Inhabited. Charlie Quimby

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      Barry started out as Flag City, selling specialty flags via what they used to call mail order, mostly to customers who bought Made in America. His best products were U.S. military standards and POW-MIA flags, the fringed guidons used by color guards and in government buildings, school and custom rodeo banners sewed by relatives Barry’s Internet bride Mai brought over from Vietnam. The walk-in store stocked flags of all nations and denominations for patriots and party animals alike. The Confederate battle flag, Jolly Rogers, lapel pin flags and bunting, Broncos car pennants, boat flags with martini glasses and Playboy Bunnies, peace symbols, rainbows, Yin-Yang and Tibetan prayer flags, Catholic flags, Episcopalian flags. Just about anything except a Muslim flag or hammer and sickle. Swastikas were available but strictly behind the counter for collectors only.

      Flag City’s glory time came post-9/11, but even an enthusiastic repeat flag customer only shows up about once a decade. Meanwhile Barry’s Chinese suppliers had figured out patriotism had certain price points and started selling below him, direct over the Internet. Compete, grow or die, that was capitalism, and Barry couldn’t afford to die. Some of his best Stars and Stripes and Don’t Tread On Me customers were into survivalism. One day Barry watched a prepper webinar that convinced him he wasn’t in the flag business, he was in the Preserving Our Way of Life business, which would kick into high gear once the central government and its fiat currency went bankrupt. He renamed the store Freedom City and stocked up on prepper specialty items. Unfortunately, the sales of home generators, water purifiers, hand-cranked radios and macaroni in ten-gallon tubs peaked without black helicopters and global collapse. So why not celebrate in the meantime with patriotic and holiday yard decorations? Get someone to go for Frosty the Snowman one winter, he might think about an Easter Bunny or a Jack-o-Lantern for next time the grandkids came over. Inflatables were an impulse buy. Nobody went shopping for a Hansel and Gretel popping from an oven. Barry’s customers had to see them full-size and in action so to speak, to be aware they could choose from Santas in all kinds of situations, even one coming out of an outhouse—add the laughing elf for twenty bucks more. The next Christmas they could add a Lamb of God Jesus or a blow-up nativity scene, although in Isaac’s opinion, the Mary and Joseph in that one looked too much like Cabbage Patch Kids.

      Placed outdoors, the displays attracted attention from the heavy mall-bound traffic but also from kids who liked to shoot Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with a pellet gun or relocate Frankenstein to a neighbor’s swimming pool. Since Barry was a desk potato and Mai weighed about as much as two of the sandbags used to anchor the displays, neither was keen about the daily set-up and tear-down required. They needed someone who’d work an hour in the morning and another at night, for next to nothing and no chance of advancement. Who better than the guy they caught mining cardboard in the Freedom City dumpster? A satisfactory arrangement all around.

      Isaac’s time was constrained by his open-and-close, seven-day-a-week bargain with Barry. He had to fill the empty hours without his head overflowing. Moving, waiting, thinking, always thinking. Thoughts ballooned, threatening to carry him away. Or they snagged high in the trees. The voices he sometimes heard came from his own mind, he knew, at least now when they were silent. But somewhere real words were being formed by real lips and they gathered in unwaveable clouds of gnats and bats and wasps whose sting he could not reason away. He always carried a book as if it were a device to arrest his mind’s fibrillation. He’d find a story, trace a line at a time, turn the pages and lose himself in the flow. A book was coverpaperinkletterwordphrasesentenceparagraphpagechaptertheend. So few things were so finely connected like that.

      He unrolled his yoga mat and settled against a bale filched from the hay field. He was half into a good story about a cowboy being squeezed off his land by a greater power. The same old story, really. The horse was going to die, but Isaac looked forward to that part, knowing his heart would be broken. He cried for whatever could turn out no other way than it always did. He cried for the good horses more than the good men because they were faithful, without any notion of their fate.

      A line struck him. He unwrapped the crucifix of thick rubber bands around his notebook. He’d bought the entire stock of red and black cloth-bound volumes from a Barnes and Noble bargain table. In the reds he recorded passages from his reading, random observations, overheard conversations and rants. On visits to his storage unit, he copied the chronological entries into black books organized by categories: Coincidence, Wrong, Puzzle, Structure and Systems, Findings, Edison/Reagan and Elements of Control.

      Isaac read until the evening passed into a grey that turned the letters runic. He watched the fading words form lines, then blocks, then merge into a black page. The transition reminded him of drifting into sleep, but also of Barry slowly going out of business, of the decline of empires, of death descending. Every fading of the light is our preview of the end, he thought, and when the end doesn’t come, we start to believe the movie is never-ending.

      Somewhere near, a shush, foam and fizzle. A gush of sparks arose, flowered green and descended as if broadcast from a king-size lawn sprinkler. A rattlesnake of firecrackers. A red thunderbolt shot above the trees, chased by a whistle and a sonic boom. Sporadic explosions, as if drunks on a firing range had vowed to shoot until they each hit a target. To the sound of ripping canvas, a multistage rocket spilled yellow, blue, white and red seed over the hayfield. A concussion seemed to slap the leaves above his head—and then silence. Cardboard flakes drifted down in a scorched cloud smelling of gunpowder, iron filings and burnt toast. Abruptly, a pair of light bars converged from opposite directions, flashing red, white and blue. Pounding feet. The dampened voices of feral types who for the rest of their lives would be hearing: You have the right to remain silent.

      One squad nosed into the yard next door, while the other crept along the road, its spotlight licking the row of townhouses. The right-hand spot found the double-track into the hayfield and zeroed in on the trees. Isaac’s hideaway was nearly invisible in full sunlight but the bright sideways shaft might pick up a shiny grommet or mosquito net sheen that would betray him.

      As the car crawled closer, Isaac heard the big police pursuit engine panting.

      “Police,” a robot voice barked.

       No shit.

      He knew the routine and wasn’t about to make a mistake. He showed his hands first, rose slowly and groped toward the light, stopped when commanded. Waited until the cop asked for his ID. Slipped the rubber band from the stack in his wallet: bus card, clinic card, library card, identity card. Inserted his finger to maintain its place while the cop passed his Maglite beam over the card and then Isaac’s face.

      “This address is downtown. What’re you doing camped way out here?” The address was the Catholic Outreach Day Center mail drop and Isaac was sure the cop knew it.

      “I have permission from the owner, a notarized letter says I can be on the property.”

      The officer shined his flashlight over Isaac’s setup. He didn’t ask to see the letter. “Trespassing isn’t going to be your problem. You know the people next door?”

      “Not really.”

      “You see who was shooting off those fireworks?”

      “No,” Isaac said. “I was here keeping to my own business.”

      The cop stepped into the camp and checked the view toward the road. The brush that provided cover for Isaac worked both ways. Satisfied, he said, “There’s a ban on. The drought, the fires on the Front Range, that’s everybody’s business. Your neighbors don’t give a damn so until we get some rain, you’d be wise to sleep somewhere else.”

      The patrol car backed down the path. At one of the townhouses, a front light clicked off and all its windows went dark. Now they knew where he was. Isaac had been warned and СКАЧАТЬ