The (Mostly) True Story of Jack and Horace.

 

Jack Parminter and Horace Vindholm were quite adamant about joining me while I looked under each of the smallish cups for a missing raisin which was to be a treat for our mis-gendered parakeet, Joramu Halsmer. We're talking here about upwards of two thousand cups, some hand-done, the others factory-perfect. They seemed to be evenly spaced, but as the sound grew louder still, I could no longer hide my all-enveloping grief from Jack and Horace. Jack's in the trades. Horace recently completed a Program. Each has a long history with corrupted evidence. I think of them as my honorary foster step-sons. They seem to prefer that I not hold them to a prior agreement. These kinds of things work both ways. If you said that I liked holding their tiny feet to the fire, you wouldn't be half wrong. You could, though, be drastically over-stating the case. The truth is, neither one of their cases is far from complete. And, when you add in the inherent frustration of coping with their disastrous complexions, you can see that this is no day at the beach.

Yes, you're right, we were nowhere near this or any other beach. The size of the place alone could have you seeing double. Now that I think about it, I still can't remember her name. I think it starts with a 'U'. Far be it from me to criticize the way people concentrate their toxic emotions. It's between them and their God,.. or what passes for one in our current debacle. While Josh and Henry leafed through my UCNA yearbook, I stole a glance at the telltale markings which littered a roadside bistro, ... the walls, the floors, the whole shebang. When I got back to my car three hours later, Jack was standing near a tree not far from the US-Canadian border. Horace had all his tiles out, displayed evenly like the 'good soldier' he is. I was at a loss to explain the looks on their faces, OR the look they gave me when I tried to protect them from a former friend who, I knew for a fact, didn't have their best interests at heart. It was all I could do not to give up then and there. I bit my lip and sat down and started driving. Josh didn't like the look of things, so he bailed when we hit our first light at Fleamont. Hank said it looked like I'd seen a ghost. I replied that it made perfect sense, no matter what he thought.

We rode in silence for what seemed like a minute or two. Finally I'd had enough. I raised my voice. Then I blew a load. Then I went in search of a neat explanation. I found it in a digital file of approximately 27 Kilobytes on a thumb drive in the glove department of an abandoned department store. The funny thing was, I worked in this very store when I was first starting out. That would be about 1983, if I'm not mistaken. Even then I was rarely taken into a room off base and asked about some mysterious surcharge. People often tried to get me to talk but, no matter what they said or did, I just wouldn't shut up. Not about that or anything else. It's very important that you believe me. There's a lot riding on this. Including my ability to feed my family. No matter how ungrateful they are, I'll always be there for them, crouching down in one of the other buildings looking for stuff. Just not the kind of 'stuff' you think, that's what. Told you!

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