red moon over west virginia- 29. the mountain

by jeremy witherington

part 29 of 36

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dick skinner got off the bus. there was no bus station, just a gas station with one pump. an old woman sat in the window of a little shack staring at dick through thick glasses. there was a coca-cola sign on the shack so it probably sold other drinks and snacks and maybe newspapers. dick did not check the shack out or speak to the old woman. there was a truck parked parked about thirty yards down the road snd he walked over to it. you from the willetts? he asked the guy behind the wheel. yeah. get in. mimd if i buy a coke first? i’m in no hurry. go for it. dick went back and bought a coke. the old woman carried out the transaction without opening her mouth. dick got back in the truck, and it got onto the road and went back to the mountain he had seen coming in on the bus. the truck started up the mountain. the road was very smooth and there was nobody else on it. dick stuck to the script eddie had given him and did not talk. he got the feeling that the driver was amused by this. my name is larry, the driver said when they were about half way up the mountain. larry was an ordinary looking guy, like dick was himself. pleased to meet you, dick told him. i’m dick. likewise pleased to meet you, dick. i am guessing you were advised not to ask a lot of questions. that’s a good guess. you are probably curious about what you will be doing. i can wait until we do it. i like your attitude. i can see eddie knew what he was doing when he hired you. dick did not reply. you known eddie long? larry asked. a while. you are probably curious about the willetts. i guess i will meet them. or maybe not. well, you’ll see them, i don’t know if you will actually meet them, like they will be your pals. you don’t say so. you want to know what they are like? it’s up to you. there are just the two of them - tom and carla. tom wears a scarf and smokes a pipe. carla drinks a lot of mineral water and looks at her legs. sounds like a life. it suits them. larry laughed. it seems to suit them. but every so often, every so often, mind you, they like a little excitement. a lot of people are like that, dick said. well, that’s enough about them. here we are. they pulled up in front of a small wooden house. for the first time since he had left the city, dick was surprised. by how small the place was. were there bigger buildings around? there were trees, but they were not that tall, and he did not see anything behind them. next

red moon over west virginia - 28. the willetts

by jeremy witherington

part 28 of 36

for previous episode, click here

when dick skinner took the job with the willetts, he was told what to expect. well, he was not exactly told what to expect, but he was told what he had to do. just do what these people tell you to do, eddie goldberg told him, and don’t ask any questions about anything. do you think you can handle that? it’s what i have been doing all my life, dick said. you think? and don’t just ask no questions to the willetts themselves, but of anybody else working there or that you encounter. even if they just look like schmucks like yourself. because you never know. can i talk at all? sure, you can talk about the weather, or about the yankees, or even about the crap on tv, like putin or climate change or whatever. just don’t ask about what is going on there. suppose somebody asks me.something? like what do i think? tell them you don’t know nothing. which will be the truth, because you won’t. so, if somebody asks me something, it will be like being in jail, they are probably trying to trap me? eddie laughed. no, man, nobody will care enough about you to do that. then i don’t see what the problem is. so don’t ask any questions. i get it. i got it the first time. now that we got that settled, what am i actually going to do there? damned if i know. just be there, and do what they tell you. but i warn you, these people are different from you and me. how so? they are really rich. i worked for rich people before. not like these people. these are the real rich, not like you see on tv. they could put jeff bezos in their back pocket and tell bill gates to polish the silverware. very impressive. how do i get to this place? take a bus to wheeling west virginia. someone will be there to pick you up. do you have a ticket to wheeling west virginia or do i have to buy it myself? i got it right here. here you go. thank you, it’s a pleasure doing business with you. eddie got up and left. dick stayed and finished his coffee. he wondered if eddie had recorded the whole conversation. most likely he had. what was the big deal? there were no secrets any more. next

red moon over west virginia - 27. last chance

by jeremy witherington

part 27 of 36

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it was tony’s last chance, at least so far as trixie was concerned. if this one did not work out, trixie was through with tony and his schemes, and she was leaving his “crew” and if joey did not want to come with her and wanted to stick with tony, she was leaving him too. of course she did not come right out and say so, but she suspected that they both suspected what her intentions were. so be it. here was the deal. it was tony’s most elaborate scheme yet. like most of tony’s schemes, it involved stealing an incredibly rare and expensive something or other. and like all his schemes. the first question trixie had was “who is actually going to pay you for this thing, tony, and how much? you can’t put an an ad in the paper or online for it, or walk out in the street and yell, hey anybody want to buy the mona lisa or whatever?” and tony would just look at her with that smirky way he had since they were in the third grade, and say , i know that, sunshine. do you think i would go to all this trouble if i did not have a buyer lined up? and trixie would say, well, do you have a buyer lined up? and tony would say, what do you think? with his little mean eyes trying to look twinkly. and joey would say nothing and just look kind of sad, like, can’t we all just get along? trixie did not think tony ever had any “buyers” for any of his schemes, but just trusted to luck to come up with one. somehow the “buyers” always seemed to back out or disappear at the last minute, especially on the rare occasions when they actually got their hands, however briefly, on the mona lisa. (“mona lisa” was trixie’s term for whatever they were trying to grab.) whatever. this was it. the last go-round. tony knew a guy who knew a guy who worked in some mysterious job for these incredibly rich people who were so rich you never even heard about them. not peasants like the waltons or rothschilds or jeff bezos or elon musk who got their names in the media. tony always knew guys like this. joey and trixie never got to meet them. trixie had a name for these guys. “dick skinner”. the guy tony knew was “dick skinner”, just like the thing tony was going to steal was the “mona lisa”. these particular really rich people had a farm, or estate or whatever, in west virginia. and according to dick skinner, what they had on the farm was not pictures on the wall like the mona lisa, or statues like the venus de milo, or the only 16 mm copes of lost movies by andy warhol or orson welles. what they had was something way more valuable, but maybe a little harder to steal and put in a suitcase or the trunk of a car. so what, trixie asked, was it exactly? next

red moon over west virginia - 26. jerusalem

by jeremy witherington

part 26 of 36

for previous episode, click here

molotov hopped off the freight. he was in the switching yard. it was not as he had remembered it. the last time he had been there he had just crossed the yard and climbed a little hill and got up on to the highway where he could grab a ride from a wayfaring stranger to texarkana or tuscaloosa . but now the highway, and the horizon, were blocked off by an endless construction site of half completed tall buildings. molotov began walking through the construction site, trying to find his way back to the highway. the tall buildings cast long shadows across his path. he heard voices. the voices were coming from behind a random section of wall in what looked to be one of the buildings under construction. there was a large packing case beside the section of wall. molotov peeked from behind it. three men sat in enormous easy chairs arranged around a plain wooden table. a large unmarked bottle of what looked to be whiskey stood on the table. the three men had glasses of the whiskey looking liquid in their hands. they all wore short sleeved white shirts with string ties. one of them wore a stetson hat, another wore a sombrero, and the third had a red and white polka dotted rag tied around his head. they looked like hard men. they looked like godly men. they looked like hard godly men. i still say, the man in the stetson hat said, that we should see what ty wickerson has to say before we go ahead. we have the permits, the man in the sombrero said. and we are doing the good work. we are building the new jerusalem. at the words “new jerusalem”, molotov’s eyes opened a bit wide. he listened more intently. i agree with buck, the man with the rag around his said, it’s hard enough to do anything in this town, let alone build jerusalem, unless ty wickerson is on board. i assumed ty wickerson was on board, the second man said, otherwise we never would have got this far. so did i, said the third man. the first man picked up the bottle and poured more liquid into his glass. molotov felt he had heard enough. he crept silently away. next

red moon over west virginia - 25. the bible salesman

by jeremy witherington

part 25 of 36

for previous episode, click here

trixie decided not to go back out into the night in pursuit of a cup of coffee. she thanked the night clerk for his information and went back up to her room. she undressed and got back into bed. she hoped she would not have any more dreams. the place was quiet enough, she had to give it that. she clicked off the little lamp on the stand beside the bed. as she did she noticed that the stand had a single drawer in it, the kind of drawer that often held a gideon bible. a bible… that reminded her of the too friendly man who had tried to pick her up on the highway… he looked land sounded like a bible salesman… a bible salesman! of course… she had thought there was something familiar about the pickup truck man, but she had been too concerned about just getting away from him to really think about it… when trixie, joey, and tony had been in the fifth grade, a new boy had suddenly appeared in the class. his name was pete pickering. his father was a bible salesman and pete, when questioned by the teacher, ms whitley, stated without a great show of enthusiasm that he, too, would like to be a bible salesman when he grew up. young pete was one of those people, who, at any stage of their lives, seem about twice as old as they are in years. it would be a stretch to say that ten year old pete seemed twenty years old, but there was something ponderous, like an adult, about him. the other children did not take to pete. he just has this way of staring at things, donna gilliam, the class princess, declared. what is he looking at? is he just staring into space? he’s a big goop, donna’s lieutenant, shirley tompkins, agreed. tony did not consider pete worthy of being recruited into his circle. trixie, whose parents were socialists and militant atheists, thought being a bible salesman was indescribably weird. she mentioned pete to her mom when she went home that night. her mom was interested in the little details of trixie’s days, and trixie regularly gave her a few crumbs of information about them. you should ask him, trixie’s mom said, why people should have to buy the bible. yes, i will do that for sure, trixie replied, in the is-she-being-sarcastic way that annoyed her mom so much. after his first day, neither joey nor trixie gave pete much thought. tony kept an eye on pete, as he kept an eye on everybody. pete was an average student. he did not make any friends. next

red moon over west virginia - 24. the fight

by jeremy witherington

part 24 of 36

for previous episode, click here

there are three types of people in the world. people who are born believing that life is war, people who come to believe that life is war, and people who never believe that life is war. as the school year dragged on forever, tony grew frustrated by his inability to establish himself as alpha boy over barry. and he had to do it under the eagle eye of old ms wilcox-serafini, who was an enlightened new school educator with zero tolerance for open displays of testosterone. and usually under the soft eye of one of the rotating group of young teaching assistants desperate situations call for desperate measures, and one day, when there was no assistant on duty, and ms wicox-serafini was unaccountably absent for a few minutes, tony took advantage of the situation and went up to barry , who was peacefully perusing a picture book, with one of his female acolytes adoringly watching him turn the pages. tony called barry a name which no well bred gentleman, of any age, should ever use to another. barry stood up. tony knocked him down! the fight was on! joey, as tony’s first lieutenant rushed to the spot, as did a number of other curious children. trixie looked on impassively, and did not move from her spot. suddenly ms wilcox-serafini reappeared, and the conflict was over, with no physical harrm done on either side. it was the first fight in the kindergarten in seven years! the fallout was enormous. barry’s parents, who had thought they were doing the right thing by society by enrolling him in the public school, withdrew him immediately. they angrily demanded to know how the children could have been left unattended, even for a millisecond, allowing such an incident to occur. they contemplated a lawsuit, but were dissuaded by their politically astute lawyer. ms wilcox-serafini was severely reprimanded and the proverbial “note” was “placed her in her file”, but her years of unblemished service saved her from terminaton. tony was removed from school for the remainder of the school year, but allowed to return the next year, for first grade. joey continued to be tony’s faithful lieutenant, but never looked at him in quite the same way again. trixie filed the incident away in her brain. next

red moon over west vrginia - 23. escape

by jeremy witherington

part 23 of 36

for previous episode, click here

after molotov left lord curzon, he did not go back to his hotel. instead he went to a little diner a few blocks from the hotel, one he had stopped in at several times during his stay. there was a door in the back of the diner, beside the rest room. he had tried the door a couple of times on his previous visits, and found it unlocked. the same sleepy individual was behind the counter as on the previous occasions. just coffee, please. molotov said to the man. he placed a silver dollar on the counter and proceeded to the back of the diner. the door was unlocked, as before. he exited, closed the door carefully behind him, and went down an alley. the alley led to a street of gray buildings which mostly housed auto repair shops and auto parts wholesalers. the street led to the railroad station. a freight train was getting ready to leave the staton. its whistle blew. the railroad police had made a sweep of hoboes just two days previously, and molotov trusted that they would expect the vagabonds to stay away for a couple of more days at least. molotov jumped on to an open boxcar with surprising agility. he found the bocxar cleaner and more comfortable than he had ever found similar facilities in his own country. he rolled his gray overcoat into a pillow and placed it under his hat, careful to keep his pistol in a pocket of the coat that he could reach in one motion upon suddenly awakening, if need be. the train pulled out. he went to sleep. * back in lord curzon’s office, catherine continued looking out the window at the gray sky. she heard the whistle of the freight train. rain began to fall. behind her, lord curzon composed a carefully worded telegram. next