“That’s pretty cool, Uncle Farrell.”
“Pretty cool,” he echoed. “You betcha. And this is where I sit, eight hours a day, six nights a week, in front of these monitors, staring. Watching. What do you think I’m watching, Alfred?”
“Didn’t you just say you were watching the monitors?”
“I am watching nothing, Alfred. Eight hours a day, six nights a week, I sit in this little chair right here, watching nothing.”
He leaned very close to me, so close, I could smell his breath, which did not smell very good.
“This is the future, Alfred. Your future, or something like it, if you don’t find your passion. If you don’t figure out what you’re here for. A lifetime of watching nothing.”
3
I studied hard for my driver’s test, but I flunked it. So I took it a second time and flunked again, but I didn’t miss as many questions, so at least I was improving as a failure. Uncle Farrell pointed to my scores as proof I lacked the guts to achieve even something as simple as a learner’s permit.
Things were not much better at school. Barry Lancaster’s wrist was still badly sprained, which meant he was now a bench player just like me. Barry wasn’t happy about this. He went around telling everybody how he was going to “get Kropp,” so I spent my days looking over my shoulder, waiting for the getting to start. I became jumpy; every loud noise, like the slamming of a locker door, was enough to make me nearly wet my pants.
One afternoon in early spring, I came home to find Uncle Farrell already out of bed.
“What is it?” I asked.
“What’s what?”
“Why are you out of bed?”
“Aren’t you the king of Twenty Questions.”
“That was only two questions, Uncle Farrell, and they were kind of related, so that probably would only count as one and a half.”
“You know, Alfred, people who think they’re funny rarely really are.”
“I don’t think I’m funny. I think I’m too tall, too fat, too slow, and too much of a screwup, but I don’t think I’m funny. Why are you out of bed, Uncle Farrell?”
“We have company coming,” he said, wetting his big lips.
“We do?” We never had anyone over. “Who’s coming?”
“Somebody very important, Alfred. Put on some clean clothes and come into the kitchen. We’re eating early.”
I changed my clothes and found my Salisbury steak frozen dinner fresh from the microwave sitting at my spot on the kitchen table. Uncle Farrell was drinking a beer, which was unusual. He never drank beer at dinner.
“Alfred, how’d you like to move out of this dump and live in one of those huge mansions in Sequoia Hills?”
“Huh?”
“You know, where all the rich people live.”
I thought about it. “That’d be great, Uncle Farrell. But when did we get rich?”
“We’re not rich. But we might be. Someday.” He was smiling a mysterious smile while he chewed his Salisbury steak.
“And you’ll be taking your driving test again next week—how’d you like a Ferrari Enzo for your first car?”
“Oh, boy, that’d be great, Uncle Farrell,” I said. He got like this sometimes. It’s no big secret that it’s lousy being poor. But there’s poor and then there’s really poor, and we weren’t really poor. I mean, I never went to bed hungry, and the lights always stayed on, but I guess it wasn’t easy working a lonely night job for the richest man in Knoxville. He wasn’t getting much sleep lately either, and that can make you a little loopy. “But I’d rather have a Hummer.”
“Okay, a Hummer. Whatever. The kind of car doesn’t matter, Al. This guy who’s coming tonight—he’s a very rich man and he’s got this proposition that . . . well, if it works out the way I hope, you and me, we’ll never have to worry about money again.”
“Honestly, Uncle Farrell, I didn’t know we worried about it now.”
“His name is Arthur Myers and he owns Tintagel International. You ever hear of Tintagel International?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s one of the biggest international conglomerates there is, maybe bigger than Samson Industries.”
“Okay.”
“So here’s the deal, Al. One night I’m on my shift and it’s just like any other night, nobody but me at the desk, doing nothing, when all of a sudden the phone rings and guess who’s on the other end.”
“Mr. Myers.”
“Right!”
“What’s a conglomerate?”
“It’s a business that owns businesses, or something like that. That really isn’t the point. Alfred, you need to stop interrupting me and focus a little, okay?”
“I’ll try, Uncle Farrell.”
“So anyway, Mr. Arthur Myers says he’s got a business proposition for me.”
“The owner of one of the biggest conglomerates in the world had a business proposition for you?” I asked.
“It’s crazy!”
“It sure sounds crazy.”
“That’s what I thought!” Uncle Farrell tapped his fork on the plate and started talking really fast. “Who am I but this lowly little night watchman? But I met with him and it turns out he’s the real McCoy, and he needs my help. Our help, Alfred.”
“Our help?” The more he talked about this funny deal, the funnier I felt.
“See, Myers and Bernard Samson go way back. Good buds from, I don’t know, the old country or something. Anyway, Myers convinced Samson to invest in this big business deal—I’m not sure of all the ins and outs but apparently there was a lot of money involved and it went bad. It went real bad. Samson lost a lot of money and he blamed Myers for it.”
“Why did he blame Myers?”
“I don’t know. Now listen, and stop interrupting, Alfred. We don’t have much time.”
“Why don’t we have much time?”
“I’m getting to that.”
“To what?”
“The reason we don’t have much time!”
He took a deep breath.
“Mr. Samson blamed Mr. Myers for this deal that went bad. He took it pretty hard, Samson did, and so he did a terrible thing.”