Chapter 45
Wonderful-Wonderful, and then, Oh My…Yikes!
Beauville… Has a ring to it, doesn’t it? Well known in the Midwest, and better known nationwide before the Great Crash of 1929… With the national news coverage, the cover lifted once again from Beauville’s songbird cage. History is said to repeat itself. No longer limited by the regional notoriety of a sunk canoe or another drowning, no longer the victim of New England’s self-centered provincialism, Beauville’s history joined its past with present. New York had noticed, and as Beauville’s beauty splashed across the television, it began to sing.
For the first time in many years, Americans from the West, and from along the Atlantic seaboard, took notice. Alerted by CNN, and summoned by the summer, they were not disappointed.
The beaches were as the flyovers represented, stretching for miles, long and pristine white. Much less crowded than Atlantic shores, they provided white sand and the new experience of fresh waves and water, a pleasing novelty to sunbathers who had only reckoned with the seashore. To exit the water refreshed without a layer of clinging salt was a new fresh wonder if you had only body surfed the sea.
And, there was the history… As old as New England’s, with French explorers, Champlain, Marquette, fur trappers, the beaver trade, and the search for the North West Passage.
History carries romance, when the story is a good one. And Northern Michigan was full of good stories, from King Strang and Beaver Island, to Mackinac Island and the French and Indian wars… complete with the La Cross game of five hundred savage participants and their observing squaws who smuggled knives beneath their blankets, passing them to the players to provide the game with a more violent conclusion, the slaughter of the British at their Fort Michilimackinac, when the oblivious British, taken by surprise, thought they were watching sport, instead of a native American Trojan Horse feint meant for them..
A good story brings mystique and mystery, an anchor in the longevity of time… and once discovered, it only adds to interest and the tourist base, as it prolongs the holiday, while providing fruit for the many articles that now began appearing in more East Coast journals, referencing this new place of summer, intrigue and beauty. Beauville, featured in the Atlantic and in the New York times magazine, even Harpers, and a short story in the New Yorker long ago submitted, now published, about a little girl on Beaver Island.
The merchants and citizens of Beauville, if they had not been story tellers before, became them now, coaxing customers, smiling, indulging these new tourists with the romance of the region. Bartenders, busboys and cashiers, listened, relayed and learned about where they lived… More than they had ever learned in school. In their own minds becoming special with the realization that they were inhabitants of such a history, and this energy carried and spread, as these servers of food and booze and jingle-jangle could not help becoming tall-tale tellers too, filling the shops and restaurants with the romance of the past. Previously passed over; Beauville and Northern Michigan joined the great fable of America, the America of revolution and the spirit that conquered the West.
There were lectures at the library, for locals first, and then for tourists too, learning, sailing, sunning. Beauville filled up. A weekend became a week and more tourists followed. Then a week became a month, and a month became a summer.
First, these new visitors were surprised by the beauty, and then when they gained knowledge of Beauville’s history, they were delighted by their discovery, and the knowledge became their own… Hundreds of years of history… Millenniums in the lakes and land… sufficient to justify the noise, the news, and the recent notoriety… to sustain exploration… Tales from the past, and new ones. CNN was happy to oblige.
The visitors had listened and read the story of Indian Dick’s rescue of Honey Darling. Some wondered what sort of Indian? They saw the news coverage and the region’s beauty. And now they came and learned and experienced as the anthropologists from camp Michagumee, not to be out done by the Beauville historic society, and the library, became so excited they began giving weekly lectures in the Harbor Park, on their digs, their don’ts, and on the history of Hemingway’s Nick Adams wandering… and so it went.
Amazing when you think about it… all from Indian Dick and CNN, and a dull summer. Hello America, and Enter Beauville… One of ‘the’ places, the Hamptons, Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, Boothbay, Kennebunk and Kennebunkport, Taint… Locations where the affluent sail and play… One more place on the map to ogle and ah about, where the wealthy and their descendants once spent, and still spent summer. Where, for a few months, the parties rolled, and the beverages flowed. Beauville, a village that might have known a Midwest Gatsby hoodlum from Chicago or Detroit. Beauville, complete with its clubs and cottage Gatsby architecture, and old money.
Yes, notoriety produced stories, and stories fostered legend. Beauville was in the news with articles like one recent in the Detroit Free Press, ‘Had Henry Ford’s Harry Bennett, or those like him, ever known Beauville?’ Were their secret tunnels going anywhere? There were rumors that a tunnel stretched underneath the harbor from side to side, once for rum runners, then used by the old lovers, Walter and Rachel, the story went, who met in secret walking from side to side beneath the water, so as not to upset 1930s post Depression sensibility. When Wilson read this, he thought. Why not just a rowboat in the dark, but this was the sort of nonsense that transpired. Soon, next, he thought, the media will be digging up King Strang.
Rumors aside, history aside, beauty aside, where the affluent go, the looky-loos follow. Beauville, according to the New York Times travel spread, was the summer’s newest place, scenery included. It was the best July in years. More people came to town bringing different accents with them, New York, Boston, the Texas drawl. There were even some Japanese with their constant clicking cameras.
Hotel bookings were up, then full. Condominiums were rented, then filled. Yachts were chartered… All sloops and ketches, yawls, now unavailable. And within a couple of weeks, instead of one monster lump of a yacht anchored in the harbor, there were three. Fifty footers became ubiquitous. Bowsprits from large sailboats stuck out from slips too small as the public docks filled completely with transient traffic. Locals who had used and thought of the public dockage as their own lost their places and were forced to anchor out. But, no matter… Most of them would take it. Because it all depended, life depended, existence depended on the summer. And this year, thanks to Indian Dick… Hurrah!... The coffers would be overflowing.
Most years, only casually busy in July, Beauville’s central blocks were now jammed with people from bright sunrise to red gold sunset. Through July and August there was a constant boat parade entering and exiting the channel, and a similar land locked affair… Crowds of tourists who strolled up main street and down the other side.
Ice cream sellers walked the streets, their carts jangling… Fudge shops, candy shops, soft serve cones. Sweets were everywhere, in hands, in mouths, in packages. Ice cream dripped and sticky-stuck to children’s faces. Mid-day strollers filled their faces with fudge. The ‘rubber tomahawks’ sold out, and every bad or good painting of a sailboat, a lighthouse, or a seagull was soon gone from every gallery and nick-knack shop in town.
The merchants were overjoyed. Visitors walked the harbor park. The craft shops sold out. There were classes on how to make a moccasin. The restaurants had long lines, and bars were open as late as the law allowed, as the inebriated filled the streets, as the days went from dusk to dark to late at night, and to tomorrow. The real estate agents made their year or set themselves up to do so with planned transactions for the fall. Longbottom suddenly had contracts on half his lots. The country was on a roll. The stock market soared, and Beauvillians grew summer-rich from fun, from sales, and from mendacity.
So it was, in Beauville… from the 2nd week of July and on. All were certain… Good times would roll until the end of summer.
**
“You’ve been busy,” said Grace. “And you’ve not been around,” said Wilson. “Where have you been?” It was the final week of July and Wilson had not seen her since the day after Indian Dick’s heroics. Grace had vanished. He might have been lonely, but work and the occasional sunset sail, and more work, had filled his days and afternoons, music and booze his nights, this and more designs, details for the house, and more music, more whiskey, more days and nights, and contentment that Daphne was spending, that the project, his life, was working well. He would have enjoyed some sex, also some companionship. He would have liked to have been a two instead of a one. But he had been busy, too busy, and that had been almost enough. Still, he had missed her and imagined last spring that this time there might be some permanence to their life and loving. And then… She had disappeared with CNN’s arrival.
Now, moments ago, unannounced, she had decided to enter his life again after almost a month of absence. And like always, with Grace, she just showed up as if she had never left, as if she were expected… the last week of July, and they had missed almost a month of summer, but from her affect, her absence might have been an afternoon.
And Wilson was pleased to see her, his eyes, his ears, his stirring groin. Grace, he could not help but smile. And with her, of course, came Barney dashing about the house and smashing. Late on a Friday, his music blaring, expecting solitude, three whiskey doubles to the wind and about to row to his boat to watch the dusk arrive, viewed from the water… Suddenly there she was. Just say Grace! Bursting through his hidden entrance door-wall.
“Are you drunk?” she asked. “Drinking,” he replied as Grace tut-tutted and frowned. “You shouldn’t. I cannot talk to you when you’re drinking.” “Wasn’t planning on any conversation, wasn’t planning on any company,” his words lugubrious, not slurred… “But, and I’m not drunk… Yet,” … Raising his eye and nodding toward the stairs, toward his bedroom, as she ignored him.
“So, where have you been? I’ve been by your house a couple of times. I’ve called. The animals were there, food and fed, but never you.”
“Shirley’s been watching them.”
“Ok,” he says… slow, drawn out, letting the K hover in the air. “And you...?”
“I was in New York, but then I have been here, just not there. David, my bond trader, saw all the coverage of the town. He decided he wanted to see the place. My church didn’t work for him, plus the church is my private place. I’ve been at the Club. David borrowed a cottage from a client.”
“How could I not have seen you?”
“I told them all to keep it quiet.”
“Really, a conspiracy?”
Wilson slouches into the cushions and takes a sip, a brood commencing behind his eyes. Grace laughs. “Not exactly, only Janet knew. I’ve been hanging with the useless rich. He, David, wants us to be an item…. I thought I should tell you. Before someone else does.”
“I thought you didn’t like him… someone you tolerated… As I recall, you said we fit… That you could not stand him, long?”
“He’s been growing on me. Anyway, I told you… He’s rich, real rich!… And my hands, my eyes, they won’t last forever… to fix the tapestries. I need a shop. He’ll fund a gallery here, and maybe… We’ll be in New York. He said he’d set one up for me there, too.”
“Em,” says Wilson. “From Beauville to Manhattan. That’s a jump”…reeling from this, but sort of expecting it. Knowing Grace was Grace, informed by her preamble. “I thought he has no taste.”
“He doesn’t. But what’s that got to do with it?”
Wilson wanders to the counter and pours more whiskey. Then, before she can comment, he gulps it down.
“Did I do something?”
“No,” she says, taking the offensive. “You cannot be here. You cannot keep this.” She waives toward the room’s centered angle, then towards the fireplace, the stairs, then upwards towards the beams. “You shouldn’t be here. You should be in Colorado. I don’t know why you came back? That job, something will go wrong, I’m certain.”
Wilson listens to this thinking, so much for nurture. Yep, Grace had never been much, at that… she would have made a lousy mother. But interesting, and if he stepped aside… Her prediction. Makes sense. He had thought this, off and on from the beginning, but once back together, his mind had shifted to… Why not? But if it all goes south, she’ll be correct. Feely owns it more than he does. Grace, his own escaping muse, or Delphi goddess. Of course, she must move on. It’s in the vapors.
Wilson looks directly at her, rises, touches her face, then says, “Well, Fuck.”
At this, Grace turns to the closet and begins to grab some of the clothes she’s left there. “One last time,” he says, reaching for her. “No,” she says, “No! It’s for the best,” and with that Barney trots up and licks his hand as Grace says “Barney”. And Barney, as dog confused as Wilson feels, gives one last yelp, and they are out the door, dog and woman, gone departed… And he senses it is forever.
If you have ever gone sideways off a roof, or found yourself tumbling down a stairway after one misplaced step, the sudden unbelievable immediacy of the event. This is how Wilson feels, bizarre is too slow a word, too cautious. If it had been physical, he would have been sent sideways, reeling, a sudden punch, so unanticipated, that he had not sensed a direction or an adversary.
As it was, his head began to throb, and the feeling grew, an awareness, a pain, and an ending, all in one. The Germans may have a word for it… a different, no English to describe it, schadenfreude. Like he has just been kicked in the gut and he cannot fight back because his attacker’s either gone, or never was, with him writhing prostrate on the floor. He does not know what to say to whom. He does not know what to feel. But no question, he hurts, a brain throb inexplicable. There are no happy excuses, no ‘it will be just alrights’. But there is major weirdness, and pain, and a sense of finality combining… Events too quick and too uncertain to grasp completely.
He had imagined she would show up, but not like this. Their relationship had been different, loving, on and off, and not. However, he had always thought that it would last… on and off perhaps, but renewing over years. He wonders if he could have stopped it, said something, done something. Had he been too confused, too consumed, too occupied with self? But how can you prepare for an earthquake? He hears an imaginary barking, but there is no dog returning at his door.
After a few more whiskeys, he recalls the last time she left. But this feels different, permanent. Overwhelmed with the finality that a part of his life has vanished, and likely for forever. He pours another whiskey, and then he grabs the bottle and cranks the music loud.
Early August
Wilson is on the second floor of Chateau Daphne, stapling the bath layout to the wall, moving from room to room carrying small 8 by 11 plans with him, details of this and that, easier than lugging a great roll of drawings that required constant searching, flipping from page to page and back again in order to find this detail or that one… Bedroom #1, hallway arch #2, bathroom #3, trim inset #4. This was a part of the Abernathy approach to building, and only possible because of his hands on attention and Cadd abilities.
Impossible for most architects in the late nineties, with their teams of draftsmen. It would not have been convenient, and in most architecture offices they would have likely found more clients, more designs, long before a building was even framed. The draftsmen, or the lone architect of the small office, already moved on to more challenges, more revenue, the client’s half forgotten, the house mentally shelved, drawings completed, the house history except for the fee centric job inspection, or a builder’s needed detail, or a client’s request for change. And once these started, then the money flowed… A poor builder with many questions causing slowdowns and greater revenue for the architectural firms than a better builder might.
On an Abernathy job, none of this occurred. There were no extra padded fees. And if a change was needed, hop-skip, Wilson was on site working, nothing to it, no need for delay or cost, as he was there engaged and working, anyway.
It was different when you both designed and built the house. Your creation lasted months, years. For Wilson, his drawings and details changed and arrived as needed. And for the owner, there was an bonus. After months of digging and framing, Wilson might find that living with the project, observing its progression, walking, watching, living in it… a new better interior idea might emerge… long after his initial drawing but before the structure’s final interior fact. Thus, these stapled small drawing details, which were more efficient, timely, and easier for the men to see and read.
Every room eventually containing its finished plan or folder, before the fact, not after. All he needed to say is “Go, go… The drawing is on the wall. The drawing is by the door. The drawing is on the sawhorse table.” And, if a still different and better detail came to mind before Dean or Randy or Waltner or Dick or any of the others had commenced. He could change the drawing and details within an hour's time on his computer, and replace an old idea or detail with a new one. He hated re-do’s but changes before the fact? On occasion, with this, he neared perfection.
His last staple stapled, with satisfaction that the house was moving toward completion, he heads to his shop above the garage to work on his current private project, the curved stringers and treads that will eventually be the turret spiral stair. He is currently layering the inside stringer, forming it around a temporary cylinder form, created for that purpose. A portion of the curved and twisted final inner helix wraps and rises against this surface. Once this is done, he will take over the turret, and use the interior turret curve for the outer stringer form, and then when both the inner and the outer stringers are formed and finished, he will remove them back upstairs to fit the treads between them. He plans to assemble it together, the entire stair, in the high great room, and when finished haul it outside through the double slider and then with a crane’s assistance lift it toward the sky and then drop it finished down into the turret’s cylinder shaft. After this, Dick and Randy will seal the stairway in forever, then frame and finish the turret cap. Voila… the stairways sudden presence as if by magic… a ‘ship in a bottle’ winding stair, for as long as the house will last. And, he will have built a stair that might be furniture. And, this must be completed, the turret capped and sealed, before the heavy rains and gales of fall. So, he is busy.
Down the hall from his make shift workshop, long windows face the marina, and the Master Mind Too. He pauses on his way to get more clamps, then observes. Something has certainly transformed Daphne. The woman is skipping like a joyful little girl, skipping!... Down the walkway to the marina. She looks up, smiles at seeing him, and waves. Such is the energy on the project in early August. A far cry from the year before, when she and Tim were at each other’s throats, when he was constantly concerned for time and money… when the energy was, at best, unfortunate.
This year, unlike the last, money is available, the crew is satisfied, and the job progresses on a steady rising curve towards completion. For two months now, Cortland has been banished, silent, about the yacht with Daphne, but no longer attempting to be in charge. The last time he created a problem, Daphne had sent him packing. So now, when he walks the jobsite with her, he says little. Wilson has won last year’s war and battle. He has managed to diminish Cortland. The house moves on. Philippe is about and not, but busy elsewhere… And his despair over Grace… Thanks to Daphne’s new home, he is surviving.
This Mr. Potato Head carries his talents forward, and its completion fills the emotional hole she’s left him. If not for Daphne’s house, he might be drinking, drunk, a forlorn mess. But fulfillment can cure the aches of love, at least it is his current pain killer… more than booze… Even as his inner voice, the demon, warns… Idiot, idiot, how trite. And trite… Yes-perhaps… But for the moment, true.
He returns to the stairs, and shouts for Dick and Waltner. He needs assistance with some clamping. The house is on a roll.
Later in the afternoon, on his way to get more West System epoxy from wherever Indian Dick has stashed it, shouting, “Dick, Dick,” and hearing no reply. Past the hall windows that look west and south and down towards the marina. Two figures are in view, on the stern of the Master Mind Too, Cortland and Daphne, visible then gone, then visible again, displaying odd body language. He pauses, observing, then faint, he hears a female shriek. Wilson knows the sound, the timber and tone, the emotion that accompanies it. Though he has not heard such shouts of anguished rage since the previous spring and summer, remembering the scene at Mackinac. It seems a lifetime, but it was only fourteen months ago. History repeating itself with Cortland, instead of Tim? Why now? The waters had been so smooth.
He stops dismayed, observant… Arthur Fiedler to the fire, watching as their quarrel grows… Daphne is there, then gone, and with each new appearance in the cockpit her shouts grow louder. Cortland and Daphne aboard the Master Mind Too and arguing… the distant cockpit, the marina, with chaos on display for anyone about or working on the job… For all the world to see!
One moment Daphne is beet red bellowing, then vanishing, then reappearing white as death, then transforming… a chameleon, red with rage once more. He observes her move to Cortland, his retreat, then his steps forward. She pauses, they hug, she cries and weeps. He calms her, but the confident affect, the firm cheeks, the lifted jaw… All are in transition. One moment, her jaw is firm, the next, her jowls appear slouched, her face returning to a softer puddle.
He hurries down the stairs toward the Marina, past the beach and the scrawny cedars. Silence, heavy silence, momentarily a calming Cort, and once more, a screaming Daphne. When he reaches the gangway, Cortland first cautions with his hand, “Are you invested? It’s the market!” Wilson can see below where Daphne stands staring at the television, the crawler moving rapidly, full of a constant stream of sell orders. Why? … what? … Watching the curve on the television plummet, its upward climb inverted, and Fobar from CNBC filled by self-importance and the moment. “We may soon be seeing something new… Never in my lifetime… An instant recession… Possibly depression… The market’s crashing! Maybe going… Going, gone!”
As it had risen, the market was even more rapidly falling, the curve becoming vertical. “Billions lost in the last hour! At this rate it will be Trillions in value, vanished!” says Fobar, who is restoring his appearance, and calming himself from shock… Preparing to be an expert going down, even as he had, for months and years, been an expert going up!
It is an event unfolding. A panic rising. But few are yet aware, if they have not been listening to the finance radio or staring at Bloomberg or CNBC… A major shock to the system yet unnoticed by the stations that feature country or classical, blues or rock, playing in offices and automobiles across the nation, and on the crew’s radios in Chateau Daphne.
But Daphne has been watching… And Wilson, now aboard the Master Mind Too, understands the reasons for her shouting, overhearing CNBC and Fobar. “Billions, Trillions,” as he observes Daphne, now returned to the cockpit, attempt to view her laptop in the sun, oblivious to his presence, hammering on the buttons… “I cannot make a trade… It will not take it… I cannot sell!” as she tosses the laptop aside. “Billions, Trillions… Trillions!” Daphne screams again, as he observes a useless, calming Cortland. “You must have had a stop-loss in place…”
“What, what! You advised me. You never mentioned… What? You!” And from Fobar on the television… “It’s going, going!”
Daphne is rage rising. A glass sails by and then another and then a weeping, crying, shouting Daphne. This reminds him of that first trip to Mackinac. What has happened to the calm, confident woman of yesterday? Of earlier this morning? One moment she is melting, the next she is exploding. And to remind him, another glass sails past his head, as Daphne screams once more and then retreats below to scan the television.
Wilson looks at Cortland, whose eyes say… Help. “I guess you would not have heard the news.” He points below, down the companionway to the main salon where CNBC is live, and the stock exchange in chaos… “The market’s already crashed 750 points!” Wilson looks below and watches… stock brokers, chits, people running everywhere… “Not since the great depression,” continues a self-important Fobar.
Then Daphne returning to the cockpit, sitting with her laptop, staring at her trading screen… Punching the keys, again, again… Yelling, crying… trying to make a trade and rescue herself, then tossing the laptop bouncing below, across the cabin floor. Then rescuing the machine as she still jams the useless buttons…
And one stock repeats, and repeats… a steady stream of sell orders… more than any other across the crawler… GG World, GG World, GG World... Another scream comes from Daphne. And then she is back on deck again, still hardly noticing Wilson.
“You, you, you,” she shouts at Cortland… “You suggested it! I’m on margin! All in! On margin! I was making so much.” Punching the buttons on the laptop in the sun again, and amazingly the screen still shines… but, but… “This thing is useless!” Anger and pain and worry in her voice, as Daphne slams the computer down. Her trades still will not go through.
“Margin,” says Cortland, shocked incredulity across his face. “Can you hold, can you fill?” “I don’t know,” she wines, retrieving the laptop for the third, the fourth, the fifth time… Pushing buttons, her fingers stabbing the keys and nothing happening. She screams more, and then another glass flies by. He has seen her drinking gin and tonics before. This is not going to be pretty.
It is as if an overwhelming storm has come to early August summer. Yet, the wind is calm, the sky clear and tranquil, but beneath this, in the land of rich America, dreams are crashing, fear is marching… uncertainty, uncertainty…and with uncertainty the market plunges, and it plunges more.
“I better go,” Wilson says to Cortland. “You in, are you in danger?” asks Cortland. “No,” says Wilson. “I’m in real estate.” But, of course, he is in danger as he retreats to the job, to the questioning eyes of his crew and subs, some of whom have switched from country to the news, and are listening to the chaos of a crashing market.
To those working on Chateau Daphne, it does not matter. But it will, if it shuts down the job, if a crashing Daphne really falls apart, if the money evaporates. If the check sitting in his drawer for his August payments bounces… 150,000… Yikes!
Wilson thinks some of the men may know this. And a peril that was nonexistent two hours ago now sits heavy on his mind. Perhaps Grace was prescient… Or was it a knowledge she had not shared? Learned information from her bond trader?
………..
It takes a couple of weeks, but the crash will hasten the end of summer. It will not linger this year. For three weeks tourists will continue to visit, and spend with hope, or as a buttress to the future’s reality. But in the background, something is very wrong. The American Dream hangs uncertain… And then… With the beginning of September, the festivities are over. Like the final crashing chord of a Mahler symphony… Finished… Abruptly over. Summer and the party too… And possibly this will extend into next year and the next. No one knows.
The merchants, the Beauvillians, sense this tightness, as the cash register’s chimes, already expected to slow, slow more, until by the 2nd week of September there is only the sporadic sound of local trade.
Those who were not invested think themselves well off and fortunate. They have saved like they always do. They will make it through the fall and winter and into the next spring and hope that things are better, if, if…? And no one knows.
Life will continue. But the irrational exuberance is gone, and perhaps it is gone forever… Like waking from a nightmare that turns to fact, the reality of the crash takes hold, with the end of summer. A hanging cloud, a shifted expectation… what some might call an end of hope.