Dead Down East

Prologue

Apologies
and
compliments
are
two remarkably effective devices for disarming adversaries in life
and hecklers in bars. If you consider the socially adept people you
know, you’ll see that they use these two conversational tools
frequently and with ease. I remember the first time it fully dawned
on me how valuable they could be.

Angele and I had been dating for a couple of
weeks. Our next planned event was scheduled for Saturday night. So
I was a bit surprised when she arrived unexpectedly at my place on
Tuesday evening. I guess she decided that there was something that
couldn’t wait until the weekend. The moment she walked through the
front door, I began to suspect what that “something” was. She had a
gleam in her eyes that seared me from the inside of my nimble
imagination right down to my insteps. I surmised that she was
either ovulating, or she had a sudden urge for a tour of the Thorpe
habitat. I began to mentally review the floor plan of the house.
“Now, where
is
my bedroom?” I thought. “I know it was here
this morning.”

Angele relieved me of that particular anxiety
by leading me right to it. She emits some kind of bedroom-seeking
sonar through her vocal chords. The sound is extraordinary. I’ll
try to describe it.

For starters, it resembles a deep hum.
Angele’s voice is naturally low and earthy. If she were a singer,
she’d be a contralto. But this hum is very low-pitched, even below
her normal register. I guess you could call it a sustained breathy
murmur. Around here, it came to be known as the “Fugue for Two
Bassoons in B Flat Minor,” or simply “
The Fugue
.” Whatever
The Fugue
is, it’s capable of finding the path of least
resistance to the bedroom, and it also makes standard foreplay
obsolete.
The Fugue
serves as a perfect bridge from what we
call “everyday life” to what I call the “Island of the Floating
Spirits,” which is my own personal euphemism for the afterglow when
that rush of endorphins makes its way into the cerebral-spinal
fluid.

On that particular Tuesday evening, with a
mutual anticipation of the “Island of the Floating Spirits,”
The
Fugue
got us down the hallway, through the bedroom door, and
onto my king sized bed. That’s when Angele spotted a lacy bra lying
about ten feet from the foot of the bed. It was wedged along the
side of the dresser, propped up against the baseboard.

“What is that?” she growled.
The Fugue
had suddenly stopped playing. In its place was her three-word
question in a totally different register.

Instantly, I tried to recall the two devices that
disarm adversaries and extract us from dicey social situations:
apologies
and
compliments
.

Unfortunately, I was a little rattled and
couldn’t think of either one, so I opted for the more standard male
approach:
lying
.

“That must be my sister’s bra,” I suggested weakly.
“She dropped in from Boston yesterday on her way to Québec. She
spent the night, and I let her use my bedroom. She can be forgetful
at times, and she’s not very tidy. She left before dawn this
morning. I guess she didn’t see it in the dark on her way out.”

“Do you think I’m some kind of daft,
Franco-Grecian bimbo?” Angele asked.

I couldn’t get a full reading on what lurked
beneath the surface of that rhetorical question, but I did catch
the drift.

“From what you’ve told me about yourself so
far,” she continued, “I suspect you are an only child, and judging
from your current performance, I’d say you’re not very accomplished
at thinking on your feet…or, in this case, ruminating on top of
your bed with half your clothes scattered on the floor behind
you.”

She certainly has a way with the English
language.

I was scrambling to apply the pair of devices
known to be effective for resolving social conflict. I also wished
I had used them before inventing a sibling. Granted, I was not yet
adept with these social skills, but I should have tried harder. My
options were limited at this stage anyway, so I decided to give
them both a whirl. I began with an
apology
.

“Angele, I’m really very sorry. You’re
totally right. I just suddenly went brain dead. I
am
an only
child. What was I thinking?”

Before she had a chance to answer
my
rhetorical question, I climbed back on the horse and answered it
myself with part two of the social-mending equation, a
compliment
.

“What I was thinking was, ‘You are so
beautiful!’ And that’s really all I was thinking. It’s no wonder I
made up that story of having a sister. Actually, my best guess is
that Jenny Boudreau intentionally left that bra there a couple
weeks ago when I asked her to leave. That’s when we broke up. She
might have figured that the bra would act like a juju or a talisman
to win me back, or maybe to keep other women from entering my life,
or at least my bedroom. She has a jealous streak, and I think she’s
into some kind of voodoo, which is why I ended our relationship. I
met you for the first time a couple of days after she vacated the
premises, apparently minus one brassier.”

“And one other thing,” I added, “I have no
idea how I failed to see it lying over there for the past two
weeks, but I can’t afford a maid, and I’ve been really busy.”

Unfortunately, I was starting to sound like
Woody Allen in
Manhattan
, trying to keep Mariel Hemingway
from going to London.

Angele looked at me for a few moments and
then burst out laughing. Uncontrollably. I had to agree with her; I
must have sounded like a buffoon. I managed a self-effacing smile,
which slipped in rather nicely between her remarks. Finally she
said, “Jesse Thorpe, you may have some faults—and a few of them
come to mind at this point—but you do have two things going for
you.”

“Thank God for that,” I said to myself.

“First, you
are
persistent. You’re
willing to fight for what you want, against long odds, even if that
means creating an imaginary sibling in the heat of passion. And
second, you are charming. In fact, you’ve charmed the shirt right
off my back.”

And with that she pulled her sweatshirt up
and over her head, and tossed it across the room, magically landing
right on top of, and completely covering, the offending
undergarment by the baseboard.

I made a quick mental note to dispose of that
bra as soon as it came up for air. I also noted that Angele,
herself, wasn’t wearing one. I wondered if this was her standard
attire—but not for long.
The Fugue
was back on the playlist!
I became so mesmerized by it that I could barely decide what to do
next. Winging it without a safety net, I surrendered to uncertainty
and let one thing lead to another.

• • •

Apologies and compliments are more than just handy
social skills; they can pivot your fate decisively. Before lunch,
Cynthia Dumais and I would be employing both of them to the
hilt—not once, but twice—in a half-controlled, half-desperate,
attempt to elude FBI scrutiny. It’s all the more curious because
the day began so peacefully…without the slightest whiff of chaos or
danger.

alive in sleepy waters.

upon the surface

hoping to lure that dream

into the light of day.

The sun had not yet risen, and a dense mist engulfed
us on the lake. There was just enough light for me to read each
line of the verse, a few words at a time. At first, I read it
quietly to myself. “That’s charming,” I thought, “although it is an
unusual place to find a poem.”

I broke the pre-dawn silence by reading the
poem again while standing in the bow of the boat. I spoke just loud
enough so Michael could hear me from the stern. I thought my soft
rendition sounded appropriately theatrical. When I finished, I
paused for dramatic effect.

“Huh?” I said, “A beautiful poem like that on
a tackle box? Go figure! Are you a professor of English literature,
or what?”

“Ah guess prob’ly,” came the minimalist,
tongue in cheek reply.

I love Michael. He can sound like a local
when he wants—and unquestionably he is a local—but his everyday
voice is warmhearted, understated and enriched with experience. He
is, without question, an authentic human being, witty, totally
comfortable in his skin, and never in a hurry to make a point.

Michael Wyeth has been a professor of English
Literature, tenured at Colby College in Waterville, Maine for
thirty years. He’s a tall, distinguished looking man in his mid
sixties, with short silver hair and a clear, almost bronze
complexion. His blue eyes are steady and engaging.

“Where did you find a tackle box with a poem printed
on the top?” I asked.

“It was a gift from Kathleen on the occasion
of our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. Do you like it,
Jesse?”

“Definitely. But since when did Plano start
engraving poetry on their fishing equipment?” I asked. “Do they
employ poets now to appeal to the ecological niche of stylish,
sophisticated fly fishermen?”

“Actually,” Michael offered with a slight
hesitation, “I wrote that verse more than thirty-five years ago,
when Kathleen was a student of mine. On the day she graduated from
Colby, I signed a copy of my novel,
Silent Trees
, and had it
ready to give to her as a parting gift. As a prelude to the
ceremony, the graduates paraded by the lineup of professors on
their way to their seats. When Kathleen filed past me, I called her
aside and handed her the book, saying, ‘Here’s something you can
read if the commencement speech gets a little boring.’

“I was already enamored with her…smitten
really…but as her professor I had been coy about my feelings. I
guess I let the cat out of the bag with the poem, which,
incidentally, I wrote just for her. I penned it on a blank page at
the end of the book. The rest of the poem reads:

Friends are more conscious.

We are the angels of the earth and the
air,

learning through our struggle

to live together in the vast expanse.

Love opens the heart

and unfurls our wings.

Mysteriously we take to flight.

Michael went quiet for a minute or two…enough
time for me to absorb the full history and impact of the poem. He
cast his fly and let it sit gently on the water, perhaps hoping to
lure that recurring dream into the light of day. Then, as if to
dissolve the last trace of guilt he still might feel for romancing
one of his students, he said, “Honestly, when I wrote that, I was
hoping Kathleen wouldn’t discover it until she had finished reading
my novel. That’s the reason I put it on the last page. By then,
she’d be gone, living her life in Boston or beyond. Not far from
Maine, perhaps, but far enough from me that she wouldn’t be
pressured, even though the thought of her moving away made my heart
ache. But, if a courtship was going to happen, it would have to
come later, after the somber, professor-student relationship had
passed away.”

“Apparently, the poem worked its magic,” I
suggested.

“
That, it did
!” he intoned slowly,
without hiding his satisfaction. A smile beamed across his face as
he continued, “It was ten o’clock at night, barely three weeks
after graduation, when totally unannounced, she came knocking at
the front door of my home. To this day, that moment plays out for
me in slow motion. She’s standing on my porch, obviously nervous,
yet bold and determined at the same time. I am taken completely by
surprise. Her interest and affection for me is unmistakable, and
yet the first thing out of my mouth is, ‘I thought you were in
Boston.’