The End of the Dream (15 page)

She remembered Ewell saying, “I have to turn you guys on to Scott this guy who lives in a treehouse.”

“So he took us out to meet Scott, “ Ren recalled. “I wasn’t that impressed at first but then Scott started coming around to my place.

And he started talking to me a lot.

Believe me, I was not much then. I had tank tops, levis, hiking boots.

I was a real tomboy, hiking all the time. I couldn’t understand why he pursued me. Now, I think I know it was because I was working as a nanny for the richest people in Olympia. He liked being around people like that.. ..

They lived in this mansion, and I lived in a little cabin next door.” Like most women, Ren found Scott attractive and captivating, and she was pleased by his interest in her. She visited the treehouse property a few times, completely unaware that Scott and Mark Biggins were acquainted.
 
“I was amazed to see Mark working near the barn one day, “ Ren said. “He was from one part of my life and Scott from another. I said, Hey, Biggins, and he said, Hey, Talbot, but he ducked behind the barn. I don’t know what it was why he acted that way. I think maybe he didn’t want me to be part of that world out there scott’s world.” Ren Talbot and Scott “hung out” together a few times you couldn’t even call them dates and she developed a crush on him, probably because he didn’t make any romantic moves. She finally invited him out to dinner.

Their one big date to a Moroccan restaurant in Seattle where diners sat on the floor and ate with their fingers turned out to be a bore.

“He just sat there like a bump on a log, “ she recalled. “And he wouldn’t participate in any in-depth conversation at all. He would be attentive to what I had to say for a minute or two, and then his eyes would veer sideways and he’d be scoping out the other females in the room. And I ended up paying the check.” Afterward, Ren begged Scott to take her to a nightclub called The Rainbow. Her friends’ band, “Heliotrope and the Riders of the Purple Sage” was performing there.

“When we walked in, the place was filled with everybody from Olympia.

He didn’t like that. He turned around and walked straight out. He never liked to be in a place for very long where he knew people and they knew him, “ Ren said. “I wanted to stay so I told him I’d find my own way home. “A couple of days later, Ewell Fletcher called me to say his girlfriend my friend, Hattie*hadn’t shown up at his place in three days and he was frantically worried about her. I found out she’d been with Scott in his treehouse. She told me they didn’t even have sex, but that she’d had a wonderful time.

She said Scott cooked for her, and that he gave her champagne and caviar. Real champagne and real caviar. I never went out with him again.” Scott had always been a man who wanted what he couldn’t have.

When he realized that Ren really didn’t want to date him again, he seemed to show up wherever she was. He would sit at the bar at the Bud Bay Cafe or Louis’s and stare at her. Sometimes he sent drinks over to her table. She would lift her glass in appreciation but she never invited him to join her. “But Scott had this weird energy, “ Ren recalled. “This may sound strange but I could always sense when Scott had walked into a restaurant, even when my back was turned to the door.

His presence was electric, and you could just tell he was in the room.

“ Although Scott dated scores of women in Olympia, . it was essential to him that he be unforgettable to every woman he fancied.

Ren was sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck once and he came up to her and forced her to kiss him. She sensed it was just a conquest kiss, and, angry, she kicked him in the groin and sent him reeling back from the truck. After that, Scott left her alone, although she would run into him from time to time. “One day, “ she recalled with a faint smile, “he came out to the place where I was the nanny. The wife of the couple I worked for was very attractive, and Scott came walking up their long driveway carrying a dozen roses. I asked him what he was doing, and he said they were for my boss, for Mother’s Day. Only it wasn’t Mother’s Day. It was July. I knew he just wanted to impress her. And annoy me.” Ren wondered sometimes what Mark Biggins and Scott Scurlock could possibly have in common although Scott said they’d both gone to Evergreen. She wasn’t really connected to either one of them any longer, and she rarely thought about them. Mark considered Scott one of his best friends. Despite his shadowy enterprises and his selfindulgences, Scott seemed to be the truest of friends. When Scott was flush with money, he always shared what he had, when he was broke, he still made an effort to help. He had a kind of Tom Sawyer appeal, he made even hard work seem enjoyable. When Tom didn’t want to whitewash a fence, he made his peers think that he was doing them a favor by handing them the brush. Scott was like that. He could never have built the first treehouse or upgraded it without the help of his friends but none of them ever felt that they had been taken advantage of. Scott gave them crystal methjust the right amount and it wasn’t unusual for his crew to work around the clock.

His next door neighbor once asked him where he could hire such an enthusiastic crew of builders, and then looked puzzled when Scott laughed out loud. When the builders finished a project, they usually started a bonfire, cracked open beers, and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows. They seemed as wholesome a bunch of arpenters as any to be found. But more often than not, they also smoked some of the good marijuana Scott always had. They were all close to forty, but they were frozen in time, boys with tinges of gray in their hair, boys who clung to the better times in the past or who yearned for better days to come.
 
Since the day he met Ellen Hasland, Kevin Meyers had an even more compelling reason than Scott to come to Washington. He had put his Springmale studio up for sale, and had, in fact, sold it for the almost unbelievable sum of $240,000! The buyers gave him $30,000 down and paid him $1,800 a month, with a balloon payment of $210,000 promised one year after the sale. He had never had so much money in his life. Indeed, for the first time, it was Kevin who had money and Scott who did not. The crystal meth that Scott had buried in white plastic buckets was almost gone, and Kevin began to see that Scott didn’t know how to live without money. Along with Ellen and her daughters, Kevin often visited Seven Cedars, and, as far as they could tell, Scott was still living high on the hog. He still bought every gadget he wanted, took trips, and was the local waitresses’ darling.

It was 1990 and, clearly, a lot had changed in Scott Scurlock’s life.

He was edgy, and whatever calm exterior he managed to maintain was studied.

Sometimes, his face in repose was a study of melancholy all the classic planes and shadows a mask of despair. But then he would seize control of himself and be the Scott everyone was used to.

At the end of another halcyon summer in the Pacific Northwest, Kevin went home to Great Falls to collect his balloon payment, only to find that his buyers had failed to obtain financing. He took the place back, relievedin a way to have it. He decided to stay in Virginia, and urged Ellen to consider moving east. On one coast or the other, they needed to be together. Kevin knew his savings wouldn’t last forever now that the sale on his place had fallen through. He still wasn’t able to remodel his studio at Springmale in the way he visualized, his taxes were getting higher because his place sat smack dab in the middle of where DC bigwigs were building and buying all around him. Even as much as he loved it, he didn’t know how long he’d be able to hold on to Springmale.

Scott noted Kevin’s concerns about his financial situation. Just as he had with Steve and Mark, he hi came up with what seemed to be a magnanimous offer. “If you sell your place in Great Falls, “ he told Kevin, “you can move out here. You can remodel the barn and turn it into an art studio. I’ll sell it to you for $50,000.

“ It seemed like a great idea. Kevin could get enough cash out of his Virginia studio to pay Scott and have enough left over to support himself until he began to sell his paintings in the Northwest. His brother and his best friend were in Olympia, and the woman he loved was in Seattle, only sixty miles away. Kevin had a mission too. He had talked to Scott before about using his acreage to build low-cost homes for people in need. Nicaragua had changed Kevin Meyers. He had seen abject poverty and he had vowed to do what he could if not in Nicaragua, then in America. It could be a money-making project for Scott too. He knew Scott needed money badly. All his meth stashes were gone. All the buried money. Everything was gone. Whatever doubts Kevin Meyers had were overwhelmed by his excitement about starting over in Washington State.
 
Ellen wanted him to come west. So did Steve and Scott. He put Springmale up for sale. Within a few months, he sold it this time for good and packed up everything he owned. When he finally arrived in Washington, it was the high summer of 1990.

This time, he felt he would be there forever. “Except for Ellen, it was a terrible mistake, “ Kevin remembered, wincing. “I rolled into Olympia and drove up to Seven Cedars and no one was there. I found Scott, Mark, and Steve at The Keg restaurant, but it wasn’t like I expected it to be.
 
It was awkward. I told Scott I had the $50,000 to buy the barn, and he acted as if he’d forgotten all about our agreement. He wouldn’t look me in the eye. He finally muttered something about Those options are on the back burner now. I felt like the odd man out. Their minds were on something else something that obviously had nothing to do with me.

“ Still, once Kevin settled in, things seemed better. Scott wouldn’t accept his money, but he let Kevin set about remodeling the inside of the barn to use as a studio. It was a huge barn.

The front was wood, but one summer Bobby Gray had reinforced the back with heavy underground bunkers formed of concrete. Kevin built a twenty-four-foot workbench, a sixteen foot art table, and installed track lighting and a sink. Steve helped by installing a wide door that opened smoothly on rollers. Kevin couldn’t help being proud of what he had accomplished. Every bit of workmanship was like a piece of fine furniture. He knew he didn’t have his brother’s craftsmanship, but he countersank every screw and lovingly sanded the wood. Scott seemed too busy to check out his work, but Kevin expected him to be pleased when he saw the final result. Even if he didn’t own the barn yet, Kevin knew he would be happy painting there. Kevin commuted from Ellen’s apartment most days. Often, he stayed over at Scott’s place, sleeping in his van.
 
Sometimes Ellen and her girls who were nine, ten, and twelve in 1990 came down for weekends. The kids loved the treehouse, they would climb up the steps and then slide down the forty-foot pole over and over. And they loved the woods, and they adored Scott. Scott liked Ellen, and she liked him. But she was a highly intuitive woman and she saw sadness in him, even some desperation. He told her he wanted flowers everywhere and gave her the money to bring back armloads of them. She filled every container she could find with fresh flowers and placed them around the treehouse and on the deck. She kept the hanging fuchsia baskets watered and free of deacheads. When the Scurlocks visited, they were very taken with Ellen, and teased Scott, saying, “Why can’t you find a woman like that? “ Scott only grinned and spread his palms wide in a gesture of defeat. And they all laughed. On the surface, everything seemed fine.
 
But Kevin knew Scott better than he had ever known anyone. And something was wrong. He tried again and again to get Scott to talk about his idea for utilizing some of the Overhulse acreage to build clean but cheap housing.

Scott only stared at him with disinterest. Kevin tried to persuade Scott to sell him a few acres on the far side of the property so he could at least build a place for himself, but Scott refused. Kevin even reminded him of the slogan they used to share, “To increase the joy, we must share it.”

“You share it, Bubba, “ Scott said. “I’ve got things to think about.”

One day, Kevin was walking toward the treehouse when a bullet whizzed past his ear. He dropped to the ground, flattening himself. He looked up and saw Scott high up in the trees with a 30-30 rifle cradled in his arms, an inscrutable look on his face. As incomprehensible as it was, he realized that Scott had shot at him. “What’d you do that for? “ Kevin called, bewildered.

“You didn’t give the crow caw.”

“You knew it was me.” Scott shrugged and disappeared inside the treehouse. Kevin turned around and went back to work on the barn, shaken. It was the awful thought that his best friend, the man who had faced death with him more than once, had actually fired a gun in his direction. And for no reason at all.

Nothing was working. The land was wonderful and the barn had great potential as a studio. Why, then, did his heart feel like a stone in his chest? He didn’t know Scott any more. He still “honored” him as his friend, but he was puzzled by the coldness and the cruelty he sometimes glimpsed in the man who had once had the biggest heart in the world.
 
Kevin buried the memory of seeing Scott cradling the Winchester rifle, and continued to work around the place. He installed a septic system for the treehouse bathroom that was right out of Swiss Family Robinson and Scott was pleased.

Kevin worked mostly on the barn, though, taking great satisfaction in the way it was shaping up. He knew Scott would love it when he had it finished. He learned otherwise one day when Scott brought his sister Karen into the barn. Kevin was eagerly pointing out the improvements he had made, when Scott dismissed him with a half-wave of his arm, and walked away. Bill and Mary Jane Scurlock visited that summer, but even their visit didn’t lighten Scott’s mood. Scott didn’t even bring Bill by to look at the barn. After the Scurlocks headed back to Arizona, things continued to be strained at Seven Cedars. “Something ended the day I called him out to show him that I’d finished the barn, “ Kevin said. “I could tell right away he didn’t care about it. He was desperate because he didn’t have any money. Even in that state, he wouldn’t say he hated’ my studio. But I’d left a bunch of beans soaking in a half-gallon milk jug on the barn floor so we could make tortillas later, and he yelled at me that they were rotten” Suddenly, Scott kicked the jug. For an instant, the scene seemed Daliesque, gelid, the air full of water and beans. And then they fell like so many fat bugs all over the remodeled barn, Kevin’s art table, easels, sink everywhere. Kevin and Scott stared at each other, one in a rage, the other humiliated and shocked.