Say Uncle

by Benjamin Laskin

  “See,” she said to me. “Inspiring. How about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. What are you going to plant?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “That’s right. But you know what I was thinking? You know that big geyser in Fountain Hills?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Well, it seems like such a waste of water. I was thinking of erecting an aqueduct to channel some of that water up here.”

  “You’re pulling my leg.”

  “With all my might,” I said.

  She slapped her thigh and laughed big and unabashedly. “You are naughty.”

  I smiled back at her and waved goodbye.

  “You coming tomorrow?” she called after me.

  “Maybe.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Guy.”

  “I’m Willow. See ya later, Guy!”

  About a quarter of the way down the mountain I turned a narrow bend in the trail and stood face to face with the old goat. He was shirtless again, wore the same pair of khaki cargo shorts as the day before, and his Apple ‘Think Different’ cap. Around his waist and shoulders hung eight canteens of water, and in one hand he carried a plastic jug. He was sweating like a pig and breathing hard. Still, I had to admit that for an old fart he looked in pretty good shape. His bronze flesh was loose, but he was trim and had strong-looking legs.

  “Well, well,” I said, “if it ain’t ole Billy.”

  “Billy?”

  “Billy the goat.”

  He smiled. “Baaaah,” he said.

  “Very good. Now if you’ll let me by…”

  “What’s the hurry? Give me a hand with these things, would ya?”

  “Huh?” I said, incredulous.

  “Come on, take a load off me, brother.”

  “Why should I?”

  “’Cuz Billy the goat could use a hand.”

  “You trashed my phone!”

  “You still mad about that?”

  “Yeah I’m still mad about that. It wasn’t mine to lose. You’re an asshole. I’m sorry, but you are.”

  “Yeah, maybe you’re right. Let me make it up to you.”

  “You can’t. Now out of my way goat breath.”

  “Here,” he said, taking his Apple cap from his head. “Take it.”

  “I don’t want your stinking cap.”

  “What? You have something against Macs?”

  “No, I just don’t want your sweaty, smelly, lice-ridden hat, that’s all. I want my phone back.”

  “Oh grow up and give Billy a hand.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Know what a mitzvah is?”

  “No.”

  “It’s Hebrew. It’s a selfless good deed. You ought to do one every day. If you get the chance to do a mitzvah you never pass it up.”

  “Hebrew, huh?”

  “That’s right,” he said.

  “Pass the water, Billy.”

  Lost and Found

  I took the jug and the canteens from around his neck and we marched back up the mountain. Once on top we emptied half the canteens around the two trees. The old man then pulled a couple of small garden tools out of the pockets of his cargo shorts. Using the rest of the water to loosen up the sunbaked earth, for the next thirty minutes we scraped and dug until we had a good, square-foot hole.

  The old man smiled down at our accomplishment and slapped me on the back. “Thanks, kid.”

  “Sure. When are you gonna plant the tree?”

  “When I get around to it.”

  “Hey,” I said, reaching into my pocket. “I was wondering if you could…” I pulled out Doreen’s ring. “There’s an inscription on the inside. I think it’s in Hebrew. Can you read it?”

  He gave me a quizzical look and then took it and held it up. The sun glistened off its silver surface. He squinted into the ring, shook his head, reached into a pocket of his cargo shorts and pulled out some bifocals. He held the ring up again and adjusted his arm like a microscope.

  “Yours?” he asked.

  “My sister’s, actually.”

  “Engagement ring?”

  “More like a friendship ring.”

  “I see. Nice.” He rolled it between his fingers, closed his fist around it, and then reared back like a pitcher to launch it over the side of the mountain.

  “Hey!” I screamed, lurching desperately for his arm.

  The old man laughed. “Just messin’ with you, kid. Lighten up, would ya?” He handed me back the ring.

  I let out a sigh of relief and shook my head. Jackass. Regaining my composure I said, “So, do you know what it says?”

  “Tamid ohev otach.”

  “Tamid ohev otach” I repeated. “Are you sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure.”

  “Well, what does it mean?”

  “I will always love you.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “I will always love you. What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  He looked at me like I was wearing a clown nose and honking a horn. “It means what it means, kid. Pretty powerful words if you ask me. What were you expecting, a Shakespearean sonnet?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. I was just hoping… Never mind.” I pocketed the ring. “I’ve got to get going. Take it easy, Billy.”

  “You too, pardner.” I turned and started away. “Hey … Catch!” I whirled and saw his black cap spinning through the air. I caught it. Inside was my cell phone. “It’s scratched up a little,” he said. “But it works.”

  “Thanks,” I said, puzzled, but grateful.

  As if reading the question on my lips, he said, “Like you said, it was an ass-holey thing to do.”

  “Yeah, well, thanks.” I pocketed the phone, gave the cap a snap and put it on my head.

  “One question,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “What are you doing with your sister’s ring?”

  “She lost it. I found it.”

  “Lost it?”

  “Misplaced it, really.”

  “Does she take all her friendships so loosey-goosey?”

  “Sometimes I wonder, but no, not really.”

  “Tell her to take better care of it. There’s magic in that ring.”

  I chuckled. “Magic?”

  “All true friendships are magic. Take it from an old man who hasn’t had many.”

  “I hear you, pardner,” I said, not the least surprised. He was, after all, a kook and a sociopath. “I’ll pass the word.”

  People Dream

  When I got home I peeked into Doreen’s room and saw that she was still asleep. I stepped back, pulling the door closed.

  “Guy?”

  “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay. What time is it?”

  “Eight-thirty. Go back to sleep.”

  She yawned and stretched. “No, I got stuff to do. Man…”

  “What?”

  “I had a weird dream last night.”

  “How weird?”

  “Vivid. Scary. A people dream.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  “Aidos, mostly. She was dressed as a ballerina, or an angel, or Tinker Bell, I don’t know.”

  “What did she do?”

  Doreen sat up and placed her pillow behind her. “Well, I remember she led me to this place in the forest and pointed to a big mound of leaves. I dug through them and there they all were.”

  “Who?”

  “Noriko, Johanna, Melody, Zeeva, and Max. Dead. They each had a bullet hole in their forehead.”

  “Jeezus, Doreen, what are you having dreams like that for?”

  “I didn’t mean to, Guy. It just happened. But it gets worse. I asked Aidos what happened and she said that I should know, that I killed them!”

  “You bitch.”

  “It’s not funny, Guy. I was really upset. I’ve never had such a dream in my life.”

  “Well,
you shouldn’t have eaten that jar of salsa before bed.”

  “You don’t believe…?”

  “What?”

  “That dreams can—”

  “Foretell the future? Hey, if you knew how many times I’ve dreamed of being in a hot tub with an entire calendar of naked, champagne-sipping Playmates, you’d know they don’t. Get up. I’ll fix you breakfast.”

  ···

  An hour later we were sitting at the kitchen table finishing up our Guy super omelettes when Doreen looked up in a panic and asked me if I had seen her ring anywhere. “I don’t know what I could have done with it.”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “You?”

  “You took it off when you did the dishes yesterday. I found it when I was mopping up the counter. I forgot to give it back to you. Sorry.” I reached into my pocket and handed it to her. She stared at it in her hand, a worried look on her face.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I just remembered something else about my dream. In it I was wearing the ring; only it had tarnished and was nearly black. And it was cold, icy cold. Aidos asked for it back. I didn’t want to give it to her but she insisted. She said that I had killed the magic. I was so sad…”

  “Magic? She said magic?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Weird.”

  “Isn’t it?” Doreen slipped the ring on and held it up admiringly. “But look,” she said, relieved and chipper again. “It’s not tarnished. It’s shiny and bright! You polished it, didn’t you?”

  “I thought it could use it.”

  “What’s with you, Guy?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Housework, the garden, making me breakfast, the ring…”

  “Well, it’s like I’ve always said, if you get the chance to do a mitzvah, you never pass it up.”

  Doreen laughed. “You’ve never said that. And what’s a mitzvah?”

  “Boy, you don’t know anything, do you?”

  Just then the clock in the living room chimed. Doreen checked her watch. “Gotta go. I’ve got a bunch of errands to run.” She rose and took her dishes to the sink.

  “Leave ‘em,” I said. “I’ll do them.”

  Doreen gave me another curious look, and shook her head in disbelief. “Thanks.”

  “No sweat. Hey, can I come along?”

  “Shopping stuff, Guy. You hate shopping. Besides, I won’t be coming home till late. I’m meeting Jim later, remember? And we might, you know, make an evening of it.”

  “Not the whole evening, I hope.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not ready for that yet. It’s his birthday today,” she said, as if I should care. “Any suggestions what I might give him?”

  “How about a polygraph?”

  Doreen shook the naughty-naughty finger at me, and then strolled to the back of the house to get ready. I set our plates on the floor for Freud to start cleaning as I began on the skillet and silverware. Doreen returned, car keys jingling in her hand. She was wearing a powder blue sundress that showed off her smooth arms and shapely legs. She spun once around, her dress billowing as she went.

  “How do I look?” she asked.

  “As your brother, or as a man?”

  “As a man.”

  “Great.”

  “As a brother?”

  “You little slut.”

  “Good,” she chirped, and kissed me on the cheek. “Have a nice day!”

  Doing the Math

  To distract myself from my worries about Doreen and the likelihood of Hennes’ success, I spent the remainder of the morning picking up the house for my folks who were due home the next day. Afterwards, I went into the backyard to put the finishing touches on dad’s garden. As I planted I thought about the inscription on Doreen’s ring. Ani ohev otach: I will always love you. If Hennes was right and that was some sort of key, what, I wondered, could it possibly have meant?

  It suddenly occurred to me, why should I take the old goat’s word for anything? He was a kook, and for all I knew the geezer was also a pathological liar. I dropped what I was doing and dashed into my father’s office, Freud limping hurriedly behind me. I fired up my father’s Mac and logged on to the Internet. I wanted a second opinion.

  I couldn’t read or type Hebrew so I had to find someone with whom I could Anglicize. After dozens of jumps and searches, I linked up with a New York yeshiva chat room. There were three people in there, students I assumed, discussing something called a mishnah. I typed, “Shalom. I’m Goyguy. Anyone want to do a mitzvah?”

  Someone calling himself Matzo Ball typed back, “Got a chance for a mitzvah, can’t pass it up. What do you need?”

  I explained that I had a ring with an inscription that I was told said tamid ohev otach and wanted to know what it meant.

  Matzo Ball typed back, “You’re a lucky man, Goyguy. Someone will always love you.”

  I wasn’t sure if the writing truly was what I was told it was, and so I asked if someone could send me a screen shot of the actual Hebrew.

  “I got it,” typed another who called himself, Dreidelhead.

  A minute later I popped open Dreidelhead’s attachment and compared it to what I had copied onto a piece of paper. It was the same. Still, I couldn’t see any connection between the romantic sentiment and the possibility of it being a key to anything. I typed, “Any chance there could be another meaning?”

  Matzo Ball replied, “It means what it means.”

  Another student who went by the name of Kabbala Kid wrote, “Not necessarily, Matzo Ball. There are the numbers.”

  Dreidelhead typed, “You and your gematria, Kabbala Kid. Matzo Ball is right. A ring with a lovely inscription. Why complicate love?”

  This set off a furious argument about the meaning of love, each student showing off his knowledge of Talmudic scripture by quoting rabbis like Akiva and Hillel and others that I had never heard of. I enjoyed reading the students’ often comical commentary, and getting a peep into a world I had never given any thought to before, but I wanted to get back to the topic of the ring.

  I typed, “Fascinating debate, fellas, but Kabbala Kid might be on to something. Long story, but the ring has a mysterious past. It’s quite possible there is some inherent code. Kabbala Kid, would you mind elaborating?”

  “Gladly,” he typed. He then went on to explain that every Hebrew letter also has a corresponding number. Aleph is 1, bet is 2, gimmel is 3, to yud, which is 10. From there the letters jump by ten: kaph is 20, lamed is 30, and so on, until the last four letters which equal 100, 200, 300, and 400.

  “Do the math,” Kabbala Kid wrote, “and you see that tamid equals 454, ohev is 20, and otach is 513. Together you have 987. (454 + 20 + 513 = 987) Does that mean anything to you?”

  Dreidelhead typed, “Looks like a combination of sorts.”

  Matzo Ball typed, “Looks to me like a phone number.”

  “Hold on,” I typed. I picked up the phone and dialed the number. I promptly got a message saying to check my number and try again. “No go,” I typed.

  Kabbala Kid typed, “Nudniks, Hebrew is read right to left! Reverse the numbers: 4-540-2315.”

  Matzo Ball typed, “There’s no area code of 4 in America. They are all three digits.”

  Dreidelhead typed, “It could be a country code.”

  Kabbala Kid typed, “Way ahead of you. I just checked. There’s no country code for 4, but 45 is Denmark.”

  I dialed again, but got the same message as before. Nobody typed anything for a few minutes, but I could see we were all still logged in. Then, one by one, they each proposed a new theory, rearranging the numbers into different clever combinations. I dialed each one in turn, but none of them went anywhere. By now we had been on line together for almost two hours.

  Finally, Kabbala Kid typed, “I’ve got one more idea, then I’m out of here. In gematria there’s another way to calculate: mispar katan (reduced value), where each value is reduced to one digit, like in numerology. There a
re 3 words, right? Tamid ohev otach. Each contains 4 Hebrew letters. If we add the total of each word and reduce it to one number according to mispar katan, we get the following:

  Tamid = 400 + 40 + 10 + 4 = 454 = 13 = 4

  Ohev = 7 + 6 + 5 + 2 = 20 = 2

  Otach = 7 + 6 + 400 + 100 = 513 = 9

  “We come up with three numbers: 4-2-9,” he wrote. “Now, do the same by adding up the numbers of each of the first four columns and apply mispar katan again. For example, in the first column we add 400 + 7 + 7 = 414 = 9. And so, we get:

  9 + 7 + 1 + 7

  “9717. Do you follow so far, Goyguy?”

  “I’m all fingers, Kabbala Kid,” I replied. “Keep going.”

  “Okay,” he typed. “Now, we have 429-9717. That could be the number, but we still lack an area code. So let’s apply mispar katan again.

  4 + 2 + 9 = 15 = 6

  9 + 7 + 1 + 7 = 24 = 6 ”

  Matzo Ball typed, “I downloaded a list of country codes and have it in front of me. 66 is the country code for Thailand.”

  Dreidelhead typed, “Nice try, Kabbala Kid, but come on, Thailand? It hardly seems likely.”

  I typed, “On the contrary, Thailand makes a lot of sense, believe me. Hold on—” I dialed the new number. I got another message saying the call couldn’t be completed as dialed. “…Sorry fellas. No go.”

  Kabbala Kid typed, “Well, that was my best shot. If there’s a phone number in there we aren’t going to find it.”

  Dreidelhead typed, “Of course it didn’t work. Where’s your city code? Kabbala Kid, doesn’t it make sense to do mispar katan once more? 6 + 6 = 12 = 3.”

  I picked up the phone and gave it one last shot. Somewhere it was ringing. Once, twice, three-times…

  A woman’s voice said, “But will you love me tomorrow?”

  I jumped in my chair as if someone had snuck up on me and said, Boo!

  “Huh?”

  “Will you love me tomorrow?” the voice repeated.

  I said, “Tamid ohev otach. I will always love you.”

  The voice replied, “And if I lose you, where can I find you?”

  If I lose you where can I find you? Oh shit.

  “You have three seconds,” the voice prompted.