The Maine Events Read online

  The

  Maine

  Events

  The Maine Events

  By

  Rodney Riesel

  Published by Island Holiday Publishing

  East Greenbush, NY

  Copyright © 2021 Rodney Riesel

  All rights reserved

  First Edition

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  Special thanks to:

  Pamela Guerriere

  Kevin Cook

  Cover Image by:

  Rodney Riesel

  Cover Design by:

  Connie Fitsik

  To learn about my other books friend me at

  https://www.facebook.com/rodneyriesel

  For Brenda,

  Kayleigh, Ethan

  & Peyton

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter One

  Allen Crane pulled into York Beach around noon on August 23. It was a Sunday. Two days earlier the weather report predicted a washout, but that wasn't the case at all. A few puffy white clouds dotted the sky. It was sunny, and warm. He was surprised by the amount of traffic, and the amount of people. He lowered his window in anticipation of the aroma of fresh salt air. He breathed in deeply. There was no salty smell, just the odor of dead fish. The brake lights in front of him came on, and traffic came to a standstill. Allen went ahead and lowered the rest of the windows in the old black Cherokee.

  Frankie was asleep on the back seat, but he opened his eyes when he heard the hum of the window motor. His eyes slowly closed again, and a seagull cried out. Frankie was on his feet with his head out the window in an instant. Two seagulls were on the sidewalk fighting over a dead crab. Frankie let out a low, quiet growl, followed by a few loud barks, as he fixed them in a piercing stare.

  “Quiet down, Frankie,” Allen commanded.

  The dog barked once more for good measure. He turned, and stuck his head between the front seats.

  “Always gotta get in the last word, don't ya?” He reached up and scratched the old dog on the head.

  The red Mustang with Massachusetts plates moved ahead about three feet and stopped again. Allen did the same.

  Why did I leave so early? he wondered, as he inched along York Street.

  It was less than a five-hour drive from his hometown of Herkimer, New York, and check in wasn't until three.

  “What are we gonna do for three hours, pal?”

  The Mustang rolled forward again, and Allen took his foot off the brake. He gazed out over the water. He could see the Nubble Lighthouse off in the distance now. His eyes returned to the road.

  “Jesus Christ!” he hollered, slamming on his brakes, and driving Frankie's chin into the console.

  Luckily, he had brought the Jeep to a halt about two inches from the Mustang.

  Frankie managed to get back on his feet.

  “You okay? Sorry about that. Guess I better keep my eyes on the road.”

  Frankie glared at his master.

  “I said I was sorry.”

  Allen fiddled with the radio and settled on a country station. Kenny Chesney was singing “Happy Does.” He tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel.

  I should try and write a song, he thought. How hard can it be? If I can write a book, I should be able to write a song. Of course, I can't sing, or play an instrument. I guess someone else could sing, and I could just tap my thumbs on the steering wheel.

  The next time the cars moved ahead, it was about twenty feet. Allen hoped that was a good sign.

  “Lobster Cove,” he read aloud. “We ate there last time we were here.” He thought for a second. “What was that, seven years now? Wow, that went by fast. That was before your time, pal. They had a great breakfast. We ate there two mornings in a row. They had a Lobster Eggs Benedict. I wonder if they still have it? Maybe we'll check it out tomorrow morning.”

  The line was moving at six miles per hour now, and Allen hadn't touched the brake pedal in at least fifteen seconds. Just as he was about to get a little too excited, the Mustang's brake lights lit again.

  Dammit!

  Three ladies on bicycles whizzed by.

  Shoulda rode my bike. I woulda made better time.

  A long-haired kid rode his skateboard on the sidewalk, past the no skateboarding on sidewalk sign.

  “He probably won't be reading one of my books,” Allen mumbled under his breath.

  He looked over at Frankie. The dog was sound asleep in the back seat again.

  “Why don't you drive, Frankie, and I'll sleep for a while?”

  When he reached the corner of Tabernacle Road, Allen could see the Sunrise Motel sign.

  “A block to go, Frankie.”

  The dog lifted his head for a second, more in annoyance than curiosity, and dropped it back to the leather seat.

  The traffic began moving faster and the Mustang stepped on it. The driver honked at a woman pushing a stroller in the crosswalk and swerved around her.

  “Masshole,” Allen grumbled, and brought his vehicle to a stop, letting the woman cross.

  The thirty-something brunette smiled and gave a half-wave.

  Allen nodded. He waited as the same long-haired kid skateboarded into the crosswalk behind the woman. The kid didn't wave or give any other gesture of thanks. He hopped off the skateboard halfway across the street and carried it the rest of the way.

  “Mom,” Allen heard the kid say, but the rest was inaudible.

  Allen gave the Jeep some gas, and took a left into the parking lot.

  The Sunrise Motel was a motel in every sense of the word. There was a parking lot, and all of the twenty-four guest rooms entered from the outside. This particular motel was L-shaped, with twenty of the rooms being on the three-story long side of the L—facing the ocean—and the remaining four rooms on the two-story shorter side. The office was on the first floor, tucked into the corner where the two sections of rooms met. The doors and widow frames were painted yellow. The walls, trim, and railings were white.

  Allen backed into a parking space at the far side of the lot, shut off his engine, and climbed out of his vehicle. He reached back inside and grabbed the leash from the passenger seat.

  “Come on, Frankie,” he said, opening the back door.

  Frankie jumped to the blacktop and stayed near Allen, waiting to have his leash clipped onto his collar. Once leashed, Allen walked the dog to the rear of the Jeep, to a 50' x 50' grassy area bordered on two sides by the parking lot, and on the other two sides by streets.

  “Looks like the perfect place to take a dump,” said Allen.

  Frankie couldn't concentrate on anything but the gulls on the sidewalk across the street. He barked and stared t
hem down.

  “Quiet down, dog. We'll be here for the next two weeks and I'm not going to want to hear you barking at those damn birds the whole time.”

  When Allen had adopted Frankie from a shelter. He was told Frankie was a “Heinz 57”, a conglomeration of several unidentified breeds. In other words, a good, old-fashioned mutt. Allen considered this the best kind of dog. The shelter people thought Frankie had some border collie in his mix. The dog's intelligence, sweetness, and easy trainability bore this out, although it was hard to detect any physical evidence of the breed in Frankie's shaggy black and white coat, which reminded Allen of the love child of Chewbacca and Bigfoot. Fortunately, Frankie did not have a herding dog's hyper-energetic, workaholic nature; he was more laid-back, which was a compliment to Allen's mostly sedentary writer lifestyle. He did, though, have the border collie's “herding eye,” an intense stare he reserved for birds, for some reason. Frankie's strange bird fixation was a peccadillo Allen had learned to live with.

  Allen tugged at the leash. “Shit or get off the pot, pal.”

  Frankie lifted his leg and peed. He scratched at the grass with his back feet.

  “It ain't a litter box, dog.”

  Allen raised his arms over his head, stretched, and yawned. He scanned the horizon, his focus eventually settling on a backhoe sitting on a massive mound of dirt, between the sidewalk and the rocky beach. White plastic sawhorses and orange cones sat on the sidewalk and curb, restricting access to a one hundred-foot section of the sidewalk and beach. Yellow plastic tape was strung between the sawhorses. There was also a bulldozer thirty feet south of the backhoe. Being Sunday, there were no workers.

  “I wonder what they're doing over there?” Allen asked no one in particular. “I wonder how loud that's going to be all day?”

  As Allen turned back toward the motel, a thin woman with short gray hair caught his eye. She was standing in front of a door, to the left of a soda machine.

  “Come on, let's go talk to this lady.”

  Allen and Frankie crossed the parking lot toward the old woman.

  “You the manager?” Allen asked.

  “Housekeeping,” the woman replied, her voice a crow-like rasp from the smoke of a million cigarettes. She coughed, and spit a yellowish-green chunk of lung three feet to the parking lot.

  Nice, Allen thought.

  “Is the manager around?”

  The wrinkled hag nodded her head in the direction of the office. “What's that sign say?”

  Allen gazed at the red neon sign. “Vacancy?”

  “Not that one. The one on the door.”

  Allen squinted to see the writing on a piece of computer paper that had been tapped to the glass panel in the door. “I can't read it from here.”

  “I can get yer wheelchair outta yer Jeep fir ya and wheel you closer.”

  “I don't have a wheelchair.”

  “Then walk yer ass over there and read it.”

  The old woman turned, opened the door she was standing in front of, and went inside.

  Allen looked down at his dog. “Now that's what I call hospitality, boy,” he deadpanned.

  He heard a door slam behind him and turned to see the long-haired boy coming out of a room on the first floor. He dropped his skateboard to the blacktop, hopped on it, and sped away. Allen watched as the kid crossed the street and jumped the curb.

  The door the boy had exited—room number four—swung open. The woman who had crossed the street with the stroller stepped onto the porch. She had a baby on her hip.

  “Jacob!” the woman hollered.

  Allen knew the boy could hear her. Everyone in York Beach probably heard her.

  “Jacob Palmer!”

  A few seconds later Jacob rolled out of sight.

  The woman looked at Allen and shook her head.

  “Selective hearing!” Allen called out.

  “So it seems,” the woman responded. She stepped back into the room and shut the door.

  “Let's go read that sign, Frankie.”

  As Allen and Frankie neared the office door the words on the sheet of paper came into focus. Manager on duty from one to nine, it said in pencil.

  “No manager till one, can't check in till three. Whaddaya think, boy, should we take a walk up the street and see what's going on?”

  Frankie didn't object, so off they went. They crossed the street and stepped onto the sidewalk.

  “What do you think?” Allen asked the dog. “First time seeing the ocean?”

  Allen knew it was the dog's first time. It was the first time Frankie had been more than fifty miles from home.

  Frankie was incarcerated at the Herkimer County Humane Society when he and Allen first met. “Get a dog,” several of his friends told him. “It'll take your mind off things.”

  None of Allen's friends had ever lost a spouse, so he wondered how they knew a dog would take his mind off things. But, eventually, he figured he'd give it a try. They were wrong. They meant well, but they were wrong. The dog didn't take his mind off anything. Rum took his mind off things. Scotch took his mind off things. Tequila and whiskey also worked pretty well. As far as the dog was concerned, it was nice to have him around the house. It was great having someone to talk to, even if Frankie never talked back.

  While standing on the sidewalk overlooking the water Allen realized that the heavy machinery and sawhorse barricade were part of the ongoing construction of a stepped concrete seawall. The finished section of the seawall ended right in front of the Sunrise Motel. He knew the workers would probably be back at it in the morning, and the thought of construction noise entered his head again. He wondered how early they started in the morning. He wondered if he'd be able to sleep. He wondered if he'd be able to nap in the afternoon after writing. He also wondered how much something like this must cost. Frankie's bark brought him out of his daydream. He looked down at the dog.

  “What did I say about barking at the seagulls?” he asked. He gave the leash a slight yank. “Come on.”

  Allen and Frankie strolled along Long Beach Avenue, people watching and gull watching. Every parking space along the avenue was taken. There were SUVs with paddleboards, kayaks, and surfboards strapped to their roofs. There were old beat-up junkers and brand new Porsches. There were small RVs and larger ones that took up two spaces. There were motorcycles, mopeds, and scooters squeezed in between other vehicles. The two passed vacationer after vacationer, tourist after tourist. Allen nodded and said, “How ya doin' today?” and “How's it going,” to many of them as he passed them by. Everyone he spoke to was a lot friendlier than the housekeeper.

  At the Sun and Surf Restaurant, Allen and Frankie switched to the other side of the street. Allen inspected the many beach houses along the way, even commenting several times that maybe he and Frankie should have rented a house instead of staying at an old motel. Most of the houses that sat on Long Beach Avenue were nothing fancy. It looked to Allen as though most of the old properties hadn't had any improvements made since the last time he visited. A good percentage of the million dollar homes were in worse shape than his hundred thousand dollar place back home. Location, location, location.

  “This place serves breakfast,” said Allen.

  He stopped in front of the Oceanside Store, looking up at the long sign that was mounted to the roof and stretched from one end of the building to the other.

  The Oceanside Store is more of a diner than a store. There were a few groceries inside, and some other things a vacationer at the beach might need, like beach towels, sunscreen, batteries, chips, soda, candy, souvenir mugs, and whatnot. Inside, to the left of the door, was a counter to order and pay for food. To the right of the door were several coffee machines. There was also a service counter out front.

  “Breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” Allen read. “Maybe we should try this place in the morning.” Allen looked back over his shoulder at the ocean. “Nice view.” His eyes went back to the diners seated at the two picnic tables. “They seem to be e
njoying the food.”

  Allen gave the leash a gentle tug, and the two were on their way. He checked his watch. “We could have eaten lunch there, but I didn't see anyone drinking alcohol. I could use a drink.”

  As they passed the Liquid Dreams Surf Shop, Allen commented, “Maybe we should take surfing lessons, Frankie. Whaddaya think?”

  A blond kid with a crew cut was sitting on a wooden bench out front of the surf shop. He was bare-chested, with his black and blue wetsuit folded over at the waist, and the arms dangling off the edge of the bench. His surfboard lay across his lap and he was giving it a thorough waxing. The kid overheard Allen and said, “We can do that. We do private lessons.” He reached around behind him and fiddled with the zipper of his wetsuit.

  “How much?”

  “Around a hundred bucks.”

  “What do I do, make an appointment?”

  “Yeah, just call up a day or two ahead, and we'll fit ya in.”

  “Maybe I'll do that. Thanks.”

  “No problem, dude, but you'll have to teach the dog after you learn how.”

  Allen looked down at the mutt. “Ya hear that, Frankie? Don't worry, pal, I'll give you the family discount.”

  The kid laughed and returned to his waxing.

  “Come on, boy.”

  Stones Throw was the next place they stopped. Allen checked his wristwatch.

  “Yeah, it's time for lunch,” he said. “Stones Throw. Drink, eat, stay,” he read aloud. “Two outta three ain't bad.”

  Allen stepped up to the hostess stand.

  “Good afternoon,” said the young woman. She reached up and tucked her long brown hair behind her ear. “How many?”

  “Just me and the dog,” Allen replied. “Is there a table available outside?”

  The hostess looked down at her laminated table sheet. “Is next door okay?”

  Allen looked to his left at the deck on stilts attached to the end of the two-story Stones Throw Motel. “Didn't even know there was a next door,” he said. “But sure, that would be fine.”

  The young woman, whose name tag read Mya, scratched out one of the two-tops on the table sheet and said, “Right this way.” She picked up a menu as she walked around the podium.