“Back by the stream,” Jack said. “Not hunting, but poaching.”
“That’s right,” Debbie said. “The Prescotts had that big plot where they used to trap and they found some of the Libbys out there poaching. They tried to get law enforcement involved—the Prescotts had some family who worked law enforcement…”
“But so did the Libbys,” Jack said, finishing the thought.
“Still do,” Debbie agreed. “So the Prescotts couldn’t get any satisfaction and they took matters into their own hands. That’s when things got ugly and the Libbys began accusing the Prescotts of all kinds of strange things.”
“Like what?” Ricky asked, shifting forward in his chair.
“You name it,” Debbie said. “The Libbys said that the Prescotts were cheating the town out of property tax and embezzling from the Mother’s Club. They said that the Prescotts were abducting people and sacrificing them out in one of their cabins. They tried anything they could to get the Prescotts in trouble so they would be fighting on two fronts.”
“It didn’t work though,” Jack said.
“Well, it did and it didn’t.”
“Because every time they managed to burn the Prescotts, it also blew back on them. For instance, they did manage to get a couple of Prescott women kicked out of the Mother’s Club, but the Libby women were booted at the same time.”
Debbie nodded. “Nobody wanted to take sides, so even if they proved something against the other, the punishment was handed out equally.”
Ricky leaned on the table.
“Do you think they still hold a grudge?” Ricky asked.
“Seems unlikely,” Jack said. “Most of the Libbys dispersed forty years ago.”
“And the rest of the Prescotts fled a few years back. That kind of feud requires motivation and proximity. Without the friction of being close neighbors, there’s not enough heat for anything to combust,” Debbie said.
“Why do you care about that old gossip anyway?” Jack asked.
Ricky deflected the question. “Do you know where the Libbys went?”
For a rare moment, both Debbie and Jack were silent.
“Didn’t they…” Jack started to say.
Debbie finished the thought. “Moved up near Sebec Lake.”
“Started a commune of some sort.”
Ricky nodded. He had been to that commune earlier that day. He didn’t really want to know where—he wanted to know why.
“And then most of them took off for parts unknown. Only one of them stayed behind and said that the others were dead, but there was never any evidence of it. They say he went crazy.”
Ricky nodded again. “Yeah, that was Romeo. Do you know why they went? Was it the feud?”
“Nope,” Debbie said.
Jack shook his head too. “For sure, no. The feud was the reason they were sticking around. They weren’t exactly enjoying it, but to leave meant defeat and neither side wanted to admit defeat. They must have had another reason to move.”
Jack started talking about the Soucy-Dunns, picking up where Debbie had left off on that thread a while ago, but Debbie was looking away, squinting up towards the cabinets like she was trying to remember something. She snapped her fingers and Jack stopped mid-sentence.
“You remember those Orgone weirdos?”
Jack’s eyes lit up. “Yes, you’re right! That’s it. I had forgotten all about that nonsense.”
“What’s that?” Ricky asked. A few seconds later, he almost regretted asking.
# # #
Jack and Debbie started talking at once. They kept bursting out with little details as they remembered them. It had no thread for Ricky to follow. He had to get up halfway out of his chair and wave his hands to get them to settle down and tell what they knew in a sensible way.
“There were these weirdos,” Debbie said. “Before our time—before our parents’ time—that moved to Maine at some point.”
“Forties,” Jack said. “But after the war.”
Debbie agreed and kept going. “They believed in this energy that was supposedly discovered by Wilhelm something-or-other. This energy was supposed to be the stuff that makes things come together and come alive.”
“Science says that everything falls apart over time,” Jack said.
“Entropy?” Ricky asked.
“Yes. But they thought that Orgone was like a life force that brings things together and puts them in order,” Jack said.
“So they built this place up in Rangeley that was supposed to be an observatory of sorts, but it also had a bunch of cabins and a conference center and stuff.”
“Rangeley is pretty far from Sebec Lake,” Ricky said. “Hours away.”
“Yes, but imagine a triangle,” Jack said. “With us at the bottom, Sebec Lake is upper right, and Rangeley is upper left. There was supposed to be a flow of some sort of power that moved throughout the year to the points of that triangle.”
“Four months, four months, four months,” Debbie said while she moved her finger in the air. “I remember someone talking about that and how the Orgone people thought that they had it right and some of the Prescotts were convinced that they had the right answer. Then, some other folks decided that both groups were right and wrong. They proposed that there must be a third point to the triangle. It’s like a Father, Son, and Holy Spirit type thing.”
“Plow, grow, and harvest,” Jack said.
“Exactly,” Debbie said. “Now that I think of it, didn’t the Libbys go along with those people? Isn’t that how they ended up moving up to Sebec Lake?”
“I think you’re right,” Jack said.
“Because of the Orgone energy?” Ricky asked.
“No, not exactly,” Debbie said. “It was because they believed that if there was Orgone energy up in Rangeley, and some other kind of thing down here, then there had to be a third part up near Sebec Lake. They wanted to get up there to stake a claim.”
“Why?” Ricky asked.
Debbie shrugged.
“Why do people do anything? Money? Power?” Jack said.
Ricky sat back in his chair.
“So, they were fighting with the Prescotts who also had some sort of control over the flip side of this Orgone thing.”
“Right,” Debbie said.
“And the Libbys went with some other folks to find the third side of the coin up near Sebec Lake,” Ricky said.
“Exactly,” Jack said.
“And then all but
