Part 27 (1/2)

”He's telling us something,” Laura said.

Mike nodded. ”Dad's gotten himself into trouble.”

”We don't know that for certain.”

”Ringo does. Let's call the highway patrol.” He started for the door.

”What?”Laura was incredulous. ”Mister Anti-Establishment wants to call the cops? Mike, Dad's with Oliver Vale. Besides which, the Bald Avenger is probably a cop of some sort himself. If we're going to help, we'll have to do it ourselves.” The Doberman nuzzled her arm. ” 'We' including Ringo, of course.” Mike stopped and glared at her. ”We can't very well catch up with Dad in an old Dodge Dart, can we?”

”No.” Laura smiled a thin, sure smile. ”But we can in an old Beechcraft Bonanza.”

Ringo yipped and ran for the stairs.

The red-and-white V-tail Bonanza stood out like a mutant in a row of Cessnas and Pipers. Ringo thought it was beautiful.

”Have you ever flown in the dark before?” Mike whispered as he and Laura unfastened the tie-downs.

”Once. I almost collided with a smokestack. Instructor Bob practically wet his pants.”

They climbed inside. Ringo took the copilot's seat, and Mike sat behind.

Laura put on a headset and flipped switches, and the instrument dials glowed. ”Fuel's almost max.” She bit her lower lip. ”Listen, I know this was my idea, but tell me again why it isn't stealing.” She activated the starter.

”Taking this aircraft for personal gain would be 'stealing,' ” Mike said, shouting to be heard over the sudden roar. ”Taking it for the purpose of helping someone else is 'commandeering into the service of the people.' Besides, you have to perform a solo for your license anyway, and we'll pay for the fuel and flight time. Eventually.”

”I'm not even sure we'll be able to find Dad!” Laura shouted as the Beechcraft taxied across the field toward the gra.s.s runway. ”I won't be able to help you interpret the eye's projection and fly the plane too!”

Ringo barked.

”We accept your offer,” Mike said. He took the eye halves from his coat, screwed them together, and pushed the sphere into Ringo's right socket.

Ringo blinked. If he concentrated, he could see and hear what Jeremy saw and heard. It was unpleasant, but he would put up with it.

”Two barks warm, one bark cold,” Laura said. ”Got it?”

Ringo barked twice.

”La.s.sie should have been a Doberman!” Mike yelled.

Laura revved the engine. ”This is against the law!”

”All laws, both of nature and of man, have been suspended!” Mike cried. ”Haven't you heard? Buddy Holly is alive and well on Ganymede!”

The Bonanza roared down the runway and rose into the February night.

11.

OLIVER.

I've never dropped acid, but I've read Volume VII of Mother's diary. In February 1981, she wrote,The signals of the other world crackle about me like miniature s.h.i.+ps of light. They hop along my sweater and jump to the TV screen and back again, zip zap. Soon I will discover how to decipher their meaning, and then I shall prepare the Earth for what is to come. In the meantime I glimpse cosmic jellyfish and the whale that swallowed Jonah. Buddy rides astride its back, singing ”Blue Days, Black Nights.”

Other than UFOs, mystical beings, and vintage rock 'n' roll, the only things that Mother now recognized as marginally real were me (when she wasn't calling me ”Buddy”), Ready Teddy, a few TV shows, and her job at KKAP. The latter wasn't to last much longer; she became critical of the station's Top 40 format, and she often entered the booth and told the midday disc jockey that if he didn't play ”Rock Around with Ollie Vee,” he was a traitor to the human race.

Before the station could fire her, I suggested that she quit and let me support us. I was making good money because Cowboy Carl's Component Corral had expanded to include Cowboy Carl's Computer Corral, and Apples were selling better than amplifiers. Mother agreed to early retirement, and I sold her Nova. Thus, since I drove the Dart to work every day, she was trapped safely at home.

She was only forty years old, but I treated her as if she were a doddering crone. By encouraging her to leave her job, I forced her to abandon her one concrete link with the here-and-now. Father, forgive me.

The seances in the bas.e.m.e.nt became more frequent, and flakehead magazines filled the coffee table.

One day in June 1982, Mother called me at work to tell me that Ready Teddy was dead. When I rushed home, however, I found him bouncing in the driveway, as energetic as ever. I asked Mother what the big idea was, and she explained that she'd had avision of him lying dead. Muttering about sending her to Menninger's, I drove back to Topeka... and that evening Ready Teddy didn't appear for his supper.

I found his body on a gravel road a mile away. He had been run over and sc.r.a.ped to the side by a county grader. We buried him in the backyard.

Neither Mother nor I said another word about her premonition. What we said instead was that we would go to the shelter and adopt a puppy as soon as the hurt of our loss had subsided.

But a few weeks later, I bought my Ariel Cyclone, and the subject of getting a puppy never came up again. Mother didn't approve of the motorcycle, but beyond a few obligatory you're-going-to-get-yourself-killed comments, she let it be. Even in her ”other world” dreamland (perhaps especially there), she must have known that it's easier to love a machine than to love a living thing. When machines break, they can be fixed.

The next year, Mother made an impulse purchase of her own. I came home one spring evening and found a partially a.s.sembled satellite dish next to Ready Teddy's grave. Mother stood beside it, gazing into the parabolic sh.e.l.l. I was not happy. ”I used my own savings account and cashed in some bonds,” Mother said. ”You'll still have money for new s.h.i.+ngles.”

”That isn't the point,” I told her. ”If you absolutely had to have one, I could've ordered a better brand through work, and we'd've gotten it at a discount.”

She patted my shoulder. ”This is the one I want, Oliver. It will provide a direct link to the other world, and we'll get free HBO to boot.” She produced a s.h.i.+ny new ten-inch crescent wrench. ”Here, this came with it. Be a dear and put it all together, will you?”

But the SkyVue malfunctioned from the beginning. I connected everything properly (by now I was Topeka's fastest and greatest expert on video hookups), but at random intervals, whatever channel we were watching would dissolve into snow. Adjustments made according to the manual and according to my experience were never effective for long, and my calls to the El Dorado factory were never answered. Finally, I ran out to the dish and whanged the block converter with the crescent wrench.

”That's it!” Mother cried from inside the house.

From that day on, whenever our picture went screwy, I would go out and whang the SkyVue until Mother shouted that the reception was fine again. What I didn't know until after her death was that she believed my violence against the converter put her in touch with ”other world” beings.

She wrote,I had begun to think that the SkyVue was improperly aligned, but then Oliver went into a rage and hit it with the wrench that came packed with the electronics. At that moment, the snow cleared and Buddy Holly appeared. ”h.e.l.lo, Mich.e.l.le,” he said. ”C. can't come to the camera, but he wants you to know that he's waiting for you. I myself want to thank you for remembering me even when almost everyone else has forgotten. Sam and Elvis say h.e.l.lo.” Then he vanished, and the baseball game reappeared. I called to Oliver and told him that he had fixed the picture.

Now, whenever the TV warps into fuzz, I will know that Buddy is calling me. I will send Oliver to hit the SkyVue, making sure that he uses that special wrench, and I shall commune with my G.o.ds.

Perhaps they will let me talk to C. sometime.

And so they did.

At 11:30 P.M. on Monday, February 6, I found myself on the same blacktop road on which I had fled El Dorado the preceding Friday. This time I slouched in the back seat of a '68 Barracuda instead of straddling a '57 Cyclone.

Soon after turning north on U.S. 177, Gretchen had become convinced that we were being followed, and she had taken the Oklahoma Kamikaze onto various back roads for the next several hours, racking up so many miles that we had to stop at a middle-of-nowhere gas station to refuel despite the car's extra tank. We had crossed into Kansas well after sundown, and now, at last, we were only some twenty miles south of the SkyVue Drive-In Theater and Earth Station Emporium. My circular pilgrimage was almost over. It would be ending as it had begun, in full darkness. Pete was fiddling with the dash radio, and he found a Wichita station that was talking about us. He had to turn the volume up high so we could hear it over the wind.

”-citizens report spotting the white Barracuda that was involved in the Oklahoma chase and that is believed to be occupied by accomplices of Oliver Vale. The vehicle was seen northeast of Winfield-”