There was
a click, then the words prattled on.
“John,
theres pulling my leg, then there’s pissing on my toes and telling me its rain.” The shorter man merely seemed to admire his
own hands for a moment, before continuing as if he hadn’t been interupted.
“I’m
telling you Jim its real - it’s going to happen, its” a slight pause. “..if you can believe it, it’s going to kick
off exactly” he checked his watch again, “..in precisely two weeks..”
“No, that’s
impossible!” The fellow beside him couldn’t
help but gasp. “Two weeks? For all of that, all the planning still to go,
and what else?? Lighting? Electric bill to be paid?” He staired at his friend for a moment longer,
as if daring him to speak.
“Is the
Old Guy mad?”
“Err, it’s
a little bit more complicated than that,”
the velvet hat in hand said, tipped a bit more forward, the brows behind
them rustling. The lanker fellow merely
glanced at his toes.
“I mean, he’s got to have quite the menagerie
going at this point.”
“Jim, you
have no idea.”
“But John:
St. Louis of all places?”
“I know.”
“But this
is insane: your not talking Howard Hughs level of crazy with all of this,
right?” There was a long while where
they both had time to consider the window: the sun was setting in a spectacular
hue. Too long of a moment to pass for
him to be either thrilled or happy about it, to many heartbeats in to few belabored
chests.
“Ok, so
start again – what is this all about?”
It was
somewhere around Polk street, where he just about lost it, only a mere thirty minuets
into the trip that unfortunately for them, was about to change all of their lives.
“Reminded
me of my boyhood in the ninties there for just a min, oh how it did lad!!” The Fellow had delightfully exclaimed to John
some random Wednesday eve, grabbing thick at the rye stem before him, pulling the
shorter man close. Goodness how his breathe
stank!
“Back then
everything was blood and gore and slasher flicks, and tall lanky lasses
strolling about strangely after dark. But
what I saw out there on those endless lakeside shores was wrong, simply all awful
and silly all at once folks.” John had
figured this was going to be one of those gined up tirades, but it had been
worse that eve, far far worse.
“The
houses and apartment on that tour might have been spooky, unnerving even had it
not been for the stage, as several of the stops we went on was right next to
the highway: one in a parking lot for gods sake! Can you imagine? Had to sit there and listen to this guide, this
simply stunning, amazing lark of a lad, a literal cicerone of a fellow
(with a great mind too, mind you!), trying to startle us, trying to get us all to
whoop and holler, yet completely unable to, what with autos and tractor
trailers whizzing by at god-knows what speeds!
Streetlighting there for naught but empty roads, doing nothing but
pissing off and polluting the sky.” On
that he had taken another long swig.
“Another
sight was in a parking garage, can you imagine?!?” A deeper pull. “Terrible, I says to meself, just terrible:
here was a lad so great doing his best to rattle us all (reminded me something
of myself I should say) yet the setting was all wrong, the hippodrome there
simply off.” John had tried to calm the
man then, to no avail.
“For an
hour after I sat there, thinking to myself ‘oh Earl, somebody better do
something about all this’, I thought, says over and over again. In fact,” he says, leaning right close to the
willing ear, “reminded me of something else I’d seen as a child, something down
in right Williamsburg, cradle of USA civilization mind you, then I gets an
idea, yes I do! Have you been? Would suggest you do, its downright…amazing..after
night falls. (Its what kicked all this
all there off!)
“So I says
to meself, ‘I can improve upon this, I can bring it all together, if I can, can
I, I…I will..and wouldn’t you know it Johnny boy, that’s just what I intend to
do! Written in the stars that night
there, so I sees.”
Knowing
people in the moving and movie business he had made a few quics calls, pulled
out his checkbook, and got the gears a turning then and right away. In only a few short weeks he had the plot of
land he wanted, a plan, and his first house on the way.
“Fellas,
we gotta get a right and proper collection going, if we are going to start
anything serious like about all this.”
So buy and
collect he did.
------------------------------------------------
“So what
did he do?” Jim was saying, seeming to
hang now on every word – he could only imagine how this was going to turn out,
how the Old Mans firey brain would twist and turn all this.
------------------------------------------------
“He bought
the Borden house first”, John had said, easy like, “being a Bostonian fella
himself originally, and not knowing much at first about what he was getting
into (other than he needed to start with a big splash, gigantic)! All glitz and glamor and a hundred promises
about how he would fix it up, oh how the City fawned over each and every word,
melted at every insinuation.
Then the
movers came and they removed each chunk brick by brick, board by board and sent
it west.”
(Oh how
everything seemed to eventually go west.)
------------------------------------------------
“No, you
don’t mean the Borden house?”
“What, you
think I’d kid?” A long stare, dark
pupils growing wide.
“The sight
of those ax murders?”
“Yep, that
and more, eventually. The local cults
were trying to get ahold of it, ritual suicides happening weekly. But they trucked it out West. Took about three days.”
“That cant
be done!”
“I assure
you it was.”
“Upper
parlor, back bedrooms, vestibule, all?”
“Saw it go
myself.”
“How the
hell do he get that out of Massachusetts?”
“Slowly
Jim, very, very slowly. Yet like
everything else the man does, he does it smart.
Clean like.” A full minuet
passed, neither breathed.
“That’s
not even the worst part.”
------------------------------------------------
People
also thought the Gacy house had been flattened years ago, sent out to whatever
landfill Cook County had best to offer.
(“Do you
think the guys that built a basement at the new house there? …or else checked the old quarters?” Jim tried with a wink. John ignored him, going on.)
Then came
New London Ledge Lighthouse (in UConn that was!), some goofy one in Iowa that
mattered for some reason, a full plantation setup from the Antebellum
South. The Tate house.
(“No John,
that was gone years ago!”)
(“Sure it
was..”, came the reply)
Eventually
they all went west, caterpillar sneaking, snaking along the thick throngs along
bright American highways till the land flattened out, till large water &
lapping headstreams loomed close.
“This
feels far too much like a crappy M.Night Shalyman attempt than a real thing.”
“Was
thinking more Hitchcock,” the Old Feller had told John explicitly about a month
later, when he was studying the cork-board he put up in his study. How he had
toiled over it, seemingly day and night, plotting over his next moves.
“First
start to a collection is to go big: once private sellers hear about what your
up to, costs will go up up up, double, if not triple. Maybe in a month, mayhap less. Yes yes, ya gotta be quick, gotta be smart
like,” he was mumbling, as if to himself.
On the board he shifted another
piece into place.
Yes, he
had nabbed Elliott Ness’ Hombly Hills abode (not gone after all either, no
tearing down for any Board Formed Concrete monstrosity, oh no!) Al Capones Miami estate, sans beach, the
Mercer Retreat from the deepest ills sweet south Georgia had to offer, no moss
or Spaniards included!
(Hell,
half the things they had in Akron, how he fretted over, how he gandered…)
He had
them in Queen Anne style, Second Empire, Modernism, Futurism, Brutalism, and
one particularly garish one from Arkansas that made the flesh craw.
Something
from brown Kansas.
“God’s
John..”
“Gotta
think of the bottom line – whats the easiest way to.” He said again and
again.
He had
even once started talking Internationally.
There was that one surgeons house in Bangalore that had been a recent
interest piece, where the kind doctor seemed to enjoy nibbing on the after
leavings of his patients (don’t worry, he blamed his troubles on the butler,
after all).
“Hard
enough getting things in through customs, I’d say” Apparently he did have a
heart, after all.
On and on
he went leaving Jim bewildered – he could only think of darkness, maybe a
pustule or a boil growing larger behind worn curtains. In front of him the shorter fella prattled on,
as if he was a kid with an overdue reportcard.
“What are
you holding out on John?”
“Well,”
his friend said, warily pulling up to the near foster bar – around them the
house had grown too quiet.
“The
hardest one, was getting the estate in Boulder.” Blank stares at that for a moment, before
comprehension slowly creeped in.
“No, John,
no he didn’t. Anything but that one.” They both were thinking of bright pageants,
of caught lungs supping hard wire. Seemingly
endless nightly pleadings, national headlines, police interrogations, the
discovery of.. of..
“Yea,” John
was saying, a noticeable shiver sliding up his spine, “he did. He really got ahold of that one, had that one
shipped to the site third week of August.
That was one I’d rather not have seen.
Nobody should. But its there,
plucked fast next to the Dahmer place.”
“No.”
“Yup.”
“That’s
surreal.”
“I know.”
“Didn’t
the county, or someone get ahold of that one, once upon a time? Both of em?”
“They did:
back taxes. But when your as kookie as the Old Feller, sometimes you know how
to grease the wheels.” Neither one
wanted to think about how much that one must have cost, who and what was spent
somewhere else.
“Like I
said Jim, Huges level of crazy. Others
as well.” (The bright red speck of a
planet crossed their thoughts just then)
“There has
to be limits.”
“There was
one exception, yes.” They both sat there for a while, Jim waiting for spittle or
to fly. He could hardly hold his
breath.
“He
couldn’t get Taliesin.” There was a
strange moment, as if the day was going to rise again. Jim sat for a while, as if he almost knew
where that one was.
“The
Architects house? In Arizona?”
“No no,
nothing so crazy or ambitious as that.”
“Oh thank
god. I mean for a minuet there you
really would think he was the Almighty, the way he pulls some of this
off sometimes.”
“Well,
what I mean is, he tried to get the one in Wisconsin.”
“There’s a
sequel?!?”
“Jim, there’s
always a sequel.” The sat there for a
minuet chuckling to themselves, wondering at that for a long moment, “but if it
helps, that was the original. The ‘lab’,
as the kids would say.”
“So why is
that one important?”
“Their cook
went a tad…well, how would you say it.
Rather crazy? Back in the 20’s
this was, the other 20’s”
“So?
“Errr, the
mad set the house on fire.”
“Jesus.”
“Yea, set
the drapes ablaze, then stood at the exit with an ax for anybody trying to get
out, batting a thousand.” In his seat
Jim turned an even deeper shade of green.
“These things
happen.” Was all he could manage. He pushed his hat aside as if to exclaim or
say something more.
“Holy god
John, holy sweet everything. This cant
all be real.”
“You can
Google all this crap Jim, and I’m glad he didn’t get that one. That’s the one where that one Architect’s
family was murdered while he was out shacking up with his mistress. God knows what a mess that would have made from
all of this.”
“This is
all ridiculous.”
“I
know. But try as he might, he couldn’t
get it. Thank God. National Registry or something.” On that Jim had to smile.
“Well,
plus side is, its nice to know that there are limits, even for the Old Man.”
“Yea, thank
God for small things.”
“But what
do you do with all of it? It can be
real: can it?”
“Think of
all those wonky mystery books ya read as a kid Jim – hell, think Williamsburg,
Virgina, but bigger.” The man halted for
a moment to hiccup. “But yes, real and
kicking off tours by the first of the month.”
“But
that’s not enough time! Not for
anything. I mean, think of it, there
must have to be a hundred things to do.
We’d have to, have to..” He started
to stutter, fingers flying fast.
“A thousand,
yes, but we have most of it covered. We
have marketing, ticketing, crowd control, the works. The whole team checked it over, twice, and
early checkup for Christmas.” He glanced
sideways, trying to catch his friends sharp eye. “With your help though, we can finish it up
I’m sure by the eve before. That’s week
after next.” He glanced at his watch, as
if for effect. John merely sat where he
was.
“All you
have to do is..” (considerable mumbling,
before a gasp, a question).
“But why
St. Louis, of all places?”
------------------------------------------------
“Because
its right in the center of things, isn’t it!”
The Old Timer had practically ejaculated these words into the workmans
ears, to John, to anyone who would listen.
It was as if he was working himself into quite a frenzy at the thought –
he was from Texas after all, wasn’t he?
“Think
about it me boyos: center of the country, north south east west all converge
right about here! Center of a continent,
center of the Great Plains too! Connecting
point to major resources, yes yes – all the power of the Mississippi, the Missouri
Rivers, crashing, colliding into each other for how many millennia, all that pooling
goodness and energies and insanities up there plowing right in the heart of
things.” He sent them a sly glance.
“Plus, my
fortune tellertells me its good! Will
make it easy for ticketing, to pull it all off: feat of the century, so they
will say!” Those around them all did their
best to stifle a groan. “My shaman too
fellers, so lets just get started, and have at it!” So start they did.
In no time
they had a pattern to the best of likings to Feng Shui, agreed upon by a dozen
different Masters from six of the worlds continents.
“Now I
have my own there, to bath in the thick of all of it.”
v
------------------------------------------------
Jim had
merely sat and muttered and listened.
“The thick
of it?”
“Yes,
that’s what he said. What he really,
really said, and more. But it gets
weirder Jim, it gets so..”
------------------------------------------------
For oh
yes, the Old Man was building himself a house too, oh yes – how could he resist? All those works of a thousand peasant carpenters
pouring into his clutches, hard wood made over how many guessed decades and
sweat and cheerless toils, when here was a new master come to collect them, a
They
thought of 13 Ghosts, original and remake: Jim reached for the nearest inhale,
as if it would calm him. Bottles had
started to pile up beside him.
“And
that’s how we got dragged into it?” he
was saying, left foot tapping.
“Are
dragged into it Jim – the money is already spent, clocks ticking – this is just
a formality.”
“Oh Fuck
John. Simply fuck.” The two men sat for a long time, neither
concealing heavy sups now.
“Jim, I’m
not even to the utterly wonky ridiculous part yet.” The taller man felt his pulse rise even
further: dare he ask?”
“He’s dead
Jim.”
“What? No!”
“Yea,
found by the maid in the exact center of that damnable thing he’s been having
the carpenters.
They both
sat for a long time, as if debating on what to do. Somewhere in the back fields a crow trolluped
– neither noticed.
------------------------------------------------
The maid
had found the Old Fellow, pants on surprisingly, right in the center of the
contraption he’d been working on only two days before, the twisting turning
thing with the periscope that he had insisted on learning every inch of.
“Gunna be
more famous than Williamsburg even! Gunna be, gunna be..” he kept mumbling to
himself, day in, day out, even until the last night anyone sw him. The work crews began to wonder if he wouldn’t
inspire any of the others out there, those excenntric billionaires that he
sometimes had over to yarn with. Yea
sure, it was supposed to be half mandala, half gateway, half votex (and somehow
a fourth half black hole), but it couldn’t be up running by November, could it?
This prize
of his collection wasn’t even a house though, let alone a whole or complete
structure. Some how it factored in, a
series of wires and bright lights seeming to beam off of it. This one too had come from Chicago,
originally, and god knew how much the kook had spent to get that also.
“Feels
like coming full circle!” The Fellow had
said. There was a door to what looked
like an old safe, half of a gigantic entry portico, some. He had them underlit, left them in glass in
the basement of his house, being.
And that’s
where they had found him, and were still trying to make sense of it all.
“Yet it
was crude, and foolish, and if he had been smarter he would have done it all
himself, by his own hands. Followed that
crazy Holmes fella he liked, and done the full monty, but he didn’t.”
“And we
get to pay the price, tip the piper?”
“Back last
Friday morning, this would make it. And
yes, I’d say that’s what were here to do.”
“Does the
time of it all, the stakes really matter?”
“I hope so
Jim, I really do.”
The corner
had been called, the usual tabloids & papers paid to cover up. Everything else that had been part of the Old
Fellers heart had seemed to go with him.
-----------------------------------------------
“So what
are we going to do about it?”
“Show time
starts in six weeks.”
“We’re not
really going to go through with this, are we?”
“Contract
says we have no other choice.”
“And if
words gets out about it?”
“Oh come
of it, you already know whats going to happen, don’t you: front page, every
paper, here to Hong Kong. They will have
cults come out, sacrifice themselves by the dozen on this thing, if even its
just the first place they see.”
“God help
us if the other bits out.”
“People
are so crazy, I wouldn’t doubt it.”
They
puffed away openly now. The day
continued to die.
“Nobody is
going to find out Jim. I’m not stupid enough
to write this all down.”
“And if
anybody finds out about this before hand?”
“They
wont.”
“And you swear
to me your not recording any of this?”
“Not one
word.”
It’s at
this point on the tape you can practically hear the hands clap backs, fingers
connecting for the shake.
“Thanks John
– you remain as true and utter quality as ever.”
“Thank you
sir: now lets get down to business – clocks a ticking.”
----Fin.----
(Oldtime St. Louis, 1930)
No comments:
Post a Comment