While Boyce has found his work hours completely disappear, mine have temporarily increased. Rex knows I’ll always cover for him when he wants to take time off, so he generally waits until the last minute to call—preferably late at night, impersonating a repo man, murderer, or as he did two nights ago, a ghost. I asked him why a ghost would call me on the phone to haunt me. He said it’s certainly possible that as a ghost, if he can pass through walls and dimensions, he could use a telephone. I suppose, but why would you do that? That’s like the army using an atomic bomb by asking the enemy to hold it, hoping that the bomb's weight would eventually make the enemy’s collective back go out. Besides, I told him, even if ghosts could use the telephone, would they argue with me about their ability to use the phone, or just get straight to the haunting? “Shut up and go to work for me, Virus,” Rex finally said. I told him that on Friday night I’d be heading out to the casino with Sammy and Boyce, but he said he’d be back in time.
Apparently Rex is taking his son Rex up north to do some camping. He told me he’d bring me back a sack full of bird legs, to which I simply sighed heavily into the phone. I have known Rex for nearly ten years, and nearly every time he leaves for assorted trips he promises to bring back some evidence of ghastly behavior to class aves. I don’t want him to ever do it, but I am frankly tired of wondering what would happen if he did. Would my violent reaction be the way I finally fulfill my nightmare of being sent to prison? Rex already hunts doves which is an abomination on several levels, not the least of which is the metaphorical value. He doesn't bring that up much, however, because he doesn't do it to make me angry--he just likes shooting doves out of the sky. I can only imagine the kinds of things his son is going to hide in his crawlspace as a middle-aged man.
As Rex was about to hang up the phone, I told him to be careful about bears. He told me if he saw a bear he would shoot it in the face. I asked him if he wanted to hear how I would escape from a bear attack, and he said no, and hung up the phone. I’ll say it now, though. If I ever come across a bear, and I’m with someone else (Everyone in the woods is with someone else. Either because they are hiking with someone, or burying him), my plan is to attack my partner in the most maniacal, grand-mal-seizure way possible. By my calculations, the bear’s instincts will identify me as rabid, and not a hilarious way to spend five minutes. This probably wouldn’t work if we accidentally came across a mother’s cub. If that happens, I think I’ll turn to the person I’m with and kiss them really deeply. At some level their mind will suddenly focus on the kiss. Then I will quickly say that I have several cold sores. All this will hopefully distract the person from the fact that their arms were just removed. Even when you know you have only seconds to live and those will be spent in fear and physical agony, part of you will still think, “Cold sores?! Oh god.”
On my way out the door today to cover Rex's shift, my neighbor stopped me and asked me when I was going to do something about the camaro. I informed Reginald, who lived next door when the house was still my mother's, that the camaro doesn't belong to me, and I'd be happy to have someone take it away. "Drive it away, then," he said, despite the fact that Reginald knows good and well the only thing under the hood of that car is a family of raccoons. When I told him this, he completely ignored me. "Just get rid of it. Don't think I didn't see you and your friend ramming it with that van of his." Reginald has some kind of sports car hidden in the garage behind his house, and I think it offends him to see the car just rot there. No one knows where the car came from. For the first two years it was there I expected it to be associated with a missing person. Then I went through a phase where I was sure money was hidden somewhere inside it. As of late, I've been using it when I can't sleep at night, and I need something to lie on top of to wait for any owls or whippoorwills. Once, Rachel and a few of her girlfriends came over to Boyce's house in what turned out to be a disastrously awkward night. To break up the discomfort, Rachel asked everyone a parlor question: if they were allowed one piece of information, anything at all, what would it be. One of Rachel's friends said the cure to cancer, and Boyce said, "You've got to be kidding me," but then we found out her mom had just died of breast cancer. So I spoke up really quick to help out Rachel and I said, "I want to know where that camaro in front of my house came from." For a few minutes--if you ignored the young woman fighting back tears and scowling at Boyce--it looked like things would get fun as we imagined different possibilities for why the car was there. All of them turned really dark though, and in some way all led back to a missing person who by now has long been presumed dead. And then Boyce said, "I'm so sorry," and Rachel's friend just started crying again.
