Brother Odd

CHAPTER 29

CARRYING MY JACKET, WHICH I HAD RETRIEVED from the rack in the reception lounge, I went down to the basement, grateful that there were no real catacombs full of moldering corpses. With my luck, one of them would have been Cole Porter.

Those brothers who had wished to be interred on the grounds of the abbey are buried in a shady plot on the perimeter of the forest. It is a peaceful little cemetery. The spirits of those at rest there have all moved on from this world.

I have spent pleasant hours among those headstones, with only Boo for company. He likes to watch the squirrels and rabbits while I stroke his neck and scratch his ears. Sometimes he gambols after them, but they are not frightened by him; even in the days when he was sharp of tooth, he was never a killer.

As if my thoughts had summoned him, I found Boo waiting for me when I turned out of the east-west hallway into the north-south.

"Hey, boy, what're you doing down here?"

Tail wagging, he approached, settled on the floor, and rolled onto his back, all four paws in the air.

Receiving such an invitation, only the hard-hearted and the uselessly busy can refuse. All that is wanted is affection, while all that is offered is everything, symbolized in the defenseless posture of the exposed tummy.

Dogs invite us not only to share their joy but also to live in the moment, where we are neither proceeding from nor moving toward, where the enchantment of the past and future cannot distract us, where a freedom from practical desire and a cessation of our usual ceaseless action allows us to recognize the truth of our existence, the reality of our world and purpose-if we dare.

I gave Boo only a two-minute belly rub and then continued with the usual ceaseless action, not because urgent tasks awaited me, but because, as a wise man once wrote, "Humankind cannot bear very much reality," and I am too human.

The large garage had the feel of a bunker, concrete above and below and on all sides. The fluorescent ceiling fixtures shed a hard light, but they were too widely spaced to dispel every shadow.

Seven vehicles were housed here: four compact sedans, a beefy pickup, two extended SUVs jacked up on big tires with snow chains.

A ramp ascended to a large roll-up door, beyond which the wind howled.

Mounted on a wall was a key box. Inside, fourteen sets of keys, two for each vehicle, hung from seven pegs. Above each peg, a label provided the license number of the vehicle, and a tag on each set of keys carried the same number.

No danger of Chernobyls here.

I pulled on my jacket, got behind the wheel of one of the SUVs, started the engine, and let it idle just long enough to figure how to raise and lower the plow with the simple controls.

When I stepped out of the truck, Boo was there. He looked up, cocked his head, pricked his ears, and seemed to say, What's wrong with your nose, buddy? Don't you smell the same trouble I smell?

He trotted away, glanced back, saw that I was following, and led me out of the garage, into the northwest hall once more.

This wasn't Lassie, and I didn't expect to find anything as easy to deal with as Timmy down a well or Timmy trapped in a burning barn.

Boo stopped in front of a closed door, at the same point in the corridor at which he had offered me the opportunity to rub his tummy.

Perhaps he had originally encouraged me to pause at that point to give my fabled intuition a chance to operate. I had been caught in the wheels of compulsion, however, bent on getting to the garage, my mind occupied with thoughts of the trip ahead, able to pause briefly but unable to see and feel.

I felt something now, all right. A subtle but persistent pull, as if I were a fisherman, my line cast out into the deep, some catch hooked on the farther end.

Boo went into the suspect room. After a hesitation, I followed, leaving the door open behind me because in situations like this, when psychic magnetism draws me, I cannot be certain I'm the fisherman and not the fish with the hook in its mouth.

We were in a boiler room, full of the hiss of flame rings and the rumble of pumps. Four large, high-efficiency boilers produced the hot water that traveled ceaselessly through pipes in the walls of the building, to the scores of fan-coil units that heated the many rooms.

Here, too, were chillers that produced supercooled water, which also circulated through the school and convent, providing cool air when a room grew too warm.

On three walls were sophisticated air monitors, which would trigger alarms in every farther corner of the big building and shut off the incoming gas line that fired the boilers if they detected the merest trace of free propane in the room. This was supposed to be an absolute guarantee against an explosion.

Absolute guarantee. Foolproof. The unsinkable Titanic. The uncrashable Hindenburg. Peace in our time.

Human beings not only can't bear too much reality, we flee from reality when someone doesn't force us close enough to the fire to feel the heat on our faces.

None of the three air monitors indicated the presence of rogue molecules of propane.

I had to depend upon the monitors because propane is colorless and odorless. If I relied on my senses to detect a leak, I would not know a problem existed until I found myself passing out for lack of oxygen or until everything went boom.

Each monitor box was locked and featured a pressed-metal seal bearing the date of the most recent inspection by the service company responsible for their reliable function. I examined every lock and every seal and discovered no indications of tampering.

Boo had gone to the corner of the room farthest from the door. I found myself drawn there, too.

In its circulation through the building, the supercooled water absorbs heat. It then travels to a large underground vault near the eastern woods, where a cooling tower converts the unwanted heat to steam and blows it into the air to dissipate; thereafter, the water returns to the chillers in this room to be cooled again.

Four eight-inch-diameter PVC pipes disappeared through the wall, near the ceiling, close to the corner where Boo and I had been drawn.

Boo sniffed at a four-foot-square stainless-steel panel set six inches off the floor, and I dropped to my knees before it.

Beside the panel was a light switch. I clicked it, but nothing happened-unless I'd turned lights on in some space beyond the wall.

The access panel was fixed to the concrete wall with four bolts. On a nearby hook hung a tool with which the bolts could be extracted.

After removing the bolts, I set aside the panel and peered into the hole where Boo had already gone. Past the butt-end and tucked tail of the big white dog, I saw a lighted tunnel.

Unafraid of dog farts, but fearful about what else might lie ahead, I crawled through the opening.

Once I had cleared the two-foot width of the poured-in-place concrete wall, I was able to stand. Before me lay a rectangular passageway seven feet high and five feet wide.

The four pipes were suspended side by side from the ceiling and were grouped on the left half of the tunnel. Small center-set lights revealed the pipes dwindling as if to eternity.

Along the floor, on the left, were runs of separated copper pipes, steel pipes, and flexible conduits. They probably carried water, propane, and electrical wires.

Here and there, white patterns of calcification stained the walls, but the place wasn't damp. It had a clean smell of concrete and lime.

Except for the faint rushing noise of water flowing through the pipes overhead, the passageway lay silent.

I consulted my wristwatch. In thirty-four minutes, I would need to be in the garage to meet the Hoosier's Hoosier.

With purpose, Boo trotted forward, and I followed with no clear purpose at all.

I proceeded as silently as possible in ski boots, and when my shiny quilted thermal jacket whistled as I moved my arms, I took it off and left it behind. Boo made no sound whatsoever.

A boy and his dog are the best of all companions, celebrated in songs and books and movies. When the boy is in the grip of a psychic compulsion, however, and when the dog is fearless, the chance that all will turn out well is about as likely as a Scorsese gangster movie ending in sweetness, light, and the happy singing of cherubic children.