Moreover

"Moreover"

It was in the early hours of Sunday 14th April 2002, that Frank Naples
rang his long-time friend and agent, Lester Dale, and said simply
"They're all true. "

Obviously Lester rang back, to find out what the hell that was supposed
to mean and why Frank had rung him up so early. Unlike many of his
other clients, Frank had never had a problem with alcohol or drugs - he
had always been more interested in style than substances.

Equally obviously, nobody replied, for as the world knows, by that
stage, Frank Naples was dead in his bathroom. He had climbed into the
bathtub, one in which the white enamel was fading away slightly leaving
grey scuffmarks and placed a shotgun in his mouth. That famous mind,
that had bought joy to so many was wiped off the tiles the next
morning, after the photographers had done their work. Both of Frank's
shoes were untied, but still on his feet. He had written on the
bathroom door, in blue paint, "Look what's inside. "

Like his final spoken words, his written words made very little sense
to anybody.

* * *

Most folk in Moreover woke up that day feeling something. None of them
could have said what it was, but it was some kind of pang. An ache.
Billy, who worked in the barbers, sweeping up, said it was like the way
his left leg still itched sometimes, even though it had been inside a
shark's belly for seven years now. Only worse'n that, it was like it
was a leg he'd never had that had started to itch. The main barber,
Stewart, felt that Billy was a damn fool, who'd deserved to get that
leg bitten away the way he did, though he felt sorry for Billy's
sister, having had to have seen it, her being delicate and all. But,
there was something in what he said. Stewart felt it was like grieving
for a pet that he'd never owned. His mind was still on that letter he'd
got, that and the accompanying photograph of two people underneath an
iron bridge, heads together softly like wintering birds.

In the Oystercross bar and grill, a building that had been painted in
vivid yellow to remind those who passed by of Cuba, Sal and Carmine
sucked hard at vivid limes and talked quietly between themselves of the
body that they had found in their chest freezer, beneath legs of lamb,
shellfish and bags of skinny mince.

Outside, on top of the cliff that drew around the town like a cupped
hand, Moore paused for a moment as he rubbed a hand over the heavy cool
white stone. He had been constructing this folly now for four months
and during that time had not spoken to a soul in the town. But he felt
an urge to sit down and just tell everyone exactly why he was building
this smooth monument.

Up on Callaghan Street, where all of the buildings behaved and
conformed to the white-and-black gables that New England expected, some
of the town's most garrulous had gathered to swig cold beer from
thin-necked brown bottles and talk themselves out of this funk that the
whole town seemed to be in. Mr Garvey recalled the time that the two
mobsters had come to town, to get revenge on Sam Morning, for some
imagined slight or other. Whatever the people of Moreover had thought
about Sam and his greased hair and odd taste in shoes, he had been one
of them, and a good few people had gotten together and taken care of
those mobsters.

Luke, who'd shot his wife in the spine by accident, couldn't take much
more of this talk. He'd not been involved in what had happened to those
mobsters, the wicker baskets and the lobsters. He'd always felt that as
the law enforcement in this town, he ought to have done something about
it. Just wasn't right, what had happened, even if they had deserved
what came to them.

There was a saltiness in the air that they were used to, but something
else as well. The sun seemed a little less definite, less sharp up
there in the bedspread sky.

Back at his house, where the shutters on the windows blew at night, his
wife Iris told her sister Betsy, who is simple, to wheel her into the
library, because there was a book on poisons that she needed to
consult. Iris' lips were thin and cold and Betsy's mind dwelt on Luke
and how he looked at her sometimes in a way that was sort of like a
kind hunger.

All of them felt the same sort of knot inside them. Or rather, the
absence of a knot - as though someone had untied something that used to
bind every one of them together.

* * *

It is possible to find Moreover on a map. Not easy, but possible. The
first thing that you need is a large map of New England. Big as you can
get. If you can get a map of the Maine coastline and spread it out so
it covers a room in your house, so much the better.

The next thing you need is nothing to do but look at a big map of Maine
for a week.

That's why people don't see things that are there.

When you set to work creating a world, take care how much thought you
give it. A little sketchiness is a good thing. It helps not to know
that behind the bar and grill that Sal and Carmine own is an yard
containing a henhouse and four old-chewed up tyres. And that in that
yard, two chickens scratch around, that a dog name of Light sometimes
gets in through a hole in the fence and chases the chickens, but never
gets near either of them, since he's slowed up now, after being hit by
a chalk-coloured car driven by Miss Flynn who teaches maths up at the
school but sometimes smokes some of the dope she grows and sells to the
kids.

If you're never going to tell the story of the dog called Light (and he
has a story, much more than is hinted at here), then it isn't safe to
go thinking about it too much.

Likewise, stories have been told about Betsy and why shes pretended her
whole life to be simple when she's really sharp and precise, and
stories of Iris and how she drove her last husband insane by careful
effort. But no stories have been told about the third sister, Patricia,
yet Frank knew all about her. He knew what clothes she wore, what
clothes she kept in the wardrobe and only took out to shake her head at
while she held the hanger up to her neck and peered into a mirror. He
knew what she'd seen and done that made her cry out in the night. He
knew what groceries she would buy from Grace and Bailey's store and
which she would go a little further afield for.

Of course Light and Patricia have stories. They all have stories. Too
many.

These characters got into Frank's head and they gave him stories. And
he grabbed them with pleasure and vigour and got them down on the page,
where he thought he had them fixed. But with every novel where he
returned to the New England town of Moreover, he thought about them
more and more. He filled notebooks with details he'd never need,
sketching buildings, making recordings of who had run the OysterCross
before Sal and how it had looked and what they had charged for this and
that. Frank knew the cheapest place in Moreover to get a vodka tonic
and how many ice-cubes would go in it, knew who cooked the best
medium-rare steaks and the most subtle clam chowder. Frank knew stuff
he'd never use, stuff he didn't need to know and after a time, stuff he
didn't want to know.

People who think the next leap will be with computers talk about a
point of consciousness, when you build smarter and smarter computers
and they get to a point where they realise they are computers and start
thinking for themselves rather than doing what they're told. Any writer
worth his salt can tell you that their characters are further along
that path than any computer, no matter how well it plays chess.

Frank's characters began in his head, the town began in his head. But
after a while, they climbed out and began living. Frank wasn't
inventing any more, he was recording. He just didn't know it, is
all.

It was in the early hours of Sunday 14th April 2002, that Frank Naples
rang his long-time friend and agent, Lester Dale, and said simply
"They're all true. "