“And don’t worry, I’ll make sure that’s all legal and proper,”
Mars Baker says with a smile he can’t quite swallow. This is the point in their pre-movie show where everybody in the water laughs, Jade knows: the high-dollar lawyer reminding them that he can get down and dirty with a contract. “But seriously,” he says, already making his closing argument, “I know you can’t see it yet, but we’ve told the teams putting our homes together that they’re not to cut down even one single tree. And we’re not allowing any fences over here, either. To us, this is still going to be national forest land, and before that, the traditional homeland of the Shoshone, a fact we should all keep in mind. Ownership in these mountains is a recent concept. The one we prefer is stewardship. When the deer come in and nibble Macy’s garden down to nubs, then, well, we’ll just come over to Dot’s, order a salad, right, Ms.
Dorothy?” Then Mars Baker steps closer, says behind his hand, “But don’t tell Macy, her squash and black-eyed peas are already all she talks about…”
Jade looks up into the sky, reminds herself that Macy Todd killed a boyfriend in a hotel once upon a time, and then rented two days’ worth of movies.
While she’s staring up, Theo takes the stage. She can tell from the silence. The media mogul knows how to work a camera.
“As many of you know, my daughter will forever be a graduate of Henderson High, class of 2015!” He pumps his fist and then holds it there, like congratulating Letha. Like congratulating all of them. Then he opens that hand, massages Lewellyn Singleton’s shoulder, his eyes still staring right into the soul of the crowd. “And I don’t know what I can add that these fine gentlemen”—Ross Pangborne pushes him, as if “gentlemen” is an insult, a joke, but the effect is that they’re just boys in a locker room. That they’re just like everyone bobbing in the water, soaking all of this in—“that they haven’t already said, and said so much better than I ever could. We do, we love it here. This isn’t a refuge from the modern world, we wouldn’t use your town, your lake, your valley like that. This is a place we want to put down roots, a place we want to watch our children grow, and their children’s children. But shh, shh, we don’t want to tell anybody else about it either.” Laughter here, Jade knows. She knows because she almost burped a laugh up herself. “Where else in all of America can a town come together to float in the water and watch a movie about people in the water!” Theo says, louder now, and Lewellyn swims a rubber shark in behind him, Theo unaware of it. “And yes, a hundred times over, we miss our friend Deacon.” The shark lowers. Theo’s face lowers. “He was the best of us. He was the one who found this place. He’s the one who should be here saying all this to you.”
The mahogany locker room of Founders dissolves then, replaced by… shit.
It’s the snapshots Deacon Samuels took of Indian Lake and Proofrock, the first time he swung through. In some of them he’s running to try to be in the shot, but he never quite makes it, and that makes it approximately one thousand times more endearing.
Finally it holds on a selfie he took, him and Lonnie at the gas pumps, Lonnie’s lips pressed tight together like he always does because he doesn’t want to stutter, Deacon Samuels smiling full-on into the camera, his sunglasses in his right hand, his eyes crinkling into crow’s feet from all his hours spent on the links.
When that image is finally burned in, faded away, Theo Mondragon is there in that mahogany locker room again, Lewellyn Singleton and Ross Pangborne and Mars Baker all crowded in like groomsmen. Theo Mondragon takes a sip from his plastic water bottle, looks camera right, then leans in, says, “But we’ve got to be part of the community, we want to be part of the community here. Ross, weren’t you saying that?
We can’t just invade the place, we’ve got to… we should prove ourselves to them somehow, don’t you think? That we’re committed, involved?”
It’s obviously scripted, and Jade’s pretty sure Theo Mondragon is being a worse actor than he really is, which takes some real acting chops, but still, it works.
“And, just so you know,” Theo says, “this wasn’t our idea.
This is all Deke— Deacon, I mean. He didn’t want to be a siphon on the community, but a reservoir the community could draw from.”
“He wanted to pay back into this place,” Lewellyn Singleton, the banker, says.