Eureka (25 page)

Great
, thought Russ.
A perfect ending to this lousy goddamned day. Now I’m going to be robbed. Here in the Sunflower State, here at my new home on the range where the buffalo roam, the deer and the antelope play, and the skies are not cloudy all day, here in the Land of Oz, where Judy Garland and Bert Lahr and Jack Haley walked the Yellow Brick Road in no fear
.

“What do you want?” he said into the darkness. “Whatever it is, take it and get out of here. I’m sick as hell, and I need to go to bed.”

“I want one of your Jeeps.”

“You sound familiar. I know you, don’t I? Come out into the light, for chrissake. If you’re going to hijack a Jeep, have the criminal balls to do it out in the open.”

The man stepped into the light about ten yards away. It was Otis Halstead. “Eureka,” Otis said quietly.

“Eureka, my ass!” said Russ in as loud and angry a shout as his condition would permit. “You singing vegetable asshole! I was right about you playing possum!” Russ slid out of the seat, being careful not to step in the puddle of his vomit on the driveway. “Where are you headed?”

“West. Same as before.”

“Got a big sixtieth-birthday blow out planned?”

Otis only smiled.

Russ Tonganoxie did not see himself as a strong or tough guy, but clearly, even in his barfy condition, he could handle Otis. They were about the same stature and muscle size—medium to small, average to weak—but Otis had been mostly in bed for the last several days. That meant he was even weaker than usual. Unless Otis had a weapon of some kind, no problem. A weapon was not likely, unless he had picked up another Red Ryder BB gun somewhere.

“I’m not giving you the keys to this Jeep or any of the others—they’re antiques,” Russ said. “You’re going to have to take them from me by force, and I plan to resist with every ounce of energy I have.”

He didn’t feel sick or tired anymore. He was professionally aroused, curious, ready. This could be fun.

He walked right at Otis, who was dressed in a long-sleeved red-and-white-checked button-down, khaki slacks, and slippers.

“I paid nineteen thousand eight hundred and fifty-seven dollars for this Wrangler,” Russ said as he approached Otis. “It’s top-of-the-line. Soft top and removable side-door curtains for good weather, like now. Hard top for cold weather. Four-wheel drive. Five-speed manual transmission. Four-point-oh-liter, six-cylinder engine. P-225/75-R-15 Goodyear tires—”

“I’ll get you twenty thousand even plus another two thousand—a kind of service charge for wear and tear—as soon as I can. My word is good.”

Russ stopped two yards from Otis, who had made no sign of moving. He was standing his ground.

“Your word sucks, Otis,” said Russ. “You jerk us around and play games with us, acting as if you’re mostly out of it, capable
of only singing like Johnny Mercer.” Changing to a mocking, sneering, half-singing voice, he shimmied, shook his shoulders á la Elvis and said, “‘Do yuh hear that engine down the line? I figure that it’s engine number forty-nine.’ What crap that was. Suckers. You played us for suckers. And you and your word suck.”

Russ turned toward the door of his large garage. He pointed a small electronic device at the door, and it came up, turning on lights and thus illuminating his three other Jeeps inside.

Otis followed Russ into the garage. “Tell me about the Jeeps, Russ.” They were lined up in military formation, not unlike the Cushman King’s scooters up in Nebraska. One hundred and thirty-four and counting.

“That first one there on the left is the real
real
World War Two McCoy,” said Russ. “It’s got the shovel on the side and the extra gas can on the back, as you can see. The windshield folds down. The whole thing weighs only eighteen hundred pounds. Anybody could push it out of a ditch. I bought it from the son of a guy who took it with him when he got out of the army after the war—stole the damned thing, for all I know.

“The next one—the red thing of beauty—is the Jeepster convertible. Slightly longer than the original Jeep. Look at the whitewalls, the chrome on the front. A Jeep, but something very special.

“Then my little red-white-and-blue right-hand-drive postal Jeep. Police also used them for parking-meter duty.”

“How did you get them out here from the East Coast?”

“I drove one out with another hooked behind on a trailer hitch. Then I flew back and got the other two and drove them out the same way. I took different routes each time—both were great trips, one across on 1-70 through Columbus and Indianapolis and Kansas City. The other, longer but prettier, on the old U.S. 50
through the West Virginia mountains, Cincinnati, Vincennes, Indiana.”

“You’re as nuts as I am, you know.”

Russ said nothing and went on toward the far door that led into the house.

Otis said, “Help me, Russ. Playing dumb and out of it, as I’ve been doing, is punishment enough.”

Russ waved him off, walked on, opened the outside and screen doors, and disappeared inside the house.

“If I still had my Red Ryder BB gun, I’d shoot the lights out on all these Jeeps of yours!” Otis shouted after him.

Russ stuck his head out from behind the screen door. “Get your crazy Red Ryder ass in here, and let’s talk about all of this.”

“You’re crazier than I am! Jeeps, motor scooters, what’s the difference?”

“The number of wheels! Jeeps have four, motor scooters have two!”

“Mercer wrote a Jeeps song.” Otis did a little two-step movement with his feet and sang:

Soon Otis and Russ were sitting on stools across from each other at the butcher-block top of a high kitchen table. Otis was talking.

“I started getting better almost from the beginning. I hid it from Mad Severy and everybody else. At the very start, I really was unable to see anybody clearly, to move or talk—that’s really true. But I had my hearing and my wits about me. And slowly,
my vision came back, and I said my one glorious word— ‘Sharon.’ Then ‘Eureka!’—that was for you.”

“Thanks a lot. Sharon. I want to know about her.”

“There’s nothing to know except an unreal fantasy and a real wet dream.”

Russ offered to get Otis something to eat or drink. Otis passed and simply kept talking while Russ poured himself a glass of Diet Coke over ice; his stomach took a pass on anything else.

“I started singing. All the words to the old Mercer tunes came back to me like I had just learned them. I don’t know how or why; they just did. You were right when you said I had no desire to return to the life I had run away from.”

Russ told Otis how they had turned his problem into an official syndrome, one he wanted to call simply “Otis.” He said he should call Mad Severy or somebody at the clinic right now and tell them Otis the Escaped Singer had been found.

No way, said Otis. “They’ll all come over here and try to keep me from running away again. One of the reasons I played possum games was because I didn’t want to recover right back into my old life. I’ve led a deadened life for fifty-nine years—almost sixty—and deadened everyone else’s around me. My family’s, my colleagues’. Look what I did to Pete Wetmore. You call and I go. I’ll literally run away on my own two feet if you won’t give me a Jeep.”

Russ nodded, making no move toward a phone, and asked when Otis had felt really recovered, when and how he had realized he could talk and get up out of bed, walk, and move around.

Otis said, “When I was alone, I spoke only to myself. I had to be careful when I talked, so I spoke quietly, sometimes even in a whisper. At first it was mostly about sneaking to the bathroom. I had to get in and out of there quickly, when I was pretty sure
no nurse or attendant or one of you hotshots was due to visit. I had to learn to leave a little for the bedpan or somebody might wonder why I could go so long without.”

Russ wanted to know how he’d gotten away from the clinic and over here in slippers. They had determined that there was only a set of sport clothes in Otis’s closet. No shoes.

“Hitchhiked. First ride was with a guy delivering bottled water. The second with a Sears catalog credit checker. He had a phone book in his car, and I looked up your address. He dropped me four blocks from here.” Otis stepped down from his stool.

Russ looked at his wristwatch and then, for good measure, at a large round clock over his refrigerator. “It’s almost nine o’clock, and it’s dark as hell out there. This is a stupid time to set out.”

Otis began moving slowly toward the door to the garage.

Russ leaped off his stool and cut Otis off, blocking his way. They ended up under a yard apart.

“Don’t screw with me, Russ. This is my life, my Eureka, we’re talking about here.”

“I had an idea about recording you singing some of the Mercer songs. Call it
Otis Sings Mercer
, something like that. You could finally be what you always wanted to be.”

Otis shook his head. “You’re playing with me, and it won’t work. Get out of the way.”

Russ sprang into a boxer’s crouch. “You’re going to have to punch me out of the way, fella.” He said it in a tone and accent that vaguely resembled that of an Italian mobster.

Otis took a large, forceful step to his left—Russ’s right—and Russ made no move to stop him. “Okay, you win.” Russ reached into his pants pocket and pulled out some keys, pulled one off a ring, and tossed it to Otis. “Take the Wrangler. Can you drive a stick shift?”

A look of wonder and joy came across Otis’s face. “You’re a good man, Russ Tonganoxie. Even if you’re a little wacko. You might want to talk to somebody sometime about your Jeep problem. There must be somebody at Ashland who specializes in treating people who love Jeeps. Yeah, it’s been a while, but I can do stick shift.”

“I’m going with you.”

“What?”

“I’m going to run away, too. I hate this place and everything about it. My brain sucking job sucks. I talk to one guy, Pete Wetmore, and he kills himself. I talk to another—you—and he runs away from home on a motor scooter. Give me a minute to throw some things in a bag. What about money?”

“I have my MasterCard. They left it with my driver’s license on a shelf in the closet. I’ll stop at an ATM somewhere.”

“Me, too, then.”

“What about the other Jeeps?”

“I’ll drive one of them—the old army Jeep. I’ll just leave the other two here for somebody to dispose of. I’ll call Gidney or somebody from the road. They can sell the house, too, and everything in it, and send me a check.”

Russ disappeared down a hallway to his bedroom to throw some clothes and a shaving kit into a suitcase. Within a few minutes, he heard the sound of the Wrangler’s motor outside.

He raced back to the kitchen and to an outside door.

The Wrangler and Otis were gone.

The only sign of them was a handwritten note Otis had left under Russ’s glass of Diet Coke on the kitchen table.

Russ Tonganoxie had never been as full of conflicted thoughts and drives and instincts and desires as he was at this moment.

He could jump in the Fort Benning Jeep and go west after Otis—or go back east.

He could call the police and report his Wrangler stolen by Otis Halstead.

He could call Sally Halstead and tell her that Otis was safe but gone west again.

He could do what Otis had asked—call no one, do nothing, give him a day or two to get lost.

He could carefully parse the emotional words he’d spoken a few minutes ago about hating this place and his job.

He could begin wondering whether he really would have run away with Otis Halstead. Or was it an unconscious professional trick aimed at keeping Otis under supervision, under care, under treatment?

He could just go to bed and try to sleep everything off.

And that was what he did.

His main regret was that he hadn’t asked Otis if he really did know the words to six hundred Johnny Mercer songs.

TIS, MEANWHILE, WAS
approaching the home and fudge factory of Church Key Charlie Blue.