Later

8

I have to stop here and tell you about Regis Thomas. My mother used to say that most writers are as weird as turds that glow in the dark, and Mr. Thomas was a case in point.

The Roanoke Saga—that’s what he called it—consisted of nine books when he died, each one as thick as a brick. “Old Regis always serves up a heaping helping,” Mom said once. When I was eight, I snitched a copy of the first one, Death Swamp of Roanoke, off one of the office shelves and read it. No problem there. I was as good at reading as I was at math and seeing dead folks (it’s not bragging if it’s true). Plus Death Swamp wasn’t exactly Finnegans Wake.

I’m not saying it was badly written, don’t get that idea; the man could tell a tale. There was plenty of adventure, lots of scary scenes (especially in the Death Swamp), a search for buried treasure, and a big hot helping of good old S-E-X. I learned more about the true meaning of sixty-nine in that book than a kid of eight should probably know. I learned something else as well, although I only made a conscious connection later. It was about all those nights Mom’s friend Liz stayed over.

I’d say there was a sex scene every fifty pages or so in Death Swamp, including one in a tree while hungry alligators crawled around beneath. We’re talking Fifty Shades of Roanoke. In my early teens Regis Thomas taught me to jack off, and if that’s too much information, deal with it.

The books really were a saga, in that they told one continuing story with a cast of continuing characters. They were strong men with fair hair and laughing eyes, untrustworthy men with shifty eyes, noble Indians (who in later books became noble Native Americans), and gorgeous women with firm, high breasts. Everyone—the good, the bad, the firm-breasted—was randy all the time.

The heart of the series, what kept the readers coming back (other than the duels, murders, and sex, that is) was the titanic secret that had caused all the Roanoke settlers to disappear. Had it been the fault of George Threadgill, the chief villain? Were the settlers dead? Was there really an ancient city beneath Roanoke full of ancient wisdom? What did Martin Betancourt mean when he said “Time is the key” before expiring? What did that cryptic word croatoan, found carved on a palisade of the abandoned community, really mean? Millions of readers slavered to know the answers to those questions. To anyone far in the future finding that hard to believe, I’d simply tell you to hunt up something by Judith Krantz or Harold Robbins. Millions of people read their stuff, too.

Regis Thomas’s characters were classic projection. Or maybe I mean wish fulfillment. He was a little wizened dude whose author photo was routinely altered to make his face look a little less like a lady’s leather purse. He didn’t come to New York City because he couldn’t. The guy who wrote about fearless men hacking their way through pestilent swamps, fighting duels, and having athletic sex under the stars was an agoraphobe bachelor who lived alone. He was also incredibly paranoid (so said my mother) about his work. No one saw it until it was done, and after the first two volumes were such rip-roaring successes, staying at the top of the bestseller lists for months, that included a copyeditor. He insisted that they be published as he wrote them, word for golden word.

He wasn’t a book-a-year author (that literary agent’s El Dorado), but he was dependable; a book with of Roanoke in the title would appear every two or three years. The first four came during Uncle Harry’s tenure, the next five in Mom’s. That included Ghost Maiden of Roanoke, which Thomas announced was the penultimate volume. The last book in the series, he promised, would answer all the questions his loyal readers had been asking ever since those first expeditions into the Death Swamp. It would also be the longest book in the series, maybe seven hundred pages. (Which would allow the publisher to tack an extra buck or two onto the purchase price.) And once Roanoke and all its mysteries were put to rest, he had confided to my mother on one of her visits to his upstate New York compound, he intended to begin a multi-volume series focused on the Mary Celeste.

It all sounded good until he dropped dead at his desk with only thirty or so pages of his magnum opus completed. He had been paid a cool three million in advance, but with no book, the advance would have to be paid back, including our share. Only our share was either gone or spoken for. This, as you may have guessed, was where I came in.

Okay, back to the story.