In this year-long serialized novel set on the Vineyard in real time, a native Islander (“Call me Becca”) returns home to help her eccentric Uncle Abe keep his landscaping business, Pequot, afloat. His staff includes Mott, the general manager, and Quincas, a cute Brazilian. Abe has a monomania about 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. After a series of increasingly disastrous failures (one of which resulted in his breaking his leg), Abe recently hired Perth, an Australian con man, to spread disinformation about Broadway in a final attempt to undermine it.

Dear P:

Pequot got business! Yes, actual business — paying customers! In January! In this economy! Four of them, and all big accounts! Isn’t that amazing?

It all happened briskly (everything in winter here happens either briskly or sluggishly, there is very little in between). Right after Abe’s failure to convince the Bachelor family of the evils of Richard Moby, Mott announced that he’d gotten four clients referred to us through his kayaking-partner’s architectural firm. He shared this news Monday morning over coffee in the steamy front office, assuming it would bring cautious jubilation. Which it did, from all except Uncle Abe.

“We can’t possibly take on four new projects at once,” Abe sniffed. And he had a point about that — especially with Quincas’s compatriots returning to Brazil in droves.

“That’s the beauty of this,” Mott reassured him. “They’re staggered time-wise. I set up a schedule and we can manage all of it. Three will keep us busy from March to July, and the fourth is reworking an existing garden that would start in late August.”

“Hot diggity, boss!” chirped Quincas (who has learned to clean up his language since last spring — I’d like to think that’s my influence, not that I am a paragon of verbal virtue myself).

Abe gave Mott a sour look. “Perhaps. There are certain projects we can’t take on because I’m re-allocating our resources.”

Mott blinked. “You’re re-whatting our what?” he asked, over-articulating to express sarcasm. Abe, unsurprisingly, did not pick up on this detail.

“Are you forgetting our mission, Mott?” Abe asked. Suddenly all of us knew exactly where this conversation was headed; Quincas elbowed me and winked. I do wish he didn’t find Abe’s Moby-obsession so endlessly entertaining.

“Pequot’s mission is to encourage people to have yards, gardens and landscaping that resemble what it might have been like here back when more people grew their own food, everyone had kitchen gardens, nobody watered their lawns and few people had caretakers to groom their property.” Mott was reciting from memory the mission statement he’d helped Abe and Gwen write up 30-odd years ago in their first business plan.

“Exactly,” Abe said. “And at this moment the only way we can do that is to first neutralize our greatest obstacle, which is Richard Moby and his Broadway Nursery. That is why I’ve hired that fellow Perth, and he is producing excellent materials which we must now put all of our creative and industrious energies into disseminating —”

“I think Richard Moby is scum, Abe, but I’m not going to go around lying about him,” Mott said evenly. “And frankly, you’re an idiot to waste any time on him.”

“Are you so heartless and selfish and callous that you would keep your fellow Vineyarders in ignorance of how evil this fellow is? Don’t your friends and neighbors have a right to know what kind of man they’d be doing business with?” Abe’s delivery was impeccable: righteous, long-suffering, slightly condescending and yet fatherly. If I didn’t know he was mentally off-kilter, I’d have felt guilty for not instantly leaping onto his wagon.

“And what kind of man is that?” asked Fran, the office manager. “You want us to bad-mouth the guy, give us some examples.”

“Here,” Abe said immediately. He had been carrying a stack of papers rolled in his left hand, and now he unfurled them grandly on Fran’s countertop. “Let the facts speak for themselves.” He limped into his office behind hers (the broken leg is not yet healed).

So of course we all crowded around the papers, even though I’d seen most of them and knew what to expect — like the “photo” of Moby snorting coke with Hugo Chavez and Saddam Hussein. There was more recent “evidence” too, however, all from “reputable online sources.” There was Moby’s name in a list of people to whom Bernie Madoff had sent jewels and money a few weeks back; there was an article about how he’s a huge contributor to a lobbying group claiming that global warming is a fraud; there was an incendiary expose associating him with a slavery ring. “Every time you buy a pink petunia from Broadway Nursery,” it concluded, “you help Richard Moby steal a child from its mother.”

We all exchanged careful looks. “This is bogus, right?” Stu asked in an early-morning monotone. Mott, Quincas and I all nodded (Quincas grinning broadly). “And he wants us to turn down paying clients so we can put our energy into making people think this isn’t bogus?” We all nodded again. Stu managed to look slightly less stoned. “So we’re working for a madman now, huh?” We nodded again. There was a silence.

“Can we just ignore him, and take on the clients, and go ahead and do real work?” Dag asked. Dag — the tall, broad-shouldered equipment guy — almost never speaks, so when he does, we pay attention. Again we all exchanged glances.

“We can try,” said Mott. “As long as we’re all committed to that, I mean really committed, until Abe gets his head back on straight.” He held out his hand, palm down, and without hesitation all of us — Quincas, Dag, Harp, Stu, Fran, myself — piled ours on top of his.

So despite the captain, perhaps the crew can turn the ship around ...

Becca

Be part of the Your Name Here campaign: any person or business donating $250 or more to Martha’s Vineyard Community Services can get a mention in Moby Rich. For more information, please contact Sterling Bishop at 508-693-7900.

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