Chapter 48
Saturday morning, Wilson has awakened, anxiety gone, peaceful to an inner calm accompanying the morning’s light. An easy breeze flutters through ash and maple leaves beyond his home’s stepped structure. Still horizontal, half asleep, his view plane is above and beyond the bedroom’s deck, sixty feet distant where the tops of trees rise above the main floor roof’s apex prow… The highest point of his home’s main level, the great room roof ceiling intersection just visible at the bottom of his supine horizon view of treetops, pink clouds, and sky. He rubs the dust from his eyes. It is the feeling… the reason… he now notices anxiety’s absence, which has been again a constant, now vanished, deleted while he slept.
At other times… A year ago, such peace would have been immediately assaulted by his noisy demon shouting out a warning. But this morning the demon is silent, in repose, attached to silence, apparently on Wilson’s dream saturated recommendation… that the time had come for it to relax in hibernation. Still, there were and are the moments when the Demon has ignored him, suddenly reappearing in times of dire stress, like the recent crash, but with Cortland’s presentation, and Wilson’s encouragement it now sleeps once more… After all, how many warnings can an imagined specter-self provide? How many ways can you say you're fucked? Chateau Daphne had worn his demon out. Aware and assured of the lay of the land, Wilson no longer requires warning. So, this morning, his demon snores as he lays abed, thinking on the last few days of chaos.
Yes, the crash had been worrisome, however it now seems a tempest he has, and will continue to survive. It is going to be alright, at least for now. With this thought, he is disturbed as Ivy wanders over and jumps on the bed and then comes close and stares into his eyes… meows of feed me follow. Wilson knows there is nothing for it. It is time to rise.
As he descends the stairs from his bedroom, through nine feet of doorwall, the forest stretches, immediate to his right, where a deer nibbling his foliage adds to the window wall’s framed picture. Then farther down museum-wide steps, at the end of an outside-in and open hallway, the soaring beams of the great room rise before him, west to east. Expanding with every step descended, until his gaze turns forty-five degrees toward the great room’s point where forty-nine feet distant two panes of glass form a glass corner rising eight feet above the floor, above this a floating cantilevered horizontal header beam extends supporting two more panes of glass, trapezoid and angled to match the roof’s pitch at their top, with yet another cantilevered header supporting a floating ridge enabling a glass corner where normally a post would rise.
It is a wondrous structure… the cornered glass open at the angle to the forest view with a soaring soffit finishing twenty-six feet above an equally pointed angled exterior deck extending on the bias- fourteen feet beyond the glass corner and the great room’s floor…. A house belonging to nature and enhancing it.
The light is full this morning, bright with shadow and color, the green leaves, the gray and browns and black trunks of trees reflecting on the white and shadowed walls, and to the southeast, distant on the blue bay, the Anomie waits, visible through trees two feet wide, bare of branches until they begin to meet the sky, forty feet above the ground… Too many trees seeking the high light all jammed together, bursting from the soil over less than a decade, fifty years or more now passed, thinned by time and season with their trunks grown thick, rising like the bars of a giant prison cell, towering above the great room deck's glass railing… Survivors of rains and wind, seasons and seeding. Six or seven decades back, sprouting together, now shouting survival of the fittest.
He examines the central conundrum of his residence. He loves this house and what it represents… How he had manipulated the structure and the land… Setting it in these trees while preserving them close and careful, adjacent to its walls and windows. His ideas, his space, this light, his imagination… Waking, sleeping, meandering about… now existing as both memory and current reality, and a constant affirmation of his value and self-worth… a contemporary castle keep warding off the lifelong demon’s chant of his insignificance. He could live here forever, but for the cost. The expense of owning the place, the maintenance and payments, insurance and upkeep and the accompanying worry, the uncertainty of his ability to provide the necessary funding… this is the source of a latent constant stream, and the prime anxiety beneath all the other anxieties of work and relationships. Anxieties, that this morning have vanished or are sleeping.
He feels light, happy, youthful, and full of energy as he turns on the coffee and puts on Copland’s ‘Promise of Living’ The Tender Land CD into the stereo, aware even before the coffee… The reason for this feeling of wellbeing. His life had been ruled by the job for over a year. And this morning, he is now certain. The job will continue, and with it will come the arrival of lifestyle sustaining income. The final large and increasing exponential dollars, that came with the finish of every project, lay before him. He can live and pay for this place for another two years with the funds that will arrive with the finish of Chateau Daphne. For two more years, he will be worthwhile.
A peaceful hopeful chorus, then soaring notes turned calm, fill the room producing joyful positive echoes in his brain. Then, the sun rises higher, majestic. White walls turn red, gold and bright brass fills the room as the music climbs once more. It was going to be a fantastic day.
As soon as he finishes the necessary lists and details for Potts, he is going sailing. First, a day-sail, Saturday afternoon with another planned for Sunday, to double check the Anomie… And then he would be history… through the bridge for a fortnight, after he speaks with Potts on Monday. A meeting here at his house where he will lay out the next two weeks, tasks and plans and patterns for the vaults he now envisions, a cloistered wine room in the basement built of rugged stone like the medieval crypt one might find beneath those European cathedrals with their soaring buttresses, Chartre, Salsbury and Notre Dame. He can see it in his mind's eye… A series of asymmetrical vaults extended towards a small Christian T, nave and all that, to hold wines in the bowels of Chateau Daphne. Now, that would fit a future mansion. Cool and cold and dusty with cobwebbed bottles of wine, old in appearance and climate controlled. He wonders if anyone makes a kit to make wines look old, fake cobwebs and dust that might be used for some movie set. Perhaps those who sold him the wine room package provide a dust option too? He laughs without sound.
At any rate, he will need to print out the Bezier curved hips so Potts can copy them. And best to do this at his house on Monday with Potts present, so he can explain the how’s and why’s with a 3D walkthrough displayed on the computer's screen in case Potts has questions. If Potts gets to its fabrication after pouring the basement stairs, the wine room will be a place to use any extra concrete from the pour, and after that there will be framing, enough for a two-man team during the two weeks Wilson will be gone and sailing. And, the mason will need some interior work this fall on days, inclement with rain. Once poured and framed, the mason can start on these. He will be very surprised if Potts finishes it all before his return.
Yes, project planned, with renewed financial security due to the pre-crash checks from Daphne. He is fortunate not to have been in the market. Unaffected by the woes of many. He is going to do it, for once, take advantage of the moment. “What me worry,” as Alfred E. Neuman might have said. What good was having a foreman if you could not leave from time to time? He never sailed the boat anymore, not on an extended trip, not once all summer, only day sailing.
He’d heard Cortland’s presentation. He was secure, for now, and double checking… The banker Feely had told him not to worry. Drooling after his boat all summer and with work assured, he was going to take the last chance he would have this year to justify its ownership. He was going sailing.
Venture through the bridge and let the winds send him where they may. Think of pirate deeds and youthful dreams, of Arthur Ransome’s Coot Club or Stevenson’s Long John Silver… islands and adventure. Two weeks away, then return and place the boat in drydock early… Then nose to the grindstone, work straight through to Christmas.
And, as for Dick’s worries, pshaw, never going to happen. There were too many other details, like the wine room cavern, as yet to be determined. Potts could never dream them up, even if he was able to build them. “Tempest in an imaginary teapot,” he mutters to himself as he walks down the hillside, Ivy walking next to him.
He and the cat were going sailing. Double check the rigging, the roller reefing, make sure it all was working for his departure late Monday… at the very latest, Tuesday morning. He will drag Ivy with him on his travels. But today, he suspects she will disdain the dinghy and remain on shore to hang on the dock, more like a dog might, to wait for his return. He knew from past day-sails. By the end of the day, there the cat would be, on the dock and waiting.
Sunday dawns magnificent, with an early transforming calm, and then a rising wind. One of those days when the wind will increase with intensity, by the hour and from the North, bringing with it clear skies and a light reflective as white diamonds, the air warm with temperatures into the high seventies. An August light, bright white, yet clear and crisp with a refracting affect haunt of fall. A day to relish the end of summer, a day to make one sing, and this is what he feels like doing, and does, but waiting until well underway surging down the center of the lake, reaching towards Boyd City after installing a smaller Genny on the roller reefing forestay, to double check its set and size, in case the winds are up tomorrow, should he select it as the more appropriate sail for cruising.
The cockpit sole vibrates, humming through his toes with momentum, and the passage of water down the keel, as if the hull and Anomie are singing too, in tune with the day, the wind and water. Difficult to explain, but it often seemed to him when sailing, and also skiing on days this clear and perfect, that waltzes were the required meter, or if not a waltz often something else in ¾ time. First, he hums, as he often does, the waltz from Traviata. It fit so well. But then, even though it is August, with Christmas distant, the opening passages of Humperdink's Hansel and Gretel fill his head with the woodsman's wife, the children's mother singing with happiness to be alive. Operas are often happy in the first act, the set up for the tragedy. Though ‘Hansel and Gretel’ is one of the few that ends positively. Perhaps that is why they say it is for children. If the witch had triumphed, the serious critics might think differently… Happy, joyous with foreboding, somewhat like this late summer day, or the job, which, like life, and not this opera, could still end bad… could always go sour. Hansel and Gretel, the mother’s song sings in his head, dancing… sending him down the lake with the meter of a waltz, the resounding rhythm in his mind.
He had needed this escape. Later, he will work into the night, double-check his plans in order to be ready for Potts. And then tomorrow he will be away with the setting sun, and if there is a breeze, sail through the night of Monday-Tuesday morning… the stars from the water carrying his spirit, provoking awe, magnificent and inspiring.
Monday arrives with a NOA forecast of a High, with moderate winds from the north expected to shift west by afternoon, gusting to 20 knots, 10–12 and steady through the night. This was perfect wind and weather for his plans to sail north to Beaver, and then on Wednesday north and east through Grays reef passage and then east to Mackinac If the wind holds as predicted once through the shallows of the reef, and past the foghorn lights, he should be able to pop the chute and sail with spinnaker flying all the way to the Island. Never before has he sailed under that great bridge, alone, with his spinnaker flying, but this will be the opportunity and challenge. Wilson is excited, more than he has been in years, his enthusiasm that of a teenager.
But first Potts… and Cortland, if he is about. Wilson is at the job by 7:30 wine room plans in hand, standing in the basement gloom, looking to where the permanent concrete stair will finish, marking the location of the final tread, examining the huge and open basement space that stretches under the complete house except the two garages, where now only the wall-less mechanical room existed, measuring how it’s necessary location might fit with his medieval wine room. This was going to require a wall of stone, immediate to the stair’s exit, in order to create the feeling of a deep and cavern space beneath a mansion castle. Why not, it was pretend anyway. He walks the length of the basement, a tape measure extended, making temporary marks with a construction crayon. It will be Disneyland down here.
By eight he is showing Potts his ideas and then telling him that he wished him to get everyone working, and after that, after Wilson spoke with Cortland, they needed to go to his house. He wanted him to see the space on the computer. Where he will print out the sectioned patterns, a router template to fabricate the hips and sections that will frame the vaults just as they had done for the gothic vault above the stairway. But “this one, the series of vaults will be rectangles, not squares… Different!” He pointed to his plotted drawings.
By 8:30, Wilson is knocking on the hull and then the cabin side of the Master Mind, then peering in the windows. “Hello, anyone about?” Cortland coming towards him, climbing into the cockpit, welcoming. “Do you want coffee? Beautiful morning.” Wilson beaming, “Absolutely and yes, coffee”. “Your happy,” said Cortland. “I’m perfect, and after I finish speaking with you, and then instructing Potts….” He holds up his roll of drawings, then quickly shows Cortland the wine room as Cortland says “Perfect.”
“I’m on top of it,” says Wilson. “I have some Templates for him at my house. But then I’m going sailing. I’ll be gone two weeks. Haven’t gone on a cruise in over a year.” Courtland raises his eyebrows, saying nothing. “It will be fine,” says Wilson. “Last chance… Here.”
He extends his hand with an envelope. “These are predictions of my ongoing costs for September, where the money’s been spent so far, what will be spent the next two weeks… Materials, subs and payroll, and what I will need to try to make that deadline of yours… It will be tough, and… No guarantee, but we will try to make Christmas.”
“That’s what we’re hoping.” Said Cortland.
“And this is what I will need from you, from Daphne, September 1st or shortly thereafter.
Cortland opens the envelope. “Just a moment.” He returns with reading glasses perched on the end of his massive Rembrandt nose, coughs and appears to study the numbers, frowning. “That much?”
“Come on, it’s always that much. You know it. I know it…. The game…. No need to play it. 150 thousand the 1st of September and another 200,000 by the 1st of October.”
“You’re starting to make some real money, here…Now… aren’t you?”
“That’s the arrangement. My percentage is fixed. It’s in the contract. And now I finally get paid, really paid for my design and effort. The end when the money arrives as I begin to pay for everything.”
“I see that,” says Cortland, saying nothing more. Then he frowns and rubs his forehead as his irises rise as if in thought, “Ok,” he says. “That was their agreement. I wouldn’t have agreed to it. But I have read the contract. You’ll have your money. Daphne is happy with the house.”
This half-surprises Wilson. He was alert for a warning that might cause him to alter plans, cancel his sail… If his senses twinged? He says nothing.
For the entire job it has never been this easy, but apparently financial and job circumstances will be as Cortland represented, Friday. The man had been sincere, and to prove it, there was no mention of those damn sworn statements.
Then, Cortland says, “I’m not complaining, because… we’re counting on Christmas. These days, my role has shifted. I’m here for Daphne…Called back, the overseer. Caretaker and repairman. Fine. I’ll have the check waiting. Enjoy your sail.” Cortland pauses. “Are you going alone?”
“Yep, single-handed. Just me and the cat,” says Wilson. “I like the challenge. If something goes wrong, you’ve got to fix it.”
“Out there…Alone.” Cortland nods, then his arm sweep toward the lake and harbor. “The Big Lake?” He shakes his head. “Don’t fall overboard! Watch the weather. We need you!”
That was easy, thinks Wilson, wondering for a moment if he should reconsider. Too easy? But no, he is probably just feeling a bit guilty, leaving for two weeks to sail while everyone else remains at the end of summer working. He shakes off the thought and goes to grab Potts. Thinking. What’s two weeks?
The Plotter is printing. Wilson and Potts are in the lower-level office bedroom of his house. Down the continuing set of stairs and past another planter, open to the sky, then down a wide hallway, opening to the same view as above but lower and more compact, closer to the ground and the base of the limbless tree trunks.
The Anomie sits in the bay, beckoning. They have turned left into the bedroom with one large window cut into the hillside, four feet off the floor, the room’s only window except for a small one in the closet, high above the shelves and rod. The space functions as his office with its own bathroom.
The plotter thunks and clicks and travels as the paper rolls up, then down, tracing the pattern for the hips. Potts is looking at the computer screen as he listens to Wilson while playing the silent usurper’s role to perfection. By the end of their meeting and similar to the meeting with Cortland, Wilson will be assured that his world is right and proper with the last dog days of summer the easiest, except for the loss of Grace, his days have been for over a year.
As a cover, Potts details his woes of marriage loss and child payments, again thanking Wilson for past loans and mentioning that he may need another if Ethel gets nasty and the sheriff too ambitious. Wilson says he is always available, at least as long as the money is again flowing easily from the job. Potts almost warns him, almost tells him of the plan. He could, he could twist the tables. They both could fuck with Cortland, but then he allows the thought to fall away. The dye is cast.
******************
And if you explored, went spelunking deep into Wilson’s mind… Who knows, did he sense that a threat was immanent as the drawbridge rose above him two hours later, seagulls diving, squawking off the stern of one of the few fishing boats that still presumed to fish. Indian commerce instead of cutesy, a small enclosed solid hard chinned bullet craft designed for working rough in steep lake waves and partial storm driven submersion, returning with its accompanying gulls shitting on the deck of the Anomie, and on the fishermen as he and its Indian captain and crew waved, acknowledging their time and space and passing bonding moment, shielding their heads from screech and clatter, and carrion defecation.
Out into the Great Lake, toward a spell of freedom, a cavalier gesture as the wind was rising, a cavalier approach to life…perhaps? It might have been the same spirit that made him accept the shaky challenge of the Stevens job in the first place, operating here. Comfortable in the mountains, a life almost rearranged, another chapter commenced and underway, until Tim Stevens’s call, now almost a year and a half ago.
So, was this adventure one of setting sail or was it something more, a need to challenge reality, to shove it hard for substance, just to see if his life could really fall apart… His sail existing only as his and nature’s sideshow? This had been one of his traits throughout his life, to push at the edges of the stream when it was flowing straight and calm. And he wonders, is this what he is now engaged in? … A search and need for insecurity… Or maybe Wilson has been completely snowed by Potts and Cortland? We will not, do not know. But for whatever reason he is on his way, as the arms of the drawbridge descend in closure, as he meets the lake and swings into the wind, raises the mainsail and sheets it in to adjust the luff. Engine off and underway as he gazes West then North then rolls out the headsail, a wump of captured air as the wing forms, a surge of the hull, wrapping the jib sheet around the winch, letting it out then pulling it in to gauge its set, satisfied he drapes it around the cleat and spins the wheel twenty degrees, the jib fills wide, he halls it back in slightly… North to Beaver Island.
With this heading and a constant wind he will need no tacks… a beam reach straight on till morning. One thing is certain. It will be a calmer, brighter sail than last time. No matter how great the wind! His last sail to Beaver Island after he had punched Philippe, when Chateau Daphne was not yet a hole in the ground, when Tim Stevens still walked the earth worrying over Mighty Burgers… Wearing costumes, clad in ducks and sailor suits, sport fan jerseys, and varied caps, before Daphne’s resurrection, her growth, the recent crash, and her implosion.
There will be no need for Wagner this evening, no Walkyries, no whisky, perhaps a beer or two. Wilson smiles then frowns at the memory as a wave, one of seven, slightly rogue and steeper than the one preceding, rises up and slaps the hull, showering his face with spray, moisture dripping from his chin, tangling his hair. No matter. The sun is warm on his face, he will soon dry... What a day and perfect afternoon for sailing… light, nimble-footed on the cockpit sole, balanced and rocking with the motion of the boat, a light touch on the wheel, just enough to maintain course. He will not see the Island for three hours, the stars will be high in the sky and shining bright before he anchors.
He lets the mainsail out, then pulls it in, adjusts the outhaul, then bags the jib a bit, so the Anomie will steer herself for a few minutes. Then he goes below and grabs the bottle from the sink… Maybe only one, just one shot of Old Draper, to make the beer flow smooth.
***
Tuesday morning, Indian Dick notices a shift in Chateau Daphne’s energy and aura, a subtle change in mood and shading… slight, but present, enough to be troubling. Sufficiently bothersome that he mentions it to Randy early, 9 am, as they assemble a scaffold, repeating his concerns again with greater speculation at 10 am break. Randy, sugar from a powdered pastry clinging to his chin, concurring in conversation as he offers Dick a refill on his coffee. “Your right about that feelin…Sure. Yep, Potts is full of himself this morning, he is…he is...he is. (If you have not noticed by now, Randy likes to repeat himself the more repetitions the more serious the situation) And, by ten, it did not take any special Indian tracker wiles to notice this. Perhaps at 9 when Potts had first alerted them to his practice prance, but by 10 there is no question about it. There is a confident strut to Potts that had not been there the day before, a self-important swagger that never surfaced when Wilson was about.
Assured that Wilson would be gone for two weeks, and then, with any luck, if his and Cort's plans prove prescient, gone forever. (It is now Cort, not Cortland, as Potts presumes a new familiarity from their plots and planning. ) Potts has donned this Strut like a new custom suit of clothes, a confidence cladding, presumed to make the man.
From Indian Dick’s perspective, it does not work, nor does it bode well… Pott’s new pompous stride, not just any strut, not simply wash and wear. Rather, it seemed to be more, a symptom of Potts’s take on the weeks ahead with Potts now the man in charge, a change in his affect, settling in with expected permanence. It is a situation that Dick decides may require his best abilities at monkey-wrenching, as Dick realizes that this new Potts is intended to be permanent.
And to make this point, just like Cortland, the son of a bitch has announced a fucking meeting, and he is using Break!… to have it.
“Men, men..” No one pays him any attention and Potts’s voice grows in volume until he is almost shouting. “Men!” Dean, Waltner, Ron and a couple others, lounge against the house, looking up, munching on their morning pastries, paying all the attention some cud chawing cows might give to Potts if he were a farmer standing near their fence… A vague and stupid interest, without any movement toward Pott’s mental or physical location.
Men!
He’s trying to copy Cortland, thinks Dick. A few minutes later, the real Cortland shows up, -understanding the situation. “Morning men, team.” Cortland’s arrival accentuating Pott’s lack of weight and stature, as he stands immense, next to the smaller Potts, hovering at his ear before pulling him off for a chat. Like some adult grabbing a kid's ear, thinks Dick, good he’s going to get a lecture.
Dick and Randy watch until Cortland and Potts are out of view. Then they cork their thermoses and close their tins and head back to work. “Something’s up Dick.” “Yep,” Dick replies.
From the scaffold they turn and watch. Potts and Cortland talking a-chatter, walking first north and then East toward the road, first a calm Cortland and then what appeared to be a jabbering Potts. Dick has never seen these two so intense, as he watches the scene shift with Potts appearing to take charge, instructing. Definitely, there has been a shift, because Cortland stooping toward Potts appears to be paying attention. Dick is now certain something’s up.
Later, he observes Potts leave the job spinning his tires in haste, and then about three pm return and park next to the tool trailer… messing about in Dick’s domain. Then moving toward the house, a half hour on, the work-day about finished, Dick again observes Potts at the tool trailer, moving something inside and hauling something out and then tossing a couple of nail guns into his truck. He does not know what to make of this.
Dick and Randy, Dean and Ron and Waltner, they all borrow tools from the job. As long as they are there when needed and returned in good working order, Wilson has never minded. Usually they ask, except for Dick, who thinks of the tool trailer as his domain, and likely this is why Dick has noticed Potts invading. Normally, Potts would have told Dick what he needed and expected Dick to get it… Something that rarely happened until Potts sent someone else after Dick’s notice. But this is Tuesday and Wilson is gone… And for some reason, Potts is messing in his… Dick’s tool trailer. Odd.
As usual Dick is the last one to leave the job, and as usual he has taken any tools left lying about and put them away, a part of his routine, Indian Dick, Officer Dick, officious Dick, policing the jobsite, making it ship-shape for tomorrow. And what had Potts been doing out here, anyway? He sees little changed. Two nail guns are gone, some of Potts personal stuff is half-hidden in a corner, and underneath are stashed three new padlocks, bright and shining, still in their plastic wrapping, keys intact. Next to these there is a crumpled wad of paper, a receipt with some writing on the back, scratched out with a bunch of pencil slashes for erasure. Dick folds this and puts it in his pocket, to examine later, then he pauses… usually if locks were needed, Wilson would have sent him to purchase them…why Potts, for what?
Later, over a Dick’s Beer, he looks at the receipt, nothing special here. Potts has signed for the locks, charged them to Wilson’s company account, the same way they all sign for anything. But on the back of the receipt scrawled in Potts childish irregular printing. Beneath a layer of sad scribbles, Dick can make out a list of tasks, predictions, promises, notes. Who knows? Potts writing to himself… maybe? After he studies this a bit, attempting to make out the words, he decides to call Liz, see if she has heard anything new of Daphne from her Grand Rapids ‘friends of Daphne’ gab and gossip line. He is not surprised when he listens to reports of a reality not matching Cortland’s. There are rumors that Daphne is giving up the house. A buyer from somewhere she didn’t know, and now apparently something has changed her mind and she’s unhappy that she signed the banker’s papers. “Papers” says Dick… “It is something to do with her family money and the people that control it,” says Liz. “She’s the one who was always rich, before that Tim and his Mighty Burgers.”
“Didn’t know that,” replies Dick.
“Well, something is wrong here. So, it might be wrong there too. I’ll try to find out more and keep you posted.”
Dick returns to the back of the receipt. Beneath the pencil slashes up and back and left to right he can make out the words, or some of them. Lock up… Trailer, chain… axel, label tools, bolt door… Wh…. and a large question mark? Beneath the shading, the rest is smudged except… Cort and Ok.
When he gets to the job the next morning, Potts has preceded him, and as Dick gets out the tools, he sees the nail guns replaced. But oddly, on them there is new paint overlapping the jobsite red, a red that now exists as a partially removed shadow. The nail guns are now painted, the connection fittings, with just a dab of Pott’s color, a gray-blue that can be best described as that of the confederacy. Pott’s has left the guns equipped with Potts’s fittings… Connectors that fit Potts’s smaller diameter hoses. Careless or on purpose?
Dick spends all day working and in thought, piecing bits and pieces together, events and exchanges from the past, gossip, more recent observed interactions, the reports from Liz. And to these he adds the larger, longer events of a year ago that he still remembers clearly. The overheard conversations that caused him to tell Wilson to watch out, from this job, and from years before on other projects. Dick has never trusted Potts.
Taken as bits and pieces, they are bits and pieces. Taken as a partial whole, they grow and enlarge, and coupled with his current suspicions they become an almost certainty, and proof of Dick’s take on Potts from the beginning. Potts’s innate cultural prejudice against Indians, and Indian Dick, aside.
By the end of Wednesday, Dick has decided he needs to take action… and instead of heading home, he turns into MacGuilties, letting his officer Dick's cruiser rumble while observing from the parking lot. Brown’s and Walshinksi’s trucks are near the entrance. He parks next to them and walks through the door, the sloped floor’s central concavity tugging, leading him inwards and toward the bar where standing, stooped, perched on stools and gathered at tables, the working men of Beauville and Boyd city mingle as a mid-week, end of the day ruckus of inebriation is already ongoing.
Joanie Tillsdale smiles at Dick, “It’s been a while Dick, how’re the Indians? I heard you were expanding the casino.” “Nothing to do with that,” says Dick. “Unless I have to save some poor drunk Indian from Rufus, haul him home before Rufus gets him.” Joanie mutters, “Rufus,” with a frown. No one who frequents MacGuilties has any love for deputy Rufus. They have all seen him hovering, thinking himself hidden, late at night, at closing time. It is a bit of a joke for the regulars. Still, every once in a while Rufus nabs someone. Anyway, no one cares for Rufus.
Then referring to the Casino. Dick continues.. “I don’t give my money to the Indians. The whites do that.”
And it was true. If you ever wanted to observe a sad sack lot of humanity, go to the Indian Casino and hang out at the slots for a while, and take a gander at the customer participants, pasty thin and rumpled fat with complexions that never see the sun, their pensions insignificant, dreams departed, yanking on the levers in search of hope, of wealth, a missing or lost happiness, a victory for God’s sake… the common white man or woman, now retired, in search of the vanishing… vanished American Dream
“So, what you having?” “Just a beer,” he says, then adds “Thanks” and moves to the table where Brown is holding forth, and Woodbine and Walshinksi are listening along with a couple of the crew from ‘Diggers Do It Deeper’ …. The Deepers.
“Dick,” Brown gestures to a chair and Dick sits down. “What’s up, you slumming, spying, indulgin,” as his hands open and arms spread wide, offering Dick his MacGuilties white man’s world in a gesture of welcome. “Don’t see you much in here.”
Dick is all business. He has been going over what he will need to say in his mind, and he now gets immediately to the point and his concerns.
“I’ve been watching for a while.” He needs a backhoe, and he is just about to spew it out and tell Brown why and when and for what. Just about to say I think Potts’s going to steal the job, and then ask for the machine. Almost mentioning ‘I plan to dig up my relics’, before he pauses… Because wait. How soon? How far does he wish to scatter his plans and purpose to the gossip winds of Beauville? North-south, east-west. His concerns will scatter in all directions, and before you know it… plans amok, events unanticipated…Hell someone might call CNN, and then he speculates on this thought… a good idea, maybe, certainly, if timed and done correctly. CNN. Beauville might not be dead news, yet. Another tool… a good idea.
But instead, he says. “I know this is where you hang, where you end up on Wednesdays… Just feeling social.” He raises his glass. “To the coming weekend.” He smiles. He’s decided he should ask to borrow the needed backhoe in private.
Turning to Brown, Dick motions with his hand, a sweep toward the bar, table height, across the floor. “Joanie needs to talk to you, she said to tell you.” Brown waves at Joanie and shrugs, and Joanie pays him slight mind, unaware of her need to speak to him.
But it is enough and Brown lifts himself from his chair, and like a rising slow and graceful bear, his bones unbend beneath his bulk and he moves towards the bar. Dick behind him, saying just loud enough to carry above the din. “We need to talk. In private… It’s important.” Brown turns for a moment, his face first broadening with imagined tomfoolery and then slimming as he reflects on Dick’s ‘private and important’ and his caution. “Ok, but drink a beer first... Hey, Joanie”
Back at the table, leaving a slightly confused but busy Joanie behind, it is all Dick can do to ramble on, continue the conversation with nothing and nothing more, while he has important news to convey to Brown. But, he waits through the pitcher and half of the next until he announces, “I came in… wanted to remind you all.” He turns to the Diggers. “Tell you, and you,” Dick points. “Tell the guys that I am bringing some Dick’s beer to the job on Friday… Free Beer. Dick’s Beer for the end of summer.” He has just come up with this idea as an excuse for his presence. Then he waits until the men thank him and say they will not miss it… Until Brown announces he’s got to end it early. Until he and Dick depart the table, leaving the others wondering just what the Indian’s up to? Likely something more than beer. They all know each other well.
Dick and Brown head out the door as Dick says, “I’ll meet you at your office.” Brown whirls his thick finger in the air and climbs into his truck. Dick follows in the cruiser, as Walshinksi observes Dick turn the wrong direction from his home, in pursuit of Brown, as both vehicles turn slowly from the parking lot.
At Brown’s office, almost finished with their conversation. Dick has his backhoe. And Brown, now aware of the plan, in detail, listens as Dick cautions…
“Just in case you should bump into Bloom from Michigumee.”
“Who? I don’t know him, do I?”
“Not exactly,” says Dick. “But Bloom was there on the fourth of July. He has heard you, and of you. He knows, or at least thinks he knows. Bloom knows Wainright. We were talking a few weeks ago. Bloom mentioned you, part of his Beauville observations, a paper he said he’s been working on. I’m in it too. So are Wainright and Wilson.”
“He’s writing about me?”
“All of us,” say’s Dick, “the whole town. He thinks were interesting. He thinks that you. You Brown, with your noise and smiles and show and bluster, as he put it. You are culturally significant!”
Brown laughs.
“He referred to you as one of those localizing forces, something on the line of… let me think.” Dick rubs his brow and scratches. “All societies have centers,” he said, “like whirling circles meeting and intersecting in, what was it, something about a chaos model, the planning of chaos? Can chaos be planned, Brown?”
“Ask your professor,” says Brown.
“Anyway, system centric dervishes interconnecting to form a whole…I did not get it all, what he was talking about, above me, too many words. But, anyway, he said you were significant… Brown.” Dick laughs.
“Ridin a Dervish, says Brown… I like that. But don’t pay him too much mind, those university folks must publish.”
“Significant. Substantial.”
Brown sighs and rubs his belly like an old friend.
“I think he learned of you from Wainright, and according to Wainright, you-Brown...You! Wainright told him of the Christmas cheer, the burned down buildings, the jail time. And then you conned them all! I watched,” says Dick. “Your Jesus, your renewed life force, the zest of you, as the professor put it. Wainright told him of your Jesus moment. Bloom’s putting it in his paper.”
“I likely swayed him with my rhetoric,” says Brown, retreating into his Digger mold. “Them professors, them professors.”
“I think he senses you’re an act.”
“Me,” says Brown. “Me, an act… me, and culturally significant?”
“Yeah, like one of those Mixo projects,” says Dick.
Mixo is a local artist who has been trying to raise money for years in order to make the Mackinac bridge disappear underneath stretched miles of mylar. So far, all he’s managed is the Beauville drawbridge. And that was a disaster.
“It takes an act to know one,” says Brown to Dick’s retreating back as Dick climbs into his cruiser.
Later, seated, home, satisfaction layering his features, Indian Dick thinks ‘job well done’. He has the backhoe for tomorrow, or whenever he needs it. And likely, he’s digging Friday or Saturday. And Brown has just called with more conversation. Walshinksi followed them and stopped at Brown’s office too, and he has included himself in the loop, the planning.
“Two heads, three heads,” says Brown. “Ok, why not?” from Dick as Brown continues. Their plan is now to think, gestate, analyze, work on it, sleep on it, then reconnoiter Thursday afternoon… “For a bit more planin.”
And now, Dick waits for the phone to answer, hoping that the number added to the card… Professor Sheldon J Bloom, Anthropology Dept, University of Michigan… is either Bloom’s home line or cell phone number. He has left his number and a message. “I have something for you. Will you be north this weekend?”
Small towns are odd affairs. The personal is different than it is in cities. There is more gossip, and more mingling of the strata. And on occasion, an event will pull the Democrat, The Republican, the worker and the merchant, the student and the teacher, the Priest and the Preacher, together as one. This was about to occur in Beauville. And as you might imagine, the organizer of this event will be Janet Wainright, as the citizens of Beauville will band together to rid themselves of the interloper, the destroyer… Cortland Van DeGroot. Listen, read and follow. And to think it would have never happened but for a spring-cleaning Indian, an errant moccasin and a persistent Labrador.
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