by Stephen Bly
“Good. We’d better let Kathy know her brother’s coming.” Tony piled a clear glass dinner plate high with shrimp salad and Roquefort dressing and sat down next to Price. “How’s your grandmother, Melody?”
“Still out in La-La Land. See, it all started the other day when I told her about this Bennington guy stopping by to look for Auntie Jill.”
“I didn’t know you told her about that. Did she get angry, like he said she would?”
“No, she just sort of froze up. She didn’t want to talk about it. She mumbled something about it being ‘too late now,’ and has hardly said a word since. The psychologist wanted to know all about Bennington. She thinks it might be helpful for Grandma Jessie to face him.”
“We’re about a week late for that. I’m sure he’s back home in Chestertown, Maryland, by now.”
“Is that where he lives?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Maybe we could call him up?” Melody suggested.
“We?”
“I mean, maybe I could call him. Perhaps he’ll be out this way again. I sure hate seeing Grandma Jessie the way she is now.”
Price spread poppy-seed dressing on her salad and buttered a croissant, then sliced it in half and handed it to Melody. “I don’t think it would hurt to call. The worst that can happen is you get some more material for your story.”
“Oh, man, this new story is so cool. You two are really going to love this one. No fooling. It will knock your socks off. Wait until you read the opening line. But Pm not going to tell you any more. It’s a surprise.”
Tony glanced at Price and rolled his eyes.
Chapter 5
In the late nineteenth century, the isolation of Fox Island forced the residents to live self-sufficiently. They cleared the land of evergreen trees and stumps that blanketed every knoll, plain, and draw. This back-breaking task readied the soil for fruit trees, berry patches, and vegetable gardens. To supplement the diet of salmon and clams dug at low tide, most every family raised chickens, milk cows, or rabbits. Diversity was the key to survival.
It still is.
“It’s way too cluttered, that’s all,” Tony insisted.
Price pulled her hair back into a large comb. Her prescription computer glasses dropped to her chest, held by the Navajo beaded strap around her neck. She rubbed her neck muscles, yawned, and glanced around the room. “What’s too cluttered?”
Tony eased beside her on the blue-flowered couch, then yanked out several throw pillows lodged in the small of his back. “Chapter five, of course. That’s what I’ve been reading.”
“Do you mean parts of it, or the whole thing?” The soft wave of her hair emphasized her raised eyebrows.
“Well, in the first place, it’s twenty-nine pages long. We need to cut it to twenty-five pages. Here, I’ve redlined some things I think we can delete.”
Price pulled the pages out of his hand and flipped through them. “What is this?” She sat straight and tall on the full base of her authority as a seasoned university professor.
Tony Shadowbrook cradled his stocking feet into her lap. “You’ll have to admit there is such a thing as too much detail. Didn’t we talk that through last summer in Utah?”
Price squeezed out from under his legs and stood to gaze out the living room window. A lone sailboat gently bobbed in the waters in the distance. “I do remember a very heated discussion.”
“And what was our conclusion? That we would jam in all the details, then thin it out a tad to make sure the material still retained its crispness.”
Price leaned against the windowsill and tucked a hand under her chin. She brushed her lips and noticed they were chapped again. “I recall that it concluded in your buying me those cloisonné earrings and a dozen roses.”
A grin broke across Tony’s face, then receded as quickly as the tide. “Yeah, well, that’s what I did in chapter five… I thinned it out a tad.”
“A tad? In places you clear-cut it. If it were a forest, it would be an environmental disaster.”
“But it’s right at twenty-five pages, and I believe it reads pretty good.”
She spread the twenty-five double-spaced typed pages in a fan on his legs, still sprawled full length on the couch. “Why was all the ‘thinning’ done on the part I wrote?”
“That’s not true. I didn’t even consider who wrote the original. If it needed to be chopped, I chopped it.”
“I find it rather amazing that it’s always my additions that need to be deleted.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Look… look… right here on page 123. See? I was describing the difference be¬tween loganberries, blackberries and boysenberries. But it’s not needed, so out it went.”
“Show me one other place.”
“What?”
“Where’s one other place in the chapter where you removed your own work?”
Tony shuffled through the pages. “Here! How about this? ‘The pink cotton candy newborn clouds hung like wash on the baby blue sky.’ I took that out too.”
“That was my line.”
“It was?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Well, I’m sure there’s more.” Tony sorted through the chapter, then began again.
“Good morning, Shadowbrooks. I’m headed for Mom’s to make some phone calls. Need anything from the store?” Melody swung into the room, her teeth shining whiter than ever.
“Not really, thanks.” Price dropped into the navy side chair. She ran her finger over the glass ginger jar front of the lamp stuffed with shells and starfish and traced the scalloped shells motif on the footed resin base.
She told Tony four years ago he wasn’t the kind to co-write anything. She knew this would happen again. And they had five more summers of this? They couldn’t even fight in peace. Next year, no kids. No house guests. No interruptions. Just the two of them, slugging it out.
“I’m going after Lloyd Bennington today. I’ll try the Airport Hilton and see if I can get his phone number from them. I’ve got a friend who works at the desk part-time. What was the name of that eastern town again, Mr. S.? I want to make sure I get as much of this story as I can.”
Tony kept flipping through the pages and muttering to himself.
“What’s he doing?” Melody whispered as she stepped a little closer.
“He’s struggling with whether to allow someone else to have input into this book project or not,” Price said.
“That is not true and you know it,” Tony snapped.
“Whoops, I’m out of here,” Melody said. “The resolution of creative differences scene is a little too intense for me.”
Tony tried to explain. “I just hit on a touchy nerve.”
“Touchy?” Price scowled.
“A minor thing.”
She stood and braced both hands on her hips. “Minor? An entire chapter?”
“Bye, you all. Have a nice fight.” Melody scampered out the front door.
“We’re not fighting,” Tony yelled after her.
“I’m going for a walk along the shoreline,” Price announced.
“That sounds like a wonderful idea. I’ll get my shoes and we can….”
“Alone.” Price pulled on her cardigan sweater, grabbed a tape and her Walkman, and departed.
Tony watched her from the window as she marched down the sidewalk past a dwarf apple tree, the neighbor boy and his dog, and then the boat shed. She disappeared around the point of the shoreline. He turned back to chapter five lying on the table.
Lord, I don’t know if this gets tougher, or easier, every year.
He wanted this to work. Maybe Price was right. Maybe he didn’t know how to work with someone else. But he heard the story in his head. He saw it in his mind. Any other account felt like a distortion, like he lied to the readers.
Lord, help me to hear her story.
And see her visions.
Price stretched out in her jade two-piece swimsuit on the chaise lounge, so
aking in the afternoon sun. Tony, dripping with sweat from a run, waved a bright purple sheet of paper in her face.
“Have you seen these?”
Price propped herself up on one elbow and pushed her sunglasses down on her nose. “What is it?”
“They’ve posted flyers all over the Island. There’s a big meeting scheduled at the Community Center tonight.”
“What for?”
“Planning for the annual Island Fair. The organizers invited someone to bring in a petting zoo … sheep, dogs, pigs, cows, burros, goats and all that.”
“So?”
“Some of the islanders feel this is cruel imprisonment and exploitation of animals. They’re threatening to picket and boycott the Fair if the animals are brought in.”
“Conflict in paradise? Sounds like a book chapter. Maybe we should attend the meeting.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
“I’m glad we agree on something.”
“Look,” he huffed, “we aren’t going to go through that again.”
“No. Let’s just ignore chapter five. Maybe no one will notice it’s missing.” Not a hint of dimple showed on either cheek. “I’ll get it,” she said when the phone rang.
Tony dried off jotted notes on a steno pad when she returned. “That was Liz. She’s got an autograph signing party set up at a bookstore grand opening in Seattle.”
“When?” Tony asked.
“Next week on Friday.”
“What kind of notice is that?”
“Michael Crichton canceled and left them scrambling.”
“Great. I get to be one of the subs off the bench again.”
“Not you … us.”
“Us?”
“Promontory was picked up by the Traveler’s Book Club. Liz thinks this will be a great way to have a second launch of the book. She wants us both there to do a signing. Besides, we can announce we’re working on Fox Island.”
“What about Shotgun Creek?”
“She insisted on Promontory.”
“Well, sure, that’s fine. Do we have anything else?”
“Not on my calendar.”
“Will Liz work it with us?”
“She’s lined up a publisher’s rep to handle the chores.”
“As long as we don’t sit around talking to ourselves most of the afternoon.”
“Should be good traffic … grand opening and all.”
“Well, go ahead and call her back. We haven’t been to Seattle much since we came up here.”
“I already told her we’d do it, but I warned we might not be speaking to each other.”
“What did she say?”
“She said, ‘Doesn’t this happen every summer?’”
“It’s really not that big a deal. You didn’t have to go telling everyone in New York.”
“I didn’t. I only told Liz.”
“Same thing.”
Price adjusted the straps on her suit. “I know what’s eating you, Shadowbrook. You feel slighted to be called after the big boys cancel out, right?”
Tony gazed at the Sound. Canada geese soared like an arrowhead over a large sailboat. “Think I’ll go for a hike along the shore.”
“I thought you just went running.”
“I did. I just want a little walk.”
“Let me pull on some shorts and I’ll join you,” she said.
“Alone.” Just once, Lord. Just once he’d like to know how it feels to be the first one called. On the top of the list. Nothing flatter than a low-on-the-rung writer having a mediocre day.
By the time Tony returned, Price prepared broiled lemon almond chicken, brown rice pilaf and fresh green beans from the neighbor’s garden and watched CNN Headline News on the small kitchen television set. When she glanced up, he thought he detected a slight dimple.
“How was your walk?”
“Good. I… eh… look, you were sort of right. I guess every once in a while I get a glimpse of myself from a distance. And… I get a little tired of finishing second or third. ‘If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes,’ kind of thing.”
“Come on, number two dog, eat your chow.” This time the dimples were obvious.
“Honey, listen, I really…”
“Hey! Good, you’re not busy.” Melody burst through the front door, bounded up the stairs, and strolled into the kitchen.
“We were about to eat supper.”
“Oh, no thanks. I’m not hungry. I bought a pizza and ate half of it on the way home from Mom’s. Do you want to hear something really weird?”
“It won’t ruin our meal, will it?” Tony asked.
“Oh no. It’s not gross or anything. It’s about that guy, Bennington. You know what? There’s no Lloyd Bennington in Chestertown, Maryland.”
“Maybe he lives out in the country,” Tony suggested.
“I checked out all of Kent County. Then I checked out Queen Annes County. I even looked at the town of Chester.” Tony shrugged. “Maybe I remembered the name wrong.”
“Well, I looked up things like Floyd Bennington and even Lloyd Pennington. No luck.”
“It had to be the right name. You said it got a strong reaction
out of your grandmother,” Price remarked.
“What about the hotel? What did your friend at the Airport Hilton find out?”
“All she could tell me was that no man by the name of Lloyd Bennington stayed at the hotel for the past month.”
“Did anyone from Maryland stay at the hotel on the day that Bennington was here?”
“She can look up an individual name, but that’s all. The rest is confidential.” Melody opened the cupboard and retrieved a glass bowl. “That rice looks good. Think I’ll just have a little.”
She slipped into the chair at the table between Price and Tony. “This thing is getting really weird. Some guy pops in here, gets Grandma stirred up by the mention of his name, then disappears off the face of the globe. I feel like I’ve stepped into The Twilight Zone.”
“I suppose he could have given you a fictitious town,” Price suggested.
“But why?” Tony eyed Melody heaping spoons of rice and tossing beans on top.
“Nothing like leaving conflict and confusion wherever you go. Hey, did you two get those ‘creative differences’ settled? Wow, those earrings are really cool, Dr. S.”
“Thanks. Tony bought them for me last summer. I think they’re hand painted, don’t you?”
“I think you’re avoiding my other question. But, hey, that’s none of my business.”
“Speaking of fights,” Tony broke in, “what do you know about this meeting at the Community Center tonight?”
“Is that tonight? Wow, I forgot and I’ve got to go. It looks like the hippies are up to it again.”
“You don’t really call them hippies anymore, do you?” Price asked.
“That’s one of the nicer terms. When I was real little they moved here on the Island in swarms. They camped in trees, broke into summer cabins, rented old barns, and moved in two dozen people. That was a zoo.”
“I suppose the same thing happened all up and down the coast.” Tony bit into a piece of juicy, done-just-right chicken. “Plenty moved into Arizona about then, too, a reflection of the era.”
“Yeah, well, up here they started growing marijuana and who knows what else? They really stunk, bad. As soon as you walked into a room or business, you could tell if one was there. I bought my VW from some of ’em, and I had to get it completely re-upholstered and re-carpeted to get the smell out. Shelli Teasdale and me cut through the trees west of 11th Avenue toward the Inlet, and this grimy guy with a hatchet chased us all the way to 9th. I thought he was going to kill us. The Teasdales moved to Steilacoom right after that.”
“But that was the ’70s. This is the ’90s,” Price cautioned. “Some of them moved on, but lots of them moved in, stayed, and became good citizens. I’ve got good friends that used to be heavy in that stuff. They have steady jobs and take bath
s and everything. But look at this petting zoo thing. A classic example of misguided energy. It’s meant to help kids love and appreciate animals. They get to pet a calf or a piglet. Maybe they’ll actually consider animals to be more than the main ingredient in a Big Mac or hot dog. So, why are they boycotting the Island Fair?”
“We thought we’d find out for ourselves.”
“You’re not going to mention this in your book, are you?”
“Oh, we don’t know. Might be a little something we could use.”
Melody’s usual bright smile faded. Not one of her teeth showed. “I certainly can’t think of any reason you would even want to consider writing about this.”
“Could be we’ll find out how remote communities solve conflicts. Something like that.”
“If Harvey Peterson is there, you’ll find out about settling conflicts.”
“Peterson? What’s Harvey have to do with a petting zoo? He doesn’t think it’s part of a government cover-up, does he?”
“Harvey is active in everything that happens on the Island. He seems to thrive on being in the middle of every conflict. He’s the one who sawed down that big pine tree and shoved it into the Sound with two of the tree huggers still chained to it.”
“What happened?” Price asked.
“Oh, they let him off with just a fine.”
“No, what happened to the two chained to the log?”
“The Coast Guard rescued them. Last I heard they moved to north-central Idaho.”
“So, Harvey Peterson is sort of a counter-activist?”
“That’s a mild way of putting it.”
“Sounds like you have a few extremists on both sides. This meeting will beat staying home to watch TV,” Tony remarked. “You two never watch TV anyway,” Melody added.
“I’d always rather read a good book,” Price said.
“Speaking of good books, I stayed up to 2:00 A.M. rewriting my opening paragraph. If I show it to you, you’ve got to promise not to use it in one of your books.”
Tony held up a hand. “You got it, kid.”
“Listen.” Melody stared down at her half-eaten plate of rice and beans. “I’ve got some rotten news. Grandma Jessie kind of laid down the law at me today. She said she wouldn’t do any interviews… ever. It’s really unreasonable, and I don’t know what to do about it.”