Stan Hayes

The Rough English Equivalent Stan Hayes

In 1946, a strapping, steel-eyed New Yorker punctures Bisque (BIS-kew), Georgia's self-satisfied small-town stupor. Moses Kubielski's steaming Buick limousine has stranded him there, and Jack Mason escorts the exotic stranger to Hotel Bisque, introducing him to his mother Serena, the manager. Poleaxed by desire, Moses pursues her Yankee-style, buying a movie house on the spot and giving notice that, for him, the "old ways" are just that. Committed to returning to New York and succeeding as a sculptor, Serena deflects Moses' marriage proposal, and passion gives way to a sex-sprinkled friendship. Moses and her father become partners in a beer distributorship, and he settles onto the fringe of Bisque's bourgeoisie. Gradually assuming a pivotal role in Jack's life, he shows him, time and again, how a finger is stuck in the eye of the establishment. As tightening security around the plutonium-spawning Savannah River Project threatens to reveal his past, Moses dusts off the skills he acquired as an espionage agent to insure that the fruits of his Bisque burghership are secured for the boy. Jack, not yet twenty, joins the man he's come to love in the commission of a crime that promises to make him rich.