by Gregory Hill
Back to the Holliday experience. Imagine spending your entire academic career trapped inside the same building. Same classmates, same teachers, same reputation following you around for thirteen years. My God, it’d be like living in a cult. People must drive each other crazy. And yet, you never hear of a mass murder in a rural school.
A school is a wonderful, wonderful resource. Holliday elementary/middle/high school includes shoes in lockers, shitloads of food in the cafeteria, textbooks covering all subjects, a surprisingly well-stocked library, and, best of all, a science room closet containing a dusty 140-power PlanetEye refractor telescope.
I set up the PlanetEye and its tripod outside the Palace and pointed it toward the sky in hopes of communing with my one-legged seagull. It’s not easy to point a telescope straight up, but I shortened two of the tripod’s legs and got the thing more or less vertical and stable.
Lying on my back, I twisted knobs and jigged the telescope until I found the white dot of the seagull. I zoomed in, focused. The seagull is not a seagull, turns out. Rather, it’s an airplane, white with red stripes, dragging itself across the sky by a single propeller. Maybe a crop duster, although I’d always pictured crop dusters as biplanes. The plane was way the hell higher up in the air than a crop duster—or a seagull—had any business flying.
Also, the plane was upside down. I’m no expert in small aircraft, but that seemed out of the ordinary. I adjusted the telescope until the plane grew larger in the viewfinder. This brought me close enough to see thru the windshield and make out the faces of two men, both in a state of absolute delight, hair floating, mouths open in bellows of barnstorming joy. At least someone’s getting their jollies. I did not begrudge them for not being a seagull.
I watched the plane for a long time. The telescope was eerily still, absent the typical jitters one encounters in long distance viewing, which gave the image a static feel, except for the fact that the propeller was spinning, slowly, like the tornado. I watched the prop make a full revolution and then several more. This gave me an idea. The seagull plane was moving too slowly for this idea, but the sky was full of passenger jets that’d be perfectly suitable.
I moved the telescope away from the little plane and sighted it upward at the leading end of one of the contrails that crossed the sky.
At this distance, the telescope wasn’t powerful enough for me to pick up any faces thru the windows, but I could tell I was looking at a passenger jet, right side up, probably headed for Denver International.
I aimed the PlanetEye so the tail of the plane was at the far-left edge of the viewfinder. Then I went back into the school and ate a fist-sized hunk of government cheese and then came back and looked thru the scope again. In that time, probably six minutes, the plane had moved halfway across the viewfinder.
I gnawed cheese and pondered. If I could parse this correctly, I’d be able to figure out how fast time was moving. To hell with my hair. Measuring time in inches and months, that’s a calendar. I wanted a clock. To the math room, quick.
31
Remember when I was desperate and depressed and running two-dozen miles to save Veronica’s life? She’s okay, I’m okay, save for some lingering soreness in my lower limbs, and now I have an inkling of what’s going on around me. The world has slowed to the point where one second of world time consumes approximately one day of my reality. Which is to say, in the time it’d take for Vero to say “blueberry muffin,” I’ve eaten, digested, and shat a blueberry muffin. I’ll promise not to show my work, but I do feel compelled to give you a rough idea of how I came to this conclusion, just so you know I’m not joshing you.
From reading Great Rivet Birds: A Pre-Young Adult Exploration of Manned Flight from the Wright Brothers to the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird in the school library, I ascertained the make of the jet plane (Boeing 747) and from there I determined the length of the plane (231 feet, or so). The cruising speed of a 747 is 550 mph. The telescope’s view finder was six and a half times as wide as the plane was long, which means that the view finder at that depth could see a disc roughly 1500 feet in diameter. So when the plane travels from one end to the other
You get the point. The wild card here is my resting heartbeat of fifty-to-seventy beats per minute. That’s a lot of room for bullshit. But the bottom line is that a Narwhal day equals somewhere between .5 and 1.5 Vero seconds. This explains everything that’s happening. Not why everything’s happening, of course, or how. But other than that, it explains everything. The tornado twists, the propeller spins, and the guns fire and fall just like they’re supposed to, except way too fucking slowly.
Everyone is still alive!
A single day, that’s all it takes for me to get over my own murderous idiocy. I learned my lesson, now let’s move on. No more gunplay. No more snooping diaries. No more cruelty. Me and Robinson Crusoe and sweet Vero, we’re gonna be okay, for I am irrepressible.
*
There was a time in my life when I was nearly repressed. Three years ago, spring 2006, I was a well-established basketball official in the lesser Denver area. At only thirty years old, I’d already had eleven years of experience and had been on crew for multiple high profile high school tournaments. I’d worked a few junior college games in Greeley and I’d even subbed for a couple of games at the University of Denver, an actual, if untalented, Division-I school. If I continued with my trajectory for a few more years, I’d be working college games exclusively, and then, who knows. Italian league? NBA?
By 2006, when I was on crew, games were better than if I wasn’t. It wasn’t anything you could point to in particular, but players, fans, and coaches walked away from my work with a sense that things had worked out for a reason. When I say players, fans, and coaches, I mean those on the winning side. The losers are always ready to string up the ref. But the difference between me and other refs was, if your team won, you felt really good about how it happened. The assholes got what was coming to them and the weak inherited the mirth. With three seconds on the clock, and a five-foot-three sophomore on the line for a one-and-one to win the game, I’d whistle lane violations until the nervous kid hit the two free throws required to bring glory to his school and family. When the gazelle gets away, everyone cheers—even, secretly, the lions.
The folks who oversaw my career picked up on the existential justice that followed me around. As I mentioned before, no one remotely suspected me of being on the up-and-up. But the up-and-up-ness didn’t matter; my overseers judged me in the same light as you would a man who fakes a sore ankle in order to let his six-year-old son win a footrace.
And so, on the morning of March 8, 2006, I received a breathless call from Don Connelly, Head of the Office of Big 12 Athletics Oversight.
He: Slotterfield.
Me: Whaddya got?
He: Big-12 Tournament. Round One. Are you ready to go?
Me: Point me in a direction, light the fuse. I do not require batteries.
Don pointed me toward the Beer Sponsored Events Center at the Boulder campus of the University of Colorado. Both referees who’d been slated to work the game were stuck in an Omaha airport shrouded in fog and, due to a brutal combination of leg injuries, civil lawsuits, and a flu virus with an affinity for zebras, the entire available pool of qualified subs had been whittled to just one man, Ralph Bennett, a semi-retired legend with an affinity for jump balls and denatured alcohol. Which still left them one ref short.
Don Connelly said, “You’re a few years away from this, kid, but I hear you have style. The game will be televised on ESPenis. Bright lights. Don’t wither.”
Knock this one out and I’ve made it, I’m part of the club. In the summertime, rather than blow my whistle at YMCA tournaments, I’ll get to work the NBA summer league in Las Vegas. Fuck up and I’d never touch a Division-I court again.
I took a bite of my cereal. “When’s tipoff?”
CU was the worst basketball team in the conference. They were taking on Texas Tech, the number five team in the confer
ence. By all rights, the game should have been played in Texas, what with them having the superior regular season record. But it was apparently Boulder’s turn to host the tourney, so they, the Buffs, got the benefit of the unearned home court advantage.
It wasn’t the TV cameras that took me down, or the seven thousand fans, or the importance of the tournament. It was the awfulness of the CU Golden Buffaloes Men’s Basketball squad. CU was one degree above horrible. Texas Tech was two degrees under breathtaking. From the opening tip-off, I knew exactly why Don Connelly had called me, referee shortage be damned. Clearly, one of CU’s boosters had shoveled a wheelbarrow full of cash into a bank account in order to make sure the Golden Buffaloes prevailed. None of that money would make it to my pocket, of course. I was deceptive, but I was never corrupt. That’s another reason why the poohbahs liked me; they got to retain one hundred percent of the contents of the paper bags.
We were midway thru the second quarter when I realized I’d bitten off more than I could digest. The Buffs were no match for the Texan Technophiles, no matter what I tried, and I tried everything, including calling a traveling violation on Tech’s starting point guard for shuffling his feet before shooting a free throw.
The poor Buffs couldn’t make a basket, much less dribble or pass. The halftime score was thirty-two to sixteen in favor of Tech. Without my help, it might have been fifty to zero. The only way I could have possibly gotten CU the win would have been to cover the Tech hoop with a plexiglass lid, and even then the Buffs would have had to actually make some baskets of their own. My partner, Redfaced Ralph, was no help. He shuffled from one side of the half court line to the other while I sprinted from baseline to baseline, trying to cover for him. He didn’t blow his whistle once, which was fortunate because the effort may have led to a heart attack. Plus, he spent halftime speed-drinking a bottle of Everclear.
Texas Tech scored the first six points of the third quarter. I countered by calling them for fouls on seven straight possessions. It was ridiculous, way beyond my spacious comfort zone. I exist in the shadows, I dwell in the subconscious, and here I was farting aloud in church. The Golden Buffs missed every single one of these gifted foul shots.
The Tech players, coaches, and fans fucking hated me. There was a lot of airfare on the line. I’d never been glared at so violently. The players started lipping off and accidentally hip-checking me as we ran down court.
High schoolers and frat boys, you can threaten with a technical foul and they’ll shape up. I, however, did not actually issue technicals, and the Texans soon picked up on that. They decided that if I was going to call them for phantom fouls, they might as well commit real fouls. They started clobbering the Colorado kids. Elbows in kidneys, knee-to-knee, knee-to-crotch. This wasn’t a footrace between me and a little kid. It was a lion versus a baby bunny and I was trying to direct the events with a limp carrot.
In other words, I was no longer in control; I was in over my head; I was out of my league; the power dynamic had shifted radically. Upon recognizing this, I fucked that noise and started calling the game straight.
Once I stopped trying to help them win, CU put up a furious fourth quarter comeback and managed to lose by only nine points. One wonders what they could have accomplished without my meddling in the previous three quarters. At the game’s conclusion, a stout man in a grey suit approached me. With a grim mouth, he informed me that his name was Don Connelly, of the Office of Big 12 Athletics Oversight, and that, after the little stunt I’d pulled, he would personally see to it that I’d never work a D-I game again.
For several days after, I avoided sports radio and the papers. I did not avoid the liquor store. I lounged in my recliner and drank and loathed myself. It was a week before I regained my soul. Nothing specific happened, I just gradually realized that there’s no place for a man like me in the big time. Don was right. I never got a call to work a D-I game again, and I’m okay with that, for I am irrepressible.
32
Slowness of time is infinitely more manageable than the absence of time. It’s the difference between being dead or being on life support, and that, even if your name is Kevorkian, is a significant difference.
Those weeks ago, when I first exited the bathroom in Cookie’s Palace Diner, I’d been dropped alone into a universe of manikins. But now, with rotating tornados and spinning propellers, my manikins are once again humans. This is the difference between death and life support. In an absence of time, I’m alone. In a slowness of time, I can communicate with Vero. I simply need to be patient.
I have a plan. I acquired three music stands from the Holliday school music room. I placed one stand each directly in front of Sandy, Old Timer, and Vero, a couple of feet from their respective noses. I wrote “You have nothing to fear” on two sheets of paper and placed those upon Sandy’s and Old Timer’s stands, respectively. I thought about this. If you truly have nothing to fear, it shouldn’t be necessary to say, “You have nothing to fear.” The default setting in life should be nothing-to-fear.
I crumbled up the papers and stuffed them into a trashcan.
What, then, does one write? I had to be direct, convincing, and, most importantly, concise. I couldn’t say, “Don’t worry, fuckers. Time as you know it has slowed to a crawl and I accidentally almost shot the beautiful woman over there, who, as far as you’re concerned, recently fell on the floor and then mysteriously reappeared in her seat. My name is Narwhal Slotterfield. Last you saw of me, I was entering the bathroom. I’m no longer in the bathroom. I will take care of you in your state of time-retardation, for I am a professional amateur basketball referee. Also, there’s a tornado about thirty miles to the west.”
I settled on, “I am not a ghost.”
I placed the papers on Sandy’s and Old Timer’s music stands and set to figuring out what to say to Veronica. After eight million rewrites, I came up with:
Vero, this is Narwhal. Everything’s okay. I love you.
Get the essential stuff out of the way. Now for some sort of explanation.
Odd things have happened in the last few seconds. I’ll explain later.
Sometimes it’s best to punt.
If you can read this, wink RIGHT NOW.
Without interaction, we’re mmunicating. I want to CO-mmunicate.
Please wink IMMEDIATELY.
End with a touch of desperation to acknowledge that, although everything’s okay, it’s not normal.
It’s a first step.
With the notes placed in the lines of sight of my three principals, I simply needed to wait. I figured it’d take Vero six seconds to read the note. I figured that, after she read it, she’d read it again, which meant another six seconds. A couple more seconds to process the content and then, assuming her first impulse was to trust the words I’d handwritten on a sheet of paper that had magically appeared on a music stand that had also magically appeared, another half-second to wink. Fifteen and a half seconds. At one second Vero-time to one day Narwhal-time, it’d be at least two weeks before I knew if I had communicated with my love.
I had to find something to do with myself for a fortnight and a day.
33
I’m back on Route 36, headed west. Don’t worry, The Blad is not on my itinerary. My sole intention is to slay seconds, murder moments, commit chronocide, kill time while the people of the diner read my notes. My sunglasses are on, I’m wearing a farm cap plucked from the Palace’s lost-and-found box, which contains nothing but farm caps. My specific plan, insofar as I have any plan, is to spend the next fifteen days retracing my truncated trip toward Denver. I want to see what’s been happening in the world since I was last out in it.
First stop, watermelon fetishist. The Mack truck has now veered toward the ditch and the driver’s mouth is wide open in a tobacco-spewing scream. Consider it from his perspective. Out of nowhere, all his dirty pictures appeared on his windshield and then fell on his lap. It is socially acceptable, under these circumstances, to scream and veer into a ditch.
I float-drag the driver out of the cab and press him safely onto the road several dozen feet behind the semi. I go thru his pockets and find two hundred and thirty-seven dollars and a greasy comb. I keep the money.
Since there aren’t any cars coming, and because the driver is resting at a safe distance, I decide to let his semi continue toward its fate in the ditch. Nobody’s gonna miss a load of wheat.
On to the first farmhouse I’d visited, the one with the grilled cheese sandwiches and the découpaged “Footprints.” In my first visit, I’d eaten four sandwiches and hidden “Footprints” under a mattress. With the Missus now looking bewilderedly upon her empty serving tray, I assemble four more sammies from the white-bread-and-sliced-cheese fixin’s and leave them on the griddle to fry. Supper has been restored.
I slide fifty of the trucker’s dollars into the back pocket of my hostess’s jeans, to go along with the three bucks I’d already given her.
“Footprints” will remain under the mattress.
*
Next, the car with the college flunky. The kid has spat out the half-joint I’d put in his mouth. It’s on the floor between his feet. He’s clearly trying to act calm in spite of the uncanny marijuana manifestation. In their front seats, Mom and Dad remain oblivious.
I pocket the joint and leave the merry family to their own dervishes.
I continue west, past the sign for Keaton, past the depressing buildings of Dorsey, to the edge of the hellfire storm, to the House of Pronghorn, of redbrick, pot roast, and guns. I bring all twenty-one guns back into the house and place them in their gun rack. I leave a rolled-up dollar bill in the barrel of each of the guns. That oughta cover the price of the ammo I’d accidentally sent skyward.
More walking. I count nine cell phones that I’ve placed perilously underneath the left rear wheel of nine different automobiles. Every one of those cell phones is now smashed to pieces, the cars several feet further along in their journey. The drivers all wear the same furrowed brow of confusion. I find this gratifying.
