Bombed Read online

  He started doing that, and every once in a while a title caught his eye. He would pull the book out, read a little of it, and then sometimes put it back. Or he would sit down on the worn carpeting to read for quite a while. This wasn’t the sort of bookstore that had reading chairs. He was slowly accumulating a small stack of books to buy and so absorbed in this that a couple of other men had probably been in the store for some time before he noticed them. But eventually he did notice these men wandering the aisles much like himself, except they spoke to each other sometimes.

  Then one of them spoke to him. “That’s definitely an antidote,” said the man, pointing to what Michael was reading at the time. “It’s books like that one that will help us fight Operation Simplify Thought.”

  “Yeah, there’s nothing simple about that book,” the other one said. “And just look how many pages it has. So it’s going to help defeat Operation Reduced Expectations too.”

  This was disconcerting, having these strangers speak to him, and Michael’s first response was to get up from where he’d been sitting on the floor and walk away as if he hadn’t heard them. Still, he had heard them, so even as he was walking away, he was also intrigued. The first man walked along with him and said, “Come on over to the next aisle. There’s a book over there that explains Operation Collective Division.”

  “Yeah,” said the second one. “Shows how all those different divisions collect, you know. It’s a complicated plan, so complicated it might even conflict with Operation Simplify Thought.”

  “But I don’t think they care,” Michael was drawn to say. “Sometimes I think they must have an Operation Inconsistency too, just to confuse us, just to keep us from seeing what they’re really trying to do.”

  “You got that right,” said the second one who was a little shorter than the first. “I knew you were one of us.”

  “One of you?” Michael had never thought he was one of anything.

  “One of the people who knows about these secret operations,” the taller one explained.

  “And we’re anti them,” the shorter one said. “Yeah, we’re the anties. No, that’s not right. We’re not a bunch of old ladies.”

  “Do we have to have a name?” Michael asked. He was beginning to wish he’d never spoken to these men. They’d followed him to the end of that aisle and now had him backed up against the wall with one on each side of him.

  “No, we don’t need a name,” said the taller of the two. “Unless you’d like us to have one?”

  Michael could only shake his head. Why would this man ask him?

  “But we’re more of a movement than an organization,” said the man. “Grass roots, you know. Bottom up, not top down.”

  At least Michael could agree to that. “Sometimes I think it’s top down that causes all the problems,” he said.

  Still, these men were making him nervous. Just about everyone made him nervous, of course, but these men, not only did they sort of have him trapped here against this wall, they were much younger than he, closer to Annie’s age, and they were tough-looking. They weren’t especially tall. Even the taller of the two wasn’t as tall as Michael, but they seemed more substantial, completely filling the space around him. They looked like they lifted weights. In fact, they looked like wrestlers, not the WWF kind but more like the ones on college teams who grunt and sweat while hardly moving at all until one of them goes down. They had those kinds of necks, ones that were as big around as their heads. They had those kinds of shoulders and hardly any hair. The one who had spoken first had completely shaved his head, and the other one’s hair was military short. The bald one wore a camo vest with all sorts of pockets over a black T-shirt that stretched tight around his arms, and the other wore a khaki T-shirt that was also tight on his bulging arms, plus long, baggy shorts with a lot of pockets. They both seemed to have a fondness for pockets. And mean-looking tattoos. They were definitely not the sort of men Michael would have ever expected to have congenial dealings with.

  But the bald and slightly taller one smiled in what seemed a congenial way. “What a coincidence,” he said. “Us meeting you here.”

  Which caught Michael’s attention, because he didn’t believe in coincidences except in the sense of the Cosmic Coincidence Control Center as described by John Lilly.

  “Yeah,” said the one with the military hair whose neck was probably the thicker of the two. “We’ve always wanted to meet you, Old Red.”

  Michael had already realized they’d been reading the same blogs as he. Now it seemed they were even reading his posts?

  Baldy smiled. “You’re surprised. But we’re fans of yours.”

  “Yeah, big fans,” the other one said.

  Baldy stuck out his hand. “I’m Henry Hale. As in Patrick Henry and Nathan Hale.”

  Michael wasn’t much into shaking hands, or any kind of touching. He hesitated, but then he let the man grip his hand almost painfully. “Were your parents historians?” he asked as soon as he had his hand back.

  The man gave him an odd look and said, “You can call me Hank.”

  Then the other man was gripping his hand. “George Smith. You know, George as in Washington, and Orwell too. Smith like the hero of 1984.”

  Once Michael had retrieved his hand again, he just had to say, “Are you sure? The hero of 1984, was he really named Smith?”

  George Smith did an odd look too. “What do you mean, was it really his name? He’s a fictional character.”

  “So you’d think he’d have a better name,” Michael pointed out.

  In spite of these men’s beefy hands and rather menacing appearance, he was beginning to feel more comfortable with them since this meeting was clearly more than a coincidence. Also, now they’d stepped back a bit. He no longer felt so trapped. In fact, he could have slipped by them into the seclusion of the next aisle, except he was puzzled by the shorter man’s name. “It’s been a long time since I read 1984. Maybe you’re right, but don’t you think a hero should have a stronger name? Like Tyler Durden or Hagbard Celine. Smith, that’s a terrible name. The Smiths are the agents of the Matrix.”

  Smith looked over at Hank as if unsure what to make of this.

  “Smith is fine,” said Hank. Then to Michael he said, “This is such a great coincidence, I say we go next door to the coffee shop to talk some more. Are you okay with that, Old Red?”

  Michael took a moment to consider this, but it felt good to be called by his blogging name. It felt good to meet men who had read what he’d written and seemed to like what he’d said. And it wasn’t as if he’d never been to the coffee shop before. Annie had taken him there a couple of times. He didn’t yet have the feeling that Lisa needed him to hurry home.

  Besides, it might turn out that these men weren’t really strangers at all but friends he’d already met online. They hadn’t said, but one of them could be Daffy Duck.

  “Okay, I could go to the coffee shop. For a little while,” he said.

  Chapter 6

  The ride through the woods was challenging, exhilarating, and exactly what Annie needed right then. There was the smell of the needles and the dirt, the sun flashing through the trees, and the power of the bike under her, bumping through rocks, twisting around tight turns, and roaring up steep hills. There were low branches she had to duck. She had to focus on the trail and the bike. She had to quit thinking about anything else.

  But then she reached Russ and Char’s. There they were a little way from their house, down by their pond, and it was time to deal with the fact that she’d been chased by a Porsche Cayenne.

  They waved to her but kept tossing branches onto a pile that was taller than either of them. She swung off the bike, pulled off her helmet, sloughed out of her jacket, hung those things on the bike, and went on down to them, this couple who had been such close friends of her parents they’d often taken care of her when her folks had been off doing their airplane scheme. She thought of them as practically a second set of parents, the only ones she had now
.

  What would they do about the Cayenne?

  They’d quit adding branches to the pile. Char had stepped back, and Russ was crouched beside it. Char greeted Annie with a hug that was still strong in spite of the way age had sharpened and deepened her face.

  Russ only nodded and grinned. “Too busy for hugs,” he said. He was blowing on a weak flame at the edge of the pile. Then he picked up a jug with a sprayer on it. He sprayed the tiny flame, and it flared up. He kept spraying the edge of the pile, wielding the sprayer like an assault rifle, whooping and cheering as the fire leaped along the line of spray.

  “He’s always been kind of a pyromaniac,” said Char. Her voice was perfectly calm, but she stepped further back.

  Annie stepped back with her. “Every time I see this, I think he’s going to kill himself.” But she knew Russ wasn’t as stupid as he looked. The spray was only diesel, and eventually he set down the jug a sane distance from the fire. He danced over to her and caught her up in a hug that smelled of pitch, wood smoke, and the diesel.

  “We were beginning to think you weren’t coming today,” he said.

  “We thought we might’ve got the date wrong,” said Char.

  “The reason I’m late,” Annie began, now that they were both with her—but already Russ was grabbing up the jug again. Because the fire had begun to shrink and go dark. So she had to wait some more while he went back to spraying and whooping until the flames looked as if they might singe his scruffy gray beard.

  Finally the fire began to suck air on its own. He came to stand by her again, and they all stepped further back as the needles flared, the branches caught, and the fire threw more and more heat.

  “Guess I’m kind of a pyromaniac too,” said Char.

  Annie wouldn’t have described herself that way, but she did feel almost mesmerized as the branches turned black, then crusted white, and the center became a red inferno. She stared deep into the shifting patterns of red, black, white, and gold as if they might help her figure out what to do about the Cayenne.

  “I’m late because I was followed,” she said.

  Russ and Char both turned to her. “Are you sure?” said Russ.

  “No doubt. I led him down by the river. He chased me up that gravel road. I lost him by cutting into the woods. It was good I was on the bike. He had a Porsche Cayenne. He would’ve run me down in my Subaru.”

  “Was that what he wanted? To catch you?” asked Char.

  “Why? That doesn’t make sense.” No, anybody could find her just about any time, at her home, or at the Caterpillar Lounge, or at the old barn where she rented practice space for the band. “He had to be hoping I’d lead him to you. He tried to stay back where I couldn’t see him, but once I left town he couldn’t stay very far back without losing me. In fact, he was parked on my street when I rode out. I never got a good look at him through the windshield, but he’d been waiting there, watching for me.”

  “Whoops!” said Russ. “More pressing matters at hand.”

  The fire had grown so hot it had caught the duff on the ground. It was burning outward along the ground in scallops of flickering flames. Russ picked up a McLeod that had been leaning against a tree and started pounding out the flames on the ground. Char grabbed another McLeod. They worked efficiently but not as if they were worried the fire would get out of control. Annie would have helped if she’d thought it might, even though there were only two McLeods.

  So she just had to go back to waiting and watch them work, Russ with his scruffy beard and a faded red baseball cap, Char with her gray-streaked hair hanging in a long ponytail down her back, both of them in jeans and T-shirts that most people would have discarded for rags years ago. If you saw them on a city street, you might think they were homeless.

  But they had to have a fortune saved up by now.

  Sometimes they got to stomping on the same tiny flame and laughed when they got in each other’s way. At one point Char challenged Russ to a sword fight with the McLeods, which were fairly vicious-looking since one edge of the hoe-like things was sharp and the other forked. They’d never had any kids of their own which was why, according to Annie’s folks, they’d never completely grown up.

  Soon there was just a circle of charred duff around the fire, and the only flames were the ones consuming the pile, safely trapped within that black barrier.

  “Man triumphs over fire again!” shouted Russ.

  “Woman too,” Char corrected.

  “Man is inclusive. Everybody knows that. Except when we’re talking about the creation of the world, and then God made man first.”

  Char took another swipe at him with her McLeod. He dodged and conceded, “But God made a big mistake that day, so He immediately corrected it.”

  She turned away as if satisfied.

  “Then there were two of mankind,” he added. “One with a very devious brain and no balls.”

  He was already running for the house when Char started to give chase, so she went only a few threatening steps before turning back to Annie. “Did you have a good tour?” she asked.

  “It was great, but . . . don’t you think this is important? Someone tried to follow me here!”

  “You lost him, right?”

  “Yeah . . . but . . .”

  “I need water,” said Char. “Maybe that’s Russ’s problem too. He can get ornery when he’s dehydrated,” and she headed for the house.

  So Annie fell into step with her, but this was beginning to get frustrating. Maybe Char and Russ were too childlike, or lived in some kind of fantasy world. Here they were way out in the woods in a tiny cabin that had only a wood stove for heat. When the temperature dropped to zero and below, which it often did up here, they had to stoke that stove through the night or their water would freeze. They spent most of the winter shoveling snow, and there was always a month or more when the only way in or out of here was with skis or a snowmobile.

  It was as if real world things—whether it was the possibility that one of them might need to get to a hospital some winter night or the fact that someone had traced her to them—they refused to take anything like that seriously.

  By the time Annie and Char had reached the house, Russ had coffee brewing and was slicing cinnamon bread. He jumped in mock fear when he saw Char. “Please, don’t hit me. See, I’m repentant, I’m making cinnamon bread.”

  “I believe I was the one who made this cinnamon bread,” said Char.

  “But I’m slicing it. I’m putting butter on it. And you have to admit,” he added with a wink at Annie, “men are upstanding while women, well, women are hollow.”

  Char ignored this, probably because she’d heard the joke many times. She filled three glasses with water. Annie took one and drank it down. She was thirsty too after the ride out here, and the well water was delicious, not a word she often used to describe water.

  But then she had to try again. “This guy was driving a Porsche Cayenne. That means he either has money or he was hired by someone who does. Would the DEA use a car like that?”

  “Oh, sure,” said Russ. “They’ll spend millions putting together a buy so they can trap some schmuck.”

  “And they get to seize a lot of cool cars,” said Char.

  “So that’s probably who it was. And isn’t it time the two of you quit anyway? Don’t most people your age retire?” Annie said this while trying not to think about what it would mean for her and her band if they quit.

  But that guy had been right on her street!

  Char only laughed. “Before you retire, don’t you first have to have a job?” She carried the plate of bread out onto the porch.

  “You can’t be needing the money anymore,” Annie said.

  “Oh, Annie, we’ve never done it for the money,” said Russ. He handed a cup of coffee to her, took one for himself and settled into an Adirondack chair on the porch. “We wanted to make the world a better place. Make love not war. Peace, my child.” He’d taken off his boots. Now he wriggled a toe through a h
ole in his sock and flashed her the peace sign.

  Char was already cracking up. “That is such bullshit on a stick. Fresh steaming bullshit.”

  “Peace to you too,” said Russ, flashing her a peace sign that he quickly transformed by turning his hand around and curling his index finger down.

  “No, it’s true,” Annie said. “I think you have felt that way, that you were doing something good.”

  “You do?” Russ turned to Char. “Whatever gave her a silly idea like that?”

  “My parents said—”

  “Your parents were idealists. We’ve been more . . .” He looked to Char again.

  “Freebooters,” she suggested.

  “Right, pirates,” Russ agreed. “Or pranksters, as in the Merry Pranksters.”

  “And chemists,” said Char.

  “Definitely that. Mad chemists who are involved in some nifty experiments.”

  “But only on willing subjects,” said Char.

  “Come on,” said Annie, taking a slice of the bread and one of the Adirondack chairs for herself. “Enough of the comedy routine.”

  “And our experiments, well, we can’t really say they’ve worked out exactly as hoped,” said Russ, totally ignoring her attempt to get them back on track.

  “You see, that’s what’s wrong with your idea about making the world a better place,” said Char. “Just look around. The world is not a better place.”

  Russ shrugged and gazed out toward the fire. “Some things are better. I rather like the way we cleaned up those two bug-killed trees.”

  Annie looked out at the fire too, and the reflection of it glowing in the pond. It was such an idyllic place it was hard for even her to believe anything could ruin it. And then Char said, “I’d like to hear all about your tour.”

  So, reluctantly at first, Annie told them about the tour, and there had been some real highlights. She’d done a radio show where the interviewer had actually known many of her songs. Plus there had been several nights when everything had clicked, when Gary seemed to pull passion, not just notes, from his guitar, Buzzard didn’t miss a beat, Mercedes added just the right accents, and Annie was able to perform with the precision of all her practicing and yet not the way she’d practiced the songs at all, because the music pulsed from her through the crowd and then swelled back to her becoming so much more. She found herself slipping into the memories of those great times and just enjoying sitting here with the woods and the pond and the homemade bread, sharing those memories with dear friends.