RandyEvans

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Chapter Two Part 2 Victoria's Father

The large hall was filled with people of all ages, and Nick knew most of them in one way or another. The children were yapping and squabbling like dogs, the adults were trying to socialize and supervise the children at the same time, and there was a group of men congregating around a keg of beer in the back room. Chuck made a beeline to the tap, almost falling on his face, because the linoleum floor was slimy with spilled food and drink.

“Hi, handsome!” shouted Mindy, a fair-skinned, curly-redheaded year rounder who taught at the community college. Mindy had a Ph.D. in psychiatry and religion from Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and had moved here to take care of her elderly parents who lived in a retirement home in Harbor Springs. She had been divorced twice, the second within the past year, and she knew Nick was single and available--she did not know how available. He certainly never went out of his way to mix with people, but rather seemed to crawl around in the protective colors of his environment out on the river. She was surprised to see him at a fundraiser.

At the same moment that Mindy had turned to greet Nick, she reached for a piece of garlic bread straight from the oven, and recoiled as if she had touched a hot iron. She had burned her hand, and she was embarrassed. Nick reached out, and held her hand open for inspection. He was adept at recognizing the severity of burns to the skin, and engaged her immediately in help, comfort, and conversation amid the noise of the hall. Mindy was astounded by the focus of his attention to her. It was if the two of them stood alone in solitariness, like two blue herons in the middle of a marsh filled with song birds. He seemed liked a bright sun, drawing powers within himself. She felt dizzy as hell, and when she stepped back to sit down, she slipped on the wet floor, shoved her toe into the leg of a folding chair and felt a searing pain. She turned bright red, laughing and crying at the same time, and fell to the floor. Her attempt to openly flirt had quickly devolved into a first-class fiasco. When she tried to rise, she fainted, then revived a few moments later to see Nick’s eyes a few inches from hers.

“ I think we need to take a look at your foot--if you broke a toe, there’s nothin’ we can do but tape two together,” Nick said. “Let’s go to my place, I have a first aid kit.” She nodded, and Nick helped her hobble out to the truck. “It’s a good thing I had a pedicure today,” she thought, “but I think my foot’s going to look pretty ugly anyway.” After she had been carefully placed in the passenger seat, Nick hopped in on his side, and pulled a checkbook out of the center console. “Forgot one thing,” he said. She watched him write out a check for $500, and then disappear back into the the hall. He also told Chuck that he would have to get his own ride home, and he didn’t like the insinuating smile that Chuck gave as a response.

When they arrived at the cottage, Mindy had some second thoughts, but she still felt bowled over by him. She looked around the interior of the bungalow. The living room looked as if it was in original condition with beautiful quarter-sawn oak. Everything was so neat--much more so than her place. The house had been ordered from a Sears catalogue in 1908, and shipped by rail to Boyne City, assembled on site. The eight-room floor plan was named, “The Modern Home No. 125 ” ($1500 constructed). The middle of the house boasted a large living room with a brick mantel and open fireplace in front of a kitchen at the back of the house with a nook. Two large and four small bedrooms were arrayed around the center, three on each side. There was a 33-foot front porch, and a cellar. The front of the house faced the woods, and in later years, a bathroom was added, replacing one of the large bedrooms. Nick built a covered deck on the back that hung out over the river’s edge. There was a boathouse next to the main house that had a second floor sleeping room and bath. Nick had bought the house after he retired from his Naval career ten years earlier for about $150,000.

Nick invited Mindy to sit down in a Stickley rocker and placed her legs on a leather ottoman. He pulled off her shoes, and examined her bruised and swollen foot. “It looks like you broke your little toe,” he said. “Let me get some tape, and a few Tylenol.” He disappeared for a few minutes. While he was gone, Mindy kept looking around the room, scanned the books in his bookcases, and checked the polish on her toes. He came back with a warm, damp towel with a wash basin, and washed both feet, then carefully taped her little toe to its partner. “We can take you in to the ER to have it x-rayed tomorrow, but this should do for now.” He then left a second time, and brought back a bowl of cool water. “Here, soak your hand for about five minutes, then I’ll apply some aloe vera gel.

So there they were in Nick’s living room, both thinking about “what’s next?” when there was a loud, dull thud outside, and the whole frame of the house shook. Mindy had just stood up, and in an instant, she was on the floor under Nick. He “hit the deck” as his body learned to react to incoming mortar in Vietnam. So for the second time that evening, Mindy ended up on the floor, this time under Nick. She felt the terrain of his body, and all the dreams, visions, and fantasies that close proximity to an attractive man’s body can configure in the space of a few seconds.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Chapter Two Part 1 Victoria's Father

A week before Victoria arrived, Nick Randall was standing on his deck watching two swans float by in the current. The cold spring had finally given way to warmer weather, the steelhead run was over. The pike and bass were spawning in beds under the lilly pads and yellow flowers sat on top blooming brightly in the morning sun. He was one of the few year-round residents on a stretch of the Crooked River where mostly summer people kept old cottages. The docks and boat houses that lined the river were mostly neglected with missing planks swept away by the fast-moving currents. He was painting his small bungalow what he called, “the color of spring,” a light, pine green. The day was opening humid, a feeling that he had not experienced since the year before. Soon the rent-by-the-day pontoon boats would begin floating by along with occasional bow riders, canoes and kayaks.

Nick was 64, a retired Navy Seal. He liked being near water. He was so close to the water in this place that he could dangle his feet in the water from his deck all day long if he wanted to. He swam in the strong currents each morning before breakfast to stay fit. Early in the year at ice out, he pulled on a wetsuit, and used it again in the late fall, careful to avoid the many duck and deer blinds that dotted the marshes by the river.

Early this morning, a friend had emailed him some specs on the new Navy triple-hulled pirate chaser, the USS Independence, “faster than any ship in the Navy.” He nailed a photograph of the ship to one of the posts supporting the roof over his deck. “Torpedoes, missiles, machine guns, and helicopters at 60 knots,” he mused, “enough to get me out of dry dock.” The truth is, he and his widower neighbor, Chuck, an avuncular automotive retiree, had been “out of dry dock” the night before, all night.

A meth lab had been operating deep in the woods near state land for about two years. The local police were aware of it, but did nothing. “Around here sometimes relations affect law enforcement,” Chuck had said. Chuck, also a Vietnam Veteran, helped Nick plan their project over a few weeks, laying in marsh grass about 500 yards away from the run-down shacks and barn that made up the complex. They noticed several people coming and going, and recorded their observations until they established a clear pattern.

“We can’t kill or injure anyone, either accidentally or on purpose,” Nick stated. We need to get inside on the night we blow it up to make sure no one, not even a dog or cat, is inside.” So on the designated night, the Fourth of July, while Chuck waited in the dark, Nick fast-roped down inside the lab from a hole in the roof. He struck one wooden match, and fifteen minutes later the night sky was lit along with the local fireworks displays. People could see the red glow from their blankets on the beaches of Harbor Springs and Petoskey, and the incineration could be seen on the south end of Beaver Island, over 30 miles away. Locals thought it sounded like a propane explosion, a common occurrence in the area.

Nick’s cell phone went off about when he expected. He was a volunteer fireman, and he scrambled into town just in time to ride out to a scene of his own creation. By six in the morning, he and his fellow firefighters were laying in the grass exhausted. Local people came to see, arriving on foot, in cars, bicycles, and ATV’s. Mrs. Johan brought coffee and donuts.

Just as Nick was finishing his first coat of paint midmorning, Sheriff Lassiter paid Nick a visit. “We can’t prove nothin’, but I think we know what the fuck happened, and if you step even a little out of line ever again...my bet is that Chuck and you took the law into your own hands. We had good reasons for keepin’ a watch on that operation without movin’ in--and you will see from the news, these were not locals...some very bad people come from downstate, and you’re I’m not clippin’ your obituaries out the Petoskey News and Review. Do you hear what I’m sayin?”

Nick nodded, said nothing at first, and then after a long pause replied, “Yep.”

The sheriff jumped in the squad car to head back to Oden, but as he began to head out the long two-track road that led to Nick’s cottage, he said, “We’re having a spaghetti dinner fund-raiser next Thursday night at the town hall. Joe Beckwith needs a new kidney. I expect you and Chuck to be there, and write some big checks.”

And so just like a priest assigning acts of penance to sinners, the sheriff told Nick how Chuck and he could absolve themselves of their transgression through charity. It was as practical as taking rust off the fenders of an old pickup--the rust of sin polished away through an act of love, not exactly perfect contrition, but good enough for local use. Nick had to admit that it was a truly stupid thing to do, and he did feel a bit contrite, but the winters were long in Northern Michigan, and Chuck and he had to have something to talk about during the long hours on hard water in their fishing shanty, pulling yellow perch through the ice. After a black cigar and some nips of Irish Whiskey from their shared flask, this story would just keep getting better with age.

The following Thursday, Chuck and Nick showed up at the benefit supper.

Sheriff Lassiter greeted them at the door, “Well, it’s awfully nice of you guys to stop by. We just ran out of spaghetti, but pizza’s on the way.”