Unassigned Territory Read Free

house there was a builder, that God had a plan. Obadiah had for many years considered himself fortunate to have been let in on this—a kind of privilege to which he had been titled by birth. And so, in 1966, when Obadiah graduated from high school and saw that a choice was going to be demanded of him immediately, he opted for the organization’s offer of a ministerial deferment. It really wasn’t that much of a choice. Not only was it expected of him by the people he loved, it was what he had been prepared for. The single ritualistic act of his life had pointed the way.
    That decision was now four years old and Obadiah Wheeler was still home free, still carrying the small white card with the 4-D stamped in one corner, the card Bug House had said some would kill for. And yet somewhere, something had gone wrong. The man he was meant to be was becoming something else and there was more to it than just that revelation which had come to him during the course of a Bible study—the recognition of what looked like a fundamental absurdity in his position. There was something else going on and he would be damned if he could say what it was, only that deep inside, in a core no one saw, tiny gears were failing to mesh, miniature wheels had broken from their stems and run afoul of the wiring. There were times when he felt himself no less a casualty than Bug House. It just that in his case he was not exactly sure what he was a casualty of. There were, he supposed, comparisons. Each had done what was expected. For each it had ended badly. His only real certainty, however, remained the desperate intensity with which he longed for the healing touch. He thought of a woman he had never seen driving toward him through the night and he touched the cool glass before him with his fingertips. The coldness seemed to enter his arm and rush to his chest, its movement cut short by a tapping at the door. When he turned to meet it, however, the room seemed to spin violently around him, allowing the floor to slip from beneath his feet.
    As the tapping continued it became clear to him that Bug House would have to fend for himself. He remembered a certain horror story—Bug House talking about the VA hospital, how when it was bad there and he was freaking they would shoot him full of Thorazine and put him to bed, but the bad things would not go away and it would be the way it is in dreams, when something evil is upon you and you want to run but can’t. But then Bug House was a notorious liar, also an unscrupulous bastard for parting with his medication. A sinister plot began to unravel before Obadiah’s leaded eyes. He watched from the floor, head propped now against the sofa, as Bug House crossed the room. He listened to the soft swish of the Pomona Kimono upon a carpet long gone thin and black with dirt. He heard the muted scraping of old wood and the sharp plastic click of high heels upon linoleum. He was aware of the golden light cast by a single naked bulb as it burned in an empty hall.
    The whore was a large young woman, or so it seemed to Obadiah, certainly as tall as Bug House, who was not small and now scampered after her. She went straight for the phone and began dialing. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “This is Mary. Yes. Well.” She paused and looked around as if taking inventory. “There’s two of them here. I thought it was just one.” Another pause. “Yeah, well, I guess it will be okay.” She looked up and spoke into the room. “I need a driver’s license,” she said. Bug House fumbled with a wallet. “You’re Richard?” she asked. Bug House nodded. Mary read some numbers into the phone and then hung up. She smiled for the first time and crossed her legs.
    Obadiah Wheeler made an attempt at righting himself but quickly saw that this was not possible, that to risk movement would be to risk everything. ’Twas a tangled web young Bug House had spun. “We would both like to get laid,” he heard Bug House say. He was