It’s all in a name

You’d think with a last name of Roberts that Robert would be a poor choice for a first. And you’d think too that Robert Roberts might have chosen a name other than Really for his own boy. But that was it, the boy’s name was Really Roberts. The story that went around most of course had to do with his father’s incessant and doubtful inquiry during gestation and his mother’s equally frequent and adamant response. Now and then Really’s tormentors would refer to him as Partly or Maybe and he found that when his full name appeared in print, his fortunes often hung on the placement, within or following Roberts, of an apostrophe or question mark. Our new transfer station, a decade old or so, has provisions for sorting recyclables and so forth. It also boasts an enclosure called the Swap Shop and there the thoughtful and frugal among us deposit our cast off stuff and retrieve things we think might be useful. That’s where Flutter Williams found Really Roberts early on a recent Wednesday morning. Really was standing in the entrance to the Swap Shop with his arms wrapped around a very nicely turned out upright dress form nearly a head taller than he was.

Really’s wife, Bottoms, not only thoughtful and frugal but also optimistic, had deposited him at the Swap Shop hours earlier hopeful, apparently, that someone might find him interesting enough to take home. Bottoms had come by her name not, in the way that an over eager reader may have surmised, but because she had, for years before she settled here, been the most aggressive and productive of a crowd of Waldoboro clammers. As soon as she stepped out of the boat, she’d bellow “bottoms up” and then assume that position, flailing away till her roller was filled. Bottoms settled here with her first husband, who was a County Deputy and, when it developed he was also an arsonist, Bottoms found herself with some of his official gear, stuff that hadn’t been on his person when they took him in, like the arrangement of restraints he’d brought wishfully home one night shortly before his apprehension. Thus it was that Really was found standing, or at least on his feet, hugging the aforementioned dress form and with his wrists handcuffed together in the small of its back. The mannequin’s bust, in turn, had been cranked up, to maybe a 38D, till there was quite a strain on the handcuffs, effectively locking them in an enduring, if less than passionate, embrace .

The dress form had been there at the Swap Shop for some time, the attendants having grown quite fond of her and reluctant to let her go. She appeared daily in a new outfit salvaged from the Shop’s considerable and continually replenished stock of cast off clothing. Often this stuff was top drawer, discarded only because it didn’t suit someone’s taste or the moment. The crew named her Miss Cleo, memorializing a member of the Board of Selectmen who’d come around far too often issuing opinions about the ways things ought to be done and predicting the failure of systems set in place by others, and generally short-circuiting the chain of command that gave oversight of the Transfer Station to the Town Manager. This Selectperson had, for several years, carried the nickname because of her resemblance to the ill-fated TV clairvoyant. Accordingly, during those first few months, her namesake was dressed in a mocking way and consulted disparagingly whenever a decision had to be made. Then too she would be moved around the site, often outrageously attired, to oversee the comings and goings. After a while though she grew on them. Specifically, she grew on Flutter Williams, senior attendant, whose own solitary life was now softened at night by two companionable cats and, during the day, by the equally companionable Miss Cleo. As a boy he’d acquired and had since sustained the habit of, when anxious, raising his hands to about shoulder level and waving his fingers or, if particularly stressed, flapping his hands from the wrist. Soon he was being told not to “get all aflutter over it,” and it stuck. Over time Flutter had selected, from among the items deposited daily at the Swap Shop, clothing and accessories he felt complemented Miss Cleo. Washing and ironing and making repairs at home, he kept her wardrobe clean and pressed on a row of hangers and a chest of drawers in a back corner of the Transfer Station office. For a time he and his activities, which he made sure did not interfere with his duties, were modestly made fun of by his fellow attendants and ridiculed quite badly by a few local rednecks whose narrow range of understanding could be understood, even forgiven, with only a cursory consideration of their ancestry. Anyway it passed. After a tormented childhood during which his own proclivities were unclear to him, and a less unhappy young adulthood during which those issues became, if not less painful due to the sustained intolerance around him, then at least clearer and during which time he found, briefly, a romantic interest that suited him, Flutter was now at middle age, gentle and, to his great credit, forgiving. He was alone but accepting of and accepted for who he was; he was content. On this morning, Flutter had driven to work in an ebullient frame of mind.

The previous day, the weather being consistent with approaching Spring, Flutter had, after briefly discussing it with her just after closing, dressed Miss Cleo in a smoky violet fleece turtleneck, stone microsuede cropped pants, and a really sweet cotton velveteen jacket. A turquoise drop necklace and silk scarf completed the ensemble. Flutter wished her a pleasant evening, alluding to an imagined engagement, went home and retired full of the anticipation that sustained him nowadays, that of returning to work early the next morning to freshen her up a little before the day got started and before her public began trickling in and, on this occasion, to find out how her evening had gone.

Really was just emerging from the excesses of the night before, just coming to grips, as it were, with his situation when Flutter pulled back the canvas flap covering the Swap Shop entrance to discover that the romantic evening he’d imagined for Miss Cleo had come to this wanton end. So distressed was he that Flutter ignored Really’s imploring solicitations for assistance and instead left them both there to reflect on their behavior and their circumstances.

Around seven o’clock Bait Dyer, junior attendant and equipment operator, showed up. Bait was short for Baitbag, a handle he’d earned on the day following his graduation from high school when he accepted a bet that he couldn’t get himself into a lobster trap and shut the door. In fact, tiny, wiry and doublejointed, he’d done it without much trouble. After having removed the potheads and partition from the wooden trap he’d squirmed in through the door and, from a kind of fetal position he extended one finger from the hand folded upward over his chest and did that which no one before or since has ever done, he closed the trap door thereby cementing himself and his accomplishment in the annals of island lore. If it had ended there … but of course it didn’t. His companions tied the button down and drove through street with the trap on the tailgate announcing to all that lobstering technology had experienced a great leap forward with the discovery of a better bait than herring, and one that needn’t be kept fresh as could be readily seen from this specimen, and they were about to prove it. Then they tossed him up on the washboard of the BETHANY ANNE FOR NOW with thirty fathom of rope and buoy attached and struck out, about a dozen of them and pretty well oiled, for the East Side. Bait never went on the water again and has worked at the Transfer Station ever since.

Bait was regarding Really and altogether maintaining a pretty serious countenance, not giving much credit to Really’s pleas to be released from bondage, but instead cautioning him against just mucklin’ onto just any woman in the dead of night and counseling him of the need to be more cautious and discriminating. Just then the first customer, as usual Betsy LeFleur, up bright and early and eager to discard a load of asphalt shingles she’d picked up herself to save money after a recent roofing job at her place, started for the demo trailer but stopped first at the Swap Shop to unload a malfunctioning blender. “I’ll swap you this for him,” she told Bait, “but leave the handcuffs on.”