Nobody Bats a Thousand (16 page)

The map was crude but detailed enough that Bill could tell Bringham lived in the short hills behind Little Town Lake, a huge reservoir behind Friar Dam twenty miles north of town.

Once they were off the short m
id-city freeway, past the newest sprawl of
suburbia, and into the wide-open area of farming and grazing land, the road changed to a two-lane road of long gently rising curves.  Bill, listening to Mozart performed by a string quartet, kept the Buick at a smooth pace, several miles below the speed limit.  Mary Jean, staring through the windshield, trying to appear calm, was in fact a silent raging mass of anxiety.  She didn’t talk for fear the distraction would slow Bill even more, but she wished she had something she could say that would light a fire under his ass and get him to speed up. Every time they came around a curve or up a rise, and she could see the huge dam towering in the distance, she felt like leaning over and stomping on the accelerator pedal to help shoot them to their destination, to dissolve the morbid anticipation, to find out if this trip was another dead-end or a lucky detour to pure happiness.

Finally they went through the tiny town of Friar then past the dam and the entrance to the lake, continuing on and up toward the short vacant hills which surrounded the backside of the reservoir.

Bill checked the map then made a sharp left onto a narrow road so steep it seemed almost vertical for over a mile. Once the road leveled it began a series of treacherous turns, which Bill navigated with one eye on the road and one on the map. He slowed to a stop.

“I think it’s back there,” he said. After backing up about fifty yards, he turned into a dirt driveway and past a raised electronic gate. He stopped and checked the address, posted on the top railing of a weary, wooden corral fence, against his written directions.  “This is it, but I don’t believe it.”

“What?”

“Well look. That’s the only thing here. I find it hard to believe one of the richest guys in the whole valley is living in an old, beat-up, single-wide trailer.”

“They say he’s eccentric.”

“Because he’s rich.
  If you’re poor they just call you crazy.”

Bill slowly drove the Buick toward the trailer then stopped as they were quickly surrounded by half a dozen yapping dogs, all different makes, sizes and models.  Mary Jean began to freak. Her arms and legs tightened towards her chest as she slid away from the door to the middle of the bench seat.

“Let me guess. You are afraid of dogs.”

“Terrified!”

Bill shook his head as he switched off the engine. “Why is it whenever I take you anywhere there always comes a time when I wished I hadn’t?”

“How was I supposed to know he had a goddamn zoo up here?” Mary Jean said, and just as she finished, she noticed Hoyt Bringham exiting his trailer, advancing toward the car. She recognized him, the same white hair and thin build but something seemed different. At first she thought it was the black sweat suit and white sneakers he was wearing instead of the tailored suits she had always seen him in before. But that wasn’t all of it. She didn’t remember him seeming so loose and athletic, and the bright generous smile he wore seemed as alien to him as the planet Neptune.

Bill got out and met Bringham just in front of the Buick where they shook hands while the pack of dogs circled them. After a short conversation, Bringham looked straight through the windshield at Mary Jean. His smile widened. He said something else to Bill then came around to the passenger side of the car and motioned for MJ to roll down the window. She couldn’t; power windows with the engine cut. Bringham opened her door just a
crack,
and Mary Jean slid closer to the steering wheel.

“Young lady, I understand you have a fear of dogs,” he said to MJ who nodded like a wounded mute. “I want you to realize this is the
perfect
time to conquer that fear.  These mutts wouldn’t hurt a fly. They are probably more afraid of you biting them than you should be of them biting you.” He opened the car door wider, reached in and offered his hand. “Come on young
lady,
let’s take that first big step.  I guarantee you’ll be glad you did.”

After a little hesitation she took his hand. After another little pause she began to slide across the seat to exit the car, unsure of her sudden surge of courage, unsure of the sudden feeling of trust she felt, other than she was somehow automatically drawn to this man with the bright smile and exuberant stare from the same blue eyes she remembered being terse and sinister enough to make her, the most hard-core, seen-it-all waitress in all of Ashland, nervous.

“Leave her alone,” Bringham said to his pack of hounds, and they did, and soon MJ and Bill were inside the trailer, seated next to each other on a large, soft, leather sofa, which seemed to take up half the small room.

Bringham sat near them in a comfortable-looking overstuffed chair angled to face a small television next to the leather couch.

Bill introduced Mary Jean to Bringham.

“
It’s my pleasure young lady.
” Bringham stared at her. “But I have the feeling we have met before.”

“I waitressed at the
Blue Lantern
for two years and at
Lugi’s
for three. I’ve served you many times.”

“Not the most pleasant experience, I’m sure.”

“Well,
ahhh
…”

“No need to be kind. Back then I was a mean, vengeful, and very demanding person. I don’t think I
really wanted to be, I just was. B
ut I tipped well, didn’t I?”

“Not bad.”

“Well.” He smiled. “At least that’s something.
And you Bill, how long since we did business together?
Five?
Six years?”

“More like seven or eight.”

Bringham leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. “That was back when I still was convinced the world revolved around me. When I was entrenched in my empire and surrounded b
y all the commotion and chaos.” H
e looked at the pair on the couch. “Controlled chaos, which I thought sustai
ned me, which I thought I loved.” H
e smiled. “Until I came to realize I was just very, very afraid.”

“You?
Afraid?
You certainly never seemed that way to me,” Bill said.
“Afraid of what?”

“Of not having the chaos.
”
A
s Bringham smiled broader his eyes seemed to sparkle. “I was afraid of having to face up to peace and serenity. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was very afraid, and I’m su
re it was that
fear that drove me to be such a madman, such a manic achiever, and such a son of a bitch.”

Bringham looked at Bill, at MJ, then back at Bill. “Oh, I know what you are probably thinking. I know what people are asking, ‘has he gone completely crazy?’, ‘is this Howard Hughes all over again?’, ‘has he turned into a Bible thumping Jesus freak?
’.
  Well, no, no, no, would be the answers. But I see now that I have always been very spiritual but not the ‘leave your mind at the door and pick up your crayons’ type of devotee. My problem with religious fundamentals of any type—Christian, Jewish, Muslim, whatever—besides the fact that their narrow-minded bigotry shuts them off from other doctrines, is they aren’t seeking answers, they’re seeking peace from having to ask questions. But what is life about except questions?
Questions
,
and answers which breed more questions.”

There was an uneasy silence in the room for several seconds before Bringham began again. “I see now that my fanatical need to achieve was handed down to me from my father. Maybe it was a competitive thing, sort of a deranged Oedipus complex. I’m not yet fully sure about that part. But Bill, you and I are from similar backgrounds, and I’ve always been impressed that you avoided all the crap I subjected myself to.”

“For the most part.”

“But I am learning. Like this morning, I spent the better part of an hour extracting all these unsightly ear hairs, which I had never really noticed before.
A superb job don’t you think?” H
e tilted his head side to side and up and down for inspection. “I got a great deal of satisfaction from that, then even a greater sense of exhilaration from the fact that I could gain such a sense of pleasure from such a simple task.”

More moments of strained silence.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Bringham continued. “Here I am rattling on, dominating the conversation. I suppose one tends to do that when one lives in isolation and suddenly comes in contact with other humans.” Just then the sharp sound of two bells came from the opposite end of the trailer. “Oh my, time flies. It’s already time for my medication.”

“Did we come at a bad time?” Bill asked.

“Oh, no, no.
No problem. I won’t let you throw me off my schedule
. Sit tight. I’ll be right back.” H
e rose and walked into the darkness of a room on the far end of the trailer.

Mary Jean looked around the room. There was a small kitchen connected to the tiny living room and sparse furnishings in both rooms. A large color aero photo of the three great pyramids of Egypt was centered on the wall above the TV, but there wasn’t the grand wall-to-wall psycho statement she had expected from someone called the ‘Pyramid Man’, nor was her clock anywhere to be seen.

“I wonder how he got this couch in
here?
”
Bill wondered out loud.

“I think they built around it, but who cares? When are you going to ask him about my clock?”

“
Shhh
…”

Bringham returned carrying a large middle-eastern hookah pipe, which he set directly in front of his chair. He picked up the stem of the pipe, sucked at the mouthpiece as he lit the bowel with a disposable lighter, and then blew a thick cloud of smoke away from Bill and Mary Jean. He smiled, noticing Bill’s expression. “Yes, it’s what you are thinking it is, but it’s perfectly legal my friend. Prop 215. I’ve got two different prescriptions from two different doctors.
One for stress the other for alcoholism.
One bowl three times a day,
I came up with that part myself.” H
e took another hit and released more potent-smelling smoke. “I understand this is very good quality marijuana, what the kids call ‘
D’kind
’.  I’d offer you
some but that would be illegal.” H
e smiled and took another hit.

Mary Jean remembered weed she had smoked in Jamaica so potent it could make you forget you name. She never thought that a good feeling.

“That’s a wonderful photo of the Great Pyramid and its
friends.
” Bill pointed to the wall.

Bringham let out another small cloud of smoke. “I used to have a huge, rather obsessive collection of photos, models and sculptures of the Pyramids of Giza. I suppose the Pyramid Theater was actually part if not the pinnacle of the collection.”

“
Was
is
probably right,
” Mary Jean righteously
jumped into the conversation.
“Your ex-wife is trying to tear it down.”

“I’ve heard about that.” Bringham looked down at the floor
. “Have you met my last wife?” H
e looked up smiling.
“A stunning girl, and very bright
.”
H
e stopped smiling. “
I suppose change is inevitable. In essence losing the theater is, for me, part of the psychic purge of possessions and ob
ses
sions. It’s probably healthy.” H
e moved the hookah pipe out of his way to the side of his chair. “Of course I haven’t quit my explorations or obsession cold turkey
. I’ve got that photo, and that.” H
e pointed to a kitchen table filled with open books, a laptop computer, yellow legal pads and small scattered stacks of white paper. “Have you heard about the Pyramid Texts?  That’s what that mess is all about.”

“The Pyramid Texts?”
Bill rubbed his chin with his left hand. “If I’m not mistaken, they were hieroglyphics in the important tombs which weren’t translated until sometime in the late nineteenth century.”

“Correct. All kinds of information about them
is
accessible now online, and the more I look into them, the more trouble I have with the traditional interpretations of th
em. They might be about
much more than just burial rituals and directions to the afterlife for the Pharaohs. They might in fact be the direct key to uncovering the mystery of Atlantis. They might someday prove the Great Pyramids are actually tens of thousands of years older than the best and brightest scientists say they are now, which would throw historians the bigg
est curveball they’ve ever seen.
” Bringham smiled. “I mean almost all writing is subjective, right?”

“Especially if it’s spiritual or an article in the newspaper.”

“The Sleeping Prophet said the secret of life was hidden in the Pyramids,” Mary Jean, wanting not to be left out of the conversation, parroted something she had heard recently.