The Care Heirs
by Kjetil Jansen
part 1
Jebediah Callender had inherited from his father Jeremiah a mahogany cane with an ivory Janus-head handle, both sides grumpy. He had also inherited a fortune, the family mansion, and Bear Creek’s largest and only brownstone building, with one hundred and thirty-six tenants, a number he had doubled. He found his way to the dining room and brought the cane down on the long table.
“Josaphat. Tarquin. Let us parley in the library. Wesley and... others, you stay.”
They passed through winding corridors and the antechamber in silence. His secretary Secry opened the library door.
“Father, sir,” said Josaphat, “women are not allowed in the library.”
“She is not a woman. She is staff.” Josaphat and Secry gave each other a look.
Inside, three walls lined with books. The fourth decorated with an oil painting of Jeremiah making a point of not reading one, using a wolf as a footstool.
Jebediah put in order the lapels on his white morning suit. “Josaphat. Report.”
“Many of the tenants have ridiculously small windows, due to how we sectioned up the flats. I suggest a refurbishment.”
“Tarquin. Report.”
“Since they constantly break down, I suggest we double the number of toilets from one per floor to two. The water pressure is also extremely low. Isn’t it strange how poor people smell of cabbage?”
Jebediah controlled his ire. Succession. It is never easy. He snapped his fingers. Secry hurried out the door, plaid dress swooshing, bringing back a tall, gaunt man in a brown corduroy jacket with elbow patches, carrying a doctor’s bag. He smirked. “Your Tiffany lamp vestibule is a feast for the eyes.”
“Boys,” said Jebediah, “you remember doctor Edelfleisch. Totally unrelated to your reports, he has kindly put upon himself to cure your fear of water once and for all.”
“How wonderful of him,” said Tarquin.
Edelfleisch began to pace the room, building momentum to get his voice shrill. “As children, under my supervision, Josaphat was the one with the aquaphobia. As an exposure therapy specialist, I decided to waterboard him extensively. Tarquin, not a sufferer, how he swam and laughed. I also waterboarded him, but with milk. You must have a control group. That, and the willingness to experiment, is the basis of all science.”
As he got more agitated, he began to kick at books. “This fear, this fear must be eradicated. A wealthy man’s spawn not able to enter a yacht or attend a regatta. Inconceivable. No more fear!”
“Please don’t hurt the books,” said Secry as she reached beside a shelf.
“Did a woman just speak?”
“Never mind her. Josaphat! Lift it higher, Secry. This is the original surfboard used during the filming of the 1959 classic Gidget. After watching it in its entirety on a DVD-cassette in the parlor atrium, you will venture to Bear Creek Beach and start surfing. I want to see noodle arms, so don’t be a paddlepuss!”
“Yes, father, sir.”
“The waves are your friends,” Edelfleisch roared after him.
“Tarquin. You will travel to Niagara Falls and swim in the rapids leading to the waterfall. Don’t wince, and don’t interrupt. You are more apt to be hit by a derelict barrel going over the top than hurt by the stream. Just before the water breaks, there is an eye of the storm: a lagoon calm, blue and inviting, yes, where the local young girls often frolic, comparing breast sizes as girls do. Arrangements have been made. Leave.”
“Thank you, father.”
“Any fears, woman?” said Edelfleisch.
“No, I’m good,” said Secry.
The doctor began to circle her. “Let me guess. High anxiety. Rats. Snakes. I have a tiger python in my bag. I will let you touch it.”
“No, thank you.”
“It is not slimy, as you think. It is dry and smooth. Don’t give in to your fear. Touch my snake. Touch my snake!”
He embraced the bag, fumbling with the lock. He looked inside and lost his stride. “In future, I will avoid snake and rat together. Rest in peace, Tony Danza.”
“What kind of doctor are you, again?”
“That was never proven!” He stormed out.
“If you don’t mind me asking,” said Secry, “why are the books all identical? Of Human Bondage, by W. Somerset Maugham.”
“They are not identical, as anyone can see. They are all different editions, languages even. My dear father, bless him, collected them all, believing that somewhere there was a version that contained bondage. Maugham, that fraud! I am happy Edelfleisch kicked them. Sometimes I do it myself.
“Here. The Pocket Books’ Cardinal 1952 edition, 4th printing, June 1954. ‘With a new introduction by the author written especially for this abridged edition’. Yeah? Take that, you coward! Why didn’t you expand it, with some real action. Secry, why are you still here? I need to do my kicking alone.”
Secry left him to it, returning four hours later, finding Jebediah asleep on top of a pile of books. “Mr. Callender. There is something on the television entertainment center you need to watch.”
Jeremiah caned himself past the ice-art room to the parlor atrium. The tv showed a spectacled and bearded beatnik in puffer vest and flannel shirt standing on a stone wharf in front of the up-hoisted carcass of a hammerhead shark. He was talking to a reporter off-screen.
“Usually, sharks target menstruating women, but this brutal and cynical attack shows that no-one is safe, not even surfers with retro wood boards, innocent and looking for fun, something these evil and atheist monsters of the sea will not stand for.”
“Not for me to contradict a marine biologist, but Josaphat Callender was reportedly killed by a great white.”
“Aha! That’s what they want you to think.” The beatnik smiled, revealing some great white pearls of his own.
“They?”
“My research shows there is only one kind of shark, or none at all, as they are shapeshifters from Gnarlamox, a cube-shaped planet inside Jupiter.”
“I see. With such a structure and such a name, their intentions are sinister?”
“What’s your name?”
“Ralpfh.”
“You catch on fast, Ralpfh.”
Jebediah found the way to his chambers, changing into a grey, double-buttoned suit. Like his father, he believed a man’s clothes ought to get progressively darker as the day went on. He felt a touch of fatigue but chased it away. The culling must go on. He used to have four brothers, himself, but this is how a family business survives; you cannot divide and dilute the power.
He needed a bowel moment but found no time. The day such an action becomes the highlight of your day is the day you should retire. He passed through the catacombs and the vomitorium to the dining room. As at breakfast, there was a bit of a crowd he didn’t quite understand.
“Wesley! Report!”
“Yes, father. We seem to have a mold problem spreading from the damp basement to the lower floors at a rapid rate. I suggest we move the tenants around while we deal with this situation. You know, I saw a small girl sitting on the front steps eating a juicy slice of cabbage. I thought she had a birthmark on her face, but it turned out to be dirt.”
“Interesting. Let us parley in the greenhouse gazebo at once. No, Secry... and others, you sit. Enjoy your oatmeal and oysters.”
They sat down in the gazebo. “Wesley, my Wesley. As this problem surely is cabbage-related, I will send you on a mission. Up north, past the fields of Tornadoville and Trilbardou, a legend lives, the legend of the mold-healing golden cabbage. Bring me one. You leave at sunset.”
“Sunset it is, father. I’ll bring you the most bestest cabbage, you’ll see.”
“He fell for it,” Jebediah said. No answer from the greenhouse walls. “Secry! I can see you, behind the cycad.”
“Yes, fall he did. Your fiendish ruse he saw through not. Heh-heh-heh.”
“Nice one, Secry.”
* * *
My sojourn five days in, I reflect. The corn fields, so wondrous to pass. The simple farmers giving me rides in their tractors and combine harvesters. Too often, other simple farmers fail to get away from the advancing combines and get caught in the threshers. The combines are programmed to play a jaunty calliope tune to ease their deaths.
At a Friday night barn hootenanny, I heard the melody expanded. It even had a title. I am being crushed by something, and I hope it’s only Love. The joint was jumping.
I don’t read music, but as I travel on, I hear variations. Honkytonk. Bluegrass. Minor discords. Bold use of what I believe is called the tritone. There must be some sort of cross-pollination between the individual farms, and also some feedback to the combine manufacturers, thus creating a unique confluence.
The longer one is caught under a tractor, the more the songs are laments reminiscing about a time when you were not caught under a tractor and at the same time looking forward to rescue or death. They tend to use wordplay like: John Deere/My Dear/Dear John Letter/I once shot a Deer.
I intend to come back doing field recordings after I have accomplished my golden mission.
* * *
Copyright © 2023 by Kjetil Jansen
