A MONTH EARLIER, a far more animated Jack had jolted me out of a deep sleep. He was making my
cellphone
jingle interminably. With great reluctance, I flipped it
open. I assumed Jack was calling to cancel his account. Why he was
getting
things underway at four-twenty wasn't clear. I hated it when customers
quit, even when doing so was clearly in their best interests.
God knows Jack's unhappiness was justified. I shouldn't have called him a flaming, asshole, whack job, fagot. Not in public anyway. Still, everybody more-or-less concurred. No doubt about it, Jack had fucked up his life big time. His Website didn't cause his monumental fuck-up , but it spltlighted it for everybody to see. Nobody doubted that he should begin rebuilding his life by bringing down that site . His lunacy was becoming burdensome. His wackiness was losing whatever quirky charm it might once have had. Women who once wanted to nurture him now wanted to avoid him at all costs.
"Did I awaken you?" Jack had asked. "Please tell me you were up already." When I didn't say anything for way too long, Jack resumed speaking. "I need to meet with you. Today. Early as possible. Can you be at Karen's at nine?"
"That gives me four-and-half hours to get ready and make that two-minute drive. Yeah, sure, I can be there."
Of course, my sarcasm was lost on Jack. I knew it would be. It made me sad. When we first met, he got straight A's in sensitivity. His manners were impeccable. Nobody could have been more in tune with the nuances of satisfying human relations. Women loved him, men respected him, small children tugged his pants leg. Now Jack was 76oblivious to the needs of others. Events had turned Jack into a boor, not to mention hard-core nut job.
So why did I give a good god damn? As a webmaster, I host a couple of dozen websites besides my own. Several of them take way less work and a few pay larger fees. Sure, I need all the business I can get, but I could get along okay without Jack's outlandish site. Removing it just might improve both of our lives. So why was I so reluctant to do so?
To most the worst thing was Jack's claim of a personal association with Quetzalcoatl. Why this was so bothersome I wasn't sure. Plenty of people say they talk to God—and God talks back to them. What's so different about getting it on with an eons-old Mayan man-god who had a way of popping up whenever the mystery of the Mayans was hot topic number one? So what if he was a gaudy feathered serpent?
Sounds sort of reasonable, I allowed, but nobody was buying it. Maybe it was simple prejudice.To most, the Jude-Christian God of Old and New Testament fame was way more acceptable for chit chat than a mythological Mayan with an odd-ball name.
It didn't help that Mayans had fallen from favor. The end of the Mayan calendar in December of 2012 was once a favorite topic of speculation. Then some smart ass came along and said there had been a translation error. Converting their calendar into ours is tricky. Turns out the end might not come for a another few hundred years (or might have come and gone unnoticed). This bit of news was greeted with a long, collective, who-gives-a-shit shrug.
Trouble was Jack took all this in stride. He didn't care a whit about that calendar. He pulled a classic no-problemo. He pitched a slick as gooseshit, now-you-see-it-now-you-don't, giant curve ball of indifference. Everybody gasped in disbelief. With nary a backward glance, he agreed that twenty-twelve had nothing to do with the world ending. But ending it was still on track to do, and sooner rather than later. So sayeth Quetzalcoatl.
...
At Karen’s Cafe, a WIFI hotspot in the local mall, I had parked myself in my favorite corner, the one with an open receptacle for my iBook. I had a perfectly good, well-charged battery, but, what the heck, why not use their juice? They don't seem to mind, although I guessed I was expected to at least buy a muffin. I had a deal with Karen, swapping online advertising for a daily large cup of coffee. Since I could be counted upon to buy a cinnamon raisin bagel if not one of Karen's amazing sandwiches or at least a giant chocolate chunk cookie, she came out okay.
I had checked my AdSense account (yesterday had brought in a whopping thirteen cents; it didn't matter since anything above zero represented a gift from the cyber gods). After perusing both g-mail accounts, I was logging into Yahoo when Jack sat down at my table. Dispensing with the “howdys” and the “how’re ya doings”, he seemed alarmingly agitated. Launching right into it, Jack said, “Listen to me, asshole. For once in your life, pay attention. Mankind is in imminent peril, and I, quite honestly, can't see how anybody other than you has even the slimmest chance of delaying its demise.”
In my mind, Jack's high marks for immediacy were dramatically offset by his adjunct insanity. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have cared. Nobody had more tolerance for mental deviation than me. Truth be told, few things make me feel to home. This is fortunate since I attracted whack jobs. They seemed to seek me out. Luckily, I tend to find them, if not always fascinating, at least more interesting than humdrum normalcy. I found there often was quite beautiful logic in their off-beat meanderings once one accepted a few basic if unsustainable premises. The trick is to suspend disbelief for however long it takes to adopt an offbeat point of view.
I reached for my bagel. Scooping a generous wad of cream cheese onto a plastic knife, I began spreading it. I moved a bit more slowly than necessary, giving Jack a chance to mellow out. I can't remember ever seeing a man so riled. The normally calm academic was practically frothing at the mouth. Ordinarily Jack radiated a detachment befitting his earlier status as a highly respected academic. Over the years I had known him, Jack had taken immense pride in the ability of his first-class mind to entertain several conflicting points of view simultaneously. And, yes, he did love to hear himself talk, and, for sure, he was good at it. He would never use an ugly word when a pretty one was within reach.
To his credit, he almost always gave himself time to come up with the best possible word. Often he was positively lyrical. But not today. Today he was plunging forth recklessly, utterly unmindful of the impression he was making on D, his captive listener.
“You have to find Quetzalcoatl,” Jack asserted. “You just have to. This is a solemn debt your humanity has incurred.”
Jesus God, why today? I had way more important things to do. Without breaking a sweat I could think of at least a dozen. I tried to look pensive as I bit into my bagel. I offered Jack the other half, but he shook his head. No chance of dousing the man's agitation with cream cheese covered cinnamon-raisin. That would be way too simple. Jesus, Jack the bullshit I put up with trying to placate clients. If he wants me to bring down his Website, why doesn't he just say so? If he wants to keep it going, why can't he just send me my money and spare me the melodrama? If he wants to make changes, fine, no problem, I'll do whatever he wants. But why put me through this wringer? What is it about me that the biggest nut cases find me so irresistible? Why couldn't it be rich dudes or hot babes?
The sad thing was that until recently Jack had been among my more sane hosting clients (not much of an accomplishment, since I had attracted some real head jobs). Even as he insisted upon hovering way over the edge, Jack had reason to believe D could maintain a grip on some presentable version of reality. So much for that. So now, since D couldn't think of a reply even remotely appropriate, he pretended to be fascinated by his bagel.
"His portal is somewhere Downeast,” Jack continued. “I know that for sure. He told me he had found the perfect place for it. He said it was Downeast Maine's most magical place. Nobody knows Downeast Maine better than you. I am all but certain you can find it, but if you can't, I am know damn well your psychic girlfriend can.”
“There are two problems with this. First off, she isn't my girlfriend. Second off, even if she were my girlfriend, she's totally defensive about her abilities. No way will she hire them out. Much as I might wish otherwise, she's hardly at my beck and call.”
“No matter. The fate of mankind is at stake. Are you telling me she won't do what she can to save the human race?”
“I am telling you she'll think you're nuts.” And she's seldom wrong about such things D thought to himself.
“You'll just have to convince her otherwise,” Jack insisted. "She'll at least listen to you.”
Yeah, right. She’ll listen if she can stop laughing long enough. Cuckoo I can cope with. Cuckoo can be fetching. Relentless sanity, after all, can be downright wearing. But Jack was reeking of mental malfunction way beyond cuckoo, a craziness I couldn't comprehend, never mind mend. Delusional paranoia maybe (is that a real thing?), or some even more obscure malady never mentioned in psych 101. Jack's condition cried out for a professionalism I just didn't have.
“I can't even spell Quetzalcoatl,” I said. “I don't know what he looks like. And besides that he isn't real.” The hell with humoring him, I decided. Maybe a bitch slap to his self-esteem would bring him around, although I doubted it.
Hardly anybody can spell Quetzalcoatl,” Jack allowed. “Some days I can't. I don't want you to spell him, I want you to find him. He's real, he's very real, and he's somewhere Downeast, or his portal is. Nobody knows the region better than you. He's playing with us; to him it's a game. To make things sporting, he's given us a few clues, so now I need you to track him down.
The human race needs you to find him. And quickly! You have to promise me you'll give it your best shot. Promise me that. Now!"
"Yeah, sure, whatever," I said, vaguely aware I had just made, however halfheartedly, a solid commitment that would certainly come back to haunt me.
“Have you tried googling “Quetzalcoatl”? I asked with as straight a face as I could muster.
“Actually, yes,” Jack admitted. “I got well over a million references. Just for the hell of it, I checked out the first hundred sites. I knew none would be helpful.”
“Can’t be too many folks out there named Quetzalcoatl.”
“Actually he’s adopted different names for when he’s in human form."
"He's not always a feathered serpent?"
He can assume whatever form he wishes. Like I’ve said, lately he wants to be one of the guys, and he’s afraid Quetzalcoatl might be off-putting, as he terms it.”
“Showing up as a feathered serpent would be plenty off-putting. But be that as it may, what’s he call himself when he's here?”
“Somewhere along he line, he developed a strong admiration for Dirty Harry, and started calling himself Clint. Then he developed an even stronger attachment to President Clinton. This was when the prez was facing heat for porking Monica Lewinsky. In Q's mind having sexual relations with that woman was the penultimate one-of-the-guys thing to do. So for a while he used the name Clinton although later he shortened it back to Clint. I don’t know if he claims a last name.”
“I take it he’s no prude.”
“Well, yes and no. Sexually he’s a libertine. Claims to have screwed thousands of different lifeforms. Makes Chamberlain look like a choirboy. Once he told me he wished they all could be California girls. I guess he was pretending to be a beachboy. In this mind, nobody is one of the boys more than a surfer dude.”
“But in other ways?”
“Except when he’s struggling to be studman, he is scrupulously honest. He hates liars. He knows which local merchants are bent and has nothing but derision for them.”
For somebody so deeply muddled, Jack could seem infuriatingly focused.
I sighed. I groaned. I rolled my eyes. “I am a Webmaster, not a Super Hero. Chasing down promiscuous mythological godlike beings isn't my thing. You need the Fantastic Four or the Silver Surfer or at least the Nightstalker.”
“I need you, my man. More to the point, mankind needs you. You're the one slim chance the human race has to stick it out a bit longer. You're it, like it or not.”
Like it or not? My choice? Well, let's go with not. Definitely not. Dealing with somebody as crazy as Jack, no matter how faithfully he pays his bill, was something I would never really cozy up to. It was stressful. It didn't matter how often I told myself it's all make believe. I knew I should relax and have fun. But why did I attract so many crazies? They're drawn me, a mysterious attraction I hadn't tried to encourage.
Okay, I conceded, maybe I had made a few unwise moves. Quetzalcoatl really wasn't any more imaginary than Captain D, a character I had devised to represent my Internet business. My real name was Dick and I had called my business Downeast Directions, so calling myself Captain D was a logical choice. This seemed harmless enough, but over the years, Captain D had taken on a personality of his own. He had assumed an outlook on life I didn't completely control. On the plus side, Captain D was confident and out-going, a crackerjack salesman. He was, however, an outspoken liberal and liked arguing politics with people he regarded as tea party yahoos. D was always on the verge of souring business deals by bringing up politics or religion. I, on the other hand, am usually quiet and a bit withdrawn. Most often I preferred reading to socializing. I would go out of my way to avoid conflict while you really didn't want to fuck with Captain D.
Be that as it may, what had started out full of promise, a lovely early summer day in Ellsworth, Maine, was deteriorating rapidly. I had hoped to cut loose by mid-afternoon, to get to Blink Bonnie early to loosen up for the scramble. I liked to hit utility wedges from the flat spot just off the parking lot onto the fifth green. From here I would try to hit the balls over the trees bordering the ravine onto the ninth fairway. And from there it was a short iron back onto the ninth green. It was a short circuit, but one requiring a fair degree of precision for balls not to be lost in the ravine.
Once again I was hot on the trail of the Secret of Golf. My last few times out I felt like he was onto something hot. The key, I thought, was to move the right elbow as little as possible prior to contact. Keep it still. Focusing on this was putting me in an excellent position to hit the ball hard. My bullet-like shots were following a dramatic trajectory with just a hint of draw. Okay, deep down I wondered how long it would last. Over the years I had discovered many secrets, moves or positions that seemed to bring remarkable results. Invariably over time they dissipated. Golf was a cruel mistress, full of tantalizing promises and countless heartless betrayals. Momentary satisfaction was inevitably followed by disappointment. I knew I should have told her to fuck off long ago. But like a lovesick whelp I kept coming back for more.
More than anything I wanted to keep his date with Blink Bonnie, the ragged, seaside course off Route One ten miles east of Ellsworth. I played here often. A quirky layout featuring unique criss-crossing par five holes, it had given me both fits and unforgettable blessings. (It was on hole seven, high up on the elevated tee, that I had launched my one-and-only hole-in-one, a thing of immeasurable beauty. I had used a Ping U Wedge and a Titleist Pro V1, struck flush, never wavering from its bead on the stick 110 yards away, never doubting its destiny, at one with God. Never mind that the greens often tended to look like mini-minefields after the battle of Armageddon. The down-to-earth guys who played there— worm diggers, clammers, delivery truck drivers, blueberry farmers to name a few—were sure to show. Outside the sun had burned off an early-morning mist. It was shining brightly in a clear blue sky. The grass was green as green can be (August burnoff singeing the unwatered fairways was weeks away). Meanwhile, I was trapped inside with a lunatic. Was there a nice way to tell Jack I was way more interested in honing my backswing than in pretending to save the bizarre world pervading his crazed brain?
"How long have we known each other? Jack asked. “Four years, going on five? In all that time have I ever given you reason to question my sanity? Okay, I know you haven't really bought into the Mayan thing. That's fine. You humor me. I tell you what to put on the Site, and you keep a straight face while you put it there. Usually. But day in and day out, for the most part, by and large, have I struck you as insane?”
I didn't have a ready reply to this, and for a minute or two we sat in awkward silence. I was relieved when Tom Deegan sat down at our table. "Hi ya, Tom," I said, realizing from the vacant look on his face that he was deep in thoughts that had nothing to do with us. "Earth to Tom, earth to Tom, are you there? Come in please..." I passed his hand back in forth in front of Tom's face.
"FACTOID," Tom said suddenly. "A year or so ago, the recording of Lee Harvey Oswald contending he was a patsy was subjected to stress analysis. The experts all agreed—Oswald was telling the truth."
I figured Tom was taking the day off. Conjecturing that a conspiracy lay at the heart of the Kennedy assassination just put him in line with pretty much everybody else I knew. But, in truth, Tom never really took days off. His mind was never far removed from his Grand Unified Universal Conspiracy Theory. As a teenager, Tom had taken the vast sea of disconnected confusion that most of us recognize as reality and simplified it drastically. He had constructed a world occupied by two groups: A small select collection of conspirators and all the rest of us. The conspirators seemed to exist in an unbroken line going back to, maybe, the Druids. These days they were either quietly running the world or plotting how to take total control. Whichever, they were enjoying most of its goodies.
Tom's worldview was simple only to a point. In his mind, tentacles of conspiracy ran through thousands of vortexes. An entire coherent edifice, according to Tom, could be constructed from FACTOIDS. These were little sometimes interesting facts that were a bit like Lego blocks. Singly they amounted to little. But stuck together in just the right way they can comprise an amazing edifice. He was devoting his life to building a cathedral of conjecture.
A classic nerd, Tom knew instinctively how to make computers behave. He had saved D's butt on many occasions. Besides letting him come to terms with my computers, D often had him talk to some of his more bizarre clients. Nothing they could say would take him aback.
"Any other recent revelations on the Kennedy front?" I asked.
"FACTOID:," Tom replied, " Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, and James Earl Ray were once neighbors in the same Texas housing development. Still believe in coincidences?
"What was an innocent patsy like Lee doing hanging with those two dangerous dudes?"
As always whenever I raised a troublesome question, Tom ignored me.
"FACTOID," he said. "Two, just two U.S. Presidents introduced interest-free currency to the economy. Lincoln and Kennedy. Lincoln issued greenbacks to finance the Civil War. Kennedy released currency through the Treasury Department, by-passing the interest-charging Fed. Both Lincoln and Kennedy were shot in the head. Coincidence?"
I did a thing with my eyes which suggested that maybe, just maybe, he had a point.
Jack said, "So who killed Kennedy? The mob? The CIA? Disgruntled Cubans? Renegade bankers? Sometimes it seems like everybody was in on it except for poor ol' Lee Harvey Oswald, who was an innocent bystander. A patsy, as he put it."
I had to stifle a smile. Jack's dig was as good as any of mine. Still it seemed like maybe we were piling on.
"My theory is that JFK is alive and living in Minnesota with Elvis and Jocko," Jack added.
"FACTOID:" Tom continued, apparently unphased, , "Following Kennedy's death, more than a hundred people associated with the investigation died untimely deaths. Chance would dictate that a handful would have died. Over a hundred is way too many."
"We'll have to include a conspiracy of mass murderers as a possibility," Jack suggested, further unveiling a smartass side I hadn't known existed.
If Tom found Jack irritating, he didn't show it . "FACTOID: One of the interesting deaths was that of Dorothy Kilgallen, a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist," he said. "She had had an exclusive interview with Jack Rudy, and had said publicly that she was about to disclose what she called the story of the century. She was found dead in her apartment—at first the authorities attributed it to heart failure, but later changed it to a drug overdose. Anybody trying to hide something about the Kennedy assassination would have found this incredibly convenient."
Before Jack could jab in another needle, Katie Peterman seated herself in the fourth chair. Nobody said anything. A sudden appearance by Katie tended to render men speechless. She is a long-legged blond with an orgasm-inducing shape inadequately disguised by a baggy sweatshirt. On first blush, men inevitably assumed she was stupid. Nobody blessed with so much physicality could possibly have brains. Or so they always believed.
"Jack," D said, "meet Katie Peterman, who works with me. Katie, meet Jack Fulsum, a professor of archeology at the university and the man behind meetquetzalcoatl.com."
"Nice meeting you," Katie said. "I've heard so much about you." She flashed a radiant smile his way, not exactly a come hither smile, but one more of respect. A closet intellectual, she always felt most comfortable around academic types. Although she hadn't met him, she, like a lot of people, knew him by reputation. In conversations with me she had often defended him. At times it seemed like she was actually buying into his Quetzalcoatl connection. D know she had brains. He guessed this was proving she also had hormones, however oddly they worked.
"Jack here tells me I simply have to find Quetzalcoatl," D said to Katie, keeping his tone as noncommittal as possible. "Quetzalcoatl, I am sure you realize, was an ancient Mayan man-god."
"Factoid:" Tom interjected, "The ancient mayans thought crossed eyes were beautiful and induced the condition by hanging an object from between a baby's eyes. They were smart astronomers, but piss poor beauticians."
There was silence for a moment while we all took in this latest revelation. I broke it by saying, "To find Quetzalcoatl, we need to find his portal leading to another another universe. The portal, he says, is in Downeast Maine's most magical spot."
If I had thought this might provoke a derisive reaction from Katie, I was wrong.
"I read where scientists at the University of Oxford say they have found evidence of universes other than ours," she replied. "Something to do with bruises left over from ancient interdimensional collisions."
Jack's eyes lit up. "You have no problem accepting the notion of a multiverse?" he asked.
"None whatsoever," Katie assured him. "I look at it this way: At the time of the Big Bang. many, many things had to be just so for a habitable universe to evolve. A little colder, for example, or a little warmer, and POOF, no habitable universe. I can see just two ways for this to happen: There could be an all-powerful God who took the trouble to work everything out to perfection beforehand or there could be a system sprouting universes like an eternal cosmic popcorn popper. Eventually it would pop out our just-right universe. To me the second of these conjectures seems way most likely. Of course, as our religious friends will quickly point out, God could have built the popper. The God they evoke commonly scatters thousands of seeds so a few will sprout. But God or no God, other universes may be here and now, but with particles shaking at slightly different frequencies."
Jack looked at Katie like she was good enough to eat, which, in fact, she was.
"FACTOID," Tom said, "some physicists say that everything that can happen does happen. Whenever there are two possibilities, A and B, A happens and B also happens. This is all made possible by the creation of two slightly different universes`. Eventually, over time, this means a hell of a lot of universes."
"The likelihood of a multiverse is apparent," Katie said, "but traveling from one verse to another poses problems."
"Granted," Jack said, "but it seems as though Quetzalcoatl has been around for at least a billion years. He and his friends have had plenty of time to work things out."
He looked again at Katie. "Do you believe in magic?" he asked.
"Magic is all about us," she replied. "Consider light itself. It consists of photons which are capable of all sorts of magic. In moving from A to B, a photon may take any number of different paths, even ones that seem absurd, spiraling in curlicues, even changing speeds in midair. If this isn't magic, what is?"
I watched Jack fall deeply in love. A smile covered his face, his eyes sparkled like a billion stars,his breathing grew languid. He was beyond reach, consumed in unfathomable happiness. Big trouble lay ahead.
After this everybody fell silent.
"Jesus God," I finally muttered.
PROCEED TO CHAPTER TWO