The Savior of Seattle Read online

  The Savior of Seattle

  A Chosen Different novel

  By Nat Kozinn

  Text copyright © 2017 Nat Kozinn

  All Rights Reserved

  [email protected]

  natkozinn.com

  Credit to:

  Bodie Dykstra Editor

  J Caleb Design Cover

  1

  David bent his knees and placed his hands under the train car. He exhaled out of useless instinct, jerked, and lifted. Or at least he tried. The train car did not jerk or lift. He shifted to put more weight on his back, or on his arms, or on his legs. But it did not matter. He let go and looked out at the assembled crowd of about a hundred or so onlookers. It was an odd mix of children and the elderly. He made eye contact with one cherub-faced boy, who yawned.

  “He doesn’t even look like he’s trying,” a different child complained in the loud whisper of one who hadn’t yet learned to control his voice.

  “That’s just how he looks. Quiet!” the child’s elderly chaperone said.

  David took an unneeded deep breath, rubbed his hands together, and assumed the position for one more shot. Knees bent, back stiff, and with a look of determination that gave the impression that lifting the one-ton conglomeration of Pho-Plastic and wood was merely a matter of will, he tried to lift it once again. The stubborn train car rocked onto its side ever so slightly, creating a tiny moment of hope that elicited optimistic gasps from the crowd. Ten more seconds of lifting without any further upward movement of the train car soon turned even the most half-full-minded members of the audience into pessimists.

  “Rip-off!” one of the few teenage members of the crowd yelled.

  “Have some respect!” an old man yelled in answer.

  David turned and stormed off the stage, accompanied by an equal mix of boos and forced applause.

  A red-faced, middle-aged man in a poorly fitted suit ran up onto the stage and addressed the masses—Mel Unger, the owner of Unger and Sons Appliance Depot.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, it seems that the Savior is experiencing some technical difficulties. There will be a slight delay. Please help yourselves to the complimentary food and beverages located just behind you. The Savior of Seattle will be back soon to dazzle and amaze you with his feats of strength. Stay tuned!” Mel then followed David off stage and into the building to the side.

  Mel walked through a set of double doors and into a warehouse full of shelves and boxes. David Gilbreth sat on a small stool in the corner with his head in his hands. The stool was buckling from the weight of the massive man that sat atop it. David projected no strength despite reaching a standing height of seven feet tall, weighing over four hundred pounds, and generally looking like a hybrid of a tank and a man.

  “Hey there, Savior, you okay?” Mel asked.

  “I’m sorry, Mel. I just couldn’t lift it,” David answered while still looking down at the floor.

  “Hey, us normal humans have days like this, too. Don’t worry about it. Can I get you some water or maybe something to eat? I know when I’m hungry I feel as weak as a kitten. Let’s get some of that fried Manna in you, and soon you’ll be ready to go back out there and juggle that train car.”

  “That won’t work, Mel. I don’t eat.”

  “Oh… Maybe a little power nap will do the trick? I’m sure I can go out there and stall the yokels for a while longer. Hell, maybe I’ll make a few more sales while everyone’s waiting.”

  “You don’t understand. Nothing will work. There’s no way to get my strength back. It only moves in one direction. Nothing I can do will make it so I can lift that train car again. I’m sorry, Mel. I thought I still had it in me.”

  Mel rubbed his chin and said, “I’m not exactly in a position to judge. Twenty of me together couldn’t lift that thing up.”

  “I feel terrible. All those people out there… They were so disappointed. They thought they were going to see the Savior of Seattle. Instead, they got whatever I am now. Those kids…”

  “Hey, life’s full of disappointment. Better they start learning now than live under the delusion that things are any different. Besides, I’m not disappointed. Sales were great. I moved forty-seven radios and twenty-two solar cookers. Not to insult, but that’s the whole point of bringing you out here anyway.”

  “I don’t think I can go back out there. I can’t take seeing the look in their eyes.”

  “That’s fine. Just leave through the side door so nobody will see you. I’ll go out there and tell them you’re feeling under the weather. I’ll offer an extra five percent off and everyone will forget all about it. Let me get you your money,” Mel said and reached into his pocket, pulling out a massive wad of bills.

  “No, I can’t take any money. I wouldn’t feel right. You hired me to do a job and I couldn’t do it.”

  “Are you crazy? What’d I just tell you? I don’t care if you lift the train car or sing to it. I’m not in the entertainment business. I’m in the appliance business. My only concern is moving units. Besides, you were here all morning signing autographs and lifting old ladies up over your head. Do you work for free?”

  “Alright, how about half?”

  “If you insist. I didn’t become successful by paying people more than they ask for, even if they are nuts,” Mel said and counted out bills from his wad. “Here you go. Five hundred dollars. In cash, as usual.”

  “Thanks,” David said as he pocketed the money.

  “Say, I’m not going to get in trouble for whatever tax scheme you’re cooking, am I?”

  “Tax scheme?”

  “You know, the fact that you always get paid in cash even though everybody uses think.Net. It might not be illegal, but it’s definitely a red flag for the IRS. You’re basically screaming income tax evasion.”

  “I don’t have to pay income tax. They passed a law back in the nineties as a thank-you for my service to the nation.”

  “Now how can you ever be depressed when you’ve got something like that? You avoided one of the two certainties of life.”

  “I guess so. Take care, Mel,” David said as he headed toward the door.

  “Hey, Savior, you think we could try again in a few months? I could tear out the inside of the train car. Should shave off a couple hundred pounds and nobody would know the difference.”

  “I don’t know, Mel. Maybe. Let’s talk in a few months. And I’ve told you to call me David,” he said and walked out the door.

  ◆◆◆

  A gray and black goat chewed on a wad of hay, straws falling out of its mouth. Alexis Quinn squatted down low and tried to look into the creature’s soul. She could not find it in the eyes. Alexis did not belong here surrounded by animals. Her dark slacks, white blouse, and pea coat were not appropriate attire for viewing farm livestock.

  “How come he’s an award winner?” Alexis asked. Her hand hovered over a small notebook, ready to write down the answer.

  Alexis’s interviewee was a heavyset woman in worn blue overalls. She seemed a little put off that Alexis could not see her goat’s obvious superiority.

  “There are several factors. He’s got a robust size and weight. His coat is full and has a lovely texture. His buttocks are aligned and well proportioned,” the woman said, her voice full of pride.

  “So he’s like a prime example of what a goat should be?” Alexis asked.

  “Yeah, I guess you could say that,” the goat’s owner answered.

  “That’s great. Thank you,” Alexis said and scribbled down a few words in her notebook.

  Alexis walked away without another word to her interview subject. She put her head down and sped out of the large tent. She went right past a blue-ribbon hog without even giving it the slightest glance. />
  Once outside, she turned and headed around to the side of the tent, away from the crowd, which for some reason had paid for entry into this horrible manure-smelling place. Once safely out of sight, she pulled a metal flask out of her coat, unscrewed the cap, and took a long, full swig—two gulps worth. She grimaced slightly as she swallowed, but that did not deter her from taking just as large of a swig a second later. She put the flask back in her coat and wiped her mouth. She set her sights on a different tent across the way, sighed, and trudged toward her next stop. She nearly walked directly into the path of an oncoming brown cow, but Alexis either didn’t see it or didn’t care.

  There was a banner that read, “Seattle’s Bountiful Harvest.” Alexis let out another heavy sigh before she walked through the open front of the tent. She must have been bursting with oxygen at this point.

  The tent was full of produce. Gourds, squash, corn, tomatoes—she walked by them all, paying no attention no matter how many blue ribbons adorned the vegetables. Despite seemingly to never look at her location, she arrived at her destination: a massive orange pumpkin.

  An older man in blue jeans and a red flannel shirt was talking to a woman and her ten-year-old son.

  “They need water, just like everybody else. Lots of it, too. Then they need good soil. But the real trick is what you feed ’em. See, pumpkins got a favorite food. Do you have a favorite food?” the old man said, oblivious to the fact that the child was a little too old for this treatment.

  “Uhh, fried chicken, I guess,” the boy stammered.

  “Now pumpkins can’t eat fried chicken. What they eat is manure, if you can believe it, and their absolute favorite kind comes from sheep, and I just so happen to raise those, too. That’s why I got happy pumpkins, and happy pumpkins are the biggest pumpkins.”

  “How come everybody doesn’t…” the boy started to say, but he was cut off by Alexis.

  “What awards did the pumpkin win?” she asked, ready to write down his answers.

  “Well, ma’am, this here pumpkin won the blue ribbon for pumpkins, and it also won best in show for squash and came in second overall for produce. Betsy Hammond had herself one hell of a beefsteak tomato this year,” the man answered. Then he turned back to engage the child, but he was already walking off. A future agrarian may have just been snuffed out before he could grow.

  “So it’s a big one then?” Alexis asked, unembarrassed by her complete ignorance.

  “Yes, ma’am. Bubba here weighs in at seventeen pounds. That’s the third biggest we’ve had since the Plagues. You’re probably just a little ruined by old Bertha, but Bubba is still a fine specimen.”

  “Bertha?” Alexis asked.

  “Yeah, old Bertha. The record breaker. You remember her? Six years back, she broke all the records. You were here, I think.”

  “Oh God, I was,” Alexis said and left her mouth agape in horror.

  “Pre-Plagues, post-Plagues, whenever. She was bigger than them all. I don’t know where she came from, but we aren’t going to see another like her again. No, siree. We all just have to appreciate what we’ve got now. Bubba here ain’t nothing to scoff at.”

  “Oh no, of course not. He’s gorgeous. I didn’t mean to offend you, Mr. Bubba. You’re a thrilling pumpkin,” Alexis said with a small curtsy.

  She walked away and straight out of the tent. She went back to her hidden spot and got to work emptying her flask into her belly.

  ◆◆◆

  “This was my eighth year, Harry. Eight years covering that goddamn fair. I swear, if I have to watch another hideously awkward twelve-year-old hold up a rabbit, I’m going to need to be institutionalized,” Alexis said to her editor, Harry Bleau.

  Harry was in his mid-sixties, with stereotypical reading glasses and rolled-up shirt sleeves. He had sweat forming a small pond at the crown of his mostly bald head. A permanent feature for sure.

  Harry’s office was covered in papers, both loose and in piles. Some of it was garbage, some of it was not, but most of it straddled a line between those two, and only Harry could have told the difference and not with one-hundred-percent accuracy. Besides the papers, there were several golden statues atop wooden bases—or there was gold somewhere under a thick layer of dust. The most recent award was for excellence in journalism in 1999: “A Retelling of the Port Riots” by Alexis Quinn.

  “Yeah, well, it shows,” Harry said and shook the paper in his hand. “This reads like it came from an old wire service. Past the third paragraph, it’s basically a box score for produce. It should be on the sports page. Luckily for us, none of our readers will stay awake past the second paragraph, but it’s the principle of the thing.”

  “Hey, I’d have to be J.D. Salinger to make the Seattle Metro Fair exciting. I’m not a freaking magician.”

  “Calm down, calm down. I wasn’t trying to make a joke about your prose; I was making a joke about our readership. The latest numbers are in, and the average age of our reader is now that they’ve been dead for five years.”

  “Ba-da-bump. How long have you been sitting on that one?”

  “What can I say? I’m a natural comedian.”

  “Well, dead or not, can they really enjoy me talking about produce? Even they have to want more, Harry. There has to be more.”

  “Is this where you try to convince me that we should be covering your sanitation scandal/yawner again?”

  “I’m sorry. I guess I thought speaking out against government corruption was our job. If I recall my civics class, there was even a constitutional amendment to protect our sacred duty. That’s right. It was the First Amendment.”

  “Please, Edward R., spare me the speech. Corruption in garbage contracts? My God, stop the presses. Who has ever heard of such a thing?”

  “This isn’t some mobster called Fat Tony. It’s Ultracorps. You know, the big corporation that already does half the jobs in this country and has its sights set on the other half and is willing to stop at nothing to get them. The one there’s riots about every six months or so. I think that might qualify as news.”

  “Not to our readers. That’s a little too controversial for them. Listen, sister, you could have moved on to greener pastures years ago, but you passed on your chance at a job with the think.Net pubs,” Harry said, throwing his hands in the air. What could he do?

  “Yeah, because you begged me to stay and agreed to whatever I wanted as long as it wasn’t getting paid. Like giving me the right to shop around any story you don’t want to print.”

  “Is that supposed to be a threat?” Harry said with a laugh. “You go run it by Obvious Stories weekly and see what they say. I’ll wait. And when you come back I’ll remind you that I begged everyone to stay and you’re the only one who listened. Now, did you spend wisely and carefully plan for your retirement? Because I sure as hell didn’t. And I have about zero skills in any field that isn’t publishing newspapers. We’re horses and buggies, babe, and those Model-Ts just keep rolling out. Let’s just hope they keep putting hay in the stall.”

  “It’s not enough, Harry. I used to lie to myself when I was writing these pieces. Tell myself I was only doing it to pay for the real journalism,” Alexis said and pointed down to the draft of her article. “But I can’t lie anymore. I’m not buying what I’m trying to sell myself. This isn’t some temporary predicament until things turn around. This is it; this is what we do now. We don’t matter. We’re not exposing truths and shining a light on the darkest corners. We’re putting smiles on elderly faces on their way to the grave. It’s killing me inside. There’s got to be something else, Harry.”

  “If you want to do something with that fire, find us some more hay. You get us something fluffy enough, and I might be able to afford a little blurb on one of your light-shining stories. Meanwhile, do me a favor. Double check the page proofs for me. My eyes aren’t what they used to be. I know your eyes aren’t either, but hopefully we’ve gone blind in different spots.”

  Harry tossed a couple of newspaper pages
at Alexis, who picked them up and eyed them lazily until her eyes fixed on the bottom corner of one of the pages. Underneath an advice column discussing how to make your own toothpaste out of baking soda was an advertisement: “Come see the Savior of Seattle this Saturday. He’ll wow you with his strength. We’ll wow you with our prices! Unger and Sons Appliance Depot.”

  “What’s this?” Alexis asked and pointed to the advert.

  “What? We’ve been running that for a couple years now. I guess the Savior comes down and lifts up some crap and that Unger fellow sells some of his junk.”

  “The Savior of Seattle. What about getting him to talk? Think about that. The only problem would be all the heart attacks from our over-excited readers. You don’t get more ‘glory days’ than the Savior.”

  “Yeah, it would be great, and it’d be great if I was six-two, thirty-two, and still had my hair. We went down that road about a hundred times back in the eighties and nineties. The Savior does not do interviews. As in not ever.”

  “Yeah, well, and if you had asked me thirty years ago if he’d be hocking solar cookers for some two-bit appliance store, I’d say that would never happen. As in not ever. But here we are. He’s got to be strapped for cash if he’s humiliating himself like that. That could be an opportunity.”

  “Maybe, but we aren’t exactly flush ourselves. Although an exclusive interview with the Savior of Seattle… Hell, we could end up doing three printings,” Harry said, and a smile grew across his face.

  “See, there you go. Maybe we’ll even make enough that we can afford for me to pretend to still be a journalist—for a day at least. We’ll make back ten times whatever it takes to get him to talk.”

  2

  David walked down the street, a massive cardboard box balanced on his shoulder. The concrete sidewalk was cracked and broken, revealing large chunks of earth like a half-solved jigsaw puzzle. The street was lined with buildings in various levels of decay. Those in the best shape simply needed a new paint job and perhaps some roof repairs. The others had been burnt out or had collapsed in on themselves. The buildings alternated in a depressing mix of the habitable and the condemned. Despite his soul-sucking surroundings, David’s face was plastered with a smile. His mood had taken a complete one-hundred-eighty-degree turn from just a few hours ago at the appliance store.