Dunn’s Road ran into Route 156 at the crossroads at Winston Farms. Hangtown crossed over onto Old Ferry Road, scooting past the proposed site of the new elementary school. Mitch followed. Just before Old Ferry Road ran smack into the Connecticut River, the old man turned in at a private dirt road called Lord’s Cove Lane, sending a flock of wild turkeys scattering. Lord’s Cove bumped its way a half mile or so deep into the woods before it broke into a clearing marked by two twenty-foot-high totem poles made of junked personal computers stacked one atop the other and spray painted Day-Glo orange.
As they passed in between these they were met by a forty-foot-tall grasshopper made of fenders and hubcaps, a Wendell Frye creation that stood guard over several acres of meadow filled with junked cars and buses, stacks of bicycles, airplane propellers, dinged-up aluminum garden furniture, bedsprings, rain gutters-a virtual junkyard, or it would have been if it weren’t also home to dozens of immense, half-completed Wendell Frye mobiles and whirligigs that had been left to rust in the tall weeds along with everything else.
Around a bend they approached a rambling center-chimney colonial that backed right up onto the river, affording it a panoramic view across the marshes all the way to Essex. The house had been added on to numerous times and painted the brightest shade of pink Mitch had ever seen. Or maybe it was just that he’d never seen a historic home that was painted hot pink before. An ancient, tan-colored Land Rover was parked out front, alongside a Toyota pickup and a spanking-new red Porsche 911 Turbo.
A German shepherd started streaking toward Hangtown’s motorcycle from the front porch, barking with unbridled glee. Two women immediately came out of the house, gesturing frantically at Hangtown, who waved and kept right on going, the dog sprinting alongside of him. Mitch followed. The dirt road took them past a row of sagging one-room cottages, past apple and pear orchards, past a fenced meadow with sheep. Past a chicken coop, a pigsty, a vegetable garden.
They finally pulled up alongside a huge old barn, which was also painted hot pink, the shepherd hopping into its master’s sidecar, tail thumping.
“This is an amazing place,” Mitch marveled as he got out of his truck.
“You should see it after the first snow,” Hangtown wheezed, yanking off his helmet and goggles. “You’d swear you’d gone to heaven.”
“You believe in heaven?” Mitch asked him.
“Of course I do, Big Mitch. All children believe in heaven.”
Mitch dropped the tailgate of the truck, the big dog sniffing at the cat scent on his legs. Back at the house, one of the women started determinedly across the meadow toward them.
“Not that any of this is really mine,” Hangtown went on. “My granddad married into it. Plundered himself a local girl with good Teasman bloodlines and no damned sense. Hell, she mm-rr-married an artist.” Wendell Frye was a third-generation Dorset artist. It was his grandfather, an eminent landscape painter, who founded the Dorset Academy. His father, also a fine painter, ran it for many years. “There’s eight hundred acres in all. My dad nearly lost it to the tax man when I was a boy, but it’s still ours. And it’ll stay ours as long as there’s enough fools out there who’ll pay good cash money for my contraptions. The developers would love to get their hands on it. All they see is the dollar signs. Me, I see what granddad saw-the freshwater tidal marsh with osprey and great blues, the eagles nesting in our cliffs. He used to come out here from the city every summer to paint them. That’s what those cottages were for,” Hangtown explained, waving at the little bungalows. “Painters lived in ’em. Nowadays, I’ve got Jim Bolan in residence. You’ll like Big Jim. A part of him died in ’Nam, but he does honest work with his hands. Been helping me with my contraptions since he got out of prison. These old hands aren’t what they used to be.”
The antenna was not heavy, just clumsy. They eased it out of the truck and started toward the barn with it, Mitch wondering just exactly what Jim Bolan had been in prison for.
“Got my two beautiful daughters living here, too,” Hang-town added. “They can do any of the farm chores need doing. I taught ’em to hunt, fish, change a tire, you name it. Moose-not a soul calls her Mary Susan-Moose took to it more than Takai. Does most of the farm chores. Now Moose is the one for you, if you want to plant your seed in some fine, fertile soil. She’ll make you jump through hoops for it. She’s a full-time practicing virgin, but she’s-”
“Hangtown, I’m really not looking to-”
“A big healthy brown-skinned girl, just like her mother was. Loves children. Makes all of her own clothes, pickles, bread. Can slaughter a pig. Hell, she could probably take out your appendix on the kitchen table if she had to.”
“It’s already out,” said Mitch, reflecting on just how different it was in Dorset than in the city. Here, he regularly came in contact with people who could do things. In New York no one knew how to do anything except express their opinions, loudly.
“Mind you, Takai will catch your eye first,” Hangtown pointed out. “Get your blood to boiling.”
“She’s the realtor, right?” Mitch had seen her sign on Dorset Street.
“She’s a serial destroyer of men, is what she is. Nothing but teeth and claws. Stay clear of her, Big Mitch. Her mother was half-Japanese, half Hawaiian, and all she-devil. I married Kiki after Moose’s mother, Gentle Kate, got sick and passed away…” Hangtown’s lined face broke into a sudden scowl behind the beard, his piercing blue eyes very far away. “Then I lost Kiki, too.”
“She died?”
“She left us. Died out in California. Kiki’s death… it was very sudden. I raised the girls myself. It’s just been we three for a long, long time.”
They made their way inside the big barn now and dropped the antenna on the dirt floor next to an old potbellied wooden stove. Mitch gazed around in pure, wide-eyed wonderment. He was actually inside Wendell Frye’s studio, the very place where the master created his works of art. It was like being inside the cluttered workshop of a gifted and mad Santa Claus. There were tin snips, cutting tools, shaping tools and welding torches of every conceivable type on his workbench. There were bins filled with hubcaps and fenders. There were deep-sea-diver’s helmets, boat propellers, copper pipes and elbow joints, bales of wire, rolls of copper flashing. There were mobiles in the shapes of birds and animals and planets hanging from the beams overhead. A ladder led up to a loft where there was even more stuff.
Mitch was enthralled. “How will you use this?” he asked Hangtown, meaning the antenna. “What will it be?”
“I collect things,” the old master replied, shrugging his heavy shoulders. “And I collect ideas. Sometimes the two connect up, sometimes they don’t. I have very little say in the matter. Most people don’t believe me when I tell ’em that. I’m sure you do.”
Mitch nodded dumbly, wondering why Wendell Frye had so much confidence in him. They’d known each other less an hour. Now he heard footsteps approaching.
“Father, where have you been?” a young woman demanded from the doorway.
“Foraging. And now I’m going to show my friend around.”
“Well, you’ll just have to show him around later,” she lectured him, as if he were an unruly child. “You’ll be late for your appointment.”
Hangtown waved her off. “Moose, my dear, say hello to Mitch Berger, an honest writer and one hell of an Abbott and Costello fan. You might consider taking him into your bed. You could do a lot worse.”
Moose was a tall, strongly built woman in her early thirties. She had her father’s piercing blue eyes. A face and hands that were weathered by outdoor work. Ash-blond hair that was gathered up in a bun. Her homemade denim jumper and wool cardigan lent her a dowdy, Swiss-peasant sort of look. She was not homely but she was not exactly pretty either. She had too much chin and way too many worry lines. She seemed like someone who was accustomed to carrying a considerable burden. Possibly Mitch had just met him.