Prayers to Sheos Chapter Eight, In Which our Hero Gets Information from the Kabadob, Discusses Cats, and Recommends a Book with which One May Hurt Oneself. Need help? E-mail sheos@susurrusmagazine.com

   

      I ended up on a bus traveling toward Ohio. I didn't remember quite where in Ohio, but figured that I would tackle one obstacle at a time. Getting moving again was the prime initiative; everything else remained secondary. I was out of the sanatorium, out of the beach house, out of the grip of Death, out of Asia, and now in a mess involving a reluctant pedophile.       The turns kept getting stranger.

Dear Sheos, Where do cats come from? Tony

 

 

Tony,

      Cats are a rare species of animal that spawned long before humans had chance. Since then, cats have been a kind of watcher of the progress of civilization. Not that you never see a cat with a pen and paper, or dictating events as they unfold. These things simply do not happen. Rather, cats tell each other stories when they meet each other. Instead of saying a simple hello, they explain the most interesting thing they’ve seen during their time, which is passed along as more and more cats come in contact.

      The real question, as I hope you now see, is not “Where do cats come from?” It is “Why are cats reporting on humans?” I never took that much of an interest on human affairs, so I cannot answer this question, but I assume, as you are human, that it bears some importance to you.

      Sleep isn't an easy thing to catch in a bus—maybe for some people, but never for me. I would toss and turn, and as I tossed and turned my knees kept hitting the back of the seat ahead of me. That combined with random prayers ripping through my head was a major sleep deterrent. So, I was awake during our stop in Texas; I was awake to see the little man take the stairs onto the bus like he was walking to a hillside temple in China—every step serious and filled with intent.

      He wore a parka, though it wasn't raining or windy outside. Dirty blonde hair hung in his eyes; it looked like it hadn't been washed in weeks. From the sides of his head, pointy bits of flesh poked out from behind the mess atop his head, like antennas off an old television set. His face was rugged with wear and time, but despite the leathery skin, the guy didn't appear a day over twenty. Underneath his parka were the stained and tattered articles of clothing you'd find under any overpass in Texas, or America for that matter. Frayed jeans covered his legs, the torn neck lining of a red T-shirt peeked out from beneath the parka, but his shoes were brand new black converse low-tops.

      I knew he was going to plant himself in the seat next to me before it happened. What I didn't know was that he had something for me.

      He stood at his seat for a second, taking off a hunter-green Jansport backpack, before sitting down. The guy didn't have a smell. He just had an air that suggested his griminess; other than that he was fine. Sitting in the tight seat next to me, head bent down with his hair swaying like upside down cattails in a low breeze, the man dug through his book bag and pulled out a single, slim manila envelope. He handed it to me.

      "'ere chew are to be go-ed," he said, pushing the paper closer to me. It took me a second to understand his words. I reached out and took grasp of the paper, and the man zipped up his bag. He rested, pushing himself back into his seat. Mission accomplished.

      "I am to be-ed the Kabadob." He took in a deep breath that turned into an exaggerated yawn; no one on Earth could have been as he tried he was at that moment. "I was hire-ed by someone to find the person that is to be inside that on-velope, because that's what I do: I find people, places and things."

      I couldn’t get over his odd way of talking. Eastern European, possibly Russian.

      "You work fast," I said.

      "Yes..." He looked at me curiously, and asked: "Do you know who hired me?"

      I told him I didn't. If Luci wanted this guy to know, he would have told him.

      "Normally, I do not take contracts where the benefactor keeps himself in mystery, but he was offering many favors. Favors I could not just let walk away."

      "So you deal in favors?" I asked.

      "I take money, too, but it is favors that interest me most."

      "I see." I watched him as he watched the front of the bus. His eyes old and wise, the eyes of a general who had seen way too many battles. "I heard tale of a man like that a long, long time ago, but I doubt that you'd know anything about that, would you?"

      "I know a lot of things, Sheos," he said. "Even though I am not so sure of who is to be hiring me, I could make guesses, and odds are, I would not be too far off."

Dear Sheos, There’s got to be something I’m missing here? Cynthia

 

Cynthia,

      I can only assume that you are talking about Umberto Eco’s On Literature. This is not a common feeling for people trying to read this book to have. The truth is, Eco isn’t to be understood -- not fully anyway -- by anyone. It’s like the Big Mac on a MacDonald’s advertisement: It can be viewed and praised, but once you take a bite of it, you get a mouthful of toothpicks and glue without knowing when or how things went so strangely.

      Umberto Eco’s thinking is as close as many humans will ever get to god-dom. So to quell your uncertainty, just remember that you gave it your best shot and leave it at that.

      The Kabadob got off at the next stop, saying if I ever needed someone else "to be found-ed" that I should get a hold of him. Once he had disappeared into the night, I went to open the envelope. Inside, in the middle of a single page, a typewriter-typed address was sunk into the white sheet, a moth shadow on a blank movie screen.

      Raceland High School (old), the paper said, and it didn't surprise me later to find that it was about an hour from where I was originally headed. Not knowing whether I could count on Lucifer's support, I was relying on my own senses to guide me toward Rabies and Krogg. I would have found them eventually through trial and error. This just made things all that much easier.

      The bus started up again, the engine roaring to life like it was angry to have to hit the road again, a stubborn child forced to go to Sunday school. In a few minutes, the bus was on the road, more than half its passengers asleep inside. I folded the piece of paper and put it in my pocket.

      A prayer hung in the back of my head like a sneeze waiting to attack, so I stretched and sunk into my chair, much the way Kabadob did, and I waited for it to make up its mind.