The old section of the cellar is never used. Not as large as the new but it is still sizable, approximately the length & width of the kitchen. A hard-packed dirt floor & the ceiling rafters low (not six feet from the floor) & filthy with cobwebs. Walls termite-ridden & rotted. Except for seepage the cistern is dry of course, not used for forty years. A strong smell of drains in the rainy months but I have installed a second pump. Convinced Dad it was necessary to maintain the property, & it is.
To penetrate the depths of the old cellar you must move slowly & cautiously, stooped over. You need a strong flashlight. You need sharp eyes. You need to be able to go without breathing deeply because of the smell. You need a will not easily broken.
It has been months now & the cistern has almost been converted & will be ready for use soon. Though I will have some awkwardness I guess getting my “operating table” into it—a folding table, a dinette from the Salvation Army where I got my locker is probably the best bet.
My locker I should mention is in my room. Scrubbed clean & sprayed with Lysol & used for clothes, shoes, etc., & the quart bottle of formaldehyde containing a good-luck memento from BIG GUY & the bottle itself carefully wrapped in aluminum foil & taped. & magazines, videos, Polaroids, etc. Always kept locked.
The old cellar & the cistern are the crucial places of course. A healthy ZOMBIE might live for many years there for who would know of him? who except Q__ P__, CARETAKER? & if a ZOMBIE is a failure there is the earthen floor for safe & sanitary disposal. & there is a new door replacing the old rotted door & last week I purchased a steel padlock from Sears for added security.
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Q_ P_ CRAZY FOR SQUIRREL!!!
—I wrote in red Magic Marker inside a toilet stall in the Humpty Dumpty on Lakeview Boulevard, Dale Springs, where SQUIRREL worked as a busboy. It blew my mind to think SQUIRREL would use the toilet & puzzle over those very words with no clue who “SQUIRREL” was let alone “Q__ P__”!
How many strangers’ eyes would fix upon “Q__ P__ CRAZY FOR SQUIRREL!!!” with no comprehension what these words mean. What a fantastic fireball-power in my cock.
SQUIRREL’s busboy schedule at Humpty Dumpty (near as I could determine) was Wed.-Thurs.-Fri. 12 noon to 6 P.M. Summer work I guess. One evening parked in my van in the parking lot & waiting for SQUIRREL I saw him exit at the rear at 6:06 P.M. & there was a woman (probably his mother) in a station wagon picking him up but other times he rode his bicycle (kept at the rear with two or three other employees’ bicycles all chain-locked) to his home on Cedar Street, a distance of 2.3 miles. SQUIRREL did not live next door to Grandma as I had originally surmised but was often at that house, swimming in his friend’s pool & listening to loud rock music & goofing off like adolescent kids will do. (A good sign, SQUIRREL was not a next-door neighbor of Grandma’s. For next-door neighbors are always among the first to be questioned by the police.) It was easy to trail SQUIRREL home on his bicycle.
It is easy to trail anyone home, of your choosing. No need even to be INVISIBLE.
I learned the family name. & telephoned once or twice just to hear the phone ring in that house. A female voice answered (his “Mom”?) & I asked for him (his name which does not suit him, much) & left only the message This is Q__. I will call back. There are two younger children in the family, at least. & “Mom” & “Dad” of some age around forty. “Mom” like any other woman on such a street as Cedar Street, Dale Springs & “Dad” the executive-type drives a Buick Riviera & carries a briefcase. So far as I could figure, SQUIRREL is a student at Dale Springs High, Q__ P__’s old school he hated & wished to have burnt to the ground. With everybody in it.
The address is 166 Cedar, Grandma’s address is 149 Arden. Parallel streets & the same kinds of houses, mostly colonials in wooded lots like Grandma’s. SQUIRREL’s family’s house is pretty big, with a white picket fence & giant trees—elms? oaks?—& Grandma’s house is smaller, with a part-fieldstone facade. Grandma came to live here when Grandpa died about ten years ago. To be near her son & daughter-in-law. & the other day at Grandma’s where she made me blueberry waffles (a late breakfast before I started the yard work) it came to me that Grandma was an old woman & would not live much longer. & she would be leaving an estate of course. This house, & her savings & investments & there was the rental property at 118 North Church worth how much?—$80,000? $100,000? In all, Grandma would leave a sizable estate. Maybe she would leave something to her grandson & granddaughter? In recent months I was led to believe that I was her favorite & not Junie any longer. But I could be mistaken—with females & their feelings about one another you can’t tell.
In any case Grandma P__ would leave a sizable estate when she died to Mr. & Mrs. R__ P__. & they would not live forever, either.
It seemed right that Q__ P__ CARETAKER should inherit the house on North Church. Maybe the old woman has had such a thought herself by now. This is just between you & me Quentin. Our little secret!
Standing on tiptoe to pat my cheek. A fattish old woman but frail, too. They say their bones are weak, hollowed out inside & easy to break. Her washed-out no-color eyes I had a weird flash miniature QUENTINS were mirrored in! For once they have loved you as their baby, their own strange flesh born of their bodies or their children’s bodies, always you are BABY in their eyes.
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A plan was forming like a slow dream & I did not push or hurry it. Though knowing SQUIRREL’s summer schedule would end by Labor Day. Which left how many weeks for Q__ P__ to make his capture?—only about five. & SQUIRREL worked at Humpty Dumpty only three days a week.
Now in the heat of Michigan summer I quit my medication totally & had less timidity of EYE CONTACT I saw things normally not-seen. & they sank deep in me, & brooded. A responsible man makes his own luck Dad has said. Quoting one of the great philosophers.
From that Saturday at Grandma’s spying on my prey through the hedge I knew I would have my SQUIRREL. I never doubted. He could tease & taunt me diving in the pool, & yelling & laughing running & streaming water in his tight swim trunks & at the Humpty Dumpty he could look through me like nobody was seated in the booth in which I sat but that would not forestall what would happen. Fragment Q of the big comet pulled apart into clusters of fire by drifting too near Jupiter & that terrible gravitational field & it would collide with its target & explode & it was fated to be so & it would be so. From the beginning of Time.
Except: Q__ P__’s strategy would be 100% different than in the past. This was Dale Springs & not the inner city, nor any lonely stretch of interstate. This was a Caucasian upper-middle-class kid, a child (as his parents probably considered him) & not a black or a mixed breed & lots of people cared for, & would miss at once. & would notify the police in a panic. For sure.
& that excited me, too. For never in the past not once to my knowledge had any cops anywhere known of my specimens’ disappearance, let alone searched for them. & so this would be different, & I believed I would be equal to the challenge. So wild a need & hunger, SQUIRREL entering my life like a shining angel—he was worth dying for, for sure!