or Schenectady TV stations.

  The television videographer’s timing was to prove significant, for it was soon after his arrival that Shoemaker included in his exhortations some specifics that turned out to have serious consequences. Hollering into his bull horn, Shoemaker let loose with, “End the greed! End the cruelty! End the persecution of Hunny Van Horn. The demons inhabiting Crafts-a-Palooza and inhabiting Clyde and Arletta Briening must be exorcised, must be sent flying away, must be stopped from stealing Hunny Van Horn’s billion dollars that he legitimately won in the New York State Lottery…”

  Shoemaker went on in this vein for a couple of minutes, maybe trying to make the cop see that if he interfered with this sacred ritual he risked incurring the displeasure of a celebrity.

  The Brienings were now yakking at the cop a mile a minute, CoCkeyed 189

  Arletta waving her cell phone, Clyde aiming his glue gun. The cop then stepped aside and made a call of his own.

  Five minutes later, with the strip mall still refusing to rise off the ground and the exorcists drumming and chanting and trying even harder to make the damn thing budge — at least an inch —

  two more police vehicles drove in off the highway, one of them local, the other a State Police cruiser with four officers in it.

  I figured it was a good time for me to melt away.

  ChAPteR twenty-eight

  “Donald, I do like the way we live our sedate lives,” Timmy said. “But I have to admit that when I look at these Radical Drama Queen guys and at Hunny Van Horn and his colorful entourage, I feel almost Mormon. Have I turned into Mitt Romney without even noticing it?”

  “Yes.”

  “After all these years, are you going to dump me for a man wearing farm produce?”

  “No. Shh.”

  We were in the bedroom on Crow Street watching the Channel 13 eleven o’clock news. The Cobleskill strip mall exorcism was the lead story. The theatrical ritual had pushed the holdups, house fires and state legislator scandals that generally dominate local news coverage back several minutes. This was because the Crafts-a-Palooza event was surprising and because some great visuals were available and because of the Hunny Van Horn connection.

  Quentin Shoemaker’s blunderingly connecting Hunny to the exorcism made it all extra newsworthy. Shoemaker had told me by phone afterward that he was sure his mentioning Hunny would engender both public and spiritual support for Hunny. But the predictable downside was about to become evident.

  After a couple of minutes of footage of chanting, drumming and unsuccessful attempts to levitate the strip mall, Shoemaker was interviewed briefly. He again accused the Brienings of trying to steal Hunny’s billion dollars, though without mentioning how they were hoping to pull off this dastardly feat.

  Clyde and Arletta were interviewed next, and after some tea-bagger-style rhetoric about socialism and Obama’s satanic minions, Arletta said that yes, it was true, that Hunny Van Horn owed them half a billion dollars, but after today’s disruptions and insults they felt that the entire billion ought to be turned over to them to compensate for their pain and suffering.

  192 Richard Stevenson

  Arletta concluded, “And if we don’t have the money by noon tomorrow, we will be calling a press conference and making an announcement that Hunny Van Horn will not be pleased to hear the contents of.”

  Timmy said, “Uh-oh.”

  “Yeah. This is bad.”

  A Cobleskill police official was interviewed, but only briefly.

  He said that when the exorcists were threatened with arrest for disturbing the peace, they agreed to pack up and leave only if they were first allowed to stick daisies in the cops’ rifle barrels.

  The police sergeant had explained to Shoemaker that they didn’t have any rifles with them, and anyway it wasn’t the ‘60s anymore and if the Rdqers knew what was good for them they would move along. Which they soon did.

  Next came an even briefer live report from a reporter standing somewhat forlornly outside Hunny’s house on Moth Street. She said that Hunny was inside the house and had sent word out that he would have no comment on the Brienings or anything else that night.

  Then the Channel 13 anchors moved on to a water main break in the town of North Bethlehem.

  “Hunny is screwed,” I said. “I let him down.”

  “Maybe his mother won’t even care all that much about the embezzlement revelation. If she’s even alive. Didn’t you say her mind was slipping?”

  “Oh, she’s alive, I think. I’m confident her pal from Texas and a guy named Herero have her somewhere. They may be on their way back to Texas, for all I know. If they were around here, by now they’d likely have heard that Mrs. Van Horn is officially a missing person, and cops and volunteers are searching for her in fields and culverts up and down the Hudson Valley.

  The chances are good the three of them are in a Motel 6 in Chattanooga on the way back to Houston, or maybe holed up in a casino in Connecticut. Would she care about the embezzlement revelation? That’s hard for me to say. Hunny says yes, the Van CoCkeyed 193

  Horns are respectable Christian people who would be crushed by the charge. But I’m convinced that that’s the case only with Hunny’s sister and her husband and Nelson and Yawn.”

  “Isn’t it Lawn?”

  “Lawn, yes.”

  “Surely the DA isn’t going to make a big deal of a charge coming so late in the game. How long has it been? Ten years?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “There might be statute of limitation problems for the prosecutors. It’s not murder we’re talking about here.”

  “Murder might be better. It’s racy. It’s tragic. It’s deeply human.

  Embezzlement is merely embarrassing. And except for Hunny

  — who has made a career of being the exception that proves the rule — the Van Horns apparently loathe social embarrassment more profoundly than anything else on earth.”

  “It’s almost refreshing to discover social shame in a family,”

  Timmy said. “You don’t have to be a Muslim jihadi to regret that the near disappearance of shame in American life is a serious social loss. Puritanism is one thing, The Bachelor something else.”

  My cell phone rang, and it was, as I thought it might be, Hunny.

  “Did you see the news?” His voice was barely audible.

  “I did. I’m sorry, Hunny.”

  “Can you come over?”

  “Sure.”

  § § § § §

  On Moth Street, the security guys were still on the front porch and two TV crews were on the sidewalk dozing on collapsible chaises. Inside, Marylou and the twins were in the living room watching a true-crime channel. Hunny and Art were at the kitchen table.

  “Where are the Green Mountain Boys?” I asked. “Have they returned to Mother Earth’s bosom up north?”

  194 Richard Stevenson

  “Those hippies sure did turn out to be royal pains in the neck,” Art said. “They went ahead and ticked off the Brie
nings, and now those ass wipes say they want the whole billion dollars.

  And Hunny is seriously considering giving it to them.”

  Hunny was chain smoking by the evidence of the overflowing ashtray as well as the deadly haze in the room, and he had a bottle of Jack Daniels and a half-empty glass on the table in front of him. “Quentin and the boys are good-hearted lads,” Hunny said,

  “and they mean only to be helpful.”

  “The road to hell,” Art said, “is paved with good intentions.

  Those guys are jerks. All those drums and crap.”

  “Be that as it may, their hippie habits didn’t stop you from helping yourself to a little of that boy Ethan. You had no complaints about drums along the Mohawk when you were chewing on that comely lad’s cute member last night.”

  “I’m not saying they weren’t friendly. Just stupid.”

  “Well, what’s done is done. Yes, Donald, Quentin and his drama queens have departed for Vermont. They had to go back and milk the chipmunks or something. And in a sense what they did tonight it is just as well. Perhaps it is all part of the Lord’s plan.”

  “How so?”

  Hunny sipped his whiskey and savored its return to his life.

  “I am just sick to death of the whole Instant Warren so-called bonanza. Everything was just fine for Artie and myself until that so-called good luck fell on me like a ton of bricks. Yes, I needed to pay off the Brienings their sixty-one thousand dollars. But I still have to pay them, and now they want the whole kit and caboodle billion dollars. And all I’m left with is a lot of people mad at me and Mom missing and nothing to show for my so-called good fortune except a lot of sorrow and tears. Plus, of course, the billion dollars, for the moment, which is nothing to sneeze at. Anyway, Nelson called right after the news was over and they think I should offer the Brienings nine hundred million and see if they will take it. Miriam is adamant about it not getting CoCkeyed 195

  out that Mom is a crook.”

  I said, “Well, you would still have a hundred million, a fortune.