Dispatch (13 page)

I felt like I was making a difference.

I
knew
I was making a difference when the mayor resigned.

The resignation of a faceless bureaucrat from one of Southern California's hundreds of cities was not news enough for the
Los Angeles Times
, but the
Register
wrote an article about it and then a follow-up. The
Ledger
devoted its whole damn issue to praising the greatness of Peter Greene, the finest mayor Acacia had ever had, who, for some unspecified reason, had decided to quit his post in midterm in order to "pursue other options" and "spend more time with his family."

I smiled as I read the articles.
Serves you right
, I thought.
Teach you to mess with me.

But I was back where I started—with no one to write me a recommendation. So I decided that I'd write my own recommendation. I don't know why I didn't think of it before. Why should I beg and grovel for the halfhearted endorsement of someone who barely knew me, when I could write a glowing testimonial to myself and attribute it to a person of truly impressive stature? Hell, the president of the United States could write me a character reference.

No. Public officials wrote on authorized stationery with embossed letterheads. I couldn't use the president or the governor or anyone like that. I needed a civilian, a very illustrious civilian.

I'd have to think about this some more. It deserved some serious consideration.

I had a dream that night, a strange dream in which I was walking along a dusty road in the middle of the desert. Before me was a lone circus tent, its colors faded by the sun, visible tears in the worn fabric. There seemed to be some kind of noise coming from the tent, a low, almost subliminal hum, but the sound was muffled by the heat, by the heavy oppressive air, and it did not increase in volume as I approached.

I reached the tent and walked inside, and there was a single ring made from chipped unpainted concrete. Wandering about in the cool darkness of the tent were children with gray hair and prematurely wrinkled faces, tiny terrors who walked around each other and passed by one another as though they were choreographed extras in a musical. In the center of the ring was the skeleton of what could only be some sort of prehistoric man, an apelike human with thick bones, hunched posture and a flat blunt face with protruding lower jaw. At the air-blasted note from an unseen calliope, the children gathered in a circle outside the ring, holding hands. They began to sing a song of praise, a lilting ditty somewhere between nursery rhyme and hymn, and I realized that this skeleton was their god.

I tried to back up, to make my way out of the tent without being seen. I knew that I would die in the desert, but that seemed infinitely preferable to remaining in here with these aged children and their skeletal deity.

I was almost to the door when the children stopped singing.

And the ape-man's skull swiveled toward me.

I awoke feeling both frightened and despondent, filled with a blackness I had not known before. I had the sense that I had narrowly escaped some horrible fate, that if I had not awakened but peered into the deepset eye sockets of that prehistoric skeleton, I would have been lost forever.

It took me several hours before I finally fell asleep again, and I awoke in the morning feeling tired and ill at ease.

The next day, I received a letter in the mail with no return address, the postmark
Los Angeles
. Inside was a handwritten letter that described my dream exactly, down to the last detail. It was extremely well written because it also captured the
feeling
of the dream, that nightmare sense of foreboding.

It was unsigned.

I read the letter again. And again. But the chill in my bones did not diminish. If anything, it intensified.

Folding the paper carefully, I put it back in its envelope and found for it a safe hiding place.
Who was this from? Why had they sent it? How had they known?
I had questions but no answers, and the more I thought about it, the more it frightened me.

I saved the letter, waiting for another.

But none came.

At least not for a while.
 

 

Bill Tate
453 Palmera Dr.
Anaheim, CA 92801

Dear General Manager,

I want you to know that I will no longer be watching KABC news. Your newscast was once my favorite, but I am so annoyed with your weatherman that I can no longer stomach watching the program. The inane chitchat of your anchors is bad enough, but your clownish weatherman is truly offensive to me.

From now on, I will be watching KNBC.

Sincerely,
Bill Tate

P.S. I have a Nielsen box.

 

There is no one more self-congratulatory than a Southern Californian. It's as if living here automatically makes people jingoistic jerks. Each night on the local newscasts, comical weathermen act as boosters for the region, gloating about the mild temperatures, rhetorically asking the television audience why anyone would live anywhere else, in a lamebrain attempt to make people feel better about the smog and overcrowding, as though repeating over and over again how great we are, how fortunate we are, might make someone actually believe it. Two days a year, we can see the mountains located right next to us, and invariably the
Los Angeles Times
pastes a big color photograph of the miracle on their front page, along with some caption about how lucky we are to live in such a beautiful environment, apparently unaware of the fact that most of the United States sees such sights daily, not merely when the smog clears after a big storm.

Fuckheads.

Fed up with this mindless boosterism, I wrote letters to all three of the network affiliates complaining about their weather forecasters. I realized they were just weathermen (or a meteorologist, in the case of one), but since they were on a professional newscast, weren't they considered journalists, too? Shouldn't they make an effort to appear impartial? I must have made my point because, lo and behold, they stopped telling me the weather was "nice" or "good" or "beautiful," and just provided me with an objective description of the atmospheric conditions. For a week. Two weeks in the case of NBC. But then they went back to their usual rah-rah buffoonishness like a truck tire returning to a rut in a dirt road.

It became a game. As a linguistics instructor, I informed a male news anchor that the word
junta
was pronounced "hoon-ta," not "jun-ta" as he'd been saying, and was gratified when he caught himself on air and corrected himself. As an offended Japanese American man, I let a white female reporter know that
Hiroshima
was "He-roe-shee-ma," not "Hih-row-shih-ma," and chuckled to myself when she did a one-eighty on the word.

My dad still hadn't found another job, and sometimes I felt bad about that, but his insistence on remaining a complete asshole—hanging around the house all day drunk, making no effort to look for work—made it hard to feel sorry for him. He didn't seem to be all Jesused out anymore—alcohol was once again his crutch of choice—but he was the same nasty fat fuck he'd always been, and even my mom had gone out and gotten a part-time job at the Broadway, as much to get away from him as to bring in some money to the household.

I was asked to contribute, too, but steadfastly refused, relying on the old I-didn't-ask-to-be-born line and letting them know that it was their responsibility to take care of me.

At least until I could get the hell out of there.

In some ways, I thought, I was becoming like my dad, which was not a prospect that filled me with great joy. I was angrier than I used to be, though for no real reason, and even my friends noticed that I didn't seem to have much fun anymore. This was my senior year. I should have been cutting classes and hanging out and going to parties and picking up babes and doing the things that everyone did during their last semester in high school. Instead, I glumly went on with my life, my only real enjoyment coming from collecting records and writing letters, two solitary pursuits that led me even farther from the mainstream.

I'd decided that my fake recommendation would come from Paul Newman. He was so famous that everyone would know who he was and be suitably impressed. He also stayed out of the limelight for the most part, so my lie wouldn't be easy to track down. To top it off, Newman was a philanthropist, well-known for his charitable donations and work. His words would carry weight. I went about creating my recommendation with a dedication I had never shown to my actual schoolwork. I could hear my mom's voice in my head, telling me that if I spent as much time and effort studying as I did writing fake letters, I might get somewhere in life. That was true, and I knew it was true, but here was where my interests lay. For example, although it was not something I would admit to anyone, I'd taken to reading "Ann Landers" and "Dear Abby" each day. I liked learning about people's personal problems, and finding out about them through their letters seemed particularly appealing. Of course, "Letters to the Editor" was still my favorite part of the newspaper—and not just because my own words were often printed there. This was where reporters didn't tell
us
the news, but we told
them
the news. It was a forum for the public to make clear its opinions and priorities, and I guess what I liked best about it was the fact that it could be so easily manipulated. One or two letters, properly written, could make it appear as though there were a huge groundswell for or against an issue.

Using my employee discount, I bought a papermaking kit from Gemco's arts and crafts section and used it to design a sheet of stationery based on a sample the instruction booklet called "Royalty." At the top, centered, gilt embossed, was Paul Newman's name. I'd considered adding a P.O. box number, but I didn't even know what state he lived in, and something like that could easily trip me up. I decided to keep it simple. The paper itself was expensive looking. Personalized. Off-white, rough and flecked with tiny pieces of olive green that made it appear to have been made from flower stems.

I did this in our backyard, making four identical sheets. My dad saw me working and muttered something under his breath that sounded like "pansy," but he was too drunk to really care what I was doing, and when I ignored him he went away.

It was pretty damned impressive, I had to admit. I dried the paper in my bedroom, and once it was finished, ran it through my word processor. I had purchased a special daisy wheel for my printer that typed in cursive script, and I created four identical letters of recommendation, signing them with a Paul Newman signature I'd copied from a jar of Newman's Own spaghetti sauce. The signature was the cheesiest part of my presentation, the weak link that could potentially give me away, but everything else looked so good that the total package appeared completely legit.

In May, I found out that I had received the top scholarship from the Edgar T. Dewbury Foundation, awarded each year to reward philanthropic achievements by the state's high school seniors. It wouldn't cover every expense, but it was a big chunk of change and would enable me to both go to college and get out of the house. A good thing, too, because I'd lost out on all of the other scholarships for which I'd applied.

That same day, a piece of mail was delivered to the house, addressed to me. My mom had opened it before I came home, carelessly tossing the torn envelope and crumpled contents on my bed. For all of the letters I sent out—I was buying
rolls
of stamps now, rather than books—the postal service delivered precious little in return. Even junk mail seemed to avoid me. It was almost as if there were a shield or force field surrounding my person, allowing me to send but not receive. The only letter in recent memory that I'd been sent was the creepy missive describing my dream.

Which was why I approached this new arrival with such trepidation.

I picked up the envelope first. There was no return address and the postmark was so smudged as to be unreadable. My name and address were on the front, along with a series of strange, unrecognizable stamps of low denominations, but...

But there was something odd about the writing, something I could not quite put my finger on. The hand wasn't shaky, the letters and numbers weren't faint, but there was an element of both qualities in the printed address. I picked up the sheet of paper that had come inside the envelope. There was only my name, followed by a comma:

Jason,

It was as if someone had started to write a letter but had given up instantly. I stared at the paper, turning it over in my hands. The unfinished letter was disturbing in a way I could not explain and ... familiar. Although there was no connection between the two, I associated this piece of mail with the description of my dream. Digging through the bottom drawer of my desk, I found that other letter and compared the handwriting on the two. I saw no similarities, but still the correlation continued in my mind, growing stronger if anything.

No. That wasn't it.

The witch's letter.

Yes! I hadn't saved it, but I never forgot correspondence, never forgot a type font or a signature or a style of handwriting. This one matched the witch's perfectly.

But she couldn't have sent it. She was dead.

I felt suddenly cold.

Although I hadn't wanted to acknowledge it, hadn't wanted to even consider it, I had been aware for some time that there was something ...
unnatural
about my letter writing. Maybe
unnatural
was the wrong word.
Uncanny
, perhaps. Or
preternatural
. Or
extraordinary
. Even now, I can't quite communicate the subtle sense of heightened or augmented reality that I associated with my letter writing. But it was there—I felt it—and these two missives were of a piece with it, part of the same continuum. What did that mean? I didn't know. I didn't want to know. I didn't even want to think about it. So I didn't.
 

Prom time approached.

Edson had had a serious steady girlfriend from October through April but had broken up with her over Easter vacation when he took a peek at her diary and found out that she'd been hitting on the UPS guy who delivered to her dad's office on weekends. Now he was scrambling around, trying to find a date. Robert had recently hooked up with Julie Bloom, whom we'd all known since grammar school and who was nice enough, if somewhat bland. Frank had been going steady with Liz Aldaca since they were both fifteen.