Free Off Season by Philip R. Craig

with a real estate developer. Some guy with big ideas, deep pockets and her mom’s blessing.”
    â€œThey don’t always go together.”
    â€œRumor has it, by which I mean that Angie tells me, that Helene is beginning to think that her greatest charm, as far as her mom and beau are concerned, is the fact that she may be able to talk Carl into selling his land to the boyfriend instead of to the Commission.”
    â€œAha. Skullduggery instead of true love, eh? Well, now that Carl is over there with Helene, the boyfriend can sweet-talk them both at the same time.”
    Mimi arched a brow and smiled a wee smile. “My sources tell me that Helene might be switching beaus before that can happen. Chug Lovell has been catching the Island Queen over to Falmouth several times a week, it seems.”
    Chug Lovell? Chug Lovell, who this very morning I’d seen sharing his canoe and his oysters with Heather Manwaring?
    â€œChug Lovell? I thought that Chug Lovell was . . .” I shut my mouth.
    â€œÂ . . . Wasn’t the type to attract a woman like Helene? Well, apparently he is.” Mimi did not seem displeased.
    I was mystified. “You’re a woman, so maybe you can tell me. What is it about Chug Lovell? He lives in a shack that he’s letting fall down around him, he never shaves, he’s got that crazy giggle and he looks like a pumpkin. I mean, I get along with Chug just fine, but he doesn’t fit the Romeo mold. So what is it about him?”
    â€œYou men!” said Mimi, shaking her head. “He’s lovable. He’s roly-poly, and childish and lovable. He’s also got enough money so he doesn’t have to work, he’s got an education, and he likes women and they know it. You and a lot of other men could learn a thing or two from Chug Lovell, Mr. Jackson.”
    â€œYou mean that if I was more like Chug, I might have had a chance with you, Mimi?”
    â€œMore tea?”
    So I had some more tea, and then I went home and made myself a supper of refrigerator soup, bread and white wine. Afterward I sat in front of my new stoveand read until I was ready for bed. I stepped out onto the porch first, for some night air. The fall wind sighed through the trees, and the night sky was bright and clear. I wished that Zee was with me, and wondered if she wished that she was. I also wondered if Mimi Bettencourt knew that Nash Cortez didn’t have any rabbits.

— 8 —
    â€œI thought you didn’t use electricity,” I said. “I thought you were living the uncivilized life.”
    Chug had just handed me three cold packages of venison. He grinned. “I got electricity and I got my truck, too. Some things you just can’t do without. Hee, hee!”
    â€œI knew a guy once who tried to go all the way back to the old days. Built himself a wooden boat, using only old tools. Had a wood stove and oil lamps and a wooden bucket instead of a water closet. Sailed the boat off to Mexico, then came back and sold the boat and gave the old days up. Said he’d found out he couldn’t live without paper towels. Everything else he could handle, but he had to have paper towels, so he resigned himself to living in the twentieth century.”
    Chug giggled and nodded. “I know whatcha mean, I know whatcha mean. Now, you enjoy that meat, J.W. It’s fresh and it’s good. Don’t let the game warden catch you with it, though. You know what I mean? Hee, hee!”
    â€œI’ll be careful.”
    Chug tapped one of the packages. “These are steaks. That one’s a roast and this one you’d better grind up and make into venison burger. It’s a sort of tough hunk.”
    â€œJust like you and me, Chug.”
    â€œHee, hee!”
    Through the sagging door leading to a back room, I could see a compound bow leaning against the far wall. Chug’s idea of primitivism apparently led him to eschew firearms, even the