Forever Odd

suggested to him that Carol had cheated on him.”
        “So every time he looks at Danny…” The chief didn’t need to finish the thought. “The boy’s a wise-ass, but I’ve always liked him.”
        Descending toward the west, the moon had yellowed. Soon it might be orange, a jack-o‘-lantern out of season.

----

    SEVEN
        
        EVEN STREET LAMPS WITH TIME-OCHERED GLASS, EVEN moonlight failed to smooth a layer of romance over the crumbling stucco, the warped clapboard, and the peeling paint of the houses in Camp’s End. A porch roof swagged. A zigzag of tape bandaged a wound in window glass.
        While I waited for inspiration, Chief Porter cruised the streets as if conducting a standard patrol.
        “Since you’ve not been working at the Grille, how do you fill the hours these days?”
        “I read quite a bit.”
        “Books are a blessing.”
        “And I think a lot more than I used to.”
        “I wouldn’t recommend thinking too much.”
        “I don’t carry it so far as brooding.”
        “Even pondering is sometimes too far.”
        Next door to an unweeded lawn lay a dead lawn, which itself lay next door to a lawn in which grass had long ago been replaced by pea gravel.
        Skilled landscapers had rarely touched the trees in this neighborhood. What had not been permanently misshapen by bad pruning had instead been allowed to grow unchecked.
        “I wish I could believe in reincarnation,” I said.
        “Not me. Once down the track is enough of a test. Pass me or fail me, Dear Lord, but don’t make me go through high school again.”
        I said, “If there’s something we want so bad in this life but we can’t have it, maybe we could get it the next time around.”
        “Or maybe not getting it, accepting less without bitterness, and being grateful for what we have is a part of what we’re here to learn.”
        “You once told me that we’re here to eat all the good Mexican food we can,” I reminded him, “and when we’ve had our fill, it’s time to move on.”
        “I don’t recollect being taught that in Sunday school,” Chief Porter said. “So it’s possible I’d consumed two or three bottles of Negra Modelo before that theological insight occurred to me.”
        “It would be hard to accept a life here in Camp’s End without some bitterness,” I said.
        Pico Mundo is a prosperous town. But no degree of prosperity can be sufficient to eliminate all misfortune, and sloth is impervious to opportunity.
        Where an owner showed pride in his home, the fresh paint, the upright picket fence, the well-barbered shrubs only emphasized the debris, decay, and dilapidation that characterized the surrounding properties. Each island of order did not offer hope of a community-wide transformation, but instead seemed to be a dike that could not long hold back an inevitably rising tide of chaos.
        These mean streets made me uneasy, but though we cruised them for some time, I didn’t feel that we were close to Danny and Simon.
        At my suggestion, we headed for a more welcoming neighborhood, and the chief said, “There’s worse lives than those in Camp’s End. Some are even content here. Probably some Camp Enders could teach us a thing or two about happiness.”
        “I’m happy,” I assured him.
        For a block or so, he didn’t say anything. Then: “You’re at peace, son. There’s a big difference.”
        “Which would be what?”
        “If you’re still, and if you don’t hope too much, peace will come to you. It’s a grace. But you have to choose happiness.”
        “It’s that easy, is it? Just choose?”
        “Making the decision to choose isn’t always easy.”
        I said, “This sounds like you’ve been thinking too much.”
        “We sometimes take refuge in misery, a strange kind of comfort.”
        Although he paused, I said nothing.
        He continued: “But no matter what happens in life, happiness is there for us, waiting to be embraced.”
        “Sir, did this come to you after three bottles of Negra Modelo, or was it four?”
        “It must have been three. I never drink as many as four.”
        By the time we were circling through the heart of town, I had decided that for whatever reason, psychic magnetism wasn’t working. Maybe I needed to be driving. Maybe the shock from the Taser had temporarily shorted my psychic circuits.
        Or maybe Danny was