“She’s
a neighbor, Willard, and a widow,” I replied.
“This is important to her.”
“Mrs.
Unabomber is a terrorist,” said Willard.
“Now
that’s just silly,” I said.
“No,
it isn’t,” he said. “She mailed a get
well card to the Missus and the writing matched the photograph of hand writing that
ran in the newspapers back when the Unabomber was blowing people up. I’m thinking Ted Kaczynski
was framed.”
“That’s
not much evidence to go on,” I said.
“She
had the ability and she had motive,” he said.
“You
think she knows how to make a bomb?”
“Those
bombs were very low tech,” said Willard, “exactly what an old woman would make.”
I
sighed. “Out of what? Cookie dough? Besides, what’s her motive?”
“Religious
conviction,” he said with a straight face. “She’s a heathen.”
“I
hear she’s a very religious woman, Willard.”
“Oh
yeah? Look at how she’s always arguing with Father McCarthy.”
Father
McCarthy commanded the nearby Catholic Church, an old brick and plaster pile we
called St. John the Bazaar for its constant round of money
raising fairs and carnival galas. The
parish often received checks written to
“John the Bizarre” and that sent the priest’s blood pressure into the stratosphere. McCarthy was an old grump and incidentally a
woman-hater who was known to have remarked off the cuff that if God had
invented a third sex, the women of his
parish would have been sorely neglected.
Trying
to steer Willard on the narrow path of sanity and good taste, I told him I
thought he’d been lying awake too often listening to those overnight shows on
the radio.
And I
suggested he could be more sociable when he wanted to. He needed to come down off his high horse, or
in his case the big tractor that he’d painted red, white and blue and drove
around the neighborhood handing out photos and audio tapes of Rush Limbaugh.
He
thought for a moment and then said, “Well, maybe it would be a good idea for me
to investigate Mrs. Unabomber.”
His
use of the word investigate reminded
me of the cards he printed up the year before on the little printing press in
his basement.
“Willard,”
I said, “don’t give Mrs. Unemba the FBI card.
There’s no Special Agent named Roy Orbison.”
I convnced
Willard to come with me to Mrs. Unemba’s.
I wanted to ask if she needed any help setting up for the party. “We’re
retired,” I said, to Willard. “What else do we have to do? You don’t have to eat her cookies if she
offers any.”
Mrs.
Unemba, a very tall black-skinned woman, welcomed us into her living room. She was of indeterminate age, but she had the
build of a pro linebacker hidden in her many-colored Mu Mu style floor length
dress.
“It is so nice of you to visit, Mr. David,”
she boomed in her sing-song Caribbean accent. “And
you’ve brought along your kick in the side, Mr. Patriot.”
“Name’s
Willard,” he mumbled.
“Mr.
Wil-LARD. I’ve heard you are making our neighborhood safe for Democracy.” she
said. “With your tractor, no?”
“We
thought we’d ask if we could help with the party,” I told her.
“How
nice of you,” she boomed. “You just have
a seat here in the front room while I go make us coffee.”
Mrs.
Unemba went to the kitchen, leaving Willard and I to sit in big overstuffed
chairs surveying the room’s spiritual landscape.
Her
living room was filled with just about every religious article one could imagine. Rosaries were draped over picture frames
holding paintings of famous saints with
bloody hearts hanging out from their chests, while little plastic statues of
Mary were glued on the upswept candles of a menorah. A large gold Islamic crescent hung on the
wall. Cheap religious knick knacks
dotted the end tables and religious magazines were scattered over the coffee
table and the small white grand piano.
It looked like the Product Test Lab of a TV evangelist.
Willard
inhaled as much of the sweet smelling room as his lungs could handle and then reached
over to the coffee table and picked up what appeared to be a 14 inch statue of a monk. He shook it, twisted off its head and smelled
the contents.
“Brandy,”
he said with a smile.
He
took a swig, screwed the head back on and looked around the room, a museum of
bad taste with good intentions.
“I can’t believe it,” he said. “God really does make junk.”
“Willard,
keep your voice down,” I hissed.
“Look
at that spool of wire over there,” he said, “under the picture of those guys at
a bachelor party. Just right for bomb
making.”
“It’s
picture-hanging wire,” I replied, “and that’s the Last Supper, not a bachelor
party.”
“Really?”
said Willard. “What about the picture over there of the fellow doing a drug
deal?”
“Willard,”
I said, exasperated, “that is Rembrandt’s ‘Judas Returning The Silver.’”
Our
hostess entered the room with a tray of coffee cups.
“It’s
so nice to have visitors.” she trilled. “Father McCarthy comes not so often,
but alas we differ on Augustine’s turn to celibacy. I tell him God is not against sex. Nor probably a little covetousness, for that
matter. He gets so-o-o upset, that man.”
“McCarthy
gets upset when the grass grows,” said Willard.
“So,
how old is the kitty?” I asked, wondering why it wasn’t lying about the room
somewhere.
“Poor
Samson would have been nine years old this very next week,” she said.
“It’s dead?” asked Willard.
“Only the body,” she said. “Anointed and buried under the tree out back
with my late husband’s Smith and Wesson .38 Special -- ”
“Why did you bury the little voodoo with a gun?” asked
Willard.
“ – that’s pointed upward,” said Mrs. Unemba, “so
don’t go looking for it.”
I tried to change the subject, but Willard was nothing
if not persistent.
“Why are you
having a birthday party for a dead cat?” he asked.
Mrs. Unemba turned her huge brown eyes to Willard, then
narrowed them in shrewd appraisal.
“You are such a cute little man," she said as the
smile returned to her face. "Behave
yourself or you won't get any of the lovely cookies I'm baking."
The smell of something in the oven now wafted out of
the kitchen and overpowered the incense in the living room.
Willard jumped up and spoke with the officious tone of
a Special Agent from the FBI. “What’s in
your cookie dough?” he demanded.
I stood abruptly between Willard and Mrs. Unabomber
... I mean, Mrs. Unemba.
“Roy – I
mean Willard - is on a special diet,” I
explained. “Isn’t that right, Willard?
He can’t eat anything with chocolate or he might fill up and turn brown
- I mean grey. Yes, grey is what I
meant.”
“You
poor man,” exclaimed Mrs. Unemba as she rose and brushed by me to fold her arms
around Willard. A foot taller, she
loudly kissed him on the top of his bald head and said, “Perhaps I can help
with a potion.”
“Potion?”
Willard mumbled with a quiver, as he tried to extricate himself from her bulk.
“I
didn’t bury all of ‘the little
voodoo’ out back in the yard,” she said.
“I
have to go now,” said Willard, and he was halfway to the door when I looked at
Mrs. Unemba, shrugged my shoulders and followed the old man out.
“Thank
you for the coffee, Mrs. Una - I mean
Mrs. Unemba,” I called over my shoulder as I ran after Willard down the sidewalk.
“You
come back real soon,” she sang out from the top of the steps. “I’ll have the potion ready for your friend!”
Her
booming laugh chased Willard and I all the way down the road.
David Griffin copyright 2013
The
Windswept Press
Murrells
Inlet, South
Carolina
