A.N. We're about to get all meta up in here. Enjoy snippets of Elliot's novel within MY story. So…it's a story within a story.
Some of Elliot's novel, Across the Blue Mountains, is based not-so-loosely off of vignettes from the stage play Almost, Maine by John Cariani. This vignette in particular is taken from the scene "Sad and Glad" from the stage play. I own no rights to Almost, Maine and I am merely using the scene as a parallel between the Morgan/Elliot/Brandon relationship.
Go check out the play on Youtube if you are interested. It's a fantastic production.
I hope you enjoy!
Chapter 11 — Across the Blue Mountains (Rated G)
August 2nd (Summer)
The digital timer on the refrigerator counted down from thirty minutes. I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my arm. I was canning my last batch of blueberry jam for the night and my back was crying out for mercy.
I had spent the last couple days scouring all of the blueberry plants for every last blueberry on the bush. The blueberry patch was tucked up in the north west corner of the farm away from the rest of my fruits and vegetables. Like other fruit bearing plants, blueberry bushes produced fruit annually, so I needed them farther away from everything so they wouldn't get in my way during Spring or Fall. However, that meant that clambering through the thick undergrowth and dense tree line to get every last berry was a daunting and seemingly impossible task, but the scratches on my arms and legs told that I gave it my best shot anyway.
By early evening, I had canned almost two dozen half-pint jars full of jam, and I still had the rest of the peppers and tomatoes to get through. I also had a sink load of dishes that needed to be washed, and I desperately needed a shower (somehow blueberry jam ended up dripping from the ladle as I was canning and landed down my cleavage).
While the last six jars were pressurizing in my canning machine, I grabbed Elliot's manuscript from the kitchen table, sat heavily in my canvas camping chair, and I flipped to the Table of Contents.
As far as standard chapter titles went, I found it interesting that each chapter had people's names next to them. Among the variety there, one name popped out to me. It was mine. Chapter 2 was entitled "Morgan and Eric" so naturally, I flipped ahead to Chapter 2 and began to read.
The Crystal Tavern hummed with indistinct voices. A group of young women were clustered around a high top table; fruity alcoholic drinks of all sorts were being handed off by a pretty blond-haired waitress.
Eric Young, the town's blacksmith sat at a table that was tucked away from the action. He preferred it that way. He wasn't a man who drew attention to himself, and on that particular night, he wanted no attention whatsoever.
He peeled the label off his beer bottle and stared at the half-drunk amber liquid pretending it was poison that was slowly killing him from the inside out. As he brooded, a tall brunette woman passed his table while on the way to the bathroom and stopped in her tracks.
"Eric?"
His eyes lazily glanced up but widened in hope and dread as he saw who the woman.
"Morgan?"
"Hey!" She said. Her face looked like a deer caught in the headlights.
"Heeey." He drew out awkwardly. He thought to himself: what was she doing here?
"Hey."
"Hey."
They stood their ground like two rival animals. Morgan spoke first.
"So how are you Eric? I — I haven't seen you in a couple of years."
"I'm good. How are you?"
"Good. Good." She replied with a nervous chuckle. Eric caught the glance that she made back to the group of women in the bar. He indicated them with his chin, "Are you with them?"
"Yeah!" She replied brightly but then her voice fell. "Yeah. I — uh — was just on my way to the bathroom. So I better get —"
"Whew, I'm glad I finally got to you two." The blond waitress said with an ecstatic smile. "It's super busy in there. There's a bachelorette party in there and those girls can drink. So what can you two lovebirds this evening?"
"Oh no—" Morgan started.
"We're not—" Eric broke out embarrassed.
They looked at each other and then looked away. The waitress seemed oblivious to their sudden recalcitrance and took their silence to mean they were still thinking about what they wanted to order. After all, she had other patrons to attend to.
"Well you two just give me a holler when you're ready to order, okay?" She replied sweetly and skipped spritely through the double doors which led to the kitchen.
Morgan looked at Eric and gave him a regretful smile. "Well it was nice to see you but I gotta—'
"No! I mean why don't you take a seat." He exclaimed and gestured towards the other empty chair. "I mean, I haven't seen you in months. Like … months AND months. How does that even happen? I mean, you live in the same town but you never see each other?"
Not wanting to be rude, Morgan sat down in the open seat as though she was sitting on a pin cushion. The smile Eric had on his face when she sat down was worse than the pained look on his face when she had broken up with him on that cold winter's night.
"I — I really can't stay long. My friends are —"
He brushed off her warning with a large hand, "They'll be fine without you for a moment. So what's been going on? Whatcha been up to?"
"Well, I'm —"
"— Did you know I took over the family business? Yep, I'm running the shop now." He beamed with pride and puffed out his chest.
"I did hear that." She commented politely. "That's great Eric. I'm happy for you. But I gotta get —"
"—Yep, I make tools and smelt ore. I deliver coal to the houses for their heaters. That's a pretty important job, ya know? Especially on a night like this. If people don't have coal for their heaters, they could die!"
"That does sound serious." Morgan commented idly.
Eric continued,"And I have to work on weekends and through holidays, but that's alright because that means everyone else has heat and supplies to be with their family. But that's alright because ever since Pop died, I've got no one."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"Oh don't worry about it." He replied and waved another large hand at her concern. "It's not that bad. I mean, my brother went off to war and my mother moved back to the city because the Winter is easier there. My dog died last year —"
"— I'm sorry, I didn't know! —"
"— It's fine. It was his time. But since I'm all alone right now, and since I happened to connect up with you again, I just thought that … you could come over and keep me company."
Morgan bit her lip and took a shuddering breath. This was exactly what she was afraid of. "Eric I — I would love to but I'm actually …" She paused and fixed her gaze on his, "Eric, I'm getting married."
His thick eyebrows rose and his lips pursed. "M-married?!"
"Yeah. That's why I'm here. It's my bachelorette party." She said sheepishly.
"Wow."
"Yeah." She replied meekly.
"Wow…" He blinked and the realization of what she had said just dawned on him. "I thought you weren't going to do that. Getting married that is. You said that you weren't the marrying type. I guess I just wasn't your type."
"I'm sorry Eric." She said and gently grabbed his thick forearm.
"So who's the lucky guy?" He pronounced the word 'lucky' like it was pure poison in his mouth.
"Uh…his name is Brian. Brian LeFollete. He's in the Brown County Coast Guard."
"Oh I know Brian!" Eric said, perking up a bit. "He's amazing. He once saved my friend after his fishing boat capsized in a storm —"
"— Yeah I heard about that —"
"—And he can find anyone at anytime, so if you're ever lost at sea Brian LeFollete is the man you'd want to find you —"
"—Yeah" Morgan chuckled uncomfortably.
Eric's hard eyes turned on her and the excitement in his voice was gone. "And he found you."
"Yeah." Morgan agreed sadly. "Look. I'm sorry I never told you Eric. I actually thought you would've already known."
"How would I have known?"
"You know. From other people. I thought Esme, Samantha, or Hayley would've said something. You know how people here talk." Morgan replied.
Eric inhaled a long, sharp breath. His voice was tight with emotion. "People don't talk about things when they know you don't want to hear them."
"I'm sorry." Morgan said. And she really was sorry.
He shrugged, "So when's the big event?"
"Um…tomorrow."
His eyes snapped to hers again. "Really."
"Really." She confirmed.
"Well then we have to celebrate!" He exclaimed and raised his right hand as though he was hailing a taxi. "HEY! HEY WAITRESS!"
"What are you doing?!" Morgan exclaimed in a hushed voice.
"Calling the waitress over. We gotta celebrate. You've been found! You're getting married, and that's a thing to celebrate."
Just then, Morgan caught the sight of a large black mark that went across Eric's entire right forearm. In the dim light, she couldn't make up the words but she could tell it was a tattoo of some sort.
"What's that on your arm?" She asked.
"This? Oh it's nothing. It's just a tattoo HEY! WAITRESS!"
"What does it say?"
"It doesn't matter—"
"—Wait, does that say —"
"— Don't worry about it."
As Eric went to pull down his sleeve, Morgan caught is forearm and held it beneath the candlelight.
"That says 'villain.'" She said. "Why does your tattoo say 'villain'?"
Her voice was cautious and she rubbed his forearm over his heavy woolen shirt as though she could erase the mark altogether.
Eric wouldn't meet her eyes. His jaw clenched as a storm of frustration, pain, guilt, and anger tore through him.
"Eric, why is your tattoo suppose to say 'villain?" She asked once more.
"Because that's what I am." He snarled.
"You're not a villain!" Morgan urged as Eric pulled his arm from her grasp.
"Am I not?" He asked and stood up. "Because I sure as hell think I am. Because when a guy drives a girl — a beautiful, wonderful, sweet girl like you away, how can he be anything but a villain?"
"Eric you didn't drive me away. I left you.—"
"—It's criminal, that's what it is!" He continued over her. "It's criminal, it's villainy and it has to be punished, so I punished myself. I tattooed this on my arm to warn other girls — so other girls would know the type of guy I am and they'd stay away. That way I wouldn't have to go through what I went through with you."
Morgan saw the tears that shimmered in his eyes and Eric turned away from her, his back heaving. When he faced her once more, the tears were gone and nothing except a cold, stony countenance remained.
"I wish you and Brian all the best." He said. "I'm sorry that I kept you from your friends."
Morgan watched as pulled on his heavy winter jacket and pulled the fur-rimmed hat over his head. He saluted her by touching his forefinger and index finger to his forehead and walked towards the main room and out into the winter storm.
The timer beeped which jolted me out of me dream-like haze. Large wet blotches dripped onto the white paper and I wiped her nose with the back of my hand.
I rose shakily from the camping chair and donned oven mitts to extract the piping hot pint jars from the canning machine. As I put them in the ice bath that I had set up next to the stove, my hands trembled with emotion.
Elliot had captured Brandon's overbearing essence while interjecting his own insecurities about his past relationship into one character. Yet I couldn't decide if this was a mark of genius or insanity; I was amazed and disturbed as I tried to tease out the blurred facts from the fiction.
Thoughts raced through my head: Was the character of her namesake suppose to be me? Was Eric suppose to be Elliot or Brandon or both? And what about Brian LaFollette, the amazing Coast Guard member who had 'found' and married Morgan? Was Elliot trying to be prophetic or was it a plot point that just made sense in the rest of the story?
As I mulled through all of these questions, I almost considered giving him his manuscript back, but then I remind myself that one chapter did not define the rest of his novel. I would need to start at the beginning and read the book from start to finish before I could formulate an opinion.
Golden swished her tail at me from her perch on the kitchen table. Her yellow eyes seemed to say: you know what you have to do.
Once the jelly jars were cooling in the ice bath, I unplugged the canning machine, grabbed the manuscript and brought it into my room.
I promised myself that I'd do the dishes later. Now I needed to read.
A.N. The ending of "Sad and Glad" is absurd in the best way but I left it out because it didn't fit in the story's tone. I hope you enjoyed.