George Henderson, 60, single and free-wheeling as a loose gyroscope, barreled up the same road a little later in a truck that had seen its better days many days ago but refused to die out of sheer stubbornness, not a little like George himself. It huffed, it wheezed, it threw bales of black smoke from out its tailpipe and made noises with its engine that suggested Armageddon was just around the corner. It was a truck that would have been comfortable with the fiery end of the world, feeling that it had found its home at last. George loved that truck. Mostly he liked to drive it down the road at night without lights or brakes (neither worked), accelerator pushed to the floor. He said it made him feel alive.
George was a consultant, and consequently not all there.
This particular afternoon George was on his way home from a consulting gig during which he had told the CEO of a large insurance company to lighten up enough to stop and smell the flowers.
“What flowers?” the executive had asked.
“Any flowers,” George replied.
“Roses? Can I smell roses? I used to like roses.”
“Sure. Go smell roses. Roses are good.”
“Or maybe I should smell gladiolas. Maybe that would be better. My mother likes gladiolas.”
“Gladiolas are fine. Anything. The point is–”
A junior exec wanna-be with a sense of humor uncharacteristic of the breed interrupted, “Might I suggest chrysanthemums, sir? The market is very big in chrysanthemums just now.”
“Is it?” the CEO said thoughtfully.
“Up three points just this afternoon, sir.”
But the CEO found in very short order that he couldn’t pronounce “chrysanthemums” with any reliable expectation of success and went back to roses. George, sick of the whole discussion, finally took the CEO aside.
“I’m going to let you in on a secret very few people know,” he whispered in the Chairman’s ear. “Rose thorns have shown a great ability to heal the deepest psychic wounds when shoved so deep inside the nose that they puncture the nasal cavity.”
“Really?” the CEO answered, and turned to his secretary…um, sorry, assistant. “Make a note of that,” he said without visible irony. Solemnly, efficiently, as if it were nothing out of the ordinary routine of an executive secretary, she did.
Fifteen minutes later that same powerful corporate officer handed George a check with quite a few zeros on it considering it was for only a couple of hours’ work and slapped him on the back. “Best investment I ever made,” he said. “Since I hired you our stock has risen thirteen per cent. Keep it up.” George put the check in his pocket and thought again what a wonderful country it was that would allow loonies like this to run huge corporations.
On the road ahead he saw a small figure trudging along buried under a pack three times his size – not an unusual sight in those days – and did what he always did. He stopped the truck.
“Wanna ride?”
Cas looked at the truck and weighed his chances of survival against the ache in his back and the shuddering of his legs. Despite his conclusions, he threw his pack in the bed and climbed into the cab. Using both hands, George shoved the transmission into what passed for first gear and let out the clutch, completely ignoring the screeching of gears as they ground to a pulp.
“Going to Wilbur?” he asked.
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“Only place this road goes.”
“Oh.”
“Who’re you going to see?”
“Well… It’s a band?”
“The Deranged Strangers?”
“You know them?”
“Kid, in this town everybody knows everybody–and everything. Band House is right up the road a piece. You a friend of Boo’s? You look like you might be.”
“No, I don’t drink that much.”
“What?”
“I said I don’t drink much. I’m not into booze. Isn’t that what you asked me?”
George laughed, a deep chortle that sounded like it would have fit a gorilla better than a slim 60-year-old human with a tiny mouth. “So you don’t know Boo. You know Jonathan? Nikki?”
“I went to school with Nikki.”
“Really?” George asked in surprise. “You don’t seem the type.”
“What type is that?”
“A Nikki-type. They’re all kind of…freakish, if you know what I mean. They eat bulgar, wear natural fibers, and have a paperback copy of Stranger In a Strange Land jammed into their back pockets. You–” He glanced over at the heavy-set, heavily eye-glassed kid in blue denim and boots with his scrubby beard, blotchy complexion, and dull eyes. “You don’t fit.”
“That’s the truth,” Cas said quietly. “That surely is the truth.” He hesitated for a moment but George was such an open and unflappable presence in the bouncing beast of truck that without really thinking about it, Cas blurted, “I thought I saw a monk in a rowboat back there.”
George laughed again. He laughed a lot, actually. “And you’re wondering if you imagined him? You didn’t. That’s Brother Armitage. Strange cat. Nobody knows what exactly he’s a brother of or where he comes from or even how he got here. Everybody seems to know him, and they seem to have known him all their lives. I can’t remember where or when I met him myself. He was probably just fishing.”
Cas shook his head. “He wasn’t fishing. He didn’t have a pole. He was feeding them, throwing little pieces of bread out for them.”
“He was fishing, alright,” George said. “That’s how he fishes.”
“Oh. I suppose he doesn’t catch much, then.”
“You’d be surprised,” George said mysteriously, then took one hand from an already-shaky steering wheel to point. “That’s the Band House. I’ll have to just drop you off in front. I’m late as it is.”
George forcibly down-shifted into first, there was a crash of metal wheels exploding into tiny pieces like somebody had dropped a match in a dynamite factory, and the ancient wagon rolled slowly to a stop in front of a low-slung, one story house painted purple and brown. Cas stepped out of the cab in a spirit of thankfulness and only just barely restrained himself from falling to his knees and smooching the sand in gratitude for his deliverance.
“Sure. Thanks.” He collected his pack from the bed of the truck. “Hope I’ll see you again before I leave.”
“You will,” George said, and he lurched off, disappearing in a cloud of blue smoke and a screech like the cry of an owl with a tormented soul..
