“Hot
dogs and chili? Pork chops and potatoes? Steak and rice? Chicken nuggets and
squash?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
So, what do you want for dinner?
“It’s my turn to cook.” Frank Brubaker stood there. “So. What do you want for dinner?”
“Oh, I don’t care.” Bru was as busy as a quadriplegic at a hip-hop dancing contest lately.
“Stew and cabbage?” Asked the elder.
“I don’t care.”
“Cheeseburgers and soup?” Frank, eyebrows raised, belly extended, shoulders thrown back and big hairy arms hanging like an ape’s.
All two hundred seventy-eight pounds of him, with the usual shakes and tremors.
“I don’t care.” Bru was pretty stressed-out, lately.
“Hot dogs and chili? Pork chops and potatoes? Steak and rice? Chicken nuggets and squash?”
This game could go on for a while. At the end of it, all appetite would be irrevocably lost.
“Sausages and sweet potatoes?”
Argh. Thought Chuck.
“I don’t care.”
After a while his old man retreated to the chair in front of the TV, to think, to mull it over, and hopefully to come up with some kind of a decision all on his own.
“Peas.” Frank Brubaker meditated on the possibilities. “We got lots of peas…?”
Peas, then, thought Chuck.
Let’s have fuckin’ peas.
In the background, he heard a commercial on the set, blasting out as the old man always had it turned up too loud, even though he claimed to be able to hear it when set at a lower level. It was the ad for reward miles.
‘Senorita, are you trying to break my heart?’ The matador in the oil painting said.
“No, she just forgot to replace the batteries in her vibrator.” Bru bellowed, practically, then turned away and went back down in the basement for a while.
The phone rang, and someone asked for, ‘Mr. Brubaker.’
“Which one?” He asked and the person hesitated.
He tried to place the accent. Cambodia? Nigeria? Bangladesh?
“Mr. Charles H. Brubaker?”
“Yes?” He had a hint of exasperation.
“I am with the verification department of the…”
“Give me your number, and I’ll call you back.”
There was a kind of stunned silence on the line.
“Take me off the fuckin’ list.” He hung up.
He was tired of all these cons and scam artists targeting them. Someone somewhere thought his old man was rich. Where in the hell they got that idea, he couldn’t guess. Probably just the address. The Brubaker house was actually the crappiest one, in an otherwise fairly affluent, blue-collar, working-class sort of a neighborhood.
Someone had tried the old Spanish Lottery gag. Someone tried a substitute cheque-book scam. That’s the one where you put your fake name and someone else’s real account number on the cheque re-order form. Probably stole the old man’s garbage to get the personalized re-order form. Someone was having a real go at the old man’s retirement fund, pitiful as it was. Bru was fairly convinced. He had spent some time thinking it out, but he simply didn’t know how to catch the bastards. For that you needed real resources. He knew that much. The OPP had a cyber-crimes unit, but they spent most of their time catching online pedophiles. He couldn’t argue against that noble endeavor, but how hard was it to catch con artists on the phone?
All you had to do was sit and wait for the fucking phone to ring.
“Canadians have to learn to be more rude.” He had advised the old man, probably to no real avail.
Take me off the fucking list.
The old man once hung up on someone. He stood there, hands shaking, voice quavering with upset, tongue going in and out, in and out, in and out…hands going full blast in a three-inch tremor on the left side, and a six-inch tremor on the right.
Some guy was trying to get the old man to give his PIN number out over the phone.
When his old man got going, he would exhale in a rush.
The sound was like, “hyou-hyou-hyou-hyou…” real soft but discernable.
His quivering chin made his dentures go click-click-click…clickety-click.
Mr. Charles H. Brubaker would very much like to get his hands on one or two of them guys, preferably in a well-lit, but remote back alley somewhere. He’d pound their fucking faces against the wall for a while. In the background, the Speed Channel was running at low volume. A 250-cc motorcycle GP racer was being interviewed by Cauley Morkin.
“It’s too bad you crashed out in practice and had to start at the back.” Morkin, microphone extended.
“Yes.” It was Antonio Fescobaldi, second in points and previous, Bru thought it was 2007, champion.
“I broke a feenger on my foot.” He went on and the announcer broke in.
“Toe…you mean toe.” Morkin being helpful.
And Fescobaldi said: “Yes, that is right. I broke a feenger on my toe.”
Chuck laughed at that one.
Just when you thought there was no hope for TV.
From quiet contemplation comes chaos.
He and Nibbles had done some hard thinking.
They had decided to call in to the Aronka cop shop in about a week or ten days. Bru had a story to write, and a ten-day deadline. Best get to work. Nibbles would quietly fade out, and Bru had a good line all cooked up for the cops.
‘No worries, mate.’
“Shit.” He gasped.
“How could I have forgotten?” He leapt up and headed up the back stairs on his way to the garage.
The conspirators had completely forgotten about that God-damned fossil.
He unlocked the side door and turned on the light. The boat was on sawhorses outside the back wall of the building, which was eight metres square. The cooler was tucked under one of his long, white-painted work benches. He pulled it out and shoved it onto the bench under one of the big floodlights.
When he lifted the lid, the smell hit him like a wave.
Hit with a putrid miasma of stinkiness, he pulled his head back quickly, slammed the lid on it and took it outside to the patio. He walked away for a moment, breathing deeply. Bru cussed softly under his breath out of respect for any neighbors who might be outside on a chilly October evening. He held his breath and closed his mouth tightly. Smell and flavor are closely linked. He yanked off the lid, pulled out the bag, put it on the picnic table, then walked away again. He pulled out and opened his pocket knife, a relic of his Uncle John. Then he went and cut the tightly-knotted upper portion of the bag away, again holding his breath.
“Ugh. Gag me with a frickin’ spoon.”
Reaching in, he picked the thing out and put it on the table. Chuck went to dispose of the bag into a handy garbage bin, which unfortunately did not have a lid.
He went to the back of the house. Unwinding the stiff and curly plastic hose, he turned it on and set the nozzle to a fine spray. First, you wash them hands…
He began washing the fossil accretion of mud, dirt, and assorted crud, hoping the water would cut through the smell. It was enough to make him gag. Brubaker was confused. The stuff he saw coming off under the pressure of the spray was dirt, true enough. But it wasn’t shit, and so he couldn’t account for the smell. It was too rank, too pungent.
He cast his mind around. He remembered the cat’s slimy ass, and how it could leave a real pong behind on the arm of a chair. But that was only similar, not the same.
The smell of a male cat’s backside? A big cat? What if a big cat sprayed it?
Most of the smell was gone, diluted by water. Maybe it would freeze or something.
He took the rock back into the shop under the lights. Once he fired up the kerosene heater—how could the air get any worse in here—he’d have a closer look at it, with the added bonus of Hilier’s own pick to do the looking. Searching his numerous pockets for a smoke, he was again heading back to the house when he found the scrap of cloth in his hunting-shirt pocket. He spun around and put it on the bench a couple of feet away from the stone, already drying under the lights. Then he went into the house to get smokes, a lighter, his camera, a pen and a notepad. There was something a little odd about a fossil that smelled bad.
There was also something odd, something quirky in Brubaker’s makeup. Just when he should be serious, he saw the incongruity. When he should be sober and industrious, he saw the absurdity.
The kerosene stove got going, and he closed the grating. Now for a little music…
An incisor is a front tooth...
He set up his cheap digital camera. It was capable of videos and sound as well. It sat there on a tripod as he began to enact for its benefit a hammy alien autopsy scene. But it didn’t last long, as he stood there by the bench under the lights, and picked away more dark, leaf-litter looking stuff. A little shiny white thingy fell off and landed on the top of the bench with a tick-tick-tick sound.
When his shocked eyes and tired brain finally comprehended what it was that he was looking at, a sick sense of dread hit him right in the stomach.
“Oh, shit.” He groaned. “Oh, God.”
He stood there thinking.
“Oh, Brubaker…what have you done?”
It was about a half, the bottom half, probably an upper incisor, of what was clearly a tooth. A human tooth, by the look of it. The sharp end had a little wear, but it was otherwise perfect. No doubt about it. In Bru’s mind Hilier, being a TV celebrity, would have picture-perfect teeth.
“Holy fuck.” He stood there in dismay.
What the heck now? What had they gotten…no, what had he gotten them into this time? Mr. Charles Henry Brubaker was in deep shit now. Not that he couldn’t explain everything.
It’s just that he would have preferred not to.
END
Images.
Louis. The bonus video isn't in the story, but Chuck might look out the back window once in a while...
Louis has books and stories available from iTunes.
Thank you for reading.
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