a preacher don't steal - 6. the disappearance

by nick nelson

part six of 32

yancey’s decision about leaving school was made for him. yolanda disappeared. one day yancey came home from school and yolanda just wasn’t here. her device was gone too. yancey had never seen the table in the apartment without it. there was nothing on the table or on top of the television. he knew right away that she was gone, had deliberately left. he checked her bedroom. the bed was made. the closet was almost but not quite empty, as were the drawers in her dresser. the top of the dresser was bare, and there was nothing on the little table beside her bed but the lamp which had always been there. she had not left a note - she didn’t use paper much - and she had not left any phone or other device behind. and no cash money - yancey would have been astonished if she had. yancey thought for one second about calling the police. but only for one second. he had enough in his account for a few days. he would tell xenia tomorrow that he was ready to start full time, and he would call the school to tell them he was leaving. but he would not be able to continue paying the rent. he would have to notify the rental office tomorrow. when he did that, and told them yolanda had just disappeared, the people at the rental office might ask if he had called the police. if they did, but he did not expect that they would, then he would contact the police. xenia might be able to help him find a cheap place. at the back of his mind was the thought that she might invite him to move in with her - yeah, right. if she could not help him, he would probably have to throw himself on the mercy of the revolution. tomorrow was time enough for all that. he was surprised, but not completely shocked at yolanda’s departure. she had been casually threatening to leave for years. he wondered if she had left anything in the refrigerator. it did not look like she had taken anything from the refrigerator. yancey made himself an avocado and banana sandwich on soy bread. it was one of his two nights off at the restaurant, or he would have waited to eat there. he decided to flip through the channels on the television instead of reading the book he had taken from the library. yolanda had always watched what she wanted to watch. * yancey tried the history and the alternate history channels. he could never understand between the difference between “history” and “alternate history” although he had heard it explained several times in school., the last time by a teacher that there was “no clear line” between the two. the show on the history channel was called “the rose and the wind”. the title did not seem to refer to anything in particular in the story, which concerned the war between genghis khan and saladin. according to the subtitle, it was the second episode of ten. the alternate history show was titled “the wind never surrenders” and was about the rebellion of mumfaz mahal against churchill. it was the twentieth episode of twenty-four, so yancey decoded to watch the show about genghis and saladin. saladin had been taken prisoner by genghis and held in a dungeon beneath a gladiatorial arena. saladin was to fight seven battles to the death in seven days, each against a different beast, monster ,or mongol hero, and if he survived them all he would be given a mule and allowed to make his way back across a thousand miles of desert to his own camp. so great was the mercy of genghis. as a further complication, every night that saladiin survived he was to be visited by a different beautiful woman. would the lovemaking help or hinder him in his efforts in the arena? the question was discussed at length in scenes in genghis’s harem, with the conversation led by the emperor’s wife, played by the famous actress lucy loo. lucy loo was, of course, secretly in love with saladin, and engaged in various plots to free him. yancey enjoyed the scenes of saladin’s lovemaking with the beautiful women, and also the scenes of battle in the arena, but the women’s spirited arguments and ragging on each other in the harem put him to sleep…

a preacher don't steal - 5. the restaurant

by nick nelson

part five of 32

in yancey’s last year of school he got a job as a bus boy in a restaurant on the outskirts of town, the restaurant was not a fast food or takeout place, nor did it feature fine dining or any kind of exotic or “regional” cuisine. it was just a restaurant. and that was its name - “just a restaurant”. it did not do that great a business. yancey was told when he got the job that the restaurant might go under at any time. yancey took the job anyway. it paid a little more than anything else he could find, and at least he was spared having to say that he had always dreamed of the job, and was ready to dedicate his life and his entire being to it. the just a restaurant was owned and run by a woman named xenia philips. she had owned it for nineteen years. xenia had a round body, a round head, big round black glasses that she wore all the time, and short black hair. she did not smile or laugh much, but never got very angry either. she did supervise every aspect of the restaurant’s operation, down to and including the performance of the bus boys and dishwashers. restaurants of this rapidly disappearing type were mostly below the radar of the revolution, and xenia ran it as a dictatorship, neither brutal nor benevolent. if the employees did anything she did not approve of, she would just tell them not to do it again. if they did wrong too many times, she would just fire them, without drama. yancey liked working at the just a restaurant. he liked it way better than school, that was for sure. xenia liked yancey because he never complained , always showed up and on time, did exactly what he was told, and did not make the same mistake again if he was corrected. she offered to take him on full time if he would quit school, but warned him again that the restaurant could shut down at any time. yancey wondered if yolanda would care if he left school. he did not see why she would. the school itself endlessly preached to the students the disadvantages of not finishing the required years. yancey was of a naturally procrastinating temperament. he decided to think about it. the possible closing of the restaurant was the only drawback to leaving school that he saw.

a preacher don't steal - 4. yolanda

by nick nelson

part four of 32

yancey grew up in a small town in the shadow of the great mountain. he had a mom, just one, but no dad and no brothers and sisters. he had no pets, because his mom was allergic to all animals, or at least she said she was. yancey’s mom was named yolanda. during most of yancey’s childhood she worked from home, about seven or eight hours a day, on a small device on whose screen yancey never saw any pictures of any kind, just letters and numbers. the letters and numbers were usually but not always green on a light gray background. yolanda also had a small speaker into which she spoke continually, and an earbud which prevented yancey from hearing anything that she heard. she always spoke rapidly, most of the time too rapidly for yancey to make out anything she was saying. as she was speaking most of the time herself when she worked, yancey assumed nothing much was relayed aurally to her. as a small child yancey was curious about yolanda’s job and would ask her questions about it, but she always brushed these aside. yolanda made it clear that she did not like yancey much, and regretted having given birth to him. over the years she told him thousands of times how much she regretted not having had an abortion. even though she received money from the revolutiont to support him, and was frugal enough to make a small profit from the arrangement. yolanda could have returned yancey to the government at any time, but never did. yancey was properly grateful for this. living in a small town, he and his schoolmates had no clear idea how children raised by the revolution were treated, and heard many conflicting but mostly scary and unedifying stories about the process. yancey continued to dream of having a pet, preferably a dog. one day he came home from school and informed yolanda - the teacher said people are animals. so? then how come you are not allergic to people? yolanda thought about it for a few seconds before answering. maybe i am allergic to them. are you allergic to me? I might be, a little bit. i like it better when you are not around. I might be when you are fully grown. besides, you shouldn’t believe everything you hear, especially in school. but if you can’t believe what you learn in school, what is the point of going? i don’t know. ask the revolution, not me. after that, yancey stoped asking yolanda questions, or trying to communicate with her. he concentrated on getting through school. when he got through school he wanted three things - a girl, a dog, and a job.

a preacher don't steal - 3. the little room

by nick nelson

part three of 32

yancey and mona rented a little room on the second floor of a run down two story house owned by oliver, yancey’s parole officer. this was not part of the conditions of yancey’s parole - it was just an arrangement between yancey and oliver. oliver lived on the first floor. his daughter nikki lived on the second floor, in rooms which took up most of the space on the floor. an old man named fred lived in the attic. he paid the same rent as yancey and mona. yancey could not find anything better, and oliver could use the few dollars rent yancey and mona paid for the tiny room, which was not that easy to find takers for. oliver did not find yancey at all scary. he was not the typical parolee that oliver would have to be some kind of desperate to live in the same building with, or engage in any kind of cash transactions with. yancey and mona were perfect tenants - they had no friends, or at least no visitors, talked and walked softly, and did not have a television or radio or anything they played music or movies on. yancey always claimed he was innocent of the crime he had done time in prison for, and oliver was inclined to believe him, although he did not really care, and never committed himself to believing in yancey’s innocence. yancey had a little white dog, named manfred. manfred slept in the back room of the convenience store, not in yancey’s and mona’s room. the store was , of course, open 24 hours a day.

a preacher don't steal - 2. the store

by nick nelson

part two of 32

yancey managed.a small convenience store on the outskirts of the great city of memphis in the middle of the desert. the desert had no name - it was just “the desert”. the city had the name of memphis because it had been founded by devotees of elvis presley. these people no longer existed or controlled the city, elvis was forgotten except by a handful of nomads in the desert, and nobody cared why or how the city had been named. the convenience store had no name. it was very small, and no more than one person, usually yancey himself, was needed to work in it at one time. despite being on the edge of the city, there were no gas pumps attached to the store. on an average day, two or three people would come in to the store looking for gas and asking yancey or whoever was on duty why the were no gas pumps. yancey or whoever was there would explain that the store did not have a license to sell gas and that , with the decline and inherent vanishing of the automobile, there was no longer any authority or government agency to issue it one. most people were satisfied with this explanation. 57 percent of them would buy something - potato chips, beef jerky, a cold can of mountain dew. yancey always made sure the mountain dew and the other soft drinks were good and cold, and that the air conditioning was turned on and keeping the store properly cooled mona would sometimes gently suggest that a few cents might be saved if the air conditioning was not kept quite so high, especially late at night or when business was not at its peak. yancey would point out in his reasonable way that the concept of “night and day” was almost obsolete, and the concept of “peak hours” of business even more so. oliver, when he visited the store, would sometimes make the same suggestion as mona about the air conditioning, but in a somewhat more forceful manner. yancey would reply to oliver with the same arguments, in the same reasonable manner.

a preacher don't steal - 1. yancey

by nick nelson

part one of 32

yancey was a regular guy. mona was a saint. yancey and mona had a dog and a cat. they lived with yancey’s parole officer, the parole officer’s name was oliver. yancey had issues, or maybe they could be called dreams. mona had a dream. nikki was the parole officer’s daughter. william was nikki’s stalker. zorina was a panhandler, nikki’s oldest friend. william wanted to make zorina his ally in stalking nikki. he told her if he ever won the lottery he would split it with her fifty fifty. somehow zorina was not impressed. she told william he was a creep. but as william had been called a creep many times by hundreds of people, the deadly insult rolled off him. sometimes yancey took pity on william and tried to bond with him. yancey would take the dog, manfred, for a walk and invite william to accompany them. yancey would try to explain life and time and the universe to william as they walked along but william found these concepts too abstract and paid little attention to yancey. william was more interested in manfred, the dog, and in yancey’s relation to manfred, than in any high sounding platitudes about human rights and the fate of the earth and the expansion of the universe, such as yancey was prone to expound on. william was particularly fascinated by the fact that yancey would pick manfred’s turds up in little plastic bags. “fucking hitler or elvis presley or princess diana never had anybody pick their fucking turds up for them, but this fucking dog does,” william would exclaim incredulously. yancey would point out that there were millions of dogs like manfred who received the same service from their “owners” or “pet parents”. william could not comprehend numbers higher than three so this argument was wasted on him. but he never failed to get a good laugh out of yancey’s use of the term “pet parent”. on his part manfred was well aware of william’s hostility to him, but as he was not aware of anything he could do about it, he held his own council. manfred was also aware of yancey’s secret aspirations to start a new religion, or to reconfigure one of the existing ones in his own fashion, and he sympathized wholeheartedly with these aspirations. yancey could have saved the world, but he was afraid people would laugh at him. you can do it, yancey, manfred cried, but all the humans heard was manfred barking.

bad road to the dead river - 32. strangers in the night

by nick nelson

part thirty-two of thirty-two

for previous episode, click here

to begin at the beginning, click here

anne greenleaf kicked off her shoes and leaned back on the couch in her apartment. two stiff drinks sat on the coffee table between anne and rutherford b hayes, who sat up straight on the edge of a big armchair, looking neither particularly interested nor particularly bored. rutherford’s drink was stiffer than anne’s. anne was determined to get him drunk, and do whatever else it took to get him to tell her who and what he really was. “drink up,” anne invited rutherford. riurherford took a healthy swallow of his drink. if he thought it strong, he did not show it. anne took a sip of hers. “now, rutherford,” she told him. “the time for silly games has past. why don’t you really tell me all about yourself?’ ‘i already did.” “i don’t think so. do you really expect me to believe that a person with no i d, and no memory of who he is, and no luggage , can stay nice and clean and healthy looking in this evil city, just by finding people to give him money every day and letting him sleep in their apartment?. and never have a run in with the police, who are everywhere?” rutherford shrugged. “but i just did, didn’t i?” “with the secret service? they are not exactly the police. i think that is how you slipped up somehow. though i can not figure how.” rutherford looked around anne’s small but tastefully furnished apartment. “this is a nice place.” “yes, it is.” “can i stay overnight?” “of course.” “there you have it.” * grundy turned the key and pushed open the door to his apartment. it was dark except for the light from the television. his mom was watching jerry perkins. jerry perkins was a long running tv show about a bartender who solved murders and other crimes in his time off. “were you worried about me?” grundy asked. “no, i could feel you were all right. you are kind of late, though. anything exciting happen?’ grundy thought of telling her about rutherford b hayes,, which was kind of weird if not exactly exciting, but decided he probably could not get her to understand how weird it was. besides, he knew she really would rather watch jerry perkins. “no, “ he said. “ we just had to wait on this guy. it was nothing special.” he went into the kitchenette and took a bottle of seltzer water out of the refrigerator. the end of "bad road to the dead river"