“Someone who likes to eat leftover doughnuts,” said Gravy-Face Roy.
The cold and weary travelers trudged across the dry, frozen ground toward the single white light. As they got closer, it soon became apparent that Professor Boxley was right, and Simon was disappointed. It was a house. In fact, you could say it was a mansion. The beautifully manicured grounds featured several fountains and a sculpture of two figures standing nearly eight feet tall. In the dark, they resembled some kind of hideous space creatures.
“What are those things?” Simon trembled.
“I think they’re snails,” said Catherine.
“I don’t like this doughnut shop,” said Gravy-Face Roy.
Ethan stopped in front of a steet sign. “Bumbleberry Lane,” he muttered. “Why does that sound so familiar?”
“Because you love bumbleberry pie?” Jason suggested.
“Yes, that’s probably it,” said Ethan as he continued on, giving the sign one last quizzical look. But as they neared the mansion he stopped again, this time next to a mailbox at the end of the very long driveway. He realized then that it was not his love of bumbleberry pie that had made the street sign sound so familiar. It was something far more important and much more incredible.
“I don’t believe it,” said Ethan when he saw the name on the mailbox. “It can’t be.”
Advice on Giving Advice
As the highly successful founder, president, and vice president of the National Center for Unsolicited Advice, I would like to take a few moments to tell you how I went from living in a tiny one-bedroom apartment to living in a huge, 8,000 square-foot mansion. How did I do it? I moved back in with my parents.
It was while living there—and being advised on a daily basis that I needed to get off the couch and find a job—that I first developed the concept of unsolicited advice as a moneymaking venture.
And now, for a limited time only, I would like to share with you the keys to success in this exciting and rewarding field. Why pursue a career in unsolicited advice, you ask? (Even if you didn’t ask, here’s your answer.)
For one thing, there are no start-up fees, no products to buy, and there is no special training required. I assure you the same cannot be said of unsolicited dentistry, unsolicited dog grooming, or unsolicited wart removal (now illegal in all fifty states). When it comes to proffering words of wisdom to the unsuspecting, all you need to start you on your way to mega-riches is a willingness to be annoying.
Start small, with friends and family, advising them on what clothes to wear, how they should style their hair, and with whom they should associate. Before you know it, people will be paying you large sums of money just to butt out and mind your own business.
For more on this exciting and rewarding career, write to the NCUA for your deluxe information packet, which is absolutely free, plus $9.99 shipping and handling. If you prefer that your packet be shipped without being handled, please specify.
In the meantime, be advised that with this amazing opportunity comes great responsibility, because, though giving just the right advice can be quite beneficial to the recipient, giving the wrong advice can prove absolutely disastrous.
Chapter 13
It had been a particularly long week of doling out unsolicited advice to people the world over. It all started with a trip to Tangiers, where I advised the locals on some handy alternative uses for that cylindrical hat known as the fez. They make nice planters, for instance.
From there I was off to Tibet to meet with the Dalai Lama and advise him that he might do well to change his name to Dolly Llama and become a female country and western singer.
Next came a stopover in Washington DC, where I sat down with the president of the United States and offered suggestions on how to pay off the national debt, which, at that time, had just surpassed fourteen trillion dollars. To give you an idea of how much money that is, if you were to take fourteen trillion one-dollar bills and lay them end to end, you would be beaten and robbed in about six minutes.
Regardless, I advised the president that the debt could be reduced by selling advertising space on those very dollars. Seriously, who even knows what Annuit Oceptis means? Why not replace it—along with that goofy-looking one-eyed pyramid—with the words I can’t believe it’s not butter, or I wish I were an Oscar Mayer weiner, along with a coupon for thirty cents off on your next purchase?
I offered this advice free of charge, from one president to another, and I believe it was well received. After being escorted out by White House security, I hopped a cab to the airport and flew the NCUA corporate jet back to headquarters.
Now, of course, the NCUA does employ a full-time pilot, the highly capable decorated war hero Captain Chuck “Cupcake” Baker, but I always prefer to be at the controls myself whenever possible. Flying, I find, can be quite relaxing after a long day of telling other people what to do.
On these occasions, Captain Cupcake is likely to accuse me of being a control freak, pointing out my choice of careers as further evidence of this assertion. When he does make such comments, I am inclined to heartily disagree, then make him sit in back, where he cannot be heard.
Upon my return to the NCUA headquarters, I strode into my palatial office (I so enjoy a good stride) to find my longtime personal assistant, Flolene, who greeted me with a warm smile and a hot cup of tea.
“Welcome back, Dr. Soup,” she said in that slow, sleepy Southern drawl. “I trust your trip went well.”
“Quite,” I said, taking a sip of the tea, brewed to perfection as can only be done by a true Southerner. “A rousing success, though I must say the mosquitoes in Morocco are the size of Canadian geese.” The mere mention of this reminded me of an especially nasty bite on my right elbow, and I had to grit my teeth to fight off the urge to scratch it. “Any mail of interest?”
Flolene knew better than to try to determine whether the mail would be of interest to me or not, and simply handed me the stack that had accumulated during my week abroad. Nothing terribly exciting. Plenty of bills, a few checks, a smattering of Christmas cards, and a coupon for one dollar off on a pizza that had cheese inserted into the crust, which was also made entirely of cheese. And, as always, there was no shortage of letters asking for advice on a large range of topics. Of course, when one actually asks for advice, that puts it firmly in the realm of the solicited variety, and so I promptly instructed Flolene to have those letters forwarded on to the NCSA, located somewhere in Iowa, I believe.
Weary from my travels, I summoned Hans, my driver for the past seventeen years, and had him bring the limo around. I mentioned to Hans that I should like to drive myself, as it always relaxes me after a long day of flying the corporate jet. He mumbled something about me being a control freak, or at least that’s what it sounded like coming from the backseat.
It was quite late by the time I arrived at my sprawling mansion, known affectionately as Soup Manor. My elderly parents had long since gone off to bed, and I was greeted at the door by my loyal Jack Russell terrier, Kevin, whom I had adopted nine years earlier when I found out I was unable to have puppies.
All in all, Kevin had been a good dog over the years, though he did suffer occasional lapses in behavior, having once been kicked out of obedience school for telling the teacher that I had eaten his homework—which, for the record, I had not.
My two snails, Gooey and Squishy, on the other hand, were pets of exemplary character, and were accomplished athletes as well. Like my parents, they had also gone to bed early that evening, exhausted from their extensive training for the upcoming Iron Snail competition.
And so the mansion was quiet, and I seized the opportunity for some much-needed down time. In the kitchen, I opened the fridge and found that Mother had brewed up a large batch of her famous Spam® chowder, the most delicious thing one could ever hope to eat. Unfortunately, because the recipe is a closely guarded family secret, I am unable at this time to reveal the secret ingredient that gives this dish its special ham-like flavor.
I hungrily polished off two large bowls’ worth, while Kevin ate three. I then retired to the sitting room, where I put on some classical music (Rossini, coincidentally) and settled into my chair by the fire with a delightful cabernet sauvignon and a good book, because, as they say, a good book is like a good friend. Well, good luck trying to find a book that will loan you money, bail you out of jail, or water your plants while you’re on vacation. Or in jail. A good book, I’m afraid, is nothing like a good friend, but reading one is a very agreeable experience. So I settled into my chair, cracked the spine, and tucked into it while Kevin curled up at my feet.
I had gotten only a few pages into the book and a few sips into the wine when, suddenly, the doorbell rang, causing Kevin to let out his standard woof, which came whenever any type of ringing, dinging, or buzzing noise was made anywhere. The ringing of the doorbell was doubly strange because the remote location of the mansion meant that we received very few unannounced visitors, and even fewer at such a late hour and in such cold weather.
I set my glass and the book aside. With Kevin on my heels, I walked to the front door and flipped on the porch light, then looked through the peephole. Personally, I’ve never found peepholes to be of much use. All they tell you is that someone with a disproportionately large forehead is standing on your stoop. In this case, it was several persons, and an odd-looking bunch at that, their elongated faces aside.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I’m not sure what a thousand words are worth, but I do know for a fact that you can’t use them to buy a motor home. The picture that lay before my right eye, as I pressed it against the peephole, was a strange one, to say the least. For a moment, I feared that it might have been some type of hallucination brought on by those horrible Moroccan mosquitoes or as the result of the jet lag that was now setting in.
If they were Christmas carolers, it was awfully late for them to be showing up at someone’s door, and if they were trick-or-treaters, it was later still, though I must say they did somewhat look the part. One of the smaller members of the bunch appeared to be dressed as a Native American baseball player, complete with beaded braids, buckskin clothing, and a bright blue cap. Another of them sported some kind of crude puppet on his left hand. All of them were draped in animal pelts, and, if that weren’t enough to pique my curiosity, there was also a hairless pink dog and a small brown fox.
I might very well have ignored this unlikely bunch and tiptoed back to my comfortable chair and my friendly book, but, being that it was the holiday season, I thought they may have been collecting for a needy cause, or that they themselves might be a needy cause. When I opened the door and caught a non-distorted look at my late-night visitors, I was shocked beyond belief.
“Sorry to barge in on you like this, Bertie,” said a bespectacled man with a large bruise over his eye. The fact that this stranger at my door had just addressed me by my college nickname caused me no small amount of confusion.
“It’s me,” the man continued. “Ethan.”
“Ethan Cheeseman?” I said, with equal degrees of befuddlement and delight. While Ethan’s certainly was a memorable face, it took me a moment to try to make sense of the situation. Standing next to Ethan was an elderly man, along with that hairless dog and the brown fox, and a small brood of children. Or is it a herd of children? I must look that up. Regardless, were they brood or herd or four-legged beast, I welcomed them all into my home, for I’ve had few friends in my life of the quality of Ethan Cheeseman.
Ethan and I had first met at Southwestern North Dakota State University, where we played football together for the SWNDSU Fighting Paper Clips. We pledged the same fraternity and were, for the first couple of years there, fairly inseparable. That is, until Ethan met the lovely Olivia Lodbrock. After that, none of us saw too much of him. In fact, the last time I had seen him in person was the day he made the very wise move of taking Olivia as his wife. I was only mildly offended when he chose that pretentious gadabout Chadwick Peabody to be his Best Man while I was forced to settle with being named Most Improved.
In the years that followed, Ethan and I made an attempt to keep in touch, but slowly fell out of contact the way people tend to do in a busy world such as this. While I was focused on starting a business, Ethan turned his attentions to starting a family. I could only surmise that the young people with him now were part of that family.
With a closer look I was also able to determine the identity of the elderly gentleman in the group. He was none other than Acorn Boxley, the esteemed physics professor at SWNDSU. Being that my field of study was in the humanities and not in the sciences, I had never had occasion to make the professor’s acquaintance, but now was honored to do so.
“Ethan, old boy. What in heaven’s name brings you here?” I said, offering him the secret fraternity handshake, which he rather clumsily returned. He never did seem to be too enthusiastic about the whole fraternity lifestyle. He’d always been more of an independent soul, a lone wolf, if you will. “Come in, come in before you all catch pneumonia.”
“Wow. This sure is a big house,” said the boy with the sock puppet, who I would soon learn was Simon, Ethan’s youngest of three children.
“You can say that again,” said the sock puppet I would soon come to know as Gravy-Face Roy.
“You all look a bit weary,” I said. “Please have a seat on the chesterfield.”
Young Simon, apparently unfamiliar with the word, tried to sit on the dog.
“No, no,” I said. “That’s Kevin. The chesterfield is the couch, or sofa if you prefer.”
“I prefer the couch,” Simon said, and promptly sat down on the sofa, with the others squeezing in beside him. Kevin, traumatized by nearly being sat upon, curled up at my feet and leveled a cautious stare at the four-legged interlopers in his living room.
“May I offer you a cup of tea?” I asked my surprise visitors. “Or perhaps a bowl of Spam® chowder?”
“No, thank you,” said Jason. He looked a far cry from the baby picture on his birth announcement, which I’d been sent all those years ago. My, how the time had flown; for here was this person I had known only as an infant and only in photographic form, now sitting in my living room, shyly introducing me to his girlfriend, the pretty young woman named Big.
And though I’d never seen a photo of Catherine, it was clear beyond any doubt that she was the daughter of Ethan and Olivia. Smart as a whip, I could tell in a flash. And that beautiful auburn hair. It sparkled and shined just the way Olivia’s had on her wedding day. Which, of course, prompted me to ask, “And how is Olivia?”
What I assumed to be a simple and entirely innocuous question seemed to cause Ethan great distress. He suddenly appeared more pale and exhausted than I had ever seen him look after all those grueling football practices.
“Didn’t you get the postcards?” he asked.
“Postcards?” I said with consternation, for the last contact I’d had from Ethan or from any of the Cheesemans was that singular birth announcement some twelve years before. “I haven’t received any postcards.”
“I sent you postcards. Loads of them, to this address,” Ethan said. “From the road, telling you about Olivia and how she was poisoned.”
“Poisoned?” This awful news caused my knees to buckle, and I nearly fell back into my chair.
“Yes,” said Ethan. “You’ve always had a certain way with words, and I wanted you to be the one to tell our story, in case anything were to happen to us before we were able to go back and save her life.”
“This is the first I’ve heard of this dreadful occurrence.”
“Well,” said Ethan, with a disgusted shake of his head, “nothing else has gone right, so I guess it’s possible that they all got lost in the mail somehow.”
“That seems pretty unlikely,” said Jason. “Maybe you sent them to the wrong address.”
“Thirty-four-fifty Bumbleberry Lane,” said Ethan. “Placitas, New Mexico.”
“Wait a minute,�
�� said Catherine. She narrowed her eyes, as if doing a difficult math problem in her head. “You sent hundreds of postcards to this address, but they never arrived? Is it possible that they never got here because you haven’t sent them yet?”
“I see what you’re saying,” said Jason. “And maybe you haven’t sent them yet because it hasn’t happened yet.”
“Hasn’t happened yet?” said Ethan. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” said Catherine, rising to her feet, “that maybe the chronometer on the LVR was wrong.”
“It’s unlikely,” said Professor Boxley.
“More unlikely than a hundred postcards being lost in the mail?”
“I suppose it is possible that the chronometer was damaged when we crash-landed in 1668,” said Ethan.
All this talk was beginning to make me feel as though I was in the presence of a group of crazy people. What was all this nonsense about chronometers and LVRs? If things seemed strange now, they were about to get a great deal stranger yet.
“Bertie,” said Ethan excitedly. “What’s today’s date?”
“Why, it’s December 13th,” I said, assuming my friend was interested in how many shopping days remained until Christmas.
Ethan sprang to his feet, walked over, and took me by the arm. There was a slightly crazed look in his eye, and I began to develop concern for his personal well-being, and for my own as well. “That’s the day before she was poisoned,” he said. “The chronometer was wrong.” And then, as I would later learn, came the truly important part. “And what year is it?”
Never before in all my days had anyone ever asked me what year it was. After all, there are very few reasons for someone to be unaware of the proper year. Being stranded in a location so remote that it had no calendar store would be one explanation. Suffering from amnesia would be another. And the only other reason that comes to mind for a person not knowing the calendar year is that that person has been traveling through time and has no idea where he has landed.
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