No Inner Limit, Page 3

CHAPTER THREE – Sheriff Autry Kane

  Sheriff Autry Kane, a robust, barrel-chested man of maybe 40 years, whose face looked as if it had been on the receiving end of numerous flying fists, sat in the Arabica-enclosed garden with Joshua and Van.

  “Pleased to meet you Sheriff. I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone with the first name of Autry.”

  “My pleasure, Dr. Vance. You’ve come a long way to meet up with this spook. Well, put it this way, my parents were pre-hippie, more hippy-ki-yay-ki-yay. So the singing cowboy was their matinee idol and I got stuck with it. I ain’t met another Autry either.”

  The Sheriff had that hybrid dialect that separated Hoosier twang from Tennessee drawl. Words oozed out of his mouth in a crawl, maybe a practiced patter of Kentucky keepers of the law. The mental image tickled Van. A group of tough guys sitting in a room practicing what he from now on would label a Krawl. Van realized his giddiness could be attributed to the potion and he resisted the urge to swig down more of it. The smile on his face was set in plaster. He couldn’t frown if he wanted to, and damn, he felt good.

  Autry turned to Joshua. “You got another batch ready?”

  “I do. Six Ball jars.”

  Joshua poured a small amount into the third sake cup. The Sheriff happily performed the routine….the sniff, whiff, lips, and swallow.

  “Excellent.” Autry then faced Van. “Before you git all righteous on me, this stuff don’t test for drugs or intoxication. It’s clean as morning dew. And it has made my job a hell of a lot easier.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  “Take Jeff Cook for example. He’s been in lockup two dozen times. Mean ole coot who can’t keep his hands to hisself. Beats his ole lady and his kids too. So I got to slippin’ a little elixir in the water we give him in the pokey. He ain’t been back in for two months. Word is gittin’ round that his wife is right proud of him. Even goin’ to church. So I ran some stuff by the Mrs. and she slips it in whatever he’s drinkin’. Then she got to cacklin’ bout it around town, an’ afore you know it we got us some real curious people askin’ me questions.”

  Van looked at Joshua. “There’s quite a few more stories, Van. Sheriff, tell him about Mrs. Martin.”

  “Well, Mrs. Martin, Linda Martin, was in terminal condition. Real bad, short-timer, up in the hospice in Somerset. That’s in Pulaski County so I had to sneak up there in my civies. Her kids found out about some of the stories I ain’t told you yet and wanted their mom to have a taste before she passed. Dr. Vance, you ain’t seen anything like it. This lady was like almost comatose, totally unresponsive when her kids talked with her, but she was able to swallow some of it. A few minutes later she opened her eyes and held out her hands to each side of the bed and grabbed on to her kids’ hands. Then she smiled and told them she was proud of them, that she loved them, and said she was ready to go. Wasn’t long after she slipped into glory. There weren’t many dry eyes that night. But the kids was real happy to git that last bit of blessin’ from their mom.”

  “I don’t mean to take anything away from your story, but that often happens just before passing. So you could attribute her slight recovery to the….what do you call this stuff? Or maybe not.”

  Joshua responded. “There is no name for it yet. I played around with NIL, short for No Inner Limit, but that seems a tad negative. So right now it is what it is, though the NIL moniker has stuck with the locals. We’ll hopefully know a little more when Adele arrives. As I told you, some of the ingredients come from Arizona where we have a similar setup. I can tell you that without the contribution of two of the three Arizona additives the over-all effect is lessened somewhat; especially in combatting tumor development. I am hopeful the completed results reveal that there’s nothing problematic.”

  “I have so many questions I don’t know where to start. But I’ll start with this…..what negative side effects have you noticed?”

  “Right now we know of none, but that wasn’t always the case.”

  The Sheriff chimed in. “You see that stuff over there in the corner in the aqua section? You take that out of the equation and you ain’t gonna have much luck in the sack. You put it in more than the current level and you make the ladies real happy. And that stuff is what puts the zippity in your doo dah day. You ain’t gonna lack for energy. That an’ some of the other stuff added to it. You’ll feel like mowin’ your grass at two in the mornin’. Fact is, Joshua had to tone it down a tad from some of the earlier concoctions. So that was a side effect ‘bout a year ago.”

  Joshua was next. “When we left all of the Arizona components out, there were bouts of hyperactivity and insomnia. When we increased Arizona in increments, on the high end, it resulted in drowsiness so we backed it down and found a happy medium. Also, when we left out the dandelion there were complaints of upset stomach, but when we put it back in there were no complaints. And we backed off the graviola to almost nothing since it can in some individuals act as a neurotoxin. We still use a very small amount for the pleasant flavor it adds, plus it is significant in providing vitamins B and C. I use small quantities of ginkgo since it can cause bleeding particularly among people who take warfarin, or vitamin K intolerant, or in pregnant women, and it can cause restlessness and headaches if overdosed. I have several quantities ready to go that excludes both the ginkgo and graviola, and we provide those separate preparations to a local birthing class.”

  “Can you overdose?”

  “It would be wise to partake in moderation but no one has reported an issue, not yet anyway. Mrs. Cook seems to run out of supply faster than the others and she appears to be fine. There is no need to ingest much more than a small amount since the effects are not increased by drinking more of it at one time.”

  “When you speak of others, what do you mean? How many people have ingested it?”

  “About ninety people so far, most all of them in this county. Adele uses it daily, by the way, and also has handed it out to some people around the Lexington area. She should be here by now but she is notoriously late.”

  “What do you hope to accomplish? I mean, you don’t have the ability, from what I’ve seen, to mass produce a product.”

  “Let’s wait on that. There’s a reason that all of us, Autry, Adele, Namanda, her chaperone, you and I are convening. Actually Namanda’s chaperone is more than that. She’s a SOT member who is partly responsible for tracking global disease. But Van, it has never been my intention to mass produce it, and if it comes to that I have limited ideas on how to accomplish it.”

  “You are not supposed to know about SOT.”

  “Yes, I know, but it will all come out tomorrow. I know your area is tracking the Fukushima radiation problem and Adele’s is tracking robotics and the star wars issue. Whatever your watchdog organization does is completely safe with me. I’d like to know what you’ve found out about the problem you’re tracking if you care to share it with us.”

  “An’ I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ either,” the Sheriff reassured.

  “Well, it’s fairly public information so I guess it’s all right. As you know the nuclear reactor broke up as a result of the quake and tsunami that followed in March, 2011. I’m sure you saw the horror of the Japanese people affected. It was like something Spielberg would produce, only this was real. Reactors three and four are to this day continually leaking radiation, cesium, strontium, and other radioactive toxins into the Pacific Ocean. Radioactive fuels are also burning their way down through the earth.

  I investigated a rumor that turned out to be maliciously false. The rumor was that the U.S. government, in other words the Environmental Protection Agency, had requested delivery of fourteen million doses of potassium iodide, the compound that protects the body from radiation poisoning. In other words, by inference the rumor suggested a cover up of lethal levels of radiation reaching the western hemisphere. While there has been very slight increases in the levels as far away as Texas, there is no imminent unsafe threat to our environment.

  But, if the
issue isn’t fixed, it could get worse. Fish in the near shore to Fukushima are either dead or dying. Commercial fishing there is banned and there is worry the food chain of sea life will be contaminated and spread. But I don’t see it as a problem that can’t be fixed. That’s about all I’m comfortable in saying right now.”

  “Ok, thank you for that, but I have to be honest with you. The radioactive level on the west coast is part of the reason you are here on Adele’s insistence. Off the coast of California and the Baha in Mexico there resides a very important ingredient to our potion. It’s a critical element to its overall efficacy especially in attacking cellular disease. If this offshore ingredient becomes contaminated we could possibly diminish the ultimate goal. It’s my hope that, with your involvement in the contamination levels, you will be able to make sense out of conflicting reports. Speaking of Adele, she is coming up the road now.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Autry and Joshua smiled at each other. “It’s a gift of mine, or a curse, depending on the situation. Come, we’d better go greet her before Ben does.”