I did it. Maybe it will be published and maybe it won’t, maybe I’ll do another and maybe I won’t, it doesn’t matter. I did it.

He put his hands over his face.

31

Lucy turned the last page two nights later and looked at him in a way he hadn’t seen in a very long time. Maybe not since the first year or two of their marriage, before the kids came.

“Drew, it’s amazing.”

He grinned. “Really? Not just saying that because your hubby wrote it?”

She shook her head violently. “No. It’s wonderful. A western! I never would have guessed. How did you get the idea?”

He shrugged. “It just came to me.”

“Did that horrible rancher shoot Jim Averill?”

“I don’t know,” Drew said.

“Well, a publisher may want you to put that in.”

“Then the publisher—if there ever is one—will find his want unsatisfied. And you’re sure it’s okay? You mean it?”

“Much better than okay. Are you going to show Al?”

“Yes. I’ll take a copy of the script over tomorrow.”

“Does he know it’s a western?”

“Nope. Don’t even know if he likes them.”

“He’ll like this one.” She paused, then took his hand and said, “I was so pissed at you for not coming back when that storm was on the way. But I was wrong and you were rat.”

He took his hand back, once again feeling feverish. “What did you say?”

“That I was wrong. And you were right. What’s the trouble, Drew?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all.”

32

“So?” Drew asked three days later. “What’s the verdict?”

They were in his old department head’s study. The manuscript was on Al’s desk. Drew had been nervous about Lucy’s reaction to Bitter River, but he was even more nervous about Al’s. Stamper was a voracious, omnivorous reader who had been analyzing and deconstructing prose his entire working life. He was the only person Drew knew who had dared to teach Under the Volcano and Infinite Jest in the same semester.

“I think it’s very good.” Al not only sounded like his old self these days, he looked like it. His color was back and he had put on a few pounds. The chemo had taken his hair, but the Red Sox cap he was wearing covered his newly bald head. “It’s plot-driven, but the relationship between the sheriff and his young captive gives the story quite extraordinary resonance. It isn’t as good as The Ox-Bow Incident or Welcome to Hard Times, I’d say—”

“I know,” Drew said… who thought it was. “I’d never claim that.”

“But I think it ranks with Oakley Hall’s Warlock, which is just behind those two. You had something to say, Drew, and you said it very well. The book doesn’t pound the reader over the head with its thematic concerns, and I suppose most people will just read it for the strong story values—the what-happens-next thing—but those thematic elements are there, oh yes.”

“You think people will read it?”

“Sure.” Al seemed almost to wave this away. “Unless your agent’s a total dummocks, he or she will sell this easily. Maybe even for a fair bit of money.” He eyed Drew. “Although my guess is that was secondary to you, if you thought about it at all. You just wanted to do it, am I right? For once jump off the high board at the country club swimming pool without losing your nerve and slinking back down the ladder.”

“Nailed it,” Drew said. “And you… Al, you look terrific.”

“I feel terrific,” he said. “The doctors have stopped short of calling me a medical marvel, and I’ll be going back for tests every three weeks for the first year, but my last date with the fucking chemo IV is this afternoon. As of rat now all the tests are calling me cancer free.”

This time Drew didn’t jump, and he didn’t bother asking for a repeat. He knew what his old department head had actually said, just as he knew part of him would keep hearing that other word from time to time. It was like a splinter, one lodged in his mind instead of under his skin. Most splinters worked out without infecting. He was pretty sure this one would do that. After all, Al was fine. The deal-making rat at the cabin had been a dream. Or a stuffed toy. Or complete bullshit.

Take your pick.

33

To: [email protected]

THE ELISE DILDEN AGENCY

January 19, 2019

Drew, my love—How great to hear from you, I thought you were dead and I missed the obituary! (Joking! ) A novel after all these years, how exciting. Send it posthaste, dear, and we’ll see what can be done. Although I must warn you the market is barely making half-steam these days unless it’s a book about Trump and his cohorts.

XXX,

Ellie

Sent from my electronic slave bracelet

To: [email protected]

THE ELISE DILDEN AGENCY

February 1, 2019

Drew! I finished last night! The book is WUNDERBAR! I hope you aren’t planning to get fabuloso rich from it, but I’m sure it will be published, and I feel I can get a decent advance. Perhaps more than decent. An auction is not entirely out of the question. Plus-plus-plus I feel that this book could (and should) be a reputation-maker. I believe when it’s published, the reviews of Bitter River will be sweet indeed. Thank you for a wonderful visit in the old west!

XXX,

Ellie

PS: You left me hanging! Did that rat of a rancher actually shoot Jim Averill????

E

Sent from my electronic slave bracelet

34

There was indeed an auction for Bitter River. It happened on March 15th, the same day the season’s final storm hit New England (Winter Storm Tania, according to the Weather Channel). Three of New York’s Big Five publishers participated, and Putnam came out the winner. The advance was $350,000. Not Dan Brown or John Grisham numbers, but enough, as Lucy said while she hugged him, to put Bran and Stacey through college. She broke out a bottle of Dom Pérignon, which she had been saving (hopefully). This was at three o’clock, while they still felt like celebrating.

They toasted the book, and the book’s author, and the book’s author’s wife, and the amazing wonderful kids that had sprung from the loins of the book’s author and the book’s author’s wife, and were fairly tipsy when the phone rang at four. It was Kelly Fontaine, the English Department’s administrative assistant since time out of mind. She was in tears. Al and Nadine Stamper were dead.

He had been scheduled for tests at Maine Medical that day (tests every three weeks for the first year, Drew remembered him saying). “He could have put the appointment off,” Kelly said, “but you know Al, and Nadine was the same way. A little snow wasn’t going to stop them.”

The accident happened on 295, less than a mile from Maine Med. A semi skidded on the ice, sideswiping Nadie Stamper’s little Prius and flicking it like a tiddlywink. It turned over and landed on the roof.

“Oh my God,” Lucy said. “Both of them, gone. How horrible is that? And when he was getting better!”