This is the real Chapter One from the first book, “Charles Mandrake and the Resonance Array.” I want you to be able to see if the book is worth a read by showing you exactly what’s in it. No excerpts here since they don’t really give you a feeling of how the book is going to read. Enjoy!
Chapter 1: East Bay
East Bay
October 18.
The last bell of the day rang at East Bay High resonating down the halls. Classroom doors opened and students moved out in loose groups, some heading for the buses, some for the parking lot, others just standing around talking. Charles Mandrake went with the flow toward the street, notebook under his arm and backpack on one shoulder. At the bottom of the steps he paused and checked the sky the way he always did. Low clouds from the bay were pushing inland, a flat gray layer that meant a colder weather was incoming. Bus brakes hissed at the looped drive. The flag rope clicked against the pole in a steady rhythm, and a coach shouted something at the track team near the bleachers. The air had the damp chill that showed up most afternoons after lunch when the tide turned and the wind shifted off the water. Charles took a breath, then stepped off the curb toward Maple Street.
Todd waited at the corner of Maple, just outside the reach of the school zone sign. He leaned against the telephone pole with his hands tucked into his pockets, wearing a small smile that told Charles he had the afternoon planned out. Students moved past him without slowing. Anna came up from behind, cut between two kids from their English class, and fell into step on Charles’s other side as the three of them started up the street together.
“Lab for me,” Anna said. “I have to move the agar plates at four-thirty or they’re trash.” She shifted her backpack higher on her shoulder and checked the time on her phone. “We should meet up later.”
“Dockside for me,” Todd said. “Finch has work, and he told me to bring Charles if he’s free.” He nudged Charles lightly with his elbow as they walked, like the decision was obvious.
Charles matched their pace and glanced up at the low clouds again. The air felt colder now than it had at lunch.
“I’ll go to Dockside,” Charles said. “We’ll meet you at Mel’s a little after six. If you’re late, I’ll order you an egg sandwich with the onions.”
“Ew,” Anna said, making a face. She slowed as the path to the science wing split off from Maple. Walking backward a few steps, she called, “Don’t let Finch start one of his nautical stories. You’ll never make it to Mel’s.”
“We’ll threaten him with a fresh roll of duct tape,” Todd called back.
Charles and Todd cut down to Pier Street and headed north. They passed a number of storefronts along the way. Most of this part of the town catered to tourists, but behind the buildings that lined the street, it was business as usual for a small Maine fishing town. Forklifts at the fish plant beeped in reverse. Gulls drifted over the roof line and slid out toward open water. The street sloped toward the harbor. Diesel gave way to salt and rope tar.
Dockside Salvage
Dockside Salvage had its bay doors open to the street. It was delivery day. A hand truck leaned just inside the entrance, waiting. The concrete threshold showed grooves from years of steel wheels going in and out of the warehouse. A straight line of spray paint marked where pallets could be stacked and still leave room for the chains that hung from the ceiling beams, ready to hoist boats or heavy parts when Finch needed them in the air.
Inside, the shop smelled of wood, salt, tar, and machine oil in a way that never quite went away, even in winter. Shelves held coils of rope, buckets of hardware, and plastic bins with handwritten labels. Behind the cash register, a framed nautical chart of the bay hung on the wall. Its faded lines made the harbor look like something out of an old story instead of a place they walked past every day. A kerosene heater in the corner clicked as it cycled on and off, pushing just enough warmth into the space to take the edge off the October air.
Ira Finch came in through the warehouse doors, wiping his hands on a shop rag as he crossed to them.
“You’re not late,” he said. “You’re early for tomorrow.” His voice stayed dry, like it always did when he made a joke.
“Todd, I just got six hundred meters of light mooring line in. I need twenty, twenty-meter sections cut and hung up, then the rest in fifty-meter lengths, and coiled up and put on the shelving over there.”
He nodded toward a taped-off square near the back wall where the coil of new line waited, still bound from the supplier.
“There’s also five thousand feet of hundred-pound fishing line in that box over there. I need that fed behind the wall to the shop so I can pull it through that opening when someone needs length,” he said, pointing to a small square cutout between the warehouse and the counter area. On the shop side of the wall, a rack of different test lines ran through the same opening and disappeared out of sight behind the register.
“Charles, some tourist kids messed up the bins again. They put everything in the wrong slots. Sort those first, then help Todd.”
“Where’s Anna?” Finch said, realizing it was just the two of them.
“It’s lab day, and she’s got tests running,” Todd said. “She said she’d meet us at Mel’s after Charles and I finish.”
“I see. I guess you won’t want to grill today’s catch and hear any stories tonight, will you?” Finch said.
They got to work. Todd sat on the warehouse floor with the coil of mooring line next to him. He pulled a length out, lined it up with the marks Finch had taped on the concrete, and set his thumb where the cut should go. He dug in his right pocket and came up with the old Case knife Finch had given him the first time they had gone hunting together, and his Zippo lighter. In the process, he kicked the rope out off the mark and had to measure it again, checking it against the floor marks before he opened the blade. This time he cut the rope cleanly at the mark. He flicked the Zippo open, ran the flame along the end until the fibers fused, waited a second, then pressed them between his fingers melting the end together. A wrap of waxed thread went on about a half inch from the end to keep it from fraying. He tapped the finished bit with the bottom of the lighter to set it in place, laid the section aside with the others, and reached for the next length of rope.
Charles worked at the trinket bins along the wall. They were junk bins most days, but every so often something worth keeping turned up. Brass mailbox numbers, bottle openers, pocket compasses, and other pieces from boats, trawlers, military gear, and a few things with no clear origin sat mixed together. Today, nothing stood out. He put each part back into the bin stamped for it, set a small pile aside on the counter for Finch to price, and pulled a torn label off one bin so he could rewrite it in clear block letters. When the bins looked right and the lids shut without catching, he stepped back, eyed the bins once more, and headed out to help Todd. He took the finished rope sections, bundled them, and hung them on the long peg against the wall.
When that job was finished, they moved to the workbench where an old ship console waited, its paint scuffed and its markings worn at the edges. They set it on its back and worked out the screws, pulling panels and saving anything Finch might reuse: switches that still clicked cleanly, indicator lights, lengths of wiring that weren’t cracked. Dials and meters went into a separate bin from the rest. Todd had worked for Finch long enough to know what Finch valued.
When the console was broken down into neat piles of useful and scrap, Todd slid it aside and pulled an amateur radio deck toward the center of the bench. It had a finicky power socket Finch had complained about all week. The boys opened the case, checked the board, and found the loose solder joint on the power plug feet. Todd steadied the housing while Charles held the soldier and iron. A few careful passes with the soldering iron fixed the loose joint with fresh soldier. A quick tug ensured the new joint held fast. When they put the cover back on and powered it up, the front panel came to life. Finch stepped over, gave a short nod. Satisfied, he carried the set into the front shop so he could “ragchew” with his friends fishing a few miles off the coast while he waited for the next customer to come through the door.
At six, Finch came out from the shop into the warehouse. He placed folded bills in Todd’s hand. “Pay for the week, and a little extra for dinner for you three at Mel’s on me tonight.”
Finch turned to Charles and handed him an old rolled canvas pouch. The canvas had seen sun and water. A faded boat name was stamped on the flap. A piece of cord wrapped around three times held the roll together.
“You said you didn’t need money. Lord knows the whole town knows, but every man needs useful things, and when needed, they’re worth more than money.” Inside the roll was a well-used pocket bubble level, a brass compass, 100 feet of Kevlar line, a Doan’s military magnesium fire starter bar, and a dented and faded round tin of black shoe polish, probably from Finch’s seafaring days.
“For the observatory,” Finch said. “Keep level and square to true the telescope. I used it to gauge a sextant one night at sea when the instruments shorted out. The Kevlar line’s good for anything you’d use a regular line for, just a lot stronger.”
Charles turned each piece once in his hand and set them back in the pocket. The pouch felt satisfyingly earned, and the items inside could be indeed useful.
“You better go if you want to beat the tourists,” Finch said, nodding at the tour boat coming back into the harbor a half mile south. He clicked off the warehouse lights one row at a time and checked the till lock with his thumb.
Mel’s Over Easy
Charles and Todd headed back up Pier Street, which curved once before it met Main. They walked past East Bay Gifts with its postcards in a metal rack out front, Mrs. Johnson’s Bakery, and Pier Street Market. Traffic on Main moved slow as people looked for parking near the harbor. The boys crossed at the corner and cut straight for Mel’s Over Easy.
The locals called it Mel’s Diner, and everyone knew where it was. Steam fogged the front windows in a steady layer, and from the street they could see figures moving at the counter and booths. It was already a busy night.
The bell over the door rang once when they went in and a wave of heat pushed the chill from their coats. Mel’s diner sat at the split where Main and Harbor met, with a narrow point at the front and the rest of the building stretching back deeper than it looked from the street. Big windows followed the long side that faced the road, and more glass ran along the east wall toward the harbor. Inside, the floor was packed with four-top tables set in rows, with just enough space between them for Mel to weave through with a tray. Chrome-edged tables and straight-backed chairs made a simple grid that locals knew by heart. The diner smelled of chowder on the back burners, grilled onions from the flat top, and coffee that had been poured not long ago. Condensation ran down the inside of the glass, turning the harbor lights and streetlamps into soft streaks. Todd stamped his boots on the mat. Charles shifted the canvas roll higher and tucked it more securely under his arm so it stayed clear of the doorway and from bumping anyone in the narrow aisle that led toward the back.
Anna was at their usual “reserved” table in the back of the diner by the bathroom, the spot they had claimed enough times that no local tried to sit there, and no tourist wanted. Her notebook lay open in front of her and the cup of coffee by her hand still sent up a thin line of steam. Todd’s handwritten RESERVED card from three months ago sat by the napkin dispenser with a dark grease ring in one corner where Mel had used it as a coaster during a rush. An “Out of Order” sign hung from a string on the bathroom handle and swung a little each time the kitchen door bumped it on its way back and forth.
“Well, the bacteria didn’t die,” she said. “Also, the bathroom’s out again. Some tourist couldn’t handle the baby waves in the bay.”
She pushed her pencil through the spiral and leaned back. Charles slid into the booth next to her while Todd plopped down in the chair opposite so he could watch the room.
“If you gotta go, go over to Pier Street Market,” Mel said, setting water down. “Order now and Danny will slide it in ahead of the tourist orders.”
Mel moved quick and sure, pen behind one ear, dish towel looped through her apron string. Danny worked furiously at the grill singing. He flicked a line of salt with two fingers and turned patties with a metal spatula.
A short line of “leaf-peepers”, aka: amateur photographers waited by the register with camera straps around their necks and backpacks that kept bumping up against everyone else. Tourists.
“Chowder, bread, and meatloaf,” Todd said.
He did not look at a menu. He never did, and he never changed the order because he liked what he liked.
“Grilled cheese lobster burger and fries, and a salad,” Charles said.
He could feel the day in his legs now that he sat. The canvas roll pressed his ribs and he set it on the table edge, careful to keep it off the wet ring the water glass had made.
“I’ll take the patty melt on white, and a salad,” Anna said. “And would you add three sausage, cheese, bacon, and egg sandwiches for the morning? If you forget the onions on mine, I’ll love you forever.”
“Sure thing,” Mel said, smiling as she wrote. “Y’all staying up at the telescope tonight?”
The neon egg over the counter hummed. Someone fed quarters into the jukebox and chose an old Rumjacks Irish Pub song. Charles could feel the cold on his back where his coat had not finished drying.
“We’ll go wake Charles up in the morning if we don’t stay the night,” Todd said.
Mel folded the ticket over once to make the paper tear clean and slid it on the order rail in first place, but you’d have to be a local to catch that. “Danny! Three Musketeers: Order in!”
The Observatory
Anna tapped her page. “We start with cleaning the observatory and note the switch and dial positions so we can set everything back to the way we found it. Don’t change anything until we figure out what Old Man Pibbles was trying to see through that telescope. And so that when the place opens for tourism, everything will be as it was left… more or less.”
Charles pictured the control room as she spoke: the ring of consoles, the glass, the tall shape of the scope, all still sitting the way they had on the day he moved in. Dust lay over the knobs, buttons, and metal edges, softening the lines and leaving clear prints wherever someone had touched.
He liked the thought of sitting down with a notebook and writing each dial setting exactly as he found it, row by row, until the whole room made sense on paper. For three months he had only cleaned what he needed: the Annex kitchen, the living room, the bathroom, the bedroom. The rest he had stepped around, telling himself he would get to it when school settled down.
Anna’s plan gave all of it a starting point.
When his father bought the place, Charles had used the idea of a non-profit historical society and tours to make the observatory sound practical. Clean it up, open it in the summer, let visitors pay to look through the telescope. It had sounded good on paper, so his dad consented. Now that Charles lived up on the hill, the pitch felt distant. His dad was always traveling and did not ask how the project was going. Charles was not against tours, but most days he liked the quiet more than the thought of strangers walking through the control room. For now, living there and learning the place felt more important than making it ready for anyone else.
“Got it,” Todd said. “We’d better make a fire, though. Gonna get cold tonight.”
“Supposed to get down to the 40’s.” Anna replied checking the weather on her phone.
The best part about the place was the potbelly stove in the small living room. It stood on a square of tile between the couch and the doorway, with a metal tray under the front lip to catch stray ash. A short length of stovepipe ran up and into the wall, and a shelf of split logs sat to one side. The stove was compact, but when it was going it put out enough heat to make the whole annex comfortable without much effort. The only catch was that it had to be filled before going to bed if you didn’t want to wake up cold. Charles didn’t mind. He liked the steady crackle of wood as it burned and the dim red light through the stove door as he fell asleep. It made the living room feel smaller in a good way, with the couch, chair, and low table sitting just inside the circle of warmth. Since Todd and Anna had started coming up to the observatory, the electric space heaters were unplugged and put into the shed, and the potbelly stove was used almost every night.
A few weeks earlier, when the weather began to cool and the leaves started to turn and the tourist photographers showed up in town, Todd had shown Charles how to use the chainsaw and then how to split the rounds with the hydraulic splitter in the shed. Now the woodshed along the back wall of the annex was full, rows of cut pieces stacked to the rafters. Charles had liked the work more than he expected and had stayed with it all day, feeding, stacking, and checking the rows. It gave him a solid feeling of having done something productive, a kind of accomplishment he had not felt before moving to East Bay.
A couple came in and let a gust of cold October air in with the door. The draft lifted the paper napkins in their steel holder.
“Yes, a fire and maybe some coffee,” Charles said. He set the canvas roll on the counter. “Control room first. Telescope second. The annex is last.”
“Good,” Anna said. “I brought masks, gloves, and cleaning supplies. Also, if you start cataloging screws shortest to longest, we’ll tell Mel to make you wash dishes for a night.” She shot at Todd.
Danny rang the bell at the pass through. “Order up for the Three Amigos!”
Complimentary clam chowder came in chipped white cups that held good heat. Bread appeared in a basket with small pot of butter from Tawnyberry Farms. Mel kept a stash of it for the locals, while the tourists got the processed Land ‘O Lakes butter tabs. The entrees followed.
“Louis could use a bit of help,” Mel said, nodding toward her fourteen-year-old son who was madly bussing tables to keep the flow going. He had a bandanna around his brow and a white apron on. She set dinner down and slid a paper bag over. “Three breakfasts, including yogurt. You’ll thank me tomorrow morning.”
“We will,” Charles said, and genuinely meant it.
Grease dots already formed on the bottom of the bag. Charles caught the warm smell of sausage and egg as Mel set it by Anna’s notebook.
Charles put his napkin on his lap, carefully cut his bread with the steak knife, and let it soak in the chowder for a count of three. The taste of salt and clams settled him in a way that made the cold outside feel like it belonged to some other place for a while.
Dinner was finished in less than thirty minutes, and Todd paid with the cash that Finch had given to him for their dinner.
Mel tucked the bills into her apron pocket and poured more coffee. “See you in the morning,” she said, and was already halfway to the register before Charles could answer.
Evening
Streetlamps came on as they walked up Main toward Maple, following their usual route. Some nights Anna and Todd split at Bennington Street and went home; other nights they stayed together and headed up Maple to the Observatory. The harbor reflected the lights in shaky lines as they walked. Tonight, they went to the Observatory. They followed the path that ran between the final row of houses and the first trees on the hill toward the House and observatory. Cut years before by Myles Pibbles, it held an easy grade, switching back through fir and pine to the halfway mark.
There was a small opening with a bench and a spectacular view of the town and bay. The seat was damp; the view was clear. They stopped at the rail while Charles took in the harbor, a view that never got old. Lobster boats rode low by the floats, a skiff cut toward the channel, gulls worked the chop, and beyond the breakwater a gray line of rain dragged across the bay. On the north end of the bay, the lighthouse stood on its point, its light cutting through the night.
As they walked on, the observatory came into view through the branches, with the curve of the dome and the low plane of the Annex roof. In front of the observatory, the old house sat a little to the north among the trees. The town still called it the “Pibbles Mansion,” and its windows were dark. Charles did not look that way again. He had no need to as there was no one there.
The Annex door opened in three moves. Lift, turn, tug. He rarely locked it. There was no need. The only other person on the property was the groundskeeper, and he came only in the mornings. The rest of the town avoided the place if it could be helped.
The driveway gates had never been locked as far as Charles could tell. With the town just down the hill, he chose to walk through the old path through the trees rather than drive and fight tourists for parking.
Charles set the breakfast bag on the small table, placed the canvas pouch beside it, and closed the door as his friends finished taking off their boots.
The Annex living space was simple but functional. The door opened into a small kitchen, with the stove and counter along the right wall and the fridge and sink opposite. Beyond that, the bedroom was a little larger. A bunk bed salvaged from Dockside stood on one side, a full bed on the other. A shared side table sat between the lower bunk and the full bed at the end of the room, and above the top bunk Todd had fixed a small shelf for whoever slept there. Between the kitchen and bedroom was the narrow living room with a potbelly stove and just enough space for a couch, a chair, and a coffee table, all salvaged from Finch’s as well. The restroom and showers were in the basement.
The three set their bags down and stepped into the observatory control room.
Most of the space was taken up by equipment. A central island of consoles faced the glass windows, so whoever sat in the padded swivel chair could watch the telescope while keeping a hand on the controls. Old oscilloscope screens and analog meters climbed in a loose stack along the side walls, their faces still marked with grease-pencil notes from some past run. A cork board near the door held clipped checklists in Anna’s writing, a faded emergency diagram, and a single Polaroid of the dome in winter that had been there when Charles first moved in. On the north wall, the shortwave radio room door cut a dark rectangle in the paneling, with a faint smell of warm dust and solder drifting out from the racks inside.
The south windows looked out to the path and forest but now they were dark. Consoles curved in a shallow arc. A red task lamp on the desk threw a clear circle.
The brass plate that sat on the center control panel had PIBBLES RESONANCE ARRAY 1966 in bold black lettering. That control panel was home to two round dials, three inches across, azimuth on the left, elevation on the right, each with a small status lamp above. Below and a little to the right, a square-handled red throw switch sat on its base. Up marked ON. Down marked OFF, and the switch had a label that read “Interlock.”
Anna set three trash bags on the floor by the utility shelf. “Black is trash, clear is keep, red is for anything that might spill,” she said. She tied the red bag to a low hook and settled it into a plastic bin so a leaking jar would not spread across the floor.
Todd took the hatch that led to the stairs down to the generator room. He crouched, ran a dry cloth along the lip where grit collected, and went over it again.
They worked from west to east. Charles cleared the counter in front of him, lifting a box of pictures, a drawer of pencils that needed sharpening, and a thin metal stencil marked ARRAY. Anything worth keeping went to the shelf; the rest went into the black bag. Anna worked through the desk, sorting papers into loose piles and dropping the unwanted ones into trash. At the stairs, Todd pulled up the mats and picked up a few three-inch nails so no one would step on them later.
Anna told Charles to label the drawers, starting with the top right junk drawer. He emptied it onto the desk: pencils, a flashlight and a few batteries, engineering rulers, twist ties, spare fuses. Finch’s canvas roll sat on the corner within reach while he sorted and wrote new labels.
When they stopped for a break, the desk had a clear surface again and the floor around the consoles was open. Anna noted the time in her notebook.