It’s been a while since I wrote, and I kept my promise to Harris Ames, the man in the cowboy hat from the Indian casino. But now all proverbial bets are off and I can say what I need to say about what happened to us.
Harris Ames, the man in the cowboy hat, followed us out as we were escorted from the Indian casino. We didn’t mind leaving since we had money for a really nice tombstone for Hank’s grave. He pointed at the two journals we had of Hank’s, and said he bet those were worth a lot of money. I told him they were priceless, and he said especially when you don’t get caught.
I told Sammy and Boyce that he was going to take us to the Green Bay Packers vs. Minnesota Vikings game. They couldn’t understand why, so I said because he’s rich, which means he’s eccentric. As we parted ways with Harris, he grabbed me by the sleeve and said maybe on our way to Green Bay I could tell him about the secrets in those books, but I told him the secrets were beyond us, and he laughed the way rich people do, and said, “I bet they are,” also like rich people do, who always assume there’s something they can know that other people can’t.
He picked us up in one of the biggest non-limo cars I’ve ever seen. Boyce said there should be bull horns on the front. When we got in everything was leather and smelled real new, like Ames had never took the car out before. He told us about his family company started by his ancestor Dalton Ames, but I wasn’t listening to anything he was saying. Boyce had just told me before we got in the car that when he went to get us tickets for this game a couple months ago, seats were going for over $2,000. That made me think Harris Ames was psychotic, so sitting in the passenger seat I didn’t bother listening to him—instead I just watched his hands to make sure he didn’t pull out a knife or a cup of his urine.
We were around Chicago when Harris Ames started asking if we brought the books. I said yes, and explained that they belonged to the recently departed Hank Gradowski. Harris said he must have been a very intelligent man, and I said I’m pretty sure he was. Harris asked how he came across his system, and I told him there wasn’t a system. Harris said sure there wasn’t, and then tried to elbow me without letting go of the steering wheel. Harris asked if I would read from the books. So I read: “HALLELUJAH union scabs union scabs sing in the choir Trouble AHEAD?????”
I’m not sure what Harris was expecting, but he started to get real uneasy. He asked me to read from another part, and I read, “The measurement of a dolphin’s skeleton can’t be done with forceps and the blood of the damned.” Harris got real pale. I thought I should read him the part where he mentions me, but I didn’t want to share that. Harris asked me one more time to read from another section, and I said, “There's a Scylla in the palm of my hand and he's fed from the wheels of the children cry cry cry children of the waterlily mister man WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE???????????”
At first I thought Harris had a stroke. Then, after swallowing like a hundred times and pulling at his collar, he asked what the big idea was. What were these books? I explained to him that they belonged to Hank Gradowski, who had recently died of mad cow disease. Harris looked at me for a real long time, and I was afraid he was going to drive us into the back of a semi. Sammy piped in and said, “We thought he might have written us a code in the midst of his madness,” and Boyce then said, “or corrected his journal as a ghost from beyond the grave." Harris immediately hit the brakes and pulled off on the shoulder. He wouldn’t look at us and just kept screaming, “Get out of my car. Get the hell out of my car.” We got out real slowly because there were a lot of cars and trucks whizzing by. I told Harris this was no place to leave us, and he said, “You bunch of idiots. I’m sorry boys, but you’re all idiots. Here, take it.” And he threw us a whole bunch of cash he got out of the console. He didn’t say goodbye. He just screamed that if I told anybody about this before he did, he'd come take away my manhood. Then he screamed like a really fat man getting a tooth pulled and pulled back onto the interstate, ran over the median, and went the opposite direction. For a second his car was spinning its wheels in the grass of the median, but Harris was so angry I think he screamed his car into not getting stuck.
Boyce, Sammy, and I walked a couple miles to the nearest exit, and from there rented a car to get back home. The money Harris gave us was more than enough to pay for the car, so we actually came out in the positive. Sammy and Boyce also got something new to make fun of me for. Plus, I learned something: the next time someone wants to take you to an expensive sporting event in exchange for your gambling system, make sure they know that your system comes from the crippled scribblings of a recently deceased man suffering from major neurological decay.
Of course, we never got to the Packers game. That’s okay, though, since I would have just wanted to talk to Rachel about it. Besides, I don’t think I could stand to see Bart Farve in The Minnesotas' blue.
