The Writer (5 page)

Since there was never
anything to do in Gendry besides trout fishing, Sophie went to the
party with the twins and Rebecca. Her other option was to sit
around and gossip, or watch the wind move the trees, or see the
birds doing whatever it is that birds do, or try some more writing
of her novel. She might have gone to Sal’s, the only eatery in
town, geared mainly for some random trucker, but that would leave
her with nowhere to go tomorrow. Or the next day. The same people
would be at Sal’s every day, and they never really had any
intention of going anywhere else.

The Maxwell house itself was
small, and son Taylor an only-child. His parents lived in a torrid
relationship and he spent half of his life with them living apart,
yet all still within the Gendry town limits. He was a big boy for
his age and had a slight learning disorder, but he was a kind soul
who went out of his way with his generosity to anyone he met. For
his thirteenth birthday, his first in five years in which both his
parents would be in attendance, all his friends, young and old,
wanted to give him a special birthday to remember.

A tall girl of about
fourteen, her mouth a shocking display of braces, frantically waved
her hands to gain attention. “Quick, you who are still standing,”
she said while fighting to keep her voice hushed, “find somewhere
to hide. Taylor’s on his way here right now. He still suspects
nothing, so keep as quiet as you can, okay? Let’s try to make it a
good one and give him a big fright, like the time when grandpa
Watkins died.”

Then she turned the lights
out and issued a further warning to keep quiet. Sophie had been one
of the last to arrive and she could only guess at how many people
were hiding in the main living area. On one side of the front door
was a dining table. The other was a sofa, two old chairs and small
television. Most people were crouching behind the furniture, and
for one horrible moment it crossed Sophie’s mind that she had
nowhere to go.

“Over here,” came a calming
male voice behind her, and then she felt a warm hand on her arm,
guiding her towards a closet.

“Thanks,” she said. It
surprised her how quickly she got into the fun of the event,
despite not knowing most of them. She felt like she was a young
teenager again. The presence of the mysterious man near her made
her feel a type of nervousness she might have had when she was
twelve.

“He’s coming up the drive
now!” someone else announced.

An eerie quiet filled the
room.

“You’re Sophie, aren’t you?”
the man asked her as they struggled to both fit into the closet,
since there were at least two others in there with them, both
children.

“Do I know you?” she asked,
trying to keep her voice mature. Then she noticed in the dull light
from the street that a child of about six years was standing
between them, looking at them like they did not belong there. He
glared at them and stabbed at his lips with his fingers.

“My name’s Craigfield,” the
man said, his low voice barely audible to her. “I’m staying at your
Grandmother’s place. Pleased to finally meet you. I’ve heard much
about you.”

“Sorry about that. My
grandmother can go on. I hope she didn’t embarrass you.”

“Not at all. It’s nice to
make new friends.”

The six-year-old then told
them to hush with an angry and blunt bark. They did so, both trying
not to laugh at how seriously the child was reacting. Then Sophie
realised that Taylor was not exactly rushing to get to the door and
all their haste was needless.

“What brings you to Gendry?”
she asked him, risking the wrath of the child.

“That’s a little personal,”
he replied, his voice suddenly devoid of any charm.

“Oh, no mind,” she said,
offended that he gave her that kind of reply when she was only
trying to make conversation.

The door opened and it was
Taylor, with his parents purposely lingering back. The braces-girl
flipped on the lights and everyone cheered. Taylor raised his arms
and started jumping around the room, as everyone sang for him.
Sophie made sure she made her way to the other side of the room
from Craigfield, regretting that the conversation turned cold and
she lacked any confidence to try restarting it. She tried to talk
to the other adults there, all four of them, but she always felt
herself glancing around the room for him, not willing to accept
that he had already left.

Max turned off the
television and threw the remote in its general direction, not
really trying to hit it since it was only two years old and he
didn’t want to go out to buy a new one. If he could change the
quality of programming by hitting it then he would have thrown it
earlier and more often. The remote glanced off a glass coffee
table, covered in heavy scratches, and rattled against the wall.
Its two batteries flew out and one bounced under a bookcase. Jill
rushed into the room from the kitchen, worried that the crash was
something serious. She had been trying to rescue what was the
result of a recipe that she found in a woman’s magazine that must
have contained a misprint. It was not a tablespoon of salt, but a
teaspoon. A tablespoon of salt made it very, very nasty. She
thought that washing the meat under a cold tap might help. It
didn’t.

“It’s not working,” he said
without looking at her. “I admit it. It’s just not there. Perhaps
it never was.”

“The television?”

“My novel.”

“Your book? Why, what’s
wrong with it?”

“Ever since you told Paul
and Sarah, it hasn’t felt right. I mean, I liked the first chapter,
when she arrived at Gendry. Now she’s met this new character, it
doesn’t work anymore. Boy meets girl, it’s just so obvious. First
she likes him, then she doesn’t, then she does again, then she
finds there’s something wrong with him. I can’t see where it’s
going other than the obvious, and I don’t want to do the obvious. I
want my book to be unusual, standing out from all the others.
Something to take notice.”

Jill sat on the edge of the
couch and wiped her hands on her apron, thinking how trivial that
sounded compared to what she was doing to the night’s food. “You
don’t think the problem might be your style, not the story? You
never use a lot of description, you know. The reader likes to know
all the gritty details. I know you don’t like doing research, but
for something like this, when you’re dealing with a real town, you
need to know details about the place.”

“I know a lot about Gendry,”
he said as he got up to retrieve the remote. “More than most
people, really.”

“For instance,” she
continued, not really listening to him, “don’t say it was a
tractor. Say it was a D-80 Norganwood, or something like that. The
readers like precise specificity.”

“Precise ...?” Max gave up
trying to repeat it.

“You can’t insult them with
blandness. Not when they can look Gendry up on the internet. You
can’t have more about Gendry on some tourist website than what’s in
your book.”

Kneeling, he found the
battery under the bookcase, blew off the dust, and then put his
hands on his hips as he looked at her. “You just made that name up.
You don’t know anything about tractors. What was it you said, a
Norganwood? Is that even a real make? Is that even a real name? You
just made that up, didn’t you?”

“You said you don’t like the
new character? Just get rid of him, or her. If they’re not working,
replace them with someone else. Can you do that or is it too late?
Will it mess with your story?”

“Yes, it’s a guy. All this
build-up to meeting him and you want me to get rid of
him?”

“What character are we
talking about?”

“Craigfield.” Then he looked
at her.

She was momentarily stunned
and tried to hide it. “Kind of a strange name to choose, isn’t it?
Not something you hear every day, I mean.”

“Why, have you not heard of
that name before?”

Jill gave him an icy stare.
“You know I have. And what you think you’re doing, I don’t like
it.”

“What are you talking
about?” he asked innocently.

“I think you know.” She went
back to the kitchen with a look on her face that told him she would
not be talking to him for a while. She scooped together what she
had been cooking and threw it into the garbage.

Max snapped the batteries
back into remote and turned the television back on. He increased
the volume of some random soap opera he had never seen before and
pretended to be interested in it. Then his thoughts went to his own
TV show. Back when he was a successful newspaper man he had a great
idea for a new show for kids. A cute animated show set in the
jungle, where animals drawn in the Disney style would sing “jungle
jingles” together. He wanted one of the characters, perhaps a panda
bear, to look like Elvis, and he would add an “Uh-huh” into every
song. At the end of each show one of the weaker ones would be
hunted, killed and gorged by the carnivorous ones. It would be
great suspense, Max told everyone, for the kiddies to find out if
one of their favourites were eaten that week. It would give them,
he said, an education not only into the reality of jungle life, but
also real life. He still, to this day, did not know why the show
was rejected.

With the car lights
illuminating the baffling mound on the side of the road, the driver
made his way to it. He stopped every few steps to take search for
another taste of his whiskey. These were no longer sips for fun.
Now he was trying to calm himself. The mound was a body, a man, not
young but also not one of the town’s elderly population. For some
reason it would have saddened the driver more to know that he hit
one of the elderly folk. Face down, the driver could not see
exactly who it was, but by the way he was lying and not making any
movement or sound, he knew that he must be dead.

Sudden panic gave him energy
to look around, up and down the street for other cars, and to the
nearby houses, for any signs that he had been seen. He knew that
just standing there was the worst thing he could do. Either he
called for help and then hid behind his drinking problem to help
him avoid jail time, or he did nothing and escape unseen and hope
to never be caught. Then he realised that if he was going to truly
get away with this crime he either had to leave town or quickly
hide the body. The thought of someone seeing him trying to run away
appalled him, so he was left with no other alternative.

The lifeless body made the
most grotesque sound as it was dragged by the feet away from the
road and into the fringes of a nearby forest. The effort made him
feel dizzy and ill, and he almost threw up. In the move he had set
his bottle on the ground, and now he forgot exactly where it was.
After searching around in the dark, that didn’t accomplish anything
other than make him feel more dizzy, he staggered back to his car
and slowly drove to the spot from where the body had been dragged.
Then he saw his bottle, glowing under the headlights. As he looked
at it from behind the wheel he felt so overwhelmed by sadness that
he started to sob. It took him at least ten minutes to go and
retrieve the bottle. He held it up and waved it high, in the
direction of the body, as he offered a toast, saying how sorry he
was to whoever it was. The next sip was the best of his
life.

Sally Wunder had owned the
only restaurant in town for fourteen years and over that time the
food had remained exactly the same. While there was a good variety
of dishes, nothing had ever been added or removed. Now and then
someone might try to suggest a new cake or main, and maybe one
might have a spin to an old favourite, but never would it stay for
an entire week. Sal was similar to Gendry; anything new had to be
just another version of what they already had or it was not
accepted. It was not that people had a suspicion or fear of
anything new, they just didn’t see it as better than what was
already there.

One old date fruitcake,
however, remained untouched. Originally it was a gift from a rival
eatery, that had since gone out of business, given to honour the
passing of Sal’s father. Although it was never intended to be an
insult, Sal took it as one. It was well known throughout town that
their cakes were their worst product, and Sal almost threw it back
at them. Such displays of violence were not her style, and she
acted like she would be happy to add it to her menu. The cake sat
in the same position with no one daring to order a slice. To
everyone’s amazement, for all those years, it never seemed to
change in colour or shape, and more than a few people wondered if
it would outlive Sal herself.

Sophie was delighted to find
that her favourite desert, a chocolate mousse so strong that it was
almost black, was still on the menu. It wasn’t that she feared it
might have vanished, it was just that she missed eating it, and the
sight of it on the menu was enough to bring back fond memories.
Even the thought of it reminded her of her childhood. To actually
be served a bowlful would bring tears to her eyes. She had searched
through all of the eateries in the city that she could find,
sampling so many chocolate desserts, and it was a wonder she was
not three times her size. Nothing had come close to Sal’s. The
worst one was the one she tried to make herself, after getting
Susan to do her best to guess Sal’s recipe. Sophie did not want to
admit it, but Sal’s mousse may have been her real reason for
wanting to spend her holiday in Gendry.