The Kaleidoscope (3 page)

Harold left the man suddenly absorbed in something important on his monitor, and stepped into the hall. He noticed too late that pretty boy Gordon was holding court just outside Clyde’s office, and he wondered how much he might have heard. Harold didn’t have time to turn left and avoid him.

“Good day, Harold Donaldson, how are you this fine afternoon?” Gordon cast green eyes the women called his “go-lights” on Harold. “Did you get a haircut? Your Annie Warbucks ringlets seem more tightly wound than usual today.” Gordon winked at Harold from behind the one lock of bleached blond hair that always fell over his left eye. “If that’s possible.” Once, in the men’s room, Harold saw him in the mirror, arranging the stray, until Gordon caught him watching. “Ladies love the bedhead look, don’t they?” Gordon had clicked his heels, winked at Harold, and sailed out of the restroom, leaving Harold to wet down and pat in place his own unruly waves.

Head down, Harold hugged the opposite wall. “I’m okay.” He hoped Gordon would let him pass without additional comment. The others snickered, and he knew there were innuendoes flying he probably wouldn’t understand even if he could hear them. He just wanted to be left alone.

“I understand Mrs. Donaldson will be back on the market soon.” Gordon’s smug comment was directed more toward the others, as if it was his duty to inform them. “I suppose she’ll be snatched up pretty quickly, though. Right, Harold?”

A couple of them had the decency to act embarrassed, but Harold tried not to react.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Millie Grubbs was one of the only people in the office who ever made an effort to befriend Harold. “I met her once at a holiday party. She seemed…nice. Good luck on the interview, by the way.”

“Thanks. Millie.”

Gordon formed a pistol over her head. He pretended to shoot and blew imaginary smoke from the tip of his barrel finger. “May the best man win, Harry.”

“It’s Harold, if you don’t mind, and good luck to you as well, Gordon.” Gordon said something he couldn’t hear, and a surge of laughter fell over Harold as he slid into his chair out of their sightline.

Gordon continued his performance; probably boasting about a fish he’d wrestled for hours before landing. Harold had a recurring fantasy that Gordon was fighting the line, and imagine his surprise when, wham! A whale pulls him overboard and out to sea.

He tipped two aspirin into his mouth. Harold dry-swallowed and checked the clock, doing his best to shake off Clyde’s well-meaning but off-the-mark observations, and went back to practicing his speech to Rhashan. Employees were allowed to rate each other’s workplace performance, and Harold knew the Rastafarian could fill out an “atta-boy memo,” whose timely arrival into HR could find its way into Harold’s file just in time for the review committee to see before his interview. When Rhashan realized Harold was at the same time helping his own prospects for promotion and his own best interest, the man would surely be inclined to sing Harold’s praises.

With renewed determination to prove his grandma, Georgia, and now Clyde wrong, and show them he was not somehow lacking, he set to his self-devised plan to prove his worth. Calculating he had three minutes to work on Operation Rhashan and fine-tune his delivery of the opening pitch to the committee, he sensed he still had to come up with something else for his bullet list.

What would be the feather in his cap to prove his humanity to the suits who held his fate in their hands?

Chapter Two

Walter rose from his rumpled cot and shuffled to the workbench, painfully aware of the long hours he’d spent on his knees scrubbing the kitchen tiles until long after midnight. Almost a decade had passed since he’d begun working and living at the church, and while the small room had its limitations, he at least could get from his bed to the workbench in three short steps. His custodial job would soon come to an end, and it was good timing because he had stretched and pulled every sinew and tendon to its aching limits. Even his home, St. Mark’s Community Church, was no longer a safe sanctuary. The death knells tolled, prophesying the end of the building whose bones creaked with more sad conviction than Walter’s.

While living downstairs in the structure that had been around since De Mille directed epics beneath the Hollywoodland sign, Walter had persevered through his own endless trials, which took longer because of his equipment—an outdated computer, laughable to programmers pecking and coding elsewhere in the world, and a temperamental Dremel he’d found in a second-hand shop years ago. If he’d toiled in a state-of-the-art laboratory, his invention might have been ready years earlier.

Forced into hiding and sacrificing everything precious to him, Walter had accomplished something the rest of the tech-world vigorously debated was impossible. He’d worked as quickly as his limited resources allowed, but he finally reached his goal.

Now the prototype awaited one final step, and it would be ready for real-world testing. A few more tweaks and the soft launch of which he’d dreamed was within his grasp. He unwound the protective length of fabric from the metal tube and exhaled a breath of adoration and pride. He’d polished the creation until it glimmered in the rays probing down through the high window into his basement workroom-slash-bedroom. He sighted down the shaft. His masterpiece, his swan song, was almost ready for the world.

One more piece of the puzzle, and the technology anticipated, even feared, would be born. If he’d calculated correctly, and Walter was meticulous about calculations, the day’s mail should contain the gem he’d saved and scraped for. Every tip, handout, or penny literally scraped from the gutter had gone into a jar, and last week he’d exchanged the sum for a cashier’s check and placed the order. If this final trial didn’t work, he’d lose everything he’d slaved over. His ideas were running out, his home was about to be razed, and what made the urgency even more crucial, he sensed “they” were about to discover his hiding place.

Flipping the wall calendar over his workbench, Walter circled a date two weeks hence. That would give him sufficient time to install the final part, to test, and make note of his achievement. Perhaps even enjoy it himself before he turned it over to the one who would carry it to the world, who could safely deliver the technology where it would do the most good. It was time to plan the handoff.

The sun’s rays pouring from a high window warmed and loosened Walter’s back muscles. The glint on the shaft of metal, as thick as a Cuban cigar, the length of a number two pencil, gave him more than a few moments of pride he’d not felt since the birth of his long-lost son.

He held the eyepiece up and sighted, spinning the dial. It caught and stuck in place. He wrapped it once again in the cloth, gently rested the device between the jaws of the vise and slowly cranked it shut, stopping at precisely the point where the Kaleidoscope would be held firmly in place, but not harmed by the firm grip. He filed and sprayed, working over the delicate prize until the dial spun like butter and the magnificent colors fell into place.

A freak hailstorm, or something, had damaged the church’s stained glass depiction of Christ the Shepherd. Bits of glass had flown into the sanctuary, and when he swept up the damage, he had an idea.

“May I keep the broken bits?” Walter had asked Father Tucker, glass bits tinkling in his dustpan.

Father Tucker agreed. He gave his handyman freedom in his off hours, and carte blanche access to his office computer to research the project he had fiddled with for years. “Perhaps you could make these as keepsakes for the devoted,” Father Tucker had suggested when he saw the Kaleidoscope beginning to take shape. “God has blessed you with a unique talent.”

So Walter had sifted through the shards and laid them out in shades of garnet red, amber flesh tones from the Lord’s cheek, and sky blue from the cloud-filled heavens. To thank Father for the years of allowing him free passage into his church and computer files, Walter had made an identical kaleidoscope to present to the man who had rescued him from the street, a bedraggled, anonymous face in the soup line years ago. The bits of stained glass tumbled in the chamber, arranging into patterns of exquisite beauty, each tiny piece hand chosen for its color, shape, and clarity, polished and smoothed for hours.

He absently sucked at the knuckle of his right thumb where a tiny sliver of cobalt blue still lodged, testimony of his devotion to the work of art that would carry his legacy into the next age. The twin ’scopes lay side by side. One he would leave behind, and one would go into the world. The world would never be the same.

The Kaleidoscope would usher in a new age.

A savory scent of stewed tomatoes and garlic lured him upstairs, and Walter stood in line with the other street folk for his bowl of chicken soup, garlic toast, and mac and cheese.

“You still here?” A guy calling himself Luke had been a frequent visitor. Walter often shared a bench with him in the relief center over hot meals. “Thought you were headed out of town.”

“Soon.”

“Where you going next?”

Walter shrugged. “I guess I’ll figure out something. Get your tooth fixed?”

Spoon clattering into his bowl, Luke pulled back his lip, exposing an inflamed gap in the gums. Walter held his breath against the foul odor. “Doc wants me to take antibiotics.”

Walter nodded.

“Say, I got an idea. Last few months, before I could get south, I was staying in a house. Not much to speak about, but it’s got a roof and water well. No ’lectric, but you can burn wood in the stove.”

Speaking just loud enough for Luke to hear him over the kitchen clatter, but not so the others nearby could overhear, Walter asked, “Where ’bouts?”

Luke described several turns off a major road in the mountains near Yosemite. “Pretty sure it used to be a logger’s shack. Some of the hikers stop there when the storms catch ’em. Some drugs mebbe, used to be some parties.”

Walter replied noncommittally. Could be a trap. “You not goin’ back?”

“Naw.” Luke lifted a forkful of macaroni. “Been trying to get this far south for years.” He pointed to his cheek. “Been in pain all winter. It’s nice to be where it’s warm and I can get medical.”

“Any land around this cabin? For a garden?”

“Oh, yeah. Acres and acres.” He wiped a sleeve, smearing goo across his chin stubble. “You willing to work it, you might grow something soon as the ground thaws.”

“It safe?”

Luke’s eyes flicked left and right. “I left a shotgun under the floorboards in the bedroom. Jams once in a while, but you take some shells up there and don’t mind a gamble, you can use it to run off the troublemakers.”

Chapter Three

Harold’s alarm went off, and he sensed this Monday was not going to offer the same comforting routine around which he’d shaped his life. At any moment he could receive notice the interview committee was ready for him, and he would need to be prepared. While having his every-other-Saturday haircut, he had come up with an idea to meet Clyde’s challenge. An idea that made his stomach tumble topsy-turvy when he thought of actually going through with it.

Weekends with Georgia had been stressful, but he put up with her notions to keep the peace. He most resented their lack of routine; the pressure to find “wacky, exotic activities” to keep her happy was exhausting. Having his control back was the one good thing about her absence.

Now that she’d left, he was free to follow a weekend schedule that almost rivaled his weekdays. He wrote all chores, categorized either “weekly,” or “monthly,” on a white board on his fridge, then referred to the day’s list before heading out. Following a route he’d mapped out to most efficiently cover the neighborhood, Harold kept his steps to a minimum.

Once a month he rode the bus to a large supermarket for items not carried in the corner market. This particular Saturday included the barber for his customary 3-2-1 buzzcut. Then he refilled his allergy medicine, picked up the dry cleaning, and allowed between twelve and thirteen minutes in produce for bananas and apples, two fruits he found reliable.

His stomach churned as he turned the faucets to start the shower. He’d taken one giant leap toward becoming more “charismatic,” as Clyde had suggested, but the very idea of what he planned made him want to hurl.

Walking past the local church—ironically, the same building Georgia worked to save—Harold had noted the service times. He’d not attended church since he was a kid. Someone kept the walks swept, the small flowerbeds planted with seasonal color. Poor masking for a building badly in need of repair. But Harold’s concern was not for St. Mark’s, but what he might gain for himself.

“Find some way to make yourself more personable.” Clyde’s advice resonated as Harold froze, forcing passersby to step around him while he read the marquee. What better way to connect with people than through the fuzzy world of faith? A management book, picked up from a sidewalk sale, now nestled in his bag and encouraged as much: 
Attending church or temple will increase your chances of being seen as a well-rounded member of your community.

He had almost talked himself out of going, though. Grandma Destiny would not approve. Religion was for the weak-minded, for kooks. “If you can’t touch it or explain it with science, it’s all hocus pocus,” she’d drilled into his head whenever he asked philosophical questions. “It’s all smoke and mirrors, just like a magician’s tricks. Everything can be explained.”

But then he read the sermon topic, which could not have been more appropriate for his quest. Or weirdly ironic.

“When God Became Man: Self-demotion or Selfless Promotion?”

Harold returned for the Sunday service.

“Instead of sending around a plate for your usual offering this week,” Father Tucker announced at the conclusion of the sermon, “keep it. I want you to make a personal connection with someone who may be in real need or even in pain. Step outside your personal comfort zone. If we never see who is out there in need, we develop shells so thick we don’t really feel what other people are going through. Not only may your small gift make a large difference, you might find out something about yourself. Oh, and one more thing.” The priest had stepped away from the altar. “Keep our building in your prayers. Unless a miracle happens, we’ve lost our final appeal to the wrecking balls.”