A Whole Nother Story (10 page)

ADVICE ON DEALING WITH TRISKAIDEKAPHOBIA

W
hat time is it when the clock strikes thirteen? If you said “Time to run for your lives!” then you may suffer from
triskaidekaphobia
, an abiding fear of the number thirteen. This is an affliction not to be taken lightly and help is available in the form of support groups, toll-free hotlines, and twelve-step programs. (There are some thirteen-step programs as well, but they are far less popular.)

These worthwhile organizations will assist you in coping with your fear of the number thirteen or, as triskaidekaphobia sufferers call it, fourteen. It is a common response to this phobia to simply pretend that the number does not exist. I first noticed this while traveling to Zurich for the annual International Conference on Unsolicited Advice. As I boarded the airplane, I noticed that it had no thirteenth row. They left it out.

It’s a bit disconcerting to realize you are flying with an airline that is superstitious. I could only hope that a black cat did not cross our flight path.

Triskaidekaphobia is certainly nothing to laugh about.

But what is to be done about this completely irrational fear shared by an estimated “fourteen” million people? The best advice I can give you at this time is to follow your first instinct and, when you encounter that dreaded number,
run for your lives
!

CHAPTER 14

W
hen you’re on the run from secret government agencies, international superspies, and evil, murderous corporate villains, it’s not always possible to get to a hotel, making it necessary, on occasion, to camp out. As a result, Mr. Cheese-man and his family always traveled with two tents, four sleeping bags, a gas stove, a lantern, and two prefab fire logs.

As the station wagon pulled off the main road, the moon hung in the sky like a rotating, reflective orb with an approximate diameter of 2,158 miles. Mr. Cheeseman drove down a dirt road for a short time before before turning onto an even smaller, bumpier dirt road. After a few minutes, he pulled the station wagon to the side of the road and turned off the engine.

“This looks like a good place to camp for the night,” he said.

“Are you sure, Dad?” said Jough.

“It’s just an open field. We won’t be bothering anyone and no one should bother us way out here.”

“But what about the time we camped out in that city park?” said Gerard.

“Yes,” said Maggie. “And the next morning we woke up on a golf course.”

“You don’t have to remind me of that,” said Mr. Cheeseman. “I’ve still got a golf ball–sized dent on the back of my head. But there’s no confusing this place with a golf course, that’s for sure.”

Mr. Cheeseman and his children piled out of the car and immediately began setting up the two tents, which was always easier to do during daylight hours. To make the job less difficult, Mr. Cheeseman turned on the car’s headlights, being very careful not to use the high beams.

“Can we build a fire?” asked Gerard as he pounded in the last tent stake. “And roast marshmallows?”

In addition to the two tents, four sleeping bags, the gas stove, the lantern, and the prefab fire logs, Mr. Cheeseman’s family always traveled with at least one large bag of marshmallows, just in case. It was one of the few fun things about being on the run.

“I don’t see why not,” said Mr. Cheeseman, who could eat half a bag of roasted marshmallows all on his own.

While Jough and Mr. Cheeseman gathered several large rocks to make a fire pit, Maggie and Gerard began scouring the area for long pointy sticks.

“Don’t wander off now, Gerard,” Maggie said. “There might be wild animals out here.”

“We’re not afraid of wild animals. Are we, Steve?”

“Not us,” Steve agreed.

Maggie couldn’t resist and tossed a rock through the darkness into the nearby weeds. She laughed as Gerard and Steve screamed and ran back to the camp, leaving her to find suitably pointy sticks on her own.

“Mmm, that one was perfect,” said Mr. Cheeseman, eating his tenth marshmallow directly from the stick. “We really should do this more often.”

“If I could,” said Gerard, “I would camp out every day for the rest of my life.”

“And how would you wash your hair?” asked Maggie.

“I wouldn’t,” said Gerard.

“Disgusting,” said Maggie.

It was at that precise moment Mr. Cheeseman realized he and his children were not alone in the wide-open field.

“Excuse me,” came a deep and deliberate voice from the darkness.

Mr. Cheeseman jumped to his feet. Maggie screamed. Gerard wheeled around, causing his marshmallow to fly off its stick and land in Maggie’s hair, which caused Maggie to scream again. Pinky sprang into action, growling out into the darkness while hiding behind Mr. Cheeseman.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare ya’ll,” said the owner of the deep voice as he stepped out of the darkness and into the orangey firelight. “My name’s Clancy. Clancy Finkleman.”

Clancy was a solid-looking man with a square jaw and eyes in a constant state of squintiness. Not the kind of squintiness that comes from having poor vision or from having the sun in one’s eyes, but the kind that comes from being in constant pain. He wore a red plaid shirt, jeans, and a leather cowboy hat and had a knapsack slung over his left shoulder.

“You scared the dickens out of us,” said Mr. Cheeseman. “We thought we were all alone out here.”

“Heck, I thought the same thing,” said Clancy. “But I was driving by and I seen the light from your campfire and decided I’d see who else was crazy enough to be way out here in the middle of nowheres.”

“You can see our fire from the road?” asked Mr. Cheese-man, with no small amount of concern.

“Well, I wasn’t exactly driving on the road. You see, I like to take me a shortcut or two whenever possible. I know this country like the back of my hand, and my trusty pickup truck will go just about anywheres I tell her to.”

“Well, why don’t you sit down and take a load off,” said Mr. Cheeseman, who would normally be suspicious of strangers except for the fact that Pinky, once she got over her initial scare, did not growl any further. In fact, she walked right over and began sniffing at the dull, dusty points of Clancy’s cowboy boots.

“Would you like a marshmallow?” asked Jough. “They’re really good.”

“And sticky,” said Maggie pointedly as she tried her best to remove the toasted goo from her hair.

“I ain’t got much of a sweet tooth,” said Clancy. “But I’d be happier than a worm on a wet sidewalk if I could sit and visit for a spell. I haven’t talked to another human being in pert near three days now.”

Clancy lowered himself onto a rock next to the fire with a pained groan.

“You look like a cowboy,” Gerard blurted out in his best blurting voice.

Clancy chuckled. “That might be because I am. Been cowboyin’ durn near all my life.”

“I want to be a cowboy when I grow up,” said Gerard.

“You want to be everything when you grow up,” said Maggie.

“I think I’d make a great cowboy,” Gerard said in self-defense. “I can talk to cows, you know.”

“I hardly think yelling the word
moo
to a herd of cows while traveling at sixty miles per hour is quite the same thing,” said Maggie.

“Are those your cows we passed a ways back, Mr. Finkle-man?” asked Jough.

“Nope. ’Fraid not. I don’t own no cattle. In fact, just about everything I got to my name is on my person as we speak.”

“Just like us,” said Gerard. “Everything we own is on top of our car.”

Clancy looked at the top-heavy station wagon and nodded ever so slightly.

“Yup,” he said. “You folks got the right idea, that’s for sure. A man gets too much stuff, he spends half his time just trying to keep track of it all.”

“Clancy Finkleman. That doesn’t sound like a cowboy name to me,” Gerard blurted again.

Maggie thought of backhanding her little brother but decided instead that she fully agreed with him. Clancy Finkleman did not sound like a cowboy name.

“Yup,” exhaled Clancy as he removed his hat and placed it on his knee. “That might be part of my problem. You see, I’m on my way to Montana. For the annual cowboy poetry contest. I enter every year.”

“Have you ever won?” asked Jough.

“Nope,” Clancy said sadly. “I keep tryin’ though. I reckon I’ve written some pretty good poems this past year, but you never know.”

“I’d love to hear one,” said Maggie.

“Well, okay, you twisted my arm.” Clancy pulled a small, well-creased notebook from his back pocket. “But I want your honest opinion. Don’t go sayin’ you like it iffen you don’t.”

“We’ll be brutally honest,” said Jough.

“Well,” said Mr. Cheeseman while chewing on his eleventh marshmallow, “I think being just plain honest is good enough. Let’s leave out the brutality, shall we?”

“I appreciate that,” said Clancy. “My hide may be tough as leather, but the heart of a poet can be soft as that marshmallow you’re gnawin’ on.”

He flipped through the notebook, looking for the perfect poem for his audience.

“Ah, here we go,” he said. He cleared his throat and began to read. “The sun falls from the sky like a big cow pie / and the lone wolf bays at the moon. / I take off my chaps and get ready to nap / as my saddle sores swell like balloons.”

Clancy looked up from his notebook hopefully. Mr. Cheeseman and his children sat stiffly, wishing they hadn’t agreed to absolute candor. Their faces registered the exact look you would expect from anyone who had just listened to a poem about chafing.

“Well?” said Clancy. “You hated it, didn’t you?”

“It’s not that we hated it,” began Maggie.

“I hated it,” said Steve, which caused Maggie to deliver a backhand smack to Gerard’s chest.

“What?” Gerard protested. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Please excuse my little brother,” said Maggie. “But I believe what he’s trying to say is that the poem is a little bit—how shall I say— rhymey.”

“Rhymey?” said Clancy.

“Yes. It all rhymes very nicely but it doesn’t give me much of a sense of what it’s really like to be a cowboy.”

Clancy exhaled heavily and looked at the ground and the children immediately felt that perhaps honesty is not always the best policy.

“But that’s only one poem,” said Jough. “Maybe you could read another one.”

“Naw,” said Clancy. “They’re all pretty much the same, I reckon. Some are even rhymier than that one. I’m afraid I’m just not a very good poet.”

“Well, I’m sure you’re a very good cowboy,” said Maggie.

“I reckon I am. Truth is, though, a fella can only cowboy for so long before he starts to feel like a stray dog; long in the tooth and short on patience for the cold, hard ground on which he sleeps, thankful to be above it for now and not below. Like that old dog, desperate for nourishment of body and soul, the cowboy longs for a knife that can carve away a lonely night. Most times, that knife is a song, sung out low and slow to stars long since dead and calling you to join ’em. That thought is there for a moment, but those stars will have to wait. There’s just too darned much work to do.”

Clancy looked up and noticed that Ethan and the kids, even Steve the sock puppet, had been hanging on his every word.

“Wow,” said Jough. “That was great.”

“And you said you weren’t a very good poet,” said Gerard.

“Aw, that weren’t a poem,” said Clancy. “That was just talkin’.”

“But it was a poem,” said Maggie. “A beautiful poem. About what it’s really like to be a cowboy.”

“And it wasn’t rhymey at all,” said Gerard.

“You really liked it?” asked Clancy, his posture improving immediately.

“It was very compelling,” said Mr. Cheeseman.

“And very truthful,” said Maggie.

“I don’t think I want to be a cowboy when I grow up,” said Gerard. “Now I want to be a poet.”

“You want to be a poet?” said Maggie, entirely unconvinced.

“Why not?” said Gerard. “I know lots of poems. Listen to this one. ‘Beans, beans, the magical fruit—’ ”

“Okay, Gerard,” said Mr. Cheeseman. “That’ll do just fine.”

“It’s just as well,” said Jough. “That one is pretty rhymey, if I remember.”

“So you think I should write some poems that aren’t so rhymey?” asked Clancy.

“Just write the truth as you know it,” said Maggie.

Clancy rubbed his chin and thought for a moment. “Okay. I reckon maybe I’ll take your advice on this one. You know, all of a sudden I feel like maybe I finally know what the heck I’m doing. Like I can finally write the kind of poems these contest judges are looking for. Now if I could just do something about my name.”

“Well, that shouldn’t be a problem,” said Jough.

“Yeah,” said Gerard. “We change our names all the time.”

Jough and Maggie each shot Gerard a dirty look.

“He means that we sometimes make up different names for ourselves just for fun,” Jough covered.

“I think we should take turns coming up with a good cowboy name for Clancy,” said Maggie.

“I’ll go first,” Gerard volunteered. “Okay, let’s see. Instead of Clancy Finkleman, I think your new cowboy name should be . . . Wild Bill Finkleman.”

For a moment there was silence.

“Well?” asked Gerard. “What do you think?”

“Should I be brutally honest or just honest?” asked Clancy.

“Just honest, please,” said Gerard.

“Well, I don’t think it quite does the trick. But it was a heck of a nice try.”

“I’ve got one,” said Maggie. “How about . . . Tex Roper?”

Clancy nodded slowly. “It’s not bad. Got a nice ring to it. But I’m not from Texas. I’m from Mississippi.”

“Then how about Miss Roper?” squeaked Steve.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Maggie with absolutely no tolerance in her voice.

“Okay, my turn,” said Jough. “I think you should change your name to . . . Buck Weston.”

“Ahh,” said Maggie angrily as she kicked at the dirt.

“What?” said Jough. “You don’t like it?”

“Of course I like it. It’s perfect. You always think of the best names.”

“It is pretty durn good,” said Clancy. He tried it on for size by repeating the name several times more. “Buck Weston. It’s got a good ring to it. Okay then. From now on, my official cowboy name will be Buck Weston.”

“With your new name and your new style of poetry, I think you’ve got a pretty good chance of winning,” said Jough.

“If I do, it’ll be all because of you folks. I don’t know quite how to thank ya’ll.”

“You can mention us in your acceptance speech,” said Jough.

“I sure will,” said Buck. “But right now, before I get goin’, I’d like to give ya’ll somethin’ to remember me by. Hold on.”