NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
(Edited 24 Aug. 2015, thanks Francie!)
There’s a wooden ramp leading up from the roadside to Derwent Sloot’s front door in a long gradual planked slope. The wind is gusting fresh and the cold is penetrating in the shade but it is warm as I walk into the early evening sun from the shade of a big redbud in Derwent’s front yard. He is maneuvering his wheelchair out the door. His head is half hidden by the high collar of a red fleece jacket, and he wears a Greek fisherman’s cap with long strings of white hair blowing out from under it. “Hey there! Come up here will you?”
I start up the ramp from the street towards him. “Turn this goddam thing around. It’s new and I can’t deal with it.” He can’t see that one of the big narrow wheels is lodged in a gap between the planks. I push to the right and it comes out without much effort and he turns the chair the rest of the way himself. “What’s your name again?”
“I am Fred, Derwent.”
“Yeah! Fred, I appreciate the help.”
“Do you want to go down to the street?”
“I didn’t come out here to twiddle my thumbs!” I start pushing the chair down the ramp.
“I can do this. Keep your hands off. It’s downhill. Too damn steep if you ask me, but you can’t tell those numbskulls anything. Okay Ted … no … tell me again, what’s your name?”
“Fred”
“Fred, that’s it right? Fred not Ted.”
“You’ve got it.”
“Yeah I’ve got it alright. Damn near broke my back.”
“What happened, Derwent?”
“What happened? What do you think happened?”
“I wouldn’t have asked if I knew.”
“Just look at me … isn’t it obvious that I am old and rotten? … use your eyes Ted.”
“It’s Fred, Derwent.” “Yeah Fred, alright, did I say Ted?”
“You did.”
“Sorry there, Fred. Like I said I am getting old and rotten and fell on the bathroom floor and threw my back out and now I’ve got to wheel around in this chariot and find a horse where I can. I’ve been around here too long … remember too much. Now I’ve got to listen to all this election crap.”
“You don’t have to listen. Turn the set off if you don’t like it.”
“I watch only as much TV as I can stand. That’s not much, some days not at all. There’s still a few newspapers and the Internet to stay informed. We won the right to vote at York Town and now have no idea how to go about it. I voted for Obama, you know. Now I’ve got to make the same mistake again because the alternative is sheer self-destructive insanity. Did you vote for him?”
“What mistake? I voted for him too and don’t think it was a mistake.”
“Yeah of course you did. Living around here with friends like Lou and Bel you must be a liberal of some stripe, or do you call yourself a progressive? That’s what they are now. They think they are progressing. Progressing where? To hell most likely, to a hell full of wealth that belongs to others. Here we are, four years after the great financial collapse. Here’s one of the big mistakes. The president is only now going to investigate the role of fraud in the big financial crash, and its too late. The statute of limitations is about to run out in many cases. Occupy Wall Street, that’s what we get! Did you take part in the occupation?”
“No …”
“You got some sense then. What a goddam travesty … bunch of ragged know-nothing naïve fools saturated with mind rotting media noise! What’s the matter with organizing a movement for God’s sake, instead of sitting there on their cans until the fuzz sweeps them away like trash.” We reach the side of Wicket Street and Derwent turns right towards the long curve that will take us to Bails Lane. “You can start pushing now. My arms are as scrawny as a rag doll’s and about as strong. Now we’ve got a nut case on the Guild here in Fauxmont, that young Boyd Nightingale. His mind was addled by his mother years ago. He’s on the Guild … he’s ON THE GUILD! How the hell did that happen? I know how it happened. I know! Bel fell asleep at the wheel. That’s what happened and she isn’t denying it either. She’s no dummy. She should have made sure there was another nomination for the V.C. besides our boy Boyd.”
“Derwent, I was at the nominating meeting. No other names came up. What could she do? She wasn’t there.”
“I don’t care what goddammed meeting you went to. She couldn’t be there any way. The Chairman has no business at the nominating committee meeting. I’ve served on enough of them to know. She should have acted outside the meeting, and she knows it.”
“I …”
“Yeah Fred, I know you’re new to this Guild we have here, and I can tell you we’ve had it too easy too long. Now here’s Boyd, oh boy! Well Juanita Gomez was probably the only sanity he knew as a child, but what could she do? Lark is as nutty as a fruitcake and energetic as a fast acting poison. She can make an ass of herself fifteen different ways before breakfast, and look at the result: mindless reaction armed with a revolver no less! If that kid doesn’t end up shooting himself he’ll end up in court for manslaughter. I mean he hasn’t got the sense to plan a crime!”
“Dertwent, it is Albrecht who’s got the revolver.”
“Albrecht is the one packing heat?”
“That’s right. He brought it to the Nominating Committee meeting.”
“He brought a weapon? Was Hank Dumpty there?”
“Yes Hank was …”
“He’s lucky Hank didn’t tear that gristly piece of offal into dripping shreds. My god, you don’t want to mess with Hank. I saw him flatten young Charlie Tansley outside the Co-op when Charley tried to throw a punch. That was about ‘64 or five I guess. It took him about as much effort as picking up a shovel, and about as long. I thought Albrecht was more on the ball than Nightingale. His head is as empty as Albrecht’s weapon before they loaded it. Now Boyd is loaded alright. He’s been loaded by that goddam Clean up America movement with slogans and enough other toxic bullshit to pollute the neighborhood. Those people are organized and ready to occupy the attention of all the lost souls in this benighted country and there are herds and herds of them wandering the urban wastes like cattle looking for pasture. You ask that kid his opinion and all you get is a talking point. The same utterance you can hear from any of the political commercials. It’s no more his opinion than it is mine, the poor yawping fool is just a mouth piece.”
“Derwent, do you really think Americans are just a herd of animals?’
“Hell no! God love them, Americans are the salt of the earth.
You remember that song Fred, ‘Little Boxes full of ticky tacky?’”
“I …”
“You may be too young, but ticky tacky is what we’ve got now. Dreamed up by some goddammed brilliant minds too. Those bastards are getting paid by the big money to keep the conservative herds blinded by television, stampeding towards the voting booth in November. Well, so called conservatives. The word is meaningless now, much like ‘liberal’, these are just noises made by scripted talking heads.
Cyber puppets I call them, digitally manipulated, pixel by pixel, right into your home sweet home. I told bel, that Boyd and his buddy Intaglio are the beginning of the end for Fauxmont. ‘You better move fast’ … and she can. Bel is a smart cookie.”
“Yes I …”
“Bel knows how to listen, and everyone else wants to talk. Like me. Yeah! I admit it. I am a loud mouth talking son of a bitch, and she just goes along with me like she’s debriefing an agent or something. That’s why she knows this neighborhood so well. Hey! turn here.” We have reached the turn on to Bails Lane. It is narrow and unpaved. “Mind the rocks, will you!”
“Okay Derwent.”
“We are going to that house there.”
He points down the lane through the avenue of hickories to a house half hidden by purple azaleas. An inchworm floats by on its strand of silk, and settles on his shoulder. It measures its way across the fabric on course to become a geometer moth, arching its back, stretching its front out, then bringing its back end forward to recreate the arch.
“I need to talk some sense to Guderian, about his daughter’s prospects as a chess prodigy.”
“Are they expecting you?”
“They invited me to dinner. How’s that for expecting?”
“Very nice.”
“Very early! I have to eat early because of my stomach. I’ll burn up all night otherwise. They understand about my goddam stomach acid.”
