Ralph Memolo Stories

Big Bertha

 

Victor Lipscomb saw Doreen Swenson for the first time the night she brought her senior prom to a halt because of her inability to smile on cue. This mini-drama took place when Doreen and three other "attendants" to the prom queen at Center Harbor High School mounted a platform to pose for their official portrait. That platform was situated just to the left of the band stand, no more than six feet away from where Victor was playing trumpet in Mel Goldman’s orchestra during the busy prom season.

 

Victor, therefore, had a close-up view when the photographer, standing next to his tripod-mounted camera, began suggesting to the Queen and her court how they should line up for the shot he intended to take. It took the photographer a moment or two before he felt the queen and her court were properly positioned. Then, draping a black cloth over his head, he crouched down behind his camera to take the commemorative photo. But suddenly he whipped the black cloth aside and stood up. He had noticed that Doreen wasn’t smiling, so now, having hung the black cloth around his neck, he placed his hands on his hips and announced in a very loud voice that he wasn’t about to take a photo until that girl, the one standing to the right of the queen, gave him a big smile.

 

The photographer may have sensed, quite rightly, the striking difference that was bound to take place if Doreen chose to smile. She was clearly the most attractive of the young women on the platform because of her delicate features and large, dark blue eyes. But her habitual expression, straight-on and unblinking, had the hint of a frown about it because of the natural curvature of her tiny lips. But when, or if, she smiled, her facial features, once released, would change the shape of her mouth and also create dimples on each cheek. The smile itself also caused her to elevate her chin, which eliminated the slight slumping of her shoulders. Instantly, then, the somewhat pouty teenager could be transformed into a more regal presence.

 

Ah, but that night, as seconds ticked away, it appeared as if Doreen, perhaps out of spite, wasn’t about to yield any ground to the photographer. Witnessing this standoff, Victor immediately found himself in sympathy with Doreen. He couldn’t begin to imagine how awkward and difficult it must have been for her to become, instantly, the center of attention, how exposed she must have been to find herself being stared at by so many people, all of them waiting, none too patiently, it seemed, for her to smile.

 

Indeed, a group of students nearby had begun yelling out advice that was supposed to bring a smile to her face. Say cheese, they yelled. Another group said, say money. Still, Doreen didn’t smile, even when one boy, taller than the rest and with a deep voice yelled out, sex, say sex. The boy who tried to coax Doreen into smiling by saying, sex, was Doreen’s date for the prom, Lester Markey. Once the other students joined Markey in yelling sex, the prom queen and two of her attendants began giggling, and finally, a moment later, when they recovered their composure, Doreen finally broke into the long-awaited grin.

 

Quickly, the photographer put the black cloth back over his head, bent into that crouch behind his camera and snapped the photo. The group of students responded with a lusty cheer, and Mel Goldman, pumping both his fists above his head, once, twice, three times, prompted Victor and the rest of the orchestra to let loose with the kind of crescendo that usually accompanies the climactic scene of a Hollywood epic.

 

Victor, who had just finished his junior year at the University of Maine, was hoping to introduce himself to Doreen and tell her that he felt great sympathy for the experience she had been put through by the photographer, but when the orchestra took a short break he was unable to find her. Later, at the end of the prom, he once again looked for her, but she seemed to have left before the last dance. Victor did end up having a brief chat with the prom queen who gave him Doreen’s phone number.

 

Three days later, when Victor called Doreen, her father—or some man who had a phlegmy voice—said that Doreen had already left for Kennebunkport to work as a waitress at a restaurant there. No, he didn’t know the name of the restaurant where Doreen was working. Check back here after Labor Day, he added. She should be home by then.

 

Victor remembered to call Doreen soon after Labor Day, but this time, the same man, still trying to clear his throat, said that Doreen had left the day before for Boston. She’s gone off to the nursing school at Massachusetts General Hospital, the man said. Without Victor asking, the man then gave him the phone number of the nursing school’s dormitory.

 

Two nights later, when Victor phoned the dormitory, the young woman who answered said she would call Doreen to the phone. Victor heard the young woman yell Doreen’s name several times, but five minutes later, when Doreen hadn’t come to the phone, he hung up. He called again a week later, leaving his name this time and a short message in which he invited Doreen to call him back, collect. That call, too, was never returned.

 

In June when Victor graduated, he had not formulated any definite career plans since he expected—this was 1966—to be drafted. Only a few weeks after Victor’s student deferment expired he was undergoing basic training, but he was fortunate enough after that to be sent to Germany rather than the jungles of Vietnam. That meant he spent most of the next two years staring through binoculars at East German border guards who were staring back at him through their binoculars.

 

Two weeks after he had been discharged and was back home in Maine, Victor, who was an avid hiker, went to a yearly reunion of the Lipscomb family that was held in a town just over the border in New Hampshire. It happened that Victor’s widowed aunt was there with her new husband, a retired fish and game warden, and very quickly Victor and his new relative discovered a shared interest in their love for the outdoors. Before the afternoon was out the former fish and game warden had convinced Victor to apply for a position with the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department.

 

Within the month, Victor had done well enough on a battery of tests—plus two long interviews—to get a provisional appointment as deputy to the fish and game warden in Sherburne, New Hampshire. That meant he and the warden were responsible for enforcing state regulations governing fishing and hunting for almost the entire northern tip of New Hampshire.

 

Two years later, when the warden decided to retire, he did so, in part, because he came to think of Victor as an ideal replacement. In recommending Victor’s promotion, the game warden wrote, "I know that Mr. Lipscomb maintains an apartment in the town of Sherburne, where he goes to sleep, shower and change his clothes, but I’ll be damned if I’ve been able to figure out when he finds time to do any of those things. If Mr. Lipscomb isn’t on patrol, he’s visiting a school or speaking to a civic group or lending a hand to any number of worthwhile causes throughout this area. He does all that, besides writing a column, Wilderness Notes, which appears each week in the Sherburne Enterprise. In his official capacity, and through his civic involvement, he has won the respect among even those people hereabouts who generally have little affection for anyone whose job it is to enforce laws related to hunting and fishing."

 

Victor was named interim warden, and his appointment became permanent a year later, soon after he devised a new method for helping to find hunters who were lost. Victor’s invention was a loud horn modeled on the civil defense siren located on the roof of the Sherburne fire station. A similar device, Victor concluded, if taken to a spot where the lost hunter had entered the woods, might provide an aural "fix" that helped lead the hunter to safety.

 

Victor assembled his device by borrowing an air compressor from a contractor he knew. He then wrangled from the Fish and Game Department a pickup truck that was headed for the junkyard. A machinist friend helped him mount the compressor onto the back of the truck and installed the timing mechanism that caused the horn to emit, at one-minute intervals, a blast that lasted 15 seconds. Another friend, who owned an auto repair shop, carried out some much-needed repairs and improvements to the truck, which Victor paid for himself. The machinist also fashioned the very large megaphone attached to the top of the compressor. The sound produced by Victor’s device was more like a fog horn than a siren.

 

Victor used the horn/siren for the first time in l975, when two weeks into the deer hunting season he received a call from two hunters who reported that their companion was missing. The call came in at 6:00 p.m. Ordinarily, Victor would have had to wait until dawn to lead a search party into the woods. But that night, within the hour Victor, in his pickup truck, had met the lost hunter’s companions at an agreed-upon spot two miles north of the road leading to McNiff’s Pond. Following behind him were two firemen from Sherburne in the town’s fire department ambulance.

 

Victor had gone to that same area just before hunting season began to test the horn with his machinist friend, so he knew that he had to wear ear protectors while turning on the compressor and setting the controls that caused the horn to emit its first blast. The firemen and the hunter’s companions, having nothing to cover their ears, quickly took refuge in the ambulance and moved it to a spot about 300 feet away. Once Victor had his device sending out its fifteen-second long blasts, he also joined them, and not long after that they were joined by Tim Norcross, editor of the Sherburne Enterprise. Victor had called Norcross because as one of Victor’s closest friends in Sherburne, he had heard all about the the potential of this device as a means to rescue lost hunters.

 

About two hours later, the hunter who had failed to meet up with his friends, emerged from the woods, looking quite exhausted. The temperature by then was just below freezing so when he began heading towards the ambulance, two firemen ran towards him and threw a blanket around his shoulders. Moments later, when the hunter and his companions were hugging each other, Victor climbed onto the back of the truck, and grabbing the small knob that served as the manual control of the horn, he slid it back and forth, sending out six short celebratory blasts. That became, on the spot, the signal that was sounded whenever a lost hunter was found.

 

The ambulance drivers, as well as Norcross, angled their headlights towards Victor’s device to create enough light for Norcross to take a photo of everyone who had participated in the rescue of the hunter. Two firemen and the three hunters stood in front of the pickup truck while Victor, his ear protectors around his neck, had one arm draped over the megaphone of the device, which made him look as though he wanted to make sure his invention shared in the credit for having brought the lost hunter to safety. In the next issue of the Sherburne Enterprise, that photo accompanied Norcross’s front-page story about Victor’s unique method for finding lost hunters. It was Norcross who christened Victor’s device, Big Bertha.

 

 

 

 

Victor had a bent nose—testimony to his having played high school football before helmets with face guards became more commonplace—and blonde hair trimmed so close he looked as though he was a military recruit in his first week of basic training. A gap between his front teeth and two red spots on his cheeks, persistent outcroppings of ezcema, also lent his face a certain comic book quality. Nevertheless, people in Sherburne found him so likable that they were constantly introducing him to young women they knew. Victor appreciated the opportunities he had to date these young women, and each of the women were impressed with how personable and well-mannered he was, but it was apparent to each of them that Victor, honest and forthright, had no intention of letting his social life, let alone marriage, impinge on his busy schedule.

 

That began to change on New Year’s Eve l978, when Victor, having dropped in at several parties, arrived just before midnight at the home of a couple he knew, Lenore and Teddie Silver. And there, in the crush of bodies in the front hallway of the Silvers’ house, he found himself face to face with Doreen Swenson. Lenore, in welcoming Victor, had just begun introducing him to Doreen, telling him that she and Doreen had known each other since they were in nursing school when Victor suddenly interrupted her.

 

"Oh," Victor said, "I know Doreen."

 

Quickly, though, he corrected himself, saying that he didn’t exactly know Doreen, but remembered her from the senior prom in Center Harbor a few years back.

 

Then, addressing Doreen directly, he said, "I was playing trumpet with Mel Goldman’s orchestra when you were the one girl who refused to smile for the photographer taking a photo of the prom queen and her attendants. I still remember that photographer—he was standing right in front of me—refusing to snap his camera until you gave him the smile he was looking for."

 

Victor may have expected Doreen to laugh, in the way people often do when teen-age antics are recalled, but Doreen, without the trace of a smile, didn’t agree at all with what Victor had said.

 

"Oh please," she said, "it was the photographer who held things up by asking us to move this way and that until he had arranged us just so." Her tone was that of someone who had little desire to explore an incident from her high school prom.

 

Just then, Lenore excused herself in order to greet another couple coming through the front door. Victor, hardly noticing Lenore’s departure, wasn’t about to give up on recreating for Doreen that event from her senior prom.

 

"No," he said. "I distinctly recall that photographer. He was a tall, skinny guy with a funny little mustache."

 

"So you remember what a freaky looking guy the photographer was? I’m impressed," Doreen said, sounding as if she was anything but.

 

"The gym was pretty hot, they always get that way during those proms," Victor said, "and everyone was getting restless and yelling things that were supposed to get you to smile. When you finally did, the guy took his picture, the crowd let out a cheer and Mel had us play a fanfare."

 

"I beg your pardon," said Doreen, "but you’ve got the whole thing ass-backwards. I told you. It was the photographer’s fault. Who gave him the right to decide whether I was smiling enough?"

 

"Oh, don’t get me wrong. I was on your side. The photographer had no right to embarrass you that way. Some people just can’t fake a smile. But the photographer did have a point—your smile, when it came, was well worth the wait."

 

"Oh Jesus, don’t let yourself get carried away with this New Year’s Eve stuff."

 

"I mean it. At the time, I got your name and a few days later I put in a call to you. Someone, your father I guess, said you were working in Kennebunkport. I called again in September, but you had just left for nursing school. I called there a couple of times, even left a message for you to call me when you had a chance, but I never heard from you."

 

"That nursing dorm was a madhouse, people coming and going at all hours of the day and night. God knows if any message ever got through to the right person."

 

"Ah, are you’re saying it was my fault that I didn’t keep on trying?"

 

"Not at all. I had no intention of returning a call from some goofy guy I never heard of before. You learn very early in nursing that there are creeps out there who have a thing about nurses."

 

Victor noticed that Doreen still didn’t smile easily. He was struck, too, by how small and thin she was. Victor, six feet, two inches, had to dip his head forward when talking to her. She, in turn, had to raise her head slightly when she replied to him. She was wearing her hair in a page boy cut that had outgrown itself so that it draped over more of her face than it should have, but when she looked up at Victor, the hair fell back slightly, more fully revealing how attractive she was.

 

"Okay, so that was then," Victor said. "A long time ago. But what about now? How’d you end up in Sherburne?"

 

"It wasn’t a direct route from Center Harbor, I’ll tell you that. After nursing school I went to Florida. What a mistake that was. I went there because my father had retired and wanted to live in a place where he’d never see another snow flake. Well, it’s nice to escape New England winters, but after a couple of summers in Florida, I gave up. Too damned hot, too damned humid. My next job was at the hospital in Portsmouth."

 

Victor and Doreen’s chat was interrupted right then by Lenore, who poked her head into the room and rang a little bell she was carrying. It was five minutes before midnight and she wanted everyone to come into the living room for a champagne toast.

 

Not all the partygoers could squeeze into the living room itself, so Victor and several other people—all as tall as him—remained clustered in the doorway. Victor could see that Doreen had gravitated to the other end of the room, standing next to Lenore and Teddie Silver. Then, the countdown to midnight began, followed by shouts of Happy New Year, along with hugs and kisses and people drinking toasts to each other. But by the time that was over and Victor had pushed himself past a dozen or so people to reach Doreen, she seemed to have left the room. When he asked Lenore where he could find her, Lenore said that she had left because she was so exhausted.

 

"She just moved here a couple of months ago," Lenore said, "and starting a new job at our hospital and finding a place to live has taken a lot out of her. I’ll tell you what, though—I’ll give you her number. I think she’d like to hear from you now that things are beginning to settle down for her."

 

After two weeks of calling Doreen and never getting an answer, Victor contacted Lenore. Was he calling the wrong number, he asked?

 

At first Lenore said that Victor should continue calling, but then lowering her voice, she told him, "I owe you an apology. I’m sorry, but I should have told you more about what brought Doreen to Sherburne."

 

"Whatever it is," Victor said, "she seems as though she could use some cheering up."

 

"There was this guy, Les Markey, her boyfriend since high school. A jerk then, and an even bigger jerk now. He worked at the shipyard in Portsmouth, which is why Doreen moved there. Last October, they were supposed to get married, but two months before the big day, Doreen discovered that Markey was cheating on her. Boom. Big blow up. Marriage called off. But we all figured that she and Markey would eventually patch things up. They had a history of break ups and reconciliation. But this time the floozie Markey was fooling around with got pregnant and somehow forced him into marrying her. Doreen was devastated, and mostly because we were so close at one time, she drove up here to visit me and then decided to stay. She’s in much better shape now than when she got here. Back then, I was afraid to leave her alone."

 

Another week went by before Victor reached Doreen, and when he did, he didn’t find her to be much friendlier than the first time he had met her.

 

"Lenore said that you’ve been looking for me," she said.

 

"We never got to finish that talk we were having on New Year’s Eve."

 

"And for that you had to bother Lenore?"

 

"She didn’t seem to mind."

 

"So I imagine she told you all about Markey."

 

"Not in any detail."

 

"Do you want to hear the details?"

 

"Only if you want me to. But as I was saying, we never even got to finish what we were talking about that night."

 

"Maybe we can do that, but some other time. Right now I have to take a nap because I’m on the midnight shift this week."

 

A moment later, however, Doreen seemed to relent. The next week, she said, she was working days and could meet him some night for a drink at the Old Town Inn.

 

That following week, when Victor and Doreen finally got together, Victor noticed once more that she looked like a teen-ager who was in need of more and better nourishment. Also, her hair, not exactly unkempt, was a bit frazzled because she often had to reach up and pull it back to sip her drink or puff on her cigarette. She had lit a cigarette the moment she sat down, but simultaneously announced that she was well aware of what a terrible habit smoking was and that she was going to quit soon but not yet.

 

Victor sidestepped any comment on smoking, and went immediately into a brief explanation of who he was and how he came to move to Sherburne. He actually got Doreen to grin when he told her about Big Bertha.

 

"It’s put Sherburne on the map," he said, "Newspapers love that story. Every time Bertha’s helped rescue a hunter—we’ve saved four so far—there are stories all over the place about it."

 

"Well, now I know something about who you are," Doreen said, "but it doesn’t answer this question—what exactly are you up to?"

 

"That’s simple. I’m just trying to cheer up someone who should allow herself to smile more often."

 

Doreen responded to that by raising her head and blowing a plume of smoke towards the ceiling. She stayed that way for a moment, her lips pursed to direct upward the last remaining puff of smoke. Then she lowered her head and placed the cigarette on the ash tray so that she could use both hands to draw back her hair and hold it behind her ears.

 

"So Lenore has filled you in on what happened between me and my old buddy, Markey," she said. "And I thank her for that since I have no desire to repeat the story. I will tell you this though. I don’t care for men who think they can swoop down like a vulture on someone who’s trying to recover from a broken love affair."

 

"My intentions are completely honorable," Victor said. To emphasize his point, he held up his right hand, and forming his fingers in a Boy Scout salute, he added, "Scout’s honor."

 

Doreen, smiling slightly, leaned over to get her cigarette and took one last drag before stamping it out.

 

"That may be hard for me to adjust to after Markey," Lenore said. "With him, you couldn’t believe anything he said. If he put in all the overtime he told me about, he would have been the highest paid guy at the shipyard. Stupid me, I actually believed he was working double shifts even though the newspaper was carrying stories about the possibility of layoffs because work was so slack."

 

"This Markey sounds like quite a talker."

 

"Double-talker is more like it. He’d go out for a quart of milk and disappear for a day or two. Then, when he came back, he’d tell this story about running into an old Army buddy who was broke and having trouble with his wife and how he had spent the entire time helping his buddy out. Listening to him tell the story, you knew that it was one hundred percent bullshit, but he was so good at it he’d have you believing him."

 

Victor had the uneasy feeling that if Markey, right then, had come strolling into the Old Town Inn, Doreen would have gladly listened to (and believed) his latest tale of dubious validity.

 

"I obviously don’t know the ins and outs of everything that went on between you and Markey" Victor said, "but I think you should consider yourself lucky that you learned the truth about him before it was too late."

 

"So I’m told."

 

"And you have doubts?"

 

"Hey, I agreed to have a drink with you. Let’s keep it at that."

 

That caused them to move on from there to a new subject, an exchange of desultory comments about their respective impressions of Sherburne. The sum total of Doreen’s remarks was that she didn’t particularly care for Sherburne because there was too much about it that reminded her of her hometown, Center Harbor, a place she referred to as Hicksville. She didn’t think much of the doctors she worked with at the hospital in Sherburne either, and wondered out loud why she hadn’t moved to Boston where she could be earning twice as much money at one of the big hospitals there.

 

Victor was more positive. He conceded that Sherburne was lacking in night life and the excitement that went with it, but he didn’t know how anyone could dislike a town that was surrounded by such an abundance of unspoiled nature. Doreen didn’t seem to think that all those trees and scenic views could offset Sherburne’s other deficits, but rather than dwell on that, she decided, after finishing her drink, to leave. She needed to turn in early, she said, because she was doing a favor to a co-worker by going in to relieve her an hour early the next morning.

 

It took another two weeks of phone calls before Doreen agreed to see Victor again. This time they went to dinner. Doreen that night proved to be a bit more engaged. At least she was reasonably attentive when Victor talked of his idyllic boyhood and how hiking and camping trips he had gone on with his grandfather had led indirectly to his career as a fish and game warden. She scoffed and accused Victor of putting her on when he said that he so loved his job that he would have done it even if he didn’t get paid.

 

Doreen, a picky eater, was not as forthcoming about herself. When she did speak, she told of a childhood that was anything but idyllic. Her mother, after a series of debilitating illnesses, had died when Doreen was still a sophomore in high school. Since her two older sisters were already married, Doreen was left to keep house for a father who quietly drank himself into a stupor each night.

 

"Before my mother died, my father was just another drunk,"she said, "but after that, he liked to think that getting shit-faced each night showed how heart broken he was over my mother’s death. That was sheer nonsense, of course. He never needed any excuse to sit there each night sucking on his bottle of cheap booze. His big accomplishment, one he bragged about his entire life, was that hungover or not, he never missed a day of work and never took a drink before quitting time. Three years after he retired, he finally quit drinking, and six months later he died from a massive heart attack."

 

That night, and again in the following week, in another dinner together, Doreen gave Victor a peck on the cheek as he was dropping her off. But after the third time they had dinner, Doreen, instead of kissing Victor goodnight, turned and said, "So when do you make your big move? Or do you still consider me too fragile?"

 

"Are you extending an invitation or just wondering if I’m interested?" Victor said.

 

"Oh, now we’re going to play a game of you-go-first. If that’s so, I’ll be the one who goes first. Do you want to stay over? Yes or no? And don’t take all night to give me an answer."

 

Victor, with a grin, said, "I just want to make sure that I’m not mistaken for a vulture."

 

"You’re not a vulture, okay? Does that clear things up for you?"

 

Doreen may have been the one who invited Victor to spend the night with her, but she turned out to be quite proper and circumspect in her approach to lovemaking. Victor, a bit tentative himself, was workmanlike and mechanical while Doreen responded to each of his maneuvers with either a quiet yes or no. Her involvement overall was much like that of a woman who was simply going about some household task, something like folding clean laundry or dusting her furniture. In the morning, when Victor left, the kiss that Doreen gave him may have been as meaningful and heartfelt as all of her gyrations and exertions the night before.

 

That they now began to top off their dates with Victor spending the night in Doreen’s bed didn’t seem to change dramatically the nature of their relationship. But it was becoming apparent to him that his courtship of Doreen, sedate and unhurried, was beginning to yield results. She laughed more easily now, didn’t smoke as much as before and sometimes made positive comments about the people she worked with. Even her appetite seemed to improve and she didn’t look quite as haggard. Yet she continued to talk of forsaking Sherburne for a more lucrative position in Boston. What am I doing in this godforsaken place, she would ask?

 

Victor usually responded to Doreen’s threats to leave Sherburne by reminding her that the cost of living in Boston would eat up any anticipated increase in her earnings. He also talked of drawbacks that came from living in Boston, impossible traffic, noise, dirty air and street crime that seemed to him, at least, to have reached epidemic proportions. When that didn’t seem to curtail Doreen’s frequent mention of her desire to leave Sherburne, Victor told her, "You should understand one thing. If you move to Boston, I’m coming right along with you."

 

"Oh great," she said, "and how do you plan to earn a living there? By patrolling the Boston Common, looking for anyone who’s shooting pigeons without a valid hunting license?"

 

"The point isn’t what I’m going to do for a living."

 

"I get the point."

 

"I’m serious."

 

"That you are, my friend, that you are. And that’s why you sometimes drive me buggy. I wish you’d get over the idea that it’s your job to save poor Doreen."

 

"So what are you saying, that you don’t need saving?"

 

"Maybe I did once upon a time, but look at me: Do I look as if I’m in danger of falling to pieces?"

 

"Exactly. If all I cared about was saving you, I’d be moving on by now. But notice—I’m still here."

 

 

 

 

When Doreen agreed to marry Victor, she seemed to do so only because she couldn’t find any way to counter the arguments of her two sisters and her nursing colleagues, all of whom kept telling her that Victor would make an ideal husband. Once married, Victor and Doreen followed a routine that didn’t differ much from their prenuptial relationship. Because of their schedules, particularly during the work week, Victor and Doreen often saw each other only when one was arriving home and the other was leaving. If Doreen worked a double-shift or Victor came home late two nights in a row, three or four days might pass when the only contact between them was the muffled kiss and quick embrace they exchanged as one of them was either getting out of or into bed. They usually managed, however, provided their schedules jibed, to go out to dinner on Saturday nights or maybe attend a party they were invited to. Their love making, as always, was both punctual and predictable.

 

Victor, off-duty, remained Sherburne’s all-purpose volunteer. At Rotary Club meetings, his hand was the one that went up first if the call went out for a work party to reseed the grass at the Little League field or a request was made for someone to head the fund drive to refurbish Sherburne’s memorial to World War II veterans. He was a permanent fixture, even serving at times as the energetic auctioneer, at the annual fund-raising auction to benefit the Sherburne Community Hospital, and at Christmas, any poor family answering a knock on the door was likely to find Victor, a Santa Claus hat on his head, distributing toys collected by the YMCA.

 

Doreen’s main interest in the first year after she was married was reclaiming the overgrown, weed-covered backyard of the house she and Victor had bought. She cut back and uprooted shrubs so dense they prevented any light from entering the downstairs rooms, replaced the weeds with grass and transformed a rock-strewn slope on the east side of their backyard into a colorful rock garden. In non-gardening months, she was part of a quilting circle and attended, off and on, a yoga class. Quite often, because she and her nursing colleagues ended up with days off in the middle of the week, they took day-long excursions to various shopping malls within a two to three hour radius of Sherburne.

 

Doreen and Victor had been married a bit more than two years when she was at the wheel of her car as she and two colleagues arrived at a new shopping mall near Portsmouth. She had just begun looking for a parking space when she spotted two rows over a car with the vanity plate, MAR-KEY. That caused Doreen to stop so suddenly her two friends lurched forward. The one in the front seat actually slammed her hands against the dashboard to keep her head from striking the windshield.

 

In apologizing to her passengers, Doreen explained her abrupt stop by saying she had just noticed two rows over an empty spot. It was three spaces away from Markey’s vehicle, and it took quite an effort from her to maneuver into that particular space, but she was intent on doing so, even though, by now, her palms were sweating and she felt a tingling across her scalp.

 

Doreen didn’t know why, but she had this inexplicable urge to get a closer look into Markey’s car. Once having parked, however, she went along with her friends as they began walking towards the entrance of the mall. They had arrived there when Doreen suddenly came up with a reason to return to her car.

 

Feigning exasperation with herself, she said, "Oh shit, I turned on my lights earlier, when we went through that foggy area, and I’m not sure I’ve turned them off."

 

That allowed her to turn back towards her car, but once out of sight of her friends, she went immediately to Markey’s car, where, peeking in, she saw a toy truck on the back seat, along with a little plastic bat and a whiffle ball. That didn’t reveal much more about Markey than she already knew, but it gave her more time to wonder how she might react if she ran into Markey inside the mall. What, for instance, was she supposed to say if she met Markey and he was with his wife and little boy? Knowing him, she could picture him giving her a big smile and hearty hello. She could even imagine him throwing his arms around her and acting in general as if nothing had ever happened between them.

 

No, suddenly she changed her mind. As much as she would have liked to see Markey, she didn’t want that to happen while her friends might be looking on. So when she returned to the mall and caught up with her friends, she trailed a step or two behind them, her eyes moving from side to side so that she could spot Markey before he saw her. By then, her plan, if she saw him, was to find some way to shield herself behind her friends, or maybe duck into a nearby store.

 

After an hour or so, and still a bit nervous about the possibility of meeting Markey, she suggested to her companions that they move to a nearby mall, over the border in Maine, because it had a better food court. She couldn’t deny a faint sense of longing as she maneuvered her car out of its parking space and drove by Markey’s car.

 

The next week, Doreen made a return trip to the mall—this time alone. When living in Portsmouth, she had had a dental bridge done by a dentist in the town where the mall was located, and now, as she told Victor, the bridge was bothering her so she wanted the dentist who had worked on her to take a look at it. That wasn’t a complete lie because Doreen did go to the dentist, but once the dentist looked at her bridge and assured her there was nothing wrong, she drove directly from the dentist’s office to the mall. There, she found Markey’s car parked in almost the same place.

 

On this visit, Doreen methodically made her way from one store to the next until she had traversed the shops on one side of the mall. She then made a U-turn and started down the next row of stores. She had passed by three shops before she approached one that sold sporting goods, and there, through the window, she saw Markey. The first thing she noticed was that he now had a mustache and a slight paunch. From the gestures he made, he seemed to be giving a clerk some instructions, but it was the name tag clipped to the front pocket of his shirt, that told her he was an employee of the store.

 

Without any hesitation, Doreen entered the store, making her way past a display of volley balls and stopping briefly to glance at baseball gloves before reaching an area set aside for golf clubs. That brought her close enough to Markey so that she could hear him telling the store clerk how and why he wanted her to rearrange a display of sweat pants and t-shirts. While listening to what Markey said, Doreen grabbed a golf club, a putter, and pretended to study it closely. She even bent over, looking as if she was lining up a putt. She was aware that her heart was beating faster as Markey turned away from the store clerk and headed towards a door that said Employees Only. That’s when Doreen, moving two steps to the left, placed herself directly in Markey’s path. When Markey spotted her, he came to a sudden halt, pulled back his head and slapped both hands to his chest.

 

Doreen, more calmly than she thought possible, said, "Pardon me, but I was interested in looking at these new clubs."

 

"Oh, they’re fantastic," Markey said, a big grin on his face. "But there are some better ones if you come right this way."

 

Doreen quickly replaced the golf club she was holding and followed along a few steps behind Markey. Then, inside the Employees Only room, Markey, quickly peeked around some shelves to see if there was anyone nearby.

 

"What the hell are you doing here?" he said. At the same time, he took a step towards her and grabbed both her hands.

 

"I told you. I was thinking of taking up golf so I was looking at some clubs and the next thing I knew—"

 

"I have my lunch break in l5 minutes," Markey said.

 

Without looking at her watch—Markey was still gripping her hands—Doreen said, "Oh, how sad. It so happens that I was heading for lunch right now."

 

Markey, letting go of her hands, hurried over to a coat rack and grabbed a Boston Red Sox warm-up jacket. As he put it on, he said, "Now that I think of it, I guess I’ll take an early lunch today. Give me a minute to tell my co-workers that I’m leaving. I’ll meet you at the McDonald’s in the food court."

 

A few minutes later, Doreen was seated at a table in McDonald’s when Markey entered. It took five minutes for him to explain that he had been laid off at the shipyard, but that it was the best thing that ever happened to him because there was more money and less work in managing the sporting goods store. It took Doreen less time than that to tell him—tears welling up in her eyes—that she could never forgive him for what he had done to her.

 

Markey, with a slight tremor in his voice, told her several times how sorry he was at what had happened. The biggest mistake of his life, he said, was allowing her to leave Portsmouth.

 

"But you were about to marry someone else," she said. "What was I supposed to do, wait around to see if I got invited to the wedding? And you didn’t allow me by the way—I decided on my own to leave."

 

Markey, instead of answering Doreen, began to complain about the way his wife mistreated him.

 

"No matter how much money I now bring in, she seems to think I that if I had been able to keep that shipyard job I’d end up owning the goddamned place someday."

 

"I just said you gave me no choice but to leave town," Doreen reminded him.

 

"Oh that, look, we would have been able to work something out,"

 

"Even when you had the kid?"

 

"Now you put your finger on it. To be honest, there’s plenty of times I’d tell her to get lost, except for the kid. She can’t do anything to me that’s ever going to make me give up my kid."

 

Fifteen minutes later—having left their lunch half-eaten—Doreen and Markey were in a motel that was only a few miles away from the shopping mall. Doreen had shed a few more tears and Markey had again told her how sorry he was, but it seemed that the two of them spent almost as much time figuring out how they could meet again as they did in making love.

 

Markey also put on a bravura display of his ability to talk himself out of any situation by phoning the sporting goods store and telling his assistant a story of how his car had broken down while he was out running an errand. But he had been towed to a filling station some five miles from the mall, and lucky for him, he said, the owner of the place happened to be someone he had known in high school. The garage owner immediately dropped whatever he was doing, so he could get Markey’s car repaired as soon as possible.

 

"Guaranteed, one hundred percent," Markey told his assistant, "you have my word on it—I’ll be back by five o’clock. And another thing, when I get there, you go home. I’m the one who’s working late tonight."

 

"One thing’s for sure," said Doreen, as Markey got back into bed, "You’re as good a bullshitter as ever."

 

Doreen insisted on one rule about any future contacts with Markey: She did not want him calling her at home. It was inconvenient for her, but she drove to a shopping area six miles outside of Sherburne, where she called him from a pay phone outside a Chinese restaurant that had closed. On his end, Markey would take the call in the sporting goods store, but he then went to a pay phone in the mall to call her back. That was how they arranged the two afternoons they spent together at a motel located midway between Sherburne and the mall where Markey was employed. The motel they used was minutes away from an outlet store for gardening supplies that Doreen sometimes shopped at on her days off.

 

At the end of their second meeting, Markey and Doreen both wished, as they so often did, that they could find some way to spend more than an afternoon together. That’s when Markey said, "Hey, how about hunting season? From what you tell me, it sounds like that’s when Victor spends practically all his time on patrol."

 

At that suggestion, Doreen came out with a laugh.

 

"What’s so funny?" Markey said.

 

"Oh, I just thought of something. Just be a hunter who’s reported missing and Victor will be out there, in the middle of nowhere, sounding that horn he invented, hoping it’ll lure you out of the woods. If we played it right, we might get to spend an entire week together."

 

Markey laughed at the idea, too, and neither he nor Doreen ever brought up the plan again, even though they had talked to each other twice between then and when the deer-hunting season began. Then, one night in early November, just as Doreen got in from work, she received a phone call from Markey.

 

She was upset that he had called her at home, but quickly forgot about that when he said he was calling from outside the general store near the town of Paysonville, which was 15 miles north of Sherburne. He and two friends had rented a cabin for a few days near Pound Ridge, Markey said, and they had just returned from a day of deer hunting. What were the chances, he asked, that he and Doreen could get together, tomorrow night, say?

 

At first she declined, but Markey made it sound as if it were a simple matter to carry out the plan Doreen herself had suggested.

 

"The way I figure it," he said, "if I don’t return to the lodge by dark, my buddies will be putting in a call to your old man. By the time, he begins looking for me, we can be having dinner somewhere and we can have that night and maybe part of the next day to ourselves while Victor’s out looking for me. At some point, voila, I find my way out of the woods. By that time, you’ll be back home, preparing to congratulate Victor for once again saving some guy who had spent all night and half the next day trying to retrace his steps."

 

Doreen then asked him to wait by the phone for a few minutes since she would have to change her schedule. She was able to reach a nurse she had substituted for the previous week, on a Sunday no less, so the nurse, in turn, agreed to swap days off with Doreen. That meant Doreen would be free the day after next. She then called Markey and said she would meet him the next night, at 5 p.m., at The White Fox Inn, which was l0 miles east of Paysonville.

 

"There’s only one thing," Doreen said. "How do you plan to get to the inn?"

 

"My car, of course."

 

"That’ll make it hard for Victor. It’s usually where the hunter’s car is that gives him some idea of where to begin his search."

 

"Okay, here’s what I’ll do. In the morning, I’ll stay behind for a bit after my buddies have gone out. I need my full eight hours of sleep you know. But they’ll know the general area where I’m going to be hunting. That should give Victor something to go on even if there’s no sign of my car. See you tomorrow night."

 

The call came in to Victor the next day at about 5 p.m. from Markey’s friends. A member of their hunting party, they said, was at least two hours overdue in returning to their lodge and now that it was getting dark they were afraid he might have lost his way coming out of the woods. Victor told the hunters he would meet them outside the town hall in Paysonville. He was in such a hurry to get the search underway that he didn’t find out until he met up with the hunters that the friend they were worried about was Lester Markey.

 

Learning that he would be searching for Markey did nothing to alter the routine Victor usually followed when he began his search for a lost hunter. First, he spread a map across the hood of the Big Bertha truck. A spotlight on the roof of the cab of the truck helped light the map. Then he and Markey’s two friends tried to determine the approximate area where Markey had been hunting. Victor was somewhat impatient with Markey’s friends because their explanation of where Markey might be was so vague. They hadn’t even been able to tell him where he might have left his car. Eventually, however, Victor was able to draw a red line around the area where he thought Markey might be.

 

Just before 7 o’clock or so Victor arrived at the spot where the signal from Big Bertha was most likely to be heard by Markey.

 

"This isn’t going to be easy," Victor told Markey’s companions. "The wind’s coming right at us, which affects how far the sound can carry. We might even have to move around to the other side of Pound Ridge."

 

Markey’s assessment seemed to be borne out after two hours went by with no sign of Markey. Now, it had also begun to mist. Victor knew that it was unlikely Markey had made his way to the other side of Pound Ridge because he would have had to cross the Black Diamond River, which was almost impossible since the closest bridge spanning the river was at least four miles downstream. Now, Victor began to wonder if Markey might have fallen and injured himself. If so, there would have to be a search conducted on foot.

 

At nine o’clock Victor told the firemen who were with him to radio back to their chief. He wanted the chief to put out a call for volunteers who would be able to join a search party in the morning. By midnight, the wind had become even stronger, and Victor again talked of moving Big Bertha to the other side of Pound Ridge. What would happen, Markey’s companions asked, if Markey was already heading in the direction of Big Bertha?

 

"I’ve thought of that," Victor said, "which is why I’ve hesitated at doing this. But it’s not a good sign if someone doesn’t show up after Big Bertha’s been blowing for a few hours."

 

At 3:00, the first three volunteers for the search party showed up. These were men who were familiar with that area, and they agreed, once they looked at Victor’s map, that either Markey was unable to walk out of the woods or had wandered too far away to hear Big Bertha. The latter possibility caused them to think it made sense for Victor to move Big Bertha to another locale.

 

The spot they and Victor chose was about five miles away, just about opposite of where they were currently located. Before he left, he told Markey’s friends to stay with the three volunteers just in case Markey emerged from the woods. The searchers would wait until 7 a.m. and then they, and any other volunteers who showed up, would fan out and begin heading towards the new spot Victor had chosen to place Big Bertha. Victor was thinking that somewhere between those two points they were likely to come upon Markey. The fire department ambulance that always accompanied Victor on his searches had already left for the new location by the time Victor had turned Big Bertha off and prepared to move.

 

The spot Victor had picked out was about a 20-minute drive from where he had been. About l0 minutes into his trip, he was rounding a curve just before driving past the White Fox Inn when he spotted a car in the Inn’s parking lot that looked like Doreen’s. He immediately slowed down to take a closer look, which only confirmed that it was indeed Doreen’s car. By now, he had practically come to a stop. That’s when he spotted, the vehicle in the space next to Doreen’s car. It had vanity plates that spelled out the name, MAR-KEY.

 

Victor didn’t waste any time planning his next move. Across the road from The White Fox Inn, strung out on a small slope, was a row of cabins that served as an annex to the inn during the busy summer season. Victor pulled into the driveway leading to the cabins and drove up the slope about hundred feet. That put him in a parking spot next to the first cabin. It also put his truck at an angle that enabled him to aim Big Bertha’s horn directly at the wing of the inn where Doreen and Markey’s cars were parked.

 

Victor then got out of the truck and started the compressor. By turning off the timing device, he made sure that Big Bertha’s wail would be constant and unending. In fact, once Big Bertha began to sound, Victor grabbed the knob on the manual control that slid along a metal rail, pushing it with such force that it went over a small metal ridge and remained jammed in the On position. Now, nothing would stop Big Bertha’s howl unless Victor shut the compressor off, which he had no intention of doing.

 

Only seconds after Big Bertha began to sound, lights began going on throughout the inn, and moments later, someone in a bathrobe—the inn’s owner, presumably—came out the front entrance of the inn and directed the beam of his flashlight towards Big Bertha. At first, the flashlight revealed only the source of the frightful noise that had so suddenly shattered the quiet of New Hampshire’s north woods, but once the inn owner crossed the highway and climbed the slope, he could make out more clearly Victor, his ear protectors in place, standing in the back of his truck.

 

Victor, in turn, barely noticed or acknowledged the approach of the inn owner because he seemed quite immersed, with the help of Big Bertha, in carrying out the rescue of a hunter who had been reported missing. At the same time, though, he couldn’t wait to hear Markey’s explanation of why a full-scale search had to be launched for a hunter who was, in reality, spending the night at one of the north country’s finest inns.