The Wickhams in Late November:

Over in Malcolm Falls, Cletus Wickham walked into the Back Room Café on the east side of the courthouse square and made his way to his usual table.

This is what he’d done every weekday for about 30 years, not counting holidays, vacations and that month-long spell in ’82 when he was making his peace with his stomach after having won the hot-dog eating contest at the county fair. (114 – a record, which still stands, which is more than Clete was doing at the end of the competition.)

Clete nodded a greeting to Judge Thorn as he slid into his seat across the booth from Beau Wickham who was Clete’s cousin of sorts – their great-grandfathers having been brothers.

Beau,” Clete said by way of greeting the man who had shared these lunches for 28 of the last 30 years.

“Clete,” answered Beau, raising his eyes over the menu he was studying.

Clete didn’t pick up his menu. He just sat there for a moment and then said, “Beau, don’t you think it’s odd that this menu has never changed and we always look at it?”

Beau’s face had been shocked into a blank expression and he just stared as his cousin leaned over the table and started talking about what had slipped into his mind that morning taken root.”

“In fact, Beau,” Clete began, “I’ve been wondering if maybe most of us Wickhams aren’t . . .. just plain odd, period.”

Jeanne-Louise Hawmans was standing at the table now, ready to write down their order. Pencil poised above the notepad, she joined Beau in staring open-mouthed at Cletus. Jeanne-Louise was about 78 and a war bride, having married Bob Hawmans after he had helped liberate France.

She had retired a few years back but helped out whenever Suzi Wickham Beckett called in sick, suffering from one of the headaches she had developed after her 1995 English Channel Swim.

“Mon Dieu!” It escaped in a whisper between Jeanne-Louise’s lips, but it was loud enough to catch the attention of the other diners and cause them to fall silent just as Cletus tried to get Beau to grasp his point.

“It just seems like sometimes – maybe a lot of times – people think we do things . . . differently than they would.”

He floundered then, not finding better words, failing to penetrate beyond the dazed look in Beau’s eye.

The café tottered in reality at that moment in Malcolm Falls’ meshing of time and space with The Twilight Zone.

Cletus could almost see something. Beau stopped breathing. The others started to wonder if a Wickham was actually going to realize what the whole town knew – that the family was intelligent, charming, vibrant and to a member a bit loony.

But before the idea could coalesce, it started to fade. Cletus rubbed his forehead and knew he should be reading the menu before he ordered his usual tuna salad with catsup.

Beau did start to breath again. Jeanne-Louise put her pencil to the paper and a scent of bougainvillea pulsed in the air for a moment as everyone went back to chewing, chatting and being in sync.

That was a Wednesday. They didn’t come in the next day. No one did. It was Thanksgiving.

About 36 Wickhams were gathered at Dr. Howard K. Wickham’s for dinner.

Phi Beta Kappa, sum cum laude graduate of Yale Medical School, chief of neurology of a big hospital in Chicago, Howard spent the work week in a apartment and returned every week-end and holiday to his home in Malcolm Falls.

The house stood on a bluff overlooking the falls and had been built on the site of the original Wickham homestead. It was the one place Howard loved best in all the world.

He was adding another log to the fire and talking to Cletus about the smells coming from the kitchen when Clark Lewis Wickham leaned against the mantle and asked, “So could there be a Mad Turkey Disease?”

Howard straightened up and stood where old Pioneer Wickham had stopped to breathe his pony and decided to settle. He pondered, his eyes staring up and to the left in that characteristic way he had. Then he looked at Clark and slowly answered, “I don’t really know.”

An hour later after Grace had been said, everyone dug into plates filled with potatoes and yams and beans and stuffing and green bean casserole and pumpkin loaf and Aunt Opal’s Jell-0 and fruit salads and cranberry sauce and . . . on the sideboard, a mound of tuna, molded in the shape of a turkey.

Just as Beau raised his fork he gazed at Cletus and sensed there was something, something he was missing.

Then he gave a tiny involuntary shrug and thought, “Odd, I smell bougainvillea.” He took a big bite of tuna.

Ethan Wickham is a Bean man – an L.L.Bean Man. Almost everything he wears – with the exception of his underwear – comes by mail order from the L.L.Bean catalog.

He’s been a Bean Man for a little over 10 years now, ever since he saw the movie “A River Runs Through It” and subsequently read the book by Norman Maclean. Let’s just say Old Ethan identified with Montana and fly-fishing and let it go at that.

It didn’t matter that Ethan had never been to Montana and had never fished. He just watched that movie and felt the cold water of the river pulling at his legs and the morals of Montana tugging at his soul.

Of course, he never said it aloud – except when he was alone – but always in the back of his mind was the statement: In Montana we’re never late for three things – work, church and fishing.

Ethan never wondered why he didn’t pick up and leave Malcolm Falls for the Big Sky country. He knew. Two parents, one wife, three kids, two brothers, numerous friends, his house, a county club membership and his position at Wickham, Lowell, Barnes and Wickham: Attorneys at Law kept him anchored in the town in which he had been born.

He never wondered why he didn’t go out to Montana for a vacation. He knew. He didn’t want to find it was any different from the way he had found it in the movie. So, the Montana of Norman Maclean’s youth became his happy place.

It is, of course, his secret place as well. He carries on as he always has, but he carries Montana with him in his heart. And he sort of carries it on his body – in the form of his outdoorsy L.L.Bean wardrobe.

He started modestly enough with a couple pairs of rugged Timberline pants and has over the years worked himself up to the Bug Out Jacket. It arrived last Monday and hangs now in his closet, waiting for summer. When he first saw it in the catalog, he knew he had to have it.

The picture was not that captivating, reminding him of one of those transparent plastic raincoats that is supposed to fold up small enough for a pocket, but the description reeled him in: “For protection without chemicals, this jacket is a must-have. Durable 100% polyester no-see-um netting packs small enough to fit in fly vest. Front tunnel pocket for gear storage. Large drawstring hood easily accommodates hat. Elasticized wrists and drawcord waist keep pests out.”

Of course, they spray for mosquitoes in Malcolm Falls, and he really didn’t need it, but he knew it would make him feel “so Montana.” The Bug Out Headnet he passed up; it looked a little too much like a huge astronaut helmet made out of netting to be inconspicuous on the street.

Folks are used to seeing Ethan on the street in his Magalloway fly-fishing vest, with its numerous pockets. Ethan tells friends and clients he doesn’t need a PDA; he has his vest, complete with a “waterproof pocket to keep (his) wallet dry” if he should get in over his head on some legal issue.

Ethan’s wife, Maggie, has never said a word about his shift from explorer’s clothing to that of the outdoorsman. As long as he is kind and clever and entertaining and a good provider, she has no problems with his Moose River Hat – the Stetson for anglers.

Besides, she has been down this road before, so to speak. Before “A River Runs Through It” . . . and she knows this movie had to play a role in Ethan’s L.L.Bean phase . . . there was the “Indiana Jones” look, complete with battered fedora and leather jacket.

Years before that he had worn Western clothing. That had been the decade when he had caught John Wayne in “The Searchers” on the late show and had felt a bond with “The Duke” and the code of the West.

It has been better these last two incarnations – he hasn’t changed his name to match that of the character as he did when Wayne played Ethan Edwards.

That had been a little hard to explain to their friends, not to mention her parents. In his Indiana Jones stage, he had carried a coiled whip hanging from his belt and that had caused a few comments. Now he just ambles around in his fishing vest . . . and on rainy days, his waders. She thinks it is so much easier now.

She doesn’t think about what movie might have inspired him to adopt the habit of only wearing silk underwear. She hopes it was an old Cary Grant flick . . . but she doesn’t dwell on it too much.

However, she never, ever lets him watch a Three Stooges Marathon.

Well, the Wickham Family Reunion has come and gone round for another year. A few folks come from quite a distance, but for the most part, the Wickhams all live in or around Malcolm Falls.

The reunion, then, is pretty much a get-together of people who know an awful lot about each other and run into one another on a weekly, if not daily, basis. This group is spiced up by the annual arrival of some big city cousins, a couple from the branch of the family that took off out west after World War II and two or three who live just far away from Malcolm Falls that they are listed in a different phone book.

This year the reunion was at Oliver and Lois Wickham’s place about four miles west of Piney Lake. Bertha Wickham, young Hal’s wife, came over about 7:30 a.m. to help Lois make up the lemonade and iced tea and get the hamburger into patties and so forth.

The weather wasn’t predicted to be too hot that day so they didn’t fret too much about the food people were bringing in taking a turn for the worse from the heat. Of course, heat or no heat, Bertha and Lois made special plans for Aunt Opal’s perennial Jell-O dish.

Fifteen years ago when she first brought it, Seth Post, Ariel Wickham’s husband, had taken a big spoonful. Instead of allowing itself to be scooped out, the Jell-O stretched all the way over to his plate and then “bungee-ed” back to the bowl with a loud thwack.

Carolette Wickham Boone had quietly taken the bowl and emptied the Jell-O out, except for a wee bit. When Aunt Opal came back around for seconds, she saw the almost empty dish and said that since everyone had liked it so much, she would make it a tradition to bring it.

The next year, everybody made it a point to have Aunt Opal go through the line first and then Carolette grabbed the bowl and did her thing. She was afraid to put it down the garbage disposal so she slid it into a plastic bag and stashed it under the sink.

It was probably about three years later when Tim Olsen, Jane Wickham Forbes grandson by her daughter Beth, walked out behind the barn and found the youngest Wickham generation playing “Jell-O ball.”

The kids went stone still at the sight of Tim, but six-year-old Tyler piped up with “Uncle Harv taught us!” Tim found Harv out on the screen porch where the family pictures were displayed and took him aside.

“Those kids are playing with Aunt Opal’s Jell-O and they say you told them to,” he whispered sharply. Harv Wickham put his hand on Tim’s shoulder and said, “Boy, I know you’re going to school to be a preacher, and I respect that. Tim, I’ve been married to Opal for 40 years and I love her to death, but that Jell-O like to be the death of me. Now I didn’t want her to bring it to the reunion, but she went and did it and now she thinks people like it.

“So those kids like to play Jell-O-ball. Heckfire, I’ve juggled it, used it to pad the seat on the tractor and plugged up a hole in the chicken coop with it; the stuff works great. Opal thinks we like her Jell-O. Well, boy, we do. We’re just a liking it a little bit different than she imagines. Now, you going to go and ruin things?”

And that was that.

At this last reunion, Chuck Hughes, who had come with his widowed mother, SueAnn Wickham Hughes, from suburban Kansas City got to talking with his cousins about rider lawnmowers.

They were comparing the merits of John Deere, Wheel Horse, and others when Chuck asked, “So what kind of mileage do you fellows get?”

Everybody was sort of quiet for a moment and then Chuck launched off in an explanation of the new trend in suburbia. “I finished mowing my acre one day and thought, ‘Shoot, I don’t use this thing but once a week. Why not try to get more use of it?’

“So I got to talking with some of my neighborhood buddies and we figured we could save a lot of wear and tear on our cars if we mowed our way around the subdivision. First of all, we had to agree on what height to set the mowers so the paths would blend together . . .”

The cousins were nodding as Chuck went on about mowing his way into work and then Wade Wickham piped up, “Too bad SueAnn’s never been much for the outdoors or you and she could have mowed your way out here on the interstate median strips.”

Last we heard, Wade and Chuck had put SueAnn on a plane and were heading out to Kansas City on Wade’s new John Deere. They plan to show slides of the trip next year.

One day in February Lydia Wickham went missing. She was a spry and healthy 87-year-old retired schoolteacher. Never married, she was what was known in the era in which she began her career as a spinster. In fact, fiercely independent yet demure in behavior, she had almost single-handedly carried that term into the 21st century.

Schoolteacher is how Miss Wickham referred to herself. On first meeting, strangers assumed the tall, angular lady had spent a lifetime shepherding an endless flock through one of the early grades.

Actually, Lydia Wickham had earned a Ph.D. in English Literature at Yale University, and had held the Rudyard Kipling chair at Malcolm Falls College until her retirement at age 80. She had spent a lifetime shepherding fledgling freshmen through the poetic geography of the “Ballad of East and West.”

Her home was a small cottage on Old Church Lane where she gardened, read, watched “Two Fat Ladies” on the Food Channel and listened to music. Without fail, every Sunday she completed the New York Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle.

One day the postman, Hal Metford, rang the bell, but she didn’t come to the door. He wasn’t surprised; Miss Wickham was one to go out often for a “bit of air,” as she would say. He left a note about a certified letter along with the rest of her mail in the box and headed down the sidewalk to Olivia Hayworth’s.

The next day he found the mail untouched. After hesitating a minute, the postman rang twice. Again no one came to the door. He felt the fear inside him that she was lying in there – had been since before he’d rung yesterday.

Things started to happen. Inquiries of neighbors and calls to family members resulted in Deputy Sheriff Wigbey and her brother Thad Wickham going inside to look around.
Their fear that they would find her ill or worse was not realized. She simply was not there. Nothing was missing, nothing at all . . . well, except for Miss Wickham.
Relatives and friends called each other and all the places they could think of where she might possibly be. Nothing.

Former students in all walks of life accessed their databases – Jane Doe hospital admissions, police records for mention of a confused elderly woman, airline schedules . . . even car rentals. They found nothing.

Newspapers ran articles. Her picture was on TV. Nothing. Lydia Wickham was missing.

One day her sister Laura came into the cottage and just sat, breathing in the scents of her sister’s life and noting, sadly, that there was a musty stillness settling in.
She looked slowly around the room: the embroidered pillow showing the lighthouse at Two Tree Point, the fireplace mantle with the host of silver-framed pictures of family and friends and former students, the old wicker rocker – it’s back draped with the afghan their grandmother had made, the wall that was all books.

The books drew her to them. So often she and Lydia had stood there discussing novels, history books, biographies, anthologies. Laura let her fingers run along the spines of the books and thought, “Oh, Lydia, where are you?”

A book Lydia had purchased in Bermuda caught her eye. It was up and to her right. Laura sighed and dropped her head down . . . and then in the corner of her vision – to the left – was the well-thumbed copy of “Mimi of Miami.” Way to the right of that, nestled up against “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire,” was a little volume, “The Bridges of San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Suddenly she started to feel disoriented. Where was she??? In the back of her mind the words “Bermuda, San Juan, Miami “floated round and round.

She knew! It was the Literary Bermuda Triangle and it had her almost in its grasp!
She staggered back. Sinking into the chintz-covered club chair, she stared at the wall of books and wondered in what dimension her sister now lived.