Time Line

by Rex Bolt

  You had to wonder sometimes how this guy was chemically made up, where he’d be joking at a time like this. But yeah, Jack could fly off the handle with the best of them so there was some logic there--that his way of mediating the situation--meaning head on, in this case literally--could stir some emotions.

  Meanwhile, Pike and Jack approached the outside of The Box. The screwing around with the musical instruments had subsided and you could hear muffled sounds of the three doofuses talking and laughing.

  Pike was a getting a headache. Not a major throbbing top of the skull one, but a nuisance enough one, things riccocheting around behind his eyebrows.

  You didn’t want to always follow Jack’s lead and take the direct approach, but unless someone came up with a better idea you were frankly headed that direction.

  The problem being of course that once again Pike had to be careful displaying his abnormal strength. Not just in front of the three idiots he’d be speaking to in a moment, but being careful to not display anything too unusual in front of Jack either.

  The basketball dunk business had been a bit of an exception, and it seemed harmless enough in the end, since he wouldn’t be hanging around and having to answer any questions. Plus that one guy guarding him, he got under his skin . . . but still in real time you control yourself in that situation--or try to.

  Pike took a big exhale and told Jack take it easy, that he had this, and Pike climbed up the rope and swung a leg over the top and was straddling the far wall of The Box.

  The three of them were semi-lying down, and Pike and Jack had set up cushions in there which admittedly were pretty comfortable. Pike said, “Everyone okay down there? Anyone need anything?”

  The one guy spoke, the tatted guy who apparently flashed the knife. “What you got in mind dudy?” He laughed sort of scary-wild, like a mental patient, and the other two guys did too. You could smell booze oozing up, pretty strong, not beer or wine, the real stuff.

  “Okay listen,” Pike said, “the reason I’m checking on y’all--we’ll be needing you to stay the night . . . So Sweet dreams.” Pike called down to Jack to lock everything up, that their friends are comfortable, and they’ll check on them at noon tomorrow.

  Jack looked at Pike weird and Pike looked back weird, and Jack got the idea, that this was all bull crap, and who knows where Pike was going with it, and Pike had no idea himself.

  The three guys sort of looked at each other, and then one guy seemed to get a little nervous and said, “Whachoo mean you be checking on us, sucker? We be checking on you.”

  This relaxed the other two and they all laughed again and the tatt guy extended a middle finger up to Pike.

  “Fine then,” Pike said. “The only reason I ask, you don’t mind the jackhammering then.”

  “The who?” the tatted guy said, standing up, clearly not in the mood for any more games.

  Pike climbed back down and said to Jack, “You’d don’t have a flashlight on you, do you? I should have thought of that before.”

  Jack fiddled with his belt and son of a gun, the guy did have one of those mini LED jobs attached to his keys. Pike took it and went across the basement to the circuit breaker box that was above the washer-dryer. He opened the box, found the main switch, and threw it, cutting all power the house.

  Outside you could hear a big machine cranking up, and dang, the thing was loud, wasn’t it. Pike told Jack to lock the inside door to the kitchen, so his parents wouldn’t all of a sudden show up down here.

  “Hmm,” Jack said, over the roaring pitch of the machine. “And how do I do that, exactly, since the lock is on the other side?”

  “Up to you,” Pike said. “You gotta hold the handle yourself, then do it that way.”

  You could see Jack’s brain working pretty quick and he found a roll of twine and headed up the stairs with it, and meanwhile Pike climbed back up onto the ledge of The Box and shined the flashlight on the--at the moment--not too happy campers--and he said, “Okay guys, now the way to stay safe--when they start the jackhammering--is herd yourselves into the center. Don’t get near any of the 4 walls--oh, and don’t touch anything at all, even each other, because stuff conducts--and you should be good.”

  Pike made sure to shine the light mostly on the tatted guy, and he squinted up at Pike and said, “Yo man. Y’all making a big mistake, I mean to tell you. You’ll find out.”

  There wasn’t as much oomph and bravado behind it as before, and neither of the other two guys laughed this time, or backed the guy up . . . and one of them, the smallest skinniest one, started climbing up the inside rope to get out of the Box.

  “Not a bad idea,” Pike said, “except we asked you to stick around, I thought?”

  The first guy was up and over and down and the third guy was following him.

  The tatted guy said, “You a crazy *@*&*@.”

  “That’s what they tell me,” Pike said. “The jackhammer guys, they made the appointment. I tried to change it but I couldn’t . . . I know what you’re saying, it’s a real pain in the neck, especially to have them blow out the basement, and us having to watch where we’re stepping.”

  This was about enough motivation for the tatted guy to start hauling himself up and over the wall and out of here, and he didn’t have any more words for Pike, he clearly wanted to get a move on now.

  Pike waited for the guy to land safely outside The Box and then he calmly took hold of his collar with his right hand, and in one motion stuck his arm straight up . . . dangling the guy overhead like someone might hold up a torch to signal to another guy . . . or whatever the heck.

  Pike wondered, what now . . . I got him up there, but how do I wrap this up? He had the flashlight in his left hand, shining it up close on the guy like a spotlight.

  “Okay now take it easy,” Hannamaker was saying, and you could tell he was a bit alarmed, despite being okay with the fact that the tatted guy looked scared out of his mind.

  So Pike thought, yeah, don’t do anything rash, and wondering if he already did too much, and went over the line that he set for himself a couple minutes ago. Dang.

  He let the guy down but still held him by the collar and told Jack to turn back on breaker Number 12 . . . and he figured that should keep the guy busy, because there probably isn’t a breaker Number 12, not to mention Jack’ll have enough trouble just finding the breaker box in the dark.

  So Jack was gone and Pike had some privacy and he felt around on the guy and . . . oops, Jack was right unfortunately, the idiot was carrying a knife--and Pike didn’t know weapons very well but this felt like it could do some damage, and it may or may not have technically been a switchblade, but you did push a button and then pull it open . . .

  The bottom line being, Pike did all that, and then shined the light on the thing nice and clear for the guy . . . and then put down the flashlight for a moment--and dropped a knee on the guy so he’d stay put while Pike needed two hands--and Pike worked the blade between his index fingers, and twisted . . . and it was surprisingly soft, and the knife bent like a pretzel . . . and Pike turned back on the flashlight and showed it to the guy--like a lab technician showcasing the result of an experiment--and handed it back to him.

  Pike wasn’t sure why he needed to end things that way--you could have simply taken the knife away from the moron and solidly convinced him to get lost and don’t come back . . . but more than likely the episode with the senior citizen in Alaska was a factor, and Pike supposed handling it the more proactive way did make a reasonable statement.

  The color had drained out of the guy’s face, even by flashlight standards, and the guy absentmindedly took the knife back and started out of there, stumbling a bit at first and then running pretty darn fast toward the outside door, Pike assisting him by shining the flashlight on his path up and out of the basement.

  The motor noise was pretty intolerable by now and Pike assumed not only his parents would be up and trying to shut the thing down, but that a bunch of neighbors would unfortunately
have woken up as well . . . and Pike hustled back over to the breaker box, and there was poor Jack, who had located the thing but was using the light of his phone to try find Breaker 12 as Pike had instructed . . . and Pike said excuse me and threw the main switch, and all the power went flashing back on in the house, and the brutal sound of the motor in the side yard stopped.

  Chapter 20

  “Okay now that the circumstances appear settled,” Heidi said, “can you please shed some light on what transpired back there?”

  “Down there, you mean?” Pike said.

  “You know something,” Jack said, “there comes a point . . . a man gets weary of your games. Just answer the question, how about.”

  “Hmm,” Pike said. Of course this was Hannamaker behaving normally. He was the cause of it, essentially, but it doesn’t take long for the guy to deflect the conflict toward someone else. Which usually meant Pike . . . So whatever.

  They were back in Jack’s F-250, the three of them this time, Jack driving and Pike in back. Heidi had been angling her position from the front right seat slightly toward Pike since they got in.

  It was around 5:00 in the morning, this was still Friday, and they were headed to the 24-hour Walmart out by the interstate.

  Jack said, “Should we stop and eat first? You caused me to work up an appetite I have to admit. And were you screwing with me on the circuit breaker business? Why would you need No 12 cut, when all the power to the whole shebang is already cut?”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” Pike said, “we wriggled out of it.”

  Heidi said, still half turned around toward Pike, “I believe you are under-stating the result. From what I observed . . . you did quite a bit more than wriggle out of it.” It sounded like a bit of a humm at the end of her delivery, and Pike looked at Heidi more closely, and she had that pose like someone who was suddenly interested in you again, and you weren’t sure how you felt about it.

  Separately, Pike wondered had she seen anything--the main part, the business with wrecking the guy’s blade. Pike was pretty sure she couldn’t have, meaning her apparent awestruck-ness was based on him holding the guy up with the one hand and windmilling him around up there a bit.

  Which wouldn’t be something a person would ordinarily observe happening--fine--but it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, was it? Considering how adrenaline can work when you’re under duress?

  Back to the first part though, if Heidi was shifting her . . . allegiance . . . back toward Pike after all, that could be confusing. It had been exciting, initially, to connect with an older female--especially a full-fledged college one--but the reality was, her over the top intellect could wear you out . . . and it was a relief actually when she mostly disappeared with Jack yesterday.

  Pike said now, “Let’s not make a big deal about it. All in day’s work, right Hannamaker?”

  “Yeah, right,” Jack said, and as usual you couldn’t read the guy.

  “What was the giant machine though, if I might ask?” Heidi said.

  “Oh,” Pike said. “That’s a whatchamacall, not a compressor, but . . .”

  “A generator, or some shit?” Jack said.

  “There you go,” Pike said, and to Heidi: “You see--and not sure if you guys had the fires in Arizona like we did . . .”

  “Fires?” she said.

  “Not forest fires, what’s the word they use, Jeez I’m drawing a blank . . . ”

  “Wildfires,” Jack said. “You want to get some coffee? Unlike you to draw blanks.”

  Pike would have said something off-color to the guy, half-joking, half-not, except Heidi was in the truck. He said, “3, 4 years now, we have to go through that stuff the end of the summer. Even September and October. This year it got worse, not the fires but the power company cutting everyone off.”

  “Precautionary, they called it,” Jack said. “That really started pissing me off.”

  “Me too,” Pike said. “Anyways . . . my dad, it’s the final straw for him too he says. He can handle being evacuated, which we’ve been through a couple times, though they may be overreacting since that last one you couldn’t see any fire or even smell anything.”

  “The wind shifting, they’re worried about,” Jack said.

  Pike said, “Okay. The point being forget those, my dad thinks the random power shutoffs are gonna get worse.”

  “What’s the science incorporated in that decision-making process?” Heidi said.

  Jack gave Pike a look over his shoulder, another of those is she for real ones and Pike gave him a subtle look back, like you tell me. Pike said, “I guess what they’re afraid of, the equipment can spark new fires.”

  “Not the home stuff or the wires running through town,” Jack said, “so much as the big transformers and such, up in the hills.”

  “Without getting too technical,” Pike said, “the junk that controls Beacon, it’s all the way up by Muscatel . . . So they cut us off, cause they’re worried about an old sub-station functioning bad 20 miles away. Unlikely I’d know any of this, but they made us write a paper on it.”

  “Gosh,” Heidi said, and Pike realized with some alarm that she might be putting it together, that that typically wouldn’t be a college assignment would it, and he’d forgotten all about supposing to be in one.

  “Last year,” Jack said, picking up on it and hopefully sort of bailing him out, “I remember that, I had to do the same thing.”

  “Unh-huh,” Pike said and cleared his throat. “Lemme get back on track. Bottom line, my dad had a generator installed in the side yard. Not one of those gasoline-powered jobs that you pull around on the little wheels, but a serious machine.”

  “Runs on natural gas then?” Jack said.

  “Yeah, I think so. I know my dad needed a plumber and electrician both. The way it’s supposed to work, the instant the power goes out, the thing kicks on.”

  “I see,” Jack said, processing better now what was actually going on there at 3:30 in the morning. “What about the jackhammer part though?”

  “Yes,” Heidi said, “what about that?”

  “I, kind of winged it,” Pike said.

  Jack said, “Ah. Throwing ‘em a knuckleball . . . Keeping ‘em off balance.”

  “Something like that I guess,” Pike said.

  “The vastness of the unknown,” Heidi said, an odd dramatic flourish to it--and once again Jack and Pike exchanged glances.

  They took care of business at Walmart, which consisted of getting a new lock for the outside entrance to the basement--and two keys total this time, no exceptions, Jack and Pike nodded their heads vigorously on that point at the checkout counter, and Heidi added a comment that you wouldn’t have expected from her, that they looked like a couple of bobblehead dolls.

  They swung by Home Depot which had just opened and picked up a half piece of sheetrock to repair Jack’s earlier damage, and the necessary compound and paint to finish it off. Then even Heidi agreed she was pretty hungry and there was a Black Bear Diner over the freeway and Jack to his credit--though also because it was a no-brainer--picked up everyone’s check.

  On the way home Pike’s phone buzzed and it was Mitch, and this probably wasn’t going be the greatest, and Pike ignored it until they got back, and Jack said he’d take care of the lock and Pike said what about the hole in The Box, and Jack said how about this weekend and Pike didn’t say anything and Jack got the idea and said he’d handle it all back to back.

  Meanwhile Heidi asked Pike what he was feeling about today--and she was sitting in back with him now on the return trip--and Pike said he wasn’t sure but he’d have to spend some time on something first, and Heidi seemed disappointed but said that was fine, she’d watch Jack address his repairs.

  So they got back and Jack went to work and Pike excused himself and took a walk, and it was a nice crisp morning and you didn’t feel like breaking up the mood, but 6 blocks in he called Mitch back.

  Chapter 21

  “Okay here’s what I prod
uced,” Mitch said.

  He sounded more business-like than normal. Pike said, “When you go in straight-to-the-point mode on me, I get nervous.”

  “Well, son--maybe you should be. It’s not for me to judge.”

  “Okay that’s a croc,” Pike said. “You can’t be passing the buck on me here.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” Mitch said. “It does appear we have a situation on our hands. Not a hypothetical, or an incidental anymore. But the real deal.”

  “Oh,” Pike said. And you weren’t going to have to ask the guy now, Pike felt it coming, Mitch was going deliver the goods no matter what.

  You could hear Mitch flipping open a notebook. He said, “We got five . . . Are you listening carefully? Sitting down?”

  “If you insist,” Pike said, and he kept walking, though him enjoying the nice brisk conditions was over.

  “Number 1, we have Matthew Holleran, age 47, Cheyenne, Wyoming . . . Kidney.”

  Pike said, “Actually can you email me these? I’m not gonna write them down.”

  “Sure can,” Mitch said. “Number 2, Alberto Johnstone, age 66, Sparta, Tennessee . . . Liver.”

  “No heart?” Pike said. He was starting to get a little queasy, for a lot of reasons. Keeping it light might help, in a weird way, though probably not.

  “Unfortunately no,” Mitch said. “According to Erline there was damage . . . resulting from the incident.”

  “Oh then,” Pike said.

  “How many’s that . . . okay Number 3, Mike Hegan, 71, Linden, New Jersey . . . Lung.”

  “Jeeminy Christmas,” Pike said.

  “Yeah. Number 4, Robert Orancheck, age 32, Springfield, Illinois . . . Pancreas.”

  “Ooh boy.”

  “5th and final recipient,” Mitch said, “Treat Willamette, age 53, Warwick, Rhode Island . . . Intestine.”

  It was unfair to these recipients--or any recipients--to react this way, but Pike couldn’t help it, by now he really was on the edge of throwing up his breakfast. He fiddled around in his pockets and he found some gum and stuck in a wad of it and that helped.