The cabin was a rat's nest of rooms, piled to tipping with every kind of knickknack and...well, there was no other word for it -- crap. Most of the items seemed to be nicked or broken, the paper yellowed, the clothes faded or torn.
"My mom was a bit of a collector," Charlie explained.
More like a full-blown hoarder, Freedy thought, but he didn't say anything. They moved piles of clothes and baskets of cans and bottles and stacks of magazines out of the living room, and scrunched enough chairs and couches from the rest of the rooms for them all to find a place to sit.
The refrigerator was empty, but the sink in the tiny adjoining kitchen still ran cold water after letting it run for five minutes. They all took turns drinking from the faucet, none of them trusting the spotted glasses. The linoleum on the floor was peeling up, and the tiles on the counters were chipped and faded.
The trio of brothers all broke out pipes and cigarettes and cigars and soon the room was filled with smoke -- tobacco as well as another vaguely familiar sickly sweet odor. Freedy had seen the little wired off fence at the side of the cabin with six very tall, very lush marijuana plants.
"Strictly legal," Charlie said. "For my glaucoma..." His round and clear eyes were perfectly innocent, until he gave them all a very large wink.
Now Freedy never much liked pot -- made him even more paranoid and anxious than usual. He'd quit cigarettes years before, but not soon enough, because he'd damaged his cilia or something. Every time he was around smoke he'd cough up phlegm for days.
The room was getting stifling as well. One by one, the others went off to shower in the small outside shower. Freedy figured he was last again. Finally, he couldn't stand it any longer, and he went to stand out on the porch.
Garland was there smoking a pipe. He nodded at Freedy and then turned back to his examination of the stream below.
"What does Charlie mean, take back his property?" Freedy said, standing on one foot and then the other. The first thing he'd done upon arrival was take off his sweaty, stinking, sticky shoes. Now his huge hairy feet were frying on the dark slick wood of the deck.
"Strictly speaking, we're trespassing." Garland shrugged. "Not that the corporate owners care that much -- they took over this land because they plan to mine it for gold. But they're waiting for the price of gold to go up. Charlie and his friends made a modest little living off their little mine, but somehow word got out that the whole mountain was full of gold."
Oh, ho! So they weren't loggers, they were miners!
"Is it?" he asked.
"Is it what?" Garland turned and looked down on him, frowning.
"Is the mountain full of gold?"
"Only if you take bulldozers to it and leach off and leave behind the arsenic, contaminate the ground water and kill every living thing within miles..." Garland puffed furiously.
"How did they steal it?"
"Somehow they got into government records and changed the deeds, and Charlie was lax in keeping his own records. They made mineral claims, and Charlie couldn't prove he was owner. The "Lorn Mountain Corporation" hired the slickest law firm in all of New York. The boys have gone broke trying to fight them. So they decided to fight larceny with larceny and we intend to steal back the deeds and change the government records again."
Freedy wasn't sure any of that made sense, but he wasn't knowledgeable of what sense he needed to make sense of, if that made any sense.
"But what can I do?" he asked.
"In time, in time," Garland said. "I've got some ideas." He patted Freedy on the shoulder so reassuringly that for a moment Freedy almost believed him.
"We have to do two things," Garland continued. "Change the government records by infiltrating the data centers and changing the computer information at the source; and break into the Lorn Mountain Corporation headquarters in New York and steal back the deeds."
"All I can do with computers is browse the internet," Freedy said, and his voice sounded whiny even to him. He tried to put some timbre back into his tone. "And I've never broken into anyplace but my own home, and even then I had to hire a locksmith!"
"For god's sake, don't tell the others," Garland snapped, sounding annoyed.
"But...but..."
Garland was already walking into the house. The screen door slammed behind him.
1 comment:
[he'd cough up flem for days] phlegm
Getting exciting... :)
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