For Mitch Berger, a pure-blooded New York City screening-room rat, it was also a brave new world. He had taught himself to garden. Bought a palm-sized pair of bird-watching glasses and well-thumbed copy of Roger Tory Peterson’s Field Guide to Eastern Birds, a high-low thermometer, barometer, tide clock, and a rain gauge that was calibrated to one-hundredth of an inch. He yearned for a telescope, too, but worried that he might turn into one of those unshaven old geezers whom he’d seen around town with egg-yolk stains down the front of their Mackinaw bib overalls, the ones who kept bees and railed on to total strangers about the virtues of the flat tax.
Still, he was really looking forward to the Leonid meteor shower on November 16.
At age thirty-two, Mitch was lead film critic for the most prestigious and therefore lowest-paying of the three New York City daily newspapers. He was also the author of two highly entertaining film reference books, Shoot My Wife, Please and It Came From Beneath the Sink. Mitch loved what he did for a living. He especially loved this time of year in the film calendar. The bloated, over-hyped idiocy of the summer blockbuster season had been put to bed. He had been revived by the quirky talents on display at the Toronto and New York film festivals. And now he had several clear weeks before the Christmas screenings to spend out here on They Went Thataway, his woefully overdue guide to Westerns, which explained the discs, files, books and video cassettes that were heaped everywhere.
Last night he had e-mailed news of this to his editor at the paper, Lacy Mickerson. Mitch fired up his G-4 and logged on to see if she had replied. She had. Her response began with two well-chosen words: As if. Because Lacy knew perfectly well the real reason Mitch wanted to be out there. She continued: But if you insist on playing small-town boy, how about that Cookie Commerce article?
This was in reference to the so-called Serious Fun Edict devised by the new executive editor, who was encouraging staffers to branch out into other sections of the paper. The Knicks-beat reporter, for instance, recently got a chance to spend an entire fun-filled day hanging at the U.S. Supreme Court with Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Mitch was being steered toward the food section by Lacy based on something he’d mentioned to her at lunch one day.
His e-mailed response to her on this day: Still searching for a hook. Which was newspeak for: Go away and leave me alone.
He shut down his computer and started in on his morning chores. Scooped up that headless corpse with a garden trowel and buried it out behind the barn with the others, wondering what an archaeologist would make of this site in five thousand years. Headed down the path to the island’s beach with a trash bag. Trudging along the sand, alone except for a family of cormorants, Mitch dutifully picked up the plastic bottles, Styrofoam cups and beer cans that had washed ashore from the fishing boats in the night. People, he had discovered, were absolute pigs.
He returned to his cottage, puffing slightly, and went to work with a rake on the leaves that had fallen in his beds, relishing the physical activity. Mitch was a big guy, just over six feet tall, burly when he was in shape, pudgy when he was not. Since his job called for him to spend every working hour in the dark on his butt, he could morph into the Pillsbury Doughboy if he was not careful. Being out here kept him in tip-top shape. The biceps under his Rocky Dies Yellow tattoo positively rippled. Okay, maybe it didn’t really ripple, but it was a biceps.
He dumped the gathered leaves into a wire enclosure where they would quietly rot into mulch. Then he put on his work gloves and cut back the honeysuckle and wild blackberry vines that were threatening to engulf his whole house. These invasive predators he could not compost-he loaded them into the back of his bulbous, kidney-colored 1956 Studebaker pickup and tied a tarp over them. Mitch paused to cut a generous bunch of fresh white Japanese anemones from his garden, then hopped into his truck with the flowers and went toodling off across the rickety wooden causeway toward town.
The leaves on the old sugar maples that lined Dorset Street were turning a million different glorious shades of orange. John the Barber was out early sweeping the walk in front of his shop. Bill the Mobile Vet was stocking the medicine drawers in his truck outside his house. Over at the Grange Hall a hand-lettered sign announced that performances of the Dorset Players’ fall production of Bye Bye Birdie were under way. The volunteer fire department was running its annual cow-chip raffle-first prize was a thousand dollars. Lew the Plumber was busy hosing down one of the fire trucks. He waved to Mitch. Mitch waved back. Rita, who worked behind the counter at the drugstore, was taking her morning power walk. She waved to Mitch, too. And, if he had cared to stop, would no doubt have asked him how he was making out with his jock itch.
Outside Center School, the charming circa 1912 elementary school located directly across Dorset Street from town hall, there were countless red SAVE OUR SCHOOL ribbons and green WE CARE ribbons festooning the trees. Center School was the focus of a heated local controversy. There were problems with its ventilation system-kids had complained of mold-spore-related respiratory problems last year, as well as nausea and headaches. Concerned parents, most of them the newer arrivals in town, had denounced the school as a health risk. This group, which called itself WE CARE, wanted Center School to be replaced by a new high-tech school that would be built on forty acres of woods on the outskirts of town and be able to hold twice as many students. Their SAVE OUR SCHOOL opponents, most of them folks who had grown up in Dorset, merely wanted the existing school to be renovated and upgraded.
The issue would be settled in a special election on November 1, when a thirty-four-million-dollar bond issue to finance the proposed school was scheduled for a vote. For a town with a year-round population of less than seven thousand, it was a major financial undertaking. It was also a referendum on the very future of Dorset. Opponents were sure that if Center School got torn down it would strip the village of its small-town character. They also believed a giant new school would open the door to rampant suburbanization. Their mantra: If the school doesn’t grow, the town can’t grow. Proponents argued that those who opposed the plan were living in the past, not to mention cheap, selfish and sadistic for putting Dorset’s kids at risk for the sake of a little charm.
The issue was pitting neighbor against neighbor. Tempers were flaring. No one was neutral. The nine-member school board was itself sharply divided-five members were for it, four against. Dorset’s longtime school superintendent, Colin Falconer, was against the plan, pitting him directly against its biggest backer, school board president Babette Leanse, a sharp-tongued new arrival from New York. A prominent architect, Babette Leanse was married to Bruce Leanse, the most famous real estate tycoon not to be named Donald Trump. The Brat, the New York tabloids called Bruce Leanse, who was busy bulldozing hundreds of acres of Dorset’s farmland and forest to make way for new designer mansions.
Mitch opposed the new school. He liked Dorset the way it was. That was why he had moved here-because it wasn’t suburbia. But he was aware that he might feel different if he had kids. And, after losing his beloved wife Maisie to ovarian cancer, Mitch was well aware of something else: As hard as it might be to hold on to the past, it’s even harder to hold on to the present.
He stopped in at the market to shop for Sheila Enman, a retired schoolteacher who had just turned ninety and couldn’t get out much anymore. Mitch bought her a box of Cream of Wheat, milk, eggs, a half dozen bars of bittersweet chocolate and several gallons of the Clamato juice she loved. Also a jumbo-sized tub of sour cream, which she would go through in less than three days. The old girl went through sour cream so fast, Mitch wondered if she bathed in it.
On his way up Route 156 he dropped the stuff off at her house, an amazing old mill house built out over the Eight Mile River directly in front of a waterfall. Sheila had lived there since she was a girl. Her kitchen door was unlocked, her bedroom door shut. She wasn’t up yet. Mitch stowed the groceries and put the anemones he’d cut for her in a vase on the kitchen table. She’d left money for the groceries on the kitchen counter,
not to mention his payment: a sandwich bag filled with her homemade chocolate chip cookies. Sheila’s chocolate chip cookies were the finest Mitch had ever eaten-big and chewy and filled with gooey chocolate chunks. He marketed for her twice a week in exchange for them. Reputedly, Sheila also made a killer lemon meringue pie, but Bob Paffin had that franchise all sewn up. Dorset’s white-haired first selectman still shoveled Sheila’s walk for her whenever it snowed, just as he had done back when he was in high school, in exchange for one of her pies.
Mitch was discovering that this kind of payment system was the invisible commerce that held Dorset together. Cookie Commerce, Sheila called it. Lacy wanted him to write about it. Mitch was tempted. He had already written a lighthearted piece for the travel section on Dorset, as well as a longer, more sober article for the Sunday magazine on the disappearance of one of Big Sister Island’s residents. He found the place quirky and intriguing. And he had always admired the way one of his idols, E. B. White, had written about the life he’d found on his saltwater farm in Maine. Maybe this was something he could do, too. A way for him to grow as a journalist now that he’d ventured out of the movie theater and into the sunlight, stumbling and blinking. Then again, writing about people whom he knew as friends was something entirely foreign to him. He wasn’t sure he felt comfortable with that idea. That was why he’d put Lacy off.
That and the fact that he really, truly had no hook.
He jumped back in his truck and continued up the narrow country road to the dump, munching contentedly on one of his cookies as the morning sun broke brightly through the autumn foliage. The cookies were all gone by the time Mitch got there. First he backed up to the brush pile and unloaded his vines and brambles, then he eased the Studey over to the green Dumpster where folks deposited their metal items. A picker’s paradise. Mitch almost always came home with something choice. In fact, he’d furnished his whole house at the dump-his desk, bookcases, chairs, lamps, lawn furniture-the works.
On this particular morning, he was not alone. Another man had descended the ladder to the bottom of the bin and was sorting his way through the things that people had left behind. He was an old man, well into his seventies, with a scruffy white beard and a wild, uncombed mane of hair. He wore a beat-up black leather jacket, filthy corduroy trousers and work boots. His vintage motorcycle, complete with sidecar, was parked nearby, leather helmet and goggles hanging from its handlebars.
“It’s no mm-rr-McDougal’s House of Horrors,” the old man growled up at him. “But it’ll do, wouldn’t you say?”
“Excuse me?” Mitch responded, frowning at him.
The old man sported a mouthful of crooked teeth ranging in color from yellow to brown to black. He sounded as if he were gargling lumpy mashed potatoes. Plus he reeked of whiskey. “Well, you’re Mitchell Berger, aren’t you?” he demanded, staring up at Mitch with eyes that were shockingly clear and blue and lit with intensity.
“Why, yes. Yes, I am.”
“Sure you are. Recognized you from mm-rr-your picture. Only writer worth reading in the whole damned paper. Rest of ’em are a bunch of bed wetters and suck-ups. Well, did you or did you not write that Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was your all-time favorite Halloween film?”
“I-I did…” Mitch stammered, stunned. It had just hit him. He had not happened upon just any old wino. The old man standing down in that bin was Dorset’s most famous and reclusive resident, Wendell Frye, the man who had single-handedly redefined modern American sculpture. Andy Warhol had transformed a Campbell’s soup can into art. Wendell Frye had done the same for the automobile hubcap. His towering, breathtaking scrap-metal sculptures graced plazas and parks throughout the world, his name echoing alongside that of Alexander Calder, Isamu Noguchi and Ellsworth Kelly. He was a giant, a genius. He was also someone who hated prying eyes, publicity, critics and virtually anything to do with the art world. Wendell Frye hadn’t granted an interview in at least twenty years. If the art critic from Mitch’s paper somehow got a chance to meet him she would, well, plotz. And here Mitch was standing in a Dumpster talking to him about Abbott and Costello.
“Must have seen that movie fifty times,” the old man muttered, fishing an unfiltered Lucky Strike from a rumpled pack in his leather jacket. His hands were huge and knobby and scarred. He lit his cigarette with a battered Zippo lighter and pulled on it deeply, setting off a cough that seemed to rumble up from the pit of his stomach. “I love when they’re searching for the mm-rr-monster down in Dracula’s dungeon. Those wonderful slimy walls and cobwebs.” He seemed quite chatty for a recluse, Mitch couldn’t help but notice. “And then when part of the wall swivels around and Bud finds himself in that secret chamber with Karloff.”
“Strange,” Mitch spoke up.
“It’s hilarious is what it is!”
“No, no. I mean it’s not Boris Karloff playing Frankenstein’s monster in that movie. It’s Glenn Strange.”
Wendell Frye peered up at him, befuddled. “You’re kidding me.”
“I never kid about credits, Mr. Frye.”
“Christ, don’t call me that.” The great artist seemed genuinely hurt, as if he’d extended his big hand in friendship and Mitch had slapped it away. “It’s Hangtown.”
“Okay, sure,” Mitch said, smiling at him. “As in a Hang-town Fry-bacon, eggs and oysters, am I right?”
“So you know your eats, too,” he said approvingly.
“You don’t get a shape like mine by nibbling on rice cakes and parsley.”
“I sure do love that movie.” The old geezer was still talking about Abbott and Costello. “Love dungeons and secret passageways of all kinds.”
“If that’s the case, then you ought to check out an old Charlie Chan picture called Castle in the Desert.”
“Is that the one where Douglass Dumbrille wears that mask over one side of his face to cover his scars?”
Mitch raised his eyebrows, impressed. It wasn’t often that the name Douglass Dumbrille came up in conversation anymore. Not even in the critic’s section on the flight back from Sundance.
Hangtown flicked his cigarette away and went back to pawing through the trash bin. “You mm-rr-might enjoy my house. It’s rigged with all sorts of secret passageways and chambers. They used to hide slaves there back in the days of the Underground Railroad. Emma Teasman owned it then.”
“The poet?”
“That’s the one. My great-grandmother. Mind you, I’ve made a number of modifications and I’ve put in… Aha!!!” he exclaimed suddenly. He’d found himself a bent-up old rooftop television aerial. It must have been eight feet high when it was intact. It was still plenty large. “A monument if ever I saw one!” he proclaimed, hoisting the ruined aerial up in Mitch’s general direction.
“A monument to what?” Mitch grabbed it by the other end and yanked it up onto the ground.
“To when the one-eyed monster was king,” Hangtown replied, starting his way slowly up the ladder out of the Dumpster. “It’s not anymore. That damned Internet’s the big boss now. Point and click. Point and click. Now the nincompoops are buying crap they don’t need without even getting up off the sofa. Hate those damned computers. Only good thing about ’em is they killed television-except for Celebrity Deathmatch on MTV, of course. Ever watch it?”
“You bet. Martha Stewart removed Sandra Bernhardt’s inner organs with an ice cream scoop last time I saw it.”
“So you have cable at your house?” the old man inquired slyly.
“Why, yes. Don’t you?”
“Nope. Still aren’t wired out by us.” Hangtown reached the top of the ladder and climbed out, wheezing. He was a big, lumbering old man, at least six feet three, and he had a lot of trouble moving. “I’d love to get me a satellite dish. But then I’d never do a thing except sit and watch old movies all day. Hey, what are you looking for down here anyway, Big Mitch?”
“A bucket to hold my kindling.”
“Hell, got some old copper apple-butter tubs in my bar
n. Fix you right up.”
“That’s awfully generous of you, Hangtown.”
“The hell it is. You’ll pay me for it.”
“Why, sure,” Mitch said hastily. “How much did you have in mind?”
“I need you to take this aerial home for me. Won’t fit in my sidecar.”
“You’ve got yourself a deal,” Mitch said, glancing admiringly at Wendell Frye’s antique ride. “That’s quite some old bike.”
“It’s a 1936 Chief,” Hangtown said, as the two of them deposited the aerial on the tarp in the back of Mitch’s truck. “Manufactured right up the mm-rr-road in Springfield by the Indian Motorcycle Company. Found her in a barn in Higganum a few years back. Cylinders still had the original nickel plating.” He climbed slowly on and donned his leather helmet and goggles, cackling at him. “Spiral Staircase was another good one. Remember that eye in the peephole? Man, that’s the good stuff! Who was the villain in that?”
“George Brent.”
“George Brent! Whatever happened to him?”
“He died.”
Hangtown shook his huge white head at Mitch. “Wish people would stop doing that. Makes me wonder if it might happen to me someday.”
“You think it won’t?” Mitch found himself asking.
“I don’t think at all, Big Mitch,” the great artist roared, kick-starting the bike’s engine. It caught right away, spewing clouds of thick exhaust in the morning air. “Thinking is what kills you. Christ, didn’t you know that?”
CHAPTER 2
Ohh… Ohhh… Ohhhh…
They were at it again up on the third floor. Those damned Sealy Posturepedic gymnasts in the room right above hers. They’d been humping away up there nonstop every night for the past week, that bed of theirs shaking like a washing machine in its final spin cycle.
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