In this year-long serialized novel, set on the Vineyard in real time, a native Islander (“Call me Becca”) returns home after two decades to help her eccentric Uncle Abe keep his landscaping business, Pequot, afloat. Abe has a paranoid hatred of Richard Moby, the CEO of an off-Island wholesale nursery, Broadway. Convinced that Moby wants to destroy Abe personally, and all Island-based landscaping/nursery businesses generally, Abe is obsessed with “taking down” Moby. A series of disastrous direct attacks over many months did nothing to dissuade him; he did, however, finally change tactics to an ill-considered smear campaign against Moby.

Feb. 27, 2009

Dear P:

Well, I think I might have something like progress to report on the Abe-vs-Moby front. Or if not progress, at least a changed attitude on Abe’s part. (While change does not automatically equal good, I want to point out that the last time he changed gears, from actual attacks to a smear campaign, he downgraded the danger to himself and others. Gone are the days of trying to drive a rented boat full-speed into another boat, or breaking his leg while sneaking into somebody’s office, or shooting a gun in the hospital ICU, or whatever it was he was trying to do with the fireworks. And so on.)

The latest thing, this smear campaign, has just been silly — and totally ineffectual. Nobody cares about Richard Moby supposedly buddying up to Hugo Chavez or Saddam Hussein, nobody believes Richard Moby set the fires in Australia or used child slave labor. Even when Rachel the gardener tried to help Abe “spread the word” about Moby, it just didn’t fly.

So the good news is, Rachel the gardener is out of the picture. The better news is, Abe has given up on the smear campaign.

The not-so-good news is, I don’t think the nonsense is quite over yet.

Rachel, of Rachel the gardener fame, came by earlier this week seeking Abe. I don’t have to tell you about the weather here; it’s colder and grayer than New York, but not as punishing as it was; at this point, it’s just the endless bleakness starting to wear everyone down. Rachel is a fabulous aging earth-goddess, with swaths of long gray hair she wears in two loose braids that she ties together to keep out of the way. I really do like her, which is part of why it was such a bummer for me when she began to work with Abe on this screwy “smear campaign.” I’m not even sure what it meant that she was “working on it,” as there didn’t seem to be much for her to do. But she was condoning it by expressing interest, and that right there was half the problem: it validated Abe’s “mission” at least in Abe’s mind.

I wish I could say Rachel came to her senses and excused herself from the whole escapade, but that’s not what happened. I wish I could say that I, or Mott, or Quincas, talked her out of it, but that’s not what happened either. No, what happened instead was weirder: Abe fired her, sort of.

Rachel showed up at the office as she does once each week, to pick up Abe’s newest collection of trash-talk to disseminate around the Island. As has happened every week, we all nod to her (while we sit around throwing darts or playing chess, since Abe refuses to put any of us on unemployment, as he’s convinced we will defect to Moby’s business); she nods to us; she disappears into Abe’s office; they have a secret tête-à-tête; she comes out with the latest libel, and goes her way for the week.

But this time, she went into Abe’s office for a much shorter time, and came back out both empty-handed and apparently stunned. She gave all of us worried, questioning glances as she made her way to the door, but spoke to none of us directly, so none of us spoke to her. As soon as she was gone, Abe stepped out of his office and addressed us all — probably the first time he’s done that in a month or more.

“Rachel and I will no longer be working together as we have been, regarding Richard Moby,” Abe announced. “I have let Perth, my PR man, go as well.” I think each one of us heaved a sigh of relief to hear that; Perth is the one who fabricated the false news stories (like the one recently tying Moby to the salmonella poisoning in peanuts).

“So you are finished with Mr. Moby?” Quincas asked, voicing the question on everyone’s mind.

Abe glared at him in contempt. “Of course not. I am not so irresponsible that I’d let that man continue his scheming unabated. But my fellow Island growers are simply unable to grasp the magnitude of his evil. He is the Bernie Madoff of the nursery world; I am the Harry Markopolis.”

“That’s an absurd and meaningless metaphor,” I said. Abe turned the contemptuous glare on me. It was pretty harsh. I shut up.

He glowered at our whole assembly. “As I was saying,” he continued, in a tight, dramatic voice. “As we enter a new era of accountability, of oversight, of responsibility, I consider it fitting to hold scum like Moby accountable for their behavior.”

“What’s the behavior and how are you going to hold him accountable?” I asked, in an annoyed voice, because I am really getting tired of this now.

Again he turned the eagle-glare on me. He nodded slightly. “You just wait,” he whispered, as a demented Dennis Hopper character might. “Oh yeah, you just wait.”

And on that note . . . here comes March!

Becca

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Vineyard novelist Nicole Galland’s critically-acclaimed works include Crossed: A Tale of the Fourth Crusade. Visit her Web site, nicolegalland.com.