Page 14 of The Bad Weather Friend

The only member of the staff who seemed capable of murder was Mordred Merrick. He’d been educated at Columbia University and later denied tenure in the English department at UCLA because, according to him, he didn’t hate Shakespeare enough, though he hated the bard a great deal. Mordred was a doper, though he consumed his weed in the form of brownies to avoid being outed by the distinctive scent of pot smoke. He promised to share his treats as soon as Benny was old enough for what he called “the sacred experience,” which he said would be when his student turned twelve. Mordred’s résumé asserted that he was a multidiscipline prodigy capable of instructing in the full spectrum of academic subjects. However, he spent much less time on mathematics than on such things as the secret history of the world (which was ruled by evil Rosicrucians), the superhero status of Fidel Castro (who hadn’t died but had only taken a vacation on his home planet), and the need for children to keep meticulous notes on their parents’ political beliefs and report them to the state when the revolution came. Benny found all this interesting and colorful, but not convincing. During his second month of instruction—and for the remainder of the more than two and a half years that he was homeschooled—he began to carry a sharp penknife in his pocket when in Mordred Merrick’s company, just in case.

The best thing about life in that house was the music room, which contained a Steinway piano. After two years in residence, he sat down at the instrument one day, humming a pop ballad he liked, and discovered that he could play the tune note for note.He was a piano prodigy. Once he’d heard a song through to the end, he could perform it flawlessly. Benny might have pursued this talent if Mordred Merrick had not repeatedly recounted howhispiano teacher had molested him when he was a young boy; as a consequence, Mordred ever since had to avoid cocktail lounges and other venues offering piano music, because every time he saw someone playing, he wanted to blow that musician’s brains out. Nevertheless, Benny had talent. One day that would matter.

His most formative day as the adopted son of Jubal Catspaw came on the Thursday when he turned thirteen. After a birthday party with a magician, a juggler, a guy who made origami animals out of dollar bills, a karate master who broke boards with his head and concrete blocks with his hands—but with no other children in attendance—Benny was shown a short video about Briarbush Academy. Situated in the scenic, forested mountains of Northern California, where the air was pure and nature unsullied by industry or excessive civilization, Briarbush educated only the brightest sons of the nation’s richest and most forward-thinking families. The stellar faculty not only provided superior academic instruction, but also turned out young men with wilderness-survival skills and superb physical endurance and keen ambition, shaping them into the next generation of leaders.

The following day, Jubal and Naomi began a yearlong around-the-world tour that included a wealth of experiences. Their African safari would be staffed by two guides, two able marksmen to protect against predatory wildlife, six porters, a camp manager, a chef, two kitchen assistants, a classical guitarist, a flutist, and a night-soil specialist. In Egypt, they would be given VIP tours of the three most famous pyramids; the prime minister himself would serve as their docent in the tomb to Tutankhamen; they would travel by camelcaravan where practical, and otherwise by armored Land Rover. Hot-air ballooning through the Alps. An expedition up the gentle slopes of Mount Fuji to the shrine at its summit. A glamorous journey by private train—locomotive and three cars—from Shimla, India, to New Delhi, to the Taj Mahal in Agra, thence through the high-country tea plantations of Darjeeling, to Calcutta, from there to Chittagong on the Bay of Bengal. And so much more.

As Jubal and Naomi jetted off to Africa, Benny was flown to Napa, California, and from there conveyed north into the wilderness aboard a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, to the Briarbush Academy. In this primal land of vast forests and isolate lakes, daunting slopes and chasmic ravines, the nearest volcano had long been dormant even though on some nights a low grumbling issued from it, as if it were a giant who dreamed of decimating entire villages of little people. The storied academy, its majestic buildings of native stone, was modeled after England’s famous boarding schools with the intention of exceeding their grandeur while conveying the impression of a last stronghold against the ignorance that engulfed the world beyond its walls. Here, 130 sons of the ruling class, between the ages of twelve and eighteen, were housed and fed and educated and morally formed for an annual fee of two hundred thousand dollars.

Benny didn’t want to go to Briarbush. Nobody wanted to go to Briarbush. He didn’t have a vote in the matter. And by now he was too old to find comfort in building a LEGO staircase to the moon.

On arrival, he was taken directly to the residence of the headmaster, which stood apart from the school. Dr. Lionel Baneberry-Smith was fiftysomething, tall and lean, with gray hair, yellowish eyes, thin maroon lips, and a smile as warm as a clear morning in January. Mrs. Catherine Baneberry-Smith was much younger,very pretty and pink cheeked, with foxglove-purple eyes. She served small, dry cakes that had an almond flavor, cookies that smelled like mushrooms but tasted okay, and hot tea that Benny sweetened with honey.

Although formal, the headmaster and his lovely wife were welcoming and pleasant. The only thing that troubled Benny to any extent was the collection of big, exotic insects displayed in Lucite boxes on the shelves in the drawing room, where tea was served. Mrs. Baneberry-Smith kindly explained that, in her late twenties, she had been an entomologist studying insects in Asia, until she was bitten repeatedly by a highly poisonous spider. She was hospitalized for three months, spent another three in a rehab facility, where she met her husband and, in light of the fact that her constitution would never be what it once had been, decided to leave the jungles for the settled academic life at Briarbush, where she enjoyed looking after her spouse, counseling those boys who became homesick, and teaching a class in the fifteenth-century history of Italy.

Benny had been plunged into the company of strangers and a challenging new environment. The change in his circumstances was extreme, but much in his new situation promised adventures large and small. The dramatic landscape. The presence of boys who could become his pals. The mysteries of the rambling academy, which looked as if it must have infinite attics and labyrinthine cellars and countless secret passageways. He would no longer encounter Rudyard Bromley in awkward moments when the butler proceeded with his duties while silently weeping. Mrs. Bromley’s Celtic songs, sung in a venomous voice, were a thing of the past. Mordred Merrick would now have to find another boy to radicalize. All in all, Benny was enthusiastic about his new life. Then he met his roommate.

THE PLEASURE OF PHYSICAL LABOR

A career as a real-estate agent was demanding, but it didn’t involve much in the way of physical labor. Physical labor could be rewarding. Benny liked physical labor, enjoyed losing himself in it. That was why he did so much housework that wasn’t necessary. When he threw himself into cleaning, he proceeded feverishly, put everything he had into it. He liked to sweat as he was scrubbing, waxing, and polishing.

When he came home from the hardware store, his purchases were not limited to a power drill with a reversible motor and a variety of bits. He also brought a pair of collapsible metal sawhorses that had a vise-lock feature, a handheld circular saw, and a pry bar.

He changed into shorts and a T-shirt and protective kneepads. Without checking his text messages, email, or voice mail—to hell with them—he attacked the crate with gusto. After removing twenty screws, on his knees, he shoved the lid off the big box and let it clatter to the garage floor.

Benny gazed at a silver-gray container that was maybe brushed stainless steel. About eight feet long, three and a half feet wide. Cosseted on all sides by sandwiched slabs of dense Styrofoam. The lid wasn’t ornate, but instead smooth and featureless. Nonetheless, the shape brought to mind a casket, suggesting Talmadge Clerkenwell might be even more eccentric than he had appeared in the video.

The thing was cold to the touch. When Benny slid his hand along the lid, something like static electricity raised the hairs on his arm and needled his palm. He snatched his hand back.

He removed the screws holding the planks to the crate’s corner and center posts. Using a pry bar and a hammer, he disassembled the box, stacking the lumber to one side and the slabs of Styrofoam to the other side.

When exposed, the object lacked handles with which pallbearers could carry it. The lid wasn’t in two sections, which would have allowed the display of only the upper half of a deceased occupant. So it wasn’t a casket. With its rounded ends and curved top, it might have been the work of a pop-art sculptor, an immense hot-dog bun crafted in steel.

Benny slowly circled the container, seeking a button, a pressure latch, a slide control, any mechanism that might open it. None of those features was offered. Neither did he find a keyhole; even if one had been apparent, he possessed no key.

The line defining the lid from the body of the container was as thin as if inscribed with a pencil, perhaps generous enough to allow the insertion of a razor, but not the blade of a pry bar.

When, in frustration, he lightly rapped the hammer against the lid, the sound wasn’t the hard crack of metal hitting metal, but rang through the garage like a merry carillon of silver Christmas bells, echoing wall to wall.

Benny startled backward. “Books, my ass.” The eerie but not unpleasant tintinnabulation suggested that what appeared to be steel was something else—and not something he could name.

As the ringing slowly faded into the tinkling notes that might accompany a flight of fairies in a Disney movie, the head fell off the wooden handle of the ball-peen hammer.

Benny had intended to fasten the crate planks to the sawhorses and, one by one, reduce them to manageable lengths with the circular saw. Instead, he went into the house and closed thedoor to the garage and locked it. He was in the laundry room, holding the handle of the headless hammer. He put it on top of the clothes dryer. He looked at his hands. He flexed his fingers. They didn’t fall off. He stood with his mouth open. He didn’t know what to say. Anyway, there was no one here to whom to say it.

A GROWING SENSE OF DREAD

In addition to an address in Boca Raton, a phone number was included on the FedEx box that had contained Talmadge Clerkenwell’s video. However, when Benny called it, a recording informed him that service had been discontinued. He tried three times, always with the same result.

The copy of the Mayweather Universal Air Freight manifest that had come with the crate cited the same phone number.

Googling Talmadge Clerkenwell was as successful as googling “Mr. Nobody N. Nobody.” He was less than a ghost. He appeared never to have existed.

When Benny sat on a stool at the kitchen island and opened the video card from Clerkenwell, the screen failed to brighten. It was an automatic device with no controls. Evidently, it was programmed to erase after being played once.

Perhaps Clerkenwell’s disappearing act had another explanation, but the only conclusion Benny could reach was that the colonel had taken steps to ensure that his nephew could not return the strange container or what was in it.

The old man’s mellifluous voice seemed more sinister in memory than it had been when Benny first heard it: “Whatever happens, no matter what—be not afraid. There is no reason to be afraid, though there may seem to be. Trust me.”

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