by Phil Wohl
The grade-school inmates were let loose for recess on the expansive playground, complete with swings and a huge play set. Daniel ran out the play set and quickly jumped in the air, ran on top of the tire bridge, and scaled the huge wall of the fort-like structure. Just behind him, aping his moves like a monkey on caffeine was Nicole, who joined him at the top of the fort looking out over the four-acre field.
Daniel was just about to say something clever, but awkward, but Brewster climbed from the other end of the structure and was now only a few feet from Daniel and Nicole.
“It’s time to pay up, Thompson,” Brewster snarled while clenching his fists at his side.
“What’s wrong with you, Andrew?” Nicole asked trying to get him to calm down.
But the gesture only served to make Andrew angrier, like a bull being prodded and jabbed until it only saw red. Smoke was coming out of Andrew’s ears as he ran at Daniel and pushed him over the side of the plastic structure, which was some 10 feet off the ground.
Normally, a fall of that height would have required a trip to the school nurse for a Band-Aid, given that the flooring was cushioned with a thick layer of recycled and shredded rubber tires. But Daniel had lost his balance and was speeding toward a head-to-ground crash, until Nicole sped down the wall and redirected his legs so he could land safely on his feet.
Brewster looked over the edge of the watch-tower to revel in the new kid writhing in pain on the ground, but all he saw were Nicole and Daniel happily walking away together.
Daniel said, “This has been a weird, but very nice day.” Nicole smiled, “Tell me about it.”
Brewster burned inside as Hartwell emerged from behind a tree, feeling that things were surely moving in the right direction.
THREE
The phone rang in Belinda Thompson’s home office and she ran to grab it. Being a residential real estate agent, she was able to make her own hours and generally be available for her son.
“Hello,” Belinda said, being that it was her home phone line. If it was the business line, she would have used the more formal greeting of “Thompson Realty, how may I help you.”
“Mrs. Thompson?” the male voice questioned at the other end of the line.
“Yes, this is Belinda Thompson. May I ask who is calling?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. This is Barry Schoebel, vice principal of East Inlet
Elementary School.”
“Mr. Schoebel!” Belinda said in a surprised tone. “Was there a problem with Daniel’s medication?”
Schoebel rolled his eyes in disbelief, because he had seen Belinda on at least a dozen occasions since the school year began. A boy that he was repeatedly told was fragile and potentially inching closer to death’s door with each passing minute, had been holding his own—and then some—on the playground during the first two months of school.
“Well, I have your son here in my office…” Schoebel began. Trouble never crossed Belinda’s mind, because her son’s school
record was as spotless as her kitchen sink.
“Do you need me to come down to the school? I can be there in five minutes.”
Schoebel replied, “No, that won’t be necessary this time, Ms. Thompson. I’m just going to send a letter home with Daniel for you to sign. It basically says that you are aware that your son got in a fight and you discussed the matter with him.”
Belinda let the unimaginable information slowly penetrate her ‘virgin’
ears, and then immediately sought clarification. “Fight? Did you say fight?”
“Your son was in a fight at recess with a boy in his class. Apparently there has been some friction between them.”
Belinda was in disbelief, “Who is this boy that obviously attacked my
son?”
“I’d rather not say,” Schoebel replied, trying to be politically correct. Belinda always cut to the chase – “I’m coming down!” and she hung
up the phone and was walking to her mini-van before Schoebel realized she was no longer on the phone.
Four minutes later, a harried Belinda walked briskly up the front path and through the front doors of the school. She was always professional in her mannerisms and attire, because of the nature of both her personality and profession.
The 5’6” Belinda had tanned skin, dark hair, blue eyes, and was athletically trim from her years of running marathons. She wore a smart- looking, navy blue pants suit with a white ruffled shirt.
Belinda walked into the main office, which was to her immediate right when she entered the building. She knew the office by heart and bypassed the secretaries at the front counter and walked unabated to Barry Schoebel’s office.
There was no doubt in her mind that her son had been wronged and needed to be defended, until she saw the other boy.
“Drew?” Belinda said in astonishment.
Andrew Brewster had ice pack on his right eye, as a result of an accurate right cross from Daniel.
Andrew removed the ice and replied, “Aunt Belinda?”
“Belinda?” a surprised voice of mature female exclaimed from the hallway just behind her.
Schoebel mumbled, “Now that we all know each other…”
It had been six years to the day since the Brewster family had seen Belinda and Daniel. The death of Calvin Brewster was the catalyst for the painful separation.
The Brewster’s were a tight-knit clan, and it was especially difficult for outsiders to be accepted and loved. In fact, it took Belinda Thompson
more than two years of tireless effort to hook her man, Calvin Brewster. There was something about Calvin that Belinda couldn’t resist. Maybe it was his boyish good looks; maybe it was the feeling she got every morning when he struggled and groaned to get out of bed; maybe she just felt safe when he was around.
Calvin was an anesthesiologist by day and a family man at night – at least until Belinda went to sleep, which was usually around 9:30 p.m. She was early to sleep and early to rise, which probably came from years of living with her father the Marine.
Belinda and Calvin used to go running almost every night and, between her drive and his seemingly endless lung capacity, they completed four 26.2-mile marathons together. Cal was 6’1” and was a slender, but solid 170 pounds – his less than two percent body fat baffled most of the doctors he worked with. The guy was an eating machine but he never seemed to gain a pound. Belinda chalked it up to the family’s ‘killer’ metabolism, because when the Brewster family sat down for a meal they all put on the ‘feed bag.'
Back in the vice principal’s office, Daniel was even more confused about the familiarity than he was about getting in trouble at school for the first time. He thought, "How could it be that Andrew Brewster – a boy that had been bugging him daily and was getting on his nerves to the point that he was now having nightmares about being chased by him – was somehow related to him?"
Andrew and Daniel squared off as their mothers hugged, but this time
Andrew softened like a stick of butter sitting on a hot stove.
“Daniel? Daniel Brewster?” Andrew said trying to make a connection with his long-lost first cousin.
But Daniel was blank. Over the years there were few stories relayed from Belinda about his father, and even less about his father’s family.
There would be the occasional, “Your father was a great man,” or "Your father and I used to go running together all the time,” which created a vague sketch of a ghost that Daniel didn’t remember. His mother’s sadness at losing the love of her life also served to restrict the flow of salient information.
On the other hand, the Brewster family kept Cal’s spirit alive by talking about him at every turn. By the time the family moved to Beach Haven, Andrew knew all about his uncle and Daniel, with pictures and stories being supplied by generations of elders who lived under the same roof.
The bond was especially strong between Andrew and his grandpa’, Thaddeus Brewster. Andrew’s father, let's call him 'Gre
g,' was a father in name only, as he had reportedly passed away before the child was born.
Years earlier, Cal requested that Belinda live with his family but she flatly denied his advances. She often felt like her resistance was damaging, primarily because his family took the separation and loss hard before he drowned at sea on a fishing trip - although his remains never found.
Andrew and Daniel went back to class after apologizing to the immediate world and promising they would behave. That left Belinda with
her ex-sister-in-law, Emily Brewster, to fend for themselves and go out to lunch.
“My son has never been in the vice principal’s office before. I’m not sure what came over him?” Belinda stated as the two women sat across from each other in a booth at the Beach Haven Diner.
Emily was almost a carbon copy of her brother – 5’9”, 150 pounds, stringy sandy-blonde hair and light brown eyes just like Daniel – and she also had almost no body fat even after having a child. She and Cal were also fraternal twins, so Cal’s loss hit particularly deep for Emily.
“Andrew has always been a model citizen, too,” Emily stated. The elderly waitress walked up to the table and there was no
mistaking the 40 years of smoking in her almost manly, raspy voice. “What’s it gonna’ be ladies?” as she pulled a #2 pencil out of her
elevated red beehive hairdo.
When the question was met with dead air, she interjected, “Do you need a few more minutes?”
“Go ahead, B,” Emily said to Belinda, recalling an old nickname.
It was just after noon, so Belinda turned past the breakfast menu and focused on the lunch ‘diet’ section.
“I’ll have the small garden salad with oil and vinegar dressing on the
side.”
The waitress repeated the order and she scribbled down some code, “One rabbit platter, dressing on the side.”
She then looked at Emily, who was studying the menu like there was going to be a quiz at the end of the meal. “And for you, hun?”
Emily took a deep breath and stated, “I’ll have a cheeseburger deluxe, a bowl of matzo ball soup, a stack of pancakes with bacon, a bagel with cream cheese, a chocolate shake, and…”
The waitress was rarely fazed by any order, yet alone local women looking to give the appearance of dieting, but she repeated, “And?”
“Oh yeah, a side of home fries cooked well. I like it when they’re brown and crunchy.”
“You got it!” the waitress exclaimed as she scooped up the three pounds of menus. “Do you want me to being the soup before the rest of the food?”
Normally, Emily would say ‘no’ but she quickly scanned the table and imagined all of those plates in the small space in front of her, so she replied, “Yes, that will be fine.”
“I can see that you haven’t lost your appetite,” Belinda observed.
“Good thing I work out every day,” Emily replied as she patted her flat stomach.
A few minutes later, after some idle chit-chat, Belinda returned to the original discussion.
“So, why do you think the boys were fighting?”
Just then Mabel the waitress returned with a bowl of soup and said, “I took the liberty of bringing you some extra crackers,” as she put the soup down in front of Emily and then dug into her white apron and pulled out two huge handfuls of saltine crackers.
“Thank you!” Emily beamed.
The distraction was helpful in keeping Belinda at bay, much in the way she did years earlier when Belinda would ask targeted questions that obviously had loaded answers attached.
All the while when Emily was inhaling her soup – in the most feminine and respectful way – she couldn’t help but analyze why her son and her nephew had gone at each other the minute they were informally re- introduced to each other.
It was quite normal for ‘hunters’ to test each other when they were in the early stages of development. In fact, she and her brother often crossed the line of playful battling before conquering puberty.
While Emily was buzzing through her meal, Belinda had time to study her face. It had been over six years since they last saw each other, and yet it was remarkable how Belinda seemed so well preserved.
Emily noticed that Belinda seemed fixed on her face so she asked, “Is there a piece of food on me?” as she wiped her face with the hand that wasn’t shoveling food.
“No, no,” Belinda said. “I was just admiring how beautiful your skin is.”
Emily was finishing up her soup, but responded anyway like a true New Yorker trying to do everything at once.
“I use a combination of Oil of Olay night mask with pureed cucumber.”
Belinda took the information in, much in the way she had processed many of the cryptic answers from the Brewster family through the years.
When her husband used to wake up with fresh cuts, bumps, and bruises almost daily, Belinda initially wondered if she was having violent episodes in her sleep. Answers such as, “I’m clumsy,” and “I’m a quick healer,” did little to soften her resolve, yet she somehow believed him.
FOUR
Cal Brewster was a quick healer and an excellent provider, but he was a ‘hunter’ first and foremost – just as his parents were before him.
It was 1902, and the Barbary Plague - not-so-affectionately called The Black Death - was sweeping through Victorian San Francisco. The disease started in Chinatown and spread throughout the city like a raging wildfire. Four out of five people who contracted the disease died within 8 days, while the survivors had to deal with being prime healthy targets for a mass of blood-thirsty predators.
Three of the city’s inhabitants were Thomas Hartwell, his wife Marjorie – or Maggie as she was called – and their eight year-old son, Nathaniel.
Hartwell spent most of his early days chasing riches in the gold rush, and hit the jackpot with a major find just when all hope seemed lost. He became a millionaire just before the turn of the century, in a time when there was scarce few men of such wealth in the country.
Leaving a trail of empty relationships before he became established, Thomas felt it was finally time to settle down at the ripe age of 34, which is
akin to about 54 years old in modern times. Of course, there were many women lined up to get a shot at the new Hartwell fortune, but Thomas had his sights set on a long-widowed, 26 year-old angel named Marjorie Carter.
Maggie had the blatant misfortune of miscarrying a child and losing her husband in the same year. The shock of the cumulative setbacks left her basically dormant for six years, as she sorted through the emotional wreckage while working as a bank secretary.
Before Hartwell struck it big with his gold find, he had thoughts of robbing the San Francisco National Bank. In fact, he walked into the bank a few minutes before 5:00 p.m. one day, and saw a woman with her back to him when he asked, “Excuse me ma'am, what time do you close?”
Maggie in all of her shapely, blonde-haired splendor, turned around and looked at the large-round clock with her huge blue eyes and replied, “Five-o’clock, sir.”
Hartwell literally stopped in his tracks and finally saw his future before his eyes. One major obstacle, of course: if he robbed the bank then their union would be doomed; but, if he remained a reckless loser, she would barely notice him, as witnessed by her next question.
“Is there anything else?” she asked while jiggling a ring of keys in her hand. “It’s closing time.”
He was as determined as ever after his initial encounter with Maggie, and he attributed his eventual find to a renewed sense of purpose. He found his gold in a site he combed at least a dozen times, a body of water that was eventually named Hartwell Brook.
The Hartwell’s wasted little time having a baby once they were married, and were blessed with a strong son named Nathaniel. They had eight splendid years together, traveling both north and south to view the magnificence of the Pacific Northwest and their southern neighbors.
Just when Thom
as considered uprooting his family to escape the blackest of plagues, his wife came to him and said, “I feel a little achy and slow today. I’m having trouble getting going.”
That same morning, Nathaniel was running an abnormally-high temperature and was literally sweating through the sheets. Eight days later, both mother and son were gone, taken by a disease that ate them up and spit them out.
A distressed Hartwell took to the cobblestone streets, demanding an explanation from the heavens for giving him everything and then taking it away.
People were running frantically throughout the streets – some were escaping the disease, while others were trying to avoid the deadly bite of a creature just as devastating as any disease.
Hartwell was so distraught that he returned to his house and strongly considered taking his own life, but a knock on the door temporarily stopped him from pulling the trigger.
“Please go away!” Hartwell yelled as he picked up his heavy gun and pointed it toward his head.
“Don’t do it,” the voice calmly said from the other side of the door. “I
have a way that you will be able to see your wife and son again.”
Hartwell had truly run out of options. It was either blow his brains out, or listen to a voice promising full restitution. He walked to the door and lowered the gun to his side, “How do I know you’re not one of vile things
that bite people?”
“I’m offended,” the man said. “How do I know that you’re not lousy with the plague?”
Hartwell nodded his head in understanding, “Well, how can I get my family back?” he said as he lodged the gun against the door.
