The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp (Alfred Kropp #1)(4)

“Do you know what that is?” Uncle Farrell asked. “That’s where I work, Alfred, Samson Towers. Thirty-three stories high and three city blocks wide. Take a good look at it, Alfred.”

“Uncle Farrell, I’ve seen big buildings before.”

He didn’t say anything. There was an angry expression on his thin face. Uncle Farrell was forty and as small and scrawny as I was big and meaty, though he had a large head like me. When he put on his security guard uniform, he reminded me of Barney Fife from that old Andy Griffith Show, or rather of a Pez dispenser of Barney Fife, because of the oversized head and skinny body. It made me feel guilty thinking of him as a goofy screwup like Barney Fife, but I couldn’t help it. He even had those wet, flappy lips like Barney.

He pulled into the entrance of the underground parking lot and slid a plastic card into a machine. The gate opened and he drove slowly into the nearly empty lot.

“Who owns Samson Towers, Alfred?” he asked.

“A guy named Samson?” I guessed.

“A guy named Bernard Samson,” he said. “You don’t know anything about him, but let me tell you. Bernard Samson is a self-made millionaire many times over, Alfred. Came to Knoxville at the age of sixteen with nothing in his pockets and now he’s one of the richest men in America. You want to know how he got there?”

“He invented the iPod?”

“He worked hard, Alfred. Hard work and something you are sorely lacking in: fortitude, guts, vision, passion. Because let me tell you something, the world doesn’t belong to the smartest or the most talented. There are plenty of smart, talented losers in this world. You wanna know who the world belongs to, Alfred?”

“Microsoft?”

“That’s it, smarty-pants, make jokes. No. The world belongs to people who don’t give up. Who get knocked down and keep coming back for more.”

“Okay, Uncle Farrell,” I said. “I get your point. But what about the future?”

“That’s right,” he said. “The future! Come on, Alfred. You won’t find the future in this garage.”

We took the elevator to the lobby. Uncle Farrell led me to his horseshoe-shaped desk that faced the two-story atrium. About halfway between the security desk and the front doors was a waterfall that fell over these huge rocks that Uncle Farrell told me had been hauled down at great expense from the Pigeon River in the Smokies.

“Funny thing about life is you never know where it’s going to take you,” Uncle Farrell told me. “I’m working at the auto body shop when in strolls Bernard Samson. He strikes up a conversation, and next thing I know here I am making double what I pulled in at the shop. And for sitting—for nothing! Double for nothing, just because the richest man in Knoxville decides to give me a job!”

Mounted on the desktop were dozens of closed-circuit monitors set up to survey every nook and cranny of Samson Towers.

“This system is state-of-the-art, Alfred. I mean, this place is tighter than Fort Knox. Laser sensors, sound detectors, you name it.”

“That’s pretty cool, Uncle Farrell.”

“Pretty cool,” he echoed. “You betcha. And this is where I sit, eight hours a day, six nights a week, in front of these monitors, staring. Watching. What do you think I’m watching, Alfred?”

“Didn’t you just say you were watching the monitors?”

“I am watching nothing, Alfred. Eight hours a day, six nights a week, I sit in this little chair right here, watching nothing.”

He leaned very close to me, so close, I could smell his breath, which did not smell very good.

“This is the future, Alfred. Your future, or something like it, if you don’t find your passion. If you don’t figure out what you’re here for. A lifetime of watching nothing.”

3

I studied hard for my driver’s test, but I flunked it. So I took it a second time and flunked again, but I didn’t miss as many questions, so at least I was improving as a failure. Uncle Farrell pointed to my scores as proof I lacked the guts to achieve even something as simple as a learner’s permit.

Things were not much better at school. Barry Lancaster’s wrist was still badly sprained, which meant he was now a bench player just like me. Barry wasn’t happy about this. He went around telling everybody how he was going to “get Kropp,” so I spent my days looking over my shoulder, waiting for the getting to start. I became jumpy; every loud noise, like the slamming of a locker door, was enough to make me nearly wet my pants.

One afternoon in early spring, I came home to find Uncle Farrell already out of bed.

“What is it?” I asked.

“What’s what?”

“Why are you out of bed?”

“Aren’t you the king of Twenty Questions.”

“That was only two questions, Uncle Farrell, and they were kind of related, so that probably would only count as one and a half.”

“You know, Alfred, people who think they’re funny rarely really are.”

“I don’t think I’m funny. I think I’m too tall, too fat, too slow, and too much of a screwup, but I don’t think I’m funny. Why are you out of bed, Uncle Farrell?”

“We have company coming,” he said, wetting his big lips.

“We do?” We never had anyone over. “Who’s coming?”