So Shelly

by Ty Roth

  “Then you better hope the black bikini and her gang don’t get caught, and don’t be surprised when your ‘friends’ contact you and blackmail you for more money. They’ve got you, Gordo. Looks like you got your wish after all. That Zoe chick fucked you big-time.”

  “It’s not funny, Shelly.”

  With typical Gordonian disregard for segue, he asked, “What about you? What’s with the sunny disposition? When I left, you’d gone all Sylvia Plath and shit.”

  “Ha-ha,” she said, but Shelly had been waiting for this opportunity for a long time. For her own emotional well-being, she needed to share with somebody the events that had culminated in her still-to-remain-a-secret-to-Gordon abortion that I had crashed the previous December. And Gordon was the only person who might understand, and with whom she could trust her secret shame—well, most of it, anyway.

  A thick cloud cover blocked the moonlight. Shelly was grateful for the tar black of the August night; it rendered them nearly invisible to one another, reducing each to a puny voice struggling to penetrate the darkness. Emboldened by the near opacity, Shelly shared a story that, had Gordon been visible, would have caused her to see the typically impervious Gordon Byron turn red with embarrassment, rage, and disgust.

  “You know my father,” Shelly began rhetorically.

  “Asshole,” Gordon said curtly and matter-of-factly.

  “Not always,” she reacted. “He wasn’t always.”

  “To me he was … is.”

  It wasn’t argument that Shelly sought.

  “He never liked me,” Gordon continued. “Since we were kids, he always hated me. As if everything was my fault. Like I—”

  “He raped me,” Shelly blurted, stopping Gordon mid-rant.

  Nature’s evening choir filled the interval of his shocked disbelief with the intermittent croaking of frogs singing bass harmony to the melodious tenor chirping of the crickets.

  “He what?”

  “Please, Gordon. Don’t make me say it again.”

  Gordon scrambled to his feet. “He can’t get away with it.”

  Rising to her knees, Shelly groped above herself in the darkness until she found a balled fist and pulled him back to the surface of the dock with both of her hands. “Sit down, Gordon. He has, and he will.” She sobbed. Tears fell in torrents. “I didn’t tell you so that you would go all knight-in-shining-armor and defend my honor or make some kind of ridiculous scene.”

  “Then why did you tell me? What do you want me to do?”

  “I don’t want you to do anything! It’s not about you doing something or someone.” Sniffles punctuated each sentence. “I just needed to tell somebody. I needed to tell you. Because sometimes I think it never happened. I start to think I made it all up, or it was a nightmare, or my fault. And I need to know that I’m not crazy, and to remember that it was real. And, for his own good, every time he looks at me, my father needs to know that I remember and that he’s responsible. But I need someone else to know and to help me to remember.”

  “But, Shell, it’s sick. He’s sick. He needs help.”

  “No. It’s not like that. It only happened once, and something good has come from it.”

  “Oh, Christ! You’ve got to be kidding me. Do you even hear what you’re saying?”

  “It was the drinking, and since that night, he hasn’t been drinking anymore. Besides, I don’t think he even meant it.”

  “Didn’t mean it? You can’t be serious! You can’t accidentally … do that.”

  “I am serious. My mother’s been dead for nearly my whole life. Since then my father has never”—she hesitated, searching for the appropriate euphemism—“been with another woman.”

  “How do you even know that?”

  “I just do. He misses my mother so much. I get that. It’s the only thing we’ve ever had in common. You’ve seen pictures of my mother, Gordon. You know how much I look like her. That night, I think he stumbled into my room by mistake.”

  Gordon looked confused. “When was this?”

  “Last October, the night of the Halloween dance. Remember? That was the night I was with Brandon Sullivan after the dance. I’m sure you heard the rumors.”

  Gordon winced. “Aw, Shelly.”

  “Anyway, when I sat up in bed, he called me by my mother’s name. I tried talking to him, telling him it was me, Shelly. I tried screaming. He didn’t listen or stop. He just kept calling me Mary, and … when he finished, he passed out on top of me.” She paused, remembering. “That was the worst part.” Shelly stared off into the darkness at the red lights of the marker buoys bobbing on the surface of the deep channel, traveled by the massive freighters that took on thousands of tons of coal at the Ogontz docks. “I couldn’t move him or get myself out from underneath him,” Shelly continued. “His weight pressed down on me. Alcohol oozed from his pores and breath. The scruff of his beard scratched my face and neck. His … his … thing pressed sticky and wet between my thighs. I just lay there, staring at the ceiling and crying.”

  “I don’t know what to say, Shell,” Gordon said.

  “When he woke up, he must have been sober. He raised himself up and turned his face to look at me. For less than a second, I think he still thought I was his wife. Then—Gordon, if you could have seen his face—he recognized me and realized what he had done. He tried to say something; his lips quivered, but no words came out. He rolled off me and pulled up his pants with his back toward me. When he got to my bedroom door, he looked back as if to speak, but didn’t. We haven’t spoken a word to each other since. He won’t talk to me; he won’t come anywhere near me. Within weeks, he married Mary Jane, although he hardly knew her. I think it was his way of guarding against it ever happening again.”

  There was a pause as Gordon tried to absorb what he’d heard, and Shelly dried her face with her shirt. A light, moist breeze began to blow across the bay, turning their arms and legs to gooseflesh. Above, the once dense cloud cover thinned, allowing the moon to emit a luminous glow.

  “Wow,” he finally said. “I guess that explains the whole Plath phase.”

  “But I’m better now,” Shelly said. “Way better.”

  “Yeah. What’s up with the ‘shiny happy people’ routine?”

  “Shut up, Gordon. Don’t make fun. You know I love that song.”

  “I know it, but I’ll never accept it.”

  “Do you remember that night—we were sitting right here—when you told me about Annesley and how much you loved her?”

  “Yeah, I remember,” Gordon said sheepishly, as if embarrassed by his short-lived romantic period.

  “Well, now I’m in love, and I’m happy. I didn’t believe I could be this happy.”

  Gordon’s gut didn’t wrench. His eyes didn’t turn green, nor his face red. Shelly said he seemed more disappointed than anything. She said it was simply as if Gordon could already see how it would end, and it wasn’t going to be good.

  “I guess that explains it,” he said.

  While Gordon had been gallivanting around Europe and Greece that summer, Shelly had been experiencing her own quixotic adventure. Her father’s guilt-inspired avoidance of her provided Shelly with carte blanche freedom of movement. What few limitations had ever existed on her comings and goings were completely lifted. No itineraries needed to be filed; no “check-in” phone calls placed; no curfews enforced. Generous amounts of spending money regularly appeared on her nightstand.

  For her part, Mary Jane had abdicated any claim to parental authority long ago, when, shortly after she’d moved in with Claire and Frances, she’d asked Shelly to “do something about your appearance.” The black outfits, self-shorn hair, and black eyeliner were “bringing me down,” she’d said.

  “Why don’t you and Claire go on a little shopping date? It’ll be fun,” You-can-call-me Mary Jane had said. “She can help you with a makeover! You just watch how the boys come calling.”

  Shelly had flipped her the finger. They hadn’t spoken since.

/>   That summer, Shelly spent many more nights on a sleeping bag on the floor of the old farmhouse near to Neolin than she spent in her own bed. After opting to replace her sailboat, her primary means of transportation to and from the island, with the sixteen-foot Boston Whaler powerboat, a belated seventeenth-birthday present from her father that appeared one day at their dock with the key in the ignition, she came home only when she needed a good shower, or to collect odds and ends: additional clothes, eating utensils, books, and the provisions uniquely required by a female squatter.

  The Ottawa settlers had quickly established a congenial relationship with the merchants of Put-in-Bay. Since no one really gave a damn about the sham nature preserve on North Bass, the locals considered the Ottawa harmless—at least for the time being. All branches of law enforcement, from local to federal, regarded any heavy-handed crackdown as a potential public relations nightmare. The unofficial policy was to play nice and wait out the Ottawa, at least until they’d proven that they could withstand the claustrophobia of an ice-locked winter, or until Ohio’s voters passed legislation to allow casino gambling and recognized the Bass Islands as the perfect location for such gaming houses. Said legislation was set to be included on November’s ballot.

  On the first of June, a relief company of Ottawa tribesmen arrived. Their sensibilities were more sympathetic to Neolin’s aims, and their personalities were more amenable to accepting leadership. The constant complaining of the initial settlers over the lack of modern conveniences disappeared. Life on the island improved significantly. The tent city in the front yard was exchanged for dormitory-style living inside the farmhouse, and civilization arrived in the reestablished capital of the Ottawa Nation when the cistern and septic tank were made operational. Shelly’s own seemingly indomitable spirit of revolution had almost been broken during her first extended stay on the island, almost broken by the sharing of an outhouse with ten men. Happiness is running water.

  In addition to cell phones (service was shoddy on the island anyway), Neolin conceded to the use of Shelly’s laptop for monitoring events on the mainland and for communication purposes, and he pretended ignorance of the portable DVD/CD player that Shelly smuggled back with her on one of her runs home.

  By the end of June, the garden was beginning to show promise for a bountiful harvest. Although the farmhouse was in dire need of a paint job, the major repairs had all been made, the grounds spruced up, and the bowed boards on the dock replaced. Though less frequent in their patronage of the Put-in-Bay nightlife, the second wave of settlers maintained positive relations with their suppliers in the village. Shelly and Neolin established a division of labor that required each community member, including themselves, to rotate through the more menial jobs—such as housework and yard work, cooking and cleaning—and the more enjoyable task of taking the Kodiak rafts to South Bass for supply runs.

  All were expected to attend the communal evening meals, which served as social, planning, and bitch sessions. The most common topic was when to expand the compound and to allow for the reverse migration of a larger cross-section of the Ottawa population, namely women and children. Some of the men had grown mildly envious that Neolin, as de facto leader, had the benefit of Shelly’s companionship. To all observers, if not vocalized or physically acted upon by the two of them, the relationship appeared romantic—a perception the men shared with good-natured teasing of the couple.

  Happy with the fast progress of the nation, Neolin was reluctant to initiate the reverse migration and inject such a radical change into the dynamic that had been effectively established. But the men’s concern had inspired two realizations: one, it was necessary for him to surrender the mantle of leadership in order to meld into and become completely of the people in the true spirit of the Way; and two, he was falling in love. A consensus of opinion determined that a request would be made to the chief and tribal council in Oklahoma that the council discuss the matter of further settlement and deliver its opinion on the repopulation of North Bass in a timely manner.

  Neolin didn’t expect a quick or favorable response. Throughout the resettlement process, communication with the tribal council had been suspiciously irregular. He optimistically told himself that the elders were confident in his leadership and supportive of his mission, but his other read was that they were completely indifferent to his utopian dream of nation-building. He preferred the former interpretation but suspected the latter to be closer to the truth.

  One late mid-August afternoon, when the humidity chased the heat to nearly unlivable heights, Neolin and Shelly each grabbed a towel and hiked through the woods to the small sandy beach that Shelly had followed him to on the day when she’d first crashed his revolution. Sapped by the heat, the lake lay flat, with a curtain of haze rising from its slow-to-boil water. Neolin stripped down to his boxers and Shelly to her mismatched white bra and purple panties, and, facing toward the seemingly boundless Canadian waters, they cooled themselves by lolling in the nearshore shallows, because the Oklahoma boy couldn’t swim.

  “I can’t believe it,” he said.

  “What’s that?” Shelly asked, although she knew exactly what he meant.

  “Any of it. This place. My plan actually working. You.”

  “I know. It’s kind of great,” she said.

  “It can’t be real. It can’t last. It can’t really work. Can it?”

  “Why not? Why can’t we be happy? Why can’t we do anything we want? Why can’t we change the world?”

  “But what if it only works here? You know what I mean? What if this is some magic place where the regular rules don’t apply, and the second we leave here, none of it will continue or have ever happened?”

  “Then we’ll never leave,” Shelly said.

  “I don’t plan to, but you start your senior year in two weeks.”

  “I’ll be eighteen soon. I can sign my own dropout papers.”

  “I can’t let you do that. Besides, what would your father say?” Neolin probed the exposed family nerve gingerly, for fear of being cross-examined regarding his own dysfunctional childhood spent with an alcoholic mother, and never knowing his “just passing through” Delaware father, who’d made him a half-bred target for ridicule among his mother’s Ottawa people. But Neolin was curious as to the mysterious man whose generosity toward his daughter had been redirected toward Neolin’s cause.

  “He probably wouldn’t say anything. I told you we don’t talk.”

  “Yeah, but you’ve never told me why.”

  Shelly hesitated, weighing the pluses and minuses of that explanation, then concluded, “Another time.”

  “I really wish you could stay here, but you have to go back. You’ll regret it if you don’t, and, someday, you will blame me.”

  “But I’m happy here,” she said in the pleading voice of a child.

  “If only it was as simple as that.” Neolin thought for a moment before turning to look at her leaning backward, exposed and vulnerable, with her palms pressed flat in the sand beneath the wrist-deep water. Her hair was wet, pasted back over her ears and against her neck. Her legs were splayed out in front of her with only her toes exposed like a chain of tiny islands. The silky fabric of her saturated bra, with the right strap draped loosely off her shoulder, clung tightly to her breasts. Compelled, he rolled onto his hip and leaned toward her. Shelly remained still, welcoming him in. She met his mouth firmly, and, with the conviction of the newly baptized, they kissed for the first, and only, time.

  Despite Shelly’s plea to extend their getaway, wisely, Neolin rose, dripping, from the water, dried off, and got dressed.

  “Come on.” He beckoned her with an outstretched hand. “The men will talk, then tease me to no end if we don’t get back.”

  “Only if you promise that the next time we’ll pick up right where we left off.”

  “I promise,” he said.

  Holding hands and laughing as they broke through the wood line where it met the front-yard clearing of the compound
, they came to a sudden stop. A look of stunned disbelief fell across Neolin’s face as Shelly’s washed pale.

  “They’re here,” he said.

  Shelly immediately recognized all but one of the Ottawa men standing near the dock. It was the original group of settlers, along with a portly middle-aged man wearing blue jeans and cowboy boots despite the August heat.

  “Who’s the fat one?” Shelly asked.

  “The chief.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “I don’t know, but it can’t be good,” Neolin said in an ominous tone.

  “Maybe he wants to see the progress we’ve made,” Shelly offered.

  “I hope you’re right, but I don’t think so.”

  As Neolin finished his sentence, the chief’s eyes found the two of them, and a smile, as phony as a politician’s in primary season, spread across his ruddy pockmarked face. Immediately he began a tottering march to where they stood. Behind him, the old and the current settlers intermingled, exchanging greetings and shaking hands before moving purposefully toward the house.

  With a big paw extended, the chief reapplied his gap-toothed smile, and from still twenty yards away, he called, “Gabriel—”

  “Neolin,” Neolin interrupted the chief. “My name is Neolin.”

  “Huh?” the chief said, perplexed, before remembering. “Oh, that’s right. Neolin, how are you?” He offered his meaty palm for shaking.

  “I’m good,” Neolin answered. “What can we do for you? Why are you here?” His tone bordered on being insolent.

  “This is Odawa land. And you seem to have forgotten that I’m the chief.”

  Sufficiently humbled, Neolin lowered his gaze and apologized.

  Shelly interrupted their pissing contest by loudly clearing her throat.

  “This is Shelly. She’s been helping.” Neolin made the introduction.

  The chief didn’t bother to acknowledge her.

  “Boozhoo,” Shelly said, undeterred, using her Ottawa greeting.

  Neolin’s eyes snapped to her. Shelly described that it was as if the word had reset his mind to the day when she’d first arrived at the dock and she’d greeted him in the identical fashion. He started to say something, but as his mouth formed the words, from the corner of his eye he saw the men, past and present, carrying supplies from the house toward the dock.