The Adventures of Norman Oklahoma Volume One Page 5

  “Whoa, Hal,” I said, trying to force myself free, which wasn’t happening. I wasn’t going anywhere until Hal was ready to let me go.

  “It lay in wait,” Hal said. “Using the form of a woman, a guise to draw me near, but I could not be fooled.”

  His eyes had gone distant. I could see bits of bread and bone hanging in his full, dark beard. Knowing Hal the way I did, I assumed the bones were chicken, maybe turkey, but I’d never seen Eudora’s most famous homeless person act like this before and it caused me to reevaluate my feelings toward the man.

  “Hal!” I shouted. “Let me go! You’re acting half a bubble off plumb, buddy! Don’t make me shoot you!”

  “The floor was more bones than stone,” Hal said. “The bones. The bodies!”

  “Hal! Dang it! Someone’s bound to notice us here dancing like this and call the local constabulary! You don’t want to spend another night in a cell do you?”

  For a man who sleeps on sidewalks and is often seen under the influence of whatever alcohol he can manage to scrounge up, Hal had spent very little time in the town jail.

  “I never asked to be their hero!” Hal’s breath began to dissolve the inner lining of my nostrils. “I never asked to be anyone’s hero!”

  Well, I’d had enough. I couldn’t shoot Hal, but I could dang sure get his attention the old fashioned way. After all, it had worked with the Walrus.

  “Hal!” I shouted once more. One last chance.

  He didn’t respond, so I kicked him between the legs.

  He didn’t curl in on himself in pain, didn’t let me go, didn’t even so much as grunt. He just shook his head like he was clearing the cobwebs from his mind. He looked at me, looked down at his hands that were still clutching the front of my coat, and then he let me go.

  “Norman?” he said as eyes once clouded became bright. “Good gravy, Norman, I’m sorry.” Though he was mostly hair, I could see that his face had turned as red as a tomato. “I don’t know what came over me. I sure hope you can forgive me.”

  “Water under the bridge,” I said, straightening out my coat. “But you scared the bejeebers out of me, Hal. What was that?”

  “Golly, Norman,” the big man said, looking down at his feet. “I’m not sure.”

  No one knows where Hal had come from before he’d appeared one day sleeping it off in the park across from the old high school. He’d drifted into town a decade or two back and took up residence in Eudora’s back alleys, parks, and countryside. I’ve often attempted to beguile the man into telling me about himself from before, but Hal could be a wily customer when he wanted to be.

  “Well, I’ll tell you what,” I said. “I’ll forget it if you forget it. Deal?” I held out my hand.

  Hal brightened immediately. He looked up and his face was nothing but one big smile. He took my hand and shook it, nearly pulling my arm from its socket. “Deal! Thanks, Norman. Thanks a bunch.” He let go of my hand.

  “Don’t mention it,” I said, thanking God that my healing ability would take the pain away soon.

  “Oh no, I won’t mention it. No sir. Not one more word.” He made as if he was running a zipper across his lips.

  “I’m glad,” I said. “Hey, I’m sure Bob has some coffee brewing upstairs. You want a cup?”

  “Oh, no thanks, Norman,” Hal said, looking up 7th Street, away from Main. “But I gotta be going. Lots to do, lots to do, yes sir.” And with that he loped away. “See you in the funny pages,” he called over his shoulder, giggling like a little boy.

  I shook my head as I watched him walk away. Once he was out of sight I sighed and climbed the stairs to my office.

  Bob was my receptionist and as usual, he had arrived first and sat reading a book at his desk in the waiting room.

  “You’re late,” he said without looking up. “You can get all the beauty sleep you want Norman, it won’t make you any less ugly.”

  Bob had been with me for the better part of five decades now. He’s the only person left alive that I’ve known longer than Pat. He’s also the only person left alive, other than Pat, that I’d trust with my life, unconditionally.

  “And a good morning to you too, Bob,” I said, shutting the door behind me. “Any messages?”

  He set the book down and gave me a look that told me just how stupid he found my question to be. Bob was built like an egg. He had a few extra pounds around the middle and not much hair at the top of his head.

  “So, no then?” I said and then smiled.

  “Was that Hal I heard you talking to outside?” He asked.

  “It was.”

  “Poor man. Someone should do something.”

  “Like what?” I said. “He won’t take handouts and won’t stay at a shelter. Shy of asking the fella to move in what else can you do?”

  “He turned me down,” he said, going back to his book.

  “Turned what down?”

  “I offered him my spare room. Told him he could stay there. He turned me down.”

  “We’ll I’ll be, Bob. Who’da thought there was an honest too goodness heart beating there in your chest.”

  He ignored me. He’s never found me funny. I’m used to it.

  “Anyway,” I said. “Is there coffee?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I’m off caffeine,” he said from behind the book. “Doctor says it isn’t good for me.”

  “Well I ain’t,” I said. “I was looking forward to a cup of coffee.”

  “Then make some,” he said. “You’re capable.”

  “That ain’t the point,” I said. “You’re my receptionist.”

  “So?”

  “So,” I said, the heat rising in my face. “Among your job duties is making coffee.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since you started making coffee every morning fifty years ago.”

  He put the book down.

  “I made coffee each morning because I wanted coffee,” he said, then he disappeared behind the book once more.

  I stood looking at him, thinking of something to say. If there was one thing Bob excelled at, it was getting my dander up. However, I knew this was a fight I wasn’t gonna win.

  “Fine, I’ll make the coffee,” I said.

  Just inside the front door to my office was a small table where the coffee maker sat. Or at least used to. It was gone.

  “Where’s the coffee maker?”

  “I threw it out.”

  “What?” I said. “Threw it out? Why?” I realized that I was shouting.

  “I’m off caffeine,” said Bob. “I said that already.”

  “I heard you, and like I said, I am not!”

  “It was my coffee maker,” he said.

  “I wanted coffee!”

  “You got a coffee maker at home,” he said. “What’s wrong with it?”

  “I broke the pot on a walrus,” I shouted. Then, to force the point home, I crossed the room, entered my office, and slammed the door closed behind me.

  I threw my coat onto the coat tree in the corner before I snatched up the mug on my desk. I frowned at the layer of dried creamer and sugar at its bottom and spent a few moments washing it out in the sink of the private bathroom attached to the office.

  Then, because there was no coffee, I set it back on the desk with such force that I was surprised it didn’t go through.

  I sighed and went to the large picture window that looked out onto Main. The window was taller than I was and I put a foot up on the sill, thinking about coffee. Maybe I could take a ride out to the Kwik Stop, they made a decent cup.

  I could see the entrance to the Pub from the window and smiled. Lemonzeo stood out on the sidewalk with the two biters. I smiled because they were arguing. I couldn’t hear what they said, of course, but it was obvious that the biters weren’t happy. I could only assume that I was the cause of their ire, and that made me smile even more.

  Lemonzeo however, did not get where he was by not knowing how to get things
done. It only took a few moments, but he soon had the biters pacified and then saw them off in a stretch limo. I watched Abner as he stood at the entrance to the Pub, watching the limo speed off down Main at well over the legal limit. Then, as he was about to turn and go back into the Pub, he looked up the street at me standing at my window. I gave him a quick, two-fingered salute. He scowled and disappeared inside the small bar.

  The phone on my desk gave an annoying buzz. I sat and looked at the display. I was Bob in the other room. I pressed the speaker button.

  “Did you change your mind about the coffee?” I said, a smile in my voice.

  “Clem Sims is here to see you,” he said.

  Clem Sims? What did he want?

  “Send him in,” I said.

  Clem lived alone in a ramshackle, one level house out on Church street between Ninth and Tenth. The man himself was like his house: Gray, full of cracks, and long in the tooth. He’d been living in the old home for close to sixty years and had worn the same thing every day of it. Overalls over red flannel, boots, and a straw hat. All of which were perpetually stained with oil, mud, or both. The hat he only removed when indoors.

  “Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Oklahoma,” Clem said as he entered, hat in hand.

  “Please,” I said. “It’s Norman.” I gestured to the two chairs in front of my desk. “Have a seat.”

  “Thank you,” he said, sitting.

  Clem held on to his hat with both hands. In fact, were the hat a living being, like the one in them books about those wizard kids, I’d have expected to hear strangling sounds.

  “What can I help you with, Clem?” I asked.

  “Well,” Clem said, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat and then continued. “I ain’t sure how to put this, so I’m just gonna come on out and say it. Aliens are stealing my cats.”

  9

  ALIEN ABDUCTION

  THERE’S NO SUCH THING as aliens.

  Werewolves? You bet.

  Zombies? Of course.

  Vampires? Obviously.

  But aliens? It’s all just a pile of paranoia and conspiracy theories if you ask me.

  “How many cats are we talking about here, Clem?” I asked.

  “Five,” Clem said.

  “Five?” I asked.

  “Five,” he clarified.

  “Someone has taken six cats from you?”

  “Not all at the same time,” Clem said. “Every couple of days one of ‘em has gone missing.”

  “How long has this been going on?” I asked.

  “Little over a month now,” he said. “It started with Mrs. Whiskers.”

  “Mrs. Whiskers?”

  “Yes sir,” he said. “About a month or so back I got up one morning and filled all the cat dishes for breakfast. Them cats can hear that sound from anywhere in, or out of the house. That food hits one of them bowls and them cats come running.”

  I nodded to show that I was listening.

  “But that morning, all but Mrs. Whiskers showed up,” he said. “Didn’t think much of it at the time. I mean, though they do come inside once in a while, they are outdoor cats. I’ve had a few go missing over the years. They’ve wondered off or been run over or just went off somewhere to die from old age.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “But then three mornings later, Meowzers didn’t show. Two mornings after that, it was Biscuit. Then Sweetcakes two days later. Then Princess Purrington. After that I figured something odd was going on.”

  “Did you notify the authorities?”

  “Yes sir,” Clem said. “I called and spoke to Francine down there at the station. She put me through to officer Hanks.” Clem leaned forward. “Officer Hanks, he came by, took my statement and looked around a bit. He even drove by the house once or twice, but he never did find out what was going on.”

  “And that’s why you’re here,” I said.

  “Yes sir. Actually,” he leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs. Some of the dried mud from his boot broke off and fell to the floor. “I told Barbra June, that’s my sister, I told her that it didn’t seem like there was anything that officer Hanks was gonna be able to do. So she told me ‘Clem,’ she said, ‘You gotta call that Norman Oklahoma,’ she said. ‘He specializes in these kinds of things that’s all mysterious and such.’. Then I remembered how you’d helped me with my wife them years back and so I took Barbra June’s advice and gave you a call. ”

  “When Officer Hanks stopped by, did he do more than just take your statement?” I said.

  “Yes sir, he came out and looked the place over real good but said he couldn’t find no evidence of foul play.”

  “So it’s possible that each one of these cats just wandered off?”

  “We’ll, it’s like I said. Cats will do that. But five of them in a month? I ain’t never had that happen, and I been owning cats for most of my life.”

  He had a point.

  “It’s them aliens, I tell ya,” he continued. “Them aliens came down in one of their saucers and took my cats away.”

  I tried not to sigh, but one got out despite my effort.

  Six years ago Clem’s wife, Nattie, took off on him just two days shy of their fiftieth wedding anniversary. Clem woke up that morning to find her note stuck to the front of the refrigerator with a magnet in the shape of one a’them alien faces, the kind with the big, black eyes. Ironic really, once you consider what was in the note. But then, maybe that’s why she chose that particular magnet.

  Anyway, her note said that aliens had been visiting her for the better part of a decade. She’d written that a lone scout had come at first to gather intelligence for his home planet so that they could better understand us as a species, making it easier for them to enslave us when the mother ship eventually arrived.

  She claimed that she’d struck up a friendship with this alien who she called Blont Gaglefranch from the planet Bulp. Inevitably, the mother ship had arrived, managing to avoid all radar and other such tracking mechanisms being so vastly superior then us when it came to technology. She’d met with the High Flunt, the leader of the Bulponians, and explained to the alien ruler that Earth wasn’t worth their time.

  She talked about global warming, World War I and II, the atomic bomb, slavery, the Trail of Tears, the Crusades, Nicholas Cage; basically all the bad stuff we’ve done to each other and the planet over the years. In the end, she’d had him convinced and the aliens were set to leave us alone.

  That’s when Blont stepped in and threw himself a tantrum. Turns out this Blont Gaglefranch was the High Flunt’s son and he’d grown somewhat attached to Nattie. So much so that he wanted to take her back to Bulp with them. Well, of course, she didn’t want to go, but Blont threatened to use their superior alien technology to blow up the Earth if she wouldn’t leave with him.

  The High Flunt, being one of them helicopter parents I suppose, backed his son’s play. So Nattie had no choice really. She would have to go with them if the Earth was to keep on spinning. At least that’s how she wrote it.

  Clem, after reading the note, contacted me.

  I’d given the case the attention that it deserved, which meant that I’d verified that Nattie Sims, wife of Clem Sims, had purchased a one way train ticket to California. She had herself a sister in Dunsmuir. So I’d made a few calls and tracked Nattie down at her sister’s house in Northern California.

  When I spoke to her, Nattie had made me promise not to tell Clem. She didn’t want him knowing that she had left because of him. She may not have loved him enough to stay married to the man, but she loved him enough not break his heart.

  Clem, of course, had believed the whole thing. He took to bragging to anyone that would listen about how his wife had sacrificed herself to save them all. Of course, most folks had known that she’d left, and why, but no one wanted to hurt old Clem so they kept up the charade.

  Now he apparently believed them same aliens had taken his cats.

  I had a different theory. I was pretty su
re I knew what had taken Clem’s cats. And if I was right, he’d never see any of them again.

  I didn’t want to worry him quite yet, however.

  “Well now, Clem,” I said. “I can’t discount that aliens ain’t involved. I’ll look into it, that’s for certain, but I had their word the last time that they wouldn’t be taking anyone or anything no more, and being the trusting man that I am, I got to take them at their word. So, I have to think that aliens ain’t the case here.”

  “Maybe so, maybe so,” Clem said. “But the cats are missing all the same. What’s more strange is that I got to talking about what’s been happening to one of the neighbors just the other day and she tells me her cat went missing too. So did a couple of other cats on the block.”

  That about clinched it for me.

  “Clem, do you have a basement?” I asked.

  “Pretty dumb to live in Kansas and not have a basement,” he said. “Tornadoes and all.”

  “So that’s a yes?”

  “Yep.”

  “Mind if I come by and have a look around your basement?”

  “Well, no,” he said. “But they ain’t in the basement. Checked it myself.”

  “Still, I’d like to have a look around,” I said.

  “Sure,” Clem said. “Anytime.”

  We talked for a moment about my fee and made arrangements for me to meet him out at his house in an hour. With that he left.

  I could have gone out to Clem’s right away, but the rumble that had just sounded in my belly told me that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get a little something to eat. I grabbed my coat and hat and stepped out into the waiting room.

  “So?” Bob said. He was still behind his book.

  “So what?”

  Bob put the book down. “We got a case or not?”

  “We do,” I said.

  “Good,” Bob said. “Maybe you’ll start paying me again.”

  “Oh, come on now, Bob. What do you need those paychecks for? You got more money than Mickey Mouse.”

  It was true. Bob was the type of rich that was typically preceded by the words filthy, and stinking.