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Big plans
Back home and happy. Depositphotos Valeri Shranko
When she walked back in the kitchen, I could tell by her glow that everything was agreed upon. They mentioned that this was the perfect time for publication, and haste was important.
Everyone in the world was now focused, fixated on this problem, and that meant readership, and sales.
Nancy would drive them into town with my manuscript. Then they'd make their way back on the private plane they flew in on, at a small airstrip some forty miles away, with the pilot on the clock and still waiting. This tidbit answered the time factor I couldn't fathom the day before.
Nancy would handle the paperwork on my behalf. One signature settled that. They still wanted me out of sight and out of trouble. She'd return here soon with more supplies, two fancy computers and a satellite dish and all the accessories imaginable, so we could video conference. Then she'd return to her home and tidy up affairs for a long stay here.
As I was running low on food, and the gas for the generator was near empty, I told them other upgrades were in order. I wanted solar panels, a large array, for permanent power. They said they'd arrange it.
The house and its two hundred acres were now mine, along with the million in the bank. The title to the Wrangler was signed over to Nancy in front of me.
Nancy was happy to handle all the details, even a construction crew. My publisher had just told her of the five percent I insisted she get from this book and now she felt like my full-time partner, while I considered her my wife. He'd deposit two hundred thousand in her bank account for immediate expenses so she could get things started, buy materials and supervise the crew she'd hire. It was just one more ruse of theirs to get her to stay and keep tabs on me, their wayward son, their golden goose.
Each week she would tally up the costs and send them the receipts. Then they'd refill her account to keep the project rolling. She'd never handled such large amounts of money before, or had complete control over a crew of men, and she loved the idea, finally rising in the world from a lowly, overworked nurse, collecting bedpans and diapers, or worse, holding the hand of someone about to die.
It had been a miserable job lately, she told us, a cramped and stinking environment, overused equipment constantly breaking down and dead bodies lifted off beds in front of her every half-hour. Some of them were people she'd known and a few personal friends her age, as it had started to spread to every age group now. Hardest to stomach were the children it infected. It cut into her heart to watch them die.
But she was now in a glow and my agent and publisher too. He was holding the manuscript and looking down at it while she spoke, not listening to her, probably trying to compute the millions it would make him within weeks. And now with a fourth book planned, which I told them I'd begin that day, he considered himself soon to be a tycoon, be rich beyond his wildest dreams. He asked me if he could keep the first page to frame on his office wall, even when Nancy was still talking.
They rose from the breakfast table in a hurry. As I followed her to her room to help her pack a few things she hugged me tight with one long kiss. She was still in love with me she declared, and asked if I was angry at her last, hasty departure. We hadn't had time to talk.
"Of course not", I told her. "And all those scraps on my desk really were most of the book. I just had to finish it on my own. That's the way I write. Without you I would never have finished it. Every kiss you gave me sparked new ideas.
This was in large part the truth, and I knew it would gain me even more love through the fourth volume. Her love motivated me to try harder, to think more deeply, to write more beautifully.
She was delighted with this confession. She left with a glowing smile, saying she'd be back within the week with a convoy of trucks with supplies and everything we needed for our solar array. I use the word 'our' because I was set on marrying her.
She was back in five days, with fifteen men, five trucks, a bulldozer, an excavator, and food supplies to last us two months. They finished the job in that time, sleeping in tents on the land they cleared, working long hours for double pay. Now I had a huge battery bank in the basement, and capacitors that filled a shed, for constant, endless power.
While they were there, as they had all the heavy equipment, we had them clear another fifty acres of land and fence it in, some sections for crops, with an irrigation system of pipes and pumps. They repaired the old barn for livestock, along with several other sheds, one for a tractor and another for grain storage. This took more trips into town with the trucks and another week, but cash was no problem. The book was out and making five times the money he sent us.
One night she mentioned to me that she'd like to own a horse. It was springtime and we could have a field planted with grass to feed it. One of our men had a small tractor and could easily do it. The tractor appeared the next day and the seed. That night she asked if we could buy the tractor. She'd already talked to the young man, and he taught her how easy it was to operate. She always made these queries as we lay in bed, the lights out and her warm arms wrapped around me, naked and face to face. I'd agree and be smothered in kisses. This was her bribery and my reward. I didn't mind as it turned into a nightly routine, and who could resist such affection.
The next night she mentioned a second horse, to keep the other company, and we could go riding together, tour our property each morning. She'd already talked to one of our hands to teach us. She always seemed to prep everything to answer any doubts that might spring up in my head. I'd never ridden before and knew nothing of a horse's needs. But she had that list ready too, saddles, brushes, pitchforks for hay, troughs for water, apples for treats. She was efficient and thorough. My answer was always a reluctant 'sure', trying to fathom the responsibilities it entailed, and the work. I was putty in her arms. She could mold me any way she wished.
Money was never even brought up. She made conference calls on our computer every few days, me standing calmly beside her, nodding in assent to her excited pleas, her body quivering with excitement waiting for the 'yes'. And with a deadpan face my publisher had only one question directed at me, how the book was coming along. I'd step forward and show him the pages of another half-chapter completed, to be emailed right away. The next day another quarter million appeared in her account.
With the solar array complete, the sheds repaired and the fields cleared of rocks and stumps, I was beginning to think of making this place self-sustainable, just in case my imaginary ''wave" did come true. We asked the men to work another week, building stalls and a workstation in the barn, with Nancy ordering every tool imaginable, repair parts for her small tractor, a welding rig and compressor and seeds and everything else we might need. Every night in bed we had passionate sex and talked for hours about the future of our farm.
I'd already hinted at the proposal, giving her a ring of my mother's. But that went sour when she left the month before. Now we were more in love than ever, with our talks and enthusiasm in overseeing all the improvements to the place, in total agreement that it should be a world unto itself, our biodome, our private, completely self-sufficient enclave. She agreed to marry me as soon as I finished the manuscript and we flew to New York, which was already arranged for the book launch.
Just as I was finishing the last chapters of doom and gloom in my fiction, Nancy mentioned farm animals, several cows and chickens and pigs, a goat and finally a large dog to scare away foxes. I agreed that we'd need them for a food supply but also that we had no idea how to take care of them.
I told her we couldn't just 'Google' it. She had a ready answer. One of our workmen grew up on a farm and could stay on and handle those matters. He was the youngest of the crew, only twenty-four and likable. We thought of him as a youngster, both of us being twenty-eight.
The timing worked out perfectly, finishing the grounds, now something like a rural estate, sending the crews home and our sly escape to New York, which only two of our workers knew about, because they stayed on. They had to, to care for the two horses we'd just bought.
I talked to the men occasionally, taking a break from my writing for some fresh air. They knew about my books. Nancy pointed out one day that one of the older men there was a fine carpenter. His name was Bill. After a short talk I took him to my study and asked if he could build me more sets of bookshelves similar to those, covering the empty back part of the living room, making it a library.
He said no problem if he could find such nice wood. After the next trip into town, he returned with not only the wood but a fine, hundred-year-old set of chisels in a leather pouch. He told me these chisels were Pennsylvania Dutch. The wood handles were all beaten but the steel looked brand-new and had a bluish tint, razor sharp. I was amazed at their perfection, being so old. He also told me he dropped one once and lost a sliver of his long toe right through his sneaker and showed me that too. I began to like the fellow and we talked at intervals as I wrote in my den with the door open and he built my shelves just fifteen feet away.
He must have mentioned to his workmates the story I was now working on. They sat around a fireside every night after dinner and drank and chatted. I told him most of the plot. I found that it clarified itself in my own head as I tried to explain it. He knew my whole storyline even before Nancy.
A few days before they were to leave he asked if I might join them at their campfire. They had concerns. Some of them probably thought me the prophet they'd read about in the papers and all my predictions being dead-on so far.
All I could think to say was that I hoped I was wrong, but if not, they should do the same thing we were doing, make some retreat for themselves and fence it in. If the epidemic got worse, they could keep out intruders and stay safe. Most nodded in agreement. Some looked bewildered and admitted they didn't have the means. But I said that if things did get bad, for their family's sake, they should pool their resources, join into clans with their best friends, maybe ten or twenty adults, include someone with a remote property, (not hard to do in Vermont), and build there. Most of these fellows were resourceful, skilled in construction and farming and even hunting. The way they looked at each other in agreement, I could see this was not a problem. Only city folk were in deep peril.
The last thing I ordered was a large arsenal of weapons and ammunition, all kinds, rifles and hand guns and a few automatics, to protect the place. As they carried the labeled boxes to our basement they realized I was serious and that things might go left.
The next morning, they drove off in a convoy of vehicles, thanking me profusely for the large bonus I gave each one of them. My book was finished and I was happy. I was generous to a fault with those first earnings, my agent always said, doling out wads of hundred-dollar bills to each one, like I had to the escorts in the city. But these men earned the money and would put it to better use than drugs, and besides, as my latest book foretold, money would soon be a thing of the past and those bills no more than paper.
Our trip to New York was brief, businesslike, lasting three weeks. Because of the near-lock down our ceremony was limited to twenty, all wearing masks. But the press was outside and we made the headlines once more. The signings and appearances were likewise subdued. I had Nancy at my side and she seemed to glow in the limelight.
She also kept at bay the flocks of former escorts standing in their provocative outfits, sparkling in the wings, hoping my naive lusts and appetites would flow again and spill out in some dark alley for a line or a phone number. I'd never seen her evil glares before or the ploys of opposing females trying to get close enough to me for a whisper.
My agent also kept close; to repair the mistake she made the last time. She accompanied us to the few clubs I took Nancy to, the few still open and half-empty because of the rules. I wanted Nancy to have a taste of some of the nightlife she'd never seen, and I bought her the jewelry and outfits for our dates. She wore them for me, but as she gazed in the mirror of our hotel suite, looking like a princess, even though I praised her stunning glamor, I could tell she felt uncomfortable and out of her element. I reminded her we'd be back home and in jeans in a few weeks. These glitter days would soon be over, not only for us but the whole world, so we might as well enjoy the last sip. I was right again and the world didn’t fathom it, though I gave them so many hints in my book. But I also wondered at my prophesies.
It was like flipping a coin and having it come up 'heads' ten times in a row. It was uncanny.
The ceremonies and spectacles were almost done, the champagne, the fake smiles at introductions, the T.V. interviews, my fingers tired with signatures. In a few days we’d be home again, half-naked in our house the mornings, the curtains shut. She was a nature girl and unabashed about nudity. We reveled in being blissfully alone.
I had no ideas about another book, no care even, as the money was pouring in. But the world was more than ever desperately wanting to know where this pandemic was going and I had one more appearance to make in a large and full auditorium.
I gave a lecture on my mode of writing. That went smoothly. But during the question and answer some people stood up and called me Satanic. But a larger group stood up after they did, angry and equally loud, yelling back that I must have some connection to God for giving them these warnings, that I might be his spokesperson. These were all members of the new 'Church of Hope'.
To quell the tumult I told them I didn't know. The stories just came into my head and it all started with one vivid dream. This only heartened those who were convinced I was a messenger of God. I told them I didn't like depressing endings more than anyone else. My publisher stepped in at this awkward juncture and announced that I was writing one last volume, where the final solution would be revealed.
He forced my hand again by saying the book was already started and would soon be out. Everyone took his words the way he framed them, to mean I would reveal a final cure, the description of the end of it, our beating the pandemic for good. The whole audience now stood up and cheered loudly at this revelation. I was nonplussed by this new task but grabbed the microphone from him and added that I would never have to write another book on this subject again. This put a stop to his shenanigans, but news of the scene went viral.
The stock markets spiked, my book sales too, and everyone breathed a deep sigh of relief. Too bad I was right once again, one last time. This time the coin came up ‘tails’, the virus winning.
I think it’s an altruism that people grasp at every piece of hope, any possible interpretation of a page or a situation that’s best for them, twisting the facts around like pretzels and not seeing the larger, obvious tsunami coming their way, their heads in the sand, right before the inevitable disaster.
I was honestly tired of it and of people thinking of me as some kind of seer. I wanted a fresh story if I was going to continue as a novelist, the only trade I knew, a happier fiction.
There was a novel I'd started and half-finished before I began my pandemic books. But it stalled and I put it in a drawer and out of mind. It was my very first effort in fiction, so it had a sentimental value, and I thought it was coming along well. I revised each sentence and paragraph many times till they pleased me, always looking for the perfect word. It was a story of two lovers, together for a time but then separated by a war and finally reunited again. But I lost interest one day when I realized that it was just my fantasy, my pipe dream, and trivial, of no concern to anyone else. I boxed it up, just a week before I had the real dream.
My uncle of course liked it and wondered how I could park it away after I’d spent so much time on it. But this is how a writer works, I told him. It takes a certain flame, an inspiration to keep going. And if that flame flickers and dies, there’s no use trying to revive it. Just as in love, better to move on and try anew.
But all isn’t lost. It never is because it distills in the mind long after it’s over and becomes an inner experience like a piece of you, a practice in prose and a writer’s history, with a few choice phrases lifted from it for the next book.
The strange thing was, Nancy was almost a mirror image of the heroine of that story, right down to her feistiness and the color of her hair.
Even in this I was prophetic. It was like a curse.
Home again. Stock photo from Pexels.
