9/12: Merrill, part the first

Merrill Stanley visited this afternoon. Or rather, materialized, just below the house as I was trying to manage a thirty-foot ladder in a stiff breeze, waving it about like a horizontal windmill. He calmly watched as I was finally able to prop the thing against the house, nearly putting it through a second floor window as I tripped over a hidden root. I left the ladder leaning at a ridiculous angle and went over to speak with him. Jude came out from the other side of the house and greeted him effusively. He began with a recitation of the purchase prices of various buildings on the island, beginning with 1928 and proceeding to the present. This, we have discovered, is his standard way of introducing, or reintroducing, himself, especially under new or unfamiliar circumstances.
We asked him if he wouldn’t stay for a cup of tea.
-Do you have it made already? he asked.
-No, but we’ll put the water on.
-That’s alright, then, I think I’ll be getting along.
The weather might have been blowing up a little and he was probably eager to get back to his “ailing” lobster boat, bought from a fellow in 1964 for $4,000. It is a battered looking affair, bedraggled white going to grey, turquoise trim on the house, with a pair of rusty, crooked exhaust pipes that remind me of the little crooked man who walked a crooked mile.
We said goodbye and turned around to deal with the ladder. Two or three minutes later, Jude said,
-Let’s go see his boat.
We ran down to the landing but there wasn’t a sign of him or his dinghy or his ailing lobster boat. Gone as suddenly as he had appeared.

Merrill’s Ailing Lobster Boat, the Vivian M.