The Prisoner of Snowflake Falls (6 page)
I discovered that Ambrose was the sort of guy who attached little yellow sticky notes to everything as reminders to himself. For example, there were a couple of sticky notes attached to the envelope full of money I found buried under a stack of shirts in his dresser. One of the notes made it clear that the money was intended for Melinda's high school graduation present. The other note had all these calculations on it, showing how far Ambrose had to go before he could afford the bracelet Melinda wanted.
I guess I should have taken the money. When you think about it, is pretty much my professional obligation. I considered this option for so long that I had to make myself a second sandwich. On the other hand, it was clear that Ambrose still had quite a way to go before achieving his financial goal. So I decided that I would take a few dollars out of my own wallet and add it to the envelope. You may think this is weird for a burglar, but it made me feel good.
You'd be surprised how good I can feel when hunger or the fear of getting caught by Social Services isn't getting the better of me. I get plenty of fresh air and exercise. Best of all, nobody tells me what to do.
As a bonus, Evelyn's tree house gives me a bird's-eye view of the entire neighborhood. This is a very convenient method of keeping tabs on the habits of any possible patrons. The view of my potential benefactors has been greatly enhanced ever since I managed to steal the previously mentioned expensive pair of binoculars. Lately I've been keeping tabs on a man I like to call “The Colonel.”
The Colonel is a retired army guy who has the kind of bristly crew cut that makes his head look like the business end of a brand-new toilet brush. He lives with a small army of cats he has named after famous military leaders. For example, one cat is named Custer and another is named Napoleon. There are even two cats named Omar and Bradley, in honor of the famous World War Two general. Even though the Colonel has over a dozen cats, I suspected he might make an excellent contributor to my emergency fund.
I always like to get a closer look at a benefactor's premises before doing any actual burglarizing. Sometimes I pretend I'm selling magazine subscriptions. This usually gets me a quick peek at the layout of the living room. When I first visited him, the very talkative Colonel told me that he already had more than enough magazine subscriptions to periodicals like
Soldier of Fortune
,
Guns&Ammo
and
Cat
Fancier Monthly.
After he informed me of his part-time job as “a mall enforcement official,” he introduced me to a few of his cats, including General Patton, who the Colonel said was specially trained to be “an attack cat.” As if to illustrate the point, General Patton made an impressive attempt to shred the bottom of my jeans with his razor-sharp claws.
The Colonel explained that General Patton got very upset when any stranger attempted to “breach the interior perimeter,” which was marked by a series of used tin cans filled with thumb tacks that the Colonel sharpened using a special nail file. The Colonel told me the cans were tied together with twine and strung across both the back and front doorways at ankle level to form homemade tripwires.
The Colonel also bragged that there was a bucket suspended over a doorway by the stairwell. The bucket was filled with the water he soaked his dirty sweat socks in, and it was specially triggered to dump its contents on an unsuspecting intruder as they made their way up the stairs leading to his bedroom.
The Colonel delivered a very passionate speech about how burglars were “a festering boil on the kneecap of the entire human race.”
Having watched the Colonel through my liberated binoculars, I have discovered that, while he has no less than three ancient locks on his back door, I could probably pick all three of them while blindfolded. I have also observed that his house is full of very interesting and collectable items. Antique swords, vintage canteens, old-fashioned pocket watches. It's the type of merchandise that I could sell to my shady friend, Lenny. Lenny is a business acquaintance of my Uncle Andy's. He runs a pawnshop that accepts stolen goods, no questions asked. In the distant past, Lenny helped my quest for cultural enrichment by purchasing some of my liberated items for far less than they are actually worth.
Of course, since I'm lying especially low at the moment, I have no immediate interest in the Colonel's antique collectables. Right now I'm much more interested in his impressive stock of canned provisions. While we were talking, the Colonel mentioned that he liked to keep a lot of canned goods on hand in case of an earthquake or a foreign invasion. “Of course, something along the lines of a nuclear attack is unlikely,” he pointed out, “but that is no reason to be unprepared.”
I thought the old guy must be lonely, because when I expressed interest in seeing his collection of canned goods, he was more than happy to give me a guided tour of his supersized pantry. It was a very impressive sight, especially for someone in my particular situation. I mean, once you got past all the cat food, he had all sorts of gourmet-type things in little cans that you didn't even need a can opener to open. You just pulled on these little tabs. And voila! All of a sudden you had a feast. Oysters, salmon, gourmet soups. Plus some other kinds of exotic delicacies that sounded very French.
As if this wasn't tantalizing enough, the Colonel showed me a lot of emergency equipment that would be just about perfect for my tree house, including a little generator and a battery-powered hot plate with all sorts of handy domestic features. All, according to the Colonel, one-hundred-percent approved by the military for domestic life in the jungle or other unfamiliar terrain. It was almost enough to make me drool.
On the surface, it was very tempting to think of the Colonel as the ideal patron for all my provisionary needs. The problem? To be honest, I found the Colonel more than a little scary. He was always doing calisthenic-type exercises with unopened gourmet soup cans taped to his ankles. This even freaked out the cats, especially Omar and Bradley, who were always ducking under the couch.
Did I mention that the Colonel has a vast collection of nightsticks from his part-time job as a security guard? Did I also mention that he bragged to me about having a Super Soaker water pistol filled with a special bright red dye he'd mixed up in his basement? He called the formula CR-13. The CR stood for Citizen's Revenge. He told me it took him exactly thirteen tries to get the formula just right.
According to the Colonel, CR-13 smelled like a combination of rotten eggs and boiling roof tar. After several experiments on himself, he had determined that the dye was highly resistant to soap and water; he informed me that the lingering odor was “comparable to that of a very angry skunk.”
It was going to take a lot of planning to break into the Colonel's house. Especially if I was going to avoid any pitfalls along the way. Fortunately, Wally Whispers taught me more than how to pick a lock: he also taught me a lot about patience.
I missed Wally almost as much as Uncle Andy. There was something about him that always made me want to listen very carefully. Maybe it's because he has a way of making everything he says sound like a valuable secret. “Every disadvantage has a silver lining,” he told me, in regards to his soft way of speaking. “For instance, people tend to pay attention when you whisper.”
“But aren't there times when you feel like yelling?” I asked.
Wally shrugged. “I have discovered that nothing worth saying above a whisper is worth saying at all.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, suppose I volunteered the opinion that I consider you a very polite young man,” he said. “Would that opinion sound any more sincere in a louder voice?” When I shook my head, Wally looked very pleased. “So what have we learned?” he asked. And then, answering his own question, he added, “Yelling is not only rude but also highly overrated.”
I must admit that there have been a couple of times over the last few weeks that I've felt like yelling. If only to get rid of some extra tension that comes with my present situation. Much as I enjoy my freedom, there are times when I get this lonely feeling that won't go away. It can also get somewhat stressful lying to my Uncle Andy about the Hendersons. But when I feel like yelling, I always try to remember that it's overrated.
The thing I wish most of all? That when Uncle Andy gets out of jail, he'll find a house somewhere so that everybody can be together again. Of course, it's only a dream. And sometimes it seems like that dream is never going to happen. No matter how long I wait.
Not that some things aren't worth waiting for. Yesterday I got back from cleaning myself up at the outdoor pool facility down the street. When I returned to Evelyn's yard, the sky was still blue. It was the kind of sky that looked like Uncle Andy had put it all together just right.
I tried to remember that blue-sky feeling as I drifted to sleep that night. I thought about how great it would be if the world were more like one of Uncle Andy's jigsaw puzzles. A place where every piece was made to fall perfectly into place. That way, no matter how bad it got, you'd always know that blue skies were coming your way sooner or later. All you had to do was be patient.
S
ometimes I like to think back on the days when I didn't have to steal to survive. Back then, I thought of it as “recreational theft.” I didn't have to worry so much about the basics because I could afford to use any liberated cash for the luxuries of life.
You might think that I would spend all my ill-gotten gains on frivolous items like junk food and computer games. But just about every penny I stole back then went into what I like to call cultural enrichment and self-improvement. Like matinee tickets to the theater, opera or symphony. Or maybe a special lunch at the type of restaurant where you have to use at least three forks for a single meal. Even though I have fallen asleep at the symphony a couple of times, I enjoy cultural enrichment a lot.
You may ask, “Why would Henry go to an Italian opera in the middle of the day when he doesn't even understand Italian?” Let me explain. I used to feel extra guilty about stealing, because I knew my late mother would not approve of me indulging in criminal activity. Maybe not guilty enough to stop stealing altogether, but way past guilty enough to come up with a guilt-easing plan that kept some of my mother's long-term wishes for me in mind.
My mother loved the arts and, every once in a while, she would scrape up enough money to take me to a play or a concert. “Let's be extravagant, Henry!” she would say.
Extravagant
was one of her favorite words, and whenever she used it, it meant dressing up to go sit someplace for a long time.
I was young and squirmy at the time. But she explained that I would appreciate the experience later on. “I want you to value the finer things in life,” she told me. “I love your Uncle Andy, but all he cares about is beer, poker and staying up late to watch old movies on tv.”
There are times when I get lonely for my mother and our extravagant times together. That's why going to an opera or a concert that I know she might have liked makes me feel a little closer to her spirit, if you know what I mean. She was always a big believer in savoring life's more elegant moments.
Once, we were passing a display in a store window and she pointed out a very expensive bottle of French perfume called Springtime in Paris. We went inside the store so that a woman in a little black dress could spray my mother with a free sample. Then she laughed and leaned down toward me so that I could smell what she considered the greatest perfume in the world. From that moment on, I always looked forward to the day when I could save up enough to buy her a whole bottle.
I even told my Uncle Andy that I was starting a perfume fund for her next birthday. The trouble was, my mother got pretty sick way before her birthday and had to stay in the hospital. My uncle got this idea to buy a bottle of Springtime in Paris to cheer her up. “Why wait for tomorrow when she can smell good right now?” he asked.
Our plan was simple. “You kick in the money from your perfume fund, and I will make up the difference with a suitable donation,” said Uncle Andy. “But if your mother asks, you tell her you bought the whole bottle with your savings. Understand?” Even then, I understood that my mother would not try a single squirt of any perfume bought with the proceeds from theft. I told my uncle he could definitely count on me.
We went to buy the perfume at a fancy department store, and Uncle Andy asked the saleslady for the biggest bottle of Springtime in Paris she had. I took out all my change and put it on the counter. The saleslady was very nice about sorting all the coins. She even made a little joke and asked if the perfume was for my girlfriend. I said it was for my mother.
I'll never forget the way my mother looked when I presented her with the bottle of perfume. She gave me her best smile, and then she looked at me like maybe it was too good to be true. Right away, I knew she wanted to make extra sure that Uncle Andy had not liberated it from a perfume warehouse or some strange woman's dresser. I showed her the sales slip and then topped things off by lying very vigorously about how I'd been saving up for ages.
Normally, my mother would have asked a few more questions. But she was pretty pale and skinny at that pointâwhat you'd definitely call frail. So she cut the questions short to save energy and just smiled. “Why don't you squirt some in the air right now?” she asked, looking at the bottle like it was part of some very nice dream she was having. “You know, like they do at the perfume counter.”
“Isn't that a bit wasteful?” I asked.
“What the heck, Henry,” she said, a little bit of color returning to her cheeks. “Let's be extravagant.”
And so I squirted a little perfume in the air while my mother lay back on her hospital pillow and closed her eyes. She looked so happy that I asked her what she was thinking about. “I am thinking about our lunches at Chez Maurice,” she said. I guess of all our extravagant times together, the lunches at Chez Maurice were her favorite.