L I B R A R Y / B L O G

CHICKEN WINGS

Charles strode into the library with that heavy and forceful step holding a large white take-out box with barbecue sauce running down one of its sides ever so slightly. Standing well over six feet and weighing upwards of 270 lbs, with longish, wild, curly hair that framed his face like like a William Blake drawing, he had a strong, menacing presence, and no one could help but notice him or his curious dripping package.

I was in my usual spot behind the circulation desk waiting for books to pile up on the return counter and chatting with my friend Ms. Gatti who had just returned from a trip to Germany with her little boy who was sick. She was recounting her adventures while I searched behind the desk for the DVDs she had ordered. I was hoping Charles who stood quietly by the returned book cart, was not patiently waiting for me to end my conversation with my friend. The food item he was holding was filling the whole library with a smell like a “Thank God it’s Friday” franchise and I was starting to worry I was going to be mortified if the package would be presented in front of the entire library patronage.

When Ms. Gatti left he saw an opportunity and gleefully opened the box, its juice just barely missing some of the recently returned books: (Chocolat by Joanne Harris, The Power of Now by Eckert Tolle, and In The Company of Cheerful Ladies, by McCall Smith). Inside the white Styrofoam box lay 12 bright, orange, hideous, chicken wing parts, which gleamed under the florescent lights giving them a very surreal quality, especially given the environment. They reminded me of artist Damien Hirst’s pickled cow series. Charles insisted I take 1/2 of the contents and so as not to hurt his feelings I rushed in the back, took out 4 wings, shoved them in the small refrigerator, and came back to my place behind the desk where I noticed more than a few nostrils fluttering trying to figure out where the barbecue was. Charles went off to search the Internet unfazed and left his wings near the card catalogue . Grease and books, an odd combination.

It was the summer of Hallie's thirteenth year, which was 1965, and she padded her calloused bare feet up and down the hot sandy sidewalks of Provincetown, Massachusetts avoiding the cracks, looking for something she wasn’t sure of. Her shoulders and long lean limbs were reddish brown from hours spent in the sun wearing sleeveless blouses and cut offs. She would stop often to turn her whole body and face towards the hot rays that radiated off the bay. Eternally flip-flopped or barefoot and listless was how every summer had been that she could remember. Except this summer felt full of the promise of more independence. Each year her mother and she would meet her mom's friend Leslie in Boston and they ’d all pile into her 60’s sedan and begin what always seemed to Hallie an interminable trip to the tip of Cape Cod. Once there they would stay at Leslie’s parents house on Commercial Street. The house was large, breezy, ramshackle, sandy and usually full of people. You could smell the water from the beach across the street.Like many Summerhouses it had very little insulation so the walls seemed thin. It was also spacious enough to give everyone his or her own airy room. The mood there was rambling, open. The screen door would be constantly slamming through out the day, as did the outside gate, as everyone floated in and out with their private schedules leading secret lives, Hallie included. Leslie and Hallie's mother, Florence, "Flo" for short, had been friends since childhood.  Best friends, finding themselves both divorcees some years since they met, and eager to enjoy the yearly, summer, nightlife of this resort town.  They were looking for something too, but unlike Hallie, thought they knew what it was.  While relishing being invisible, Hallie also felt on the outside of things, as she had so often.  Her mother was young, stylish and charming. She had married Hallie's father, a man her family felt beneath her “class” and it hadn’t worked out. Hallie's dad was a Native American who worked in construction. Flo was an adventurous spirit who rebelled against her strict Anglo father but ultimately shattered her marriage and then was shattered by the divorce. She was now lost. Hallie was what remained of that marriage: one half New England Wasp, one half Cherokee.So there they all were in a big, rambling, sandy house in a Bohemian town where all was casual.  And not too much to Hallie's disappointment, her mother enjoyed and became a casual mother in that environment as well.  She could feel free to wander, smoke pot on the beach, and go snorkeling with strangers. She went for boat rides, became a wharf rat, upset parents of “less wild” girls, hung out behind Italian restaurants, and came in at 2:00 in the morning with out being noticed. Flo and Leslie, pretty and young danced at parties with Norman Mailer, flirted with Robert Motherwell and drank martinis.
  
 The young girl crawled along the many streets, back roads, and dunes that summer. Everyday she met and made new friends.  "Wharf rats" like herself; street people, people playing checkers in the square, dishwashers... There was always a place to belong in that Honky Tonk land of the ephemeral.  A seasonal circus in suspended animation.  A popular band at the time who enjoyed fifteen minutes of fame: “Molty and the Barbarians” (Are you a Girl or are you a?) adopted her.  Molty played the drums but had only one hand, so the other stick had to be wedged in his hook. She was often adopted, people thought she was neglected; an impression she cultivated.  This wasn’t the first summer she had become a "wharf rat", or kissed a diver who insisted she shave her legs if she wanted to be seen with him. The summer before she met a young Portuguese fisherman named “Ringo” who had introduced her to pot.  She knew the only reason she spent time with him was because he looked exactly like the Beatle he was nicknamed after. They would stay up all night smoking on the trash-laden beach next to the long, busy Provincetown wharf.  Hallie's life in general was that of a schizophrenic. She went from a private girls' school in Boston during the school year, to “street girl” in the summer.  Here in Provincetown she was constantly moving like a shark up and down the walkways, beaches, and streets, her skin getting darker and darker, her brown hair blonder, restless and searching. There at home or in school, she ’d always fidget in her constricting shoes and socks chained to a desk for hours waiting to go outside. People were always sitting in the back yard of the Summerhouse drinking cocktails those days; Leslie’s elderly parents would shuffle about.  Sisters and husbands and children were coming and going and coming throughout the summer.  But Hallie's mother and she were in it for the long haul: the whole season of dreams: June through August. The two crossed paths only occasionally. Hallie would stay for dinner at the house, if Leslie’s sister, Marcia, made Portuguese bean soup which required ginger snaps and other delicious things, otherwise she would street crawl and knaw on a loaf of freshly baked Portuguese bread throughout the day, tearing at it and delighting in its squishiness. She would roll the dough inside the chewy crust into balls before popping them in her mouth. Often parched throughout the day, Hallie would drink water from the town's water fountains. All day she walked the hot sidewalks with her sand encrusted calloused feet. Leslie and Nancy made their nightly rounds to the artsy bars and parties.  They were still in their early thirties, enjoying rebelliousness from their former days of being owned, of being wives. It was the 60's: a time for female emancipation and the sexual revolution. Both of them had been brought up in very proper Bostonian households; Hallie's grandparent ’s household being the more Victorian of the two. Florence's parents had been into their 40's when she was born. Leslie's parents who owned the Summerhouse were intellectuals who enjoyed the artistic element of P'town. One afternoon, as Hallie was rushing sneakily out the front door to avoid being asked where she was going (a daily occurrence) a man pulled up on a motorcycle.  He was just outside the front gate about to dismount, and before she could slip through it he said, “So you are Hallie!" Her first thought was, “But you are so old!” but she didn’t say it, because instinctively she knew he was there to see her younger mother and it surely would insult him.  He had a large sandy handlebar moustache, which was artfully waxed she associated with “old”, but he also had a weathered look to his skin. She found out later he’d spent twenty years at sea as a merchant seaman.  The strong sun made the black leather on his jacket glow and look soft and supple. It smelled of the kind of oil used on saddles.   In a kindly way, with a twinkle in his eye, he backed the motorcycle to allow Hallie the freedom to pass by but then chuckled “Miss aloof”. The word “aloof” stopped her. It was as if she was deeply understood and appreciated all at once. A comment designed to win her over.  She was 13 and wanted to be known for her cool aloofness. She decided to like him even if he was old.  “Would you like to go for a ride?’ he asked and soon she was bravely grabbing the back of his jacket to help herself on behind him. Hallie placed her bare legs and flip-flopped feet warily on the foot rests near the hot wheels of a 1960 500cc BSA. The man jumped up and down to start it up and then with a roar they began weaving in and out through P’Town's Commercial Street, bumper-to-bumper traffic. It was Hallie's first motorcycle ride: a gentle ride clearly designed not to scare a beginner but with enough alacrity to keep a young girl interested. She had made another new friend. (to be continued)

NANCY'S MURDER

The phone rang around 3:15 July 16th and startled the young couple out of their sleep. Jeremy begrudgingly rolled out of the left side of the bed and walked across the squeaking farmhouse floor to pick up the receiver. The voice on the other end of the phone apologized for the hour and reason for the call. It was bad news. He identified himself as Detective Bronson and wanted to know if a woman named Emily Stuart lived at this address, if he had the right number. Jeremy indicated yes after which Bronson murmured in a tone designed he used to soften a blow: “I’m sorry to tell you …Emily’s mother has been murdered.”

While these words poured out of the receiver Jeremy kept his eyes on the person half asleep, buried under the covers in the bed across the room. How was he going to tell her that her mother was dead, had been murdered? How do you tell someone news like this?

After a few more sentences with Detective Bronson he hung up the phone. “Emily, wake up…that was a detective…I have some very upsetting news.
Emily stirred, then sat up with sleepy trepidation.

“He said your mother has been…. killed.”
“No…there’s been a mistake” she said incredulously
“Yes, he said it was definitely true, I’m so sorry…they’ve been looking for you since yesterday…it, happened yesterday evening during the storm.”
“No, they must have the wrong person.”
“They said Al killed her.”
“No, she must have been in some kind of accident, she will be OK.”
“Emily…your mother has been killed…I’m very sorry.” He went over to the right side of the bed to try and comfort her but her expression showed she was both inconsolable and in a state of disbelief.
It was 3:30 am and Jeremy knew that neither of them would be getting any more sleep that night.

Emily’s denial was slow to go away. She would not believe for weeks that her beautiful, spirited mother, who everyone for years had thought was her older sister, her funny mother: the once elegant New England debutante, had been brutally bludgeoned to death by her lover of 15 years, very much her junior: an unemployed, alcoholic ex-Vietnam vet. It happened in her cabin in a New York valley near the Catskills. Her mother’s long, refined body and head had been pummeled 25 times, or was it 50 times, was it 100? She had been brutally murdered. Could Emily grasp this?  Her mother’s life had been pounded and pounded out of her. Her mother’s troubled youth, her brilliant mind, her failed marriage, her aspirations as a writer, all her insecurities, and her future had come to an end. Beaten to death at age 60.

The images Emily imagined were almost too much for her to bear. Images of blood and violence kept haunting her. The crime scene, the living room couch she had recently sat on and sipped tea while having a pleasant visit with her mother: covered with blood where her mother had fallen after the blows…Jeremy and his friends had kindly and bravely gone over to the cabin and removed all the blood spattered furniture to spare her the grim scene. She felt humiliation for her mother who had been so modest, at the tearing and cutting of her body by strangers during the mandatory autopsy. Even though her mother’s body was lifeless during it the brutality of it plagued her: all those years of grooming and vanity and to end up a dissected object. It was a too cruel a final act, adding insult to the injury and pain that only made Emily feel angrier and more helpless.

Jeremy’s family rallied around her. They were kind. Unfortunately the trial was postponed for almost a year. The murderer boyfriend was shackled, incarcerated and waited for the trial as well. He had admitted to the crime. He had even called the police while at the scene and waited for them to come take him and Nancy’s body away but he had waited a long time before he called and he did not attempt to call the paramedics who could have possibly saved Nancy’s life.  He had a depraved indifference to human life, her life.

The 10 month wait for the trial took for ever as it postponed the ordeal to get through, to put behind one self; to move on from, a tragedy because it would mean reliving the crime scenario in detail again and again and in public, followed closely by the local papers. During this time Emily remained in a fragile emotional and psychological state of suspended animation. She was required to write a victim’s impact statement in which she described the character of the accused as unstable and capable of killing again. That he had accosted her in a drunken rage; that he had stalked one of her friends, but in the end Al only got 7-27 years and ultimately was out after 15 years for good behavior, equivalent to someone accused of smoking pot in some states. During the trial Al’s attorney (Public Defender) had tried to insinuate that Emily had been a negligent daughter. She had taken the stand in a dark blue suit she had purchased for the occasion and was surprised that she was coached by the prosecutor beforehand on what questions might be asked and what responses would be appropriate. It really was all theater and perception in relation to trial and jury she thought. Somewhere the truth was in there. In the end the jury did not grasp the concept of the prosecutor’s attempt to accuse Al of “Depraved indifference to human life” which carries a harsher sentence than the lesser Manslaughter offense that he ultimately got.

GALLOPING

 Louis's father had been absent most of his life but when he was 21 he went to find him. His father, Ralph, was living in North Carolina in the town of Southern Pines, which in 1973 was the equine equivalent to the ski resort of Aspen Colorado.  He was working as the head trainer of young racehorses on a sprawling unkempt farm called Elenora Sweet Escott’s Training Center. He was not happy to see Louis after so long, 11 years, because he saw how much of his life had passed by and how little he had contributed to the young man's formation. This was evident because immediately upon his son's arrival at the farm, Ralph started to regularly drink shots of vodka starting at 10 in the morning.

 Elenora Sweet Escott was a tall, wiry British lady in her mid-sixties who lived on the farm in a long trailer with her dog Treadwell, a black and white spotted hound of some sort who also had very long legs much like his owner. She would make him rice and vegetables instead of feeding him regular dog food. Elenora, who carried herself like a diplomat, was famous for inventing a magic potion that cured race horses of what is known as a “bowed tendon”: an incapacitating leg injury that requires a lot of TLC and rest, often incurable.  Successful racehorses can make their owners lots of money so Elenora was very busy drenching the bowed tendons of those expensive horses hoping to both cement her reputation as a good witch, make lots of money and send them happily back to the track. There were many baby racehorses at the center as well: 1 and 2 year olds who were there to be trained by Ralph. (to be continued )

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