Read Online Forever Odd by Dean Koontz - Free Book Online Page B

time to go bowling, either.”
        “Those flowering oleander hedges all over town? Oleander in Sanskrit means ‘horse killer.’ Every part of the plant is deadly.”
        “I like the variety with red flowers.”
        “If you burn it, the smoke is poisonous,” Ozzie said. “If bees spend too much time with oleander, the honey will kill you. Azaleas are equally fatal.”
        “Everybody plants azaleas.”
        “Oleander will kill you quickly. Azaleas, ingested, take a few hours. Vomiting, paralysis, seizures, coma, death. Then there’s savin, henbane, foxglove, jimsonweed…all here in Pico Mundo.”
        “And we call her Mother Nature.”
        “There’s nothing fatherly about time and what it does to us, either,” Ozzie said.
        “But, sir, Ernie and Pooka Ying know the brugmansia is deadly. In fact, its deadliness is why they planted and nurtured it.”
        “Think of it as a Zen thing.”
        “I would-if I knew what that meant.”
        “Ernie and Pooka seek to understand death and to master their fear of it by domesticating it in the form of the brugmansia.”
        “That sounds medium shallow.”
        “No. That’s actually profound.”
        Although I didn’t want the Danish, I picked it up and took a huge bite. I poured coffee into a mug, to have something that I could hold.
        I couldn’t sit there any longer doing nothing. I felt that if my hands weren’t busy, I’d start tearing at things.
        “Why,” I wondered, “do people tolerate murder?”
        “Last time I looked, it was against the law.”
        “Simon Makepeace killed once. And they let him out.”
        “The law isn’t perfect.”
        “You should’ve seen Dr. Jessup’s body.”
        “Not necessary. I have a novelist’s imagination.”
        As my hands had gotten busy with Danish I didn’t want and with coffee I didn’t drink, Ozzie’s hands had gone still. They were folded on the table in front of him.
        “Sir, I often think about all those people, shot…”
        He did not ask to whom I was referring. He knew that I meant the forty-one shot at the mall the previous August, the nineteen dead.
        I said, “Haven’t watched or read the news in a long time. But people talk about what’s happening in the world, so I hear things.”
        “Just remember, the news isn’t life. Reporters have a saying-‘If it bleeds, it leads.’ Violence sells, so violence gets reported.”
        “But why does bad news sell so much better than good?”
        He sighed and leaned back in his chair, which creaked. “We’re getting close now.”
        “Close to what?”
        “To the question that brought you here.”
        “That burning philosophical thing? No, sir, there isn’t one. I’m just… rambling.”
        “Ramble for me, then.”
        “What’s wrong with people?”
        “Which people?”
        “Humanity, I mean. What’s wrong with humanity?”
        “That was a very short ramble indeed.”
        “Sir?”
        “Your lips should feel scorched. The burning question just fell from them. It’s quite a puzzler to put to another mortal.”
        “Yes, sir. But I’ll be happy even with one of your standard shallow answers.”
        “The correct question has three equal parts. What’s wrong with humanity? Then… what’s wrong with nature, with its poison plants, predatory animals, earthquakes, and floods? And last… what’s wrong with cosmic time, as we know it, which steals everything from us?”
        Ozzie may assert that I mistake his absolute self-confidence for profundity; but I do not. He is truly wise. Evidently, however, life has taught him that the wise make targets of themselves.
        A lesser mind might try to hide its brilliance behind a mask of stupidity. He chooses, instead, to conceal his true wisdom under a flamboyant pretense of erudition that he is pleased to let people think is the best of him.
        “Those