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“Microsoft?”
“That’s it, smarty-pants, make jokes. No. The world belongs to people who don’t give up. Who get knocked down and keep coming back for more.”
“Okay, Uncle Farrell,” I said. “I get your point. But what about the future?”
“That’s right,” he said. “The future! Come on, Alfred. You won’t find the future in this garage.”
We took the elevator to the lobby. Uncle Farrell led me to his horseshoe-shaped desk that faced the two-story atrium. About halfway between the security desk and the front doors was a waterfall that fell over these huge rocks that Uncle Farrell told me had been hauled down at great expense from the Pigeon River in the Smokies.
“Funny thing about life is you never know where it’s going to take you,” Uncle Farrell told me. “I’m working at the auto body shop when in strolls Bernard Samson. He strikes up a conversation, and next thing I know here I am making double what I pulled in at the shop. And for sitting—for nothing! Double for nothing, just because the richest man in Knoxville decides to give me a job!”
Mounted on the desktop were dozens of closed-circuit monitors set up to survey every nook and cranny of Samson Towers.
“This system is state-of-the-art, Alfred. I mean, this place is tighter than Fort Knox. Laser sensors, sound detectors, you name it.”
“That’s pretty cool, Uncle Farrell.”
“Pretty cool,” he echoed. “You betcha. And this is where I sit, eight hours a day, six nights a week, in front of these monitors, staring. Watching. What do you think I’m watching, Alfred?”
“Didn’t you just say you were watching the monitors?”
“I am watching nothing, Alfred. Eight hours a day, six nights a week, I sit in this little chair right here, watching nothing.”
He leaned very close to me, so close, I could smell his breath, which did not smell very good.
“This is the future, Alfred. Your future, or something like it, if you don’t find your passion. If you don’t figure out what you’re here for. A lifetime of watching nothing.”
3
I studied hard for my driver’s test, but I flunked it. So I took it a second time and flunked again, but I didn’t miss as many questions, so at least I was improving as a failure. Uncle Farrell pointed to my scores as proof I lacked the guts to achieve even something as simple as a learner’s permit.
Things were not much better at school. Barry Lancaster’s wrist was still badly sprained, which meant he was now a bench player just like me. Barry wasn’t happy about this. He went around telling everybody how he was going to “get Kropp,” so I spent my days looking over my shoulder, waiting for the getting to start. I became jumpy; every loud noise, like the slamming of a locker door, was enough to make me nearly wet my pants.
One afternoon in early spring, I came home to find Uncle Farrell already out of bed.
“What is it?” I asked.
“What’s what?”
“Why are you out of bed?”
“Aren’t you the king of Twenty Questions.”
“That was only two questions, Uncle Farrell, and they were kind of related, so that probably would only count as one and a half.”
“You know, Alfred, people who think they’re funny rarely really are.”
“I don’t think I’m funny. I think I’m too tall, too fat, too slow, and too much of a screwup, but I don’t think I’m funny. Why are you out of bed, Uncle Farrell?”
“We have company coming,” he said, wetting his big lips.
“We do?” We never had anyone over. “Who’s coming?”
“Somebody very important, Alfred. Put on some clean clothes and come into the kitchen. We’re eating early.”
I changed my clothes and found my Salisbury steak frozen dinner fresh from the microwave sitting at my spot on the kitchen table. Uncle Farrell was drinking a beer, which was unusual. He never drank beer at dinner.
“Alfred, how’d you like to move out of this dump and live in one of those huge mansions in Sequoia Hills?”
