The Homeless Millionaire - Volume 1 Chapter 79 October 30th 1972
It was raining when I woke up the next day and it was foggy, too; when I looked out of the window I could barely make out the pier. I capitalized on that and lit a proper fire right away, and sat in front of the fireplace while going through my usual coffee-and-cigarettes morning routine.
My chemical toilet experience of the previous day had motivated me to use it as little as possible. So when the time came, I got dressed and took a wad of paper and the shovel and went for a walk in the woods.
It was very peaceful in there. I smoked a cigarette while squatting over the hole I’d dug, watching the blue smoke I blew out dissolve in the milky grey mist. There was next to no wind, and all the birds were quiet. The whole world seemed to be sleeping under a thick, soft blanket. I was almost done when there was a rustle and a squirrel suddenly appeared no more than an arm’s length away. It reared up and gave me the beady black eye, and chattered indignantly.
“I’m sorry,” I told the squirrel. It didn’t seem happy with my apology. It gave me the other eye, then bounded away into the mist. It crossed my mind that maybe its home was nearby, and that it didn’t appreciate big, noisy, stupid animals taking a dump by the front entrance. I was sorry that I hadn’t taken along a shortbread or something to leave by way of making amends.
I took extra care to cover up my crime, and went back inside the house for a quick hot shower and did the breakfast routine. It was tiresome, really, shoveling all that food inside just to shit it out the next day. I was getting really sick of the baked beans, I’d eaten enough of them in the past couple of weeks to last me for the rest of my life.
The weak, watery light inspired me to try my hand at a watercolor. I decided to paint my breakfast debris: the plate smudged with sauce and spotted with bread crumbs, the dirty knife and fork crossed in an argument over who’d gotten the bigger share of the food. I scr.a.p.ed out a couple of beans surviving at the bottom of the can and put them next to the warring cutlery, and poured some of my remaining coffee into a small, flat cup and set it down next to the plate. The small dark pool at the bottom of the cup shone faintly with reflected light, and I knew I’d have a hell of a time capturing that reflection. There was a thin gold band running along the rim of the cup too; if I managed to get all that right, it would be one hell of a painting.
Some people drew an outline in hard pencil before painting a watercolor, but I didn’t. I could always see the faint pencil lines later, and they seemed to imply the picture had been painted by a retard who had to follow the dotted line. Getting the shape of the plate and the cup right with just the brush was f.u.c.k.i.n.g difficult. I tore up my first two attempts, hissing with impatience. I took a cigarette break and wondered whether a shot of rye would improve my chances: a bit of alcohol often gave my hand the fluidity of movement required to get something right with a single, decisive stroke. I was about to get the rye bottle when I heard a boot thump on the front porch and froze.
It was Harry. He came in and suddenly the house was full of noise. I wished he hadn’t come. I had been getting on all right in my misty bubble.
He picked up on that right away and I had to lie, explaining that I was trying to paint something and f.u.c.k.i.n.g it up time after time. I asked him how the hell he’d managed to find his way with all that fog outside.
“It’s easy,” he told me. “I went along the shore and reached my landmark and steered directly west to hit the pier. Hey, I’ve got news that will put a smile on that life-is-shit face of yours.”
“Oh yeah?” I said, getting all ready for the news that Chaz had sold a couple of my pieces even before they were put on display.
“Yeah. I tracked the guy that boat, you know, that cruiser is registered to. Bigshot corporate executive. He has two birdbrain teenage sons, one of which is likely the guy that took his pals for a ride in dad’s boat. But I wrote letters to both of them , just in case. Explained what will happen if they go around trying to steal pot from other people. People who get upset easily, and know how to use a gun.”
“Jesus, Harry. That’s heavy. What if the cops trace the letters back to you?”
“They won’t.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“My old man was a cop, man. I know how they work. And I didn’t use the post. I hand-delivered those letters right after dawn today. Had a hell of a time finding the place in this fog. Then I did a bit of shopping, and drove down to the boat at twenty f.u.c.k.i.n.g miles per hour. Man, it’s a real pea-souper today down in the city. No wind, the air stinks so badly you can hardly breathe. It’s a real pleasure to be out here. But hey, you don’t look too pleased. What’s the matter?”
“You need a drink first,” I said, and got it for him. I got myself a drink, too. We sat down and tossed the rye back and lit up and I told him about the visit from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I mentioned that they’d been accompanied by some of the guys from the cruiser, and that one of those guys was called Joey.
“But that’s one of the guys I wrote,” Harry exclaimed. “Joseph Stanton, Esquire.”
“Esquire?”
“Sure. Always pat their ass before applying the boot. More shock value.”
“You don’t seem to be bothered by those cops.”
“I’m not.”
“You realize you’ve got a shed full of illegal drugs?”
“Inadmissible evidence.”
“What?”
“We are living in a civilized country, man,” Harry told me, pouring himself a fresh shot of rye. “A cop needs a search warrant to present anything found as evidence. Search warrants are issued by a judge. Those guys that came here had no grounds to apply for a search warrant. And anyway, if they had one, they’d have just broken down the door. They didn’t. The conversation you’ve just described suggests Joey boy gnawed their asses about you and being the son of a local bigshot, he actually managed to get them to have a look. That’s all there’s to it.”
“You aren’t worried he’s going to run to them with that letter you wrote?”
“No. I typed that letter on a typewriter in the university library. If they bother to trace the typewriter, which they won’t, it’s basically evidence it’s one big hoax. He’ll really get his ass in a sling if he tries to work a number with that letter. The cops will think he wrote it himself, if he’s a student. And even if he isn’t, some of his pals probably are.”
“I need a shot,” I said. I drank it and lit a fresh cigarette and said:
“Harry, how the f.u.c.k did you manage to find all of that out and get it done, too? In the space of a single weekend?”
“You shitting me? It took a total of three, maybe four hours. An hour on Friday with the boat registry and the phone directory, and that includes all the driving. An hour and a half Saturday to get those letters typed. And nearly an hour of driving around in this f.u.c.k.i.n.g fog to find the house. That’s all.”
“You’re f.u.c.k.i.n.g amazing.”
“Thank you. I think I deserve another shot of that excellent rye. And what have you been up to, apart from hiding from cops?”
“I emptied and cleaned the chemical toilet,” I said, giving him the heavy look – after all, I’d been dealing with his shit, too.
“No! My hero! Did you remember to put in fresh powder?”
“Oh shit! No. I don’t even know where you keep it. But you know something, I haven’t used it in the meantime. So everything’s okay.”
“You’ve been shitting in the woods?”
“Yeah.”
“Brave man.”
We swapped wisecracks for a while and then Harry said he needed some shuteye: he’d gotten up that day well before daylight. I told him I’ll deal with the shopping – the bags stood right where he’d dropped them when he entered – and he f.u.c.k.i.e.d off to his room. I had another shot of rye and capped the bottle and put it away before taking it out and pouring myself another shot and putting it away again. I didn’t drink that shot, it was meant as a reward for dealing with the shopping.
The shopping included the weekend edition of the paper. It was called the Sunday Sun and the big news was that the Viet Cong had said they’d stick to a recent peace accord, and stop killing people. I didn’t believe that and neither did the guys in the accompanying photograph, you could see it in their faces. There was nothing at all about Peter Schmidt and the mysterious hitchhiker who might have information the cops would find interesting. Life went on, and I drank to that.
I couldn’t return to painting the breakfast debris; I had cleared them away upon Harry’s arrival. My mood had changed too, I no longer felt all fired up to paint something. So I ended picking up Sabatini’s Scaramouche fairytale. It opened with a good line:
“He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.”
This felt like a good description of myself, except that in my case, it should have ran: he was born with a permanent scowl, etc. In any case I got pulled right into the Scaramouche business. This time around, I was dealing with a lawyer who also happened to be an expert fencer. Captain Blood had been an expert fencer, too. Sabatini seemed to have a soft spot for professional men who were also good at killing other people in a noble manner.
In any case, Scaramouche seemed to be less of a fairytale than Captain Blood. But as I read on, Sabatini just couldn’t help himself and made his hero grow a pair of angel’s wings. He did it well though, well enough for me to become newly aware of my own shoulder blades.
Harry emerged from his room mid-afternoon, bearing a chess set. I batted him away with my paperback, but he kept twisting my arm during dinner. So we had a few games after we’d eaten, and he beat my ass every which way every single time.
“You’re losing on purpose,” he said, after his fifth victory.
“No,” I said. “I’m really doing my best.”
It was the perfect answer, because it was both the truth and a lie. I was doing my best, but just had no inclination to play chess. So my best amounted to very little.
I wanted to get back into my new fairytale.
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