CHAPTER TWO

THE GREYHOUSE

This short introduction to American Letters must have a setting, a base of operations for the tales to come. And that would be a place that has been in my family for decades. Built by my Grandfather in the late 1960's, it is a mansion of many rooms, and for many long years now, most of them have been empty, except for the haunting memories that remain. It was a treeless vista when it was built. The land was ancient, as all land is ancient, but the old growth forest of centuries had been cleared away to make a farmer's field sometime before the Civil War had come and for decades that is what the land remained, giving up it's bounty when the seeds of Farmer Ferguson were plopped into the ground and waited on rain and sun to finish the work of seed and man. Farmer Ferguson died so long ago that his story has long now been but fable and as the 20^th century put distance between his antebellum empire and the modern world, his farm eventually became just one small house and an acre of land on a dirt road not two miles from where this house now stands. Many men own the land now that once was owned in total by Farmer Ferguson, but his heirs have cash reserves to show for the sale of all that. The present generation of Lord Ferguson is a lawyer of some kind, very modest in his success and comfortable to sit, modestly, on the land his great-great-great-grandfather once lorded over.

After my own cash reserves were manifested the first thing I changed about the place was the installation of a fine, black porcelin urinal in the bathroom. Had always wanted one and why they don't install them in personal homes is beyond reason to me. That, and I put in the backyard a spacious cinder-block shed with a concrete floor for the storage of lawnmowers and weed-eaters and such, as I remain a firm believer that a man who manicures his own place will keep a proper humble quality to his thinking. The old shed had outworn itself and was crumbling away. There is nothing so humbling as a man coming to the manor and inquiring of the gardener if the lord of that manor is about and it being the gardener. Arrogance is a quality that success breeds naturally and when one is neck-deep in success if he wishes to keep his head he had better find a way to keep perspective on the matter. I use, among other methods, dirt and grass clippings and lawnmowers to achieve that desired effect. It has worked wonders. Besides, it is good excercise.

There are trees now. Many of them. Silver Leaf Maples and Ashes and Live Oaks and Bradford Pears. I had them planted in the spring and summer of '95 and now they have overtaken the stars and one must find the hole in the leaves, atleast in the warm months, to view the heavens. The English Ivy I set on the north front of the home long ago made it's way across the entire face of it and for working on two decades now has been a breeding ground for the amicable and happy English Ivy Beetle, which lives only in English Ivy and brings joy and wealth to the occupants therein. The rose bushes, white and red, that my Mother planted in the early 1980's still bloom every spring and that is thirty years now of Mother's love, hanging and twining itself on the fence. Mother is gone, but her roses remain. There is a beauty to that that needs no poet's description. The rose blooms that have dropped over all the years have made the earth around the bushes something sacred, I am quite sure of it. The manse had been many colors over the years but in the middle 1980's it finally settled on the one color it liked the best: grey. And by the summer of 1990 'The Greyhouse' it had come to officially be called. There is a mailbox with a great stone lion on top by the road and he has been nicknamed "Leo the Lucky" since he arrived on American shores from France; Grandfather had made a trip to that fine country in '68 and brought Leo back with him, calling him 'The Lucky' when he had been dropped in both loading and unloading, but neither paw nor mane broken.

The cash that had been my Grandfather's decent, though small, fortune, seemed to disappear, for the most part, the day he died. My Father did not live long enough, nor did he ever have the ambition for it, to make any of his own besides what he required for a decent and proper living. And so I grew up poor and by my 19^th year, was as indigent as any church mouse, and not the rich church of the Modern-day American South, but the poor church's of the ancient world, when the christians were pulled apart and burnt at stakes for their odd beliefs. I would build back the family fortune, I did not know how, but I would do it. I set to work, thinking and thinking, day and night, for year upon year, before I ever set foot into the thought that would eventually be the reworking of fortune. In the time being, I was beset upon by all manner of poverty and struggle and pain. I was a young man bereft of all, and hell-bent with ambition to correct all things that had gone left and turn the world, or at least my side of it, back to right....

CHAPTER ONE; DISCLAIMERS

CHAPTER ONE

SOME DISCLAIMERS

I have successfully kept the knowledge of my great wealth and power from all persons. A grand social experiment to learn the truth of men, of women, of brother and sister and best friend; of lover and would-be lover; of mother and father and the men-about-town and the bouldevardiers and the dandys and the fops; those bimbos of both genders whose most vexing question is what hair-care products to use that day and have fits when their four-season-tan begins to fade. One dresses in the muscle-shirt and the other in bikini. Of the typical arrogant, what shall we say of them? Nothing. And everything. They are the mass and the herd and the common. Look around you, they are nearly all comprised of a class of society called 'The Typical'. There is no form to fill out, unless it be the Birth Certificate, nor is there a certain amount of cash to be earned or held in one's name, nor any special schooling required; in fact, as many of society's arrogant come from the most poor as do the most rich. What is this arrogance? It is filler. It fills the hole in their soul the only way they know how to fill it. In the end, I feel a human compassion for them, as they walk by with their nose in the air past the light-filled beings they imagine they are better than. It is free entertainment and given without need of ticket nor invite. The ignorant of all ages and all worlds are such as these. They have ever been such and ever will be- donkeys and jack-asses- all.What I have learned is humbling, as I am among the human race; and exalting, as I am not so much, after all, like the lot of them. It was an easy matter to keep this fact a secret, as during most of that time I was, in fact, very poor. BUT... I knew all along what it was I was traveling to, and when I finally found what it was, it still took years more to engineer the final play that would make me, literally overnight, go from a negative financial worth to a billion-dollar status. That is correct: I made a billion dollars in the span of a few hours, that is if one subtracts the previous years of engineering work put into it. No other fortune was ever made so quickly, once The Plan had been put into operation. If there were a Guinness Book of World Records record for such a thing, it would head the list.

My fortune, if I may say so, at your permission and pardon, is a thing of poetry, and my own sense of great power, which to me is nothing more than appreciation, comes and came in the creation of it. It took me, from the beginning of study to the day of pay-off, twelve years of unremitting- burning the candle at both ends- toil, to create my means of empire; I was without mercy in my creation of it and there was no end to my ambition for power, and not typical power, that which is over other men, but the power that comes from pulling out of oneself the very kernel of one's being, the very meaning of one's greatest dream. What is it that you are here for? What is the one question you believe your life was meant to answer? Surely there is not but one, but it helps to imagine but one, to be done with the many questions that would pop up. Many times I failed and just as many times I went back to the drawing board to come up with that one thing that would be truly incredible and worthy of historical accolade and immortality, like Croesus and Alexander and Caesar. It is the destiny of man to do great things, it is our birthright and responsibility, and against all impossible circumstance, I would make my mark, I would stand my ground, I would create my world. As I built my empire I stayed the same as I had always, I had no need for show and ostentation. My own inner world was enough for me. And as my fortune and empire grew I kept the knowledge of fortune and empire a secret from all. They all believed I was still poor! As I said, it has been the art and trade of bootlegging I have employed myself in. There are no taxes nor records of any of that. The joke was all on them, old sport. There is something quite special about the fact of hidden knowledge when one stares, unblinking, into the face of bigotry based on the economic status of an individual; such is the most popular way that men, when they grow up, bully their fellow men and having more money than God hid away like an invisible mountain it has been like holding a sledge-hammer hid within my hand as the bully sauntered up, a sarcastic smile upon his face. He never imagines correct his fate, until too late. We all enjoy surprise parties, but the best joy, as the spiritual say, is always in the giving....

I keep my cash stashed away in a vault. Underground. Beneath a very large and heavy building. I work at the very top of said building, twenty-eight stories from the ground, so that I can view both man and star from a vantage point someplace between, for perspective and for enjoyment. Man and Star... They are more connected, and yet as far away from each other, as any other two things in the universe. There are many business offices and people between myself and my cash, within that 28-story building. None know the truth of me or that cash except for half a dozen, and they are sworn to secrecy on pain of death... No, just kidding. I would only stash them away with the cash if they ever told, and would feed them bread crumbs and forgetting potions. As for the rest of them, they never think of me much at all, probably; and if they do, see me as just a junior partner to the secretive, very old and obscure eccentric who owns the penthouse at the top and whom few have ever seen. I am not really that old, perhaps eccentric, as that is so much more enjoyable to be than regular and boring. You can keep your status quo, I think I'd rather be an agent of change and something always different. I have a running bet with at least a hundred persons as to who will be the first to meet this rich and secretive recluse. Perhaps someday I will hire an old, wrinkled man to dress up as him and collect my easy money. I tell them that even I have never seen him. He keeps to himself within a stately, well-barricaded office and gives orders through intermediaries.

So these are tales of love and power, of poetry and the hours, within which a man had to make his life. I think that love, like life, is it's own reward and a personal matter entirely. Most- when the object they purport to love, flies away, perhaps not in the kindest of ways- they then become antithetical to the very idea of that once loved thing's existence; much also like when their life becomes un-like the thing they first envisioned it, they become antithetical to it also.That is the common way. I have always shunned the common in my own personal deportment. It is, after all, so very common.... All that I have ever loved is yet within me and this gift of existence is a power I never take for granted, though at times, have become tired of. But I have always tried never to give up two days in a row. As for old loves, even if some of them seemed to be among the worst possible scenarios my life could ever drum up, I had loved them all truly and I remain the same concerning them today. So I would like to tell the tale, of things gone bad and things gone well; of how it is that life becomes, nothing more or less than a book-keeper's sums; with your permission, of course. We are all headed for the ledger book. I suppose since I am here and able to tell it, it is mostly a tale of things gone well. If we are here today at all, we are all living within our very own great and immortal success.... Yes, you can too, have your own great, immortal success. Claim it now, for you have it now. The universe, after all, is a big place, and it's imagination for expansion is without limit. If we were all to succeed greatly, then there would be, not too little here, but too much. Too many men do not understand this.

The Autobiography of Andromicus Crispus Braithwaite

Andromicus the Great

and his

Fabulous tales

of heroic

gallantry

and daring do

The Autobiography

A memoir of undiluted greatness

and unprecedented struggle

evolving towards

world-wide success

and immortality;

or,

HOW HE MADE A BILLION DOLLARS BOOTLEGGING

by

Andromicus Crispus Braithwaite

PENNED WITH THE INVALUABLE ASSISTANCE OF

Christopher Forest Mills

Director of Black Ops at the Dashavoo Co.

FOR FORTY YEARS...

I walked in the darkness of a great wood. It was not because I liked the darkness that I did that, but because I had business to conduct with the stars. For forty years I walked alone, not because I was without friend, but because there were none who would walk with me where I had decided to go. For forty years I walked in secret and in quietus and in wonder. They did not know that I was wonder-filled and searching for secrets. They only knew that I was different and difficult. It was not that I was different and difficult- it was that I was preoccupied. Regular men, who do not seek for secrets, cannot know them and thus, the secret-seeker cannot be bothered by them. I had come into possession of a great fortune at a relatively young age, and I kept the fortune secret. The fortune grew in the world as I grew in it. During this same time it appeared to blind, bigoted eyes that I grew poorer and poorer. It was like smoke and mirrors, a true and cosmic magic trick. And now the disclosing of fortune and secrets is ready....

Published by

The Moving Map

Motion Picture @ Book Company

Publishers since 2011

A Subsidiary of the

Dashavoo Hovercar Flight Company

Est. 1996

Text copyright 2011

First Blog-Book Edition, April 2011

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be

aware that it was reported as 'flimflammed and bamboozled'.

All rights reserved

Synopsis:

The world-renowned inventor of the Dashavoo

Hovercraft recounts his rise from poverty to the

Planets most powerful hovercraft car company;

In fact, the planet's ONLY Hovercraft car Company....

For:

All those who ever made me think or feel...

Something new.

PREFACE

WHAT IS THE TALE OF A.C. BRAITHWAITE?

It is satire and anomaly, parable and poetry. It is short story, long story, my story, pre-story and his story and even more than that, YOUR story. It is funny and sad, it is sunny and mad. It is the tale of genius in a world where there is little of it; it is a tale of profit and of gain, of loss and of pain; it is essentially a tale of truth and of power, and of the candle-lit hour, when a young man decided, against all comers and takers, to live his life as he saw it, and give no thought to the makers, of all that will be forgot, of all that is besot, with the pride of man, and their arrogant lot. It is the beginning of a tale that will be told by many well, long after detractors have been hid, have been slid, in a well- and covered with lids- where the water is gone, and their beings alone, with their rumor and lie, to rot and to be rent, back into nothing well-spent. It is a tale to be told- a tale of bright things and bold- and will be told with a sigh, and a tip of the hat, and with this and with that. It is, to be frank, fiction that is blank, of lies. It is fiction, truthfully told, fiction bright and bold, fiction that is based in truth, and the lie of it is hid in the light of the author's candle, which he shews for you, and hopes your eyes are pleased and your mind not socially diseased, against some thought or truth unlike your own. What is lie and what is truth? Well, forsooth, any idiot can see, that that is plain and free- which is which.... But I am no snitch, figure it out for yourself.

A SHORT PROLOGUE FOR MILADIES AND MY LORDS

Andromicus Crispus Braithwaite. It is one-third Roman-Latin, one-third Grecian, and one-third British, which is interesting in that there are no Greeks or Romans that I know of in my family, we are all Irish on Father's side and there is Cherokee Indian and a European, mostly British lineage, on Mother's side. But Mother had imagined herself a gypsy in her youth- at least some part of it- and the Grecian, Roman and Britannic world ignited her imagination, so she set a world conquering name on me, or one she imagined sounded such. I later asked her if she had meant the Andromicus to be rather 'Andronicus', as Shakespeare wrote it, and she replied she had never heard of Shakespeare or Andronicus.... She knew The Shakespeare Corpus well, of course; having been a peruser of poesy herself, it was merely her way of stating her name for her son had been her own invention, and that not all great names must be given birth by the great poets, that even the forgotten and obscure have had something to say and have said it well. Mother had great ambition for me, said I was born under great stars and was destined to do great things. So Mother played at being a gypsy, and then became domesticated by my Father and her children, and then Father became a gypsy, and died that way some years later. But the story of that is to jump too far ahead too early, and I wish not to spin the brains of my readers until it is a proper time for it. You know what I mean, Jack?

I am very busy these days with business and have employed another writer of prose to help me with this burden of composition- a man whom I have known for nearly one calendar year now. He has, quite in fact, become my fast friend, confidante and fellow boulevardier for these past 11 months and some days that we have shared stories, bread and time on the disclosing of. I scoured the North American continent looking for the perfect fit for this job and though I interviewed some of our great country's most famous and well-heeled writers, none had the... je ne sais quoi, shall I say, that the job required; or to put it perhaps as the Greeks could have, that X-factor. I think writers are fine fellows, all in all, but most lack a sense of proper perspective. Too much wringing of hands and hands-behind-backs and second-guessing and all in all just an over-seriousness I find disturbing. No, I needed a man with skill at the pen and knowledge of men, and of himself. A man of the world as well of himself, secure wherever he goes. Like me. A man who could drink and laugh and live while working. "No great work is done without enthusiasm," said the great Bostonian, and that is what I was after. Fun and work. After all, this prospective cohort in the literary pursuit of my life would be spending a fair amount of time with yours truly and so the energy had to flow. The man who introduced us told me, "A.C. This fellow is the guy you are looking for. He can write in four dimensions. Wait and see and later on you can tell me I told you so." So I met the man and found him to be just my kind of gentleman, and quite a fun guy to have around. He knows me best now, as I have told him more about myself since our meeting than I had ever told myself, and so I am sure of a great and resounding success- with my stories and his words- we simply cannot go wrong in our endeavors; Heaven will not allow it and Hell would shy from the attempt.

Our method has been a simple one: he arrived at my office no later than 5:30am five days a week, at least for the first five days he did. By the second week he had missed the first 5:30 appointment and by Tuesday had missed the second one. I was in a quandary. Punctuality is a strong suit of mine and here this guy was late by two days.... But by this point I knew he was the man for the job, so we made arrangements more to his liking. He came in when he felt like it. And so I dictated to him, at his whim and pleasure, the essentials of the story and as I spoke and the recorder recorded, he wrote his thoughts and marginalia upon whatever form of paper or parchment he had at the time. He then took that work home and addendum'ed his own ideas to it and then we both sat, over cigars and brandy and dark German beer, and polished the final draft. After all that, a labor all told, of decades in the making and one full year in the shaping, I hope it now will be a usable read, and I pray it gives enjoyment, at the least, for any who may wish to some day read the humble story of a humble man and his humble days on this blue rock. I have paid him a spoiled king's ransom for the job, and his skill is exemplary, so as I said, I am hopeful of a great success. He is, by now and by the way, my brother, despite the fact that our parents never met. 'Family' is not a thing that is predicated by blood in my particular book of life. We share the same spirit and philosophy and that is quite enow. He is a man of high intellect, and mightily handsome as well, if I may add. He is old for a young man and young for an old man, as am I, and both of us have come to that age in life where the accumulation of days begs the question: What have we learned about it all? I have attempted to answer that, at least in relation to my own small life. It was a divine duo to pen these tales with, and I say it again, I am sure of a great success.

Why write an autobiography? For the only reason anyone writes an autobiography- to dare and taunt my enemies, to honor my friends, to immortalize my loves, and to set a record down, from the mouth of the very thoroughbred that was in and won the race, though handicapped and beset by all manner of fiend and hag, as to how it really was, rather than leave it to the second-guessing of third-rate stories from fifth-rate reports and no-count reporters who couldn't write their way out of a wet paper sack; (it is an old saying, and one of my favorites). Being famous has advantages, but one of its keen and very distressing disadvantages is the promulgation of pulp-fiction relative to the one 'famous'; a silly term and concept, really. What is fame? Fame is just a name and immortality a locality- and everywhere it's name. And then, too, obscurity is the futurity- of men and fame everywhere. There is no place that obscurity does not hide, lurking and waiting to cover everything made with pride.... And that being said, I still say we should work and believe towards an end that will be so great that good men will never forget it, that future great men will stop and stare, and never fully blink again.... We should do that. I have tried it. You should, too.

In the end and after the hoopla, all I really am is just a quiet boy from a small town and a common family. My biography is unimportant; I'd much rather read yours. But I cannot write your biography, I can only write mine. And though there is little I can do about a humble past, I have had today, and have now had many yesterdays, with which to create this, to me, proud present. I have much left to do, this is but the intermission. Beyond the complications, I am but a simple man with truly humble ambitions- just a strong horse, a dry cabin and a thousand-acre mountain; and perhaps a pretty woman who will bring me sandwiches and spirits.

All of our lives are both novel and motion picture. I shall do my own framing here, and shall set the story right. I shall name names and take some down, too. I shall record the kicking and kissing of ass. I do not hold stock with pussy-footers and politicians and all those who hide behind their jobs or their companies or their position. Give me a soul to speak it's truth, and if no truth, at least speak your lie boldly and to the face of one who you lie about. But they will not do that. They never have. It is their stock-in-trade to be weasels and to gain whatever they will by subterfuge. But I did not build a billion-dollar empire by being easily bullied, nor by being beaten. I have been beat many times, but never beaten. Essentially our lives become matters of translation and then rendition. Our youth gives us one idea of ourselves and it is our job to translate that idea into it's future reality or decided on some other reality. After this translation comes the rendition of our little piece we have decided to play, our little part we have decided to act. Our job eventually becomes one of 'cleaning up the mess of others', so to speak. And as they say, 'The sword is more powerful than the pen, but only when there is a pen attached to the end of it." Well, it is a new twist on an old saying. So I shall use the sword that is my pen to slash the lies of enemies and to write of the exploits of friends and as I do that, shall give an autograph, free of charge, upon the shamed and shameful foreheads of the one, and upon the grand hearts of the other and to the former it may say something like: "Andromicus Crispus was here, and he took my name and left his own...." And to the other I only hope that what I left there was a small and beautiful imprint of something beautiful and immortal. We all wish to live on in the hearts of our beloved immortals. I am no different. It will all be something like that. We'll figure out the details as we go. Hang with me, we got this, old sport.

After all, my friends, there is but one answer to it all and it is thus: that life is, after the kind words and the hand-shaking, nothing more or less than a matter of revenge. There is another old saying and it goes "Gaining success is the ultimate revenge." Revenge, against all who said we never would make it, against even our very selves, for saying that exact same thing. You young out there, have you been rejected? Of course you have. Should you let that dim your light? Will you allow arrogant, unremembered men to dim that light? Will you let your life become just another footnote to history? Or will you seek to become The very Foot of History, and immediately after planting that foot in the rear of some unremembered, arrogant jack-ass, walk into that future time with such high purpose and great stride and pride that History, she cannot help but remember you...Maybe having a great name, MAKING a great name, from one that has been unfairly smeared in dishonor, is the penultimate of revenge. Yes, that is, as my co-writer and brother-in-spirit Mr. Mills penned it well- the 'penultimate'- and to do it despite calumny is even better than to do it without it; after all, as I wrote to myself in the summer of 1990, when I decided I would become, among other things, a penner of aphorisms and a student of philosophy, 'Every great man rises up from obscurity, authority, oppression and rejection from a deep and sincere love for life and his dreams...', and my love runs as true and as deep as the Marianas trench. I am a freshman philosopher yet, but I know some things others who are far from that basic classification do not know. Allow me to share some secrets of stars and of men with you, my dearest reader.....