‘Wrongful Injury’ and a number of other crimes. We cast a wide net and included the chubby Canadian singer and his wife, the little bitch that I hear actually clobbered you with that bat. I’m working on ways to bring the whore’s off-spring into the mix. I’m terribly sorry for you little brother but your situation is a whole lot of fun for me.”
Fast forward to the two brothers sitting at a card table; Cary Colton was eating.
“You know these ‘Lean Cuisine’, the Chicken Alfredo’s aren’t half bad but you gotta eat at least three or you get hungry in an hour. I’d fix you some but I know you won’t eat it.”
Handing his beer to Gene Handy, Cary Colton said, “Here don’t tell ‘em where you got it and I’ll get you another in a few minutes. Drink it down fast.”
Gene Handy, apparently very thirsty, gulped the beer down in one long drink. True to his word, Cary Colton produced another cold beer; Gene Handy drained the beer just like before. Colton laughed and patted Handy on the head, produced another beer, and left the room.
The last conversation was with library personnel again.
“I’m searching for periodicals regarding the late Mr. Miles K. Henley can you show me the process for using the search engines in these databases?”
After that there were no more conversations that weren’t just garbled up questions of himself like, ‘Can I pull this off? How strong is she? Will Sharon be proud of me? ‘Will the Lord help me because I advocate for his fallen soldier?’
We woke and the process was familiar. We could smell each other and then see and then speak, and then move. Michael, practiced at taking the lead, carried his wife from the room.
Charlie and I saw only each other and tried to tame the urgency of our need and enjoy the feel of each other while striving for sexual satisfaction.
An hour later, before we hugged up to say our good bye for a few weeks, Michael and Lu both praised the process and the way I put it all together. They said it brought clarity and with that success came a change in attitude by all of us. That attitude was no longer that of ‘excuse me, can I see’ but was changed to ‘I know the way, I’m going to see.’ Neither one of us felt that we needed permission to take control of our destinies; we were each confident in our personal strength as well as our collective.
That evening, tucked into Charlie’s big arms, I remembered that we hadn’t explored the place behind the pocket door that Charlie discovered in the closet.
‘Lover, you asleep?’ I asked Charlie mentally.
‘Yes,’ Charlie thought.
Back in the closet with the pocket door, I soon discovered there was a room on the other side of the small side-closet where the overcoats had hung earlier which opened with another pocket door. That room was approximately 20’ by 20’ and carried shelves of collectibles. On the top shelf was a large box with catalogs and stamp books and tools for the hobby. On one shelf was another box with books for coin collecting and rolls and rolls of coins from silver dollars to penny rolls found rolled and stacked evenly in the box. One wall in the room had a huge white screen and there was a projector that hung from the ceiling, shelves of CDs and DVDs. There were three comfy chairs placed strategically around the room for easy viewing.
Though I was exhausted I continued my ‘look see’ in that ‘hobby room’ thinking that there may be information somewhere in there that pertained to Tut and I didn’t want to leave it for another time and be without that information. I also remembered Wyatt asking me for any papers that were out of place that I found. Being methodical was not easy because I knew time was running out and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to find whatever it was that was surely there.
The videos were labeled so I decided to watch a few of them while I went through a collection of papers that were scattered on the top of a smallish desk. The video was dated 1963. I got the oddest of feelings while I watched and listened to Miles on the video. It felt like he was speaking directly to me. He was quite good looking as a virile 45 year-old.
His direction and tone were as though he were leaving a message for someone; it felt like the message was for me. Not unlike me to think something crazy like that because when he left that message I was not even a year old and he couldn’t have even heard of me.
He talked about the very room I was in and what the place was to him. He said it was a place of peace and quiet, a place where ideas took shape and plans were made and personal research was conducted.
“This room,” the Miles on the video said as he raised his arms to show it was that very room “is where decisions are made.”
Collecting a handful of papers from the desk I moved over to the center comfy chair to watch the rest of the video from Miles’ own place, from Miles’ perspective and I was thinking that just sitting where Miles sat to decide would help me make good choices for his companies.
When the video ended, I started the next, keeping them in order chronologically seemed important. I watched Miles continue his dialog with the camera about what was happening in his life during that time. He talked about a woman that he hoped to meet but I wasn’t sure if he had seen her or was just making her up but either way he never said her name.
While Miles talked on the video, I listened and tried to make sense of the papers that were scattered about the desk. Eventually I stacked them neatly in a pile with plans to give them to Wyatt before we left for the airport the following day. Collecting another file from a drawer in the desk and sitting back down on the main comfy chair in which to read it; it didn’t take me long to realize that most of the documents would need to be seen by Wyatt. I cut to the chase and collected the business files to give to Wyatt and set them aside; at that point, there were two file boxes full of them.
There was a worn baby book among the files without much information in it but a few baby pictures and in the middle was a worn and yellowed 8” x 10” picture of Tut. My heart started to pound when I saw the picture and I began to gather items for another box that I would take home with me. The picture of Tut gave me renewed energy and I picked up my pace while sifting through more of Miles’ personal mementos and such.
On my hands and knees to reach a box that had been shoved to the far wall under the desk, I could feel cobwebs but didn’t see any spiders until I pulled the box into the open. When I removed the lid, the mother of all spiders came strolling out of that box.
“Holy shit,” I yelled and leapt away from the box but kept my eyes on the giant hairy thing.
My first instinct was to run but the spider was between me and the exit. I gauged the distance to the door and jumped again when I saw Charlie standing there looking at me. Charlie had a better angle to see what the spider was up to so I pointed to the box.
“Lover, there’s a big spider in the box.” I said.
Charlie laughed until he saw the spider; then he got serious. He slowly walked up to the box and squatted down to look at it. I thought I’d pee myself when he reached into the box and allowed the spider to walk up his arm.
“This guy’s a pet.” Charlie said. He spent a minute calmly talking to the spider before he put the spider onto a shelf and gave him the run of the place.
“I had a pet tarantula when I was a kid.”
Charlie said when he looked at me and saw the question in my eyes.
“That
