The Wooden Sea Read Online Free PDF
Author: Jonathan Carroll
Vertue the last two days. When I was finished he asked only about the feather and the bone. He wanted to see them. I handed them up. He leaned over the edge of the roof to get them and, stumbling, almost fell off.
"Goddamn, George! Why do you make life so difficult? Why don't you just come down for ten minutes? Then you can climb back up there and be an antenna for the rest of the day."
He shook his head. After settling himself into a comfy position, he touched the bone to his tongue. If I hadn't known him I would have protested, but my friend had his own way of doing things. If you were going to hang around with him you had to accept that. After a few licks, he delicately bit it with his front teeth but not enough to break it. Standing below, I could hear the high click of his teeth against it. Sort of like castanets. I got a shiver down my spine at the thought of putting that nasty thing in my mouth.
"What does it taste like?"
"I don't know if it's really bone, Frannie. It's very _sweet."_
"It's been _lying in the ground, _George! Probably soaked up a lot of--" I stopped when I saw he wasn't listening. No matter what you were saying, if George wasn't interested he stopped listening. It was a never-ending lesson in both humility and careful word choice.
Page 19
Next came the feather. That piece of evidence he smelled a long time but gave it only a glancing swipe with his tongue. That was somehow more revolting than the bone, and I looked away. I noticed Chuck had stopped licking his plumbing and joined me in staring up at his master.
"You lick your nuts and George licks feathers. No wonder you two live together." I picked him up and kissed his head while waiting for the lab report from the roof.
George pointed the feather at me. "This has a great deal to do with what I was thinking about before you arrived."
"And what was that, pray tell?"
"Conspiracy theories."
"You're on the roof being an antenna and thinking about conspiracy theories?"
He ignored me. "On the Internet there are over ten thousand sites devoted to the different secret plots people believe led to the death of Lady Diana. The essential motivation behind all conspiracy theories is egotism--I am not being told the truth. The same thing applies here, Frannie. You're a policeman;
you're used to logic. But there is none here, at least not so far. You're not being told the truth.
Are you more upset at the dog's reappearance or the simple fact it happened in your trunk and not someone else's?"
"I hadn't thought about that."
"There are two ways of approaching this--as mischief or metaphysics.
The first is simple: Someone saw you burying the dog and decided to play a trick. When you left the forest they dug up the body and found a way to put it in your trunk when neither you nor your family were watching."
"What about the bone? I left that in my coat pocket. How'd they get it?"
He held up an index finger. "Wait. We're only theorizing now. They used the body to play a macabre clever trick on you. Which worked because look how upset you are.
"The _other _possibility is it's a sign from a greater power. It happened because you've been chosen for some reason. The dog reappears, the feather and the bone are together, and your car starts when it was supposedly broken. I'm assuming if this is the case, it wouldn't start for Magda because the dog was already back in the car, waiting for you to find it. All this is supposition; there will be no understandable logic here because our logic doesn't apply in matters like these.
Wait a minute." He moved to the far side of the roof and climbed down an old wooden ladder leaning against the house.
He came over to us and tickled the dog's nose with the feather. Chuck tried halfheartedly to bite it. "I want to show you something inside the house. But before that, I've got an idea I'd like to try. What would you say to burying
Old Vertue again, in my backyard this time?"
Page 20
"Why?"
"Because
"Goddamn, George! Why do you make life so difficult? Why don't you just come down for ten minutes? Then you can climb back up there and be an antenna for the rest of the day."
He shook his head. After settling himself into a comfy position, he touched the bone to his tongue. If I hadn't known him I would have protested, but my friend had his own way of doing things. If you were going to hang around with him you had to accept that. After a few licks, he delicately bit it with his front teeth but not enough to break it. Standing below, I could hear the high click of his teeth against it. Sort of like castanets. I got a shiver down my spine at the thought of putting that nasty thing in my mouth.
"What does it taste like?"
"I don't know if it's really bone, Frannie. It's very _sweet."_
"It's been _lying in the ground, _George! Probably soaked up a lot of--" I stopped when I saw he wasn't listening. No matter what you were saying, if George wasn't interested he stopped listening. It was a never-ending lesson in both humility and careful word choice.
Page 19
Next came the feather. That piece of evidence he smelled a long time but gave it only a glancing swipe with his tongue. That was somehow more revolting than the bone, and I looked away. I noticed Chuck had stopped licking his plumbing and joined me in staring up at his master.
"You lick your nuts and George licks feathers. No wonder you two live together." I picked him up and kissed his head while waiting for the lab report from the roof.
George pointed the feather at me. "This has a great deal to do with what I was thinking about before you arrived."
"And what was that, pray tell?"
"Conspiracy theories."
"You're on the roof being an antenna and thinking about conspiracy theories?"
He ignored me. "On the Internet there are over ten thousand sites devoted to the different secret plots people believe led to the death of Lady Diana. The essential motivation behind all conspiracy theories is egotism--I am not being told the truth. The same thing applies here, Frannie. You're a policeman;
you're used to logic. But there is none here, at least not so far. You're not being told the truth.
Are you more upset at the dog's reappearance or the simple fact it happened in your trunk and not someone else's?"
"I hadn't thought about that."
"There are two ways of approaching this--as mischief or metaphysics.
The first is simple: Someone saw you burying the dog and decided to play a trick. When you left the forest they dug up the body and found a way to put it in your trunk when neither you nor your family were watching."
"What about the bone? I left that in my coat pocket. How'd they get it?"
He held up an index finger. "Wait. We're only theorizing now. They used the body to play a macabre clever trick on you. Which worked because look how upset you are.
"The _other _possibility is it's a sign from a greater power. It happened because you've been chosen for some reason. The dog reappears, the feather and the bone are together, and your car starts when it was supposedly broken. I'm assuming if this is the case, it wouldn't start for Magda because the dog was already back in the car, waiting for you to find it. All this is supposition; there will be no understandable logic here because our logic doesn't apply in matters like these.
Wait a minute." He moved to the far side of the roof and climbed down an old wooden ladder leaning against the house.
He came over to us and tickled the dog's nose with the feather. Chuck tried halfheartedly to bite it. "I want to show you something inside the house. But before that, I've got an idea I'd like to try. What would you say to burying
Old Vertue again, in my backyard this time?"
Page 20
"Why?"
"Because
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