The End of the Dream by Ann Rule Read Free Book Online

and grinned, mouthing “Catholic Banana Farm? “ They had to investigate.
    The next moonlit night, they drove through the massive and unguarded gate, and found acres and acres of ripe bananas. Cutting them would not do permanent damage, the plants left behind would regenerate. The temptation was too great. They worked all night, hacking off banana stalks as tall as they were, and loading them into the truck. “We had enough bananas for everyone we knew, “ Kevin Meyers remembered. “Maybe too many.
    We’d show up for the nightly potlucks each holding a stalk of them, and people began to groan when they saw us. It was worse than the acorn squashes.” It seemed that the more adventures they had, the more Kevin accepted Scott as his “brother.”
    “I loved him. He was the brother I’d been looking for. He always had time for me, and he never minded my being around. He always called me Bubba.” Although neither Kevin nor Scott recognized it, they were living out a magical time in their lives, one that could never be replaced once it was gone. One day melted into the next. They went to movies, and almost always preferred the films that were full of myth, swashbuckle, and romance.
    They played chess and sang and strummed duets on their guitars. The two of them liked to impress guests by playing “Blackbird” as a duet.
    Two decades later, Scott could still pick up his guitar and play “Blackbird” flawlessly. It was a haunting song, the words those of a man longing for his freedom. It was odd that Scott so identified with the lyrics, he had, perhaps, more freedom than almost any man alive.
    Kevin felt some faint sense of urgency, he knew where he was headedhis life would be devoted to his painting. It might be five years or even ten before he could realize his ambitions, but he had no doubt in the world that he would be an artist. For the moment, he fixed up a studio in the basement of The Shire House.
    Scott was less focused. He knew his dad expected him to get his four-year degree and find a well respected career, but he felt no particular time pressure about going to college. He was a prodigious reader and very intelligent. He had always been good at science, and he thought that one day he would become a doctor.
    Scott made a pretty good living with Hawaii Plant Life, although he would have preferred to have made it as a model. He had a display on the wall at the Shire Plantation with photographs of himself taken at modeling jobs. He still greeted women at the airport from time to time.   His friend Marge Violette asked him once if he minded kissing the older women, and he shook his head and grinned. “Scott had no sense of age with women, “ she recalled. “He liked kissing young women and he liked kissing old women. The only difference was that he wouldn’t ask the older ones for their telephone number or which hotel they were staying at.” Marge Violette was a New Jersey girl, originally, but she had been born with a wanderlust. She worked at various desk jobs for TWA for a while in New York City. Then she was assigned to Hawaii, and was stationedhappilyin Honolulu from 1969 to 1975. When the company downsized and she lost her job as a reservationist, she decided to spend a year in South Dakota. She had always enjoyed a complete change in lifestyle, and South Dakota was nothing like Hawaii. Still, she had a great time there. But Marge missed Hawaii and she came back to visit her friend Bill Pfiel in the spring of 1976. She was in her middle twenties, slender and pretty.
    She wore her thick black hair parted in the middle and caught up with two rubber bands. Hers was the ubiguitous look of the seventies, that long straight hair, a T-shirt without a bra, and either shorts or a long skirt. The extra rooms at The Shire Plantation were open to anyone who happened to be passing through.
    They never knew who might move in next. Bill Pfiel told Marge he thought she would like the young men from Virginia who lived