The posted Question: Where should the author’s imagination end and the reader’s begin? And should an author step in after the fact to assert what happens or what was really meant? Does the book. once published. become the readers’ or is it the writer’s?
My Answer: Of course the "ever-afterword" is the author's; most of the unstated material pertaining to the novel is in the necessary back-story, even if it's only lurking in the writer's fevered unconscious.
My first heroine gave up her handsome, confident, wealthy Prince Charming to return to academe and lived to be a sour old maid. She had her reasons, carefully included in the novel's structure. My daughter says I'm mistaken, that the girl married: I say she just doesn't have all the facts, and I do. Author. Authority. See?
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Dead on Dutcher's Mountain
Chapter Two, cont'd.
Installment 4
“Yes, Hon,” Brian said.
“I hope he comes to the party.”
A glimpse of a back, someone obviously lecturing a trio of men lounging on their motorcycles. “He looked pretty busy,” Hillary said. She left the highway at the bridge, crossed the river and turned abruptly left onto a road scratched into a cliff. She changed focus. “So we’ll be in the trees all weekend. That’ll feel good.”
Earl’s hair was the color of purest taffy.
“Mais oui.”
Like Karen’s.
“But I don’t really want to see that landslide.”
Brian’s voice lost its lilt. “Mais non.”
“Yeah, Karen gloated, and she leaned forward until her breath was in Hillary’s hair. “How would you like to be drowned in mud like grandpa? You know, just all of a sudden in it up to your chest, then watch it creep up your neck, to your Adam’s Apple, then your chin, and...”
Hillary was curt: “That will do.” She rechecked the girl’s mischievous image. Dismissed Earl’s memory. Guiltily produced a smile for her niece. “It makes your father and me uncomfortable and sad.”
“But...”
“No buts.”
“Okay.”
“Anyway, it’s a different kind of mine now, and I want you to stay clear away from the machines.”
“I will.”
“And you forgot to buckle yourself in.”
“Oh.” The girl busied herself and disappeared from the mirror. After a while, more quietly, she asked, “What different kind of mine?”
Brian leapt in, reclaiming his daughter’s attention. “Now they’re not going to dig a cave kind of mine. This kind is called open pit, and it’s just a wide hole in the ground. The machines that dig it are very, very big.”
“How big? Big as a house?”
Brian and Hillary smiled at the same time. “Bigger,” he told her.
It was more information than the girl could process. She was silent for nearly a quarter-mile. “Are we getting close?” she asked. “It’s almost dark.”
“Just a few more miles.” Brian reached over the seat to offer unnecessary help with the strap. Hillary wished for a cigarette.
The pavement ended and pin oaks twined black limbs against a colorless sky. Far behind, headlights followed in the dusk. She crossed another gorge, climbed, crossed a low bridge, then another one, and they were into a land of pine and oak, of shadowed meadows and sudden vistas with white peaks to the south. Dutcher’s Mountain humped into view, low and rounded. The other end of its long crest beetled over the void of another gorge. Brother and sister fell silent, watched it approach.
A flicker caught Hillary’s eye on the eastern slope, like a headlamp flicked on and off, but there were no roads on the mountain so she dismissed it.
“A bear!” Karen shrieked.
Across a clearing a silhouette slowly rose from four legs to two, pawing jerkily at an invisible enemy on the ground.
“It’s in a trap!” Brian explained. “No fair! Karen, don’t look.” Nevertheless the three of them watched as Hillary pulled to a stop. Brian craned his neck to see, his breathing shallow, his eyes large. “Why doesn’t...why isn’t he shooting?”
“Who?”
“That guy in the woods! He has a rifle. Why doesn’t he kill it?”
Bear grunts, high-pitched and whimpery, reached the car.
“I don’t see anyone,” Hillary finally said.
“He’s in the trees. No, he’s leaving. No, he’s just bent over.” They strained to see. “No, he’s leaving. He should shoot it.”
“Maybe he’s afraid he’ll hit us if he does. I’ll pull forward.” Hillary put the car into motion.
“Someone’s coming,” Karen announced. “Bet it’s Sheriff Earl.”
Hillary stopped the car. Headlights lit the oaks ahead and filled the interior of the car with yellow light. It brightened to a glare. Brian got out and walked back, already talking. Hillary couldn’t hear what he said, but a car door slammed and she heard footsteps in gravel. The headlights darkened everything else; trees were made yellow and black. Karen unsnapped her seat belt.
“Stay with me, Karen. Your father and the sheriff are busy.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“If you want to help the bear, go turn off the sheriff’s lights, then come right back. I’ll turn mine off, too. Then the light won’t get in the way when Sheriff Earl aims his gun.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And come right back.”
Hillary concentrated on the trees, then the darkening sky as Karen doused McCoy’s lights. She had even recognized his footfall, over her brother’s.
The bear cried. Two shots thudded, timed well apart. Karen returned and slammed the door. The men were back; she stopped watching the trees.
“Hello, Hill,” he said. He stood quietly in the grass, his pistol hanging in his hand.
Hillary nodded. “Earl.” She couldn’t say more.
Then she could, and wanted to, but knew it would come out rushed and silly. She grinned like a kid.
He said, “I have some things to do before I can get to the party. Save me a dance?”
“Sure.”
He went back to his car and drove off first.
“Gads, Aunt Hill, do you know Sheriff Earl?” Karen asked.
“I used to,” Hillary said.
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