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.”