The Eye of Moloch

Chapter 16

With a last ceremonial stroke of the sanding block, Thom Hollis pulled his work light nearer to examine the dovetail joint he’d just completed. The two maple boards mated flush at a perfect right angle.

He gathered and then dry-fit the sides, front, and floor with their fresh cedar liners and brass hardware. The drawer knit together so well it would almost seem an insult to smear it with glue and stain. There sat a work of art, if he did say so himself, sculpted as it was with only a fret saw and hand chisels.

As the old saying goes, you can judge a rich man by his shoes, a salesman by his necktie, and a tailor by his inside seams—but to size up a carpenter, you really need to look inside his drawers.

Some would see it as a waste of time, such obsessive attention paid to a humble household repair. Old and treasured things, though, deserve to be restored with all the care and patience shown by their creators, or so he’d been told by his teachers.

A strenuous yawn came from the direction of the doorway and he turned to see that the young man Tyler had arrived on time to retrieve his phone. They exchanged a polite good-morning and Hollis pointed out the reassembled gadget waiting on the far end of the bench. The boy came over and picked it up, but he only slipped it into his pocket without turning it on.

“Now you need to use that thing just like normal,” Hollis said, “like we talked about.”

“I know. Nobody would ever believe I actually got up this early, so I’ll wait till later to sign on.”

“That’s good thinking,” Hollis said. “Say, do you like spiders?”

The boy’s sleepy eyes grew wide. “Don’t say it. There’s one on me, isn’t there?”

“I’m just asking.”

He shuddered a bit. “I hate spiders.”

“That’s bad news for you, Tyler, because they’re everywhere. Throughout your whole life, city or country, every minute you’re almost never more than six feet away from a spider. You don’t see ’em most of the time, but they’re seeing you, with all those shiny black eyes. They’re thinking about you, too, if you can call what they do thinking. Mainly they’re just wondering what sort of a web they’d need to spin to catch you.”

Hollis turned back to the bench and set about cleaning the work surface with a hand brush and dustpan. “I’m not saying they’re all bad. There’s some deadly ones out there to be sure, but some can be very helpful little creatures. You shouldn’t ever forget, though, they don’t care what’s good for you, not for a minute. They’ve always got their own best interests in mind.”

“Okay, okay, jeez, I get it.”

“I’m sorry, you get what?”

“You’re saying Big Brother’s watching, and even when he’s not, the phone, the computer, and Facebook, and Google, and Skype, and Twitter, and Pinterest, and Instagram, and all the games and the apps, whatever, even if they say they’re free, they’re not really, and I need to be careful, yadda yadda yadda—”

Hollis frowned and pointed to the boy’s shoulder. “No, I’m saying there’s a gigantic spider on your shoulder.”

The frantic clog-dance of swats, stomps, and curses that ensued got Hollis to laughing like he hadn’t laughed in months. When he realized he’d been fooled the boy laughed, too, despite himself, though in the course of it he did refer to his elder by a few choice names that wouldn’t bear repeating in polite company.

“Really, thanks a lot for freaking me out,” Tyler said. “Very mature.”

“Any time.”

Hollis went on with his cleanup, replacing tools and storing unused stock. After a few minutes of this he noticed that the boy hadn’t yet gone.

“This ain’t a punishment detail,” he said. “Go on, now. You’re a free man.”

“Yeah, I know.” Still, he didn’t move to leave. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“My cousin said you fainted the other day, when they found you guys out in the woods. Is that true?”

“Am I the only subject of loose conversation around here? Why do you want to know?”

“I don’t know,” Tyler said. “It’s just that you’re this big strong guy, and I guess I never heard of a grown man fainting before.”

“If you must know, I’ve had a bit of a condition, and since I got back from the service it’s been known to flare up on me from time to time. I hadn’t slept or eaten much for a week or so, and I suppose it all must have built up and got the better of me.”

“What, like post-traumatic stress whatever?”

“Yeah. Something like that, I guess. Maybe we should put it up on the bulletin board to save the others the trouble of asking.”

“And why’s your voice sound that way? It’s kind of, I don’t know, kind of wheezy.”

Hollis took an extended look at the worn edge of one of the chisels, then put it aside for later sharpening. “Bring me a Coke from the fridge over there, and I’ll tell you.”

The young man went to the corner and brought back the bottle as requested. “So?”

“So, I took a piece of shrapnel in the throat one time. I was out to cover an allied patrol, nothing special about the mission, just an afternoon milk run in year five of a sixty-day war. We got hit outside of Sangin, total surprise, by some local warlord who’d switched hats and took a better bribe than what we’d offered. I was lucky with what I got, compared to some.” He touched the scars; they were easier to trace without his beard. “Like the other thing, it comes and goes. Believe me, I’ve sounded worse.”

“Sangin. Where’s that, like Vietnam?”

“It’s in Afghanistan.” Hollis hooked the bottle cap on the metal lip of the workbench, popped it smartly with the heel of his hand, and took a drink. “And you know something? I understand it’s not top-of-mind for a lot of folks these days, but for all the people who’re still dying in service to this country, whether or not you believe in the wisdom of these perpetual wars, I think it would be a pretty damn good thing if we all at least knew the names of the places where they’re giving their lives.”

The boy didn’t speak for a while, and then he said, “I’m sorry.”

Even as he’d said them Hollis knew his last words were too harsh, and he hadn’t meant them to come out as they had. All in all, it seemed best to change the subject.

“Well, if you’re going to hang around, would you give me a hand with something?”

“Why not? I guess there’s nothing better to do at the crack of dawn,” Tyler said.

The two carried the assembled drawer over to the bachelor’s chest it had been made to repair. With some delicate maneuvering they worked it onto the slides and eased it home until it came to rest at the cushioned stops in back. Hollis ran his thumb over each junction to test the fit, and then stood and took a step back to receive the full effect. Once the finish was matched and perfectly weathered it would take a big-city appraiser to ever tell the new parts from the old.

“Looks like somebody’s been slacking off,” Tyler said.

“Hmm?”

“There’s a ton of stuff to do here.”

“Do you want to see what your folks have been dealing with, instead of doing this work and looking after their business?” Hollis leaned to the side, picked up a fat file from the nearby desk, and slid it over in front of the boy. “What’s been taking up their time is right in there. I don’t think they’d mind if you knew about it.”

Tyler opened the folder and began to leaf through the many regulatory letters, writs, notices, citations, affidavits, audits, and notarized decrees inside. As Hollis worked the boy stopped occasionally to read various items more carefully.

“Dude, this is messed up,” Tyler said.

“It sure is.”

About a year before, an odd couple had visited the ranch for a week’s stay. They seemed to be allergic to almost everything and kept to themselves most of the time, but they’d asked a lot of questions.

Shortly thereafter the first of many official registered letters had arrived.

Hundreds of supposed violations had been reported to an army of bureaucrats, boards, and commissions. Fresh raw milk was being served to guests who requested it, along with ungraded butter and eggs. Wild horses and “feral” animals were alleged to be present, perhaps to be bred and raised on the property. Child labor laws were being flagrantly sidestepped. Dinner menus lacked the required nutritional data. The trumped-up charges and obscure technicalities went on and on.

As a result, multiple licenses and permits were under review or in the process of revocation. Retroactive taxes, fees, and fines were being assessed, and several cease-and-desist orders had been served. All these charges were baseless and most were trivial, but some were dead serious. One of the Merrick brothers traveled the gun-show circuit with hand-tuned and legally augmented high-end firearms; his inventory was actually being named in a preliminary injunction as an illegal cache of assault weapons.

“What does this one mean?” Tyler asked.

“They’re accusing your aunt Mary of diverting storm water.”

“Wait, what? You mean the stuff that falls from the sky?”

“Yeah. She’s got a sixty-gallon rain barrel out by the vegetable garden.”

“How can that be against the law?”

“Those paper-pushers made a mistake because it’s not against the law yet here in Wyoming, but it is in more states than you’d think. Doesn’t matter, though. It still takes time and lawyers to answer it all.”

Tyler put the paper back with the others and closed the folder. “This is just, I don’t know . . .”

“Harassment?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s un-American, is what it is,” Hollis said. “Intimidation by regulation, and selective enforcement against a hit list of political enemies. Now don’t get me wrong, government’s not all bad. Once you let these corrupt control freaks get their hooks into office, though, they never stop. It just grows and grows. This is the kind of nonsense they thrive on.”

The next few hours passed quickly as honest work gradually replaced the conversation. At the start what this boy knew about carpentry wouldn’t pack a thimble, but he picked things up with ease and he seemed to like to learn. It was almost eleven when Tyler’s mother dropped by to bring her son a ham-and-egg sandwich and to let Hollis know that Molly’s meeting was about to begin.

“My mom’s been talking about you,” Tyler said, when she’d left.

“Is that a fact?”

“Yup. I think she’s smitten, as grossed-out as I am to say it.”

“There’s a compliment in there somewhere,” Hollis said, “and by George I’ll take it.”

“Can I ask you something else?”

“I guess there’s no stopping you.”

“It’s not because anyone’s including me in all the secret talk around here, but I’ve picked up a little in the past couple of days on what you and your friends are all about.”

“Okay. What do you want to ask?”

“Now don’t take this the wrong way,” Tyler said, “but you’re sitting in here fixing old drawers and bitching and moaning about regulations and bureaucrats and stuff.”

“So what?”

“So if you’re all on this great mission, shouldn’t you be out there saving the country instead of sitting here?”

From the mouths of babes, Hollis thought. He wasn’t looking forward to it, but in a few minutes down the hall that very important question would be put to a final vote.