Poul finds Mendel and is shocked to see him with Harry. Mendel and Harry grow closer as they spend time together and roam the beach. Harry plays with a group of children he’s befriended. One of them recognizes Mendel from all the publicity. We’re introduced to the troubled young man. Mendel has a troubling vision about Harry.
Size: 14 MB
Restless, Poul leaves the city, fine food and women to find Mendel. Mendel meets Harry, a former carnival wild man and now a beach bum. They share philosophies, have adventures with children and with three men who try to kill Harry. Poul is waylaid when muggers send him to the hospital.
Length: 22:40
File Size: 20.79 MB
Author’s note: Please listen to the whole novel and spread the word to your friends. If you’d like to make a donation, send a check to The Perfect Song Scholarship Fund, Mansfield University Foundation, Mansfield University, Mansfield, PA 16933
Due to circumstances beyond my control I’m a temporary bachelor. It wasn’t too bad the first week. Nathan and I worked through the food Leigh had cooked. We’ve kept the kitchen fairly clean and the rest of the house is passable.
This weekend I couldn’t put it off any longer. I had to wash my clothes. The house is three stories with the bedroom on the third floor. I pulled everything out of the hamper and threw them over the hallway railing to the dining room floor. I’d seen Leigh do this before. This was the most efficient way of getting the clothes down one floor.
I scooped them up in a big pile and headed to the basement floor and dropped them in the laundry room.
That’s when things got complicated.
I realized I didn’t know what came next.
I was starting to feel a little frantic, then vaguely remembered something about separating white clothes from the coloreds.
I did that, stuffed the socks and underwear into the washer’s maw and closed the lid.
I started reading all the words on the washer panel. Who in hell came up with all this stuff? “Heavy. Normal. Light.” Are you supposed to weigh the clothes before you put them in? I looked around for a clothes scale but found nothing. What the hell. It’s underwear and socks and they didn’t feel heavy. I took the safe route and chose “normal.” What’s more normal than socks and underwear? They’re one of the few things men and women have in common. They have to be normal.
I pulled down the detergent and poured some in. Yes, I know there are directions on how much to use but I’m a guy and we don’t read directions, at any age. I studied the washer panel again. What in God’s name is “pre-wash”? You either wash something or you don’t. Pre-washing sounds so unnatural. I pictured a team of elves in the washer with little scrubbers looking for stains they could make disappear and when they were done the chief elf would pop his head up and give me the thumbs up. “You’re allowed to wash now!”
I skipped the prewash and studied some more. Hot. Cold. Lukewarm.
Wash.
Spin.
I realized with fast growing despair that nowhere did it say “start.”
We have a washer that’s sitting here with enough options to fly and land it but there is nothing that tells you hot to start it!
The big knob on the right was the most obvious so I pulled it.
The knob came off.
I put it back on and pushed it. Nothing.
I started turning it like a roulette wheel. Somewhere in the 5 o’clock position I heard water start running.
I don’t know what I did or how I did it, but running water was good enough for me. I stepped out of the laundry room, closed the door and hoped the pre-wash elves could swim.
California overwhelms Mendel. He visits Disneyland. President Lincoln is assassinated. Beasely stuns the world at a press conference where he reveals Mendel’s identity and issues a challenge that creates an international manhunt.
File: Chapter 8
Length: 18:37
File Size: 17.7 MB
Part 2
As I walked the one-eighth mile back to the Explorer, parked on the nursery end of the building, I studied the receipt. Twelve bags of sand, weed killer and two pair of one dollar gloves should not add up to $89.
The sand was five dollars a bag. That was wrong. I know the sign said $3.28. I hopped in the Explorer and drove back up to the other end to the loading dock. I went in and checked the bags of sand.
I ordered the wrong one. I wanted patio sand. That was $3.28. Construction sand was $5. I got back in line. By now the mechanical woman was on break. When I made it to the register I explained to Alan (they all wear name tags) that I wanted to return the sand I had just bought and buy patio sand.
“I can’t do returns at this register,” he explained. “You have to go down to the service desk.” I felt my face get red.
“Yes, I should have known that,” I said. “Okay. I need patio sand. 12 bags. I’ll just get it now and take this first purchase to the service desk afterward.”
He rang it up. “I’ll need someone to load it,” I said.
He picked up the intercom. “Tom to the loading dock. Tom to the loading dock.”
Poor old Tom was a busy guy.
I stood outside for about five minutes when Tom came out. “Are you sure you want patio sand?”
He was a young guy with a beard, eager to be helpful. “I don’t know. I’m working on a patio,” I said.
“Well, everybody working on that kind of thing gets the general purpose sand.”
“Where’s that?”
“In the nursery at the other end of the store.”
I felt sick. I had parked there initially, asked for sand, was sent clear up to the other end with construction stuff, bought the wrong sand, walked back to the Explorer, bought more sand and now this wasn’t right?
I sighed, thanked him and drove back to the nursery, parked and walked half the distance of the building to get my money back.
I stood in line for the third time in 45 minutes. When I reached the woman, I realized I recognized her from other returns. She’s a small woman in her mid-thirties, and tawny. Tawny colored hair, light green eyes and blondish cast to her skin. When I first saw her a year ago I was struck by her potential beauty. She has a small nose, high cheekbones . . . and front teeth blackened with cavities. She rarely smiles and when she does it’s very fleeting.
“Can I help you?”
“Uh, this is a little confusing. I bought construction sand, which wasn’t the right kind so I went back and bought patio sand but Tom said I didn’t want that either. I want the sand that’s in the nursery. That’s what Tom said. So I need to return them.”
She looked suspicious and studied the receipts. “You just bought two loads of sand and never even loaded them? You want credit back?”
I nodded. “That’s about it.”
“Do you have your card?”
I pulled out my credit card. She studied it and decided I wasn’t a crook. . .just a really bad shopper.
When I signed my receipt she looked at it. “Does that say Dennis Miller?”
I must have sighed because she followed it up with, “I won’t say anything. I’m sure you hear it all the time.”
I nodded. “Yes.” For the record, I was born three years before the other Dennis Miller. I had the name first. He just staked more territory with it.
The tawny woman and I were friends now.
I walked back to the nursery and found Dick. “Where would I find the general sand?”
Dick was spraying shrubs. He pointed to the bins at the end of the building. “Back there, row 5, last bin,” he said pleasantly.
I walked back to row 5 last bin.
It was empty.
Another sales rep, Louis, came around the corner. “Can I help you?”?
“I’m looking for the general sand.”
He shook his head. “We’re sold out. You’ll have to go up to aisle 20 at the other end of the store.
I wanted to scream! I pulled out my phone and called Leigh. I told her what I had gone through and had had it. “We don’t need to work on the patio today. If I go through anymore of this I’m going to be an old man with a heart condition. I may have one right now. I’m coming home.”
“I really wanted to finish the patio today,” she said.
The conversation was brief, ending with my marching orders. I drove back up to the r other end, bought 12 bags of patio sand.
Yes, I bought the same 12 bags of patio sand that I had bought 15 minutes ago and returned.
The mechanical woman was back at the desk. I didn’t even try to explain. Just give me 12 bags of patio sand. “And I need someone to load it.”
“Tom to the loading dock. Tom to the loading dock.” She handed me my receipt without looking at me. “Thanks for shopping at Lowe’s and have a nice day.”
It wasn’t Tom who brought the bags out. It was Ted. When I opened the door and exposed Zeus our German Shepherd, and Tyler, the blue heeler, Ted froze.
I don’t say that lightly. Ted stopped dead in the position he was in when he laid eyes on Zeus. To show him how to do it, I loaded the first bag. Then he followed suit, very cautiously. When the last bag was loaded I wanted to dance.
I finally had my sand. Three purchases and 90 minutes later I had my 12 simple bags of sand.
At home I opened a bag and tried to make a sand castle. It crumbled.
“It’s the wrong kind,” Leigh said. “You want play sand.”
Okay, I mentioned in a post somewhere that the 30×50 foot slate patio that we slaved for two years to build was half destroyed in a heavy rain storm. Leigh and I started working on it yesterday. Repairing it entailed lifting each stone, some of which weigh 50 pounds, pouring sand, leveling, lifting, leveling, until it matches the stone next to it.
We ran out of sand.
Over breakfast this morning I said, “I’ll go over to Lowe’s as soon as we’re done so I can beat the church crowd.” I figured we needed about 12 bags. So I loaded in the dogs and we headed out. Twelve 50 pounds bags of sand. Should take about 15 minutes.
I parked at the nursery end of Lowes, walked around, didn’t see sand, asked a sales rep.
“Where’s the construction sand?” That was my mistake. I take full responsibility for that.
“Construction sand is at the other end of the building. Aisle 20, I think.”
I walked the eighth of a mile to the other end. Other people are walking slow, shopping, thinking, getting in my way. I make it to Aisle 20 and find construction sand. The little label says $3.28. That’s what I want.
I stand in line at the service counter and wait while others check out. It’s a warm, sunny day and I want to be outside but we need the construction sand. When I get to the service person, I tell her I need 12 bags of construction sand. She is a short, stocky person who has made it to her early 50s without acquiring a personality. She looks at me mechanically like a nurse who never had compassion, and looks on the computer screen. She can’t find it.
A line is building behind me and I know at once that I am one of those people who just can’t go through a frigging line with any kind of efficiency and I’m holding up their time.
“Show me where it is,” she says, holding her scanner gun like a lethal weapon. Holy shit! Somewhere in the Lowe’s world, they teach sales clerks to use their scanner guns like . . .well, scanner guns! When held in a certain way the damn things look deadly.
Okay, look at the goods, find the bar code, aim with outstretched arm, squeeze trigger until the red laser has it pinpointed and fire! As we walked, she lowered the scanner gun safely at her side so she wouldn’t accidentally shoot any innocent stock.
I walked fast because I have this paranoia about keeping other customers waiting and, to tell you truth, because she was stocky and out of shape and I wanted her to hustle to keep up with me.
Not that I’m in good shape but it’s always a pleasure to find other people in worse shape.
I stopped at the bags of construction sand with a feeling of winning a battle. I found something in your store that you couldn’t find in your own computer!
Without a word she lifted the gun and shot the bar code. “How many did you want?” she dryly. I’m not giving her enough credit. To ask how many you want without any hint of human emotion takes practice. Years of it, I imagine. Yes, maybe she was born with in the inherent potential, but she had to recognize and practice it.
If Stephen Spielberg developed a robot and it asked, “How many do you want?” It would have some emotion – and a music bed that would make you cry.
If Bill Gates developed a robot that asked you the same thing, it would sound like this woman.
“Twelve,” I said with just enough emotion to let her know that I was a human who wanted 12 bags of construction sand.
Without a word she shot the bar code 12 times.
What bothered me is that I really don’t think she enjoyed it. I think she shot it 12 times without any feeling whatsoever.
That’s just not human.
We marched back to her counter. The line of people was longer and I was feeling guilty as a Catholic. I’ve known Cathlolics all my life and they make a profession of feeling guilty. When you have something as tangible as a line of impatient Americans waiting for you to get your purchases in order, that, my friend, is reason for guilt.
The woman rang up the 12 bags of construction sand, along with the weed killer and two pair of women’s garden gloves for Leigh.
I slid my card through the machine. She handed me the receipt to sign. She was efficient, silent and stared straight ahead. I could never have any kind of relationship with this woman. As I signed the receipt I had no idea that I was going to have another meeting with her, whether I liked it or not.
“I need someone to load this for me,” I said.
She nodded and picked up the phone with the same practiced efficiency she used the laser gun . The woman was unsettling. “Tom to the loading dock. Tom to the loading dock.” She hung up the phone.
I tried to maintain some authority. I’m 56 and I’m a customer. I have just paid for my sand. At the same time I’m aware of the line of people who are very close to forming a vigilante group to toss me into the concrete mixing demonstration that’s going on in the back of the building.
“I’m at the other end of the parking lot,” I said. “It will take me a few minutes to go down and bring the car back.”
She nodded, looking at the next customer.
I could not crack this woman.
I went after the Explorer, not knowing this was only part one in an adventure that was going to take a long, long time.
More next week.
Mendel arrives in California. Poul returns to the Arizona desert to retrieve Mendel’s mystical songs. J.W. Beasely feverishly prepares for the world’s biggest press conference.
File: Chapter 7 Part 2
Length: 11:22
File Size: 10.5 MB