Over-Hard

A stocky man in a beige trench coat and a dark Stetson hat smokes a cigarette on a metal bench on the side of the road.

‘You should never make fun of anything that you don’t understand.’

I always thought I understood those words, but no matter how many years I cling to this flailing dirt ball of a planet I still manage to find my foot in a far-too-familiar place, lodged securely between my tongue and my teeth. In my line of work there is plenty I don’t understand. I have seen and done things that are squarely impossible. The trick is to never let anyone else know that you don’t know what they’re talking about and the best way to do that is to keep your mouth shut. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to master that concept either. That’s why I’m at this bus stop; waiting for a ride that’s two hours late and wondering why I ever even left my apartment. But I know why. Deep down we all know the reason for the things we do, even if we don’t want to admit it. A woman goes shopping for expensive pearls because she doesn’t know if she can be pretty without them. A man kills a younger girl because he’s terrified she’ll never notice him. And me, I’m just curious. It’s not a sense of civic duty or a generosity of spirit or any of that blah blah blah, but a need, a burning desire to know. How else would these crazies get me out for this crap? Dr. Lombard would have been up the creek but for fate or karma or whatever lousy god you believe in that threw him up on my door, and here we are.
He walked in like a shadow afraid of the sun, pale as white marble and fidgeting to beat the band.
“Detective Harrison? Detective Louis...um…Harrison?”
“It’s Lou,” I said. I hate it when people think they’re doing you a favor by spelling out your whole name. “What do you want?”
“Oh. Yes. Right. Well, I’m actually here because I was referred to you by a colleague. A Dr. James West…”
“James Westner, I remember,” I do remember. That damn doctor had me running all over South America looking for lost Incan gold. “We never did find much gold, but I hear that the Incan library we turned up is keeping him plenty busy.”
“Yes, quite. It is actually on his recommendation that I’m…”
“Curious though, I read in the paper that the doctor found that library all by himself. I could have sworn I was there with him, but what do I know? The paper never lies.”
“Oh…well…I, uh…” Dr. Lombard turned whiter, if possible, and nearly split down the middle before I offered him a seat. It took him a few minutes to calm down, but after a snifter of brandy he unloaded his whole suitcase of problems. It sounded complicated, but it boiled out that somebody somewhere found a real old scroll that everybody else thought never existed. It was by a guy named Hesiod and it says that the Titans, not the ones from Tennessee, but the things that made the earth, never left. It says they just lied down on the ground and became cities. Dr. Lombard thinks they’re about to wake up, starting with San Francisco. Now, I’ve been at this a long time, but this one took the cake.
“So, you want me to go to California and make sure that the Golden Gate Bridge doesn’t stand up and start walking around? How did you get a PhD?”
The doctor stood up from his chair in a prissy huff and started gathering his things. “So I guess you won’t go then?”
“Oh no, I never said that. You got the green, I got the steam. And I would love to ride one of those cable cars again.”
So here I am; waiting at a bus stop for a greyhound to take me out to the “Golden State” of fine wine and Rice-A-Roni. I don’t imagine much will turn up, but a paid trip’s a paid trip and I know some people out there who can tell me if this is a spool worth unwinding. So, I wait...

A newspaper blows by the stocky man on the bench with the headline ‘EARTHQUAKES RATTLE SAN FRANCISCO: TURBULENT TREMORS LARGEST ON RECORD’.