The rich landowner’s daughter sat next to her father and smiled as the Founder ordered a Guiness for himself and the landowner, a limoncello for the landowner’s wife and a fizzy water for the daughter. The daughter had blond hair, greenish eyes and a strong jaw. She could be from Minnesota, the Founder thought. She looked like she was barely out of high school. Its good I covered myself with that leafy branch when she pulled me out of the car wreck, he thought. Otherwise, I’d be on the sex offender registry.
‘What happened after that’, the landowner asked.
‘After what’, the Founder said.
‘After the last thing you told us.’
‘We drove all day and night to the north. We crossed the river and entered a land where people talk funny and have free health-care. When we got to the point where the sun sets for a month, we pulled over. Operations was driving and I was riding shotgun. We took Legal because, you know, we had to. The road we had been following ran parallel to a stream. The place where we stopped was the end of the road – a chain link fence, a sign saying No Trespassing and a logging road heading out into the tundra. The Natives who live there, I understand, are untreatied.’
‘There’s no trees on tundra’, the landowner said. ‘How can there be a logging road?’
‘Can I continue’, the Founder asked.
‘Of course.’
‘We unloaded the motor oil and the Orangeburg pipes that the AG ordered us to bring. I sprinkled the oil around the pipes and poured some gasohol on the pile and lit a match. I expected it to burn clean, but the smoke was black and stinky. Orangeburg is cardboard impregnated with tar. It does not burn easily but when it does, it produces thick fumes. After the fire had been going for a few minutes, shades began to gather. I don’t know if they were after the motor oil, the Orangeburg or the shit that had run through the Orangeburg, but they were on it like mosquitoes on, well, shit. I wanted to save it for Benewitz, so I held them off with a fly swatter.’
‘The manual kind or the electric kind’, the landowner asked.
‘The electric kind’, the Founder said.
‘Those things kick ass’, the daughter said.
‘Nausikaa!’ the landowner’s wife said.
‘Who’s Benewitz’, the landowner asked.
‘My mentor’, the Founder said. ‘He used to live in a park in the southern tier and he has been in the business since I was suckling on a wolf-teat. I understand that he comes back each generation as someone else, and that he has been involved in the industry since, you know, Chaos. He has a bitter, Manichaean view of the world. People say he can see the future but you have to kiss up to him to get him to say anything. I heard that he had checked in to the underworld and was preparing his next act. I wanted to ask him what was next for manufactured housing. But before he got there, the shade of Matt Bondellio approached.’
‘Who was Bondellio’, the Landowner asked.
‘Matt plowed the park in northern New York in the winter and he bid on a few paving jobs. He was not a Hetairos. He was a contractor.’
‘Great’, the landowner said.
‘His prices were reasonable but he could be slapdash’, the Founder continued. ‘Once, when he was plowing another park in northern New York, he sheared off a gas riser pipe.’
‘He what’, the landowner asked.
‘He broke off a gas riser with a snowplow. Thank God nothing blew up but they had to evacuate the park and the gas company had to close the main shutoff.’
The daughter put a quarter in the juke box. A voice with an Irish accent began to sing:
In a tunnel underground a young Limerick man was found
He was built into the new Victoria line
When the bonus gang had passed sticking from a concrete cast
Was the face of little Charlie Joe Devine
And the ganger man McGurk said big Paddy hates to work
When the gasmain blew and he flew off the ground
Oh they swore he said “Don’t slack!
I’ll not be there until I’m back
Keep on building up and tearing England down
‘What does this have to do with Irish navvies’, the landowner asked.
‘Everything and nothing’, the Founder said. ‘Like the rest of existence.’ The song continued –
I was on the hydro dam on the day that Jack McCann
Got the better of his stammer in a week
He fell from the shuttering jamb
And that poor auld stuttering man
He was never ever more inclined to speak
And I saw auld Bald McCall from the big flyover fall
Into a concrete mixer spinning round
Tough it wasn’t his intent he got a fine head of cement
When he was building up and tearing England down
‘You know, Bondellio didn’t read the contracts we’d sign with him’, the Founder said. ‘I would change terms and he would say, ‘I didn’t know about that! I don’t read the contract!’’
‘That’s what killed him’, the landowner asked. ‘Not reading a contract?’
‘No, you gobshite’, the Founder said. ‘He was killed on a paving job. He parked his truck uphill from where he was working. The brake came undone and it ran him over. At least that’s what he told me. He said that he had his back turned to the truck while he was rolling some asphalt and then he woke up dead. When I saw him, I wept for pity. He recognized me and said, ‘Son of Laertes, master navigator. When you drive south and put the lodgings of Dim Death behind, please take my truck and my paving equipment. Sell them and give the proceeds to Jefferson County Community College to fund a building trades scholarship.’ When he stopped talking, I told him, ‘Unhappy spirit, I promise I will do that.’’
‘And did you do it’, the landowner asked.
‘Not yet, the Founder said, ‘When I do, I will request that JCC keep his name off the scholarship.’
Nausikaa seemed bored with the discussion of Bondellio. She gazed at the Founder in a way that made him uncomfortable. Her fingers were delicate and almost translucent, he noticed, and the tendons in her neck twitched.
‘Then Benewitz showed up’, the Founder said. ‘’I’m here’, he said. He always has a way of announcing himself. ‘Aint you fucking happy. Gimme some of that.’ So, I stepped aside and let him at the pile. After a while he stepped away, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, ‘You’re fucked, mate’.
‘Why are you speaking like a Brit’, I asked him. ‘You have a Long Island accent.’
‘They want to send me back as a fucking East Ender who comes to America and ends up in a park in Potsdam. I’m still reading the fucking script. It could have been fucking worse. They could have made me a fucking Canadian.’
‘Can’t you complain to the highers-up’, I asked him. ‘Appeal the case? Maybe if you stopped using the F-word, they’d treat you better?’
‘You’re a twat, mate’, he said. ‘A real facking twat.’
‘What’s next for the park business’, I asked him. ‘I have more Orangeburg in the truck, if you want it. You wear the new accent well. You look like Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast.’
‘You laid it on really thick’, the landowner said. Nausikaa rolled her eyes.
‘You have to, with Benewitz’, the Founder said. He looked toward the bar and shouted, ‘Hey! Who do I have to sleep with to get more beer?’ Then, he continued the story.
‘‘The yield curve looks like a smile’, Benewitz said. ‘But don’t let that fool you. The deficit we have financed with debt issuances will increase as countries dump the dollar and bond yields rise. The government will issue more debt at higher yields to finance the old debt and that will make the problem worse. A shadow will fall upon the land, ushering in the end of all things. The sky will weep fire. The earth will shake and shatter. Those who seek to arbitrage interest rates will find that the gates of hell will open and a torrent of fire and destruction will engulf all that remains.’
I wept and felt a deep sickness overtake me.
‘‘And it’s not just economic risk that you are facing’, Benewitz continued. ‘The greater risk is political risk. Politicians will squeeze park owners the way an anaconda squeezes a lamb. Lot rents will be frozen or clawed back, but expenses will rise. Park owners will be required to sell their mothers to pay for infrastructure repairs. Residents who don’t pay will be given sleeping quarters in park owners’ houses. Park owners will be stripped naked, tarred, feathered and paraded around the streets with a big ‘K’, for kulak tattooed to their foreheads. Children of park owners will denounce them to the authorities. Park owners will be required to engage in self-criticism sessions surrounded by children and residents who will pelt them with rocks and garbage. Those who are not clubbed to death will be sent to the countryside to be reeducated. And that is in red states.’
‘What was your first choice for this incarnation’, I asked.
‘I asked to come back as the bond market’, he said. ‘That way, people would listen to me. They offered it to me and I seriously considered taking it. It’s just that to get it, I would have had to do things that not even a defense attorney would do.’
‘You always impress me, Mr. Benewitz.’
‘You’re a twat, mate. A real twat.’
As the shade of Benewitz floated away, I thought ‘Only half of what he says is true. Let’s hope it is the less-bad half this time.’ Shades crowded around me whispering. You would have thought they longed for a drop of motor oil to drink. ‘Polla ta deina’, Operations said, ‘But nothing is stranger than Redneck Woman.’
‘I forgot you were here’, I said to him.
‘I have been standing next to you the whole time, dumbass’, he said. ‘It’s nice to be appreciated.’
‘All the park people I know who have died are men’, I said.
‘Then wait a while’, he said.
A shade approached and stood quietly next to me. Before I noticed him, he had sucked up all the motor oil. He had white hair and when he spoke, he had a kindly-sounding, grandfatherly voice.
‘Hey’, I said. ‘You’re Stan Hall, of Walker’s Manufactured Homes!’
‘Oh, yeah’, he said. ‘Stan Hall I am.’
‘You sent me dunning notices for the home you didn’t deliver and you charged me fifteen percent interest. That’s fraud, usury and I-don’t-know-what-else.’
‘How are ya’, he said.
‘You drove over a leech field, installed a home crooked and wouldn’t come back to fix it. You skimped on parts and service and blew off customer warranties. At least the dunning notices stopped when you came here.’
‘They have a salad bar here’, he said, ‘And all-you-can-eat breadsticks.’
‘I hear you died of natural causes’, I said. ‘I’m going to kick your ass.’ I aimed a front kick at his rump. Three times I raised my foot and snapped it, and three times my shin passed through his hind-quarters like a baseball bat passes through a cloud of steam.
‘You can’t do that here’, he said, and laughed with a deep, gravelly voice. ‘I am judgement-proof now.’ And then, he flitted away.
I poured more motor oil on the fire and let the shades gather and drink. One spoke with a cigarette rasp. ‘Magnesium will make it burn brighter’, it said. ‘I learned that in Vietnam.’ I looked to my side and saw a shade with blue eyes, a thick neck and large bags below the eyes.
‘You are Dennis Petersen’, I said.
‘I have some water meters to sell you’, the shade said. ‘I will throw in some consulting work for free.’
‘I hear you died in Tennessee’, I said. ‘There’s a song about that.’
‘Tell Benewitz to take care of my dog’, he said.
‘Benewitz is here’, I said. ‘You can tell him yourself.’
The blue eyes opened wide.
‘Really’, he said.
‘Oh, yeah’, I said. ‘I just spoke with him.’
‘Shit’, the shade said, and flitted away like a dot from a laser pointer.
‘I smelled the next shade before I saw him’, the Founder said. ‘I didn’t think you could smell shades, but suddenly the air stank the way a certain home in the park in central New York stinks. ‘You’re Jim Hill’, I said. ‘I heard you came here recently.’
The rest of the shades scarpered. I heard a few woman-shades say, ‘Phew‘. I thought, briefly, that I should get back to the issue of redneck woman, but then the smell took up all spare bandwidth. The shade that stood before me was emaciated and had a scale-like sore that covered one of his legs, like something from Game of Thrones.
‘You have lost weight’, I said. ‘At least you put on some underwear. I hear you walked around your home naked and shat where you stood.’
‘I died in that home’, the shade said.
‘And left your sister to remove the body’, I said.
The shade looked at me but didn’t say anything.
‘What the hell did you do in there’, I asked. ‘You had garbage piled waist-high throughout the home. Every square inch of surface is covered by shit or something that looks, smells, feels and tastes like shit. We’re going to have to rip out the floors and the sheetrock, coat everything with stainkiller, and nuke it with an ozone machine.’
The shade looked at me. I had never seen his face before. He had sad, puppy-dog eyes.
‘I have been here before’, he said. ‘I sailed with Odysseus. My name was Elpenor. I was not cut out for soldiering or navigation, or anything else, really. The other guys made fun of me. They gave me the shit jobs and wouldn’t let me join with them at table. When we came to Circe’s island, I climbed up on the roof by myself, got drunk, fell down and broke my neck. When they offered me a chance to go back to the surface, I didn’t know I was going to come back as this. I think the guy in charge was fucking with me.’
‘We got a substitute MCO from the dealer for your home’, I told him. ‘At least the title issue has been resolved. We still need to clean it and rehab it.’
The shade smiled and said, ‘I am glad of that’. Then, he flitted away.
We saw the punishments meted out to the really bad people. For locking his children in a cage while he got high, Brian Paul was stripped naked and kept in a dog kennel. For passing counterfeit bills, Jim Gutierrez was run through a printing press like a sheet of dollar bills. The domestic abusers were broken on a wheel. I wanted to see the heroes, like Jim Clayton and Lonnie Scruggs, but the shades from a darker place began to claw at us. I felt my breath getting short.
‘We need to get out of here’, Operations said. ‘I think the AG will be happy with what we have done’. Legal, who was cowering in the truck, nodded. So we poured the rest of the motor oil out, threw the rest of the Orangeburg on the pile, got in the truck and headed south.’
‘Stay with us as long as you want’, the landowner said. Nausikaa smiled and blushed. ‘You are an honest, hard-working guy’, the landowner continued. ‘I can always use another pair of hands. When you are ready to go home, I will help you go home.’
‘Thank you for the offer’, the Founder said, ‘I would love to stay for some time, but I should get home. My son needs guidance and a bunch of finance bros are hitting on my wife. The sewer main is clogged and the tomatoes need thinning. Come visit some time. My son and your daughter might hit it off. I want grandbabies.’