GRAYBOY By Pierre Beauregard Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts In Creative Writing Chair: Harvey Grossinger Denise Orenstein D Dateate- ' 2006 American University Washington, D.C. 20016 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 1434424 Copyright 2006 by Beauregard, Pierre All rights reserved. INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. ® UMI UMI Microform 1434424 Copyright 2006 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. © COPYRIGHT by Pierre Beauregard 2006 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. GRAYBOY BY Pierre Beauregard ABSTRACT Grayboy, more or less, is a novel about the nature of good and evil, and the ambiguity therein. The novel’s four main characters - Toby Shepard, a thirteen year old New England boy who is undergoing some strange and magnificent changes; Lucien Delacroix, an estranged, ex-priest who has defected to the US Virgin Islands; Kitty, a homicidal and powerful young drifter hell-bent on finding the “dark man” of her dreams; and Mr. Curtis Black, a shadowy and luminous force borne from the turbulent waters of the Pacific Ocean - represent different areas of the spectrum of good and evil. As the novel progresses, however, the lines of this spectrum are blurred, until nothing is left but destruction, loss, and questions of fate, faith, love, and God. ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT...........................................................................................................................ii Chapter 1. FOUR CHRISTMASES........................................................................................... 1 2. THE GRAY............................................................................................................. 38 3. AWAKENING ........................................................................................................80 4. REPUDIATION ....................................................................................................126 5. ACCIDENTAL GRACE.................................................................. 177 6. CREATION’S RAINBOW...................................................................................220 7. STATESIDE..........................................................................................................255 8. FULL BLOOM......................................................................................................298 9. THE WHITE..........................................................................................................363 EPILOGUE................................................................................................................. 437 iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 1 Four Christmases 1 Mr. Black December 25, 2004 6:30 PM Middle Eastern ST (9:30 AM ET) He (It) was bom into the world in a fashion strikingly and horrifyingly similar to the way that we all are, only on a larger scale; he was shot up along the underwater mountains that compose the Mid-Indian Ridge and jet-lined three miles up through the water, quivering arms molded to his sides, lips pulled back against the flow of the water, bearing his teeth at the dim hint of light above, until he broke the surface in a high arc of white caps and approaching thunder and the first few vicious gasps of air. Hurricanes rocked the Perth Basin and Australia’s West coast, perplexing meteorologists, causing enough damage for the Australian leaders to refer to the sudden inundation of weather as “the most devastating flux of natural phenomenon to have reached our coasts in one hundred years.” One Aborigine tribe committed mass-suicide, guided by their ninety-six year old elder, who held that with the new moon, the darkness will begin. Dogs and cats grew feral, clawing at and scrambling up the legs and arms of their owners in mad attempts to gain higher ground. Birds littered the skies, darting and swooping, gliding in hectic unison, unable to find solace in the trees or rest on the lines of 1 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 2 telephone poles. The supervisors of mental health institutions in and around Sydney called in employees who had the day off, doubling, tripling their staffs, in a frantic effort to maintain some sort of order in the face of whatever was affecting the patients. Things, some people said, were going crazy. In the first few weeks of the New Year, the African, Australian, and Indian coasts would host the largest amount of whales washed up dead on their shores in recorded history. With the whales came other large fish; Tuna, Swordfish, Sharks, Snapper, Dolphin, Australian Tarpon, three Giant Squid (one of which was the largest to have ever been laid eyes upon by any air-breathing being, a massive thing three school buses-long that was discovered by a twelve year-old girl on the very Southern tip of Madagascar,) as well as millions of pounds of perch, shrimp, and seaweed that had browned as if dried up. Scientists blamed the storm, declaring that the sudden change in pressure had somehow affected the temperature of the deeper waters of the Indian Ocean. This was enough for those who watched the news or read the paper; it was the kind of incident that caused one to shake one’s head, smirk, or grunt about global warming - or all three, maybe. But before the whales and the shrimp and the giant squid, before the barking dogs and the shitting birds, just as the air began to turn in on itself and conceive the beginnings of a true rager, just as the true center of the strange few weeks to follow, afloat on his back, cleared the water from his lungs with hacking coughs of blood and mucus and salt and tried to adjust his eyes to the blinding radiance that was daylight, an English pleasurecraft called Seascraper carved its course through the lush waters of the Indian Ocean towards Thailand. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 The owner of the yacht was Thomas Eldridge III, a graying aristocrat of enormous wealth and mentionable descent, who loved his wife and children and grandchildren and prepubescent Asian boys. The latter was the purpose of this month-long voyage, which marked the thirteenth anniversary of Thomas’s annual December-January pilgrimage to Bangkok. His eight-man crew were aware of Eldridge’s behaviors - in fact, it was the captain, Jon Upshaw, who made all the arrangements, who turned his eyes downward and saw to it that their sheets were changed each morning, who paid the hard, toothless woman the twenty dollars a day apiece she demanded upfront for the boys. The crew made few comments about Eldridge’s eccentric fancies, reserving them exclusively for nights when Eldridge had retired with his boy of choice and they had cracked into the ship’s extensive supply of liquor, and even then, talked of it in no more than a word or two at a time. There was something unspoken between them all, something deep below the water upon which they drifted, something sealed by a six-figure salary for a month’s work, that never came up save for the few moments between the closing of one’s eyes and sleep. Jon Upshaw, if anyone, was the exception. Long ago he had been a captain in the British navy, and because of a heart murmur had retired at the sea-weathered age of thirty-six. Upshaw had been with Thomas Eldridge since the beginning, thirteen years, and had recently spent each night in the head, crouched over the toilet with a lurching stomach and a swimming sensation that cocked his vision as if from rough seas. He’d not been seasick a day in his life, though, and he new better that to think that it was Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 4 seasickness now. Things were catching up to him. Jon thought that they had been a long time coming. So when from the navigation room, a twenty-by-sixteen windowed booth atop the towering mass of Seascraper, he spotted what looked like a man floating on his back in the swollen, rolling heart of the Indian Ocean, Jon immediately felt a gush of emotion come into his stomach, the sense of something returning, an idea that God Works In Mysterious Ways, an idea that something good was about to happen, something glorious...like he was being