“The book on the rack over there? Looks like a phone book?”
Kindle considered his leg. The ache, which never ceased, was cranking up toward real pain. “Tell you what… I’ll carry the book if you carry that machine.”
“It’s a transceiver. Or you can call it a rig.”
“All right, Christ, it’s a transceiver. Can you carry the fuckin’ transceiver?”
Joey smiled. “Should have brought your wheelchair.”
“Smart-ass.”
Joey rooted in the stockroom for a boxed unit with a manual, then loaded it into the trunk of Kindle’s car. “I appreciate the help,” Kindle said. “You’re not done yet.”
“No?”
“Think about it. You want to be a radio station. So you need more than a box. You need—”
“An antenna.” It was obvious. He felt a little stupid. “Well, shit.” He squinted at the kid. “You know about antennas?”
“Could figure it out.”
“They stock ’em here?”
Joey nodded. “But we should come back with a truck or something. We’re talking about maybe a big beam antenna. You got a three-hundred-watt transceiver, so you want a big antenna and a big tower to do it justice.”
“Why don’t I just go home and let you take care of it?”
Joey backed up. “I didn’t volunteer for this.”
“No, hey, I didn’t mean it that way—”
“I mean, fuck you if you want me to do your job.…”
“No—”
“Just wanted to help.”
“So help.” Kindle slammed the trunk shut. “Let’s not stand here in the pissin’ rain. We’ll come back with a truck. But maybe tomorrow, all right? My leg hurts.”
Joey gazed at him. “You broke it?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“Fell down a mountain.”
“Uh-huh,” Joey said. “You look too old to climb a mountain.” Kindle sighed and took a pen and notepad from his shirt pocket. “Write down your phone number. I’ll call you about the antenna.”
“Told you I’m not doing your work for you.”
“You don’t have to work, goddamn it, you only have to point.”
“I just like the electronics.”
But Joey wrote his number down.
There was a baseball game on TV that night. There had been a long hiatus after Contact, then the season had picked up where it left off. The World Series would run into cold weather, but with all these domed stadiums Kindle supposed that wasn’t a problem.
He had watched all these games. Everything else on TV since Contact had been bizarre and kind of frightening, even such laudable events as the relief flights to the Third World. The food flights had been good, but they had also been operated with scary precision. There was something unnerving about all those military planes in V formation, even if their cargo bays were filled with wheat.
Now the relief flights appeared to have stopped; the implication was that the refugee populations of the world had found some new way to get along… or had “discorporated,” a word Kindle remembered from his youth. Feeding the poor had been a stopgap effort, a bridge to that great unspoken mysterious millennium Kindle felt bearing down on him like a runaway locomotive.
But baseball went on. The NBA hadn’t started a new season, football was finished, but a decision had been made in some telepathic congress: The World Series would be played out come hell or high water.
Maybe in Spain it was soccer, or in Russia it was hockey or chess or whatever the hell they played over there, but games still mattered. According to Matt, there were still Little League games being played in Buchanan, even some pick-up football on the high school field. Whatever it was people were turning into, they still liked to get out on the turf and chase a ball.
He hadn’t followed baseball since the 1978 World Series, the last time he’d owned a TV. The Yankees took the Dodgers that year, as Kindle recalled. Things had changed since then. He didn’t recognize names. Everybody looked too young. But he had watched the season progress on his hospital Sony, and he was determined to see the end of it.
Tonight it was an AL game, Detroit at New York. He thought Detroit looked good for the Series. He thought it would be a Detroit/Chicago Series, and his money was on Detroit.
The Tigers would take the Cubs, and then Kindle would pack up his possessions and move on.
He spent that night at the hospital, but he wasn’t sick enough to stay longer and he didn’t intend to. It was a charmless place at best. At the same time, it seemed pointless to move back to his cabin. He could get all the isolation he wanted much closer to town.
In the morning he phoned the local realty office. No one answered, but Kindle was ready for that. He knew a guy who worked there, or used to, a guy named Ira who sometimes hired his boat for fishing trips. Kindle reached him at home. Ira’s voice had the detached, bemused quality Kindle had come to expect from a Contactee. Kindle identified himself and came to the point: “Just a question, Ira, seeing as you’re in the business: Are houses free?”
“What do you mean… you want to buy a house?”
“Nope. I just want one. Yesterday I wanted a radio rig and I got one for free. Can I have a house?”
There was a pause. “Well.” Thoughtful. “I know of some empty properties. If you move in, I don’t suppose anybody will mind.”
“You’re shittin’ me!” Kindle couldn’t contain himself.
“Beg pardon?”
“Christ, you’re serious! I can move into any fuckin’ house?”
“Any empty one, I suppose.”
He recalled Joey Commoner’s remark about an antenna. “I want a house on a hill. No obstructions. Nice view all around.”
“Ocean view?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I can give you a few addresses.…” Kindle fumbled for his pen.
He spent the next day looking at properties. By mid-afternoon he’d picked one out: A two-bedroom frame house in Delmar Estates, a mildly upscale part of town, overlooking Buchanan and a northerly piece of the bay. The house was empty and unfurnished.
He moved in his single piece of property—the radio transceiver, still boxed. He put it in the middle of the living room floor.
The house had an empty-house smell. He guessed the broadloom had been cleaned before the property went on the market. Maybe the walls had been painted. He breathed in, breathed out.
He had never lived in such a place and never really wanted to… but he guessed a month or so here might be tolerable. Although, at the moment, there was nothing to sit on but the floor.
He drove to the Sears at the nearest mall and found the doors standing open but no one on duty at the cashiers’ stations. What else? He realized with some startlement that he could equip the house with any furniture he happened to like, price being no object. He’d always kind of admired these imitation-leather sofas, for instance. He tried one out, right there in the deserted Home Furnishings department. It was like sitting on a stuffed lizard. Sumptuous but probably sticky in hot weather.
But this was all academic—there was no way he could transport any of this stuff, not at the moment, not without grinding his bad leg down to bloody splinters. He sighed and moved on to the patio furniture. Two folding chairs and a chaise lounge, just about his speed. He tucked them under his arm and carried them to the car.
He went back for fresh clothes—a pair of jeans and an armload of cotton T-shirts and underwear.