This is a special chapter. If you wish to listen to a stand alone segment - The Nookie Wars-The Demise of King Strang Go to 25:28 on left and - 37:40 on right. It starts soon after. Voice- Female Hal
CHAPTER SIX
There are times when you would
have been better off to have
missed the party or
maybe not
Wilson did not know what to make of it. The meeting, the afternoon, the wasted day. His surprise had been too great. Nothing had worked out as planned; Saturday afternoon with a check in hand, the house approved or close to it, and he, ready and waiting to begin the dig. What a mess.
You should have said this…you should have said that...you certainly should not have hit him. Wilson’s mind spun round this mistake of a day like a revolving mobile, slow then fast, dipping and rising. It will work... You’re fucked... Sell the house... Quit... But no one’s buying. How many dollars remain in the accounts?... Freedom?
His old buddy, the Demon laughed. You must have the job. There is no such thing as freedom. If you had just accepted Philippe, not been proud, you would have been better off. His Demon laughed some more. As if he could ring himself from himself in some shape changing metamorphosis?
And all this missed the other important point, the most important point. He needed building. He enjoyed building. Not enjoyed like a swell party or Christmas or a birthday (if he even remembered those anymore, except by their charting of his decay) but enjoyed because of the fulfillment which came with it. There are few endeavors which can end so complete and satisfying as building a house. When you are finished, there it stands, your work, you and your crew’s craftsmanship, your industry, your and their ideas made whole. A sculpture on the hill, on the lake, or in the mountains...Art?... to walk through as light and space and residence. The closest thing was music. But he could not compose. However; to have the chance, the opportunity, one required money of their own, or a willing banker, or clients…a patron. And if clients were required… Big dumb to punch out their decorators. Or whatever that Philippe was, probably just a kitchen guy, a CKD, that might account for the graph paper.
Whiskey shaded the perspective of his Calder - spinning thoughts, revolving first fast, then slow. He was not at peace, nor was he enraged. Instead, he felt used up and empty. The music helped to mitigate this, it and the whiskey muted the negatives while adding color to the picture.
The first movement of the Ninth (Beethoven’s), it be just alright; he thought...lounging on his deck, gazing at his boat. The ‘Anomie’… Normlessness, the sociologists said, and that is why he had named her so... a statement to all, a joke on himself...only a few understanding.
Tim would not have. Daphne would not have. Philippe might have understood, in some stuck in the closet, now leaping out, gay-way. He supposed he could empathize with the fellow in some weird fashion, his difference, but no. Philippe was an ass, a fraud, a graph paper scratching opportunist. Why did women like these guys, he wondered…must be a sex thing, the lack of its intrusion? Perhaps it was simply that gay guys were non-threatening. He knew they were just as fickle as the most unstable woman. Actually, more so.
Wilson knew that game. He remembered staying at his friend the Architect Jackson Winthrop’s house after being expelled from his own home during the nightmare of his divorce... Jackson renting him a room, then later informing him he was coming out! That he was Gay…something Wilson had already realized. Jackson announcing, fierce and proud and noisy, I am me and I am Queer! Adventurous with his new freedom!
He and his boys, necking on the couch… Bizarre masks, feathered boas…weirder than any woman might imagine. No doubt about it…and more emotional. He had seen the blown tragedies, the overacted despair, their affairs transitory, often evaporating with screams and vocal pain, followed by flying missiles.
He remembered sneaking up the stairs and hiding beneath his blankets on that mattress on the floor. It had been money then, too. She, his ex-wife-taking, the lawyer advising, manipulating, and the lawyer taking too, until there had been almost nothing left. The way of the world, get it, lose it, need it...Money. Forced by circumstance to live in one little room in a house full of gay guys because the town, Aspen, was full…Nowhere to rent during winter in the late seventies, and she, his wife turned blond Gorgon nightmare, living at his house.... the house he had built, his hands, his dollars, his industry, his brains, his bank loans... Becoming her money. Could that have been why he had punched Philippe twenty years later? No, he thought. I punched him automatic - automatic as one would flush the toilet.
He listened, the second movement, so simple in cadence but profound in substance. Was that life too, perhaps? But enough of Ludwig Van… for now. Puccini again, Tosca and Mario, and the villain Scarpia, the lovers joy and pain mixing with his whiskey, tossing it back, dribbling down his throat, numbing and burning at the same time. It will work; you will ride it out, a dreadful storm already lifting?
Wilson needed conversation, Colorado…he tried four friends but got hold of none of them, and San Francisco…no one there either, and Ann Arbor…No one, and Grace just miles away...nothing but ringing or machines.
No one to whine to accept the whiskey glass, the bottle, his cat, and his emotions, which were resurrecting, slow and triumphant, not yet gone sour with the booze. Then… As the heat rose in his capillaries, as his face turned red, glowing from four quick ounces of Old Draper … He was going sailing. Fuck it!
The wind had been building for the last two hours as it shifted east-south-east. It would be on his quarter if he went to Beaver. He and Ivy would be rolling. The flag on the other side of the shore in front of the green grassed old money place was beginning to crack in the rising wind. What were sailboats made for, anyway? For sailing when the winds were high…For the challenge of the storm.
It was the same routine, but this time, he had closed the door to the head. Ivy, unable to reach the bilge, was instead burrowing amidst the sail bags in the Anomie’s stern, trying to find somewhere safe. Wilson was loving it. She was not. He started the diesel and set the rpm’s high enough to make way on the mooring, then walked forward and tossed off the bow lines as the Anomie, pilot-less, chugged by, heading out into the larger lake from his sheltered bay.
Where the bay met the lake, the waves were building… and with the rising wind, becoming pointed…sharp, slapping against the Anomie’s beam…three footers and increasing. There would be six or eight-foot waves on Lake Michigan, perhaps even larger…Steep Lake waves because of the fetch of only a few hundred miles… Unlike the long spread rollers of the sea.
The diesel surged until he made the harbor, motoring past the cuteness, reaching the drawbridge where he honked his horn and waited until its green-blue arms rose above him… Wilson gazing upward as his mast slipped through steel girders opening to the sky… clouds above, incessant gulls, the Anomie heading out into an expanding tempest.
The glorious blue North of earlier in the day had retreated from the sky and with the winds Eastward shift there arrived greater humidity and clouds. The horizon going a flat bruised yellow-gray, and the water, no longer the azure of the morning, now turned a forceful stormy tarnished silver. Wind continued to build as he spun the Anomie bow first to the waves. The halyard clanged as he raised the mainsail, flapping, snapping to the wind's whistling increased howl. Wilson shut off the diesel and let the Anomie slide off the wind, due North, into a quartering, building, white clotting sea… His Anomie turning from form to function, and becoming alive. He set the wheel and went below to put on foul weather gear… grabbing the whiskey bottle from the sink as he passed by… holding first with his left hand and then his right to the overhead handholds. There was no sign or sound of Ivy, not even a purr.
It was awkward with the yacht rolling and pitching. Up, then down. He braced himself against the hanging locker struggling into the yellow slicker, right leg, left leg, jacket, left hand, right...the inverted bottle.
You shouldn’t have been so abrupt, he thought, might be fucked now… but Tim had said, could he believe him about what transpired on the plane? That ‘things were sorted.’ And if not, who else could they get? Even if Philippe somehow screwed him, and Tim reneged on the contract. Who could they get? To build it, if he was unwilling to build the fraudster’s plan, or alter his own, at Philippe’s direction.
It was summer. Everyone was busy. Sure, they had him because he needed their money. And there was always compromise, but not like this…Daphne and her Philippe…that fraud on feet with his messy drawings, and his school kid graph paper. Impossible to understand! He could not fathom…when he had computers, plotters, programs, time, study and knowledge… That this dipshit might steal his job? But you made peace with him, remember, you made peace with him...never, never, never would, never could. You are now in Limbo-land.
Still, who else could they get? Builders weren’t hanging ripe. They were not falling from the trees. They were busy. And few were as good as he was. He knew that, and so did Tim…even if Daphne did not. But to have reacted so…that automatic punch, Philippe screaming, bleeding. That had not been cool! Philippe with his nose red and dripping as he ran from the building… Not cool! You dumb idiot, you lost more with that one punch than you could have ever lost in a month of meetings. Ha-ha-ha... His demon was making his synopses pop!
By early evening, the wind was roaring. Thirty, forty knots, and white waves were breaking, pounding into the Anomie’s sides, his spirits growing dark…the main sail double reefed, the headsail furled to almost nothing. He was making nine on a beam reach, rolling on the waves, spray showering the boat, swilling on the whiskey, laughing… “Fuck-em… Fuck-em!” in one of those moods where it was impossible to get drunk no matter how much you consumed.
The dusk went rapidly dark with dismal bruised punched purples to the West. Aboard the Anomie, it was like riding a thirty-three foot, sixty-thousand-dollar water ski. Wilson holding on to the wheel…the inertia, the momentum, he and eight tons of boat, a rocking, plunging carnival ride into the dark. Laughing and swilling whiskey…deep cavernous gulps, laughing at the absurdity of it all. This existence…up and down…like these crashing waves, or the mountains - skiing. It was never easy, was it… Life? Or did he just make this difficulty so?
Wilson went below and turned on the running lights. Music, he needed music, something loud to complement the wind’s howl…banging into the galley counter… Die Walkure, Richard Wagner, the second opera of the Ring. He cranked it loud as it would go, grabbed his harness and returned to the cockpit, clipping in for safety. The winds howled, the waves crested, and Die Walkure sang. Gold, it had started with gold, Das Rheingold, the river maiden’s gold and gold would yet come back to play, but for now the Walkure sang and rode across the sky.
In one of those places where heaven could have become hell, and he still never wasted, Wilson sailed through a night of booze and wind, opera, anger, and perverse joy. Until the morning brought with it arrival and the Island, the winds dying, a zippered tangerine gold streak opening off his stern.
The gusts had diminished an hour before sunrise, slacking from the tempest of forty knots to a now relatively mild eighteen. The harbor before him was a long affair, two miles long. Stretching from its entrance, protected still by the now Reagan defunct, red roofed deteriorating Coast Guard station. A sad statement of Republican economizing, no longer marching trumpet shiny, once white, now pealing, a structure lost of purpose, drifting slow and inevitable back to dust, and into some useless old building hell.
It was a long narrow well-sheltered refuge, unless the wind blew from the East, and it had been an east wind throughout the night. Even though the wind was dying, the waves were not. And these, rolling from the Michigan mainland forty miles away, continued their progress until they hit a little village in the distance.
Wilson turned on the Diesel, furled the headsail, and climbed the rollers in until the Marina was clear in all its shabby deterioration. No way, he thought. No way, not possible. I’m not going in there. Because, in there, meant a motley bunch of twisted docks of varying length, depth, and size, pilings spread and scraping, twisted planks tugging on their fasteners, banging in rhythm with the onslaught of the long-fetched waves. The marina might as well have been built by Noah for all its indeterminate, bent, and hobbling age. And to get a boat in with rollers from the east… Well, forget it! That was a doorway to crunched bows, bashed scrapes, nicks, bangs, and busy boatyard repairs.
So, Wilson eschewed the marina and spun northwest for four hundred yards inside a shoal and into an anchorage less open, with greater shelter. Here, he dropped the hook, backing down hard to set it. He placed the engine in neutral and let the Anomie hang for a bit to see if she would drift or not.
After ten minutes and a repeated tugging testing of the anchor rode, he was convinced, and turned off the diesel, to silence, peace, and quiet, except for the sound of waves and a few seagulls returning from inland farm field safety. He went below, still no sign of the cat, until he grabbed the awning from the stern, Ivy rolling out of it dazed, confused, and blinking.
“Meow, Meow, Meo-ow,”
“It be just alright, Ivy,”
But Ivy didn’t think so, immediately dashing back into the stern to hide some more. The awning was a long blue peaked oddity, which covered the whole cockpit, making the boat seem larger with its shelter and dark blue canvas ceiling. It attached with a couple snaps and twelve Velcro straps. He would never use it in high winds. However, even though the Eastern sky sat red with warning, Wilson guessed the day would improve to one of a lighter breeze and sun. “Red in the morning - Sailors take warning.” Perhaps, but he was anchored and secure now, his expectations… serenity and sun .
He took one last nip on the whiskey bottle, the last sip there, and went forward to his bed, first checking on the boat’s position, taking mental bearings on the shoreline, a barn, an antenna, then notating his position from the loran. He set the anchor alarm and went to sleep. The Anomie moving up and down with the slap of water and now and then rolling, rocking. The cradle of the bay… The night, the tempest, and the previous afternoon all departed, sending him to sleep.
Wilson awoke, first half asleep, then suddenly alert. Something was wrong, and it wasn’t the purring lump of fur sitting on his head which now preceded to whack him twice with her paw. No, it was not Ivy who awakened him, although she had been trying to, either for food, affection, or because she was a smart cat. Cats, and Ivy in particular, have an enigma spirit about them, which always makes one wonder. But it was not Ivy’s pawing. It was the whine of greater wind, a sharp slapped crack, a snapping like a symphony’s flayed bamboo switch accompaniment. ‘Crack, Crack, Crack.’ He was alert and immediately up. What was it? Were they dragging? No, and then through the viewfinder of the cabin door, he looked into the cockpit towards the awning, which was barely holding on and violently flapping.
He hurried out to control it. The Velcro straps had failed, and it remained attached by only fore-and-aft metal snaps. These were stretched and tearing at the fabric. Wilson ran up the companionway, slipped in the cockpit, righted himself and hurried to the mast where, holding on with his left hand, he unfastened with his right. And this was the opposite of what he should have done, because now the awning flew off the stern like a great kite, six feet above him and ten feet off the water… an odd shaped flag of dark blue… straight out, snapping more and more. And when he failed to control it, and with the final fastener’s tear, the whole thing went spinning off to land about ninety feet away, first skipping, then settling, sinking into the water. Fuck! He jumped over the side and went to retrieve it, using his high school lifesaving stroke to drag the blue inanimate chunk of heavy cotton canvas back to the Anomie… His plan to throw it in the dinghy.
Where was the dinghy? It was not where it should have been bobbing off the stern. It was gone! He climbed aboard and threw the awning on the cockpit sole, then looked to see if it was distant floating or on the shore near town. Where was the damn thing? Had he lost it the night before while full of whiskey, wind, joy, rage and opera? No, it had been there that morning; he was almost certain. Then his gaze turned north away from the village, and there it was, his Avon, coasted up just nice as you please, perpendicular to the water's edge, as if he might have left it there, and gone strolling into town. Well, that would be another swim…eventually.
Absent the awning, the former shadowed privacy of the cockpit was now exposed to the full expanse of the horizon, causing the Anomie to feel smaller, lifting up then down as the waves continued beneath a gray and jaundiced sky. He went forward. The Anchor rode was tight as muscled sinew, but it appeared to be holding. And below, the Loran said they had not drifted, only swung a bit, and this he could see with observation. His position was close to what it had been before. Any change was the result of the Anomie’s rotation round the anchor, now spun and shifted East.
With the awning gone, the space that had held the safe privacy of a child’s fort, built of blankets, drapes and upended furniture, lost this comfort, as well as the awning’s utility and protection from the elements. The cockpit now seemed incongruous, a small, plastic, cushion padded lounge, floating in a gray blue harbor lake, open to an expansive sky.
His eyes hurt from the brightness, and it was not bright at all. Instead, a puffed pudding light sat high above traveling gray white lumps of cloud navigating a weathered mashed potato sky. Where before he had felt private, anchored and secure, he now felt naked to the day. He went below, where to his surprise; Ivy had emerged from the forepeak. She was standing on the first step, head cocked, knowing turquoise eyes almost lost to black pupils, meowing with hunger. He put some crunchies in a dish for her and set it under the settee. The only sounds were the wind, the occasional slapped wave, and her crunching teeth, and the shrill, off-key screeching of a gull.
I’m hung over, he thought, and badly. What time is it anyway? He gaged the sun out the hatch opening. It was afternoon. The brass clock in the head affirmed this, reading 2:45. He had slept away the entire morning and half the afternoon. The adrenaline rush from retrieving the awning departed, and inside his head, his demon laughed. He would now pay for the night, last night, the opera, the drinking, the impossibility of drinking too much. Now, that impossibility was here, real and throbbing.
Wilson squinted...A hair of the dog? He found the bottle, but it was empty. Must be another somewhere. Rummaging in the back of the hanging locker, under the sink, behind the cracker box, he found an airplane bottle. Ugh, Grand Marnier, Wilson frowned at the small misshapen bottle. But it was all there was. He twisted off the lid, consuming the entire contents in a single cough syrup swallow, then chased it with a coke—waiting for the sugar alcohol rush to arrive.
This proved inadequate, unsatisfactory. He would need to go to town, but first, some music. Hangovers wanted resurrection, and nothing but a little God for that. He set the Messiah playing. “I know that my redeemer liv’eth” reverberated from the hidden speakers, four of them deep in the Anomie’s teak belly and four more hanging adjacent to the curtained windows. The Anomie became an organ box of God and resurrection. And this was all too much, as if he was inside a speaker, his head becoming a hammered woofer.
So, he swam to shore—small waves breaking, head pounding, inhaling now and then at the wrong moments, coughing out any lake, sucked in. Within minutes he had reached the dinghy and returned to the Anomie for a shirt, then rowed back to shore for a walk to town. Ivy remained asleep in the stern, her deep purring similar to the sound of a slowly warming boiler.
The road to town was light worn out gray asphalt, cupped and crumbling at its edges. It reeked of storm, and wet worms now baking in the heat, their race back to the dirt lost to the asphalt’s furnace. Half-wet dead worms, and summer scents, rotting fish washed up on the shore, little rows of shiny, scaly death, Alewives. These were the seaside odors of this Island. His shoes squished and squeaked, wet from water that had washed about the dinghy’s floorboards. A few seagulls rode the wind and sleek slick ducks, their feathers shining, floated and dove for fish near the shore.
He liked Beaver Island more than Mackinac. It was not as full of beauty, not as pretty, not as important to history and not as grand or high vistaed with arched granite. No dreams of a North-West passage had ever lingered here. There were no smells of fudge or horseshit, and the cars that ran, and those that did not, were few and rusted. There were no carriages at all...no statues, no obsequious uniforms - clowning. Just a funky old island, with a funky old marina, and this was the reason Wilson preferred it. Plus, the harbor was better for anchorage (except for the East Wind) and quieter. He had lost his boat many a night here, rowing out in the dark, waves splashing into the dinghy, drunk, going from bow light to bow light until he finally found her. He liked Beaver better. The only thing was, he thought, I’ve been laid on Mackinac, never on Beaver.
And that thought led him to Beaver’s history. This island, larger and not so grand, this Beaver Island, was the home of a different sort of history. It was the home of one of America’s weirdest conflicts… The Nookie wars. At least that’s what Wilson called it, and how the inebriates referred it in the tall tales told in the drunken bars of Beauville. A religious war over, of all things, too much happy screwing. Yep, that is what it had been about, or so the story went, that old King Strang, his flowing beard, the Mormon hotshot who chose his own path to Beaver with a band of followers. Forget about Brigham Young, Strang knew better, and had taken a different way and that path had washed him and his acolytes up on the shores of Beaver Island in the early nineteenth century. The new Jerusalem, God’s hosanna of an island, driven there, these godly folks, by all those other godly folks who had disdained the King’s group—His band of Godly men because of the obvious folly of their ways, and their many wives.
Yes, right on this Beaver of an Island. The Mormons had arrived, somehow, with their leader King Strang and their Joseph Smith tablets given to Smith in a great golden light, one dark gloom of a misty night by the Angel Macaroni in some former godforsaken Pennsylvania farm field. He laughed, his demon chortled, but that is how he remembered the name, the real name even more absurd, the Angel Moroni.
Jesus Christ… Saturday Night Live had not even been invented yet, and this guy, this Smith, way before his time, had named his angel after some misspelled piece of pasta. Yankee doodle went to town riding on a pony.... blah-blah-blah.... Pasta. And the Mormons had bought it. Bought the name and the flowing golden locks and the Moses tablets. Bought the whole shebang… Go figure… The real, the secret, the only word, the divine word on tablets, direct to Joseph Smith from God, via a golden light and an angel named Moroni. An old testament God, too… One of those thou shalt fuck a lot and multiply…Gods... Have as many wives as you want…Gods. Smith had not missed a punch. He knew what the suckers wanted. Sex is what they wanted, so he gave it to them, straight up.
“Have as many wives as you want, screw all the time, multiply. It is God’s plan.” Of course, they bought it, wouldn’t you? (If you were a man?) Wilson thought of Mark Twain’s description of Brigham Young’s great gift giving difficulty. Why, single out one wife for a present and you cracked the box and more so! Because surely… there would arrive a hundred more jabbering screeching wives harping for their presents too. Enough to make a pauper of a man, in all things but love.
But this difficulty had not troubled the Strang Bunch. Why, these religious Mormon men, they knew which side of the loaf had the honey and they were not going to let a few baubles stand in their way. Hell no. And being religious, god-fearing men, why they had been happy to oblige, happy to accept God’s divine wisdom, Smith, his blond Angel, and the tablets too. And this had caused the problem… Beaver Island’s only war.
Can’t you imagine it, cold and winter, lonely, not enough women to go around, no one to warm up the bed, no one to keep the chilblains away from a Northern Michigan frozen misery of a howling winter night or howling day? Sure, they would have been envious, those mainland men. And their wives, what ones they had, why the wives would have been crazy with fear that perhaps this polygamy could go both ways… That the next step might be one wife for many men; many stinky, whiskered, besotted, either by whiskey, God, or both…men. A war of envy, a righteous, cold, and frozen fingered, meager stoved, lonely, Christian war of want on a frozen winter day, over all the hot steamy nookie that these Mormons were getting…War.
Horny, lonely, righteous, bible-thumping, bible-beating, bible-reading, Christian farmers, warriors of God, crossing over the ice frozen lake to kill the hot steaming sex besotted, too much nookie grabbing Mormons. That band of oddball fornicators who were having too much fun...who had taken up residence just over there, out there beyond the water.
“It’s frozen now boys! Let’s go get em,” only thirty some odd winter miles of jealousy and an arduous hike away. Get them, and they had.
Scampering, swilling, leaping over ice cliff and crevice, racing to Beaver Island-thirty miles… rising above the ice and distant. Yep, kill the Bastards, and they had… Shot em dead. And that is the story of King Strang. Let it be a lesson for you. Beware of the weather.
Wilson laughed again. This story always greeted him when he reached the Island...launched itself from some personal ether and trotted round his brain. Beaver Island, perhaps not the home of fudge, but the home of the United States’ only Poontang War. He and his demon continued to chuckle until they reached the village a half mile away.
The Shamrock Bar and restaurant was as he remembered from a year ago. But in all fact, it was also as he remembered it from thirty years before. It was a constant place. The green Shamrock at the door was still weathered past the point of fading and the same shallow industrial gable still faced the street… a bit more sag to the facia… a bit more rot to the soffit.
Two picture windows faced the harbor and the old Marina, these whistling from the wind that still blew straight down the harbor’s alley, more intense than at the Anomie and building. So often at night the wind dies, but not these East Wind gales, he thought, they seem to gain momentum, to sleep and grow on the day like some alert but resting animal, waiting to pounce later, in the dark… To attack again with renewed aggressive claws with the arrival of night.
However; it was not yet night, not yet evening, only 3 or so… Already with the rising wind, the boats in the marina were plunging up and down. The small ones rising like mad horses and the large, the few huge powerboats, moving more uniformly, up then down, beneath repeated clouds of spray. The sky however was clear with clouds traveling rapidly westward across the Island. The afternoon’s gale was to be one of wind and sunshine.
Inside, the place was airy and the wind and howls mingled with old wood separated here and there, creating whistles of different shrieks and pitch. It was a fixture, the mirror was the same, the stools were the same, the massive stone fireplace was the same, as well as the Formica tables and the vinyl chairs... Trapped in time and happy for it... The Shamrock.
Off the bar was another room where sounds of pinball machines beeped, next to the squawky bright flat new neon of video games. Like many small towns or villages… On Beaver, you either went to the school, the church, or the bar. The Shamrock was much more than just a bar. It was a place of yachtsmen drinking, locals drinking, babies crawling, children running-screaming, ice-cream cones, card games playing and food being served… A tavern as it should be, a refuge for everyone.
There was a vacant seat and Wilson sat down. No one paid him any mind except the pretty young college student bartender who poured him his whiskey up and his beer-bottled cold. The whiskey was gone in one gulp and he motioned for another, at the same time inverting the beer until it was half gone. That would do it. That will get rid of the hangover. Now he would be sipping.
Wilson walked into the fireplace room. There was no fire, but a couple of older men sat there on faded, ripped lazy boys, reading. Returning to his drink, he looked again around the bar. To his surprise, peering out at him from the corner of her eye, just exposed by a long blond fall of hair, was, of all people, on this island, Alicia! She smiled.
At the same moment…the same instant. Daphne was in her backyard pruning roses. She wore white with white garden gloves. A wide brimmed straw hat with a sideways affected flop sat on her head. The clippers she held were shiny bright. Not from any hardware store, these, but from one of those la-de-dah gardening joints that had sprung up all over in the nineteen nineties. You have seen their catalogs. I am sure. Everything photographed just so, just right, stamped and polished, shiny pictured, the same old junk as always but at three times the cost, and a gardening pretension that sucked the dirt right out of gardening…making gardening elite and cool.
She held this clipper in her hand and for a moment, as if with fatigue from exhausting labor, she wiped her arm across her brow and sighed, affected as a lazy galley slave. The roses stood still about her. Sweet, silent and heavy blossomed. In Grand Rapids, there was no wind.
Tim was outside too, studying sites, analyzing cities, and examining cards, menus, logos, and plans. Scattered about him were resumes of restaurant contractors and resumes of chefs, spread on a hollow, webbed, metal table beneath a folded Martini and Rossi umbrella. The late afternoon sky was empty except for one lonely belch of cloud hanging direct above him… Alone and hovering, a scout for the night, as if there had only been so much moisture up there, just enough, one heaven’s cough attempting to fill the sky.
Because of this, the shadows were few except where he now sat, where this one single cloud blocked him from the sun. A bit left, a bit right, at the neighbors, even by his pool or across the street… In any of these locations he would have been in sunshine. But here at the table, he sat in the sky’s only shade. Not noticing except that he was becoming cool.
Cool, even as he looked at steamy pictures of women, models dressed in proposed short skirts for Gourmet’s Everyone. Above the knee, full and pleated, then a top ever so tight and plunging—black, black, and black high heels. He thought of Hugh Hefner. Was it too much, he wondered, or would the average man appreciate these hooters of Gourmet? He picked up his empty gin and peered at one of the photos through the heavy lens of the glass. Now, the model looked like she was Bertha from the fun house.
He and Daphne were not talking to each other. In fact, given the cloud of bad energy that sat like a swarm of flies around each of them, you might wonder why they were so near to each other at all. And the reason was one so common to those married for a while… Habit. One becomes comfortable with even a foul odor if it hangs around long enough.
The Stevens were resting their rage in their own ways, waiting for the next round of a battle that had been going on for years. A conflict, which had consumed the previous night, part of their ride to church, their ride home, and most of their marriage. The sermon had not been one of fire and brimstone. It might as well have been, had you heard their conversation in the car. There, there had been brimstone and fire, lots of it before they had given up on conversation and descended into ‘caveman’ grunting. Now, they were at some hazy valley of temporary truce, resting at the end of another skirmish, each waiting for the others next offensive.
Their current altercation was, of course, about the day before and Daphne’s house and Philippe, and Wilson and the punch… ‘The shot heard round the world.’ of the American Revolution. This had become ‘The Punch heard round the world.’ of Tim.’ Daphne had pounced on him as soon as they had left the plane, and she had been attacking off and on ever since.
Damn house, Damn Daphne, Damn Mighty Burger, thought Tim. Going back to analyzing what type of martinis he wanted to serve, and how he was going to buy the white wine cheap. And Daphne… she was just angry. She knew why, but she didn’t know the reason. She had never known the reason, and that might have been the reason. Off and on, there were occasions, when Daphne’s nature required anger and pouting. It was her need and instinct. She had never been introspective enough to examine...why.
One thing about Daphne, flying high or crashed, she was always right. Her God did this for her. She possessed one of those gods that sit on people’s shoulders, telling them daily that they have the stuff and know the way. You know the sort… If God sits on your shoulder, the Devil’s got your mind… That model of God. Quiet in her praying, many would not have known she was a nut. She did not think she was. She did not think. But she was a veritable Loony Tune for God. And this trait often made her wrong when she was right and right when she was wrong. Maybe that is what God is all about, perhaps that is what tugged man from the ooze, this knowledge of being right, oblivious to fact. She had it. Tim hated it and they would soon argue again because of it.
Tim was hunched over, leaning on his left elbow, rereading his notes. The sun had drifted from underneath the single cloud and his eyes were pinched, squinting with a reemerged afternoon brightness. He grabbed a pencil, slashed through some lines and continued to read.
“That was a nice sermon,” said Daphne. He ignored her. “That was a nice sermon,” she repeated.
“Huh, what? Oh yeah, nice, sure.” Tim continued to look at his papers.
“A very nice sermon.”
“What, look, I’m busy. Leave me alone, cut some more roses. I heard it. Sure… Nice. They're always nice, except when they’re not.” He went back to planning his new chain… No, the uniform is too skimpy, a pleasant fantasy, but no, they’re eating… not supposed to be thinking of screwing… It’s the wrong balance. The men must find the women sexy. And their wives must find them classy, beautiful…and non-threatening! Yep, that’s it, their wives, their dates… It’s not the men, the needs of the women must decide the costume. Any pretty woman will attract a man. But no bulging breasts… How about ballerina-looks? Yes, Danskin. But that might make them feel fat. Women who feel fat don’t eat. Good point… No Danskin… Baggy.
“It was a nice sermon.” There she was again. What’s with the sermon? “Yeah”.
“You’re not listening,” she said. “That part about making something of your life for God. I liked that. It’s what we are doing; I’m doing, with the house, building, creating beauty. Something to add to the wonders of God.”
“What?” What the hell was she talking about? The house, God, where did that leap come from? Maybe it would be good if they were kicked out of that church. Screw business. But no, lots of business goes on there. Hell, some of those guys will be investors. Maybe have to have a party with the Hooters uniforms for that.
“I think I was meant to find Philippe, part of a bigger plan. God wants me to have a beautiful house.”
Jesus, he thought, did I miss something? Has she always been like this? No, it has been that Mary Lou and that Bible study, AA, ever since she tried to quit drinking. God’s been little help there… Twelve steps, twelve apostles, twelve jurors, twelve knights of the round table. Hooey! Twelve steps to insanity. God has just made her crazy. One day slurping too much and then slinging glasses at his head, the next day talking of sermons. Hope they never join forces… Yikes. Booze, anger, and God combined? A Mighty fortress, God! For him, it was business.
“Tim, you’re not listening.”
“Sure, I am, God, house, beauty. I heard you fine. But we need to use your Philippe for the interior…more of an advisor. We’ve already hired Wilson.”
“No,” she said, “No! He’s just a builder. Philippe’s an artist.”
“So, we will let him art the inside and give Wilson the house. You saw those drawings. Wilson was right! They weren’t.”
“I could build from them.”
“What? Oh, give me a break. You couldn’t build anything, plans or not. Let’s give Philippe the kitchen, the rugs, the walls, the tile. I can talk Wilson into that. He won’t like it, but I can sell it. And then you are happy. He’s happy. Philippe’s happy and I can deal with my new restaurant. I’ll be happy. Happy, Happy, Happy.” He started dancing round the table. Daphne watched, knees together, hands folded in her lap.
But whatever creativity Tim had or was trying to have concerning Gourmet’s Everyone was now gourmets gone. And he stared at Daphne.
“Want a drink?”
“No,” she said, “I’m not drinking.”
“Ok,” said Tim, moving to an outside bar cart and pouring some Scotch into a glass.
“You sure?”
“I’m not drinking, and you should not drink so much.”
“Talk about calling the kettle black. Who’s the one that made the scene on the Island? Wasn’t me!”
“You caused it,” she said.
“Yeah, and I caused all those drunk driving’s, too.”
Daphne had lost her prim and proper and she was standing now, her right foot solidly forward, shiny clippers spearing the light from between two folded angry arms. She moved to the bar cart and poured a gin.
“Oh, Oh, Oh, you better watch out,” said Tim.
“You know,” she said. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m not going to drink this.”
Then the glass was sailing at him, spinning, dropping, dripping. He ducked just in time, dark spots appearing on his shirt as the glass sailed over his head and smashed into the side of the house.
“Daphne! You’ve lost it!”
But she was through the doors, tromping away inside.
Wilson and Alicia were fairing much better. He had taken her to stroll the island, and they spent the afternoon hiking the dirt roads, and smiling at the mainland and each other.
She was on Beaver because Kenny, mid trip, had needed to rush back to Detroit to deal with some pressing matter of paint. The color he had sold as Blue Midnight had been Robin's Egg instead, and GM was howling. Every one wanting their blue midnight SUV’s tout suite. Alicia had been left to watch the boat and wait, and without a stack of books, she was lost and lonely. Not knowing what to do until Wilson had appeared.
After replacing her smile with a tilted stare, it had been a “Hey stranger didn’t expect to see you” meeting. He had echoed her speech right back at her. “There is something about Islands,” she said. “Something about Islands finds us meeting stranger, something mysterious and tugging. You know how to whistle don’t you? Just blow.” Laughing at her attempt at a Lauren Bacall accent. Or was it Garbo’s? “I want to be alone.”
Their walk and tour up into the high Island meadows returned them to the Shamrock and dinner. And with dinner, one thing led to another as their conversations merged, the house, the punch, the general mess of things. Hours passed without notice. They drank and laughed and talked as if suddenly old friends, and when Wilson said it was time for him to check on the cat. Alicia was all surprise and caring; peaking at him from herself, curious that he might sail alone but for a cat, and care. So, she suggested she walk a bit with him out into the round dark with only heaven’s light shadowed by the moon, out with him at least part way toward his dinghy. But laughter led to laughter, and she walked the whole way and then somehow it just seemed proper when she climbed into the dinghy and rowed with him out to the Anomie. What had been possible on Mackinac, but for the confusion of Tim and Daphne and Alicia’s Kenny, was now clearly happening as they rowed towards the Anomie, then stepped aboard. Ivy was there waiting, and then she pouted, if cats can pout, at Alicia’s presence. Watching the two of them as they doubled into the for-peak berth and made love, long slow and quiet. Ivy a sentinel at the foot of the bed.
The air was heavy enough to touch. A drip from the closed cabin lid had awakened him; the moisture puddled and congealed, forming droplets slow to fall. But one had found a path bouncing off his nose, and it was it, or its scratching which had startled him from sleep. Sometimes his waking was immediate, at others times it was a lengthy affair. If it had been a night of cocktails, he was often ‘rocket awake’ only to feel poorly later. The few drinks of the last evening had been enough to fog his judgment but not enough to hurt. Wilson experienced no half-drunk leaping urge to eject himself from the berth. Perhaps it was the warmth there, holding him.
He was not alone. In fact, the usual womblike solitude of the forepeak of his sloop was disturbed, you might say invaded. It was full, full of females. Ivy the cat behind his head…yes, she was often there and purring, but this other one sprawled half on and half off him, Alicia… She, any she, for that matter, was unusual. How, what, he remembered, as if from dreaming, the ride out through the waves, the spray, the wet, the rapid dropped clothes…grabbing to damp soft sex… Two, three times. It had been a while for him. And now as he awoke, he felt his hormones stir again, should he wake her? If she remained asleep as he left the berth, he would leave her gently snoring but otherwise… It had been a while.
Alicia did not stir, and he banged his way towards the companionway. Scratching, stumbling and yawning at the day and a blue sky above a flat watered calm. The morning was translucent, bright, and hazy with drifting mists, which clung to the Anomie’s sides, as if she were floating on inverted clouds. He went to the stern and pissed, then slipped his way on wet decks towards the bow pulpit. Where he climbed and dove and then rose upward like a missile, a torpedo rising vertical, surging to the anomie’s ladder. Cold, damn cold. Well, he was alert now; nothing like a dive into cold Northern Lake Michigan when its depths were stirred by storm. He had forgotten. This was not the water of the bay outside his door.
He heard Alicia now. “Elephants,” and he turned to see her climbing up the companionway steps. Her hair was a straggly witch mop, and she was wearing one of his shirts with the Abernathy Builders logo, a hammer where the little polo man should have been. It was just long enough to cover her. “You sounded like a herd of elephants.” Then, “Look,” she said, pointing.
They heard the slow chug of an engine meant for power, not for speed, and out of the haze emerged a black hull with tires on its side, wide and beamy, with a slight tumblehome, and a rising bow. It appeared to be a small workboat except its doghouse was shiny as lacquered furniture. Black rubber tires and a small cabin, outhouse vertical, with a concentric curve towards the up-swaying bow. It was a toy, but a toy that could have served as a tug, if needed.
The engine’s chugs bordered on annoyance with the piston’s slow rhythmic drawn-out compression. A gurgle came from the stern of this craft, and out of the doghouse appeared a man, waving. He was a large, solid, hairy fellow, with a thick waist and powerful buffalo shoulders heavily muscled above and around his neck and arms.
“Yoh, Wilson, I thought I might find you here.”
“It’s Rudy Walshinksi,” he said to Alicia who pushed her hair back sideways from her face.
“I’m going to put my pants on,” she said, and went below.
Walshinksi and his tug pulled up next to the Anomie.
“You got company!”
Wilson responded. “What are you doing here on a Monday morning, shouldn’t you be pulling wires?”
“What are you doing here on Monday, shouldn’t you be building? But, yeah, I should be, but I’m not, Woodbine’s got it under control. We’re not that busy. We’ve been waiting on you. I expected you to be underway, been waiting for a call for that electric service you said you wanted three weeks ago.”
“Best laid plans, you know.”
“Laid huh,” Rudy smiled towards the anomie’s cabin.
Wilson said nothing.
“I just came over here to give her a shake down. Cathy and I are going for a cruise next week, so I hope you won’t need me then. But Woodbine can handle it. What’s going on with that project, anyway? Last time I saw you the plans were done. You were ready to go and then they didn’t like something and you were off to the Island with them. Did you go?”
“I went,” said Wilson, who then told Walshinksi the story, the whole dam mess of it. In the middle of his narrative Alicia came up combed and looking soft skin young with a couple cups of coffee. “I was not sure about the stove. You don’t need to light the Vixen’s with a match… But here.” She gestured with her hand to Rudy, “Hi, want some? I’m Alicia.”
Rudy looked at Alicia and then at Wilson. “Thanks,” he said, the lines of his forehead frowning in opposition to the smile about his lips. “You really did that, you punched him.” He started to laugh, deep gravelly bass chords, and happy - a Falstaff laugh. “I know it’s not funny.” He laughed some more. “But.” Walshinksi sipped some coffee then spurted it back into the cup. “You’re, fucked.”
“You think so?”
“What do you think? She’s going to screw with you forever…now…buddy.”
Alicia nodded towards Rudy. “He’s right you know, isn’t that what I told you last night?”
“Yes,” said Wilson. “But I don’t want to talk about it. I’ll work it out somehow. Let’s go to shore…eat. Want to come…Rudy?”
“Sure,” said Rudy. “Let’s take my dinghy, it’s better, it’s bigger, and it has a motor.”
The Shamrock was not much different from the night before, ten thousand mornings after the night before, airing out and smelling of stale beer and too many cigarettes. But the smell, mingled well with the over easy and the greasy sausage and hash browns. Another reason he liked the island, no Eggs Benedict, no eouf Florentine, no crab la di dah, no crepes of pretension. Nothing worse than a dive gone Gucci, he thought. Ripped stools old Formica and La di dah just didn’t cut it. And no Bloody Mary with some expensive Gucci Vodka. Red beer and grease and the jukebox already playing some Satan rock put on by some lonesome teenager trapped on Beaver for the summer, a white pasty black Goth thing of youth with steel pimples on his face and tongue. Some things had changed.
Turning to Alicia, gesturing with his head towards the scrawny young human weirdness. “How do they eat with those things, anyway?”
“Carefully,” she said.
Rudy spit into his coffee, holding back his laughter as his face swelled. Then he looked at the kid “How do you eat with all that buckshot on your tongue anyway, no never mind, your so skinny you probably don’t eat.” The kid ignored them, intent on his game. “Could you eat with those things?” he said, turning to Wilson.
“Maybe it's for sex.”
“Uh, oh… yeah, said Rudy” Alicia turned away looking embarrassed.
“Shall we ask him?”
“Leave him alone,” she said.
The food would have been great if not for the fish fry of the night before. The hash browns had a bit of a fishmonger flavor to them, but he didn’t mind.
“So, a cruise, is it?” Wilson said to Rudy. “I hope you’re planning a couple of weeks… that thing,” he nodded to Rudy’s Tug. “That things about as slow as my sail boat.”
“Her name’s Jezebel,” said Rudy. “Jezebel,” laughed Alicia. “Why Jezebel?”
“I don’t know, that was my wife’s mother’s name, fat battle ax… Make up and earrings on a mass of flesh. And she could lift a cow or eat one. It just seemed to fit.” He shrugged as if to say ‘what me worry.’
“But Wilson, I am the bearer of bad tidings, I’m afraid. Your project is under assault and not only by the Philippes of the world, and you don’t even know it.”
“What assault?” said Wilson.
“It’s that Janet Wainwright and her husband… they were at the law firm on Friday.”
Rudy’s wife Cathy worked at the law firm Slackton, Ripperly and Robb. Wilson had always thought of them as Thief, Thief and Drunk Thief, but they were effective lawyers.
“They want to stop your project. They claim there is a wetland where the road comes in. No road, no entry, no lots, no building...”
“But I thought that road’s been there forever,” said Wilson.
“It has. Conrad Wainwright’s father put it in, with horses. But when they improved it. The Wainwright’s claim that the new culvert… You may not know Wainwright’s sister sold the land to Longbottom… They cannot deal with it. But anyway, they say it was installed without a permit. Now, they want to get rid of the road all together.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Wilson.
“Jimmy Ripperly didn’t think so, and you know he handles their Beauville business. If they want to fight it, he will. He doesn’t give a shit… could pay for a lot of Gin.”
“Damn,” said Wilson.
“Daphne’s house, Tim’s house?” questioned Alicia. “Oh, they will love that.”
“Do you know these people?” she continued, staring at Wilson.
“I’m afraid so,” he replied. “My friend Grace knows them. I’ve been acquainted with them for years…have even eaten dinner at their wreck of a house on occasion. Deer Haven, they call it. Old money, busybodies with all the principles in the world when it comes to others, and none at all when it comes to themselves. Nimby’s, but they will say it is for the good of the environment… I know them.”
“You should get Grace and go talk to them,” said Rudy. “You’ll do a nicer job than anyone else. Your clients could have hired Whitehall!”
“Who is Whitehall?” said Alicia.
“Beauville’s original builder, that’s what his sign says. Original structures for original people.”
“Oh,” said Alicia, “I get it, no good… Is that it?”
“What kind of doofus would have a sign like that?… Lately, I wish they had hired him, left me alone in the mountains.” Alicia pauses with this, studying his face.
“You met me.”
“I did, didn’t I?”
“You need to talk to Grace, maybe she can help,” said Rudy.
“Who is Grace?” said Alicia, the slightest protest in her voice.
“She’s a friend,” said Wilson, turning toward her. “Old girlfriend, too. But that’s a while ago. She’s good friends with them, hates them though.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Alicia, staring out the window.
“Sure, it does,” he said. “She likes them and she hates them. She likes them for what they are and hates them for what they are not, and sometimes it is the other way round…hates them…likes them. Grace hates all her friends. Hell, she probably hated me when we were together. I’ve never been able to figure her out, don’t hate her though.” He chuckled.
“Oh,” said Alicia, “she doesn’t sound like someone I would care for.”
“Sure, you would,” said Wilson. “Grace is likable. That is why people don’t mind it when she hates them.”
Rudy listened to this conversation while saying nothing, just nodding his head in agreement or confusion. “You better talk to them,” he said. “I hoped I’d find you. But Cathy will let you know what’s going on. You just can’t tell anybody.”
“Tell anybody?” questioned Wilson. “In Beauville? Hell, in Beauville even the dogs will hear of it, and soon.” Fuck, he thought. Isn’t it enough of a hassle already? The demon was frolicking in his head again. You better watch out…blah, blah, blah. “Fuck,” he said.
Wilson stood up. “I’ve got to go.” He turned to Alicia. “Do you want to sail across with me?” You can take the Ferry back.” She smiled at him, paused a few seconds and said “I better not. I think you are going to have your hands full.”
“Not tonight,” he said. “But tomorrow. Why don’t you come sail, today? Then, I will drop you at the ferry. Buy you a ticket back, tomorrow morning. Spend the night in Beauville, at my house.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “But I will call. I don’t even have your number.”
“Nor I yours.”
They exchanged numbers and walked out the door. Alicia gave him a kiss then walked towards the bent and twisted Marina. Wilson and Rudy climbed into the tender and then chugged out to the Anomie. “I better hit it,” he said to Rudy.
“Good luck, call Cathy, I’ll be back tomorrow. That Alicia’s nice.”
“Don’t even think about it.”
“Are you kidding! Cathy would castrate me. Tomorrow.”
Wilson raised the anchor and started the engine, Ivy rushed into hiding and he motored out towards the flat lake until he reached the Reagan ruin where he put up sails and set a course, south, towards Beauville. A gentle breeze of eight knots brushed the water and wispy clouds drifted above him. The sun was hot and the water cold. He put on his slicker because of the chill, looking to the east, and the passage North. A passage he wished he was on while steering homeward toward life and a much more odious adventure.