The Hole in the Wall - Lisa Rowe Fraustino [5]
I hoped the visitor was someone interesting. Like the longhair with sandals who had started hiking from British Columbia to join the commune thirty years ago and just showed up last August. For the most part, though, more people left than arrived at Zensylvania (especially A.O., After Odum). Now it was pretty much down to the Dogstars, that longhair guy, and a bunch of goats.
Not surprisingly, Cluster said, “A representative from Odum Research Corporation came to test our water again.”
The Dogstars got their water from a pure spring, and they bottled and sold their Zenwater to health food stores. Last fall, their dog Red Dwarf had suddenly gotten sick and died. The veterinarian said the cause was something Red Dwarf ate or drank. Cluster’s parents went to town and knocked on Mr. Stanley Odum’s door. Nobody except them knew what was said, but the next day Cluster told us some of Odum’s goons showed up to put a fancy water purification system into their spring. (Well, she actually said some “representatives” showed up. At our house, we called those people “Odum’s Goons.”)
While they were at it, the goons brought one for our well too.
“Wasn’t that generous of my old buddy Stan to give us that high falutin’ H2O gadget for free?” said Pa. Like most people in town, he gushed over Stanley Odum like he was some kind of hero when he opened up the Stanley T. Odum Zoo and the Boys of Summer Stadium.
“So generous that he doesn’t want us to get sick off his polluted runoff and sue him,” Jed said.
Those two had a difference of opinion over everything. If Pa said sneakers, Jed said sandals. If Jed said blue, Pa said red. And arguments over Odum could go on for hours.
“Of course Stan doesn’t want us to sue him,” Pa said. “He doesn’t want anyone to sue him, ergo he does the right thing. That’s how the free market is supposed to work. It’s the American way.”
“Yep,” Jed said, “that’s the Corporate States of American way, all right. Put your childhood buddy out of business and then refuse him a job as a lousy janitor in your stinking rich company. Good guy, that Odum.”
Jed was talking about the time Pa went to apply for a maintenance job at ORC and couldn’t get past the front gate because he flunked the employment test. Actually he couldn’t even take the test because it was digital. And Pa wasn’t.
“Teenagers. You think you know it all when you have no idea what you’re talking about. Stan’s not a bad guy. He’d have hired me if he could. It’s not his fault I don’t know how to use all that technocrapola he’s got over there.”
“There is such a thing as retraining, Pa. Education. If your generous benefactor didn’t see fit to provide that for all the schmucks who did things the old-fashioned way before he took over the town, then at least you could get yourself back to school and learn how to function in the world we’re actually living in today.”
With arguments like that overflowing in our little house, I didn’t know what to think about Odum. Good guy, bad guy, which was he?
“Oh, Mr. Odum is neither one nor the other. He’s human. He’s both good and bad.”
I snapped my head toward the voice beside me. Cluster Dogstar in the Rust Bus. Yikes, had I been talking out loud? I thought I was just thinking to myself! Or had Cluster read my mind? I wouldn’t put that past her. I snapped my head the other direction to look for clues on Rico’s face. He had his toe in his mouth.
“So how did the water test turn out?” I asked Cluster.
She shrugged. “They just took a sample. We’ll find out the results later today.”
“Do you think there’s a reason they keep checking? Something they know is wrong?” Jed would think that.
“I really can’t say.”
What was that supposed to mean? Did Cluster not know, or did she know something she wasn’t allowed to tell? I’d have asked her if she didn’t already have one leg out the door. By now we had reached the Mildew School, and the only thing Cluster had on her mind was going online.
The Mildew School was my name for our branch of the Stanley T. Odum Education Center because