Day 18. The police banged and banged on my door. Mr. Pound wasn’t with them. They wanted to know if I knew that Ms. Roberta Sais, who owned the Book Cellar (and who in theory is my employer) had died. No, I said, I didn’t know. Murdered, they said. No, I said, I didn’t know. I was very busy. I had to work on my paintings. I thanked them for the news. She had heirs, they said. I said I always thought she put on airs. Heirs, they said, I should close the shop until the heirs came. And I said good. I made a “Closed on Account of Death” sign and hung it in the door.
In the afternoon Mr. Pound came by and pounded on my door until I answered it. I told him we were closed.
He said he was here to pose.
I let him in to do some sketches. He started to go up stairs to my studio. I told him I do my sketches in the shop. He wasn’t easy to sketch because he kept talking. He hinted that he was a vigilante going after criminals the system might let off on some technicality—like no Miranda rights. Lots of stories of cars in the nights. For some reason I pictured them as moving silently and without headlights. “Dark of night doesn’t stop you, eh?” I asked.
He reacted violently, then chuckled, and said, “No dark of night doesn’t stop me.”
He talked a lot about criminals who made their confessions got off easily. With his pull down at the station he could help such a criminal. If the criminal doing the murders now were, say, to confess to him, he could make it very easy on the guy.
If on the other hand the current murderer were to try to weasel out—to escape from the long arm of the law—he would make it very difficult for him. He would track the murderer down and strike when the killer least expected it.
He didn’t ask to see my sketches, which was good, because I wasn’t pleased with them. When I left I tore them all up in little pieces.
I am going to sleep in the studio tonight—to protect my paintings. I am worried about them somehow.
Day 19. Today I painted
Day 20. This morning I came to my senses and took my medicine. I realized I must have done some pretty bad things. I figured I’d wait for Mr. Pound, and when he came I’d confess to him. He could make it easy for me. He was my friend. I waited all day, but he didn’t show.
About six I called the downtown police station. Mr. Pound had told me that he still had friends on the force. I figured I could ask around and they could put me in touch with him. It took forever to get in touch with homicide. While I waited I cursed myself for not having got his number. Then I got Detective Blick. I asked if he knew Mr. Pound.
“Mr. Clarence Pound?” he asked.
“I’m not sure of his first name. He is a retired policeman. He had told me he still had friends on the force.”
“Let me guess, he told you that he tried to make detective but ‘political’ forces kept him from making the grade. He also said that he was a vigilante, bringing criminals to justice who had escaped their just desserts.”
“Well, yes,” I said.
“I am sorry to tell you this, sir, but Clarence Pound is a retired postal worker with some severe personality problems. Every few months he stops his medication for awhile and gets to thinking he’s some super-cop. If he’s been bothering you, let me know and we’ll pick him up and take him to his doctor.”
“No. He hasn’t been bothering me at all. Thank you.”
I hung up as he was asking “Who are—”
Mr. Pound is some kind of nut. I’ll have to be ready for him.
Day 21. I slept in the studio and he broke in. I woke up and saw him looking at my paintings. He had a gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other.
“They’re blank,” he said. “All of these canvasses just painted white.”
“No,” I said, “They’re very subtle. You must study them carefully.”
“They’re blank. You’re some kind of nut.”
“No, you’re the nut. You’re an ex-postal employee. You’re not a cop. You’ve never been a cop.”
“That’s not true.” He pointed the gun at me.
“It is true. You’re not a cop.”
Suddenly he sat down. Just sort of collapsed. He didn’t say anything for a long time. I thought about going over and taking his gun away.
Then he began to talk in a low monotone. He explained who he really was and everything became clear to me.
He is Mr. Carlos Pound, owner of a very important gallery in New York. Today we are putting my paintings into a U-Haul van. We will drive up to New York, where he’ll host a one-man show for me.
I bet we make quite a splash.
THE THIRTYERS
When the world didn’t end in the Year 2000, the Reverend Jessie Cancun was among the first people to proclaim the idea of the “Babylon Calendar.” According to Rev. Cancun, the evil forces of the Whore of Babylon had stolen the right and true calendar of the pious and replaced it in the year 1066, which was actually 1096. It was unclear to the general public why Rev. Cancun had taken the year of the Norman Conquest as the pivotal moment for the calendar hoax by the forces of Darkness. His own explanation that “1096 adds up to 16, whereas 1066 adds up to 13,” while numerically true (if there is some reason for such addition of constitute digits), seemed at best a bit odd. The same could be said of 904 and 934 for example. But Rev. Cancun did little to woo the public.
Yet his church, the Grand Convocation of the Missing Thirty, otherwise known as the Thirtyers, did not lack for members. Many, many people had been involved in one belief system or another that had seen great change as likely in 2000, if not indeed the very End of the World. And the great Psychic Depression of the Oughties contributed to his membership.
The basic tenets of the faith were five. First, the real End of the World would happen in 2030 (or, as they reckoned it, 2000). Second, the faithful needed to gather in a community that banned the evil Babylon calendar. Third, the consumption of fast foods was evil. Fourth, the taking of new names after tourist paradises was necessary—the Rev. Cancun’s birth name had been Trexler. Fifth, the avoidance of the World Wide Web, which had distracted all of us by promoting the myth of Babylon 2000, and thus tricking people out of the real End of the World. The odd nature of the beliefs (especially the tourist name-taking) gave the cult a good deal of publicity in the early Oughties. Both Rev. Cancun and his sister the Rev. Waikiki were interviewed great deal in those days, and although they avoided the WWW with great fear and loathing, a number of pages were kept about them.
But as the Psychic Renaissance of the Teens started such oddball faiths were usually forgotten, since by and large mankind had better things to do. The lure of the weird is always with us however and as the Babylon Calendar approached 2029, my editor wanted me to research the Thirtyers—see if any of them still hung on to the faith, how did they live, what were their fears at the coming millennium.
Information on the sect was very limited. The older pieces written decades before were easy to find in the GreatData Snowball, but nothing appeared after 2012. They had bought a small town in Oklahoma, the site of a bankrupt ashram. They had renamed their community 2X15, pronounced “Two ex Fifteen” apparently a private joke on Y2K, which my readers may remember as the buzzword used to describe the Millennium. Their desire to be cut off from the increasingly integrated WWW meant that didn’t even have phones or cable television. They didn’t even allow cars into their town, according to the 2012 article. I couldn’t rightly think of any appliance that wasn’t connected to the WWW. Could you imagine not being able to ask your refrigerator if it had ordered those carrots you like? They must live in a weird pre-animist world, thoroughly unlike the one we live in.
I decided to go there.
