39

Chapter 39

I awoke the next morning with a nagging feeling that today would be important on numerous levels. To have such information thrust upon you before even choosing your boxer shorts for the day is quite the weight, and I met it with a winner's response: promptly ignoring it. I wasn't in the mood for 'important'. I just wanted to sleep in a bit. With one crisis apparently solved and a number of others picking up speed, I needed a little reflection time. So I rolled over and reflected. I had to do something about that east-facing window, though, and the sun is a hard bargainer. By 7:15 my bedroom was so hot I couldn't sleep anyway so, peeling off the thin bed sheet, I decided it was time to go to the Colonel's and commit once and for all to his mission of interstate delivery. I hoped this would make his day.

Pulling on a white T, I chose the boxers that were on top of the 'to be washed someday' pile (default) and stepped outside. Bufford must have retrieved his work clothes earlier, or perhaps they harbored more magic than I knew. Either way, they were gone. I made my way across the yard barefoot, my vision impaired from shielding my eyes. A jagged piece of plastic from a Tic Tac container embedded itself in my heel. I knew better than to traverse my yard barefoot. With a mild shriek, I plucked it out, tossing it to the street where it would do me no more harm. I could probably get tetinus from something like that. Since they've been keeping records, an average of 381 people die from tetinus every year...23 of those from untreated paper cuts. Blood poisoning. A, AB, Be positive you're current with your shots.

I stepped up to the Colonel's porch without further incident. His back door was halfway open. I knocked on the screen three times. No answer. Since the Colonel's house was not one I would feel comfortable just barging into, I knocked again, five more aggressive raps this time. Still nothing. Figuring I had given more than fair warning, I slowly opened the screen door and called his name. Walking cautiously into the back room, I felt something cold on my feet. Ah ha--The linoleum was flooded with water. Sure enough, upon inspection, I saw the kitchen faucet running full-blast into the sink and pouring onto the floor in a Niagara Falls of wasted municipal resources.
"Colonel!" I called. "You've got some water going on here!  Colonel BB?" I tip-toed lithely across the floor.

Thinking it was possibly stuck in the open position or something, I tried to close it. It turned off easily. Strange. Torn between beginning the clean-up and locating the Colonel, I stood in the middle of the kitchen, considering. It was then I noticed the TV on in the living room. Colonel uses the television mostly for research and confirmation for his various conspiracy theories, (my favorite of which being that Uzbekistanian sanitary workers were sending paramilitary groups in Michigan secret messages involving an imminent government coup, and encoding these messages in the sermons of famous televangelists. Brilliant. Fractured, but brilliant if it was true).

In a fit of decisiveness, I decidedly decided it was more important to locate the Colonel. Perhaps he had information about the kitchen mishap...or, lacking that, the ensuing revolution. I walked into the living room. Asleep. Sound asleep, apparently. He was pushed back in his recliner rocker, footrest up and looking quite peaceful while the receding tsunami ensued in the next room. Something wasn't right with that. I approached.

"Colonel? You alright? Hey?" Nothing. It was then I recognized that this was serious. I reached over carefully and slid two fingers below his wrist to check his pulse like I'd seen it done on TV. As I'd feared, there was none. He was cold, ashen and heavy.  Not quite sure what to do (the Colonel was much more adept at handling this sort of thing), I steadied myself against the wall and weighed my options. Looking around, I noticed a note thumb-tacked on the door facing of his studio. On the note was hand-written the address and phone number of the Colonel's daughter.

I pulled the note from the tack and returned to the living room. On the coffee table, there was a pad of paper with a pencil on top and a single sentence printed on the paper: "Death rhymes with orange".