Brother Odd

by Dean Koontz

  “Semper Fi sure does seem to be what we need.”

  She said, “Brother Gregory was an army corpsman.”

  The infirmarian had never spoken of military service.

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “I thought he had a nursing degree.”

  “He does. But he was a corpsman for many years, and in the thick of action.”

  Medics on the battlefield are often as courageous as those who carry the guns.

  “For sure, we want Brother Gregory,” I said.

  “What about Brother Quentin?”

  “Wasn’t he a cop, ma’am?”

  “I believe so, yes.”

  “Put him on the list.”

  “How many do you think we need?” she asked.

  “Fourteen, sixteen.”

  “We’ve got four.”

  I paced in silence. I stopped pacing and stood at the window. I started pacing again.

  “Brother Fletcher,” I suggested.

  This choice baffled her. “The music director?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “In his secular life, he was a musician.”

  “That’s a tough business, ma’am.”

  She considered. Then: “He does sometimes have an attitude.”

  “Saxophone players tend to have attitude,” I said. “I know a saxophonist who tore a guitar out of another musician’s hands and shot the instrument five times. It was a nice Fender.”

  “Why would he do a thing like that?” she asked.

  “He was upset about inappropriate chord changes.”

  Disapproval furrowed her brow. “When this is over, perhaps your saxophonist friend could stay at the abbey for a while. I’m trained to counsel people in techniques of conflict resolution.”

  “Well, ma’am, shooting the guitar was conflict resolution.”

  She looked up at Flannery O’Connor and, after a moment, nodded as if in agreement with something the writer had said. “Okay, Oddie. You think Brother Fletcher could kick butt?”

  “Yes, ma’am, for the kids, I think he could.”

  “Then we’ve got five.”

  I sat in one of the two visitors’ chairs.

  “Five,” she repeated.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I looked at my wristwatch. We stared at each other.

  After a silence, she changed the subject: “If it comes to a fight, what will they fight with?”

  “For one thing, baseball bats.”

  The brothers formed three teams every year. Summer evenings, during recreation hours, the teams played one another in rotation.

  “They do have a lot of baseball bats,” she said.

  “Too bad that monks tend not to go in for shooting deer.”

  “Too bad,” she agreed.

  “The brothers split all the cordwood for the fireplaces. They have axes.”

  She winced at the thought of such violence. “Perhaps we should concentrate more on fortification.”

  “They’ll be first-rate at fortification,” I agreed.

  Most monastic communities believe that contemplative labor is an important part of worship. Some monks make excellent wine to pay the expenses of their abbey. Some make cheese or chocolates, or crumpets and scones. Some breed and sell beautiful dogs.

  The brothers of St. Bart’s produce fine handcrafted furniture. Because a fraction of the interest from the Heineman endowment will always pay their operating expenses, they do not sell their chairs and tables and sideboards. They give everything to an organization that furnishes homes for the poor.

  With their power tools, supplies of lumber, and skills, they would be able to further secure doors and windows.

  Tapping her pen against the list of names on the tablet, Sister Angela reminded me: “Five.”

  “Ma’am, maybe what we should do is—you call the abbot, talk to him about this, then talk to Brother Knuckles.”

  “Brother Salvatore.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Tell Brother Knuckles what we need here, defense and fortification, and let him consult with the other four we’ve picked. They’ll know their brothers better than we do. They’ll know the best candidates.”

  “Yes, that’s good. I wish I could tell them who they’ll be defending against.”

  “I wish I could, too, Sister.”

  All the vehicles that served the brothers and sisters were garaged in the basement of the school.

  I said, “Tell Knuckles—”

  “Salvatore.”

  “—that I’ll drive one of the school’s monster SUVs up there to bring them here, and tell him—”

  “You said hostile people are out there somewhere.”

  I had not said people. I had said them and they.

  “Hostile. Yes, ma’am.”

  “Won’t it be dangerous, to and from the abbey?”

  “More dangerous for the kids if we don’t get some muscle here for whatever’s coming.”

  “I understand. My point is you’d have to make two trips to bring so many brothers, their baseball bats, and their tools. I’ll drive an SUV, you drive the other, and we’ll get it all done at one time.”

  “Ma’am, there’s nothing I’d like better than having a snowplow race with you—tires chocked, engines revved, starter pistol—but I want Rodion Romanovich to drive the second SUV.”

  “He’s here?”

  “He’s in the kitchen, up to his elbows in icing.”

  “I thought you were suspicious of him.”

  “If he’s a Hoosier, I’m a radical dulcimer enthusiast. When we’re defending the school, if it comes to that, I don’t think it’s a good idea for Mr. Romanovich to be inside the defenses. I’ll ask him to drive one of the SUVs to the new abbey. When you talk to Brother Knuck…alvatore—”

  “Knuckalvatore? I’m not familiar with Brother Knuckalvatore.”

  Until meeting Sister Angela, I wouldn’t have thought that nuns and sarcasm could be such an effervescent mix.

  “When you talk to Brother Salvatore, ma’am, tell him that Mr. Romanovich will be staying at the new abbey, and Salvatore will be driving that SUV back here.”

  “I assume Mr. Romanovich will not know that he’s taking a one-way trip.”

  “No, ma’am. I will lie to him. You leave that to me. Regardless of what you think, I am a masterful and prodigious liar.”

  “If you played a saxophone, you’d be a double threat.”

  CHAPTER 28

  AS LUNCHTIME APPROACHED, THE KITCHEN staffers were not only busier than they had been previously but also more exuberant. Now four of the nuns were singing as they worked, not just two, and in English instead of Spanish.

  All ten cakes had been frosted with chocolate icing. They looked treacherously delicious.

  Having recently finished mixing a large bowl of bright orange buttercream, Rodion Romanovich was using a funnel sack to squeeze an elaborate decorative filigree on top of the first of his orange-almond cakes.

  When I appeared at his side, he didn’t look up, but said, “There you are, Mr. Thomas. You have put on your ski boots.”

  “I was so quiet in stocking feet, I was scaring the sisters.”

  “Have you been off practicing your dulcimer?”

  “That was just a phase. These days I’m more interested in the saxophone. Sir, have you ever visited the grave of John Dillinger?”

  “As you evidently know, he is buried in Crown Hill Cemetery, in my beloved Indianapolis. I have seen the outlaw’s grave, but my primary reason for visiting the cemetery was to pay my respects at the final resting place of the novelist Booth Tarkington.”

  “Booth Tarkington won the Nobel Prize,” I said.

  “No, Mr. Thomas. Booth Tarkington won the Pulitzer Prize.”

  “I guess you would know, being a librarian at the Indiana State Library at one-forty North Senate Avenue, with thirty-four thousand volumes about Indiana or by Indiana writers.”

  “Over thirty-four thousand volumes,” Romanovich corrected. “We are very pro
ud of the number and do not like to hear it minimized. We may by this time next year have thirty-five thousand volumes about Indiana or by Indiana writers.”

  “Wow. That’ll be a reason for a big celebration.”

  “I will most likely bake many cakes for the event.”

  The steadiness of his decorative-icing application and the consistency of details in his filigree design were impressive.

  If he’d not had about him an air of deceit equal to that of a chameleon sitting on a tree branch, disguised as bark, waiting for innocent butterflies to approach, I might have begun to doubt his potential for villainy.

  “Being a Hoosier, sir, you must have a lot of experience driving in snow.”

  “Yes. I have had considerable experience of snow both in my adopted Indiana and in my native Russia.”

  “We have two SUVs, fitted with plows, in the garage. We’ve got to drive up to the abbey and bring back some of the brothers.”

  “Are you asking me to drive one of these vehicles, Mr. Thomas?”

  “Yes, sir. If you would, I’d be most grateful. It’ll save me making two trips.”

  “For what purpose are the brothers coming to the school?”

  “For the purpose,” I said, “of assisting the sisters with the children if there should be a power failure related to the blizzard.”

  He drew a perfect miniature rose to finish off one corner of the cake. “Does not the school have an emergency backup generator?”

  “Yes, sir, you bet it does. But it doesn’t crank out the same level of power. Lighting will have to be reduced. They’ll have to turn heating off in some areas, use the fireplaces. And Sister Angela wants to be prepared in case the generator falters, too.”

  “Have the main power and the backup generator ever both failed on the same occasion?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I don’t think so. But in my experience, nuns are obsessed with detailed planning.”

  “Oh, I have no doubt, Mr. Thomas, that if nuns had designed and operated the nuclear plant at Chernobyl, we would not have suffered a radiation disaster.”

  This was an interesting turn. “Are you from Chernobyl, sir?”

  “Do I have a third eye and a second nose?”

  “Not that I can see, sir, but then you’re largely clothed.”

  “If we should ever find ourselves sunning on the same beach, you are free to investigate further, Mr. Thomas. May I finish decorating these cakes, or must we rush pell-mell to the abbey?”

  Knuckles and the others would need at least forty-five minutes to gather the items they’d be bringing and to assemble for pickup.

  I said, “Finish the cakes, sir. They look terrific. How about if you meet me down in the garage at twelve forty-five?”

  “You can depend on my assistance. I will have finished the cakes by then.”

  “Thank you, sir.” I started to leave, then turned to him again. “Did you know Cole Porter was a Hoosier?”

  “Yes. And so are James Dean, David Letterman, Kurt Vonnegut, and Wendell Willkie.”

  “Cole Porter, he was perhaps the greatest American songwriter of the century, sir.”

  “Yes, I agree.”

  “‘Night and Day,’ ‘Anything Goes,’ ‘In the Still of the Night,’ ‘I Get a Kick Out of You,’ ‘You’re the Top.’ He wrote the Indiana state song, too.”

  Romanovich said, “The state song is ‘On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away,’ and if Cole Porter heard you crediting it to him, he would no doubt claw his way out of the grave, track you down, and exact a terrible vengeance.”

  “Oh. Then I guess I was misinformed.”

  He raised his attention from the cake long enough to give me an ironic look heavy enough to weight down a feather in a high wind. “I doubt that you are ever misinformed, Mr. Thomas.”

  “No, sir, you’re wrong. I’m the first to admit I don’t know anything about anything—except that I’m something of a nut about all things Indiana.”

  “Approximately what time this morning did this Hoosiermania overcome you?”

  Man, he was good at this.

  “Not this morning, sir,” I lied. “All my life, as long as I can remember.”

  “Maybe you were a Hoosier in a previous life.”

  “Maybe I was James Dean.”

  “I am certain you were not James Dean.”

  “Why do you say that, sir?”

  “Such an intense craving for adoration and such a capacity for rudeness as Mr. Dean exhibited could not possibly have been expunged so entirely from just one incarnation to the next.”

  I thought about that statement from a few different angles. “Sir, I have nothing against the late Mr. Dean, but I don’t see any way to interpret that except as a compliment.”

  Glowering, Rodion Romanovich said, “You complimented my cake decorations, did you not? Well, now we are even.”

  CHAPTER 29

  CARRYING MY JACKET, WHICH I HAD RETRIEVED from the rack in the reception lounge, I went down to the basement, grateful that there were no real catacombs full of moldering corpses. With my luck, one of them would have been Cole Porter.

  Those brothers who had wished to be interred on the grounds of the abbey are buried in a shady plot on the perimeter of the forest. It is a peaceful little cemetery. The spirits of those at rest there have all moved on from this world.

  I have spent pleasant hours among those headstones, with only Boo for company. He likes to watch the squirrels and rabbits while I stroke his neck and scratch his ears. Sometimes he gambols after them, but they are not frightened by him; even in the days when he was sharp of tooth, he was never a killer.

  As if my thoughts had summoned him, I found Boo waiting for me when I turned out of the east-west hallway into the north-south.

  “Hey, boy, what’re you doing down here?”

  Tail wagging, he approached, settled on the floor, and rolled onto his back, all four paws in the air.

  Receiving such an invitation, only the hard-hearted and the uselessly busy can refuse. All that is wanted is affection, while all that is offered is everything, symbolized in the defenseless posture of the exposed tummy.

  Dogs invite us not only to share their joy but also to live in the moment, where we are neither proceeding from nor moving toward, where the enchantment of the past and future cannot distract us, where a freedom from practical desire and a cessation of our usual ceaseless action allows us to recognize the truth of our existence, the reality of our world and purpose—if we dare.

  I gave Boo only a two-minute belly rub and then continued with the usual ceaseless action, not because urgent tasks awaited me, but because, as a wise man once wrote, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality,” and I am too human.

  The large garage had the feel of a bunker, concrete above and below and on all sides. The fluorescent ceiling fixtures shed a hard light, but they were too widely spaced to dispel every shadow.

  Seven vehicles were housed here: four compact sedans, a beefy pickup, two extended SUVs jacked up on big tires with snow chains.

  A ramp ascended to a large roll-up door, beyond which the wind howled.

  Mounted on a wall was a key box. Inside, fourteen sets of keys, two for each vehicle, hung from seven pegs. Above each peg, a label provided the license number of the vehicle, and a tag on each set of keys carried the same number.

  No danger of Chernobyls here.

  I pulled on my jacket, got behind the wheel of one of the SUVs, started the engine, and let it idle just long enough to figure how to raise and lower the plow with the simple controls.

  When I stepped out of the truck, Boo was there. He looked up, cocked his head, pricked his ears, and seemed to say, What’s wrong with your nose, buddy? Don’t you smell the same trouble I smell?

  He trotted away, glanced back, saw that I was following, and led me out of the garage, into the northwest hall once more.

  This wasn’t Lassie, and I didn’t expect to find anything as easy to deal with as Timmy down
a well or Timmy trapped in a burning barn.

  Boo stopped in front of a closed door, at the same point in the corridor at which he had offered me the opportunity to rub his tummy.

  Perhaps he had originally encouraged me to pause at that point to give my fabled intuition a chance to operate. I had been caught in the wheels of compulsion, however, bent on getting to the garage, my mind occupied with thoughts of the trip ahead, able to pause briefly but unable to see and feel.

  I felt something now, all right. A subtle but persistent pull, as if I were a fisherman, my line cast out into the deep, some catch hooked on the farther end.

  Boo went into the suspect room. After a hesitation, I followed, leaving the door open behind me because in situations like this, when psychic magnetism draws me, I cannot be certain I’m the fisherman and not the fish with the hook in its mouth.

  We were in a boiler room, full of the hiss of flame rings and the rumble of pumps. Four large, high-efficiency boilers produced the hot water that traveled ceaselessly through pipes in the walls of the building, to the scores of fan-coil units that heated the many rooms.

  Here, too, were chillers that produced supercooled water, which also circulated through the school and convent, providing cool air when a room grew too warm.

  On three walls were sophisticated air monitors, which would trigger alarms in every farther corner of the big building and shut off the incoming gas line that fired the boilers if they detected the merest trace of free propane in the room. This was supposed to be an absolute guarantee against an explosion.

  Absolute guarantee. Foolproof. The unsinkable Titanic. The uncrashable Hindenburg. Peace in our time.

  Human beings not only can’t bear too much reality, we flee from reality when someone doesn’t force us close enough to the fire to feel the heat on our faces.

  None of the three air monitors indicated the presence of rogue molecules of propane.

  I had to depend upon the monitors because propane is colorless and odorless. If I relied on my senses to detect a leak, I would not know a problem existed until I found myself passing out for lack of oxygen or until everything went boom.

  Each monitor box was locked and featured a pressed-metal seal bearing the date of the most recent inspection by the service company responsible for their reliable function. I examined every lock and every seal and discovered no indications of tampering.