The Contribution

The following was written at a writing workshop in Italy in the mid-1990s. It is based on fact. 

Vincent LaFlamme backfired into town one morning early in March.  Looking up from my weaving, I saw his old, burgundy Mercedes slowly making its way down the snow covered hill.  Only a stranger would drive down Main Street ahead of the plow. The post office had just opened and a few people turned to watch the car make its way to a parking spot in front of the Downeast Realty office.  It shuddered, then stopped, like an old lady grateful for having made it that far.   

His black wool cape appeared first, its red satin lining glowing against the snow bank. Tossing the cape over one shoulder with a theatrical gesture worthy of Barrymore, he disappeared into the realty office below the editorial office of the Friendship Packet. 

The plow arrived next, heaving snow against the rear bumper of Vincent’s car, making quick escape impossible. A conga line of pickups followed in the plow’s wake, the occupants eager to get to Gail’s Variety for coffee and the morning news. By noon word had spread that Vincent LaFlamme had rented the old lighthouse.  At 12:25 Vincent arrived at Gail’s, heaved his rear up onto a stool and said, “Good afternoon, lady and gentlemen.”  His voice was like a bad impersonation of a second string actor -- British, but not by birthright.

The village of Friendship, Maine sits at the edge of a peninsula overlooking Penobscot Bay.  Most of the residents are from “away”, having ended up there by chance.  I discovered Friendship 18 years ago, the last stop on my vacation that year, and moved here ten years later.  Now I spend my days weaving and watching the seasons fold one into the other, looking out at the post office where everyone goes to trade gossip, post notices of potluck suppers, or sell baked goods to benefit the historical society.

It’s the rhythm of weaving that I like.  Tossing the shuttle back and forth through the warp yarns, the treadles clacking against each other as they move up and down, the soft whoosh of the beater against the weft. 

I headed to Gail’s, arriving soon after Vincent.  Earl Baker had just arrived, too.  Earl never sits on a stool, preferring to stand at the end of the counter, resting heavily against his wooden crutch to ease the pain of phlebitis.  Earl’s been away from Friendship only once in his life to serve in World War II.  The day he returned, he stopped first at the Variety store, then at the house on the waterfront that he still shares with his brother Walter and an old spaniel, before taking his skiff out to lay lobster traps in the bay as if he’d only been away overnight.  No longer able to tend traps, Earl carves sea gulls from scraps of lumber, paints them black and white and gray, glues them onto dowels and pushes them into blocks of wood.  Tourists think they’re folk art and buy them at Gail’s for more than they’re worth. 

 “Wheya ya from?” Earl asked the newcomer. 

“New York City,” Vincent replied, looking Earl up and down as if the smell of fish still lingered in his clothes.

“What ya doin’ up heah?”  The regulars leaned further over their coffee cups, buttocks straining under chinos.  Gail, the author of “Gail’s Grumblings”, a monthly column fueled by the discussions at her counter that appears in the Packet, was behind the cash register. 

“I just finished a play and decided to take a vacation,” Vincent said.  “I’m a costume designer.”  

“That so,” said Earl, pulling on the words like taffy.

Bubbles Wardwell, his pants permanently stained from wrestling lobsters into his boat, entered into the conversation as Gail walked down the line, refilling coffee cups.  “They just diyad Mame at the theatah up to Bucksport.  Cahn’t say I liked it.  Too much singin’ ‘n dancin’.  Couldn’t understand what they was sayin’.  Was theya singin’ ‘n dancin’ in your’en?  Can’t say I’d like it much ifn there was.”  Bubbles could be relied on to ask questions no one else had considered.

“No,” Vincent said, shifting on his platform, “It was a revival of Sunset Boulevard.  Pardon me, madame,” he said, turning toward Gail, “is the frankfurter one hundred percent beef?”  Gail scooped the package of franks out of the cooler and set about trying to find the answer.

“Why wouldja need ta design costumes for a revival?” Bubbles asked. “Seems they’d have some left ovah from the fust time.”  As I left Gail was still squinting at the hot dog wrapper.

Later that afternoon Maud deRatt appeared on Main Street.  A self-proclaimed witch with untamable black hair and a cell phone, Maud owns The Water Witch where she sells batik clothing of her own making.  She’s also a real estate agent, a surprisingly popular profession in a community of less than 1,000 people.  She’d taken Vincent to see the lighthouse when he’d arrived in town.  Oblivious to the rumors about her past that cling to her aura, Maud sails up Main Street like a ship leaving port several times every day, smiling at passersby, her large lips and teeth smudged with lipstick.

Toward dusk the following day, Vincent parked in front of Maud’s building, a large, dilapidated structure.  Once used by the Masons for their secret rites, it’s now used by the volunteer fire department for training.  “Might as well let the boys get familiah with it befoah it goes up in flames,” reasons Paul Merchant, who’s been the village fire chief since retiring from the boiler room of an Exxon tanker.  Paul never wears a coat even on the coldest days.

Vincent presented Maud with a bottle of peach brandy.  Maud served dinner on her claw-footed oak table, giant talons gripping the middle of a low stage left by the Masons.  Maud sits in the chair once used by the grand potentate, wearing a red fez exhumed from a closet, its gold tassel catching in her frizzy hair.  Her menu is always the same.  A stew of whatever vegetables and chicken parts were on sale the day before at the Friendship Market, inserted into a crock pot and set to a low boil.

Early the next day, she carried the information, gleaned during the evening’s conversation, into Gail’s, cornering me at the magazine rack.  The counter was unusually quiet, the men leaning away from their coffee cups to better hear what she had to say.  Earl, not known for subtlety, limped to where we stood, holding his bad leg off the floor, his shoulder sagging against his crutch.

“Vincent learned about Friendship from one of those two gay guys who lived in the Perkins house last summer.  You remember them, don’t you Earl?”  Earl’s bad foot hung at half-mast.  “He let me try his cape on.”  She wiggled her shoulders, settling into the memory.  “He’s going to look at my clothing line and give me some new ideas.”  Maud’s designs never changed from one season to the next, and that year would be no exception.

Vincent settled into the village, driving an assortment of widows to the weekly garden club meeting, borrowing books from Withrow Library, attending town council meetings, and entering into conversations at the post office and Gail’s.  At potluck suppers he added roasted Vadalia onions to the tuna casseroles and Jell-O molds, submitting recipes to Phoebe Cather’s cooking column in the Packet.  He even joined the Trinitarian Church, establishing his place among the 35 parishioners, third row center. 

On July 4^th, Vincent led the costume parade around the Common, cape flying, children following along dressed like Elvis, the Ladies of Friendship in summer dresses and gloves salvaged from village attics, Little Bo Peep leading a poodle masquerading as a sheep, and a miniature Norman Schwartzkopf in fatigues and a camouflage-painted, pedal-powered jeep.  Photos appeared on the front page of the Packet, Vincent front and center, prancing feet stepping high.  It was pure theater and he was in his element, as we all applauded from the sidelines.  Vincent had become part of the fabric of Friendship, weaving his presence into the town.   

The sirens ripped through a veil of fog on Halloween morning like a harpy gone mad.   Two police cruisers screamed all the way to the bank. 

Twenty minutes earlier, as I was sitting down at my loom, I’d seen Vincent run to his car from the Bangor Bank and Trust office, his cape like the wings of a bat, a wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his forehead.

He didn’t want to harm anyone, he told the jury, so he waited until there were no customers inside.  The widows acknowledged that Vincent “was always polite.”

The police caught Vincent near Camden with $12,582.00 stuffed into a paper bag.  Bubbles Wardwell, sitting on the bench in front of Gail’s, summed up Vincent’s residency in Friendship on the evening news:  “He did make an interestin’ contribution to th’ community.  I guess he’ll be contributin’ to another community of sorts now.” 

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