The Prophet Freddie

When it all started, I was still living in the trailer park right off the interstate, near Summerville. This was after I’d stopped working for Baker and gone out on my own. Work wasn’t coming, it was the Covid time, and nobody was getting construction done, or those that were had more money to spend on it and hired the firms with newer model pickups.

I spent most of the day watching my bank account drain down and hoping my luck would change. A lot of nights before it got too hot I’d sit out back behind the trailer, light a little fire in the fire pit, pop open a Coors and think it all over, trying to figure out where I made the wrong turns. The construction business wasn’t going that well, even before the virus hit. I guess I should have stuck it out and gotten a college degree. Maybe I’d be behind a desk somewhere now, boss yelling, all hell breaking loose, wondering why I wasn’t some quiet place sitting by a fire.

Every now and then, the phone would ping. The message sound. I knew who it was, and wasn’t in any all-fired hurry to pick it up, but now and again when the fire was starting to die down I’d get up and gather a few more sticks from the brush all around – and check my messages.

Usually there would be about ten or fifteen of ‘em. All from the same guy.

Now listen, Bob, cool is cool and good is good and here we are all on the rat line. But I can’t even get a cup of coffee. Things are gonna turn around for you.

What happened to the nineteen above it? Bob, please get out. You have to get out. Everyone does. You have to get out of your awareness to know anything. I wish I knew.

The universe, Bob, embarrasses me. Embarrasses. Please make it speedy, make it reckless and breakneck. Please. Wanton and frantic. Turning around for you.

The onlookers are beyond our machinery, so remote it takes my airstream to the Midwest. For that I do thank God.

Bob, when it comes right down to it, you got no case. Neither do I. You got no case.

You get ahead with the metrics of it all. Have you really looked at the crop circles? Have you? Or at a really fine, well crafted dog biscuit? Don’t do it, you’ll get happy, and you don’t want to get happy. Bob, if the glove don’t fit, you must take a shit.

The devil is a liar. God is a garbage collector. We are a bunch of hairless apes and where is our watchman, where are our guiding lights? Guidance? Sure, and soon you’ll be a grandpa again, and how do you know this? I’m not hurdling through the air. This all means what it says.

The art of the affront. OK I won’t be such a gigantic jerk. Now you know I can’t make that flow through, because of those crop circles.

I am a pretty good handler of dogs. Bob, please stop. The ignorance is crushing me. If only you’d just open your damn eyes.

And on and on like that, from this guy I used to work with, Freddie. Some of it almost made sense. Some of it seemed to and then it would veer off somewhere else. Freddie was a good guy, but he had had a rough time the last few years, got laid off, and his wife left him. He would sit in this crummy apartment he rented down in Beaufort and, well, he did love his weed.

That’s what I put it down to. When Freddie was good and stoned, maybe had tossed back a couple of beers and some whiskey on top of everything else, out would come the wisdom.

I don’t want to scream. I mean, who does? But sometimes you have to. Seriously, I’d keep quiet about it but then I’d explode. I just know what I know. I’ve seen what I’ve seen. You could have seen it too, Bob, if you had tried. You could have.

But I don’t know who you are, or if you really wanted to clamber up that pyramid at all. That’s up to God, but God, God is busy.

I will be crisscrossed and patterned and double pleated and no one cares. I mean, do you?

Bob, you’re a stock boy, you’re a stick figure, I swear on a stack of Bibles. This fight will last a week, maybe two. After that your business will be gone; the keys will be in the lock, and you’ll be in suspense that no one will be able to suspend.

Just pick up what you need. I don’t want synchronization. I want congruence.

Please, Bob, just look at the crop circles, just look, even just for a minute. Really look.

Sometimes I’d text him back. “Sometimes,” not because I was being rude, but because – well, what do you say to that? Sometimes I’d give it a try.

“Freddie,” I wrote him one night, “maybe you’ve had enough for the night. Maybe it’s time to go to bed.” But all I got back was more of the same. Nevertheless, I’d try now and again to talk him down gently, although a couple of times I admit I got impatient with him and wrote him things like “Freddie, this stuff doesn’t make any sense.” “Freddie, you better be careful, you’re sounding really crazy.” “Freddie, no, I haven’t looked at the crop circles. I don’t care about the crop circles. I care that you’re sounding like a nut.”

Really, that’s how it all got started. I thought of it out by the fire one night as I was reading these texts. The screen reflected orange from the fire onto Freddie’s texts, which made them seem even weirder. I thought maybe if Freddie could read his own texts when he wasn’t drunk or high, he would see how silly he sounded, and maybe start trying to lay off the booze and pot a little.

Being me, I thought it would be funny if I started keeping his texts until I had hundreds of them, and then get them printed up in a little book. The Wisdom of the Ages, something like that. The Word from the Prophet. I’d get it printed up with a real nice leather cover and hand it to Freddie and say, “You know, pal, this book has changed my life. And it can change yours, too.”

I poked at the fire and started chuckling. I started wishing he would send me more texts, so I could get another chapter in. And Freddie, most every night he would oblige me. It only took a few weeks to get a couple of hundred pages of his sayings. I printed them out one night and was surprised at how thick it was. It would still make a little book, one of those books they put up at the checkout counter in bookstores, how to do this or how to lose that gut or how to get in touch with your inner gawky kid or whatever, but this one would be different. This one would deliver a real message, a message people could use, words to live by.

The whole thing made me laugh, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought of ways to make the joke even bigger. I searched online for spiritual book publishers. New age spirituality and whatnot. Yoko Ono/Marianne Williamson gobbledegook. They should lap this stuff up.

One of them caught my eye: Everlasting Mind Publishing. They were the real deal. Website featuring a background image of Saturn, the Moon, stars whirling around. A mission statement on the front page from Gaia Westfall, the publisher, a handsome woman maybe around 45, bright sparkling eyes, white hair pulled back in a bun, like an old-fashioned schoolmarm but with a dash of Timothy Leary.

Perfect.

Immediately I started an email to Ms. Westfall. “I have recently come across,” I wrote to her, “a little volume from a self-effacing man of wisdom in my area. I have met him and his eyes glow like coals in the fire. The book spoke to my depths like few books have. Jonathan Livingston Seagull moved me, but nothing like this. The text is attached. The author, the seer, has asked me to keep his own involvement in such worldly affairs to a minimum, so I am taking it upon myself to contact you on his behalf. I am confident that you will find this book as enlightening as I did.”

I attached the file of Freddie’s texts, hit send, and went back to Key Largo on the TMC, one of my all-time favorites. As it happened, I was watching it yet again a couple of days later when the email came in from Gaia Westfall. Johnny Rocco was telling them all that he was going to get to the top again, and for keeps this time, as I read it, and reread it.

Dear Mr. Spencer, thank you so very much for sending me this extraordinary volume. I know it will come as no surprise to you to learn that this is book rivalling the wisdom of Rajneesh and Jones, a book that millions will find will carry them to a new and higher plane. I am pleased to inform you that we will be publishing it and using all our resources to give it the biggest possible push into the consciousness of the unenlightened.

I couldn’t believe it. I read it and reread it, and it kept on saying the same thing. Could this be real? Maybe this was Freddie’s own joke on me? But that couldn’t be, since I hadn’t told him I was saving his texts or planning to send them to anyone. In fact, I hadn’t told a soul.

Gaia Westfall was on the level. Soon Freddie’s wisdom would rock the world.

I was laughing too much to concentrate on Rocco again. Went out back and sat by the fire pit and thought it over. Should I tell Freddie? Nah, that was the whole point in the first place, to get the thing printed and then to present him with a copy. Maybe it would open his eyes.

And maybe it would open the eyes of a lot of people. I felt like a fool, out there all by myself in the back laughing out loud.

Well, you know what happened then. A few months later I went into the Barnes & Noble and I saw it: Insights for a Troubled Time, leather-bound in sky blue with gold lettering, right there on the counter by the checkout line. My heart actually started racing. What was Freddie going to think? I realized then I didn’t really have to worry about that. He never went into Barnes & Noble anyway. This whole thing would blow over without his having heard about it, I’d give him a copy, we’d have a good laugh, and maybe he’d lay off the weed.

The phone calls started the next day. I was the only contact the publisher had, and they gave out my number with the publicity for the book. They made it clear that I wasn’t the author, and that put me in a weird John the Baptist position on the radio interviews I did in those next few weeks. One host – I can’t even remember the show or what city he was calling from, there were so many I started to forget that my construction business was on the rocks – asked me straight out “Are you the prophet?”

My mind immediately went to the Biblical cadences I picked up way back in Sunday school. “Nay, I am not the prophet,” I said. Yes, I said “nay.” It was all still just a joke. “I am not the prophet, but lo!” OK, now I was maybe laying it on too thick. But what the hell – it was all just for fun, anyway. “Lo!” I said again. “He walketh amongst us, he liveth and breatheth as we do, and he imparteth his wisdom to whomsoever he willeth.” I started to feel like I had a lisp, and was thinking I better cut it out, but the host guy was lapping it up. He started asking me when I met the prophet, how well I knew him, if I had been the scribe who sat at his feet and noted down his utterances, how many followers he had, if he drove a car, wore Western clothes, the whole nine yards.

Well, I didn’t have anything to lose. I just kept laying it on thicker. I built up Freddie until his eyes glowed and he left no footprints when he walked.

That was when it all really took off. I got asked to go up to New York to speak about the wisdom of the prophet, and, well, I gotta tell ya, what they were offering me was more I had made adding on people’s extra rooms and fixing the roof on their carports the whole year before the virus hit. In fact, it was more money than I had made the last five years.

Meanwhile, Freddie was still writing me every few nights, still sending me his stuff about the crop circles and God and enlightenment, but he was still working as a greeter down at the Walmart, the job he got after he got laid off, and he had no idea any of this was going on. He had no idea that he was the author of the Number One selling book on the New York Times Bestseller List.

I got to New York City on one of those clear cloudless nights that make the air exhilarating and wild with possibilities. The whole thing was so crazy, such a big joke, it didn’t really dawn on me until I stepped out of the Uber and into the lobby of the Four Seasons. Here I was, living in a trailer park, trying to keep alive a dying business, and I was staying at the most sumptuous hotel in the city because of a practical joke I had played on a friend.

Well, what would you have done? I knew that in a couple of hours there would be a hall full of the aging hippies these things appealed to, women in gingham and men in jeans and the granny glasses all around and the hair a little too long, rumpled and aging, the flotsam and jetsam of the Summer of Love a half-century ago, still casting about for some hope, for some light, so many years after the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. What was I going to do? Run? Walk up to Gaia Westfall, who was there to see the man behind her new bestseller, and explain to her that the whole thing was just a gag, that Freddie was just a nutty old guy who started spouting crazy stuff when he got a little grass, man? Really, what would you have done?

You know what I did. I went into that Four Seasons ballroom with the glittering chandeliers casting sparks of light onto those senescent, hopeful faces, and I gave them what they came for. I couldn’t be Freddie as well as Freddie could, but after all, I was just the messenger, after me would come one who was far greater. I quoted some of the book, I paraphrased some more, I trotted out some King James Bible language, I sounded portentous and as sincere as I could.

At the end of the evening, Gaia gave me a big hug. Gaia was beaming. Gaia took me out to dinner, everything on her, a place that Bogart would have taken Bacall (and maybe he did), a place that Frank would have taken Ava (and I’m certain he must have), Dom Perignon and lobster and everything was so sweet, so tender, so wildly expensive. Gaia slipped a check for $5,000 into my pocket. Gaia Westfall was beautiful.

Back up in my luxurious room I flopped back on the bed, still in my Men’s Wearhouse sport jacket. Five thousand dollars. Five thousand for an hour in a room with some old hippies, feeding them bullshit. That was too bad, but they’d been feeding on bullshit ever since they were teenagers. They loved it. They wanted more. And I loved the check Gaia had slipped me. I wanted more.

So the lecture tour started from there. You know what happened. I spoke all around the country. The crowds in Seattle and Portland were rapturous. I spoke on three continents. They loved me in Stockholm. They loved me in Copenhagen. They loved me in São Paulo. There wasn’t even one bad event. Sometimes the crowds were less enthusiastic, and then I would go into warning mode, telling them that the prophet would give them no more wisdom if they were unable to hear that which he had already bestowed. Gaia came with me. I think she liked it when I scolded the crowds most of all.

It wasn’t until the event in Berlin that I started to think about it. When we got to the hotel, there was a big picture of me on the cover of Der Spiegel. The city was electric with the excitement of it all. Gaia wanted to go for a walk under the stars, and we did, but every five steps or so someone would recognize me as the messenger of the prophet, and come up, eager and beseeching, wanting me to lay some wisdom on them. It spoiled out walk, and made me restless, so when we got back to the hotel I put on a mask, a lot of people were still wearing them then since the Covid hysteria had not died down, and I went out again, alone. Walked all around that city, trying to spot the few buildings that were there before 1945, looking at the faces of the people walking by, and thinking it over.

I was going to have to tell Freddie.

Here he was, beloved by millions, people all over the world hanging on his every word, studying his utterances, trying to uncover the kernels of wisdom hidden in his gnomic sayings, and he had no idea any of it was happening. Maybe he had heard about the prophet, but Freddie wasn’t much for books – I knew he hadn’t opened up a copy of Insights for a Troubled Time if he had even seen one, and since I hadn’t done any speaking around Summerville or Beaufort, or anywhere in the state, so the local press hadn’t taken any interest in me. Even if they had, he didn’t watch the news or read the papers, either.

But there he was, in his deep blue Walmart shirt, welcoming people into the store, probably a lot of people who read Insights for a Troubled Time fervently, searching for an answer, searching for a way out of the hole they had dug for themselves, and not realizing that this kind-looking man in his late fifties, a bit seedy and down at the heels, was the prophet the world was celebrating. He didn’t know, and they didn’t know.

And here I was, preaching his word, clearing more money than I had ever dreamed of, staying in the finest hotels, eating in the most exclusive restaurants – all because of Freddie. One night Gaia and I were at Le Bernardin in Manhattan, a place that took my breath away, a place where dinner and champagne for Gaia and me cost upwards of $8,000 and was worth every penny, let me tell you, and I looked over at the next table, and there was Derek Jeter.

Derek Jeter! I was never much of a Yankee fan, but you had to love Jeet. 3,465 hits. Not much with the glove overall, but always clutch, always there when it counted. And a real class act, too. He was in a sharkskin suit, shimmery, with a black shirt and a white tie, and the man looked like every bit of the 265 million bucks he earned playing for the Yankees. This was around the time when he was involved with the Miami Marlins.

I admit, I was staring. And then Derek Jeter turned and saw me.

I know I’ve told you this part before, but I still can’t believe it. Derek Jeter looked at me, smiled big, and stood up and walked over to where Gaia and I were sitting. “I can’t believe this,” I hear Jeter saying, but it’s so amazing, I felt as if I were someone else, watching the two of us. “You’re Bob Spencer.”

You can imagine how I felt when he said that. “Yes, sir,” I said, froggily, and cleared my throat.

“Yes, Mr. Jeter, I am, I’m Bob Spencer.”

He smiled again and stuck out his hand, Covid be damned. “Damn right you are,” he said excitedly. “I am so incredibly glad to meet you.” Then he paused, and looked soulful. “You probably get this all the time, but Insights for a Troubled Time is absolutely my favorite book. I’ve never read anything like it. I’m not exaggerating, Mr. Spencer, when I tell you, it has absolutely turned my life around. And it has given me some ideas for how I can turn the Marlins around.

Then Gaia spoke. She had to. I was honestly speechless. Here was Derek Jeter telling me that he loved Freddie’s wisdom. Derek Jeter. “Mr. Jeter,” Gaia said, brushing back a strand of her stringy white hair, “we are so grateful to have had the opportunity to bring the prophet’s wisdom to the world, and so very deeply, immensely grateful that you have benefited from it.”

“Good,” Jeter said, and I could see how he had slipped so easily into businessman mode. “Listen, who do I talk to about bulk rates? I want to give a copy to every member of the Marlins organization, especially the players, of course. I really think it could be what we need to help us turn the corner and become a winning team.”

I was seeing stars. Was this really happening? I knocked on the table. It was real. This was no dream.

“We would be honored,” Gaia was saying, “to gift your organization with as many copies as you need if you would consider becoming a spokesman, helping bring more people to the knowledge of Insights for a Troubled Time.” Smart girl.

Jeter was nodding. “I’d be honored. That would be wonderful.” They exchanged business cards.

Derek Jeter was going to become a spokesman for Freddie. I had to tell him.

But how? “By the way, buddy, you’re a prophet now, and millions of dollars will be thrown at you if you just say a few words, but be sure to get good and soused first”?

I couldn’t think of anything else. And I knew he would find out sooner or later. I was going to have to tell him. But I didn’t have the guts to do it face to face. I did it the way this whole thing started: by text.

“By the way, Freddie,” I wrote one early afternoon, when I knew he hadn’t started drinking or smoking yet, “I have something very important to tell you.”

“What is it, Bob?”

“Well, you see –” And I was just about to write that I had gotten some of his texts to me published as a gag, and then it took off, and now he was a world-renowned wise man, but that seemed more like a joke than my first idea of collecting his sayings into a book. He would think I was making fun of him. He would think I was just trying a new way to shame him out of getting drunk and high.

Above all, he wouldn’t believe me. And why not? I scarcely believed it myself.

“Well, you see—” I kept typing. “I’m moving. I’ve found a new job and I’m leaving Summerville. I’m sorry I haven’t had a chance to swing down to Beaufort and have a couple of beers and tell you in person, but everything has been so busy with the new work and all –”

“What do you mean a new job? A construction gig?”

“No, Freddie, I’m getting out of the construction business. I’ve actually gotten a desk job as a supervisor.” I hoped he wouldn’t ask me any questions about that. “The only thing is that I have to relocate to New York.”

“New York! Wow! Is it good money.”

“Yes, Freddie. It’s very very good money.”

“Well, Bob, that is so great! I’m so happy for you! I always told you things would turn around for you, didn’t I?”

He had always told me that. And he turned out to be right.

I went up to New York, to Montauk instead of the city for the safety and the views and the water. Gaia came with me, and a wizard she knew married us last Friday. The guy actually had one of those conical hats with moons and stars on it. I had to suppress a laugh. She was so radiant, so entranced by it all. We’re planning to winter in Gstaad and summer in Monaco. The only thing is, she keeps asking me if she can meet the prophet. I was able to head that off, told her he was very reclusive, couldn’t meet too many people, it would mess with his chakras.

But then she started asking me when he would be delivering his second book.

So every night when she goes out to her Insights for a Troubled Time study group, I text Freddie. I don’t tell him he should cut out the booze and weed anymore. If he keeps seeing those things he sees, maybe I can keep this going for awhile.

And one day, I really am going to get down to the Beaufort Walmart and take Freddie to lunch. I owe him that.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and the author of 30 non-fiction books. Sometimes he writes stories that mean nothing, go nowhere and make no sense. This story is a work of fiction. He is terribly sorry to disappoint you, but there is no Freddie. There are no insights for a troubled time, and Derek Jeter has never had any involvement with any of this. Spencer can be reached at director@jihadwatch.org.