Forever Odd. Dean Koontz
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once told me that we’re here to eat all the good Mexican food we can,” I reminded him, “and when we’ve had our fill, it’s time to move on.”
“I don’t recollect being taught that in Sunday school,” Chief Porter said. “So it’s possible I’d consumed two or three bottles of Negra Modelo before that theological insight occurred to me.”
“It would be hard to accept a life here in Camp’s End without some bitterness,” I said.
Pico Mundo is a prosperous town. But no degree of prosperity can be sufficient to eliminate all misfortune, and sloth is impervious to opportunity.
Where an owner showed pride in his home, the fresh paint, the upright picket fence, the well-barbered shrubs only emphasized the debris, decay, and dilapidation that characterized the surrounding properties. Each island of order did not offer hope of a community-wide transformation, but instead seemed to be a dike that could not long hold back an inevitably rising tide of chaos.
These mean streets made me uneasy, but though we cruised them for some time, I didn’t feel that we were close to Danny and Simon.
At my suggestion, we headed for a more welcoming neighborhood, and the chief said, “There’s worse lives than those in Camp’s End. Some are even content here. Probably some Camp Enders could teach us a thing or two about happiness.”
“I’m happy,” I assured him.
For a block or so, he didn’t say anything. Then: “You’re at peace, son. There’s a big difference.”
“Which would be what?”
“If you’re still, and if you don’t hope too much, peace will come to you. It’s a grace. But you have to choose happiness.”
“It’s that easy, is it? Just choose?”
“Making the decision to choose isn’t always easy.”
I said, “This sounds like you’ve been thinking too much.”
“We sometimes take refuge in misery, a strange kind of comfort.”
Although he paused, I said nothing.
He continued: “But no matter what happens in life, happiness is there for us, waiting to be embraced.”
“Sir, did this come to you after three bottles of Negra Modelo, or was it four?”
“It must have been three. I never drink as many as four.”
By the time we were circling through the heart of town, I had decided that for whatever reason, psychic magnetism wasn’t working. Maybe I needed to be driving. Maybe the shock from the Taser had temporarily shorted my psychic circuits.
Or maybe Danny was already dead, and subconsciously I resisted being drawn to him, only to find him brutalized.
At my request, at 4:04 A.M. according to the Bank of America clock, Chief Porter pulled to the curb to let me out at the north side of Memorial Park, around which the streets define a town square.
“Looks like I’m not going to be any help with this one,” I said.
In the past, I’ve had reason to suspect that when a situation involves people especially close to me, about whom I have the most intense personal feelings, my gifts do not serve me as well as they do when there is even a slight degree of emotional detachment. Maybe feelings interfere with psychic function, as also might a migraine headache or drunkenness.
Danny Jessup was as close to me as a brother could have been. I loved him.
Assuming that my paranormal talents have a higher source than genetic mutation, perhaps the explanation for uneven function is more profound. This limitation might be for the purpose of preventing the exploitation of these talents toward selfish ends; but more likely, fallibility is meant to keep me humble.
If humility is the lesson, I have learned it well. More than a few days have dawned in which an awareness of my limitations filled me with a gentle resignation that, till afternoon or even twilight, kept me in bed as effectively as would have shackles and hundred-pound lead weights.
As I opened the car door, Chief Porter said, “You sure you don’t want me to drive you home?”
“No, thank you, sir. I’m awake, fully charged, and hungry. I’m going to be the first through the door for breakfast at the Grille.”
“They don’t open till six.”
I got out, bent down, looked in at him. “I’ll sit in the park and feed the pigeons for a while.”
“We don’t have pigeons.”
“Then I’ll feed the pterodactyls.”
“What you’re gonna do is sit in the park and think.”
“No, sir, I promise I won’t.”
I closed the door. The patrol car pulled away from the curb.
After watching the chief drive out of sight, I entered the park, sat on a bench, and broke my promise.
8
AROUND THE TOWN SQUARE, CAST-IRON lampposts, painted black, were crowned with three globes each.
At the center of Memorial Park, a handsome bronze statue of three soldiers—dating from World War II—was usually illuminated, but at the moment it stood in darkness. The spotlight had probably been vandalized.
Recently a small but determined group of citizens had been demanding that the statue be replaced, on the grounds that it was militaristic. They wanted Memorial Park to memorialize a man of peace.
The suggestions for the subject of the new memorial ranged from Gandhi to Woodrow Wilson, to Yasir Arafat.
Someone had proposed that a statue of Gandhi should be modeled after Ben Kingsley, who had played the great man in the movie. Then perhaps the actor could be induced to be present at the unveiling.
This had led Terri Stambaugh, my friend and the owner of the Grille, to suggest that a statue of Gandhi should be modeled after Brad Pitt in the hope that he would then attend the ceremony, which would be a big deal by Pico Mundo standards.
At the same town meeting, Ozzie Boone had offered himself as the subject of the memorial. “Men of my formidable diameter are never sent to war,” he said, “and if everyone were as fat as I am, there could be no armies.”
Some had taken this as mockery, but others had found merit in the idea.
Perhaps someday the current statue will be replaced by one of a very fat Gandhi modeled after Johnny Depp, but for the moment, the soldiers remain. In darkness.
Old jacarandas, drenched with purple flowers come spring, line the main streets downtown, but Memorial Park boasts magnificent phoenix palms; under the fronds of one, I settled on a bench, facing the street. The nearest street lamp was not near, and the tree shaded me from the increasingly ruddy moonlight.
Although I sat in gloom, Elvis found me. He materialized in the act of sitting beside me.
He was dressed in an army uniform dating from the late 1950s. I can’t say with any authority whether it was actually a uniform from his service in the military or if it might have been a costume that he wore in G.I. Blues, which had been filmed, edited, and released within five months of his leaving the army in 1960.
All the other lingering dead of my acquaintance appear in the clothes in which they died. Only Elvis manifests in whatever wardrobe he fancies at the moment.
Perhaps he meant to express solidarity with those who wished to preserve the statue of the soldiers. Or he just thought he looked cool in army khaki, which he did.
Few people have lived so publicly that their lives can reliably be chronicled day by day. Elvis is one of those.
Because