Read Online Inspector O 04 - The Man with the Baltic Stare by James Church - Free Book Online

you stay, the more they will be convinced that you deserve what you got. Maybe they’ll be right.”
    “The longer I stay, the more I realize I don’t want to go back to that madness.”
    This stopped the conversation.
    “Never wise with your words,” my brother said finally. “Lucky for you, no one heard it but me.”
    “Are we done?” I went to the door. “Because if we are, I’m sure you have things to do, memos to write, all of those things that the Center has to have or the world will grind to a halt.”
    “As always,” he said, “you are your own worst enemy. Have it your way; stay up here until you rot.” He never came back.
2
     
    After the first load of lumber was used up, I decided to test the limits and phone for more. It wasn’t clear who was on the other end of the line.
    “Seasoned lumber,” I said. “Galvanized nails, otherwise they rust. And wood screws—try to get the ones with the flat heads. That way I can countersink them. Wait, I also need sandpaper. Two sheets of fine, one medium, and one coarse.”
    “That’s it? Nothing else?” The voice on the other end sounded surprised. “Screws and sandpaper?”
    “Can you get them?”
    “Sure I can get them. I’m a magician. I wave my magic wand and everyone gets everything they want. Last week, a man called from another place—I can’t say where—and asked for fresh fruit. He said his gums were bleeding. I’m still looking for fruit. Screws will be no problem.”
    About two months later, the old man in the old truck was back with a shipment of boards, a box of nails mixed with screws of various sizes and types, and three or four torn sheets of sandpaper.
    “The guards at the bottom of the hill emptied the box and looked at every damn screw. Normally, they wave me through without a second glance. There must be something going on.”
    “As long as it stays at the bottom of the hill,” I said, “I could give a fine fuck.”
    “Yeah,” said the old man, “that’s what I thought.”
    One of the few things I had brought with me, besides my grandfather’s tools and a few pieces of furniture he’d made, was a radio. Reception was poor, but I could hear something overthe static the few nights a week I got electricity. At first there was only electricity a few hours a day and some days not at all, but by the third year the outages were only on Thursdays and usually only in the afternoons. At one point, I wondered if rumbling on Thursdays had anything to do with the power outages. Maybe every time they set off a charge, they blew over a power line by mistake. When I was in the army, things like that happened more than ever made it into the reports.
    A doctor visited twice a year. He said they told him it was owed me because of my family’s loyal service, but I had a suspicion my brother had sent him up to spy on me. If he was a spy, he was melancholy and soft-spoken. The second year, he brought books that he thought I should read. He brought Tolstoy and Chekhov in Russian, which I read slowly and with some difficulty. The third year, he carried in his pocket a small book that must have been read a hundred times.
    “What is this?” I asked as he handed it to me.
    “Kafka,” he said. “Make sure it’s a clear, sunny day and sit outside when you read it. Don’t try to read it at night, and whatever you do, don’t read it when the wind is blowing.”
    “Why not?”
    “If I know you, you’ll want to devour it in huge chunks. Don’t. Sip it as if it were boiling-hot soup. If you’re not careful, you can hurt yourself with Kafka. It can make you very cynical.” He smiled.
3
     
    The house had not been so difficult to build. It was a simple structure, basically a box with two windows in the front and one in the back, a front door, and a flat roof. The ceiling was low, but I didn’t have many tall visitors. A few times every winter, I had to go up on the roof and shovel off the snow, so eventually I built asimple ladder