The Noticer Returns

  All those ideas were new to Baker and Sealy, but for Sealy, it took longer to process. She was getting there, however, and it was making a difference already. It was just that the stories Baker had told her lately all seemed so fantastic . . . especially the one about Jones in the field the first day. Maybe unreal would be a better word for the stories, she had thought. But Baker was already a new person, full of hope and ideas, and for that, she was grateful.

  Perhaps the incredible yarns and their recent frequency had taken their toll, but for whatever reason, Sealy laughed in Baker’s face when he told her there was a five-pound goldfish in the Grand Hotel’s pond. “Oh, Baker, give me a break,” she’d said and rolled her eyes.

  Minutes later, as she almost lost her shoe to a patch of sticky mud, Sealy would have given anything to take back those words. Maybe it was the eye roll that had placed her in this position. Ugh, Sealy thought. Why didn’t I say something like, “Five pounds? Wow!”?

  It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy seeing the goldfish; Sealy’s aggravation with herself was that she had known better. All women knew better. The situation in which Sealy found herself thirty seconds after getting out of their car could have been avoided because it was all wrapped up in the natural defensiveness that Baker possessed as a man. The fact that he was a typical man meant that he was of course hugely offended if ever a shadow of uncertainty was cast upon anything he said. And one could triple the reaction if it happened to be the man’s poor wife who had innocently voiced the doubt.

  That offhand remark had prompted Baker to insist that without delay, she walk around the pond with him until he spotted the monstrous escapee from some kid’s aquarium. It was on the third trip around that he had (Thank God!) finally seen it, and she’d said, “Yes! Wow! You were right! That’s unbelievable!” all the while knowing full well that she would have reported having seen the creature from the black lagoon if it meant she wouldn’t have to circle the pond again.

  It was almost six thirty when they climbed the bank from the pond to the parking lot. They were headed to the pier, and Baker had already said, “See? I told you,” at least five times when a young woman got out of the coolest minibus Sealy had ever seen.

  “Whoa!” Baker exclaimed before Sealy could say anything. “What is that?”

  “Hi, guys!” the young woman greeted them brightly. “Do you love it?”

  “That is so great!” Sealy said. “What is that color? It has a sky-blue . . . aquamarine, smoky thing going on.”

  “Palladian Blue is the official name of the color,” Christy said. “Benjamin Moore HC-144. And it’s a camper too! This is going to be my photography vehicle.” She held out her hand. “I’m Christy Haynes . . . BeachChicPhotography.com. We live in Orange Beach, but I travel. Tell me your names . . .”

  “What?” Baker asked, and Sealy laughed.

  Baker was overwhelmed, and Sealy knew it. “I’m Sealy Larson,” she said. “This is my husband, Baker. He likes your van, and he’ll catch up in a minute and probably talk about it. We have two teenage daughters, and Baker tends to shut down when we all talk at once.” She laughed again. “We’re here to meet a man who is helping us. Evidently there is a class—”

  “Jones?” Christy said. “That’s why I’m here too!”

  Soon they were hurrying from the parking lot to the pier, where Jones was waiting. Sealy and Christy were giggling like schoolgirls when they reached the end. Baker shrugged an “I have no idea” to Jones as they approached. Jones smiled, and Baker realized suddenly how good he felt right at that moment. His wife was happy. For the first time, maybe ever, he had a direction, and a new life was waiting for him to shape and mold with good choices.

  “Girls? Children?” Jones teased as he motioned for Christy and Sealy to join where he and Baker were already sitting. As they took their seats, Jones remarked, “I’m not even going to ask what that was about.” Of course that set them off again. When at last the two women had gained some semblance of control, Jones said, “I asked you to come a bit early tonight. Several others will arrive after a while, but I have a guest who’ll be here in a few moments just for you. Quickly, before he arrives, I’d like to know what you are looking to do for a living.”

  “Photography,” Christy blurted out. “I already have my website. It’s BeachChicPhotography.com. Isn’t that a cool name? I don’t have the camera I really need yet, though. I mean, the one I have is fine. It’s just not the very—”

  “Thank you, Christy,” Jones interrupted. Baker looked as if he might jump over the pier railing. “Sealy? What are you looking to do?”

  Suddenly shy, Sealy wondered if her idea was ridiculous and hesitated. “Go, Sealy!” Christy said and made her new friend smile.

  “Okay . . . ,” Sealy began. “Well . . . I love plants, and I see nice houses all the time whose flowerbeds are empty or uncared for. I’m pretty good at growing things . . .

  “Baker?” she said to her husband. “You know how you told me Jones said not to think in an average way?” Baker nodded. “Well, remember last Saturday, when you were at that Mr. Bailey guy’s house all day?” Baker nodded again. His mouth was too dry to speak. “I went to sixteen houses while you were gone. I was able to talk to eleven of the owners. I told them how nice their yards would look if some of the beds I saw were planted and cared for.

  “Every single one of them told me they already had a person or a landscape service taking care of their yards, but I remembered what you said Jones told you about value. So I told them that my business did not do landscape, that I specialized in seasonal beds. I said that for a certain amount, I would plant, fertilize, trim, prune, mulch, and change the beds completely three times a year. I said that all they would be required to do . . . I told them, ‘All I will need you to do is drive in and out of your driveway, looking at your incredible yard and accepting all the compliments from your neighbors.”

  Christy was about to jump out of her chair but managed to stay quiet. Jones was grinning, but Baker asked the question they all wanted Sealy to answer. “Did anybody say yes?”

  “Eight of them did, Baker,” Sealy said. “Eight of them. I have almost three thousand dollars already on the books. I don’t have books yet, of course, but that’s what you say when you’re in business, right, ‘on the books’? I already gave my notice at the restaurant, Baker. The girls are resigning too. I’ve got to have help.”

  He avoided fainting, but Baker was lightheaded as he went through the motions of informing the others about his business interest. “Cooking,” he said. “Cooking . . . like outdoor-style. I mean good things, though, not just steaks and burgers. So . . . cooking.”

  Jones was about to speak when Baker added, “Fishing too. Also working on boats and motors. And by that, I mean boat motors. So boats and boat motors, fishing, and cooking.”

  Jones did not delay. “What else?” he asked. “And think in terms of the value your passion has for other people.” He looked at the dark-haired young woman first. “Christy?”

  “Okay,” she started, “I’ll try to do this quickly. Value. I think I get this. Not who would hire me as a photographer or who will let me take their pictures and pay me because anyone could do that, right?” She was talking to Jones, who nodded slowly. She was on the right track.

  “So . . . there is a specific camera—and when I get the money, this is the one I’ll have—this camera, if used correctly, can produce photographs that are startling in their intensity. I am telling you . . . photographs of a family or a child in the right photographer’s hands . . . of course, it is really the photographer’s eye that makes it all work . . .”

  Jones glanced at Sealy and Baker. Both were smiling, and Sealy, especially, was interested in what Christy was saying.

  “Anyway, here’s the value: I will work with specific interior designers . . .” Christy stopped her monologue in its tracks, looked at Sealy, and said, “Oh my gosh! Do you know Melanie Martin in Orange Beach? She owns M Two. Unbelievable inte
riors. Your plant thing? She is going to love your idea!”

  After patting Sealy on the leg, Christy continued to talk. “Jones,” she said, “with interior designers such as Melanie as clients or even individuals who contact my website—it’s BeachChicPhotography.com, did I already tell you that?—anyway, I will create framed wall galleries from photographs wrapped on canvas. These will be made to fit whatever specific wall space a person or company desires. The pieces and multiple-frame galleries I will produce are not available anywhere else!

  “Think about it . . . This business will provide select clients with a limited-edition gallery—a number one, of one. Ha! How’s that for limited? Anyway, what was I saying? Oh! This will be a limited-edition gallery . . . no! It will be a one-of-a-kind wall gallery of a person’s life or family or their children. The gallery will be created by a special photographic process and produced by hand for a specific location in someone’s home. What do you think?”

  “I think you are on to something,” Jones said. “Terrific start. I love it. Sealy, I love your idea about the plants too!”

  Baker was overwhelmed and a little nervous that she and the girls were quitting their jobs, but he was excited and proud of his wife. The value Sealy found for someone else in what she loved to do was remarkable. She had proven the value to other people, and now she actually had clients. It was nothing more, Baker decided, than perspective—a different way of thinking about something about which everyone had already been aware for years. With that kind of thinking, Sealy had opened a business of her own—and created jobs—in a single day.

  The shy woman to whom he had been married for years now had Baker looking at his own ideas through a new lens. “The ideas I have can be proven too,” he said to Jones, “just like Sealy already did. Just hearing her story has already changed what I know I can do. What she did by actually selling her idea—proving its value—is the same thing I can do.

  “One thing, I want to allow a few specific people who own great boats to have their own personal boat mechanic. Do you know how long it takes around here to get a boat repair done? It’s ridiculous. And I just know there are at least a few folks who would be thrilled to pay a modest monthly fee in order to have a mechanic virtually on-call for them.

  “I’ll work out a fishing service too. There are lots of people around here who have boats but don’t know how or where to fish. I know how and where, but I don’t have a boat. I can prove value to those people, I promise. Then after a day fishing on their boat, with my third business I will creatively cook their dinner, using the fish they caught as the main course. Guess how I’ll cook it?” Baker said to Sealy.

  “On your Kamado Joe,” she said.

  “Of course!” Baker responded. “I’ve already drawn the plans for an open trailer that holds an outdoor kitchen . . . with three BigJoe grills on it. I’ll eventually have to get two more, of course, but this will work. It’s totally different from what the usual caterer does.”

  From behind him, Baker heard a man’s voice. “I already know how to fish, and I can cook them, too, but if you’ll tell me how much you need for the personal mechanic service, I’ll sign the deal right now.”

  It was Jack Bailey.

  “There it is!” Polly screamed, and I almost ran our car into the Grand Hotel’s pond.

  The object of Polly’s attention was a forty-year-old, aqua-colored Volkswagen minibus parked between a Corvette and a Mercedes. “That’s Christy’s van!” Polly squealed as I, with great skill and nerves of steel, managed to park nearby.

  It was Thursday evening, and we were early again for Jones’s third parenting class. Only twenty minutes ahead of schedule, we did not have enough time to eat—in fact, we had grabbed a bite on the way—but we did have just enough time to look at the van. “Come on,” Polly urged as I stuck my face in front of the last moment of air conditioning I would enjoy until later in the evening.

  Groaning at the prospect of being forced to look at an old van, I exited our own vehicle and walked toward what my wife was already describing out loud as “a work of art, a thing of beauty, an antique of great historical significance . . .”

  Not being a car person myself, upon stepping into the presence of greatness not seen as a means of transport since the shuttle program at NASA, I could only muster, “Very nice.”

  “Dear!” She seemed stunned by my nonchalance. “Dear, this is a Westie! It’s an original VW Microbus with the Westfalia Camper addition. Come here and look inside. This is fabulous.”

  Hm, I thought. Fabulous? From a woman who would not camp if the lives of her children depended upon it? At her insistence I looked through the louvered side windows.

  “It has a sink,” she said, “and a stove and a fridge and a little closet.”

  It did indeed. And with the pop-top featuring a hanging bunk, I could not resist a smidgen of sarcasm. “Wow! This is great,” I said.

  “See?” Polly responded, biting hard on the little piece of bait I had dangled in front of her. “I told you it was incredible.”

  “Oh yeah,” I smirked, “and with all these cool additions I’ll bet you could cram an entire half of a person in there. Can a half person drive this thing?”

  Polly did not speak to me as we walked to the hotel’s pier. I was snickering just loudly enough for her to hear, so I’m sure that had something to do with it, but by the time we arrived three minutes later, all was good. “Christy is already out there,” she observed. “And Jones. And . . .”

  “That’s Baker Larson,” I said, “the guy I met with Jones the other day. And that’d be his wife with him, I suppose.”

  Polly stared. “And there’s someone else.”

  “That someone else is Jack Bailey,” I said, a bit surprised. “I wonder what he’s doing here.”

  Polly had an idea. “You know, I’ve talked to Christy several times lately. She said that she was meeting before class with Jones. Something about business, remember? They mentioned it last week.”

  “I remember,” I said. “Baker needs something. And, hey, if they’re meeting about business, Jones has the right guy out there in Jack Bailey. He lives within a mile of here,” I added, looking around.

  “It’s that way,” Polly pointed. “I went to a ladies’ charity event there once. I’m not sure I could find the driveway again, but it’s an unbelievable place. And I loved her . . . his wife, Mary Chandler.” I nodded.

  We had stopped in the late afternoon shade of one of the massive oaks beside the Grand Hotel’s Conference Center. Quiet for a while, we were content to watch the small group from a distance. “Jack’s doing most of the talking,” Polly finally said.

  “I noticed that too,” I said. “Look at Jones. Leaning on the rail with his arms crossed . . . See how he’s smiling? What’s happening?”

  “Hey!” Baker said when he saw his friend and jumped up to shake his hand. Baker introduced Jack to Sealy and Christy before turning to Jones and asking, “Jack is our guest?”

  “Yes, he is,” Jones replied. “And we have only a little time before the others arrive.” He beckoned them toward the pier railing and said, “Let’s move over here and catch the breeze. Jack, if you don’t mind, talk for five or six minutes on how to outdo your competition in business. You are somewhat on down the road with your businesses. Your perspective on how it all happened will be interesting.”

  Jack was about to begin by saying that Jones had been the first man in his life who had loved him enough to tell him the truth about himself. He intended to inform the small class about having walked around town all day one Sunday, then all day Monday, before he finally ran into the old man on that Tuesday morning. He wanted to say that he would have spent any amount or paid any price for the fifteen minutes he had gotten to spend with Jones.

  These people in front of him included a man who was now a friend of his own. They were starting businesses, and Jack wanted to express just how important the wisdom and thinking aspect of their lives would be if they exp
ected to succeed. It had been Jones, he planned to say, who was responsible for whatever success he had attained.

  Actually, Jack had a lot to say before he started on the topic that had been requested, but when he opened his mouth to speak, the old man spoke first. “Jack?” he said.

  “Yes sir?”

  “In the limited time we have,” Jones said, “dig as deep as you can into adding value to the lives of others and the extreme business advantage that particular focus provides. And Jack?”

  “Sir?” Jack answered as Jones smiled at him.

  “Leave me out of it.”

  At that moment the thought raced through Jack’s consciousness that he—Jack Bailey—had traveled the world and was a well-respected member of his community, a leader . . . How was it then, he wondered, that he could be so easy to read and outmaneuvered by this particular old man?

  Jack shifted his mental gears quickly and said, “I have learned that it is relatively easy to beat the competition. We do this by playing at a level at which most people are not even aware there is a game going on. A consistent winner in any endeavor thinks differently—sometimes dramatically so—than ordinary people. Our competition tends to focus on their business. What can we do to attract attention? How can we get more customers? Unfortunately for them, the more they focus upon themselves, the further they push away from their ultimate objective, which is to grow and prosper.”

  Christy was frowning. “Wait,” she said. “If you don’t focus on your own business, what do you focus on?”

  “Other people,” Jack said, but the answer did not erase Christy’s frown, so he explained. “I have learned that one can create value in people’s lives that goes beyond what they think of as ‘your business.’