The Writer

by RB Banfield

  It had taken three days for Jill to accept that Max had named one of his character’s Craigfield. She first assumed that he was named after her new friend as some sort of dig at her, but now she realised that she had overreacted. Her quiet apology was accepted by Max and she hoped nothing more would be said about it. As far as she could tell, the Craigfield in Max’s story was nothing like the Craigfield she knew, and she hoped that Max would either change the name or drop the character from his story. She started reading his first draft to look for a way to convince him of doing that.

  From what she read, she could see potential in the story but it would need work, and probably only had a limited audience. It started out as a predictable piece of ‘chick-lit’, and yet had unwelcome dark shades. The shaky attempts at duplicating Gendry’s local quirky humour were also a concern, as was the way he depicted the children; at times too childish and at other times too smart. She gave thought to the problems, trying to figure out who the target audience could possibly be who would want to read it, before deciding to confront Max over it.

  “What’s going on with the girl?” she asked him without much of a warning. “I thought she falls for Craigfield?”

  Max was sitting in his writing room with his feet up on a stack of boxes that might or might not be full of old and discarded drafts. He did not know exactly what they were, since it had been a few months since he was brave enough to look. Such drafts were never a good read. Sometimes he would use them as a distraction for whenever he felt stuck and wanted to dream that he could turn one into a motion picture full of amazing visual effects. Such dreams usually continued to trying to cast his stories with the latest movie stars, which would make him feel bad because he could never find anyone who was exactly right for any of his characters.

  He looked up from a music magazine that happened to be covering the recent decline worldwide of Elvis impersonators. It was just a short article, a side piece, but it was the reason it had caught his eye in the bookshop. The other articles looked interesting too, and he was contemplating looking for their online site and maybe subscribing.

  “And what’s with all that other stuff in there, that murder stuff?” she continued, becoming too emotional for something so trivial. “Isn’t it meant to be a love story? I’m not getting it, Max. I’m not getting it at all. We need to talk about it.”

  “That’s the story, yes,” he replied calmly, wondering why she was going off at him. “I’m just taking me time with it. I don’t have to rush it. Other things need to happen, or you haven’t got much of a story to tell. You can’t tell the whole story in the first part of the book. That’s what the rest of it is for.”

  “Your love story looks like every other story I’ve ever read.”

  “It’s only just begun. I have to set scenes and introduce characters. You can’t rush these things.”

  “But a love story? Can’t you write something different? Something original? What you’ve done with the twins is also a concern, but obviously they’re not the main characters. I really doubt kids would act like that; certainly not backward ones somewhere like Gendry. And I really don’t know why you’ve made the main character a girl. You don’t seriously think you can think like her, do you? And okay, you’ve added this thing about a dead body, or whatever. Okay, so this girl’s met this guy, but she doesn’t know anything about him except he’s writing some book and she can’t stand him. What if he’s a fugitive? That would be good. Someone on the run from debt collectors, maybe? Or from the murder? Perhaps he should have been killed but it was mistaken identity? Or what about making him the murderer? He’s on the run, and this poor girl gets dragged along by him. Then the twins can follow him and stop him. Perhaps you should make the twins older, so they can fight him? How old should they be to be able to realistically handle a gun? How old are they meant to be, anyway? I don’t remember reading that anywhere.”

  “Handle a gun? Sounds to me, you’d rather be writing it.”

  “And what’s with having no chapters? Some kind of modern thing, is it? I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

  “It’s my book and I’ll write it how I want to, if you don’t mind.” Now he was feeling insulted. “Or did you want to do it for me?”

  Jill went to leave the room, insulted that he was not paying attention to her ideas. She had expected him to take notes, not just look at her like she was interrupting his magazine.

  “Why would I waste my time doing that?” she asked tersely. “Oh, and by the way, the real Craigfield is a nice guy. I’m sure I must have mentioned him to you. How else would you have stolen his name?” She continued talking as she went into the next room. “You must have, since you can’t think of anything original yourself.”

  Max tossed his magazine to the floor and followed her. He stepped too hard on his bad foot and pain shot through his leg, causing him to take a second to lean against the doorway. He didn’t see that Jill was looking at him not with pity, but with disgust.

  “What do you mean, the real Craigfield?” he asked her. “Who’s that?”

  “Are you serious? I’ve told you about Craigfield. I know you know who he is. I just hope he never finds out you’re using his name like this.”

  “Remind me.”

  “Remind you about Craigfield? My gym instructor? Don’t I talk about him every time I come back from the gym? Or do I talk about him without using his name? Then let’s clear it up right now. Max: I’ll have you know, I have a gym instructor. He’s cute, he’s dreamy, he’s buffed, he’s a great teacher, and his name is Craigfield. I’m allowed to have a schoolgirl crush on him if I want to. Why don’t you put that in your story too? Especially the bit about him being buffed.”

  Max was speechless as he eyed his wife. She ignored him as she checked through her purse in the way she always did before going out. The old house-jeans and casual blouse would have to do, since there was no time to try on one of the nice new tops that she had in her closet. Max was too angry with her to want to question where she was going. He enjoyed the sound of the door closing since it meant that she was no longer in the house.

  Sophie found her grandmother in the kitchen. She was busy working on the guest menu for the next month and it was work that needed her full attention and everyone except Sophie knew not to talk to her. The menu itself would seldom change, which was more for Simona’s benefit than any guests that they might have with them, but it still needed to be approved.

  “I have met your guest,” said Sophie.

  Susan looked up and instead of giving an annoyed sigh, which would have been her response under normal circumstances, she smiled, expecting to hear happy details.

  “He was at Sal’s,” Sophie continued, beginning to worry that Susan might not agree with her opinion, “when I happened to be there too, so we said hi.”

  “More than that,” Susan said with a twinkle in her eye. “You two went on a romantic walk. That’s what I heard, anyway, and I see you’re not denying it. No one is safe from eyes in this town.”

  “So, I shouldn’t bother to ask who told you that? Well, I guess it was a nice walk, I’ll admit that much. What he said, he wasn’t so easy on the ears as he was the eye. You never know until you get around to talking to someone, see they’re not on the same playing field as you.”

  “Easy on the eyes, he certainly is. How I wish I was your age, my girl. I wouldn’t be wasting any time just talking with him, like you were.”

  “Grandmother! I was just getting to know him. After all, he is living in this house too. I need to do my bit for the family, make him feel welcome and all. That and his writing, we had some things to talk about. And I’m not saying I won’t talk to him again, if that chance came along. He had just better impress me next time, if we did get to talking.” Sophie realised she was letting Susan’s opinion get the better of her, and she wondered if she had been too harsh with him.

  “Good for you,” said Susan. “Pity, then, about his wife.”

  “His wha
t?”

  “His wife, dear. He’s married. Not seen her here. Don’t think she likes the country life. Prefers the city, apparently.”

  “His wife?”

  “Didn’t he tell you about her? Perhaps he didn’t have the chance.”

  “No, he didn’t tell me about her. In fact, he gave me no reason to think he was married. In fact, he said he didn’t think much of married life. He’s married?”

  “Sounds like you should watch that one,” Susan said with a wise smirk. “Might be a player. I met plenty of them when I was your age.”

  “I’ll be watching him all right, so he doesn’t get too close again.”

  “Perhaps the reason he’s by himself is because he’s not with his wife at the moment. He seems to be about the right age to be starting his second go-round.”

  “That’s an awful thing to say. You don’t know anything about him, do you?”

  “I can see a glint in his eyes. I know men well enough.”

  Sophie was about to point out that since she had been alone for a while and since she wasn’t in the same age group, that she wouldn’t really know what a man like Craigfield was like. She also stopped herself saying that it was better to be single at her age rather than at Susan’s age.

  “I saw the twins outside,” said Sophie, wanting to change the subject before saying something she might regret. “They were excited about something they’d found in the woods. They were real secretive about it. Did you hear what it was?”

  “Some kind of dead body, I think they said,” Susan said like it wasn’t important.

  “Kind of a shock, isn’t it,” Sophie said after she let it sink in. Gendry wouldn’t get too many victims of crime lying around in the streets?”

  “People do die, dear. It does happen. We may not be as spectacular as the way you do it in the big city, but we have been known to keep up. A lot of the older people I’ve always known in town are no longer with us. One or two who recently passed, I remember being old when I was a girl, so they were old a very long time. Come to think of it, they’ve been gone a good ten years now. Shows you how time can fly like the birds.”

  “But we’re actually talking about a dead person they found? Someone found in the woods? Do you know who it is? You’d probably know them.”

  “Haven’t a clue who it is. It’s all hush-hush. I’m sure Andy will have it sorted for us soon. I think they have some city investigator in town to look around. At least, that’s what the boys said Andy told them they were doing. In all likelihood, it was one of our elderly folk out walking one nice sunny morning, when Father Time caught up with him and dropped him dead on the spot. If you ask me, that is not such a bad way to leave this world, with the birds and the trees. Literally going back to nature, I suppose.”

  “You think that’s a good thing, to die alone like that?’

  “There’s worse ways to go, dear.”

  “I don’t know why you’re acting all calm about this. The twins seemed to think someone else was involved. They think it was a murder, and a violent one too.”

  “They’re just boys being boys, and boys with particularly rampant minds. Let’s just wait to see what Andy and this city person has to say. They need to wait, apparently, for the family to be notified, before us public find out. I’m just pleased all my family is present and accounted for, so I don’t need to worry about that. Same with all my friends; I made sure I checked in on them when I heard. Whoever it is, he must have been a loner.”

  Sophie looked at her grandmother and almost completed her thought, in that the deceased person was probably not married. She then feared that Susan might put the two thoughts together, and Sophie might again have to hear the assurance that dying in alone the woods was actually a good way to go. Sophie also realised why Susan was talking up Craigfield and people dying in the woods. She wanted her to find a partner before she became old and unattractive, otherwise she too might one day be found in the woods by two boys eager to run around town bragging about it.

  Dale Gant swore with a short and violent shout when he found that his coffee was both cold and terrible to taste. He opened his car door to throw the cup out before the car came to a stop. The top came loose and it made more of a mess on the road than he was expecting. A group of people were watching him and he eyed them back, daring them to make a complaint about his littering. They all looked away as he stepped out of the car and straightened his clothes, and he kept watching them until he was sure they were not about to confront him.

  Seeing how many people were gathered around the crime scene made him swear again. It was so loud and so viscous that that rest of the crowd looked at him and then away to avoid his gaze. He stomped his way through the long weeds and yelled out, demanding that Andy Handisides show himself. The town sheriff responded with a shout of his own, but his was polite and optimistic. To Dale’s disgust Andy then walked over to him by passing right next to the body. Dale demanded he know why there was no tent set up around the body and the immediate area cordoned off. When he heard that Gendry didn’t have a tent big enough he swore again. Quite a few of the onlookers decided that they had seen enough for today and began to move on.

  Dale had met Handisides twice before, so he knew what to expect. It wasn’t his large girth that was his most memorable feature, but his smile. His large teeth could be off-putting to the most hardened criminal. Dale had seen a lot of bad things, and bad people doing those bad things, but nothing could compare with being confronted by someone who appeared happy and yet also appeared threatening at the same time. His teeth were not grotesque, or broken, or contained gaps. They were just too big. His large smile made them appear even larger, not helped by his perpetually languid attitude. Such an attitude was exactly why Dale hated visiting Gendry. That and the fact that the local insect community loved to visit his skin. He expected to resolve the crime as quickly as he could, so he could go home and nurse his bites and enjoy telling his friends how dumb these Gendry people still were.

  At least Dale was happy to see that the body had been covered. Missy, the sheriff’s assistant, further helped him by saying that she had taken a lot of pictures, from every angle she could. Dale told Handisides to question every single one of the onlookers who remained, and to start with those who were looking to leave. He also needed to find a rope to keep them away from the body. When Andy mentioned that he suspected that the body had been moved from the road and hidden there in the undergrowth, Dale asked how he could have sustained such fatal wounds otherwise.

  “Or did he run real fast into a couple of these trees?” Dale asked him.

  “They’re not the most dangerous trees I’ve ever seen,” said Andy, hoping for a smile from the police detective.

  Dale reacted like he had said nothing. “You know how much I enjoy coming all the way up here for this sort of treatment? There’s too many bugs in this place. I hate bugs, you know that? Make me swell up all funny when they bite me. And they always bite me. Why don’t they bite any of you? Or are they just sick of the way you taste? Two kids found him, that right?”

  “Yes, sir. Kerry and Jerry Tyle.”

  “You pay close attention to this, okay? I need to know how close they got to the body, and if they moved anything, or took anything. You find them and you get them to see me.”

  “We’ve already questioned them.”

  “You’ve already done a lot of things. Like let half the town trample all over my crime scene. Just get those kids for me.”

  “They didn’t mean any harm, Dale.”

  Dale sighed like he was going to swear again. Instead he looked up to the road and the group of people who were still foolish enough to be hanging around after hearing what kind of a mood he was in. “And somebody up there get me some decent coffee!” he shouted at them.

  They all flinched at the same time, but even that was not enough to get them to budge. Gendry never had a murder before and they were not about to miss any of it.

  Andy Handisides didn’t car
e that he was twenty minutes late to a meeting that he himself had arranged. He pulled his car up close to the steps of Sal’s and took his time getting out. His vast stomach was becoming increasingly larger with each passing year, and he had no concern over it, or that it made it difficult to reach for low doorknobs that were common in Gendry. He liked Sal’s place very much anyway, and the easy-to-push doors didn’t hurt. He was pleased to see that it was packed with most of townsfolk, including that nice young woman Sophie, down from the city and staying with that nice Susan Tyle. Any further interest he might have had in thinking about her vanished when he noticed that Sal had provided a big helping of carrot cake for him to devour.

  Dale Gant slowly walked up to him, looking disinterested in everything around him. Andy had no say in letting this expert from the big city assist with the homicide investigation. If he was asked then he would have declined, which was probably why he was never consulted. Both men viewed each other as an annoyance, and they seldom said anything that did not involve the case. Dale liked to dress well, exercise a lot, eat healthy and loudly curse anything he didn’t like, which was a long way from both Andy and the town he lived in. He also had an unhealthy appetite for coffee and Andy knew that if he kept him supplied then he had a much nicer work associate to deal with.

  When the twins Kerry and Jerry saw that Handisides had arrived they made their way over to Sophie, eager to tell her the news they had been keeping to themselves.

  “It’s official now,” said Kerry or Jerry.

  “We can break our silence,” said Jerry or Kerry.

  “It’s the postman!”

  “The postman?” Sophie repeated.

  “Yeah, our postman,” said Jerry or Kerry.

  “Are you saying the postman is dead? You saw his body?”

  “If he wasn’t dead, he wasn’t feeling very well,” said Kerry or Jerry, gaining a laugh from the other.