Storiesonline.net ------- Willie's Legacy by Openbook Copyright© 2005 by Openbook ------- Description: On a small, privately owned, Island off the Southeast U.S. coastline, a man buries his brother, and then bends himself to undertake a daunting task which he feels unprepared and unqualified to perform. This is his story and the judgement he assigns to the events that transpired. Codes: MF slow rom 1st cons ------- Chapter 1 I'd always looked up to Willie, but that was nothing unusual in itself. He was two years older than I, and he was my brother. He had just turned thirty two when he started having pains under both his arms and a tightness in his throat. Having never had a real illness before, Willie did his best to ignore things in the hope that the discomfort, whatever it was, would soon go away. Two months passed by, and still the pain under his arms remained, and the throat tightness got progressively worse, rather than better. In the end, it was Frannie, his wife, that finally convinced him to see the doctor and have it looked after. On the small Island where we all lived, Willie was the catalyst that made everything happen. He'd gone abroad for five years, finishing a mainland education, before taking an additional year to tour the parts of the world that he'd always wondered about while growing up. It was during this year long Odyssey that he'd met and fell in love with Frannie. Every Island woman and girl had been disappointed on the day that Willie returned with his beautiful Irish bride. It was remarked on many times that, over the next week, more Island girls lost their virginity's than in any previous year. They had pretty much all been saving themselves in the hopes that Willie would return and pick them to be his bride. It was also said that most of the boys and men, who were the recipients of these virgin gifts, had been forced to put up with torrents of tears and anguished wailing while they ravished these virgins for the very first time. I myself, had been offered numerous opportunities to be the second choice of some of those girls, but I gently turned each offer down, not wanting to serve as a poor second choice, or a Willie substitute. I had hopes of someday finding someone who would want me as her first choice, not as some, lesser, consolation prize. Ten years later, and I was still looking. The doctor was enough concerned about his earliest preliminary findings that he sent Willie away for further testing and consultations on the mainland. Willie spent two weeks at Johns Hopkins undergoing a full battery of diagnostic exams. In the end, all the physician's were in agreement about what Willie was afflicted with, and Willie was allowed to return to the Island to get his final affairs in order. After my father had died, Willie had inherited the Island. He owned everything, lock, stock and barrel, fee simple, and unencumbered. My father had always told us that we, meaning our family, owned the Island and other things in an unofficial trust of sorts, a partnership that was implicit, rather than being either a legal obligation or somehow, binding on us. We were the caretaker's of the Island, and ownership was more a legal technicality, than an actual state of being. When Willie returned to die, there were seven hundred and eleven souls living on the Island. Word quickly spread about Willie's condition, and soon the Island was in utter turmoil. Uncertainty usually produces fear, and this fear produces some high emotions and panic. When my father had died, everyone had known that Willie would be taking over, and there was only the sadness at my father's passing. With the news of Willie's rapidly approaching death, the Island residents were fearful of the change that might be coming. This was fueled by a rumor that Frannie was going to sell the Island and move back to Ireland with Seamus and Megen, Willie and Frannie's two young children. I didn't see Willie for several days after he returned. I knew that he'd want to spend time alone with Frannie and his children. I walked the windward side of the Island, head down and chin tucked in, dealing in my own quiet way with the loss that I was already feeling. My parents had only been able to produce two children before my mother drowned in a sailing accident when I was two. My father never remarried, and we were raised by most of the Island's women. Willie and I were welcomed in every Island home and felt like we both belonged to a huge, extended, Island family. It never really occurred to me that we were the Island's Royal family until the week of my father's passing. As I walked back and forth among the dunes and washed up flotsam, I couldn't help wondering what I'd do if Frannie did sell the place of my birth. I'd never left this Island because all I had ever wanted was right there for me already. I'd never applied myself in school because Willie was already taking care of that himself by undertaking a strict and comprehensive course of study. He was being groomed and prepared for the role he would one day have to undertake. As the younger son, I was allowed to indulge myself in whatever made me happy or caught my interest and fancy. I was a decent sailor, able to make my way competently, in anything with sails that was under sixty feet in length. I could swim as well as anyone I knew, and I could dive beneath the waves and stay under for two minutes or more on a single breath. Climbing the palm and coconut trees was easy for me, and I had hunted the wild pigs with success from the age of nine. I knew everyone on the Island, and had never been in a fight or had to strike anyone in anger. Those were my skills and accomplishments, not much in the way of either foundation or preparation, with which to undertake a new career, in a strange place, where I'd be unknown to everyone. I looked behind me as I walked, hearing a distant voice calling after me. It was Willie, and he strode after me with his long steps, that just seemed to glide above the sand. I never knew how he managed to do that, as I'd sink down to my ankles when I walked along the same sandy path as him. "Clark, hold up now. Don't force me to keep chasing after you." I stopped and waited for him to reach me. When he was close enough, he circled me into his arms, and the two of us shared a moment of closeness and sadness. We didn't discuss the health news, mostly because neither of us had anything to add or say about the medical reality. Willie loosened one arm from me, and with the other arm he pushed me forward in the direction I had been going before he approached me. "It's good to see you C.C., I was hoping to run into you before now. You got a new girl or something?" "Willie, I figured I'd give you some time with Fran and the little nippers first. It's gotta be hard trying to explain things to everyone. Doc Mahler told me what the people over at Hopkins said. I don't understand why shit like this has to happen. First pop, and now you. It's like no one I give a rat's ass about ever makes it past forty five or so. How can you get cancer like that, throughout your whole system, in less than a year?" "Well, the symptoms for a year maybe, but the cancer, who knows when it first started?" I looked at my brother then, waiting for him to tell me about how long he'd felt bad things happening inside him. I wanted to cry, and to go out and destroy something, all at the same time. It was so unfair. It wasn't just Willie and Frannie and the kids and me. It was the hopes and lifestyles of more than seven hundred people that were being affected by this cancer. It was killing Willie, but none of the rest of us were exactly going to escape untouched by it. "I've got two or three months C.C., that's what we need to worry about now. We need to make sure that everything can go on pretty much like before, after my time is done. It's going to be up to you, big guy, that's what Frannie and I decided." I stopped and just stared at him. There was no way that he could even believe that I could fill in for him. I didn't want to, that was the first thing, but even if I did, I wasn't qualified to do it. I'd watched him preparing for years to do what he now did. I remembered the first year or two after dad died, the sixteen and eighteen hour days that Willie had to put in seven days a week. All the daily decisions that needed to be made, and how one thing always affected ten others. Willie made mistakes too, plenty of them in the beginning, and that's where most of the time was spent, doing things to make the mistakes less costly and harmful to the Island. Our economy was a fragile thing, and not at all self sustaining. Food had to be shipped in and money that we made in mainland investments had to be used to keep everything balanced and working. I knew nothing about how things worked on the Island. I turned on the shower, but I didn't know what it took to keep all the pipes working and the water supply clean and safe. Those were Willie's responsibilities. "Frannie needs to sell the Island then Willie. I can't do it." He just looked at me with those sad eyes that I'd seen all of my life. It always hurt me more to disappoint Willie than anyone else, even our father. He knew I wasn't trained for this. It wasn't fair for him to ask me either. "We're not selling C.C. It isn't an option, so just forget that, okay? When I die, the Island goes to you. I don't control it, that's in the original charter. Frannie won't be leaving. Megen and Seamus, this Island is their birthright, so they aren't leaving either. You need to be the caretaker now. When Seamus gets older, if you've done a good job and gotten him trained right, maybe then you can turn it over to him and go back to sailing and fishing and hunting all day. Not before then though. Do a good enough job and you'll get to sit back when you're fifty five and start living your perfect life again." "I can't do it. Nothing you can say is going to make me qualified to do it Willie. Maybe we can hire someone to come over and manage it for us?" "I really feel bad for you Clark. If I could change places with you I would. I'm sure you think that my dying is a lot easier than your having to take care of things for a few years. To me though, I'd love the chance to stick around and do what I always planned on doing. You didn't ever plan for anything C.C. Don't you think it might have been a good idea to look in once in a while just to see how things ran? Didn't it ever occur to you that this day might come? You're thirty, and you've never done a day's work in your life. You need to grow up, and it better be fast, because in a month, when my strength starts to fail, and they're shooting me up with pain killers, you won't have anyone else to answer the questions that you need to be asking me now." "You never asked me to learn anything Willie. Today's the first I've heard that I was your backup plan for the Island. Couldn't you have at least warned me, or dropped a few hints?" I was scared and, maybe, more than a little bit pissed at how he was treating me now. All of my life I checked with Willie about almost every decision I'd made. When dad died, I never did anything without Willie telling me that it was okay. He wasn't being fair now. "I'm sorry C.C. You're right. I thought there was more time and that it wasn't necessary for you to learn. I'm sorry. I guess I just don't want everyone to suffer because I wasn't prudent enough to anticipate this possibility. I'm scared now more than I've ever been. Not just of dying, although that's no picnic either. I'm scared for Frannie and the kids, for you, and for the Island and all it's people. I've botched things up badly and I need you to step in and pull everyone out of the mess I've made. I'm a poor steward, and dad would be disappointed in how I'm leaving the responsibility he entrusted to me." I hadn't seen Willie cry since my father's funeral, almost nine years before. Both of us were crying now. I couldn't do what he wanted me to do, but I couldn't let him die thinking that his whole life, and what he believed had been his sole purpose for existence, was ending in abject failure either. "Willie, if you could learn it, how hard can it be? You think I can learn it all in a single day, or should I plan on it taking two or three?" He looked at me with the look I'd always wanted from him. We walked back to his office at the plantation. He started right in during the walk back, letting me know that Frannie would be a big help to me, and telling me who on the Island really understood how different things worked. When we got to his office he started in by showing me where all the paperwork was kept, and how the various accounts were all interconnected with each other. We sold tea, tobacco leaf, sugar and fish to the mainland and bought almost everything else we needed from them. There was a complicated investment portfolio which had to generate sufficient income to pay for the difference between what we earned from sales and what we spent for supplies and for replacement parts for the worn out Island systems. We had no phones, and our electricity came from three small diesel generators and some windmills hooked up to batteries. Our water system was a natural cistern and jerry rigged pipes that had been set up and added to in a haphazard manner over the past fifty years. It cost my family more than one hundred thousand dollars of our family's investment income every year to keep the Island economy afloat. In the eight plus years that Willie had charge of the Island, family income from Island activities had dropped to the point where we were dipping into investment principal every year for the past four years. This year, our annual shortfall was projected to be more than twenty thousand dollars. Of the seven hundred residents on our Island, only sixty or so contributed to our economy in any direct manner. Until that day, I was one of the heavy majority that had contributed nothing. We owned a store on the Island, but people just came by and took what they wanted or needed, and wrote down in a book the things that they'd like us to get for them. No one ever paid for anything. Willie told me that was how it had always been, and that was how our father told him to continue doing it. I used that month he'd promised me, and a lot more besides. As Willie began taking more and more pain medicine, the time we spent together became more about two brothers saying goodbye, and less about the old guy breaking in the new guy to the workings of his job. Willie began to slowly disconnect and drift away from all of us. Cancer can be all consuming, eating away at more than just the interior organs of it's victim. The day finally came when Frannie begged me to leave Willie alone with her and the children. She felt that seeing me made Willie feel his guilt at having somehow failed the Island more intensely. She wanted him to die surrounded by the successes of his short life, and not what he perceived as his failures. Reluctantly, I said goodbye and told him that I loved him. As tradition demanded, the plantation bell was rung five times, telling the Island that Willie was finally at peace. I heard the bell as I walked not far from where Willie had caught me that day when he first told me that I was to be his successor. I dropped to my knees and finally let out my own anger and my own very real fear of failure. With Willie now dead, some large part of me wanted to jump in one of the fishing boats and head off to the mainland. I knew I could easily lose myself in one of the cities on the coast and find a way to live out my life being only responsible for myself. If I'd done what I wanted to do, this would be a far different story. It was dark out when I finally got my emotional things together and stood back up and walked home to my small shack. I got up in my hammock and rocked myself to sleep. Life on the Island for me had always been so simple. I fished and hunted and walked all over watching to see what everyone else was doing. When I got hungry I went to someone's house and they fed me and gave me something to drink. In thirty years no one had ever turned me away. I would take my fish and bring them to houses and divide the catch up among the people who fed me. The same held true for any wild pig that I killed. I often helped people trap sea turtles and to harvest the delicious sea turtle eggs when they were laid and covered on the beach. Coconuts, mangoes, pomegranates, bananas and other fruits could be picked from the trees while I was walking around. I knew who liked what, and would often drop things off as I walked by. Rock lobster was something I had to dive for, but I knew all the places where they could be found and was always ready to go for a quick dive. When Willie died, my perfect Island lifestyle died with him. We buried him next to my father, and near the headstone we'd put up for my mother when she'd drowned and her body hadn't been found. Tradition dictated that I needed to speak at every Island funeral now. Willie's funeral was my first official act as the new owner. I said some words and spoke of what Willie had meant to me, and about how he always wanted to do his best for the Island. I told the people that Willie had been the last of the traditionally trained owners, and that I would be flying without a compass or any training to speak of. I ended by telling them all that there would be big changes coming and that they better get prepared. After the funeral, I walked Frannie and the kids back to the plantation, and then I turned to head back to my shack. "Where are you going Clark? Your place is here now. I've moved all of our things out of the big room. That's where you are to live now. I'm staying in Poppy's old room until the children and I decide what we'll be doing." After my mother had died, my father couldn't stand their huge bedroom suite anymore, and so he'd moved everything of his out to a big downstairs room on the leeward side of the great plantation house. His room had opened up to the veranda in the side yard and that was where he'd spent the remainder of his life. That room was right next to Willie's office, now mine, I had to keep reminding myself. I had planned to use Pop's old room myself on nights when the weather was bad and I didn't feel like walking back over to my shack. When Willie and Frannie came back to the Island, my father had installed them in the main suite where he and my mother had spent their entire married life. No one had asked me or told me of their plans for me living there. I didn't think I'd be comfortable living up there in that room that was more than three times as big as my comfortable shack. I hadn't slept in a real bed for more years than I cared to remember. I didn't think that it was a good day to upbraid Frannie for being presumptuous about dictating where I was to sleep. I knew that I could hang my hammock out on the upstairs balcony anyway. My parents had a hammock out there for many years, and my father had left it when he moved out of the room. It was gone now, but I could get another, or make a new one if I had to. I went upstairs after telling the family good night, and found that someone had packed up most of my things in wooden boxes and carted them over from my shack. My old hammock was on top of one of the boxes and it only took me ten minutes to plait a braid that extended the hammock to fit the two large hooks that stretched across the veranda railing's six by six support beams. It was a little lower than I was used to, but it would serve unless a rain squall came in from the East. Luckily, that was very unlikely for another six months. I slept out on the balcony, comfortable enough considering that it was the first time I'd been back sleeping in the plantation since I was twelve years old. My father hadn't believed in being too controlling of his children, especially with me. He pretty much let me make my own living and eating decisions as long as I reported in to either him or Willie at least a couple of times each week. In the ten years before his death, I couldn't remember my father ever needing to come looking for me. I would see him almost everyday anyway, because the Island wasn't that large, and because I made it a point to see a lot of the Island every single day. I may not have done much that was productive, but I made sure that everyone knew that I was still around and willing to pitch in if needed. I came downstairs at about seven the next morning and went into the owner's office. For the first time I sat down at Willie's desk and swiveled in his chair. I was four months from my thirty first birthday. I stood at about six one and weighed somewhere near one ninety. I could read and write and do sums to at least a tenth grade level. There wasn't a single paper in the owner's office that I'd ever signed myself, not a contract or agreement that I'd ever approved or ratified, but by some process that I still didn't understand, and knew that I had never really agreed to, I found myself responsible for everything on the Island. My Island now, and my responsibility too. I wasn't qualified by either skill or temperament for the job I found myself filling, but I'd do my best and hope that a combination of luck and willing knowledgeable advisers would see me through until Seamus was ready and able to take over for me. My goal was simple. I wanted to keep the Island afloat financially until then, and I'd try to see that everyone here could go about their normal lives able to live like we'd all lived for the past hundred years or so, on this beautiful serene Island of ours. When I saw the double doors to my father's old room open sometime within that first hour that I was sitting in Willie's chair, I was caught up in the sight that Frannie gave me as she stood between me and the morning light wearing a thin white nightgown. With the strong sunlight behind her I could plainly see the outline of her body underneath her gown. She was a gorgeous woman, although caring for Willie in the last days of his illness had taken it's toll, her clear fair Irish complexion and her wonderfully muscled and toned body were on full display. I'd always marveled at Willie for summoning the confidence to have ever approached this Irish Goddess, and never more so than when I saw her standing there in that light, posing for me, both of us knowing that this was a deliberate act on her part. It constituted an unequivocable offer, I was sure. It appeared that my beautiful sister in law had made a momentous decision about her own future, and about the futures of her children as well. I found myself wondering whether it had been her decision or something that Willie had pressed upon her. I had never been with a woman. This was a decision that I had made on my own. Over the years I'd had many opportunities, but I'd never given in to my desires and cravings. I'd carried a vision of what I wanted in a woman. Frannie, silhouetted in that sunlight, surpassed that vision in almost every aspect. I felt myself grow hard. At the same time, I was determined that I'd do nothing to dishonor either her memory of Willie, or the high regard I held both of them in. I stood up from my chair, knowing that my erection was plainly visible outlined against the pant leg of my thin white cotton trousers. I bowed slightly in her direction, acknowledging her even though I couldn't trust my voice to speak to her right then. I walked outside and went looking for a morning meal. Surely Frannie knew that this was going to complicate my situation, at a time when I was already overwhelmed. I closed my eyes and traced mentally the shape that she had so casually allowed me to see. Willie had once told me that Frannie was unlike any woman he'd ever known. He hinted that he'd known his fair share, and more, while attending university. As I'd admitted to having had no experience with girls or women, Willie had not attempted to go into specifics with me. "She's the perfect balance and blend C.C., no inhibitions or hold backs. She has beauty, brains and an unlimited ability to enjoy life. I tried to get her to bring Fiona, her sister, here for you, but she absolutely refused to." We'd never spoken of her like that again, but I remembered the look on his face as he described her. Willie had never seemed more enviable than at that moment in time. While he lived, I'd coveted nothing of Willie's. Was I going to end up taking his place in every aspect of his life? Would I somehow lose myself, my own identity, and become Willie's surrogate, a father to his children, husband to his wife? Is that what I'd settle for? I could certainly have settled for far less. ------- Chapter 2 I spent all of the next month doing a careful, house by house census of the Island's population. It had shocked me when Willie had claimed that only sixty people contributed directly and positively to the Island's economy. There were now seven hundred and ten of us living on the Island. My preliminary data showed that there were forty seven children under age five, thirty two aged five to nine, forty seven between ten and fifteen years old, and fourteen that were between sixteen and seventeen. Under children I had a total of one hundred and forty. There were seventy four boys and sixty six girls. None of the children had jobs that made material contributions to the Island economy. There were two hundred eleven Island residents between the age of eighteen and thirty four. Of these, one hundred thirteen were males, and ninety eight were females. Thirty one of the males were engaged in productive labor that benefitted the Island economy. Eleven of the females were productive in the economy as well. This meant that one hundred and sixty nine people in our prime working age demographic were uninvolved in producing anything that directly contributed to the economy of the Island. I was shocked when I saw that number. I wondered how my family could have permitted and allowed something like that to take place. I knew that I had long been one of the residents that was non-productive, but I hadn't realized that I was the norm rather than an exception. I began to see why Willie had encountered so much trouble balancing the income with the outgo. The thirty five to fifty nine age group contained three hundred forty six residents. This consisted of one hundred thirty three males and two hundred and thirteen females. Twenty one of the males were productive to the Island economy, as were fourteen of the females. Again, that meant that three hundred eleven in that age group were classified as economically non-productive. There were thirteen residents aged sixty or more. Our oldest resident was "Granny Torres" who claimed to be ninety seven, but was probably closer to eighty from the ages of her children still living on the Island. Tony, her eldest, was fifty seven, and he remembered his mother being a young and pretty woman when he was growing up. The other twelve were sixty to seventy, and were all females for some reason. Tony Torres was our oldest resident male at fifty seven years nine months of age. None of the eldest residents were economically productive for the Island. By my tally, seventy seven people added to the wealth of the Island. That was a better number than Willie had given me, but that still represented barely more than ten per cent of our population. I knew all of these people too, and I knew that many of them were close to being self sufficient in terms of meeting their own food needs and in maintaining their homes and the paths leading from their properties to the central congregating areas of the Island. It wasn't all simple black and white numbers that I was dealing with. We had forty people engaging in our commercial fishing fleet, but there were another six that operated the boat that delivered fish to the mainland. Only two people grew our tea, but seven others worked the harvests that occurred several times each year. Five of the tea harvesters also worked in the fishing industry as well. Three people tended the tobacco leaf growing, but they grew their tobacco on pieces of land maintained by several other families who didn't participate in the planting, tending or harvesting. The sugar cane was spread out on one whole side of the Island. Many people worked in the cane fields during harvest, but only five spent time clearing and burning the fields for later new growth. There probably wasn't a house on the Island that didn't have three or more machetes that were kept sharp and ready to help with the cane harvests. I had always worked the cane harvests for at least a portion of the cycles. Another fact I unearthed was that our commercial fishing hadn't produced a net operating profit in the past seven years. Our boats were in degraded shape and we had no one on our Island who was able to perform anything more complicated than simple maintenance on the engines on any of the boats. We had lost a lot of our fishing skills when people who knew their trade had stopped teaching it to our young. More than half of our total work force was involved in plying a trade that wasn't making us any money. If we used profit as a standard to judge productive labor, we had twenty seven people engaged in work that returned a profit to the Island. I started looking closer at the investment returns that Willie had been getting. What I found really made me nervous. My father had generated a steady five per cent return on average each year. It varied from four point eight three per cent to five point twenty one per cent over the twenty three years he was in charge of investments. Willie had averaged just over thirteen point seven three per cent per year. There was no way that I could ever equal that kind of high return, and it would be crazy for me to even attempt it. Willie was investing in sophisticated leveraged investments where he was separating different components of yields and selling off the separated pieces as desireable strips. He was also trading in energy futures and clean air credits. I had no idea how to do any of that, and didn't even have my own checking or savings account. "Frannie, can you please come help me with this?" I was out in the hall in front of the plantation office when my sister in law was walking by. I showed her the notes I'd made detailing Willie's annual income yields and asked her if she knew how he'd managed to perform so well year after year. "That's what he studied in school Clark. Finance was his main field of study you know? He was always most confident about that aspect of his stewardship. To him, none of the rest of it made any financial sense. He said it was just as well that we grew tobacco leaf for cigars since we were more Communistic than Fidel in Cuba. Have you figured out about the fishing business yet?" "You mean that it loses money every year? Yeah, I've figured that out too. At least we make money with the cane and the tea and the tobacco leaf." "Willie wanted me to tell you that you need to keep the fishing fleet going though because it produces a tax write off greater than it's cash on cash losses. Willie offset all of the gains from the agriculture by the paper losses on the fishing. He said that we eat a lot of the fish that are caught and they don't count against us as income. Also the diesel fuel for the fleet is used to power the Island generators. Without the fishing we wouldn't have electricity when we need it. Some of the batteries for the windmills are also part of the fishing fleet components." All of this information made me realize that I had to get greater detail before I could start making meaningful decisions about Island economy changes. Well, at least I had a better handle on who wasn't working and producing for the Island. The next day I rode to the mainland when they delivered our fishing catch to the cannery. It was my first time on the mainland, and I'd only ever been to three or four other small Islands before, and that had been when I was out sailing with my father. It was somewhat intimidating seeing how big the city was where we landed, and it only had a population of seventy thousand. I wondered what New York or Chicago looked like. I went to the unemployment office there and signed up to talk with a counselor. When I explained why I had come to see him, he thought that I was crazy. I assured him that all of the Island inhabitants were U.S. citizens, and showed him the part I'd read from one of their pamphlets about training programs for the chronically unemployed workers. He took me over and introduced me to a nice lady who was his supervisor. She listened politely to what I had to say, taking notes from time to time, and then told me that they would send out a team to verify my claims on the Island. I offered to transport her team round trip for three hundred dollars, and that included two night's stay at the plantation. She told me that she'd have to get back to me about that. I gave her our mainland post office box and told her that we only picked up our mail on Tuesdays and Fridays when our fleet delivery boat was in the city. I hurried back to the cannery dock and could see that everyone had been waiting around for me to get back aboard. I didn't get back to the plantation until after nine that night. I was hungry when I got in and had to knock on Frannie's bedroom door to ask her where some food was that it wouldn't cause a problem for me to eat. She got up and made me two nice ham and grilled cheese sandwiches. When she put them down in front of me I thanked her and bit right into one of them. It was good, and I told her so. She told me that it had been one of Willie's favorites when he needed to stay up and work late. "How did you like the mainland Clark? Was it truly your first time going there?" She sat down at the table with me and I told her what I'd seen and done over there. After I told her what I had been trying to get accomplished with the unemployment office, Frannie laughed and clapped her hands together. When I told her that I had offered transportation and lodging for three hundred dollars, I was afraid she would cough up a lung as hard as she was laughing. It took only two weeks before the team made arrangement with us to transport them out to the Island so that they could conduct field interviews for skill training placements for three hundred of our residents. I selected the three hundred that I wanted interviewed and explained to all of them what we were doing and why it needed to be done. I wanted some of our residents to learn new, and hopefully valuable skills, but I also wanted to take full advantage of the money that the government was willing to spend to train and retrain workers who came from certain categories of the labor force. I had farm workers (cane harvesters), displaced fishermen, and tobacco industry workers. All three of these category of workers was entitled by federal mandate to training and either extended unemployment benefits or training living allowances. I had several buildings that were currently unused that could be leased to the government and used for training, and nine unused bedrooms in the plantation house that I could rent out nightly to teachers and program administrators. We had three boats that were licensed to carry up to fifteen passengers with the tickets held by our captains and the certifications of the boats themselves. The interview process took longer than we expected, but we finally managed to get two hundred and fourteen of our applicants accepted in one retraining program or another. I made the state a good offer on three training buildings and got a signed lease for six of our plantation rooms at thirty dollars per night per room. We served three meals per day and they cost fifteen dollars a day. It was a family style menu and each guest had to either opt in or take care of his or her own food needs. With all of the rentals, leases and transports, the Island was taking in over four thousand dollars per week. The residents in training for the various programs were being paid $784.00 per month per student, and the shortest training program was for thirteen weeks. Frannie acted as hostess for the plantation rooms, and we brought in several residents to cook and help with the room clean ups and the linen and towel laundering. Frannie and I jointly decided that we wouldn't take any of the training money from the residents, but that we were going to start charging people for a lot of the things they were ordering from our store. For the first time in our store's fifty year history it started showing an income. Not a profit, but having an income was a great beginning for us. People started getting used to paying for the things that they wanted or thought they needed. I used some of the money coming in from the unemployment training to get an unemployed marine maintenance and engine mechanic to come over to the Island and work on the fleet engines and to help train a few of our residents in marine maintenance. We let him stay in my old shack, and he got his meals with the families of the people he was providing training to. His classroom was whichever boat he was currently working on. All his people seemed to be learning good skills and our fishing fleet started looking like it might not sink if caught in any type of real seas. I withdrew the old directive that Willie had issued where the boats had to stay within sight of the Island at all times. This allowed the boats to go out to areas where the prospects of a good catch were far better. It didn't seem like it was possible, but all too quickly a year had passed since Willie had died. Frannie and the children dressed up in their best clothes and went up to the hill and visited Willie's grave. I had been going up there two or three times a week, quietly and all by myself, explaining some of my ideas to Willie and talking about the processes I had gone through to arrive at the decisions I had been making. I knew that Willie wasn't in a position to hear me, or certainly to make comments or suggestions, but I still wanted to run some of the things by him if only to get them better organized in my own mind. While I was up there, I decided that it wouldn't hurt anything to let him know about the thoughts I'd been having about Frannie and the future I hoped she and I might have together someday. Frannie had done some other things to let me know that she was available to me if I was interested. I was very interested, but I wanted to wait for the whole year, and to also make sure that she didn't think that I thought I was exercising some right of inheritance with her. She and Willie had been good together, but I was no Willie. I waited another week, until the weekend when all the guests had returned back to the mainland for a period of time. I arranged for two Island women to come over early and get Seamus and Megen and take them down for their first cane harvesting party. I watched from my balcony as the children were led away from the plantation house, and then I got dressed and went down to my office and knocked on those big double doors that connected the two rooms. "Come in Clark." My heart was beating quicker than normal and I was as nervous as I ever remembered being. There weren't many men still untried and tested with women at my age. I opened the doors and looked over at Frannie who was lying in her bed, her head and back propped up on several pillows. Her red hair was still piled up in the bun she tied it in when going to bed at night. She was still in her night clothes and had her covers pulled up almost to her neck. She was lovely just like she was, no makeup or other adornments were necessary to make her more beautiful. I knew some of the pleasure Willie must have felt seeing her like that almost every single morning of his adult life. As I walked over to the side of her bed, I knew that nothing I'd prepared or rehearsed would serve me as I tried to convince her that I was someone who could offer her a better life than what she now enjoyed. I found myself losing the little bit of confidence that I'd managed to build up after reviewing all that had happened in the year since Willie had died and left me in charge. It was true that we had generated enough in Island revenues that we hadn't needed to use any of the meager profits our mainland investments had produced. I'd generated a whopping three point zero three per cent, more than ten full percentage points of gain less than Willie's career average return. I was no Willie, but I was sure that Frannie was all too aware of that. "Frannie I wanted to see you today. I think it's time the two of us had a discussion to see if there is some way the two of us can be more together." I stopped and waited to see if she would stop me or divert me from stating my case to her. She was still smiling at me, so I took that as a positive sign and started to move further into my plea. "I know that you were used to Willie, that it was him that you loved and married and made a family together with. I always said that I wanted my own woman, someone who wouldn't feel like she had to settle for less than Willie." Frannie held up her hand then and stopped me before I could continue on. "Clark, Willie isn't here. If he were, neither of us would be having this conversation would we? I'm still here though, and I don't have to choose between you and Willie. I'd be choosing between you and whoever else the Island might turn up to court me. Who would you say gives you the most competition for the women's affections here on the Island Clark? If I was to answer my own question, I'd be forced to admit that no one does. I'm afraid though that you will always try to measure up to the impossibly high standards that you have always attributed to your brother. He warned me that you would do that you know? When he got sick he was always talking about how disappointed in him you'd be when you discovered how poorly he'd managed the Island's resources. He told me that you'd do a better job because you really knew everyone on the Island, and that you'd made all of them your family for your entire life. Willie could never have done that Clark. His gift wasn't that broad." "The money he made with the mainland investments." "It wasn't sustainable Clark. You saw the risks he was forced to take each year as the other Island incomes tapered off. He projected that he'd need to earn twenty five per cent annual returns within two more years just to not deplete the principal every year. He stood pacing in his office late on many nights, telling me that it just wasn't possible to do. In a year you've instituted sustainable growth and changes to the economy of the Island. You've gotten residents to train and acquire the skills that can produce money to keep our Island on a firm economic footing for many years to come. The fishing was profitable, cash on cash, for the first time in many years. The people who live here are looking forward to the coming years, unlike the way it's been for the decade or two before. They have hope that something good is in their futures. Hope is crucial for happiness." " I want to live here with you, to help raise Seamus and Megen, and to try to do my best for the people here, our Island family." "I don't want to be a piece in your life's puzzle Clark. I need to be a hunger deep inside you that nothing else will satisfy. I need a man with a passion for life. Can you summon up some passion Clark?" "I don't know Frannie, I've never tried to." "Willie told me something else too Clark, because he knew that you could probably make it to this point, but that then you'd pull back and try to play it safe again. He said that has been your pattern since childhood. He told me to help you get past that one stumbling block that always seemed to stop you from pressing forward with your plans." As she spoke, Frannie shrugged out of her night clothes. I watched her with fascination as she managed somehow to do that while still keeping her covers up so that nothing important got exposed. "I'm totally naked now Clark, underneath this coverlet there is no obstruction to what you claim you want. You have to come forward though to claim it because I won't go farther than this." She lay there, supported with her pillows and keeping the comforter secure up to her neck. I wanted to rip off that cover and feast my eyes on her naked body. I wanted to throw off my own clothes and ravish her the way I knew that Willie would have done. Instead, I stood there thinking of Willie and knowing that she could never accept me like she'd accepted him. She was staring right at my face, and I knew that she could tell that my passions weren't adequate to the challenge she had issued. I began the slow process of withdrawal, knowing that some things were never meant to be. I'd done all that I was capable of doing. I'd said what I'd come to say and offered her what I had to give. I had been right from the beginning, and that was why I'd never been willing to be the consolation prize for those that preferred Willie to me. I didn't blame them for preferring him, I just didn't choose to settle for being second choice. I turned away, obeying that tight knot in my stomach that urged me to flee before it got even worse. I made it to the office doors before she called out my name again. "You Clark, I choose you!" I turned around and she had thrown off the covers. I drank in all of her loveliness in one giant, visual, gulp. She was all that I'd imagined and then some more. It took several seconds for my feet to turn and head back to the bed. Somehow, I'd shed all of my clothes by the time I managed to crawl into the bed with her. She had chosen me. If she hadn't she wouldn't have called me and thrown away her covers. I remember starting with her face and kissing her wherever I could manage to reach. I fumbled I'm sure, not knowing where to pay attention to next. I allowed myself to act and react, forgetting for a time that I had no real idea about how I needed to proceed. I'm sure she helped me all along the way, but that's only because I somehow wound up buried inside her and letting my instincts point me to where I wanted to go. I gave her the passion she'd asked for, more passion than I ever knew I had within me. I heard myself yelling and crying and laughing and moaning as I strove forward to achieve the joining that I'd never before known. There came a time when I simply couldn't move without the exquisite feeling of impending explosion overpowering any thought processes I still was capable of producing. I knew that if I pressed forward that I'd simply explode and cease to exist. There wasn't any way that I could do what I needed to do and still continue breathing. I didn't back away from it though. I was committed to the end. There wasn't anything on this side that was important enough to stop me from going over to the other side where I needed to be. For the first time in my life I simply trusted myself and let it all go. After a lifetime of holding back, the letting go was beyond my description capabilities. When I had finished letting go, I knew that I'd be able to do it again now that I'd once discovered how to do it. "I love you Frannie. Thank you for your gift." That was the morning I received Willie's legacy. He had started planning it for me soon after he found out that he was dying. Somehow he knew that I would always need that big push. His dying pushed me, and then Frannie took that last necessary push to get me to see that I was the one who kept setting up the barriers that no one could ever knock down. She was all that he'd told me she was, and she made me more than I thought I'd ever be. Seamus is on his way back to the Island now. His degree is in his hand and he's coming back with his college sweetheart. He and I will start in by sharing the tasks of running the Island. He can do the planning and I'll look after the implementing of his plans. Frannie and I have two children of our own, William and Lacey. Lacey takes after Frannie and is filled with all of life's exhuberances. At ten she already shows promise of being the kind of woman her mother has always been. There is no one on the Island that will have the slightest chance of winning her favor though. William takes after his dad, he rummages around the Island getting into everything he can find. He moved into my old shack when he was eleven, and we only see him in passing when he's going to or coming from another Island adventure. Frannie doesn't worry about him, and she has the highest of hopes that he'll one day assist Seamus in the caretaking roles that are too much for any one man to handle. I'm starting to think about taking Frannie and Lacey up to New York one of these days. There must be someone up there who has all the requirements to meet Lacey's high standards. I wonder who it is that runs that other Island? The one they call Manhatten. ------- The End ------- Posted: 2005-11-15 Last Modified: 2008-07-02 / 07:47:38 pm ------- http://storiesonline.net/ -------