Night Mares in the Hamptons (35 page)

I worried that the expenses would be so high the show couldn't make a profit, until Mr. Whitside from the bank and Dante Rivera, who was now the financial manager for the event, with his own staff, assured me half the services were being donated and the rest were at base scale wages. We'd make a profit, a very nice profit indeed.

So many tickets sold before they were printed, the crews needed to add extra bleachers on the football field. The baseball and soccer fields and running track became tent cities for hospitality and vendor areas, dressing rooms, pens for the animals, and more port-a-potties.

Trucks brought in bales of hay for ground-level seating, and left an open space near the shortened, narrowed performance area for blankets and beach chairs. Ty approved the new arrangement as long as a fence secured the perimeter, security forces ensured no one got onto the field, and no alcohol was served. He insisted on a dry venue despite protests that beer made a lot of money. He talked to Uncle Henry about trading passes to retired policemen in exchange for checking bags the audience carried in. No coolers were to be permitted. Ty was not exposing Paloma Blanca or his friends to a tossed bottle or drunken rowdiness, not at this family affair. They compromised on wine sales by the plastic glass in the tents.

Giant cranes hoisted scaffolding for the lights and amplifiers, and one of Ty's contacts donated the use of a camera crew and two huge screens to project the show from every angle, so people at the farthest points could still see everything, just like at a ball park. They even found a sign language volunteer and a Spanish translator.

Dante had the high school computer club making a PowerPoint presentation for the introductions and the intermissions. They were going to feature an airplane shot of Bayview this week, before the caravan arrived, and an archival picture of when Mr. Scowcroft had racehorses on it. They taped a spokesman from the Nature Conservancy talking about preserving open space and an address where people could send checks to help purchase the magnificent property. People from a horserescue organization made their pitch, too.

I worked up a logo for the event: Ty's profile in woodcut style, with waves in front, horses on a distant hill behind. Louisa liked it so much, she ordered posters and T-shirts to sell, white ink on green shirts. As soon as they came back from the printer, and I signed the posters, she started the Boy and Girl Scouts hawking them and tickets at the post offices and supermarkets from Montauk to Bridgehampton. Meanwhile, Dante gathered so many corporate sponsors, he had to find new places to hang their banners and another tent with another wide screen for their reserved seating.

With no sign of the mares or sendings from H'tah, I stopped worrying about the money and started panicking about teaching at the arts center.

The twelve kids in my class were too excited to sit and think quietly about plots or characters. I chucked all my notes and lesson plans and decided we'd make a coloring alphabet book instead. They'd be for sale at the show with a tiny box of crayons, both a souvenir and a way to keep little children happy and quiet. If they made more money for the ranch, great. I promised to come back in August to teach the story session.

We divided up the alphabet letters and started to discuss what the kids wanted to draw to represent each letter. There were fights. Shouting, pushing, a few tears. And the kids behaved badly, too.

I never wanted to become a teacher. I didn't even like children.

I took a deep breath and told everyone to sit down and talk one at a time without raising their voices.

Letty spoke first. She claimed the P for Paloma Blanca. One of the local girls thought it should be a map of Paumanok Harbor. K2, the pudge with the runny nose, wanted to draw a pinto pony, like his hero, Connor's, horse. Letty was not used to being denied, especially by kids her own age, not as privileged, perhaps not as well-educated. They were careful of her wheelchair and friendly enough in greeting her, but they weren't about to sacrifice their own ideas for some uppity summer kid who got escorted into the building by her own muscle-bound bodyguard. This was their town, their arts center, their chance to help buy the ranch. I could see a lot of trouble coming, and Letty not coming back.

So I decided some alphabet letters got two facing pages, with as many drawings as we had finished in time to get printed. They just couldn't be too small for little hands to color in the lines.

One of the free, advertisement-supported newspapers offered to print up our pages tabloid size if their name went on the cover, so we worked on that, too. A bunch of my students had their own laptops to work on with intricate graphics programs, but the arts center had drawing pens and ink that made a wonderful mess. The kids loved them and produced wonderful drawings after their pencil sketches. I couldn't believe how talented some of them were, but Letty was the best.

She had good enough manners, thanks to her nannies and tutors, most likely, and quickly learned not to be arrogant about her skills. Some of the others went to her for her opinions when I was busy, which set her to glowing. K2 became her sidekick, except when his nose dripped.

“You've got to stop telling people their drawings are great when you know they suck.”

She didn't understand his problem. She wouldn't tell K2 he was fat, would she? Why insult someone else's efforts? Especially when she wanted them to like her? But she stopped lying and made helpful suggestions.

The children learned to confer and cooperate, which was probably more important than what I'd intended to teach. Almost every letter of the alphabet warranted a debate.

A could be for Appaloosa or Airs above the ground—they were all eager to see if Paloma Blanca could do the classic Lipizzan leap. No one was saying. One little girl wanted an angel on the A page, because her father said that's what sponsors were called and his insurance company was paying a bundle. We decided on America, because members of the armed forces were forming a color guard to carry the flag in for the national anthem. Then we had to decide how to portray America, and who was going to draw it.

B was easy, a sign on two posts saying Bayview, with a horse peeking around the uprights.

C was going to be for a condor that K2 drew with Letty's help.

They wanted dressage for the D, so I showed them Ty's website to see what it looked like: a high-stepping horse ought to be enough.

And so on.

“No, we are not drawing geldings. Think some more.”

“Flowers in a field for F? That's a great idea, Mary Jane.”

H worked for the herding dogs. L definitely had to be for Lady Sparrow since Paloma Blanca got a page of her own. We brought up a picture of her on the computers from the website.

Native Americans, Open space, Rodeo clown—Yes, we were having two of them, friends of Ty's.

Sheep.

I claimed the T. I sketched Ty and his Stetson in cartoon style, with running horses on the hatband ribbon. We'd never get done in time if I didn't help, right?

X was tough, until someone yelled out, “An exit sign, so people can find their way home.”

We almost gave up on Z, but Mary Jane suggested a zebra. It was almost a horse, wasn't it? No one liked the idea.

Letty ran over K2's toes in her excitement. “How about a horse sleeping, with z's coming out of its ear. Then we could write Good Night. Thank you for coming.”

Brilliant.

Except it reminded me of H'tah, and how I wasn't looking for him.

Ty was so busy I seldom got to see him, and then it was with his friends or his business associates. There was no such thing as another private dinner for the two of us or a day at the beach. But we did get to spend the nights in each other's arms.

There was no frantic hurry now, no stolen moments between watching for the mares and searching for the colt. We had all night, and a few more days. By now we were comfortable with each other, although still learning what we liked in lovemaking. Ty was imaginative and innovative and always caring of my pleasure. And he brought treats and chew toys for Little Red. Who could ask for more? When I slept, it was with complete satiation and contentment and exhaustion. No dreams.

Then he left. Dante was flying Ty in his private jet to New York to meet with Mr. Scowcroft's lawyers, then to Albany to talk to the state comptroller and legislators about funds. If they had to, they'd fly on to Florida to urge Scowcroft himself into backing the plan and lowering the asking price.

My bed seemed awfully empty. So did my house. Susan spent all her free time at Rosehill, making friends with the mostly male show business people and helping Cousin Lily feed them. I didn't know if she was spending time with Connor, but I hoped so, rather than sleeping her way through Ty's friends and the crew.

I could understand how this was exciting for a small-town girl, having so many new men at her fingertips at once, but Connor needed her support. He'd been left as spokesman, the least talkative soul I'd ever met. I got the idea he disappeared whenever he could, because I saw him on the motorbike going through town when I went to and from the arts center. I wished Susan was with him; I prayed he wasn't surfing by himself. He was a big part of the show, according to the program I was sending to the printer.

I was the last person to offer to help with the interviews. I'd have been stuttering and stammering, even if there was only a high school kid behind the camera.

I couldn't help Connor, my jobs for the show were done, the class was going well, and I couldn't sleep. So I went driving.

It was me and Little Red, cruising around the Hamptons looking for a cave or a number twenty. I thought there was a long avenue in Springs with numbered side streets, but the street names stopped at Nineteenth.

I parked as close as I could get to Cavett's Cove in Montauk and walked along the beach by the lights from a nearby motel. When I got no vibes there, I drove back to Paumanok Harbor checking house numbers. Most people had taken down their protective Christmas lights, so it was too dark to read them. Other people never bothered to put up numbers, no matter how many times the police and firemen asked them to, for safety's sake.

At first there was more nighttime traffic than usual through the Harbor, but as the hours went by, I began to feel alone in the dark, spooked by every odd shape on the side of the unlit roads.

H'tah might be alone in the dark, too. I locked the car doors and kept going.

I parked at a dead end that overlooked the bay and stopped to admire the stars and the moon on the water, with a few boats bobbing at anchor. Any one of them could be a drug runner. Any one of them could have a frightened horse on board.

I must have fallen asleep while worrying, because I started to dream. There was no danger in my dream, no horse either. All I saw was a willow tree. A weeping willow, like the one I had drawn for H'tah. I knew it was me.

“H'tah? Are you there?”

I got another view of the same tree, not the way I'd drawn it, with my arms—the tree branches and leaves—around a little white horse, but just the willow tree. I woke with a start, not frightened, not in a panic, but knowing H'tah was calling me. I tried to project back “I haven't given up, baby! I'll find you. Keep calling!”

I knew he couldn't understand the words, and I didn't know how to tell him I was coming. I grabbed the pad I always carried, turned on the car's overhead light and drew the willow tree. Then I drew the horse, but at the farthest corner of my paper. I flipped the page and drew him closer. Another page, still closer to the tree. I closed my eyes and imprinted the pictures there. The next one was totally in my head, with horse and tree practically touching. “Visualize it, H'tah. See me coming for you.”

Then I started driving. Speeding, I guess. The farther the car got from the water, the fainter the picture of the willow in my head. The closer to Bayview, the more vivid the tree, with leaves and grass. But was that my memory? Or H'tah's, a leftover remnant from his time there?

I had no way of knowing, except the tree I saw in my mind was not drawn in my style.

I knew at least twenty people were at Bayview, and I'd met most of them, so I drove up the hill to the ranch where clusters of campers and trailers were parked in the cleared area. A few lights were on, and I heard people talking softly, someone strumming a guitar. This could have been a cattle drive, except for the lack of cattle. And these were show business people, not cowboys. I spotted my cousin sitting at a picnic bench with the sound technician. Connor came toward me.

“Do you need something?”

“I thought I had a dream, maybe a vision, from the colt. I think he is still here.”

“Here in Paumanok Harbor or here at Bayview?”

“Here. I can see the vision stronger from here.”

Connor looked around. “There's no place to hide.”

They'd bulldozed the buildings and filled in the old well before anyone was permitted to camp there. Uncle Henry declared the place a hazard, private property or not. Scowcroft's people agreed to pay for the work, rather than face a lawsuit or a court order. The mayor agreed to get the job done with town employees in exchange for permission to use the land temporarily.

“Nothing here but weeds,” Connor told me.

And snakes. But only a few acres of the property were cleared so far.

I didn't even have a flashlight.

“I'll come back tomorrow.”

“We'll be rehearsing. Setting up all the gear and testing the sound system. And three more damned interviews. I can't help you.”

“That's okay. You're doing enough. Have you spoken to Doc lately?”

“Hell, no.”