'Well, he lives out there with this woman - she's his common-law wife, I guess -and about ten kids. Man, you talk about sluts ... the dirt on her neck, Gard ... you couldn't wash it off unless you used a jackhammer on it first. I guess he was married before, and ... doesn't matter ... it's just ... I haven't had anyone to talk to ... I mean, they don't talk, not the way a couple of people do, and I keep mixing up the stuff that's not important with the stuff that is - '
Anderson's words had started to come out quicker and quicker, until now they were almost tripping over each other. She's speed-rapping, Gardener thought with some alarm, and pretty soon she's going to start either yelling or crying. He didn't know which he dreaded more and thought again of Ishmael, Ishmael rambling through the streets of Bedford, Massachusetts, stinking more of madness than whale-oil, finally grabbing some unlucky passerby and screaming: Listen! I'm the only fucking one left to tell you and so you better listen, damn you! You better listen if you don't want to be using this harpoon for a fucking suppository! I got a tale to tell, it's about this white fucking whale and YOU'RE GOING TO LISTEN!
He reached across the table and touched her hand. 'You tell it any old way you want to. I'm here and I'm going to listen. We've got time; like you said, it's your day off. So slow down. If I fall asleep you'll know you got too far from the point. Okay?'
Anderson smiled and relaxed visibly. Gardener wanted to ask again what was going on in the woods. More than that, who they were. But it would be best to wait. All bad things come to him who waits, he thought, and after a pause to collect herself, Bobbi went on.
'Chip McCausland's got three or four henhouses, that's all I started to say. For a couple of bucks I was able to get all the egg cartons I wanted ... even a few of the big egg-crate sheets. Those sheets each have ten dozen cradles.'
Anderson laughed cheerfully and added something that brought gooseflesh out on Gardener's skin.
'Haven't used one of those yet, but when I do I guess we'll have enough zap for the whole town of Haven to let go of the CMP tit. With enough left over for Albion and most of Troy, as well.
'So I got the power going here - Jesus, I'm rambling - and I already had the gadget hooked up to the typewriter - and I really did sleep - napped, anyway - and that's about where we came in, isn't it?'
Gardener nodded, still trying to cope with the idea that there might be fact as well as hallucination in Bobbi's casual statement that she could build a ,gadget' which could power three small towns from a source consisting of one hundred and twenty D-cell batteries.
'What the gadget on the typewriter does is...' Anderson frowned. Her head cocked a little, almost as if she were listening to a voice Gardener could not hear. 'It might be easier to show you. Go on over there and roll in a sheet of paper, would you?'
'Okay.' He headed for the door into the living room, then looked back at Anderson. 'Aren't you coming?'
Bobbi smiled. 'I'll stay here,' she said, and then Gardener got it. He got it, and even understood on some mental level where only pure logic was allowed that it might be so - hadn't the immortal Holmes himself said that when you eliminated the impossible, you had to believe whatever was left, no matter how improbable? And there was a new novel sitting in there on the table by what Bobbi sometimes called her word-accordion.
Yeah, except typewriters don't write books by themselves, Gard old buddy. You know what the immortal Holmes probably would say? That the fact that there is a novel sitting next to Bobbi's typewriter, and the added fact that this is a novel you never saw before does not mean it is a new novel. Holmes would say Bobbi wrote that book at some time in the past. Then, while you were gone and Bobbi was losing her marbles, she brought it out and sat it beside the typewriter. She may even believe what she's telling you, but that doesn't make it so.