A Builder's Tale - Chapter One - read prologue chapter first! Select see all at bottom of page

Audio is female Hal

                                                        Chapter One

                                    If  Everything Remained The Same

                                        There Would Be Nothing New

He remembered Mackinac Island from long ago when he was young. His family had vacationed there.  This Island between the lakes, set amidst The Straits of Mackinac. Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, and above them, farther north, Superior.  It fit that so much history came together at this freshwater junction that defined Michigan as Michigan defined his own small history. 

     The past was heavy and full at this intersection of lake and land where Indian canoes had traversed, where French, English, and Americans had all spent lives, or portions of lives... For adventure, for beauty, for profit, for trade, for control of a waterway that might lead to or be the Northwest passage.  That mythic watery path to the Pacific that calls throughout our nation’s early history, a ‘manifest destiny’ years before Mr. Greeley.  It and the beaver trade were the reasons for the island fort, which, rising from the bluffs above him, sat like Gibraltar, in command of the surrounding freshwater sea. 

Mackinac Island.   

He remembered—adrift in his mind.

     He heard the horses' hooves from a four-year-old’s summer past. Percussive sound, muted rubber shoes on asphalt, and he remembered an avenue that was large and long and grayish black.  Tall trees lined its edges, defined by wide, meandering veranda walkways, listening to the sound of horses from inside the carriage, with its red wheels and seats of black leather, their driver’s whip before him lightly snapping at the horse’s hindquarters.

     It was one of his earliest vacation memories, the horse’s rump swaying as it climbed the hill, he and his parents in the fancy coach, slowly moving upwards… steep loamed island granite and a white Shangri-La of an estate above them, expanding in view with their carriage’s progress, their driver perched outside and high above the horses, clicking the bridle, wearing red and a top hat.  1954 and Mackinac Island, men with sticks hitting the ground to his right, deep meadows to his left

     “Look,” he had said, “look,” pointing at the men with sticks, seeing a white ball. 

     “Look!”

     “It’s a game, Wilson, golf.”  

The game, silly game. Another man hit the ground and then threw his stick.  It held no great wonder for him on this morning when everything he saw was bright, new, and exciting—Men, woman, strolling, riding, speeding down the hill.

     Every so often the horse would stop unbidden and defecate, then move on up the hillside.  Black men sweated, climbing upward, and speeding down, manipulating rickshaw bicycle contraptions, ferrying skinny and fat, tan and pasty, white folks to and from the hotel…Mackinac Island.

    “You’re going to love it, Willy.  There are no cars here, only horses and bicycles, carriages.”

A rickshaw with a dark frame and yellow wicker bench sped by, the bench-black leather beneath the fat buttocks of an old lady, her head covered with a floppy white hat with a faux flower on its side. 

     It was summer, and he was four. 

    “You will have your own bike.  You can pick it,” his father had said. 

He could not yet ride a bike.  What his father meant was a larger tricycle. Wilson had seen them near the ferry, another little boy with one—green with wooden blocks attached so the boy could reach the pedals. 

    The horse stopped and oozed again. “Giddap,” said the driver, flicking the whip, “giddap.” The Hotel was huge before them, full of gardens and flowers, red carpet steps, and dark smiling men in uniforms.

     “Welcome sir, young master, Mrs., Welcome to the Grand Hotel.”   

And up the wide steps they had followed their ferried baggage.  Up the wide steps to a veranda, a deck, a porch, column after column and flag after flag, east and west, high ceilinged…forever.  Then through great doors. “The Grand,” had said his father.  “See the pool,” had said his mother pointing down and out and away towards more gardens, and a light blue Paul Bunyan foot shaped hole of water, and beyond that deep blue waters-the Straits of Mackinac.  Water, and ferries, and boats everywhere. 

     “Hurry-up, Wilson, we are going to the room. Hurry-up now, you may look later.” 

     He followed, examining everything, all new and glowing and wonderfully full of life.  Towering above him was the check in with rows and rows of keys.  He could barely see them, and adjacent, another uniformed man.

     “Your name, sir?”  

     “Abernathy, Abernathy. Two rooms.”  

Bang, clang, an old brass elevator open to the lobby.  He looked down as the floor vanished.  Two floors and then a wide hallway with lights on blue papered walls, and carpet, tan beige and dappled green, with bordered dark wood, shiny door after shiny door; the brass number said 207.  They walked inside behind the man, who set their bags on the table, then opened a door to another room.

     “This one’s yours, Willy,” his mother said while his father fished in his pockets and handed something to the man. 

     “Thank you, sir.” The man tipped his head. “Thank you, if you need anything.”  

     The man left, and out the window he had seen again the blue water with the dotted white boats, and like confetti, the white-capped foam.  A horn sounding and then another…Red, Right, Returning. 

    He was almost jumping from his clothes in excitement, his father sitting down, his mother placing clothes in drawers. 

     “Just a minute Wilson, we’ll explore.”  

Horse sounds below and flower smells, people back and forth, then another carriage.  This one with a surrey and fringe, open, with many people riding, gawking, pointing at the hotel—then up high at the wide windows, at him.

                           *************************************

He heard a ferry and a foghorns sound. The blasts from the ferry and the lower louder harbor light shaking him from the past.  Yes, that had been how it was, that first time, his initial visit to the Island.  Sweat dripped on his nose, fell to his chin, and rolled down the shallow slope of his belly, burned ripe red and itching above blue nylon, lounging in the stern of his current client's yacht, a bloody Mary in his hand.  Well, what used to be a bloody Mary…some of it consumed and some seeping into the cushions beneath him—the glass tipped over by the past. 

       Jesus, it was noisy. His head throbbed from the bar, and from the night before.  Horses' hoofs clattered with snare drum rhythms, pulling a carriage going by.  Well, some things had not changed.  There were still no cars on the Island.  And the servants were poor white men now, the society having dumped at least some of its prejudice. There were fewer blacks working now than there had been before.  Perhaps, because it would be just too ridiculous and unjust to costume up some black man as if it were still the days of liveried slavery.  This had changed, and for the better. But the statues in the park remained the same.

      The marina, Mackinac Island Marina, sat before the street, before the park, before the old Victorians lining shores where French trappers had first landed.  Was it a park then, or a mosquito swamp, or just a bunch of wickiups with Indians?  God, his mind was full.  Too full, he thought, staring into the harbor water.  Too many years, too full.  The water was slick with green, and filth, and mung, and oil.  Had it been this foul when he was four?  He had not noticed. 

     He looked to shore again, a white pushcart, a scrawny man with a shovel, unshaven and smoking.  Every so often, the man bent, shovel down, and scooped up some horse dung.  He was no longer black, either.  Wilson wondered if the blacks would even want the job.  If you listened to the news in Detroit, the answer would have been no.  They were all supposedly doing crack and killing. But he did not believe this. It was just another one of those twisted thoughts arriving with Michiganders from the South on their frantic weekend journeys north... The white man’s prejudice—the result of the need for a ‘them’, a ‘those people’, to compensate for their too hectic, unfulfilling lives? 

     Jazz to crack, to killing—all from carriages?  No—he didn’t buy it.  Too much. His head was too full.  Too much.
     And how had he become talked into this, anyway?  Sitting on this elaborate plastic barge that might just as well have been a living room with engines—A bar inside and a bar out—The temptation on yachts like this always to overindulge. 

     He got up to pour a little more gin and tonic, sun over the yardarm, then decided against it.  Where were his clients who had dragged him here? Where were Tim and Daphne? He felt like he was on stage or waiting in the wings, and God, he hated it, this part of it. Hated performing, hated selling, and he was becoming worse at it.  You would think he would be getting better, old hat, falling off a log, better.  But no, he was just thinking of drinking too early.  Better not...might need to sound wise and witty...smart with houses.  Jesus, he had begun to hate it.  Begun? Or had it been a while now?  Quite a while, like a toothache growing.

      He had sensed this inconsistency in himself before he had departed Colorado. In fact, it was in larger measure the reason why he had left Michigan a second time to return to the mountains.  Aware that at times he hated the entire process, the politics of work and life, the meetings, the bullshit, the money — Always, the money!  But it was this need of money that had sucked him back. The need, and his desire to once again build another special sculpted home—To seek self-worth through concrete, wood and stone.  But the business of it all.  This bill, that bill, this car that car, this boat. Too much stuff.  Money and the need to feel, to be creative, had captured him.  How had he let it happen, thinking of the days when everything he owned fit in his little Austin Healey?  He had started out so pure.  Wilson farted long like the ferry, then off the stern behind him he heard a cry.

      A man was approaching, potbellied and brown, astride a long sleek bit of black plastic, which was, for the most part, engine.  There was a bikinied woman on the bow and the man was shouting at him.  Well, not at me, thought Wilson, but at this boat, this massive self-indulgence I'm aboard. 

      “Master Mind Two, Master Mind Two.” 

 Master Mind Two?  Where did they get these names?  The Steven’s yacht looked more like an Ethel to him.   Wilson rose.

     “Yeah”

     “Can you give us a hand?” said the fellow.  “Alicia’s not much good at docking.  She makes a better port.” 

Jesus, he thought. You fool, you’ve gone and trapped yourself again, trapped in the land of clods.  The woman at the bow smiled and jiggled, shaking her hair.   

      “Sure,” he said, gesturing.  “Have you talked to the Harbormaster?” 

      “Kenney,” said the man. “Kenny, I’m a friend of Tim and Daphne.” 

Tim and Daphne were his clients.  Wilson left and grabbed the line, wrapping it back and forth. 

      “Better check with the Harbormaster.”  

      “Hi,” said Alicia, giving him one of those female stares, traveling downward and lingering at his sunburned baggage of a gut.  He sucked it in, then let it back out.  What the hell, he had been down that route before; he was on no stage for that.  There lay financial terror and horrible expense. 

      “Hi to you too, holler if you need more help.”  He walked away, returning to the Stevens yacht. He had not noticed. The Master Mind Two or Too, was it?  Anyway, yacht, boat, plastic floating monstrosity, whatever.  Wishing gin, he grabbed a Coke instead.  Then, looking back at Alicia, who was smiling at him, he remembered past despair.

Actually, the Island had been his idea. 

“We want a Victorian,” they had said at the third meeting in May after all his work on the first plan.  “Something that looks substantial,” and the wife, Daphne, had brought pictures of houses she liked. 

“Margie gave me these when she saw your plan.  All my friends like this look better.” 

     He examined her pictures.  Hideous houses, way too much, too full of porches and turrets, gewgaws and junk.  “I haven’t done a Victorian in years,” he had replied.  “It’s too bad you did not like my first design.”  At the same time wondering, why had they come to him?  Why had they bothered him in Aspen?  They had seen his past designs.  His houses were special, sculpted, contemporary with perfect open spaces, yet none were the same except for the white and oak and light.  Why him? And it was too bad.  That first plan had been nearing perfection.  Two, no three weeks on it, proud of its space, and the use of the property, the days tromping in the spring sighting it—all now for naught, too bad!

     “I liked it,” said Tim.

     “Me too,” Daphne now, “I liked it, but it’s not what I wanted.  I want this,” she said again, thrusting the pictures at him.  “This.”

      “We aim to please,” he replied. “A Victorian could be interesting, might be fun to do something like I did in the Seventies again, something different from my last two.” 

     But the pictures were terrible—Tiny rooms in a mansion full of too much altogether.  Why him?

      “I love this one,” Daphne had said.  “I just love it” ...shoving the picture in front of him.  

     The photo was of a room; a space so full of doilies, tables, vases and knickknacks that one could barely see the floor.  This was hardly his style.  And a room with windows divided into little panes, divided to look old, like when they could only make them small—The result of this, a lack of light.  And the outside had stone.  He appreciated that, and some Roundy Doo’s.  Well, these were ok.  However, the building, the building, was just all too much.  Still, he needed work.  He had agreed to design and build them a house.  One of his Aspen friends’ bits of joking verse came to mind.  “Every Rich man today, it seems, wants a camp.  Something musty and old, but no home for a tramp.”   Fuck! 

     But they had paid him for the first plan- maybe he could design a minimalist Victorian, one with open spaces and not so many things—sell them on that idea.  At least it would be money. He made a lot on the plans, the drawing.  It would be at least another 7,000 before they ever got to working drawings.

     However; this building, this picture, was Mr. Potato Head, and in contrast to anything he had ever done, it was horrible.  Potato head architecture—here a turret, there a turret, here a dormer, there a dormer, jammed willy-nilly into the side of a building with way too many gables.  No sense of design at all, just stuff on top of stuff, gingerbread do-das onward, misplaced, heading toward some house graveyard of poor design. “Ugh”

     How can I do this?  Then it came to him, Mackinac Island.  There were fine 1880s houses on those steep bluffs, large and impressive but not too much, their accents well done but limited, a special round porch, one onion turret, a few well-placed dormers.  They could steal design from them.  Who cares, Victorians, there were thousands of them, and nothing unique or special about them unless it was just that one had more crap and fizz than the next one.  But the old ‘cottages’ on Mackinac—not too bad.  Still—thousands of times before.   That is when he had suggested. 

     “Let’s go to Mackinac Island.”  

He had been there so many times with his family, and on sailboat races.  Or alone and private, dropping in for one night, for supplies, and a sail around the Island on his own boat before moving on farther east, then north, to Georgian Bay. 

     “Let’s go to Mackinac Island, check out those houses.” 

But he meant for a day, and then departure, and then privacy away from this Daphne and Tim. 

     It was best to take a while to know one’s clients, to let them fill out the questionnaire.   How many bedrooms, how many bathrooms, did they read, what did they want in a home?  Then he required time alone to think.  He had done this all once before.  He better do so again.  Just to check, in case this Margie, Daphne’s friend, had opinions concerning baths and beds and bookshelves too.

     And they had suggested the boat trip.   What could he say?  He was a sucker for the water.  So here he was, trapped on their Clorox bottle of a boat, on Mackinac Island.  They absent, and he telling himself to watch the booze.  Don’t lose it.  He would have to eat dinner with them, chat with them, sleep near them.  Oh well, maybe it would not be so bad.  Tomorrow they would tour the Island and look at the houses above the Grand.  The ones facing the Straits like old dowagers weathered by time, commanding a vista which today includes the Mackinac Bridge, more magnificent than the golden gate.  And a high bluff view that had seen sailing merchant ships, and before their time, trappers, frigates, Indian canoes, and bold fresh clear blue water, East and West since the last ice age.

     “Wilson,” a shrill, syrupy voice spoke his name. 

     “Hey buddy,” deeper now, a man’s. 

     They were returning.  His clients.  Tim and Daphne of Grand Rapids, Michigan, home of furniture, home of Scamway, home of God and greed, home of Gerald Ford, and one of Michigan’s enclaves of conservatism.  Wilson did not know them well enough to know their politics, but he was beginning to suspect they probably fit.   What had the Detroit Free Press said of their city’s greatest son when he stumbled into the presidency?  “A simple local yokel whose ass has been struck by lightning,” something like that.  Grand Rapids. 

     He rose as she stepped aboard.  Daphne was tan and red with a perk, once pixie, cheerleader face, now sagging into middle age.  A tight pink bodice supported drooping breasts above white shorts exposing early cellulite.  Her Blond hair rolled out beneath a white baseball cap.  Its logo, Mighty Burger, a ketchup oozing burger on spindled legs, announcing its presence in the middle of her forehead.  Tim followed his bubbling Daphne, wearing some sort of skipper costume—white hat, black brim, gold and anchor ridden, with shorts too white, and knee socks above Pat Boone shoes.  How old were they?  He guessed early fifties. 

     “Fudge,” she said, dumping four white and blue boxes on the cockpit table.

     “Howdy,” he said. “See anything?”    

     “Horses and shit,” Tim replied.  “What a toilet.”

     Well, perhaps, thought Wilson, but no, the idea fought too powerfully with his memories and imagination.  Sure, there were many tourists and traps, fudge stores, bars, rubber tomahawk shops…and they’re all made of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same. Pete Segger, but that was houses.

      “I like it,” said Daphne.  

      “You would,” replied her husband, now scratching at his legs and adjusting his socks perfection.  “You would.”

       “Did you look at any houses?” said Wilson.

     “No, we didn’t get that far.  Daphne did not want to climb the hill.”

      “My knees hurt,” she said.

       “Drink?” said Tim.

Tim moved to the bar, the outside bar. He poured some whiskey; lots of it, with ice, in a Styrofoam container stamped Big Mighty and gestured with the bottle. 

     “Coke,” said Wilson. 

     “Daphne?” 

     “Gin dear, large, dry.” 

They sipped in the cockpit.  

     “Your friends arrived.”  

He pointed to the Kenny yacht a few slips away—sleek, fast looking, black with gold letters, Midnight Vixen scripted on the side. 

     “That’s a fast boat,” said Tim, looking in envy and then back at the comfort of his barge.  “All the paint that GM consumes.  It comes from Kenny.  It buys the toys.”

      Who were these people—this Tim, this Daphne, now on their second cocktail, while he still tried to avoid the booze?  ‘You have always been weak,’ said the demon.  ‘Weak with expectation, weak because there was a future.  No leaping into life’s pool and swimming, but waiting, waiting, for everything to become perfect.’  Tim and Daphne staring at him, she chattering something to him through a fog.  Tim speaking too, something about even if it was a toilet, it might be a good place for a Mighty Burger.  He nodded, and they both turned away toward Kenny who had just arrived—The Baron of paint, stained dark as his heaviest brown 

     Was it possible that they and he were of the same species?  White skinned, blond to brown haired, eyes blue, blue green and hazel.  They looked the same, he and they, but they were not, he knew or thought, with too much false and misplaced pride?  Did they think, or were they simply in the process of consuming?  Economic engines of flesh, of blood, making, spending, producing, buying.  Engines of supply and demand.  Could they be real? He could touch them.  He could hear them.  He could smell them.  He knew he needed them, and they thought the same of him.  But did any of them need one another at all?  

     The joy of building, the joy of designing, the smell of wood, the fabrication, the filthy madding chaotic mess of it, of construction… land, to design, to muddy hole in the ground—he needed them.  To concrete pouring, wood framed, shingled, high windowed, and fabricated sculptures—he needed them.  Interiors, wonderful with light and marble… oak epoxied stairs...Too bad he was not the driver.  The real driver of the bus being specie, currency, coin or paper, unknown, numbered, never seen, except in statements, bank statements, stock statements, money, bills and invoices.  It made one boring, but without it one might be a dullard.  It should have opened passions doors.  Instead, it so often slammed them shut.  He knew. Did they, this Tim, this Daphne?  ‘You think too much.’ The demon said.  And he was well aware of this… and so often, to no purpose, to no productivity.  ‘Why are you thinking? Work, produce, grovel, you idiot-grovel.  Listen to Marx, listen to his re-reasoned surplus value.’  But Marx was wrong—too generous of opinion.  You sell your life not your labor, and that was even fouler, especially if it was sold to people like these…Who looked the same.

     He slammed the demon’s door.  Tim was speaking to him, at the same time nodding and gesturing to Kenny, who now also held a drink in his hand. Tim of the ‘Pat Boone’ shoes and perfect socks.  His nose, straight and aquiline, with a face too soft, too lightly sculpted for a man.  Thin and graceful, almost androgynous. A Nureyev without the satyr, next to the smaller, rounder, balder, tanner, Kenny-Baron of Paint, whose head resembled one of those healthy brown eggs.  Survival of the fittest? Perhaps, for Tim, sure did not look like it for Kenny… Nope, not either one of them.  What an odd bit of history, someday… The Age of Rejects…  A return to the tyranny of the Bourgeoisie ... Stop it, stop it… he should have locked the door… Well, never would, never could.  Never the less he tried again.  Super glue?

     “What’s up with ‘Mighty’ these days?” Said Kenny. 

      “Not good,” replied Tim.

Wilson listened. 

      “I’ve got thirty-five of them now and all of them are losing equity, every one of them is down.  If I tried to sell.  They keep cutting prices to compete with the big burgers, and my labor costs are up.  That fucking Clinton!  These kids, they want more than the minimum wage.  I’m squeezed.” 

     Wilson looked, first left then right, about the Master Mind Two—the opulence, the white, the teak all new and shining... Stroking the faux white leather beneath him.  ‘Clods,’ said the Demon, ‘Do you really want to get involved with these people? Oh, but you need to don’t you, idiot, those payments, you’re trapped and you’ve committed.’ The demon laughed.  And he had committed, the contract was signed.  They were talking to him.  He saw their mouths moving, and he tugged himself back again to be polite.

      “A Victorian, is it?” Came from Kenny.  “I hear you’re good…And Daphne,” he looked towards her, smiling down. “She likes her Victorians.” 

     ‘Get out now, before it’s too late, get out now, walk away, idiot, idiot.’  Demon laughter now, dancing round his brain.

      “I’ve tended to the contemporary, the last ten years.  But we can do it, we can do it.” ‘Ha, ha, ha.’ Demon laughter.

     “I’m not sure we can,” said Tim. 

Daphne quickly turned towards her husband. “What?”  As if she had never heard it before.  Wilson wondered, great, what am I in for?   ‘Ha, ha, ha, ha-ha-ha.’ 

     “What?” she said again. 

      “Now, we have talked about this, Daphne.” 

He thought.  What am I?  They’re oblivious to me.  I am just here, another thing.  ‘Ha, ha, ha’… Fuck!’  Daphne’s face was growing redder, her cheeks puffing out, her little nose retreating in her face. 

     “Fuck you Tim, it’s my dream.” 

Wilson raised his eyes toward Kenny, who shrugged as if to say, oh well, ‘shit happens’. 

     “Tim, you’re having a midlife crisis,” bellowed Daphne. 

Tim sloshed his drink around its ice and took a long slow sip while frowning at his wife.   

     “Wilson, have you had yours?” … “Well?” 

     “I’m not sure I haven’t always had one, always been in the midst of one.”

       Tim’s affect was strange, body slouched yet Prussian rigid. His eyes pooled blue, but like a malamute’s, somehow hollower than they might be.  Dog’s eyes, confused?  His face smiling. 

     “Huh? What do you mean by that?” 

If you need to describe it.  It was like explaining physics to a fish, perhaps? But different, because Tim’s eyebrow was raised in curious skepticism, perhaps more in a lack of understanding of Wilson, than the idea.          

     “Nothing.”

     “I wasn’t talking about Wilson,” said Daphne. “I was talking about you!  You always try to change the subject.”  A scowl formed her face.

Tim frowned with amusement towards his wife, as one might look at a toy or a pet that one loved and sometimes tolerated.  

     “Occasionally, Daphne, you’re a really dim bulb.  Sometimes I wonder how you even find the switch.”  

Daphne now pouted—insulted.  She moved to the edge of the Master Mind’s gunnel rail, then quickly turned and hurled her drink towards her husband.   But it missed, and gin, ice, showered down on Wilson, a squeezed used up lime landing on his foot.

     “Oh no, I’m sorry.”  

She sped to towel him off, touching too long, pulling on his sleeves, wiping too close to his groin…Smirking at her husband. 

     “Stop it, Daphne. Wilson will dry on his own, just fine.” 

‘Watch out,’ said the demon, an angel now. 

     “I’m going for a stroll,” said Wilson, grabbing his top-siders and pulling them on, one foot then another, as he walked and hopped away and down the dock. 

      Alicia was lounging on the Midnight Vixen, spilling from a suit that could have been a Kleenex.  She waved, and slouched, then gestured with a drink.  The Vixen was a few slips away from the Master Mind Two; in distance only seventy or eighty feet.  He turned towards her. “Sure”. 

     It appeared it might become another night of booze.  On the boat with them?  He glanced back.  Why not? They wouldn’t notice if they kept drinking.  And it seemed to be in their cards. Why not his?  He didn’t need to be whipped in that direction.  Hell, maybe he would need a load on, just to sleep…Imagining crashed glasses, and cushions stained, then looking again at Alicia, he wandered out the slip’s walkway.  ‘Watch Out, Watch Out!’

     “Not so happy in burger land?” 

     “Doesn’t seem to be.” 

     “Well, it won’t be the last time.” 

     ‘Watch out,’ again said the demon, but for different reasons.

      Wilson climbed two steps and boarded.  Alicia, her irises at the top of her eyes, gazed at him with a 'Je ne sais crois’ that did not match her costume.  Did he see it? Really?   A knowledge of too much life already?  An acceptance and smiling cynicism that didn’t belong with the physical package. Her deep tan, flat stomach, legs long stretched, breasts aging but attractive.  He could not help noticing; the fabric daubs of her suit, a small turquoise band-aid, exposing almost too much.

     “Why? That happens a lot?” 

     “Enough,” she said. “Enough, it’s just part of their routine-they’ll be fine in a while.” Just then there was Kenny, looking down, brown pot belly, large but firm like an over inflated football... thing looks like it needs a signature, powerful legs, gray fringe around his head... some Roman accolade wreath. 

     “Thought I’d get out of there too.  They’ll be at it for a while now.  Don’t worry, Wilson, you seem OK. It’s not their best side.”  

He faced Alicia,

     “Hey babe- I’ve got to talk to Roger.” He pointed to another large powerboat, a Viking, which was just pulling in, belching its horn to no purpose but noise. 

     “I’ll pass,” she said. 

Wilson looking, watching the comedy-the play, movie, sitcom?

     “You know I can’t stand him, always leers at me, ugly little man.”  

     “Knows paint though,” said Kenny.  “Buys it. I sell it in case you’ve forgotten.”  

     “He’s just another car guy,” she said.

     “Fine, stay here and entertain Wilson.” Turning to Wilson. “Make yourself comfortable.  I’d stay away for a while.”  

Kenny twisting, nodding back over his shoulder towards more shouting 

     “I was thinking of going up to the fort,” she replied.  “Wilson, want to come?” 

     “Sure.” 

     “Never been up there,” said Kenny, facing the stern now and turning his head upward.  On the cliff above were painted white rock walls, serpentine stairs, flags, guard turrets...Some clown dressed up as a soldier, boy scouts.  Wilson gazed too. Would the British have liked all this? Their fort turned into Disneyland?

     Kenny headed off, Alicia went below.  He smelled the water—slightly putrid and faint of oil, and the fudge—the overwhelming sweetness of it, sugared nutty and buttery in the air, the horseshit, barnyard rich.  An odd combination of odors to mingle as one.  Eau de Mackinac. 

     Bicycles raced by along the shore, bells ringing, some built for two. “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do,” he and his parents had sung that. “I’m half,  crazy, over the love of you - It won’t be a stylish marriage - I can’t afford a carriage - But you’ll look sweet - up on the seat - of a bicycle built for two.”

     Alicia re-emerged with a long-sleeved, oversized translucent white shirt, boat feet, and a straw hat with a turquoise band that matched the Kleenex turquoise subtly penetrating the white. 

     “Come on,” she said.

     They meandered down the long main dock until it teed inward towards the shore and the Victorians, the Yacht club to their right, Michigan flag, US flag, Yacht Club Burgee, barely signaling a breeze.  Then the park with its bronze Father Marquette—Speckled white with seagull filth, left then right, past the Wickiup rebuilt Indian something, and up steep stairs walked on by Indians, British, French, Americans, Trappers, Hustlers, Frauds — Centuries before.

      She walked before him.  He could get in trouble here, buttocks moving beneath the white as she climbed the stairs, narrow waist, and long tumbled hair.  No, not a chance. Look higher now, look upward, look at the sky.  Trumpets sounded, a cannon boomed, the pretend guard was changing.

     From the fort they could see it all, a beauty overwhelming, this confluence of waters, the green and cream bridge, five miles long, Upper Peninsula to lower, then westward and barely north, then east dipping south to Canada, the route through Lake Huron to the farther North of Georgian Bay.  Superior was out there too, somewhere.  You just could not see her.  And south through Lake Huron departed a water path to the entire world. The Saint Lawrence Seaway.

    More immediate below them was the street bordering the park and marina, tiny bikes, tiny carriages, tiny people, tiny yachts, and one in particular to the east end of the main wide T.  It was the Master Mind II.  They could just make out the figures in the stern, one looking west and one east.  There was no blood on the decks. He could almost feel the anger... way up here.

    He and Alicia spent a sun shaded few hours at the fort and along the hills, which lead to the further bluff and the Grand Hotel...Inland and hilly until that view was clear too, but more West and less commanding.  Alicia chattered with wit and smiles, and over this period he gathered that her association with Kenny had been ten years—She probably 35 and twenty years or more his junior.  He gained the awareness that Kenny was growing old in more ways than one for her.  That she was becoming weary of being a trinket on someone else’s bracelet, perhaps ready to detach herself.

     Had he pursued it, something sexual might have come of their afternoon, right there and then, on a towel, in the shrubbery, behind the trees.  It was possible.  But neither of them were that foolish to confuse an already strange scene with an additional layer of chaos.

     And for Wilson, this was just as well, because relationships frightened him. So, by early evening they were walking back down the steep stairs, past the white painted boulder walls.  Tired, descending... And the others… Kenny talked paint… Tim snored… Daphne pouted… all against a backdrop of wisps of cloud, purples and pinks, and a setting sun still high orange, three quartered above darkening blue waters.

     Hours before, he and Alicia had seen a sloop arriving and, as he had thought then, it was familiar.  It was the Persephone with his old friends Steve and Kathy Robbins aboard.   

     “Alicia, can you tell them I’m with friends over here?”  

He pointed towards the Robbins’s thirty-five-footer. 

     “Sure, ok, tomorrow maybe,” she had replied, then given him a head dipping-
     “Later.”

     “Say thanks to Kenny,” he added. 

There was a certain sadness in their parting, the threatening, non-threatening afternoon of her company.  We’ll see, no, never happen, ten years… And Kenny seemed decent enough, successful, a boob perhaps, but pleasant, and apparently extremely rich…Never happen.

      The Robbins welcomed him and he sat in the sunsets second quarter with these friends of years—understanding even more so with their company how much the charade of his builder designer life was wearing thin and why he had fled to Aspen in the first place.  Damn, this is better, he thought, and no games.  Why, he could just sit with Steve and Kathy…They could just sit and stare at one another, saying nothing, and none of them would even think about it… impressions-anything.  Or they could do as they set about doing, which was catching up.  How had it been in Colorado?  Why was he returned when he had said he might never come back?  The who, the where, the how…Old projects and thoughts, new ones…sipping more cocktails, past agendas, new agendas, old friends and where they were.  Telling stories…fitting on him like his oldest softest most repeatedly laundered shirt.  The invite for the night, no one said anything about it, the invitation was just there, hanging, should he choose to grab it?  He had every intention.  Yes, this was much better.            

     So, sunset built and finished, the boat rocked, the ferried horns went silent, and with the departing daily visitors…he, they, the Marina, went into repose, a quiet evening of the occasional horse and carriage going by, footsteps on the docks, lilting laughter, the drifting combination cacophony of different tunes, the meandering inebriated around midnight and then sleep, secure, but with trepidations of tomorrow, and a gently rocking windless night with no sounds of screaming outrage from the Master Mind Two.