The Brownie of the Alabaster Mansion: A Short Story Read online

“Hey Booker, hate to call when you’ve just left for vacation, but I just got a jingle from Charles in the hanger. He says a guy came racing up in a 1928 Rolls with two ladies he called his secretaries. The guy told Charles you have given him free reign to take the company’s jet. Wanted to go to L.A. Mumbled something about corporate PR. When Charles asked for proof, the guy pulled out your monogrammed briefcase and claimed you gave him permission to discuss corporate matters on the trip. And he had a suit on . . . and he was driving your 1928 Rolls . . . and he flashed the NDA with the new trucking company . . . had you original signature. So Charles called the pilots and let the guy fly. I wasn’t informed until the plane was airborne. I’m sorry about all this. Call me to confirm, will ya?”

  CFO [Saturday, 7:15 A.M.] – “Listen Booker, just got a call from our institutional bank in New York. There’s apparently been some odd activity on all three of our lines of credit. The LOCs have been drawn down to almost nothing. I have no idea what happened and I assume you may know what is behind it. The Treasury Department got the first call. I’m sorry I’m talking so fast. I know this doesn’t make sense. Hate to call you so early on a Saturday. You got my cell.”

  CLO [Saturday, 7:38 A.M.] – “Booker this is Andrew. We have an employment matter we need to discuss. An EEOC claim to be exact. To be really exact, there are a number of claims. I’ve been getting calls from the heads of HR all morning. It seems—and I don’t know how—that someone has been firing the various CEOs of our subsidiaries. Tarwick Mills. Tarwick Cellulose. Tarwick Paper. All of them. He fired them because they were quote—not his color—end quote. He actually said that. We’re going to be fighting reverse discrimination claims until we get this cleared up. The guy claims to have been acting under full authority. Wouldn’t give a name but the phone lines show he was calling from your house. The man said he was taking over the businesses. This gets even better. The guy who called from your house was speaking like a Beatnik.”

  Deputy Administrator, FAA [Saturday, 7:44 A.M.]— “Mr. Tarwick, my name is John Hatiey and I am Deputy Administrator of the Federal Administration Association. It has come to our attention that the private jet of Tarwick Timber Corporation has been flying low over the county. Buzzing the tallest buildings, if you will. I have checked with my staff and no one is aware of prior clearance. Given the heightened state of alert for terrorism, this gives us cause for concern. I will be following up with a letter on Monday. I regret to inform you that I will be forced to cite your company under FAA regs. The plane must be grounded until our investigation is complete. Good day.”

  VII. The Return

  Sooner than Booker could respond to those heated voice messages left for him (and numerous others) the sport utility pulled up to the gate of the Alabaster Mansion. The iron gate yawned open and the Tarwicks sped up the long driveway. Chelsea and Booker could not believe their eyes.

  A throng of people from all over the county were gathered on the front lawn, shouting in apparent joy and disbelief. At the top of the crowd, near the manse, was their brownie shucking and jiving, throwing handfuls of money to his new best friends.

  People were diving, arms outstretched, for all the money being strewn across the lawn. Young and old. Booker recognized the frenzied people as the laziest of the county; those who cared not to work or to get an education. He recognized some as having been let go from the local factories of Tarwick Timber Corp. for an inability to show up at work on time.

  Fluttering green bills. Twenties. Fifties. Hundred dollar bills. There was no end to the amount of it. Airybus just flashed his big smile as he tossed it all to the wind.

  To Booker’s amazement, none of the poor spoke about how they were going to buy food with the money or heat their homes for the winter. The utter disrespect for his money would not have been so heart wrenching if that had been the case. Instead the rabid people bragged how they were going to buy the latest digital gadget and the biggest chrome rims for their tires.

  “This is our money,” Chelsea was screaming as she dashed to pick it up. Booker was only a few steps away but was unable to hear her over the noise. She then commanded the girls to help out. They thought it was a ton of fun until Jan got her foot stepped on by the thronging mass.

  By this time Booker had fought his way through the crowd of revelers. Airybus saw him coming and dashed for the front doors of the Alabaster Mansion.

  Booker tore after him.

  Inside the brownie skipped up the stairs, two risers at a time, as Booker closed in. The normally staid CEO was yelling obscenities.

  On the second floor Airybus made a right and shot into an oval room. Booker followed and began chasing him around in a circle for a number of revolutions with the brownie calling out, “You’re such a drag, Daddy’O. Just spreadin’ some love and bread to my constituents. A little grease for their palms.”

  “I’ll wring your skinny neck! You hear me? I know it was you and your ugly secretaries who took the corporate jet.”

  “Smooth ride.”

  “You buzzed the town!”

  “It was really the pilots, not me.”

  “And you’re jealous of our wealth, aren’t you? I knew it all along.”

  “My charisma alone demands that I should be the richest in the county.”

  “You will leave this house if I have to throw you out by your funny round ears.”

  A dance move of sorts while going past the door placed the brownie outside the oval room. His dress shoes tapped down the oak stairs and he was back outside in an instant.

  Booker fell as he rounded the corner on the second floor and nearly plunged headlong down the stairs. For a moment he caught a glimpse of brown bottles strewn across the foyer below. He recognized them as beer bottles. He saw kidney-shaped stains of dried liquid and enough scuff marks on the normally shiny wood floor to rival any dance studio. It looked like a frat party had taken place in the mansion.

  Booker hightailed it down the stairs and raced outside after the creature. He took a handful of steps across the front porch when he heard the front door of the manse slam closed. When he turned around he heard the bolt fall into its moorings with a thud.

  He spun to find Airybus peering out a sidelight window. At that moment Booker saw what he had failed to notice in all the commotion of flittering money. Black metal grates had been installed across the windows of the Alabaster Mansion. They were bolted into its flashing, yet decorative (fleur de lys tips). Regardless, they still gave the manse an appearance of sitting in a bad neighborhood.

  As Booker glared through the bars, he saw Airybus holding up a key in one hand. It was a different key than the one on Booker’s ring, which he immediately tried to fit in the keyhole. It was now too big. He realized the locks to the front doors had been changed while the family had been away. He raced around the entire structure, trying his key in the multitude of doors to no avail.

  The Tarwicks had been locked out of the Alabaster Mansion by their brownie. They could not even smash in a window to gain entrance.

  In a beleaguered slump shouldered way he told Chelsea as much upon circling back to the front of the house. The girls were still picking up the last of the money flittering across the front lawn. Booker rounded up the family and led them over to the long garage. Its side door was the only one he had not checked on the grounds.

  The key fit and a twist popped the door open. Airybus had missed this one.

  Booker flicked on the overheads. He gulped long and hard at what he saw . . . or rather what he didn’t see. Only a shiny rubber floor gleamed back at him. The garage had been emptied of his prized antique vehicles.

  He raced over to a bank of electronics taking up part of the west-facing wall. He punched buttons and pulled out a keyboard mounted on a slide rack of the built-in desk. Four computer monitors glowed to life before him. They were connected to the many security cameras (some hidden, some plainly visible by design) that were perched in various nooks and crannies of the manse.

  Booker
reversed the digital video recording to the day they left. Chelsea and the girls huddled behind him in interest. The images on the quartet of monitors moved in unison.

  “Stop. Back up. Right there. Look at the monitor for the back portico.”

  There was a leg, clothed in pinstriped material, climbing in the back window.

  “Airybus!” gushed Jan.

  Booker slapped a palm to his forehead. “We left the back window open after the fire. That’s how he got inside.”

  Later that day the brownie was captured on video in the foyer drinking cheap beer with two friends he must have invited to the Alabaster Mansion. One of them was also a brownie. And although the video was without audio, Booker could tell that the new brownie was a bombastic loudmouth who acted even stupider than he looked. Nonetheless, his arrogance nearly matched that of Airbus’s and as Booker watched in amazement, he reasoned this must be yet another undesirable trait of the creatures.

  There they were, the three of them, sliding down the oaken banister, balancing beer bottles on the opposing newel posts, hopping on one leg in a circle, break dancing, holding two bottles on their heads like devil horns.

  This embarrassing spectacle infuriated Booker to no end. Since his wild partying days when he whooped it up at an Ivy League university with the kids of other