Charlemagne Summer

Don't believe the myth that life-changing events have to be titanic, striking with the force of Thor's mighty hammer and scattering havoc or happiness from one horizon to the next. Sure, that's the way they've been hyped since Moses and Homer, but most of the time, in real life, defining moments aren't that way at all. They're more sneaky than dramatic, arriving with less fanfare than a mosquito strike and leaving not a wiggle on the seismic scale.

It was just such an event, you may recall, that caused the notorious Macphergus Creek Fair incident of 1975, the travesty of sex, indiscreet nudity and youthful innocence which sidetracked the promising career of twenty-year-old Ferguson Cartwright who at the time was probably the only combination chauffeur-and-doctor-of-philosophy-candidate in the country.

Cartwright had brought the calamity on himself by getting angry at his employer and benefactress, the wealthy philanthropist Hermina Hohenstraussen, merely because she would not let him drop out of college for a few months so that he could study malfunctioning male sexual apparatus.

Once he was mad, he wanted to get even, which is perfectly understandable, but the method he chose was so foolish and fatally flawed that, without his intending anything more than a modest revenge, it swerved him off the well-marked interstate of his personal road map onto a deceitful trail that slithered from gully to bog to quicksand before he knew what was happening.

His downfall had its genesis on a spring afternoon in May 1975 when he drove Mrs. Hohenstraussen's Grand Mercedes limousine onto the hydraulic lift at Jim Maynard's Macphergus Creek Garage, leaped impulsively from the chauffeur's cockpit to the plush passenger saloon and ordered Maynard to 'send the car aloft so I can do some serious thinking.' He was seething at Mrs. Hohenstraussen because she had dismissed his request so curtly, saying, 'You know the rules. Your scholarship contract requires you to pay a two thousand dollar forfeit if you forego your studies for reasons other than health or academic failure, neither of which is likely in your case.'

She knew he didn't have the money, and now he was in a serious bind, needing to find a graceful way to back out of the study after promising two college buddies that he would be the lead researcher. The truth wouldn't do. His collaborators were the sons of rich men, and his having to drop out for the lack of a measly two thousand dollars might be construed as a character flaw. His humiliation would be total.

Frustration made him unbearably tense. He hurled his shoulders back against the gold leaf decorating a corner of the saloon and flung his feet up onto the richly-upholstered bench seat. He was about to stamp his shoes up and down and grind his heels into the powder-blue plush when the loud clang of a wrench hitting the garage floor reverberated painfully inside his skull.

'Fergy's up there, sonny,' he heard Jim Maynard say, 'but my instructions are not to disturb him.'

'Oh, please, Mr. Maynard. I've got to see him. It'll be all right. He knows me real well.'

'I doesn't matter. I've got my orders.'

Cartwright stuck his head out the car window and demanded to know what the commotion was about. He looked down and saw Mike Gervasi, a wiry little twelve-year-old, standing beside Maynard. The tail of the boy's faded shirt sagged out of the waistband of his shorts and one of his tattered sneakers was untied. He held a large flat package, wrapped in brown paper, and looked up earnestly at Cartwright through bright green eyes set in a sun scorched and freckled face so common among redheads.

'I'm sorry, sir,' Maynard said, 'but young Mike came barging in asking for you, and I got distracted and dropped a wrench.'

'It's my fault, Fergy,' the boy said, 'but the only thing I was thinking about was seeing you. I've got to show you this.' Mike held the package up above his head.

'Not now. I've got problems.'

'But it has to be now. It's something you need for tonight.' Cartwright looked searchingly at Mike. The boy was both precocious and cunning, but he wasn't known as a troublemaker.

'All right, Jim,' he said. 'Let him come up.'

'If you say so, sir.' The garage man walked to the back wall of the service bay and turned a lever, causing the hydraulic lift to descend. The moment the limousine wheels touched down, Fergy opened the door, pulled Mike and the package inside, and commanded Maynard to send them up again.

'Show me what you brought.'

Mike removed the paper from the package carefully, uncovering what at first glance appeared to be a centerfold illustration from a men's magazine.

'What do you think?' asked Mike.

'About this?' Fergy was puzzled.

'Is it worth anything?'

'Of course not. It was printed in about a million magazines.'

'Not this one,' said Mike, pushing the picture at Fergy. 'Look at it real close.'

Fergy saw then that Mike had brought him no printed reproduction but an original painting of a black-haired maiden of pleasing dimensions wearing a flowered lei and little else.

'Where did you get this?'

'You like it! I knew it was good.'

'Too good for you to have. Where'd you steal it?'

'I didn't steal it. It was given to me by the artist.'

'Oh, sure. For what? Mowing his beach grass?'

'No! Honest! It was painted for me.'

'This? For a kid your age? Come off it. What kind of pervert would do a thing like that?'