Authors: Ty Roth
“Why don’t you and Claire go on a little shopping date? It’ll be fun,” You-can-call-me Mary Jane had said. “She can
help you with a makeover! You just watch how the boys come calling.”
Shelly had flipped her the finger. They hadn’t spoken since.
That summer, Shelly spent many more nights on a sleeping bag on the floor of the old farmhouse near to Neolin than she spent in her own bed. After opting to replace her sailboat, her primary means of transportation to and from the island, with the sixteen-foot Boston Whaler powerboat, a belated seventeenth-birthday present from her father that appeared one day at their dock with the key in the ignition, she came home only when she needed a good shower, or to collect odds and ends: additional clothes, eating utensils, books, and the provisions uniquely required by a female squatter.
The Ottawa settlers had quickly established a congenial relationship with the merchants of Put-in-Bay. Since no one really gave a damn about the sham nature preserve on North Bass, the locals considered the Ottawa harmless—at least for the time being. All branches of law enforcement, from local to federal, regarded any heavy-handed crackdown as a potential public relations nightmare. The unofficial policy was to play nice and wait out the Ottawa, at least until they’d proven that they could withstand the claustrophobia of an ice-locked winter, or until Ohio’s voters passed legislation to allow casino gambling and recognized the Bass Islands as the perfect location for such gaming houses. Said legislation was set to be included on November’s ballot.
On the first of June, a relief company of Ottawa tribesmen arrived. Their sensibilities were more sympathetic to Neolin’s aims, and their personalities were more amenable to accepting leadership. The constant complaining of the initial settlers over the lack of modern conveniences disappeared. Life on the island improved significantly. The tent city in the front yard was exchanged for dormitory-style living inside the farmhouse, and civilization arrived in the reestablished capital of the Ottawa Nation when the cistern and septic tank were made operational. Shelly’s own seemingly indomitable spirit of revolution had almost been broken during her first extended stay on the island, almost broken by the sharing of an outhouse with ten men. Happiness is running water.
In addition to cell phones (service was shoddy on the island anyway), Neolin conceded to the use of Shelly’s laptop for monitoring events on the mainland and for communication purposes, and he pretended ignorance of the portable DVD/CD player that Shelly smuggled back with her on one of her runs home.
By the end of June, the garden was beginning to show promise for a bountiful harvest. Although the farmhouse was in dire need of a paint job, the major repairs had all been made, the grounds spruced up, and the bowed boards on the dock replaced. Though less frequent in their patronage of the Put-in-Bay nightlife, the second wave of settlers maintained positive relations with their suppliers in the village. Shelly and Neolin established a division of labor that required each community member, including themselves, to rotate through the more menial jobs—such as housework and yard work,
cooking and cleaning—and the more enjoyable task of taking the Kodiak rafts to South Bass for supply runs.
All were expected to attend the communal evening meals, which served as social, planning, and bitch sessions. The most common topic was when to expand the compound and to allow for the reverse migration of a larger cross-section of the Ottawa population, namely women and children. Some of the men had grown mildly envious that Neolin, as de facto leader, had the benefit of Shelly’s companionship. To all observers, if not vocalized or physically acted upon by the two of them, the relationship appeared romantic—a perception the men shared with good-natured teasing of the couple.
Happy with the fast progress of the nation, Neolin was reluctant to initiate the reverse migration and inject such a radical change into the dynamic that had been effectively established. But the men’s concern had inspired two realizations: one, it was necessary for him to surrender the mantle of leadership in order to meld into and become completely of the people in the true spirit of the Way; and two, he was falling in love. A consensus of opinion determined that a request would be made to the chief and tribal council in Oklahoma that the council discuss the matter of further settlement and deliver its opinion on the repopulation of North Bass in a timely manner.
Neolin didn’t expect a quick or favorable response. Throughout the resettlement process, communication with the tribal council had been suspiciously irregular. He optimistically told himself that the elders were confident in his leadership and supportive of his mission, but his other read
was that they were completely indifferent to his utopian dream of nation-building. He preferred the former interpretation but suspected the latter to be closer to the truth.
One late mid-August afternoon, when the humidity chased the heat to nearly unlivable heights, Neolin and Shelly each grabbed a towel and hiked through the woods to the small sandy beach that Shelly had followed him to on the day when she’d first crashed his revolution. Sapped by the heat, the lake lay flat, with a curtain of haze rising from its slow-to-boil water. Neolin stripped down to his boxers and Shelly to her mismatched white bra and purple panties, and, facing toward the seemingly boundless Canadian waters, they cooled themselves by lolling in the nearshore shallows, because the Oklahoma boy couldn’t swim.
“I can’t believe it,” he said.
“What’s that?” Shelly asked, although she knew exactly what he meant.
“Any of it. This place. My plan actually working. You.”
“I know. It’s kind of great,” she said.
“It can’t be real. It can’t last. It can’t really work. Can it?”
“Why not? Why can’t we be happy? Why can’t we do anything we want? Why can’t we change the world?”
“But what if it only works here? You know what I mean? What if this is some magic place where the regular rules don’t apply, and the second we leave here, none of it will continue or have ever happened?”
“Then we’ll never leave,” Shelly said.
“I don’t plan to, but you start your senior year in two weeks.”
“I’ll be eighteen soon. I can sign my own dropout papers.”
“I can’t let you do that. Besides, what would your father say?” Neolin probed the exposed family nerve gingerly, for fear of being cross-examined regarding his own dysfunctional childhood spent with an alcoholic mother, and never knowing his “just passing through” Delaware father, who’d made him a half-bred target for ridicule among his mother’s Ottawa people. But Neolin was curious as to the mysterious man whose generosity toward his daughter had been redirected toward Neolin’s cause.
“He probably wouldn’t
say
anything. I told you we don’t talk.”
“Yeah, but you’ve never told me why.”
Shelly hesitated, weighing the pluses and minuses of that explanation, then concluded, “Another time.”
“I really wish you
could
stay here, but you have to go back. You’ll regret it if you don’t, and, someday, you will blame me.”
“But I’m happy here,” she said in the pleading voice of a child.
“If only it was as simple as that.” Neolin thought for a moment before turning to look at her leaning backward, exposed and vulnerable, with her palms pressed flat in the sand beneath the wrist-deep water. Her hair was wet, pasted back over her ears and against her neck. Her legs were splayed out in front of her with only her toes exposed like a chain of tiny islands. The silky fabric of her saturated bra, with the right strap draped loosely off her shoulder, clung tightly to her
breasts. Compelled, he rolled onto his hip and leaned toward her. Shelly remained still, welcoming him in. She met his mouth firmly, and, with the conviction of the newly baptized, they kissed for the first, and only, time.
Despite Shelly’s plea to extend their getaway, wisely, Neolin rose, dripping, from the water, dried off, and got dressed.
“Come on.” He beckoned her with an outstretched hand. “The men will talk, then tease me to no end if we don’t get back.”
“Only if you promise that the next time we’ll pick up right where we left off.”
“I promise,” he said.
Holding hands and laughing as they broke through the wood line where it met the front-yard clearing of the compound, they came to a sudden stop. A look of stunned disbelief fell across Neolin’s face as Shelly’s washed pale.
“They’re here,” he said.
Shelly immediately recognized all but one of the Ottawa men standing near the dock. It was the original group of settlers, along with a portly middle-aged man wearing blue jeans and cowboy boots despite the August heat.
“Who’s the fat one?” Shelly asked.
“The chief.”
“What’s he doing here?”
“I don’t know, but it can’t be good,” Neolin said in an ominous tone.
“Maybe he wants to see the progress we’ve made,” Shelly offered.
“I hope you’re right, but I don’t think so.”
As Neolin finished his sentence, the chief’s eyes found the two of them, and a smile, as phony as a politician’s in primary season, spread across his ruddy pockmarked face. Immediately he began a tottering march to where they stood. Behind him, the old and the current settlers intermingled, exchanging greetings and shaking hands before moving purposefully toward the house.
With a big paw extended, the chief reapplied his gap-toothed smile, and from still twenty yards away, he called, “Gabriel—”
“Neolin,” Neolin interrupted the chief. “My name is Neolin.”
“Huh?” the chief said, perplexed, before remembering. “Oh, that’s right. Neolin, how are you?” He offered his meaty palm for shaking.
“I’m good,” Neolin answered. “What can we do for you? Why are you here?” His tone bordered on being insolent.
“This is Odawa land. And you seem to have forgotten that I’m the chief.”
Sufficiently humbled, Neolin lowered his gaze and apologized.
Shelly interrupted their pissing contest by loudly clearing her throat.
“This is Shelly. She’s been helping.” Neolin made the introduction.
The chief didn’t bother to acknowledge her.
“Boozhoo,”
Shelly said, undeterred, using her Ottawa greeting.
Neolin’s eyes snapped to her. Shelly described that it was as if the word had reset his mind to the day when she’d first arrived at the dock and she’d greeted him in the identical fashion. He started to say something, but as his mouth formed the words, from the corner of his eye he saw the men, past and present, carrying supplies from the house toward the dock.
“Wait!” he called. “What are you doing?” He took a step in their direction, but the chief positioned his bulk between Neolin and the house.
“It’s over,” the chief said with unquestionable finality.
Shelly said she had never seen such sorrow possess a person’s face so immediately as it did Neolin’s upon those two words.
Ignoring the chief’s claim, Neolin tried to work his way past him. But the big man was surprisingly light on his feet and strong of arm. He easily corralled Neolin and kept him at bay. The evacuation continued as Neolin crumpled to the grass at the chief’s feet and wept the tears of the defeated and dying.
The chief turned to Shelly and commanded with no equivocation, “Go home.”
They were the words of a father, spoken in an authoritative tone, which she had never heard until that very moment. It began a momentum deep inside her that she was unable to stop. She said that she remembered walking slowly toward the Whaler with her head turned back and her eyes glued on the weeping Neolin, who never, whether out of shame or resignation, lifted his eyes or hand to convey goodbye.
* * *
“That was a week ago this morning,” Shelly told Gordon then, and told me just a few hours later. The sun was already coming up on a new day behind them and casting their small shadows onto the surface of the bay. The sky was clear and blue; it was going to be a beautiful day. The previous day’s humidity had been chased away by the overnight breeze. Shelly and Gordon had been talking all night. “I haven’t heard from him since. Gordon, I’m worried.”
“I can see that,” he said. “I’m sure it will be okay,” Gordon said, more dismissively than sympathetically.
In the next instant, suddenly inspired, Shelly sprang to her feet. “Wait here,” she ordered Gordon.
“What? Where you going?”
Ignoring his questions, she sprinted toward her family property, across the dew-drenched grass and the fence-enclosed inground pool that lay between the bay and her house. In the murky light of morning, Gordon watched her enter the combined cabana/pool supply shed and emerge with her boom box the size of a large suitcase.
“Oh, shit,” he said out loud.
Upon returning, she read the chagrin in his expression. “C’mon, Gordon. Like when we were kids.”
She didn’t wait for or want his opinion. She placed the boom box at their feet, pressed play, grabbed Gordon by his two limp-wristed hands, and performed a sort of waltzy maneuver and spin beneath his noodly arms as several string-dominant measures of an orchestral tune blew from the
speakers at a decibel level that threatened to wake both of their pathetic excuses for parents.
Suddenly, the orchestra was replaced by an infectiously upbeat melody and the voice of R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe singing what sounded much like a children’s song in both tune and lyrics: “Shiny happy people laughing …” Shelly joined in the singing, released Gordon’s hands, and danced around his maypole rigidity, hippie-like, spinning and twirling in her bare feet with her arms over her head, singing through the first verse.
“C’mon, Gordon, sing with me,” she pleaded. “ ‘Shiny happy people holding hands,’ ” she sang along to the refrain.
Over her head, Gordon watched a light switch on in what he knew to be her father’s bedroom window. It was followed by the appearance of his stout figure standing and watching between glass and curtain, nearly filling the window’s width.
Their eyes locked. Even at that distance, Gordon’s expression betrayed his knowledge of Shelly’s father’s heinous deed.