Page 68 of The Bad Weather Friend

“You said we’ll ‘bring an end to this current war’ on me. The word‘current’seems to imply there might be other wars like this in the future.”

“Maybe I didn’t imply it. Perhaps you only inferred it.”

As they stepped into the foyer and stood waiting for Harper, Benny said, “It sounded to me like you bluntly implied it.”

“Well, I was trying to set your mind at ease, my friend, but I guess you won’t let me do that. Once we can break these Better Kind fanatics or badly disrupt them, we can put your life back together. But they can always regroup. Even if their project implodes, there are always others like them, some wealthy, others who aren’t wealthy but have political power and can use the resources of the government to harass you and others like you.”

“Tormenting nice people who just want to get along—they get off on that?”

“Yes. But they’re also afraid of people like you. Theron had it somewhat right. When kindness and decency—also known asniceness—are coupled with wisdom, you have charisma of a good kind. When charismatic people also have plenty of courage, they can inspire others and, with them, do great good things. That scares the hell out of Theron and his pals, who claim to be doing good even when they’re doing great evil.”

“So it’s all about money and power to them?”

“Not entirely. Some know they’re doing evil, but some don’t. In each case, they’re all the same—impatient, shortsighted, reckless fixers. Seeing themselves as fixers gives their lives meaning.”

“Fixers?”

“They’re people who can’t let anything be as it is. No matter how good the thing is, it’s never good enough for them. Everything they look upon seems either not quite right or wrong, and they’re convinced they know how to fix it. Most of the time, they utterly destroy it before rebuilding something less good from the rubble.”

“What sense does that make? If my car has a broken windshield wiper, I don’t blow up the car before starting repairs. Andfor sure I don’t want my life blown up and fixed. Even with you on my side, what kind of life will it be, always a target?”

Spike pinched Benny’s cheek affectionately. “It’ll belife, my main man. Who in this life isn’t a target one way or another? You’ll do fine, Benjamin. We’ve got this. Say ‘We’ve got this.’ I want to hear you say ‘We’ve got this,’ and really mean it.”

“I don’t feel like we’ve got this.”

“Sure we do. Say ‘We’ve got this.’”

“I don’t want to say it. Saying it will jinx us.”

Spike gripped Benny’s lips with one thumb and two fingers and gently massaged them as if shaping the words he wanted. “Say it for Uncle Spike. Say ‘We’ve got this.’”

Benny endured the mouth massage until it stopped. Instead of saying what was requested of him, he said, “‘Plenty of courage.’ According to you, the formula for success is niceness, wisdom, and plenty of courage. But I don’t have gallons of courage. I have like maybe one cup of courage, maybe not even a full cup.”

“You’ll have oceans of courage when you need it,” Spike assured him. “When anyone has something more to lose than just his life, the fear of losing that bigger thing gives him great courage.”

“Bigger than my life? What more could I lose than my life?”

Spike looked to the spectacular staircase and smiled, and Benny turned to see what the smile was about, and Harper was descending with the rabbit in her arms. He was rocked. He was hammered. For a moment he could not breathe. He had been aware that this woman was growing on him, not like a fungus or anything gross, but growing on him in a good way, the best way, growingcloserin mind and heart, growing more precious and with surprising speed, considering under what circumstancestheir courtship had been conducted. Could one date be called a courtship? One date chaperoned by a craggle? It wasn’t even a date by the standard definition. Yes, they’d eaten dinner together, while Spike had eaten ten dinners, but they hadn’t gone to a movie or dancing. They had invaded Handy Duroc’s house, and they had stripped Oliver Lambert naked and sent him off to shake a deep-fried zucchini stick at his party guests, and together they escaped being fatally gassed by an evil old man who was now lying dead in urine-soaked pants, but a quick review of the evening’s activities failed to reveal anything that could credibly be calledromance. Benny had been aware that something was evolving between him and Harper Harper, a sweet mutual attraction, even something that might be described as arelationship. However, as he watched her gracefully descending the stairs with a large white rabbit, he was rocked so profoundly by emotion that the thought of losing her was intolerable. His passion had nothing to do with the rabbit; it was all about Harper. He would do anything to protect her, anything, including sacrificing himself to save her life, which he would most likely never be called upon to do—he sure hoped not—but he would take the bullet for her if it came to that.

When Harper descended the final step and set foot in the foyer, breath came to Benny, and he said, “We’ve got this. I’ve got this.”

“You make me proud,” said Spike.

LEAVING PALAZZO DEL CONIGLIO IN HIGH EMOTION, BENNY REMEMBERS AN EMOTIONAL TIME AT BRIARBUSH

Every week, another few boys joined the growing hive of worker bees, their eyes transformed to one shade of gray or another. Of the teachers, staff, and students, only Benny and Jurgen and Mengistu seemed to be aware of this transformation. And only they thought it was peculiar that these gray-eyed minions attended to mysterious tasks at the direction of the headmistress rather than pursuing their studies or horsing around as boys their age were wont to do.

Autumn always came early and passed quickly in those mountains. That year when Benny was thirteen, most species of birds migrated south in the same two-day period, perhaps because instinct warned that winter could arrive abruptly and with brutal force. The sudden departure of 90 percent of the birds effected a change of no big material impact. However, the silencing of their songs and flight calls, their erasure from the sky, where the sight of them on the wing could lift your spirit, was one of many reasons that the mood at Briarbush Academy became darker by the day. The food in the dining hall, previously the best thing about the school, gradually grew less flavorful, as if the chef and everyone on his staff had lost their culinary mastery and motivation. At times, Benny and Jurgen and Mengistu heard an ominous bass throbbing that rose from the earth and persisted for an hour or longer, as though an immense machine had been constructed in a previously unknown cavern beneath Briarbush and was now laboring at a sinister task. Eerie electronic sounds riddled the night, originating somewhere beyond Felthammer House, butthey never lasted long enough to be tracked to their source. No one but Benny and Jurgen and Mengistu heard either the throbbing or the electronic keening. Or if others heard it, they were programmed not to react or remember; increasingly, the three boys suspected that, except for themselves, everyone at Briarbush was being programmed; by what method, with what intention, and for what purpose they could not say.

Though all but three minds were clouded to the truth of weird goings-on, the incident of the bears was perhaps too dramatic to be deleted from the memory of those who witnessed it. For days it remained a topic of conversation among everyone at the school. The black bears that roamed these mountain forests and high meadows weighed about three hundred pounds, and they could be dangerous if they were angered or felt threatened. They had long shied away from Briarbush Academy, which Jurgen said must be because their instinct told them most of the boys under formation there were too tasteless to be worth eating. Until the last Monday of that September, nobody had ever seen more than a single bear at a time wandering along the meadow near the forest. On the afternoon of the visitation, seven black bears appeared in the tall grass, lined up like the statues on Easter Island, standing erect, swaying slightly, facing the school with their heads raised as if heeding a sound only they could hear or drawn by a scent only they could detect. Students and staff gathered at windows and on balconies and even in the open yard to observe the phenomenon. As though under an enchantment, the bears held their position for almost an hour before they dropped to all fours and lumbered away into the woods.

That was not the end of it.

A few days later, at half past the witching hour, Benny’s nightmare broke apart as if it were a jigsaw puzzle, bright pieces spinning down into a black void. He woke with a start, threw aside the covers, erupted from bed, and stood trembling in the dark dormitory room. All that he remembered of the dream was a dry and susurrant voice speaking in a language he didn’t know. Awake, he still heard it, not as loud as when he’d been lost in sleep, but insistent and strange.

“What is that?” Jurgen asked, and Benny realized his friend was standing on the far side of the room, presenting the shadowy shape of a boy in the dim glow that issued from the digital bedside clocks. “It’s the same creepy voice as in the dream.”

“Mine too. What was your dream?”

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