47

Chapter 47

I stuck the key into the ignition and tipped it forward. The engine turned over as if groggy from a long nap, then de-bugged itself into a mostly consistent purr. Shifting into drive, lurching toward the asphalt, I proceeded east across town, slowing as I finally reached the general vicinity of where Bufford said he had hidden the truck. Sure enough, a grove of crab apple trees soon appeared, from which sprouted a dilapidated double wooden-posted billboard advertising a specific Johnsons & Jonhsons hair product. I bumped over the culvert, circled around and backed the Suburban up to within a few feet of the moving truck's back end, and shut off the motor. Climbing out of the driver's seat, I shielded my eyes from the morning sun. I wished I'd grabbed a breakfast burrito or something. Hard, hot work was ahead of me, work that was going to probably take a while. (That's what she said).

The loading door wasn't locked, so I grabbed the handle and used the momentum to haul myself up into the cargo area. Surveying the scene, my shoulders dropped.

Like pandemonium frozen, a Guernica scene of original oils scattered every which way. A veritable scree field of angular audacity. A big messy mess of a mess. The high-speed chase had done massive violence to my careful packing job, and the results were obvious though, thankfully, largely of only an organizational type. Bleeding was at a minimum. Most of the recognizable damage was limited to scrapes along some of the frames. Only a few canvases had sustained noticeable rips or puncture wounds.

I went about transporting and re-organizing the paintings as best I could into the Suburban and after an hour or so had established a passable new order for them. It was tight, but everything fit well enough. The temperature was already unbearable--everything in my line of vision was rippling with heat waves and I was beginning to feel light-headed--so I cut short the detail work, blessed the effort, and crawled back out of the empty moving truck and onto the ground, kicking up clouds of scalding dust as my flip flops hit the grass. Sighing deeply, I made my way back to the Suburban and dug around the passenger seat for my backpack. I pulled it over and fished out a dirty white T-shirt and a Mason jar full of gasoline. Then I walked back over to the loading fender, unscrewed and tossed the lid. I immersed the t-shirt up to the sleeve and took a lighter from my pocket. I turned the jar upside-down so as to soak the shirt, and lit the sleeve. Then I lobbed the jar against the forward wall and jumped up to grab the nylon pull strap. The weight of the door lowered me down to the ground like an angel, and I struggled to click the loading door into place. Flames were already licking beneath, melting the rubber seal and destroying any evidence of my involvement.

Returning to the Suburban, I turned the key, shifted it into gear and managed back around the sign, into the culvert and, finally, onto the shoulder. The highway was coming to life for the morning commute and I blended into it all. Looking back, I saw the Tresseme billboard already consumed by a tornado of thick black smoke and flames that were ghostly invisible against the morning sun and stark white clouds. Tom Petty played in my head as I crossed the county line.


END OF BOOK I

46

Chapter 46

Paper clipped to Ineola's screen door the next morning:


Bufford-

You've been a good friend for years. I know things are remarkably anguishing for you right now. Use caution. Test everything. Be wise in the way you act and with what you let into your skull; evil is afoot. I feel it. If Ocho Rios is where you've determined to go, you have my blessing, not that it is in the least bit required. Take care of yourself, and may we meet again soon and drink Budweiser well into the night under that large tree in lawn chairs of questionable integrity.

I should be back in eight days at the most.  When I return, I look forward to redemptive news from you, and will be in a certain and recognizable state of angst and distraction until that moment.

Godspeed in your travels and objective.

Forever your friend,

Brody

45

Chapter 45

I decided to ride out the rest of the day in the front yard under the big tree, not knowing what to do next. No one was about and I had the whole afternoon to consider my dilemma. At this point, I was sure the police would finger-print the paintings in the truck and I would be hauled in as an accomplice in one of the most annoying bank near-robberies of the city's history. Aiding and abetting, harboring a criminal, conspiracy to commit robbery...art theft? Who knew what they would throw at me in an effort to get me to talk. I steeled my resolve.

It was then that something flitted across my peripheral vision and I heard the screen door slam shut. Turning around in my lawn chair, I saw Bufford peeking through the curtains of my living room, surveying the scene, eyes wide as ping pong balls.

It took an hour or more to calm him down to the point he could re-count his experience. His story truly was incredible, but I knew a thing or two about celestial events and metaphysical anomalies, so I recovered rather quickly from the temporal aspect of his tale. After, I berated him for the "asinine stunt" and huffed about his "lack of vision and general hold on reality" for a while. Then we discussed the potentially contrasting values of immediacy and caution in a situation like his and finally determined that things were not going as he had hoped. In the end, he gave me the truck keys and described its location. He had hidden it on the east side of town beneath a Tresseme shampoo billboard partly obscured by a grove of crab apple trees. No more decisions would be made today, he said. He needed to sleep. He suffered from something like an extreme case of jet lag and complained of an infernal honking sound in his head that would not go away. I told him I hoped he understood, but that I was leaving early the next morning and we would talk on the phone the next day. We shook hands and he retired for the night across the yard to Ineola's house.

44

Chapter 44

The police chase made the news, both the 5 and 6 o'clock varieties. That was no small feat in our town. I guess it could be partly owed to the unusual nature of the chase, but it was more probably about the more unusual nature of its end. Indeed, David Copperfield (of the illusionist, not the literary phylum) could not have pulled off such a feat. Channel 9 caught the mythical event from their very expensive helicopter camera: Bufford in the big yellow truck careened down the 4 lane with at least 12 police cars in proverbial and literal hot pursuit. They all headed for the large tunnel that would take them under the reservoir and into suburbia, disappearing one by one beneath the dark maw of concrete and kudzu. Then, in a cloud of grease and swirling dirt, they all emerged on the other side. All, that is, except for one large yellow truck and its driver. Half the police force of that fair city squealed, squeaked, and slid to a stop, confused, their tires leaving numerous erratic question marks streaked into the asphalt.

What had happened was that time had stopped again. It caught Bufford and the yellow truck in its powerful sphere of influence, but missed the rest of the show. The city's finest were completely unaffected and no one saw nothin' except for, as one officer put it, "a blinding flash of light accompanied by the sound of one of those model T rubber squishy horns, farting over and over for the span of 5 or 6 seconds." (His testimony is as of yet uncorroborated). Be that as it may, Bufford exited the tunnel in what was assumed to be his current state of fight-or-flight, driving 82 miles per hour like a bat out of...a tunnel, and hit the surface in the dead of night. Now, this confused him something terrible, so he used his rear-view mirror. There were no police cars. There were no cars at all to speak of, it being now 3:37 a.m. and all. He pulled off the road onto the gravel shoulder and caught his breath and bearings. This took a while. Then, he tossed the massive head off and elbowed it across the seat, stumbled out of the truck and stumbled further, out of the fuzzy dog suit. He had a headache the size of his problem and couldn't see through all the stars and pinwheels dancing in his field of vision. In a few minutes, he'd stumbled all the way to a pay phone and dialed my number. At which point I was involved, again.

After the fiasco, I had phoned Debbie to pick me up after her kickboxing session (or organic gardening class, I don't remember which), and she was happy to do it. Not explaining why I needed a ride required some conversational diversion tactics, especially when the first thing she asked was whether or not I had seen the crazy police chase on the news, and whether I thought it was an alien abduction or a spontaneous sink hole like those in Chile and Austin, MN. I told her I thought both propositions were equally tenable and suggested we spend the rest of the trip praying for the perpetrator's clearly wayward soul. That worked. Debbie was a devout member of the Jesus, Mary and Joseph Community Church. I was praying for something else entirely: for the grace to gracefully overstep the bounds of social etiquette with Debbie. (No, not that). Debbie owns a tan 1978 Suburban.

When she pulled up at my house, I leaned forward but paused with my hand on the door.
"Deb, I've decided I need to ask you for a favor."
"Shoot, boss." (She always called me that).
"I need to borrow your car. And before you answer, you need to know it's a longer-term thing, like, 2 weeks."
"Well, I guess that would be OK. What for?"
"It's a long story, but it has much to do with therapeutic art, family ties and a sacred promise I made to a dear friend who has recently passed."
She was silent but for a moment then she opened her door, stepped out onto the street, and tossed the keys through the open window onto the cracked faux leather seat.
"Don't scratch her up, boss." She winked. "And don't stay gone forever. EcoCares likes to pretend we need you. Besides, you're kinda cute, and I miss you when you're not around." She winked, then flipped her long brown hair and walked toward the bus stop.
"I promise. You watch out for those sink holes, Deb. EcoCares likes to pretend that we need you, too." Then, "Take care...and thanks." I was impressed with my come-back.
Without turning around, she flopped a slender hand into the air behind her and strutted away, her hips still very loose from that gardening class, or so it would seem. And why had I never noticed that before?

43

Chapter 43

The big purple dog who was unmistakably my unmistakably troubled friend, waddled toward me. Bufford's voice came from behind a smiling, gaping mouth and wagging red velour tongue.

"Brody. You've got to get out of here, man." He whispered, leaning in toward me.
I scanned the room for guards. There were none.
"Funny. I was just about to say the same thing to you. And can you put that weapon down completely and immediately?"
"No. I can't. but I really think you should leave. Now. What are you doing here, anyway?"
"Bufford. You really need to see someone about this erratic impulse-control issue you've got going on. You're about to bite off way more than you can chew, and there's no tunnel in the world long enough to rescue you this time."
"I just need some cash so I can get outta town. I'm absolutely going to Ocho Rios."
"Yeah, yeah, I know, which is a whole different discussion that we need to have. Even then, there are better ways, man! Let me be perhaps the first person to tell you this: you're about to go to the federal penitentiary! This is not a small thing you've decided to do here! And you have a very, very narrow window of opportunity before your options are taken away completely. From that point on, you'll have no options at all, except maybe how many push-ups you want to do before your cell block's 13 minutes of yard time. Now, listen," I looked around. All of the bank patrons were being very compliant. Sirens were heard off in the distance, though it was no guarantee they were responding to this particular situation. Wishful thinking.

"I'm not going to tell you to surrender, but you can't go through with this."
"You should surrender."
Bufford and I both heard it, and we looked around for the source of the unsolicited advice.
"You should surrender now and take your medicine."
"I'm not on any medicine," Bufford said, his voice clearly distraught.
"Yeah, yeah, I know, which is a whole different discussion that we need to have"
"Are you mocking me," I asked, against my will.
"No. They're just words. What I'm trying to tell you is this: Some people end up spending their whole lives trying to escape. You're better than that. Now, let's go. You've got more important business elsewhere, and you should be about it. Don't worry about how you'll get to Rios; you'll get it all planned out. Trust me."
Bufford exploded. "Trust you? Who are you and I'm not prepared to lay my future in the hands of someone I don't know and, more importantly, can't see!"
"I know it's difficult, but these things will become clear with time. Right now, you don't have a choice, really. Even Brody says so. Get out of here...and do it NOW!" I could swear that I saw those big plastic eyeballs shift to the left, then the right again.

And the sirens were closer now. There was movement far back in the cubicle section of the bank. An administrator of some middle level had pushed The Button or something which, by the way, goes against all their job training. The FDIC insures all accounts up to $100,00.00. Supposedly. But there wasn't much time, and there hadn't been much from the beginning.

Bufford was suddenly frozen, a still life of synthetic fur and palpable tension contemplating its future. Suddenly, the still life leapt toward the bank door, knocking over a plastic trash can and hit the front door with such force that each one spider-webbed and sent prisms of multi-colored light spinning throughout the room. Everyone on the floor sat up and surveyed the scene, mouths open. One elderly lady exclaimed, "It's beautiful!"

I walked toward the doors just in time to see one million images of my yellow truck speeding away, a blur of purple mass and black floppy ears bouncing around behind the steering wheel.

42

Chapter 42

--SATURDAY--
The local truck rental place opened at 7:00. The transaction was absolutely straight-forward, since it was cash-based. (Oh, for simpler times when our money was real, and you could lean against a light post at midnight, smoke a cigarette, and flip a coin in your hand like Carey Grant did in The Maltese Falcon. Doing that with a debit card just isn't the same thing, especially when it's windy. Smoking is bad for you).

I found that driving a truck takes more concentration than riding in a transit bus, so I was a little bit on edge, but I finally arrived at the Colonel's house with minor incident and angled up over the curb and into the front yard. Even at 7:45 in the morning the grass resembled a brush fire both in look and feel. I would need shoes for this work. I headed toward my house for my flip flops and the last V8. Stepping onto the porch, I thought I was hearing things. Specifically, I thought I was hearing a small tinkling bell. And I was hearing things, but it wasn't the imaginary things one hears that could lead to hearing Other Bigger Imaginary Things, it was a real "hearing things". The tinkling turned out to be attached to a shiny new silver ice cream wagon with a green umbrella shivering with the motion. It had four giant rubber wheels decorated with spinning red and yellow crepe paper on every spoke, and the wagon gleamed in the sun like a space ship.

"Brody! Look, Brody! Look what was in my back yard this morning. Wha'd'ya know, huh?"

Edgar was beaming with joy. I gave him a long-distant high-five and a smile and continued inside. Ethyl strikes again. I hope this new cart is upgraded with a parking brake...and a cup holder. Why not. Looked like Edgar was back in business. It didn't seem right to solicit his help in loading the paintings, so I left him to his own work.

Slipping on my flip flops, I walked over to the Colonel's back door. More crime scene tape. I used my teeth to break the tape and my knee to pop open the screen. I felt pretty ingenious for a few seconds. All that work was wasted, however, since I couldn't twist the door knob with anything less than my hand. Truly, all man's glory fades. The kitchen floor was still wet and I passed through it in the same way one would pass through earthquake rubble, and continued past the living room. The Colonel's chair was empty and the TV had been turned off.

It took about an hour and a half to load up all the paintings into the truck. I wrapped each in newspaper then bound them in groups of 5 using sheets and blankets and towels from the Colonel's closet and 2 rolls of duct tape and slipped in pillows to stabilize the whole load. I pulled down the rolling door, swing locking it all in place with a thick metal thud. I jumped into the driver's seat, situated myself and turned the key. The gas spurted into the carborator and ignited, starting the pulse of the pistuns and moving the oil through the manyfold and into the wires of the transmistion reservoir-thingie. I know a lot about cars.

I had two stops to make on my way out of town. First, I dropped by the Stop N Shop for some road trip snacks. Akhmad was behind the counter. A keen observer, he had noticed the gargantuan truck blocking out the entire store front. I had pulled through, taking up all seven parking spots. The Fritos were lined up on a tall cardboard box next to the counter, and there was a swath of Scotch tape permanently stuck on the tile below, gathering the boot scuffs of every customer, like a memorial to recent events.

"What are you doing, my friend?" he asked.

"Believe it or not, I'm delivering some things for the Colonel. I just need a Coke and some Twizzlers for the road."

"Allah give him rest. Very good, Mr. Brody. I am having some trouble insuranc-ing my damages from your friend making the trouble. Can you help me make forms and fill out application to the secret agents?"

"You mean the insurance agent?"

"Yes, I suppose. Insurgent agent."

" No, In-SUR-... uh, OK. I'll be glad to help you out. It'll be a week at least before I'm back in town, though. I'll drop by next Sunday afternoon."

"Yes. That will be fine. And many thanks."

I paid for the snacks, exited by the front door, climbed back into the truck and released the parking brake. My final stop was the bank just on the edge of town, not because I had an account there, but because Edgar found out a while back that they give away free Dum Dum suckers at the self-service kiosk. I pulled into the parking lot and coasted to the edge of it, again taking up seven parking spots. (You wouldn't relish trying to park one of those things in a legitimate spot, either. don't judge). I left the truck running, and walked across the lot and through the large tinted double doors, blinding myself when I stepped into the sun's reflection as it swung across the glass.

Strolling up to the self-service kiosk, I began picking through the vast array of colors, finally settling on one of those wrapped in the red 'surprise flavor!' wrapper. This one would be for later. For immediate consumption, I wanted something a little more sure. I feathered the options and was reaching for grape when I heard a voice from across the room yelling, "OK! This is a stick-up! Everybody get your hands up and lie down on the ground!" I was too startled to realize immediately that specific directive didn't make much sense, and I just froze, two fingers grasping a grape sucker still halfway in the bowl.

"I said 'down' and no one will get hurt!" the voice repeated. It seemed muffled and quite agitated. I scanned the room to find the source. When I found it, I was shocked with a sense of surreal recognition. The bank robber was seven feet tall, brandishing a shot gun, and dressed from head to toe in a matted purple dog suit. The head rotated slowly in my direction. Matching my eyes, it dropped the weapon and froze.

PART IV: THE LEAVING IS THE HARDEST PART / 41

PART IV: The Leaving Is The Hardest Part


Chapter 41

Debbie was distressed that I was leaving, but promised to do all that was necessary to keep the machine grinding on. Mr. Soloman graciously decided to bequeath upon us a healthy amount of money from his corrugated cardboard business in Oslo. I paid the essential bills and said my farewells. When I left, I noticed that the office smelled like petunia blossoms.

I arrived at home, halfway expecting Bufford to be reclining on Inolea's front porch nursing a V8. He wasn't, and he wasn't. Edgar was nowhere to be found, either. I rifled through my closet and bathroom for essential "taking a short trip" items, and threw them all into a duffle, repairing its shoulder strap with some duct tape and a safety pin. For grins, I included the CosmoTech mug. Then I took off the lamp shade in the living room, reached inside and untaped an envelope which held three fifty dollar bills. I got a gallon orange juice carton and a plastic milk jug from the refrigerator, cut off the tops, and retrieved another three fifties from them each. My own version of the FDIC. I've never trusted banks. You shouldn't either.

I gathered everything onto the couch, sat down in the La-Z-Boy and tried to figure my strategy. No car. Little money. No reasonable way to transport me and over 175 sentimental paintings to Seattle, Washington. What to do.

[It was one of those times in well-written stories where a surprising plot twist conveniently allows the story, otherwise doomed, to continue. Let's not call it a 'contrivance'; life is full of legitimate surprises, orchestrated from Above].

Feeling a bit more relaxed  due to this recognition, I spied Ethyl's note on the floor across the room. It was flipped back-side up. There was writing--writing I'd missed upon first reading. I walked over to pick it up. When I read it, my faith in Providence was renewed. It said, and I quote:

"One mre think I lift you agift. Look under th porch. Them flowers sur are purty huh."

A caterpillar jumped in my stomach, broke tradition and transformed immediately into a bouncy little butterfly, then exploded into a whole herd of them. I opened the screen door and looked over the side of the porch at a suspicious plot of petunias. Looking closer, I saw hidden within the stems of the flowers a Zip-Lock baggie. In this neighborhood, the contents of such a baggie would usually be only one thing. Untrue in this case as, when I opened it and unrolled the paper towel, the contents looked a lot like $2,300.00...because it was. What a sweetheart, that Ethyl was, and what an angel. The question remaining now was, Ryder or UHaul?