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.
It had been a long day and he was beginning to tire, but he made a second stop at the A P, where he picked up canned food, cold cuts, a couple of loaves of bread. The house was equipped with a refrigerator and stove… but hang on, was the electricity working? It hadn’t occurred to him to check the lights. He supposed he could phone the power company. If the phone was connected. If there was a phone. Okay, one more stop, back to the mall to pick up a touchtone telephone.
It was nearly dusk by the time he arrived back at the house.
Electricity, it turned out, wasn’t a problem. The refrigerator was humming vigorously. He switched on the kitchen lights and began putting away the food.
He noticed the wire shelves in the refrigerator were barely cool, and he frowned and checked the freezer. No frost. Not even a trace. Was that significant? Maybe it was a frost-free unit; Kindle had heard of such appliances, though he had never owned one.
But the refrigerator was humming like a son of a bitch. When he was here earlier… had he noticed that sound?
Maybe not.
Maybe, this afternoon, the electricity hadn’t been turned on. He plugged in the phone and called Ira. “Ira, I found a place.”
“I know,” Ira said cheerfully. “Up on Delmar. I was the listed agent on that property, by the way. Good view. I hope you’ll be happy there.”
“Pardon me, Ira, but how the fuck do you know where I picked to live?”
There was a pause. “The neighbors saw you leave some belongings. We assumed you were moving in.”
“What, you talked to the neighbors?”
“Well. In a way.”
By voodoo telegraph, in other words. “So tell me… did the neighbors also talk to the power company?”
“Well, Tom. Everybody more or less talks to everybody.”
“Well, Ira, doesn’t that more or less scare the shit out of you?”
“No. But I apologize if we alarmed you.”
“Think nothing of it.” He put the phone down in a hurry. Unfolded a chair and sat in it.
He’d forgotten to pick up a TV set. Was there a game on tonight? He couldn’t remember.
Kindle went to the kitchen, where the light was brighter, and unpacked the transceiver. Ungainly object. He tried to read the manual, but it was written in some language only theoretically English. “Do not allow to contact with moisture or heavily wet.” Words to live by.
He guessed Joey Commoner would be able to figure it out.
November was rainy; he postponed the chore of erecting an antenna. The ache in his leg retreated some. He began stocking up on groceries, beginning to suspect that Mart’s fears about the food supply were well-founded. The staples were still being trucked in, but luxury items had begun to disappear from the shelves. He stockpiled some of those, too. He felt like making a trophy list. Successfully hunted down in Buchanan, Oregon : Last bag of Oreos. Last bottle of gourmet popcorn.
He ferried down some items from his cabin, mainly tools and books. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire had been sitting where he left it last August and was a little musty, since he’d left the windows open, but still readable. A trudge through Gibbon might not be too bad, given all this rainy cool weather. Then on to Madame Bovary.
The Tigers took the American League pennant late that month.
He called Joey when the skies cleared for a couple of days.
“Been waiting to hear from you,” Joey complained. “I got a lot of tower parts from Radio Shack. And a beam antenna from Causgrove’s. But you weren’t at the hospital.”
Kindle gave the kid his new address. “You can transport all that?”
“Took a van out of the lot at Harbor Ford.”
Must do that myself one of these days, Kindle thought. “Are we talking hard physical labor here?”
“Some,” Joey said. “Bring beer,” Kindle said. “You got it.”