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.”
“Okay, sure,” Mitch said, smiling at him. “As in a Hang-town Fry-bacon, eggs and oysters, am I right?”
“So you know your eats, too,” he said approvingly.
“You don’t get a shape like mine by nibbling on rice cakes and parsley.”
“I sure do love that movie.” The old geezer was still talking about Abbott and Costello. “Love dungeons and secret passageways of all kinds.”
“If that’s the case, then you ought to check out an old Charlie Chan picture called Castle in the Desert.”
“Is that the one where Douglass Dumbrille wears that mask over one side of his face to cover his scars?”
Mitch raised his eyebrows, impressed. It wasn’t often that the name Douglass Dumbrille came up in conversation anymore. Not even in the critic’s section on the flight back from Sundance.
Hangtown flicked his cigarette away and went back to pawing through the trash bin. “You mm-rr-might enjoy my house. It’s rigged with all sorts of secret passageways and chambers. They used to hide slaves there back in the days of the Underground Railroad. Emma Teasman owned it then.”
“The poet?”
“That’s the one. My great-grandmother. Mind you, I’ve made a number of modifications and I’ve put in… Aha!!!” he exclaimed suddenly. He’d found himself a bent-up old rooftop television aerial. It must have been eight feet high when it was intact. It was still plenty large. “A monument if ever I saw one!” he proclaimed, hoisting the ruined aerial up in Mitch’s general direction.
“A monument to what?” Mitch grabbed it by the other end and yanked it up onto the ground.
“To when the one-eyed monster was king,” Hangtown replied, starting his way slowly up the ladder out of the Dumpster. “It’s not anymore. That damned Internet’s the big boss now. Point and click. Point and click. Now the nincompoops are buying crap they don’t need without even getting up off the sofa. Hate those damned computers. Only good thing about ’em is they killed television-except for Celebrity Deathmatch on MTV, of course. Ever watch it?”
“You bet. Martha Stewart removed Sandra Bernhardt’s inner organs with an ice cream scoop last time I saw it.”
“So you have cable at your house?” the old man inquired slyly.
“Why, yes. Don’t you?”
“Nope. Still aren’t wired out by us.” Hangtown reached the top of the ladder and climbed out, wheezing. He was a big, lumbering old man, at least six feet three, and he had a lot of trouble moving. “I’d love to get me a satellite dish. But then I’d never do a thing except sit and watch old movies all day. Hey, what are you looking for down here anyway, Big Mitch?”
