Sherlock in Cheyenne : The Adventure of the Cure-All in the Bunkhouse

Mr. Holmes has disappeared. That is, my Sherlock Holmes has been gone for more than three weeks. He has been absent before on numerous occasions due to requirements of whatever a case might require of his time. But he kept in touch. Not like this, which is gone, gone, gone.

One morning he was in his chair angled toward the lab and away from me and my card table and bed, it had got so he was there every morning as I got up. He might be reading the newspaper, our page first, of course, or studying various textbooks, or staring thoughtfully at the lab over by the wall.

Then he was almost always there in the armchair at the close of the day when I would be about to fall asleep. The wind could be howling or the rain pasting the east window, and the space heater roaring away on max and he was there. Calm and quiet he was and ready to reply if ever I said Good Morning or Good Night – but I never did. I now regret that. I should have told him how his being there was an aid to me in my continuing attempt to accept my transfer to this era, under these conditions, and what having his ongoing never-fail triumphs over Them did help to sustain me.

He had got here before I did. I may help him in an inconsequential way but no doubt he is the Main Man. It seems I provide a base for him, a place to be as my “tutor”. He really could be my tutor, though anyone who knows of such a cover such as it is doesn’t buy it. So what? He does a lot of good. Sometimes the community knows it, and sometimes it’s Native Americans, and sometimes it is the Air Force, and sometimes just the two of us. So what?

But is he gone for good? It is impossible They could have hurt him. He is of course, not “dead” – such doesn’t apply to him. But maybe he is off on a new assignment? OK for him but I don’t want someone else nor do I want to stay here by myself – what purpose would it serve? I have already speculated about my cycling through junior high over and over. Though maybe I would go onto high school, college?

Truth be known it is the empty chair in the morning and night. What a concern! He battles for all of us and I want him in his chair!  OK. OK, I am trying to get the homework done, be a good brother and son and accept the foibles of my friends. I am doing that. So where is he?

I have been spending more time upstairs – actually not more family interaction but more being there and “there” is usually in front of the TV. Recently it was Barney Fife giving a “hairy” rendition of the Preamble to the Constitution to prove once you’ve got it (memorized) it’s always with you. Friendship and close associations can be modified so that, if you accept the premise of irrevocable change, then no shock occurs if they aren’t going to be always with you. Remembered they can be, but not in a living format.

Neither of us is dead. I’m doing my part. Again and again I ask – where is he. I mean is he “here” and not on assignment elsewhere? Has his tour of duty ended here, has he ETS’d ? In the way of a few unearthly things having an imitation of a living format came to me one school night as I sweated over pre-calculus (we are all patriotically, with ample funds, going to find an answer to the Russkies) I heard a sigh for achievement, a woman’s luxuriant sound, rich and mild, surely with a glowing countenance and velvet dress, demure with the whole scene in coloration almost like caramel. A very beautiful woman. And I did hear it. Mom and the others were in bed. No wind. Furnace not yakking. No space heater. I had heard her. It came from the lab. The lab was against the east wall after the door swung open to it farthest and the lab then went to the west wall and South to near the furnace. Then the lab filled in the space diagonally back toward the door. Two rows of benches and equipment and experiments were along that dimension.

I went to the entrance to the lab but really if Mr. Holmes put more equipment there you would have to vault the benches to get inside the lab. I stood expectantly at the entrance. Something was up. I smelled off to the right an electrical short with cinnamon sprinkled on it – so it registered. I went toward the smell, and behind an inner row of benches, was a blue fluid flow experiment. Mr. Holmes had set it up. It had started. There were three presentations of it. In one the blue fluid remained pooled at the bottom of a tank. An amorphous mass was inert above the pool. In a second adjacent part of the experiment the fluid had made it half way into the mass. The last section, the third one, had blue lines piercing the mass. The blue pencil-thin fluid was in lines in the hundreds and multiplying in number then and there. The mass was defeated, the pool was ascending. The fluid shot out and up and over the container and blue splatters sounded loudly on the concrete floor.

It was a sign. Mr. Holmes was fine and still here.

Confident that Mr. Holmes would soon show, I gave more undivided attention to playing my bit part in the great Cold War struggle, for as much as my homework could contribute. My hard concentration on my math was broken when I had to look around for my slide rule to get on with it. I then could hear my Mom upstairs calling out about a phone call. About a tutor. Tutor! I was out of the room in two giant steps and bounded up the stairs. I paused for composure before I entered the dining area (also containing a washing machine shrouded in fine linen in a corner). I walked in to take the receiver from Mom. “Sorry,” I said to her. She had no problem with it, having other fish to fry elsewhere in the ruckus-filled house.

Sherlock! Holmes! (Pausing, calm and composed? Well try for it.) Mr. Holmes, good to hear from you again.

Ah, yes indeed, and I am very sorry my dear boy, for having taken such a very long time to contact you, I was trying to infiltrate Them and one thing led to another and I did not do as I had hoped. I shall stop by in a few hours with a guest. Is that acceptable?

A guest downstairs?

Of course, of course, I should have made that clear. Another “student”.

Sure thing.

The phone went dead. I returned to my study and after a few hours I heard two set of shoes navigating down the stairs. The door opened wide and in stepped a Zeegler! For a split second I thought it could be Mr. Holmes in disguise, but Mr. Holmes was close behind the Zeegler.

The Zeegler stopped a few steps inside the room so the door could close. Mr. Holmes moved ahead of the Zeegler and indicated the Zeegler should sit in my chair at the card table, I was on the bed. Mr. Holmes remained standing very near to the Zeegler. One of Mr. Holmes arms was inside his coat.

Mr. Holmes – I thought you would care to speak with a Zeegler. This is a rare opportunity for us to get to know a Zeegler. Of course he can ask about us.

So I was to cross-examine the Zeegler. I assumed Mr. Holmes had already conversed with the Zeegler, to no avail. Therefore, I was to query on a lower plane of interaction. High road vs. low.

So: How are you trained? No response, no sound, no movement. How old are you? Where were you born?

Mr. Holmes interjected – I believe they “come about.” They persist unless pierced in combat as we well know.

Me- So they are clones?

Mr. Holmes shrugged. And I then couldn’t remember if we had gotten to “cloning” in our conversations.

Me- Well, then, do you prefer guns or spears or knives?

Now that got a rise. He looked at me and he said they had never used spears.

Oh but you did, Mr. Holmes and I were once attacked by hundreds of Zeeglers carrying spears.

He shouted, No spears! And he rose from the chair and twisted toward me and lunged for me. He was about half way to me when Mr. Holmes brought a revolver butt from his coat down on the back of the Zeegler’s neck. He fell into a nondescript heap at that half way mark between the chair and the bed. Mr. Holmes effortlessly picked up the Zeegler and seated him in my chair. Then Mr. Holmes stepped quickly into the lab and returned with a rope. The rope went around the Zeegler’s neck, then around his wrists and then around his ankles. Mr. Holmes held the end of the rope as he stood over the Zeegler.

The Zeegler’s head was against his wrists and his wrists were on his knees. Uncomfortable it looked to me.

Mr. Holmes – Please be so kind as to be more courteous toward by colleague.

The Zeegler actually smiled or at least showed his teeth to me and seemed to regret his action, beg for forgiveness, and silently plead for an alteration in how he was situated. Uncomfortable no doubt.

The Zeegler said – I have no spear.

Me – Well certainly some may and some may not have a use for a spear. I meant not to insult you by forcing a spear on you.

I smiled. I guess the Zeegler did too. I looked at Mr. Holmes for guidance.

Me - Well then let’s chat about nothing in particular (when I had every intention of mining something useful from whatever I got out of him).

I said “let’s chat” again. I then also looked at Mr. Holmes.

My colleague, said Mr. Holmes, is desirous of being friendly toward you. For your next infraction I shall shoot you.

The Zeegler blankly looked up at Mr. Holmes. Mr. Holmes extracted a huge knife, like a Bowie knife, from his coat. He swiftly made three motions to cut the knots at the Zeegler’s knees, then wrists, and then the neck.

The Zeegler stiffened, gulped, and then relaxed in the chair.

I asked questions about the weather, uniforms, food (3 squares a day?), bunks in barracks, cars, trucks, school buses, freight trains, snowflakes, high winds, and so on.  I was asking about his favorite day of the week, assuring the Zeegler that mine was on the weekend and I named each day. On “Saturday” I perceived a twitch, I’ll call it that, anyway his countenance flickered. On the streets of Cheyenne, favorites of, he had a tiny “reply” to Lincolnway and for what was his favorite kind of building I meant such as wood, brick, concrete, and adobe with an aside on use, form and function, he had an unspoken preference for adobe.

We “chatted” without a word from him for another half hour. Finally I looked at Mr. Holmes and back at the Zeegler and back to Mr. Holmes.

Mr. Holmes to the Zeegler – I suppose this has been a waste of time. I had hoped we could have had a congenial expression of companionship – on some level. Well and good if such does not become you. As things are, we will meet again. Be gone.

The Zeegler got up, went to the door, and left. As simple as that.

Mr. Holmes – So then, an adobe structure on Lincolnway to be visited by us this Saturday.

Mr. Holmes did briefly relate to me his infiltration. He had himself captured. That status did not prove useful so he disappeared in their midst and became a Zeegler. Then he captured a Zeegler – the one that I chatted with.

But then why were we concerned about Saturday on Lincolnway with adobe?

Mr. Holmes – Rather amusing to be off to thwart Them but not knowing how or why.

Me – Sorry, I just realized I haven’t been reading the newspaper of late. They are there. I pointed at a pile of papers beside his armchair.

Mr. Holmes – Ah well then, let us have a go at acquiring news of Them.

He picked up a paper and then turned to “our page”. I did the same with another issue and others. The more recent issues had a small, and on our page, ad of a Cure-All as a tonic, elixir, modern super medicine, fit of the fittest and so on across many small ads on our page.

Mr. Holmes – No doubt the “cure” will in and of itself become an illness second to none. What?

Me – Oh undoubtedly. Saturday?

Mr. Holmes – Delivery? Shipment? Manufacture? Our presence will resolve it. But what building?

Me – I know of only one adobe directly on Lincolnway. I mean an adobe “house” and an adobe “bunkhouse”.

At this site there has been a cooperative effort involving my school and a trucking company called DBN, meaning Drive by Night, from the film “They Drive by Night” with Raft, Bogart, Ann Sheridan, and Ida Lupino. The DBN is located at a “house,” really only a bedroom for Miguel’s father, and what is called the “bunkhouse”. Both are on a large paved lot. The house seems to sit in a parking lot. The lot is large and slopes from the bunkhouse at the top of the slope and from the north then down to the house and further on down to Lincolnway. On the east is Beacon Street and along it the company trucks park before beginning a night run. The drivers sleep in the bunkhouse during the day if they so choose.

Miguel’s father manages the operations. I went there to return Miguel’s visits to our house (we then rented a house not far from the adobe structures.) I would wake up Miguel’s father. He was a baseball nut. Ok guy, usually asleep during the day, mostly spoke Spanish and had a bat, ball, and mitt in bed with him.

Along the west side of the lot, which drops off down to the alley, are grates cut into the rock wall. Coals can be place in the grates and hot dogs and Pepsi are available some Friday evenings, courtesy of the school and DBN. Boys and girls attend. Whichever sex predominates in numbers has dibs on the bunkhouse for that night, if they want. We then lived close enough that I preferred to go home since I had seen the object of my then desires, Betty Carlson, and usually my conversation with her was in opposition to a restful bunkhouse night.

Across from the lot, across the alley, was a used car lot that Mr. Holmes and I would make use of post our visit to the bunkhouse. That visit occurred Saturday night, late. Mr. Holmes was in disguise as a Zeegler. I was his prisoner and we went downstairs, after entry, to a football-sized expanse of manufacturing apparatus that looked like the second football-sized area under the first one. At the first sublevel, Mr. Holmes extracted huge bags of sand from within his Zeegler duds. We began to run along the corridors flinging the sand into the works. Then Mr. Holmes grabbed two crowbars from a wall cabinet, and we sprinted along smashing left and right, up and down the aisles. Down to the second sublevel we went using the crowbars to brace shut a large door behind us. Mr. Holmes pulled out two revolvers from his coat (he had changed back to himself) and tossed me a third one. He was shooting out three manufacturing sifters or pumps or sorters – whathaveyou- with one shot. He walked eyes closed and pointed left and right with one revolver in each direction. I more modestly might get two with one shot. And I kept my eyes open.

The Zeeglers were coming, the Zeeglers were coming. We were in a narrow corridor beyond the production area and the Zeeglers were four abreast coming at us. Mr. Holmes got three from right to left and I got the leftmost one as they, of course, advanced inches on us everytime a line of them disappeared. Not to accept the inevitable, M. Holmes shot out the electrical boxes. Even in the dark he and I kept firing since the barrel flashes gave tiny, but enough, illumination, and it was a straight corridor so I kept the weapon pointed on the same line.

Mr. Holmes said “go left” and I smacked into a door, which on opening, led further west, I gathered. The door was slammed shut by Mr. Holmes as the Zeeglers pounded on it. Cracks from somewhere showed light. We went there and opened a chute to the outside. The “outside” was the west edge of the truckers’ lot and the light was from across the alley in the used car lot, closed to customers.

Not closed to escapees from the wrath of the Zeeglers. We low-crawled among the vehicles looking for keys in the ignition. Found one. We got in. We pushed it off the lot and down the slope to Lincolnway which also sloped down. We coasted to the intersection of the Sinclair station and the motel. Then right until near 15^th Street. We tried it and it started. With me steering and Mr. Holmes working the pedals, we made it to less than a mile from home.

The transition from Saturday to Sunday was very short for me. Mom was calling down about breakfast and I had only started to sleep. Couldn’t stay in bed. If I did she would come down and Mr. Holmes and I would have had to have a “lesson’ underway. Therefore, I went up to pancakes prepared on a flat grill that were thin, crispy at the edges, with maple syrup streaming down the sides and ice-cold milk in a huge glass. We all had a delicious time.

Only an hour later after my return to Mr. Holmes did sleep overpower me. Mr. Holmes kept watch and could run interference with any interaction with the upstairs element. I couldn’t sleep long. I had a couple of big tests on Monday. To get the official results of our intervention at the bunkhouse, we would need Monday’s paper.

I could study since we weren’t trying a church. Mom took us to a different church for a trial period on some Sundays. Not Catholic, since Mom felt they would compromise you somehow and then convert you. Once converted, you owed them, they owned you. As a Church member you remained one, no amount of nays got you off… so Mom said. But this Sunday we had a break. Usually we attended Bible study while the grownups were at services. We wore Sunday best, and for me, that was like singing at the VA when I met Grady.

I had to come awake for lunch, or dinner as it was called on Sundays. Mr. Holmes said he was going downtown, or nearly there, to the bunkhouse. Upon his return in the evening about suppertime, he said it seemed as before on the lot at Beacon and Lincolnway.

Monday’s paper had no ads for Cure-All and instead there was a short article about a local maker of medicinals had gone out of business. End of story. So then I wanted to say something to Mr. Holmes about his presence being pleasantly felt day and night if he was in the armchair as I began and ended my day. But how to say it? Could I prevail upon you to be in your chair at certain times? No, wouldn’t do.

Ok – Mr. Holmes, it is good to see you there (pointing) AM and PM. At such times I know nothing is amiss.

He had a pipe in his left hand. He stopped bringing it to his teeth. The pipe went in his coat. He stood up, went behind the chair, grabbed each armrest, and lifted and rotated the chair some degrees toward my direction. Then he sat down.

Ah, he said, the pleasure is all mine, and he smiled.

I tipped my invisible hat to him.