The Kaleidoscope (16 page)

Harold’s fingers struck the smooth metal. “Found it.”

“What is that?” Vince’s focus followed the ’scope into Harold’s breast pocket. “Is that a kaleidoscope?”

“Yes, want it, too?” He was only half kidding.

“No, man, I don’t need more weight. But can I see?”

Harold hesitated, but since he looked so eager, he handed it over since he didn’t really have a credible reason not to. Or that would make sense if he tried to explain. Vince examined the device gingerly, as if it was a baby bird. He aimed it at a gap in the high branches, and twirled, sighting, his lips parting the beard, tongue at the corner of his mouth. A fraction of a second later, his blue eyes brimmed, his voice had gone soft. “Dude.” Turning the eyepiece toward Harold, he pushed it toward him, insistent. “Look!”

Harold knew whatever Vince had seen wouldn’t appear to him. “You’ll have to tell me what you saw.”

“It’s my mom, and she’s healthy.” Vince peered into it again, but spun the dial in vain. “I almost didn’t recognize her because she was so thin. It’s gone now.” He lowered the ’scope to examine it from both ends. “How does this work?” He handed it back. “And why is it heating up?”

“Not sure.”

“Is that thing magic or something?”

“Yeah. I guess it is.” It was the first time Harold had admitted there was something he couldn’t explain.

“Dude.” Vince almost whispered, reverent.

Harold shrugged, got to his feet and tucked the ’scope back in his trouser pocket.

A pickup truck slowed across the street and they both turned.

“Headed to town, anyone need a lift?” The driver thumbed into the bed, and Vince waved, then scrambled to sling his pack over his shoulder.

Harold was surprised how fast he moved, considering the heft of the pack.

“Good luck finding your friend’s cousin.” Vince sprinted to the edge of the road, pausing to wait for a break in traffic.

Still barefoot, Harold leaned against the tree and yelled, “Hope your mom’s okay!”

Vince dashed behind a passing car across the street to catch the ride. He swung off his pack and a couple of other riders lifted it into the bed. When he’d climbed in, Vince cupped his mouth and called to Harold, “I forgot, if you go to that cabin, the password is cats in—” but was cut off just as a logging truck roared past.

“What?”

Vince repeated himself as the truck pulled away, but Harold was lousy at lip reading. A pinecone pierced his still bare foot as he tried to move closer to the road, but it was too late because the pickup had sped off, Vince waving from his perch on the wheel well. Harold slid a foot into his shoe. Without socks, the rough interior scraped his tender skin.

“ ‘Cats in’ what?” He looked over at Glenda as he retied his boots. “What did he say? Look for a cat hotel? Cat house? Old lady with cats?”

****

“The owner didn’t have much to say.” Pepper told him when she emerged from inside, followed by Morrie. Harold was rummaging in the car for his rubber flip-flops. “What are you doing?” She watched him take off his boots. “Where are your socks?”

Harold told them about Vince and the sock exchange.

“That was nice of you,” Pepper told him when they got back in the car. “The manager promised to call us if he sees anyone matching Joseph’s description, but he wasn’t really any help.” She aimed the car back toward town and they idled, waiting for a rumble of motorcycles to pass. “I hate to admit we’re kind of running into dead ends.”

Harold knew he was going to regret what he was about to say. “I may have a lead.”

Pepper’s gaze met his in the rearview mirror. “You do?”

He told them about Vince’s suggestion. “But this squatter sounds dangerous. We should ask the sheriff to go out there with us.” He reconsidered. “Never mind. Without any more to go on than that, they’ll think we’re nuts—” He pointed right.

“We don’t have time to go into town, find a cop, and convince them we want help questioning the local off-the-grid population.” Pepper turned the wheel in the direction Harold had indicated. “Besides, it’s not going to hurt to ask a few more places.”

“It could be dangerous.” Harold worried the squatter would shoot them dead and bury them all in the woods.

“He’s not going to shoot a half bald girl in a skirt.”

Morrie nodded, but Harold doubted he really understood the ramifications of what Pepper was suggesting.

Harold told them, “He tried to give me a password, but I only heard part of it. I think that’s what he said.”

“What is it?” Pepper coaxed. “What did you hear?”

“Cats in. But now that I think about it, maybe he was saying it’s a cat house.”

“Huh?” Pepper flicked on the turn signal. “What are you talking about?”

“Prostitutes.”

“That’s what you got from that?” Pepper leaned forward to get a better angle on the road. “Or maybe he meant there were lots of cats in the house? Were you sneezing, Harold? He could have been warning you about your allergies. Or”—now she was on a roll—“he has lots of cats in heat.” She giggled. “This should be fun. A crazy old guy living in the woods with dozens of cats. Take your medicine, Harold.”

She aimed the car down the road toward their ultimate doom as Harold searched his pockets for an allergy pill. They wound up the mountain road and found the turns that led them up to the horrible place Vince had described. The yard was just lumps of weeds and muddy patches, and the proverbial rusty washing machine listed sideways on the porch. The only deviation was a small vegetable garden laid out in straight rows. It was weeded, well-watered, and lush. Beyond that, the place could have been abandoned.

“Hello? Is anyone home?” Pepper insisted, and Harold didn’t really argue much, that he and Morrie should wait in the car while she got out of the car alone to approach whoever was in the cabin. A woman by herself would be less threatening, she said. Harold hoped she was right. She walked a few feet toward the house, but no one emerged.

“I don’t see any cats.” Pepper stepped back to the car. “Just a lot of crap piled up.”

Someone had nailed plywood over sections of the tin roof. The ancient clapboards’ paint was singed and cracked, and spindly columns of split logs held up corrugated aluminum over a makeshift porch. Burlap flapped from an open window next to a screen door that had been badly repaired with fishing line.

The sun had dropped behind a dense stand of pine and fir trees, and even though it was still early afternoon, the clearing was close, dim, and growing colder by the minute. “I’m just looking for some help finding the main road!” Pepper opened the door, but before she got back in, shouted, “Ollie Ollie oxen free!” She shrugged, and started to get back in the car.

“Wait!” Morrie said. “Movement!”

Harold was about to jump out and wrestle Pepper back in the car so they could put this behind them and laugh about the time they almost got their heads shot off by a recluse in the jungle when he saw it, too. An icy thread of fear laced his bowels into knots. “Let’s just go, Pepper. This is crazy.” He’d never prayed, but he considered doing it now if it would convince her to leave.

“Wait, I see someone.”

A deep voice challenged them from behind the torn screen door. “What do you want?”

Pepper glanced into the car, and Harold hoped she’d get back in, but she wasn’t giving up. “I…we got lost. Can we get some help?”

The door smacked open, and a bear of a man, head wrapped in a soiled kerchief, stepped onto the porch. “We’re not buying what yer sellin’, and we’re not listening to yer religion pitch.” He gestured with the business end of a shotgun. “Now git.”

“I’m not here for any of that, I promise. My name’s Pepper and I need your help finding someone.” She flicked off her scarf revealing her bald head.

“Thought you said you were lost.”

“Um. Please? My friend’s anxious to find his cousin, who has been missing and we have on good authority…”

Harold winced at the white lie, and suddenly remembered their friend. He blurted, “Tell him Vince sent us!”

Pepper heard him. “Our mutual friend, Vince, tells us that you may be able to assist us—”

“Don’t know no Vince.”

“Get back in, Pepper. Let’s get out of here,” Harold urged. He was dizzy with fear.

The man moved down a crumbling block of stairs. In a matter of seconds, he’d be well within shooting range. His salt and pepper grizzled beard blended into seaweed-like brows over piercing, angry eyes.

“I gotta pee.” Morrie yanked open the door, and slunk away, disappearing behind a tangled hedgerow before Harold could protest.

The shotgun swung toward the commotion, and Harold shouted out the open window. “Tell him the password!” His heart was thrumming in his ears.

Pepper lifted the scarf as if it were a white flag of surrender. “Does the word ‘catsin’ mean anything to you?” Unassuming and nonthreatening, she was the most beautiful thing Harold had ever seen. And her bravery outshone his, as he still cowered in the car, ready to jump into the driver’s seat and tear away from the danger. If he only knew how to put the car in gear.

The grizzled man continued on final approach toward her, first aiming at her, then at the car. Harold feared they were all going to die. He hadn’t expected to go like this, but what could be done? Maybe Morrie had run for help, and they’d be rescued before they were carved into little pieces and planted in the meticulous garden, oddly out of place in the otherwise overgrown yard.

The man wasn’t really that much taller than Pepper, but his face read fury at them for invading his compound.

Harold could no longer hear, but the man’s manner seemed to change as she talked, his attention rapt on her upturned face. When the shotgun finally lowered and she stepped closer to him, Harold could almost feel her delicate fingers on his own arm, a butterfly’s touch, her breath warm and sweet.

Glenda began a low whine. Morrie still hadn’t returned.

From the softening expression on the guy’s face, Harold knew she was working her charm. In a moment, the man’s posture also visibly relaxed, and he turned around, headed back to the cabin. Pepper motioned to Harold to get out, beckoning urgently.

Glenda jumped from the car as soon as the door opened. Harold would have preferred waiting for Morrie, but Pepper was already following the guy past steel drums amid overgrown weeds. A couple of sheds in various stages of falling down huddled a few yards from the structure built of logs. The cabin had been repeatedly repaired with peeling plywood, and its windowpanes were either cracked or missing completely.

Their reluctant host stopped as the dog ran up to him.

Harold hissed, “Sit, Glenda,” under his breath, but instead of walloping her snout away when she began snuffling up his leg, the dog broke the last bit of the man’s wary caution.

When she bumped his crotch, the mountain man laid the shotgun across a drum and cuddled her head in his hammie fists. “Come inside, and I’ll get your doggie a drink of water.”

Harold shoved trembling hands deep in his pockets to still them, and wrapped his fingers around the Kaleidoscope. He’d almost forgotten about the object in the face of death, and now found it oddly comforting.

Inside, banging from behind a thin wall continued for a few awkward moments as they stood inside the door. The shanty’s decades of history was revealed in peeling layers of wallpaper and retro shades of faded paint. A jumble of mismatched, worn, and torn furniture that made side-of-the-road castoffs seem appealing were huddled around a wood-burning stove. The bare floor was of rough wood and needed a good sweeping. Along the far wall was a closed door, presumably to the bedroom or hallway, next to a bookshelf crammed with torn and worn paperbacks.

Their host came around the corner with a pie tin grasped in his thick fingers. When he saw Morrie, who had stepped inside behind Harold, he froze. Water sloshed out and onto Pepper, who knocked back into Harold.

“Gus, these are my friends, Harry and Morrie.” Pepper wiped at her wet thighs, introducing them as if they were at cotillion and not standing in the most appallingly filthy hovel this side of Fresno. “Our host has offered us iced tea, isn’t that nice?”

Gus’s wizened face remained stony. “Where did you come from?” He leveled a glare at Morrie, who cowered behind Harold.

“Gus, Morrie is our friend, and he’s the one who is searching for his cousin.” Pepper brushed at her arm. “Do you have a towel or something I can use to dry off?” Water had dripped down her leg in a dark trail. Glenda took a tentative taste of the water and wagged her tail without drinking.

Gus grabbed a rag off a hook and sniffed. He must have been satisfied it was reasonably clean because he handed it to Pepper, who dried her arm and leg.

“Sit,” their reluctant host ordered, and they promptly obeyed, pulling out chairs from a small, round wooden table. Gus clattered around again, this time rinsing out mismatched glasses and pouring murky brown liquid in them. They could see into the kitchen from their chairs at the table.

Even the dog was sitting, watching him, and when she glanced at Harold, he narrowed his eyes at her.
You sit when
he
tells you to?

He turned his attention to the recluse, trying to recall the management book’s chapter on personality types. Perhaps he was more comfortable in smaller groups. Pepper’s magic had worn off, and the gruff demeanor had returned as he banged around, knocking into the plywood and peeling cabinets.

Avoid causing aggression by averting eye contact while maintaining confident posture.

Or was that instruction from the forest service pamphlet on how to act if you encounter a bear in the woods?

Finally, Gus pulled out a chair to join them at the table so scratched and carved with lewd drawings and unreadable graffiti that Harold couldn’t tell what the original wood grain had been.

Compelled to fill in the blanks regarding the password fail, Harold ventured, without looking directly at Gus. “I met a guy down the road. He told me about you…and…he goes by Popcorn.” He knew he was rambling, but no one stopped him, so he kept going. “I think he wanted to tell me a password but a truck going by drowned him out.”