Tongue tied

Chapter 13

Timmy said, "We're onto something here."

"You bet we are," Thad added.

"We are?"

No sooner had Zinsser departed than Timmy and Thad emerged from the barn picking hair out of their teeth. As we spoke, they repeatedly spit into Zinsser's parking lot, which I now noticed was strewn with tiny strands of gnarled wool.

"Zinsser's boyfriend Darren, who's in there reading an ancient Incan text while he's minding the cash register," Timmy said, "gave us the lowdown on three kids who work for Zinsser during the week making cheese."

"They're trouble," Thad said, "and Zinsser is actually meeting a couple of other guys in Great Barrington right now that he wants to hire to replace these kids he doesn't get along with."

"These three," Timmy went on, "are young and gay and angry and out of control, according to Darren. And, not only do they have constant personality and ideological clashes with Zinsser, recently they fought over which radio station to have on in the cheese-making room during the morning. The kids want WRPI for the music they like and the Pacifica news. Zinsser is always present to supervise- apparently getting the wool-to-cheese blend just right can be tricky-and he insists that the radio be tuned into… guess who?"

"Interesting."

"And so," Thad said, "there's this constant tension in the morning, with the kids their names are Charm, Pheromone and Edward-mocking and berating Jay Plankton all the time, and Zinsser refusing to change the station."

"Why haven't the kids quit? Or why hasn't Zinsser replaced them sooner?" I asked.

Timmy said, "They live up the road in Charm's father's house. He's one of Zinsser's financial backers. The father's in Provence for the summer with his new wife. But Charm can only live there and have her checking account replenished periodically if she's willing to work for Zinsser. She had academic and drug problems, and this is part of her rehab program. Zinsser has to keep her around-and where Charm goes, Pheromone and Edward go too-so he's canning the Mexican illegals who now do the field and barn chores, Darren says, and Zinsser's getting the three young people out into the open air where he won't have to listen to them dis the J-Bird all morning long."

I thought it over and said, "None of this is what I expected to find here." I described to Timmy and Thad my encounter with Kurt Zinsser, angry neolefty turned angry neocon.

"Unless his devotion to Jay Plankton is all a cunning pose, which I don't think it is, Zinsser is as unlikely a harasser of Plankton or kidnapper of Leo Moyle as we're likely to come across. These kids do sound like better bets, sort of. Certainly they would have access to llama droppings. And if they couldn't stand Zinsser and wanted to mess with his mind and get away with it, they could go after his hero, the J-Bird. Except, of course, they're… kids. Three young students in rural Massachusetts who stage a kidnapping in New York? I don't know about that."

"But," Timmy said, "we haven't met them. Darren says they're pretty out of control.

Especially Charm Stankewitz. And they know about Zinsser and the old FFE He told them all about it, apparently hoping to show how cool he once was."

"Are Charm, Pheromone and Edward their real names?"

Thad casually spat something ugly into the dust and said, "Charm's real name is Patricia Stankewitz, and Edward's is Edward Nicetwink. It had been Edward Beers, but he had it legally changed last winter when he hit eighteen and his parents in Stockbridge couldn't stop him. Pheromone's actual name, believe it or not, is Pheromone Peabody."

"An old New England Yankee family via the sixties, it sounds like," Timmy said.

"And what about Darren, your source for all this data?" I asked. "I take it Darren strikes you as a reliable source of information."

"He's got no axe to grind that's evident," Timmy said. "He's Zinsser's boyfriend, and that's clearly where his sympathies lie. But his story of these three troubled youths is plausible enough."

"Why don't you go in and meet Darren?" Thad said. "He'll give you a free sample of Woolly Llama Cheese."

Timmy said, "Yes, you haven't had any yet."

"Is it pretty awful?"

"Of course," they said, nearly in unison.

"Lead the way."

Darren, a slender, sloe-eyed man a good twenty years Zinsser's junior, was wearing a llama T-shirt like his partner's. He had a small llama tattoo on one upper arm, and on the other upper arm were tattooed the words "Robert Forever," apparent evidence of the hazards of subdermal body decoration.

At my request, Darren reiterated what he had told Timmy and Thad about Charm, Pheromone and Edward. He had nothing new to add, although when I asked him directly whether he thought these three schoolkidsPheromone was only seventeen, and Edward and Charm just a year older-were capable of pulling off a kidnapping, Darren said, "Nothing those brats did would surprise me. They are totally unpredictable, and I've always thought truly dangerous."

"But how could they kidnap anybody in New York? Are any of them big enough and tough enough to wrestle a man in his forties into a waiting vehicle? Do they possess firearms or other weapons, or drugs they could use on somebody?"

"I don't know about guns," Darren said, "but I suppose they could drug someone. All three of them have extensive experience with pharmaceuticals. They're all rather small, but if they were going to snatch somebody in New York they might have larger friends there who could help them. They go into the city at least once a week and stay with some people in Brooklyn."

"Any idea who these people are?"

"Not really. I've heard them mention Louis somebody, and a Sharon, I think, and somebody they refer to as Strawberry Swirl."

You could practically hear the wheels turn as we all made mental notes on Louis, Sharon and Strawberry Swirl.

"Were Charm, Pheromone and Edward in the city yesterday?" I asked. "That's when the kidnapping took place. Late morning sometime."

"Actually, I think they were," Darren said, his eyes widening. "Or Charm was anyway. We weren't making cheese yesterday. We won't make cheese again until Tuesday. By then Kurt thinks he'll have some new people to work for us who are less obnoxious to have around."

Timmy said, "Don, you haven't tried any cheese yet."

"No," Thad added. "We have but you haven't."

Darren got up from his stool behind the counter. "This stuff will change your life," he said, with no trace of irony. His was supposed to be the generation steeped in irony, but apparently that had all gone by him. Using a small square of parchment paper, Darren retrieved a sample-sized portion of Berkshire Woolly Llama Cheese from the refrigerator case. It was grayish, and it resembled a mouse minus its extremities.

"You're serving this cheese chilled," I said. "Shouldn't it be allowed to warm to the task of being eaten, to collect its cheesy thoughts for a while?"

"Ideally, yes," Darren said. "But much of the flavor and nearly all of the healing properties are in the oil of the wool. As you suck the cheese out of the wool, the chewing and sucking combined with the heat of your own saliva release the oil and its protein. One of the sad aspects of modern American life is the haste with which most people devour their food. It was easier for the ancient Incas, of course, to take the time to absorb the healing oils in their llama cheese, because they lived a much less pressured existence."

As I inserted the moist morsel into my mouth, Thad said, "Rural agricultural people have plenty of pressure on them, usually associated with the vagaries of climate. But it is true that the pace of that life is much slower a lot of the time."

"The trouble with the hectic lives we lead," Timmy said, "is that for most of us it's all too rare that we take the time to stop and suck the cheese."

Which was what I was doing at that moment. The cheese itself wasn't bad-ripe, a little salty, with a hint of smoke, and not so gluey as I feared. The wool that was marbled through it, however, was another matter. I was counting on my finely tuned gag reflex to prevent disaster. What if I swallowed this thing whole? Had that ever happened to a Berkshire Woolly Llama Cheese devotee? Were there FDA warnings on the package?

I glanced around the shop for a Heimlich-maneuver instructions poster. None was visible, although I knew Timmy was capable of successfully executing the proce-dure. Some years earlier I had seen him apply the maneuver and dislodge what looked like half a strip steak from an old lady's trachea at a Friendly's restaurant near Lake George. So adept was Timmy that upon the first upward thrust under the desperate woman's rib cage, the deadly gob was ejected and shot across the room, knocking over a little boy's Fribble®.

"What do you think?" Thad said.

"It's tasty," I replied. "But sucking a wad of hair takes some getting used to. It's uncommon in our culture."

Timmy said, "Thad, do the Amish chew hair?"

"Not in Pennsylvania, as far as I ever heard. In Indiana maybe they do, or Ohio."

Darren said, "To achieve the full benefits, you really need to eat it every day for several weeks."

Almost as if by plan, we quickly changed the subject back to Charm, Pheromone and Edward, and discussed how we would carry out a visit to them at Charm's father's house up the road.