The Fiction of Owen Thomas

A Better Place (“The Calling”)

A Novella

Summary

Young Tyler Freeman has grown old. He looks back on an enormously successful career in the world of television entertainment having built the empire that is Shoofly Studios. He has more money and admirers than he can count. And yet, all is not well.

First, Tyler’s son, Kevin, whom out of guilt for years of fatherly neglect Tyler has made Shoofly Studios’ Director of Creative Development, has proven himself an abusive tyrant with more loathing for his father than he can contain. 

Second, Tyler and Shoofly Studios have been sued. The daughter of John Lindstrom, the man who wrote the book – Signs of Passing – from which the old Winchester County television series was adapted, seeks to enjoin Tyler’s career-crowning efforts to produce a modern remake of the series.

Third, Tyler has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

The question of what to do about these various interwoven concerns brings Tyler’s life into sharp relief. The rather sudden and unexpected prospect of death promises to intercept Tyler’s life ambition of belonging to – if only by owning the creative rights to—the Winchester County of his youth. He is, therefore, increasingly ambivalent about defending his questionable claim to creative rights in court. His company, its aggressive lawyers, and his son, however, are ferociously intent on avoiding liability and protecting Shoofly’s investment in what promises to be a lucrative project. In the eyes of his son, Tyler is a feckless executive and a saboteur of the best interests of his own company.

No one but Dr. Matthews knows, of course, that Tyler’s days are numbered. Not his son. Not his ex-wives. Not his board of directors. Not even Grace Bell, his personal attorney and long time confident. How does one announce the end of his existence? How does one trust anything said to him after such an announcement? So Tyler keeps his own counsel, sacrificing all sleep and solace except what might be gleaned from reading the original stories about Sheriff Hank Winchester and the community of townsfolk of which he was the center.

Clarity, as it often does, comes from unexpected places. As he waits for bad news, Tyler strikes up a conversation with a teenaged boy playing a hand-held video game at the doctor’s office.  As luck would have it, the boy is none other than the grandson of Warren Lemiski, aka Pillsbury, Tyler’s oldest childhood friend; a man he has not seen in decades. The encounter cannot be mere coincidence. For Pillsbury is the one person in the world who can point the way to Winchester County and, at last, if such a thing is possible, set Tyler free.