The South Branch Scribbler presents it's second guest in the New Brunswick authors series for August and September.
Chuck Bowie graduated from the University
of New Brunswick in Canada with a Bachelor Degree in Science. He lives on the
East Coast of Canada, an hour North and East of Maine. Growing up as an air
force brat, his writing is influenced by the study of human nature and how
people behave, habits he picked up as his family moved nineteen times in his
first twenty one years. Chuck loves food, wine, music and travel and all play a
role in his work.
His
writing will often draw upon elements of these experiences to round out his
characters and plotlines. Chuck is involved in the world of music, supporting
local musicians, occasionally playing with them and always celebrating their
successes. Because he enjoys venting as much as the next fellow, Chuck will at
times share his thoughts with a brief essay, some of which can be found on his
website. http://chuckbowie.ca
He is working through the fourth novel in
the suspense-thriller series: Donovan: Thief
For Hire. His newest is entitled Steal
It All, and follows Three Wrongs
and AMACAT. He is now writing the
fourth, as-yet untitled.
Chuck is married, with two adult musician
sons. He and his wife Lois live in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
Following is an excerpt from Amacat:
Chapter One
Prince Edward Island
A single track of sunshine elbowed its way through the crack
in the curtains, creating a warming sundial effect on the pickled hardwood
cottage floor. Peggyand John Whiteway awoke to their perfect Prince Edward
Island morning. Johntried to offer up a ‘Good morning darling,’ but the ensuing
crackle of his voicemade him pause and change the greeting to an accusation:
‘You got me drunk lastnight!’ He couldn’t muster the requisite indignity so the
words became just…words. Instead, he peeked inside the coverlet and silently
thanked his wife foragreeing to his ‘no pajamas’ rule while on vacation.
The shower was splendid. He loved a
long, lingering shower—he was averaging two a day this week in an effort to keep the beach
salt off. And theowners of the property, bless ‘em, had dropped off another
wicker basket with acarafe of coffee, fresh croissants, and a map to a different
island destination. They had done so every morning so far; he had casually mentioned
it to a neighboringcottager and thus knew it was a perk the folks next door
didn’t receive, whichmade the treat even sweeter. It was the best vacation John
had ever had. There’s something special about the simple pleasures.
“Honey, don’t knock the simple
pleasures,” he called out over the spray of steaming water.
In the background the cell phone
was jacked up on the docking station. It was The Hold Steady, playing Barely Breathing. Her son Aaron had
loaded up Peggy’s phone with songs before they left. A bit of a downer song,
although he loved it, just not first thing in the morning.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Turn that crap
off.”
In reply, she entered the bathroom
and flushed the toilet, leaving without saying a word. He stepped to the far end of the shower to
escape the rush of cold water, smiling as the song continued to amplify through the
wall.
John ate the last almond paste
croissant while Peggy showered. Afterward they tidied up the place. The cottage was located north of
Charlottetown, in what he called the artsy-beachy area. It was their second straight
summer at Brackley Beach, the second of many, he hoped. The loft was fairly
tidy so it took but a moment to pick up the pair of wine bottles and the pillows
he and Peggy had reclined upon in front of the enormous floor-to-ceiling
windows the evening before.
On the main floor the dishes were
already in the sink—”I promise I’ll do them when we get back, Pegs.”—so they had merely to get set
up for the day. He’d loaded the back pack; found that errant pair of sunglasses,
argued good-naturedly about the need for four bottles of water and the relative
merits of Vans runners versus sandals, and off they went to explore the beach. The
giant red dunes in the nearby national park were their destination this morning.
They turned off the main highway
about a mile before the national park gates. Peggy couldn’t pass the Owl’s Retreat art gallery without
stopping, so she tugged at John’s shirt the moment she spied the shop sign. John
parked the Prius and headed straight for the smaller door to the left of the main
entrance. It led to the little café on the side of the gallery and he grabbed his
third coffee of the morning.
While Peggy wandered off to the koi
ponds and garden at the back of the gallery, John stood in front of the framed heron that had
caught their eye earlier in the week. He debated whether the pleasure they would derive
from looking at it long after their vacation would be worth the bother of
lugging it onto the plane back to Minnesota. Peggy sauntered back and asked him if he
wanted to buy it.
Then, as couples will, they
discussed whether the convenience of buying it now (and worrying about it possibly getting stolen from their
trunk later in the day) outweighed the bother of stopping by the gallery at the end
of the day. It was, as Pegs noted, a good five minutes out of their way, since they
were coming back from a different direction that evening. Ten minutes,
actually, if you counted both ways, which she obviously did.
John could tell she didn’t really
care what the decision was, but if he didn’t make a decision soon, the banter would degenerate into
bickering, and he didn’t want to go there. So he pretended to care and told her he
really wanted to buy it now. He was pleased when she said “Up to you, babes.”
Problem solved. A bubble-wrapped minute later and the trundled parcel was safe
in the trunk, sitting beside the back pack with the water, extra T-shirt sneakers,
a couple of murder mysteries, towels, and a wrap for Peggy’s hips in case they
ate at a fancier restaurant for lunch. Pegs was becoming a bit self-conscious
about the extra couple of pounds she had put on this past year. John couldn’t see
it but Pegs assured him they were right there, the bastards. She brought the wrap
even on the hottest days. Just in case.
Inside the park they pulled over on
the water side of the road, closest to the dunes that were the star of this recreation area. The
weather was unfolding perfectly so they expected to meet people on the dunes or at
least on the beach. Initially, however, they were alone.
“Score!” said Pegs.
John was glad they had worn
sandals. The couple had mounted the thirty-foot rise of loose red dunes only to find a higher, more
impressive set. They dropped into the swale between the two sandy ridges, and then rose
back up to view the water through the lens of an amazing island morning. As a
kid in the lackadaisical sixties he had been given a jar of liquid mercury no child
today would be allowed near. The sensation of sinking his bare toes into the
night-chilled sand that morning felt just like when he had stuck his bare finger into that
cold, dense liquid.
The sun had risen well past the top
of the dunes on their left but still cast long shadows across the leeward side of the empty beach. A minute
earlier the night chilled sand from the shaded part felt like a cool liquid. Now the
sun-warmed sand felt like a different material altogether.
The beach stretched on and on in
both directions. They could see a few families far off in the distance, but otherwise they were
alone with two miles of beautiful red-sandy playground. He pointed to the families
in the distance.
“Sorry, Baby-cakes; no nude
sunbathing this morning.”
“Yeah, like that was going to
happen.”
Once again John smiled as she
patted him on the shoulder. It was a great day.
“Okay. Enough with the climbing. Let’s go down there and
make sand castles and solve mysteries. Did you bring a good book?”
He took her hand and led her down
the water side of the dunes, red sugar-sand feeling like a cool silk on his ankles where the sun hadn’t
yet got to it, and they strode onto the best beach in Canada.
John stopped at the base of the
dunes to study the marram grass that had been planted to reduce the erosion. Peggy took the backpack and
went on ahead to pick a spot on the sand between the ever-shortening morning
shadows and the water. He took the lens cap off his Nikon and bent down to take a few
photos; this grass would be a beautiful border for his garden back in St. Paul.
Surely the garden shops back home had a non-marine version of this.
He thought
of that quote: ‘God gave us memory that we may have roses in December.’ “Or
marine grass from Canada in Minnesota,” he muttered.
Something made him look up, to
where Peggy was standing. She had headed down to the water’s edge having dropped the backpack a few
feet behind her. Something had caught her attention. A peevish thought
entered his head, disturbing his unclouded mood: If we sit that close to the water this
early in the day, it might be a little too breezy. Why doesn’t she just come back
halfway up the beach? It would be warmer, offer softer sand and the dunes would keep
us out of the breeze.
As if in reply, Pegs screamed. It
began as a wail, but she obviously felt only her best effort would do under these circumstances and her
voice went up a few decibels and a few notes. A half a mile downwind the little
boy and girl turned their heads in one motion and stared up the beach, at his
wife. John began to run.
* * * *
“Dammit, this is why I came to Canada, to get away from this
shit.”
John refused the invitation to sit and paced the great room
of his cottage, eyes glued to the floor.
“If I wanted murders and,
and…mayhem, I’d have stayed home!”
His eyes finally rose up to meet the RCMP officer in charge
of Queens County, Prince Edward Island.
“Because believe me when I tell ya,
we got m-murders back home. I don’t need ‘em following me on vacation!”
John’s voice was rising, uneven and
his face was blotchy and red.
“Shut up, honey.” Peggy had gotten
control and was now unexpectedly calm.
“There’s not a lot we can do about…”
John stopped to glare, looking but
not seeing. He raised the palm of a soft hand as if to halt any interruptions.
“…Because I expect to dig my
god-damned toes in the sand and not dig up bodies with ‘em. Especially bodies that I recognize! What the
hell is this? Detroit?
No, it’s supposed to be this gentle storybook place…”
At this point John ran out of
steam. Peggy leaned forward without getting up and patted John on the back of his bare calf. After standing patiently for
several minutes, acknowledging his witness’ need to vent away a little of his shock and, yes, fear, Inspector
Ian MacIsaac stepped forward and took control of the discussion. He glanced at
his notepad and began.
“Mister and Missus Whiteway, is it?
I’m going to tell you my understanding of what transpired, and you can stop me if I make any errors in
what took place, when it happened or your observations during the course of your
morning. Now, I would ask you to jump in if anything, anything at all is different
from your impression of what happened. John, I really appreciate your cooperation in
this matter and I am truly, truly sorry for this, ah, interruption of your
holiday.”
The Inspector took a deep breath.
“Shall we begin?”
He pointed to a nearby teak chair
into which John reluctantly sunk, and the Inspector followed suit by dropping his bulk into the mate
of John’s chair. He started to speak but something out of the corner of his eye
caught his attention. He looked over to John’s wife.
Peggy had raised a tentative finger
as if she was pointing crookedly at the teak and wicker fan above them. She began, faltered then started
again in a hesitant voice, all the while smoothing her shorts with the flat of her
hands.
“I…I was wondering if we saw who,
who we saw. Was it…?”
Inspector MacIsaac gave her a look
as if to ask why it really mattered who the body had been before being murdered. But he merely offered
that when the red beach sand was pushed away from the rest of the victim’s
face and naked body, it did indeed look like the Hollywood actress Nadia Kriss, but
that he couldn’t possibly confirm or speculate who in fact the woman was. He
then leaned forward, rested an elbow on one knee and from his notes proceeded to
tell the story of how Mister and Missus Whiteway from St. Paul, Minnesota walked
straight into the shit on what up until that moment had been a perfect Prince
Edward Island vacation day.
Thank you Chuck for sharing the beginning of what will be a marvelous tale. Buy Amacat here .
Next week in the series of New Brunswick Authors, you can meet Pierre Arseneault of Moncton.
The medium-range work includes
organizing workshops and readings for the autumn, writing grant applications
for 2015–16, planning ahead for the 2015–16 writing competition and mentorship
program, fundraising (also nonstop)… and trying to boost membership through our
regional rep program. We also are about to launch a new section of our website
called TeensWrite…a place where we
publish short stories by young New Brunswick writers. I’m really excited about
that program. 
GM: The story that comes immediately
to mind is the time I decided, at age 11, to handle a canoe myself in a high
wind. One summer we visited a cabin on a wide, strong river that flowed
eastward for a quarter-mile before cascading over a dam. On this particular
day, Dad told me not to go canoeing, because the wind was too strong. I headed
out anyway. The wind caught the canoe bow and immediately torqued the boat
broadside so I could not control its direction. At the same time, the river
current carried me inexorably toward the dam. As I struggled to control the
canoe, I saw Dad at the end of the dock, watching. He kept watching as I
drifted downstream. I had to slowly inch my way forward in the canoe so I could
paddle from the mid-section and gain some directional control. Finally, after what
felt like hours, I reached land far along the shore, just before the dam. As I
gingerly hauled the canoe back over cobbles and sunken logs, I saw Dad in the
distance, still standing rigid on the dock. Only when I got within earshot did
he turn and leave. He never said a word about it, and neither did I.
