by Crash Barry

Do not trust Wilbur

“I know he’s gonna fuck me,” the Mad Scientist said, taking another puff off the joint. We were friends again, having reconciled a couple days after the Great Alpaca Escape. Now it was November. Winter was fast approaching. The Mad Scientist was worried his job at Wilbur’s alpaca farm was in jeopardy. “He fucks everyone. And he’s proud of it.”

It was true. Wilbur the Alpaca Farmer didn’t care who he ripped off. He gleefully sold an ocean-soaked Gator to his sister. He smugly short-changed the elderly at yard sales. He stole phone chargers from hired hands. He stiffed the Mad Scientist on several small cash loans during Calais shopping trips. And this from a man allegedly worth over $40 million.

“Back in the spring, he told me this was gonna be a year-round gig,” the Mad Scientist said. “He promised full-time during the summer and part-time during the winter when all I had to do was feed and water ’em a couple times a day.” He puffed again, then handed me the joint. “But the last time I asked, he said he was still trying to figure out what I was gonna be doing.”

He brushed his tangled mess of hair back from his ears, then carefully removed his spectacles. He had altered the third-hand frames, melding them to his thick prescription lenses with duct tape. He wasn’t even supposed to still be wearing glasses. Wilbur had promised to pay for Lasik surgery. That was part of the deal — his only health care benefit for tending the alpacas and being Wilbur’s bitch on a 40-acre saltwater farm.

Wilbur knew a guy who fixed eyes for astronauts, cops and ballplayers. He insisted the fella would be able to repair the Mad Scientist and free him from the millstone of poor vision. Unfortunately, the eye-guy said the Mad Scientist’s goggles were too far gone to be fixed. Since Wilbur wasn’t paying for new glasses, he was stuck with his rickety homemade pair of specs.

“He said he’d let me know about work when he gets back from Florida.” The Mad Scientist shook his head. “Like I have time to wait. I gotta know now! I’ve got bills!”

Actually, he didn’t have many bills. Other than the telephone and electric, he was bill-free. Didn’t pay for water, thanks to the meter bypass he rigged. Wilbur was allegedly gonna pay his property taxes. (A whopping four grand a year, since the Mad Scientist’s sprawling compound was zoned commercial.) He’d long stopped filing federal or state taxes because he owed tens of thousands. Luckily, he owned his home (a gift that was part of a complicated legal settlement), so he had no mortgage. And since he didn’t have wheels, there was no car insurance. His biggest expense, besides thrice-weekly coffee brandy and half-and-half binges, was cigarettes.

“He says to me, ‘Sell some of that weed I gave you.’” The Mad Scientist moaned and pointed at the five-gallon bucket in the corner. We’d both been avoiding it like the plague. It was filled with dried, moldy cannabis. Wilbur had presented the mangy marijuana to the Mad Scientist as a bonus the month before. No one was interested in the shit. The one sucker who purchased a bag was sent back by his wife, demanding a refund. And no matter how jonesing we were, neither one of us cared to dip into the bucket. That was some bad weed.

“I NEED MONEY!”

I already knew the truth. Wilbur intended to ship the alpacas — at great expense and hassle — back to the alpaca consultant’s farm in southern Maine. The pricey, pregnant camelids were far too valuable to entrust to the Mad Scientist’s care during a harsh Eastport winter.

Wilbur had told me his plan a couple weeks before, after he informed me that my temporary job as stable boy was over. He asked me not to tell the Mad Scientist because the beasts wouldn’t be leaving until the end of the month. He feared that if the Mad Scientist knew there’d be no work this winter he’d go nuts and kill and eat the herd. And he was probably right.

So I kept the secret. “Maybe you should have another plan,” I told my pal. “Just in case.”

“Oh, don’t you worry,” the Mad Scientist haughtily replied. “I’ve always got a plan. You know how the auditorium is falling down?”

Most of his hundred-room house was on the verge of collapse, but the auditorium — the size of a high school gym — was especially decrepit. The year before, using a configuration of scaffolding, shopping carts, hydraulic jacks, blocks, tackles, shackles, rope, cable, chain and huge steel pry bars, we tried to erect a 20-foot-tall spruce tree as an ersatz column. The tree was still there, leaning at a 45 degree angle, providing no support whatsoever to the auditorium’s sagging roof.

“Yeah…”

“Well, I’m gonna rip up all that hardwood flooring and sell it. I know I can get two or three bucks a square foot. Rich folk from away are always looking for antique floors. I’ve got almost 3,000 square feet of premium, clear red oak. Gotta be worth ten grand!” He was getting excited. “And with the price of steel going up — those I-beams that hold up that end of the building are 35 feet long. I’ve got eight of ’em. Worth a fortune. Someone would pay top bucks for that steel. And you’ve seen how many light fixtures I’ve got.” He paused for a second. “Whaddya call ’em? Schoolhouse lamps. Gotta be worth 50 bucks each. And I got a hundred of ’em.”

He grinned wildly. I didn’t want to bust his bubble, but how the hell was he gonna get 50 dollars per light while living in a crumbling manse, car-less, all the way Down East, without the Internet or any contacts in the antiques business?

“By the way,” he said. “I keep meaning to ask. What’s the deal with the guy who wanted my sculpture? Wasn’t he gonna buy it as a Christmas gift for his wife?”

I re-lit and puffed the ganja. There was no “guy” interested in what we called his “sculpture.” The piece was the crotch of an old tree. Inverted, it resembled a rugged pair of female legs. He’d noticed it because the crotch looked vaguely labial. Upon my suggestion, he wired the piece as a lamp, to make it functional. I’d placed it in a storefront window in downtown Eastport as part of a Dadaist art installation. Once, in passing, I mentioned that a couple of people had commented on the lamp. They liked it, I’d said, which was true. But that’s all I’d ever said.

“Is he gonna buy it? ’Cuz we can come down a hundred bucks to make a deal.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. The price tag had been $500. “I wouldn’t count on it. But ripping up those floors, that seems like a good idea.”

“Yeah, I know.” He took the joint back. “You wanna help? Me and Giant could use a hand, de-nailing, ’cuz I think I can sell the nails, too. Ten bucks an hour.”

“Really? That sounds alright.”

“I’ll pay you after I sell the floors.”

“Okay,” I said, even though my gut screamed the opposite. I’d give him a day or two. That’s all. “Let me know when.”

“Fuck.” He sighed. “I never should have trusted that bastard.”

Crash Barry will sign and read from his novel, Sex, Drugs and Blueberries, and his latest book, Tough Island: True Stories From Matinicus, Maine, on Fri., Nov. 18, at Gulf of Maine Books, 134 Maine St., Brunswick, at 7 p.m.