Unfortunately, that’s not so hard to answer: practically straight from that production of Oklahoma! she went to the big city (well, a larger city), where she met Mr. Winkler, her agent, who promised he would protect her, and for a while, he did. She got a job at an auto show, and another at a county fair, and then, what was supposed to be her big break: a film shot on an island — the Island from Hell, she calls it now, and if only she had told them no when they kept refilling her glass of punch. But of course, she hadn’t, so now there is the video—the video — reproduced so many times she can never, ever get it off the web or out of certain stores, like a target on her chest for all those guys who walk up to her at parties and on the street to smirk, “Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?” And needless to say — damn Winkler! — she gets zero in the way of royalties.
A new start, Heather thinks, is what I need, but if she leaves the Burrow, how is she going to afford it?
The sad thing is that she is demonstrably quite pretty, or at least, she used to be.
Spilt milk, Heather, her mother used to say, can never be put back into the glass again. Except with a sponge.
Also, Jeffery thinks, the story of Jack would be perfect for a kid’s cartoon show, maybe with endorsements for dog food and pet supplies, meaning a lot more in terms of the income stream it will generate.
Going.
Junior goes into the closet in his bedroom and pulls out the special case in which he keeps his crossbow. Old Stag Killer, he says out loud, under his breath. My old friend. My only friend.
Going.
Though Raymond has ceased to mention it to Jeffery, that nightmare of him being a duck and dropping down in search of a pond has been returning — three times last week, and so far in this one it’s up to four.
And going even farther.
XV
These days, when the Captain thinks about that incident on the set of Mellow Valley, he wonders if things were as verifiable as they appeared at the time or if they were part of a gigantic plot conceived and carried out by his enemies, members of some vengeful intelligence service from across the world, or possibly even one from his own country. He can think of several candidates who might have created that particular scenario, and the evidence is plentifuclass="underline" sure, there was the business with the women taking showers and all, but someone must have moved the signs to get him lost. It only made sense that no one would admit to it. So that was one clue. And after all, he had made a bundle of enemies during those years of sailing in and out of ports. Because in point of fact, it would have been strange if a representative from one intelligence agency or another had not contacted him to ask if he would lend a hand in tipping the balance of the Cold War this way or that. Well, they had asked, with gifts included, and naturally he had agreed to help them all.
Thus it was during those years the Captain sailed here and there, gathering intelligence like a patient honeybee, selling a little here, a little more there, until one day he stumbled across a piece of information (many important pieces, actually) that numerous people in several different governments would be most unhappy to have revealed. So of course it was necessary to discredit him. And, now that the Captain thinks about it, why had those producers of Mellow Valley contacted him in the first place, out of the blue like that? Sure, he was a celebrity, but there were plenty of other captains who could have done that job for less. Also, come to think of it, once he arrived at the set, his work was fairly minimal — a couple of questions about tying knots, something about a ship’s log — but really his duties seemed only afterthoughts, a sort of cover to keep him busy and not too curious (all this, of course, in hindsight). In other words, the whole scenario leading up to the business with those women in the shower had been a deliberate setup to put him on the sidelines and keep him quiet just in case he ever decided to have a little chat with the reporters for the St. Nils Eagle.
Well, their scheme didn’t work, did it? Or maybe it did, the Captain thinks, because he has kept quiet — until now, anyway, settled down as he is, far from the corridors of power, though still making a living, and a good one, as a celebrity in his own right. No threat, they probably think; their mission has been accomplished. But has it? He still knows plenty of people who would be very interested to hear what he has to say about certain things.
And then the hole suddenly appeared in his front lawn. Was it another warning, just to let him know they know where to find him? That he is vulnerable? Was it a reminder to keep quiet? How naïve do they think he is? First there was the incident in the shower, and now, not only is that being brought up again, but also there is the hole. Is he supposed to think it’s only a coincidence? For that matter, could the hole in his lawn have been used for spying? Wasn’t, come to think of it, a Myrmidon just another name for an inhabitant of Murmansk? Did his subconscious give him the clue he needed on the very first morning the hole appeared and he was too slow to process it? All this time he has assumed he was dealing with the CIA, but what if he is wrong? What if it was the work of the damned Ruskies? And if it was, what is their agenda?
Once the Captain settled on land he’d hoped never to have to use the Walther again, but who was it who said that in order to make a decent omelet first a person has to break a few eggs? The Ruskie, Lenin, that’s who. And right now, depending on who or what is excavating his lawn, it is just possible that an Easter Egg Hunt is around the corner.
He can feel his Death Quotient going straight up, along with his blood pressure.
Episode One, The Burrow, Scene Five
JEFFERY is up late at night, standing alone in a corner of the kitchen.
Jeffery:
What is it with this constant grinding, 24/7, day and night, but particularly at night, when there are no other distractions to keep me from hearing it, forcing me to make it the virtual center of my brain? And, what’s worse, although the noise may only be in my imagination, it seems that, like those annoying television commercials that appear at double the volume in the middle of whatever
PBS
special or wildlife program I might be watching, the noise of drilling — if that’s what it is— actually increases during the night, almost as if, during the daytime, the noise-dampers, or mufflers, whatever things they use to quiet the machinery, are all in use, but at night, when the federal or state or local inspectors — whoever — go back home to cozy evenings around their flat-screen televisions with their families, all hell breaks loose and the giant teeth chew through the earth like so many enormous worms, creating their tunnels to who-knows-where — maybe Hades itself for all I know — louder, louder, louder — so whenever I try to write another scene for the very screenplay that, ironically, is supposed make me rich and free me from the tyranny of the din of such distractions, I can’t think of the actual words I’m supposed to be using. I can’t think about my characters; I can’t think about anything remotely resembling a plot line; all I can think of is that noise, and there’s nothing I can do about it: I stuff my ears with cotton, with wax, with waxed cotton, rubber plugs, lumps of silicone — nothing works — and meanwhile here I am, a nervous wreck, unable to form a single thought that is not centered around the maw of that infernal machinery, not a single idea, not the slightest bit of whimsy or touch of heartbreak that does not include the grinding of those awful teeth, the howl of metal against rock, the crunch of metal pulverizing rock and everything else that stands in its way. Oh Christ, Christ, if it would only end.