by Una Mannion
“It’s in the book, which I read. And it’s in the movie, which pretty much everyone here but you has seen.” The others were agreeing. They knew those details, too.
“Abbey, what happened to the woman you were talking about that was ill?” Sage asked. “Keep telling that story.” She must have finished the one about High Point.
“Well, after months of the banging and noise and voices, now she was really sick and weak. She went out back and into the woods in her nightgown. She hadn’t been out of bed in weeks. And she sat down on a stump and spoke to the spirits out there. She said, ‘I am very sick, and I think I am dying, and I am asking you please to help me do this, to do this the best I can, and I can’t with all this racket.’ And she asked them to stop. Her husband found her as she came back out of the woods, and she was shivering and pale and soaking wet, but she was smiling. ‘They’re going to stop,’ she said. ‘They told me they would stop.’ And they did.”
“Who was the woman?” Sage asked.
“The Carlsons near Hamilton, you know that house with the really long driveway into the woods?” Everyone was quiet. I knew them. Mrs. Carlson had been really sick and had died. When I raised money on Daisy Day for cancer, Mrs. Carlson had bought a daisy. She came to the door in her robe, and she was so thin that her face looked like it was caving in. When I told Marie, she said I should never have gone to their house, getting her out of her bed and asking her for money. “That woman is sick with cancer. What’d you go there for? Of all houses?” But Mrs. Carlson had thanked me—really thanked me—and I knew she meant it because she was sick, and she thought what I was doing was in some way for her, and I felt then that it was.
Abbey went on. “But I also heard that when she was out in the woods with the spirits and talking to them, they said something to her.” She paused, and we all stayed, rapt, waiting to hear what the Indian ghosts had told Mrs. Carlson in the woods. Abbey leaned forward and spoke low. “‘Don’t be scared.’ That’s what they said to her. And she said that helped her. It really helped her.”
I shivered again.
“They’re my neighbors,” said Jack next to me.
No one asked him if it was true or whether he’d heard anything, as if we didn’t want the story contradicted because it made us feel better, that the spirits of the woods could be spoken to and could be merciful if we just asked.
“What kind of Indians were here? Was it like Sioux or Cherokee?” Tony asked.
“Delaware,” said Jack.
“No,” Wilson said, cutting in. “That’s what white settlers called them because they couldn’t say their name. They were Lenape.” I had never heard of them.
“What happened to them?” asked Tony.
“They got wiped out. They got disease, and most of them were pushed west.” Wilson had finally sat down at the fire, next to Abbey.
We were silent for a moment, and then Wilson spoke again.
“They have a cool creation story, though. Their creator had a dream of earth, and he created a special tree. From the roots of that tree the first man was born. Then the man born from the tree kissed the earth, and that’s how woman was made. So the whole of human creation came from the roots of trees.”
I doubt anyone sitting at the fire had ever heard Wilson McVay say so much.
“Who’d have taken you for all this hippie talk?” said Sage. “Where’d you hear all this?”
“He’s making it up for the tree girl,” said Abbey, looking over at me. What the fuck was wrong with Abbey, and why did she keep saying these things to me about Wilson? And especially in front of Jack, who might also say some of this back to Thomas.
Wilson stared back at her. “I didn’t make it up. My mom’s an anthropologist. She’s always talking about this stuff.” I remembered the bag of drugs he’d brought down to our house, saying his mother’s medicine cabinet was so full she wouldn’t miss any of it.
Nobody said anything, and they were all probably thinking what I was: how strange to imagine Wilson McVay with a mother, never mind sitting down with her, listening to her tell creation stories.
“So why are all you pioneers sitting around with spears?” Wilson asked. “You plan to fight the police with your sharpened sticks?”
“Oh wait, I forgot!” Tony said. He leapt up and ran back over toward the woodpile.
“Maybe he killed a squirrel with his BB gun that he wants us to cook,” said Sage.
“Or snake,” said Abbey.
“Copperhead or garter?” Sage and Abbey cracked up.
Tony came back with a grin on his face and an Acme brown paper bag. He pulled out small plastic packets, flinging them at us. One landed in my lap. Marshmallows. I looked over at Sage, and we both burst into laughter. It was unbelievable. Tony looked so pleased with himself, and he sat back down and put two marshmallows on the end of the stick he had made into a spear and handed two to Sage next to him. I opened my bag, took one, and put it on the stick. People were passing them, so I passed my bag to Jack.
“Tony made us skewers,” I said.
“I can see,” he said. He seemed annoyed about something. He leaned forward and said, “Can I talk to you? Like apart from everyone?”
“Yeah, okay.” I got up and walked away before Sage had a chance to say anything to us. I could feel Wilson watching as we walked across the lot. I led us toward the mouth of the trail, and I remembered the night we watched the snow up there with Thomas and the night at the swim club, and how, despite what Sage had said about him, there had been something between us.
20
I moved quickly through the dark, sure-footed despite the beers. I could feel the trail beneath me, roots like bent arms in the path that could catch your foot, the spine of angled rocks, and I knew without looking where they were. The yellow rectangles that some nights blazed on trees were barely visible. I had the sensation of something behind both of us. Abbey’s stories about graves and upset spirits didn’t scare me. If the spirits were here and all around me, they knew I wouldn’t tear up the ground or level trees. I believed Mrs. Carlson’s story. She seemed like that kind of person, someone who would go out there alone and explain herself and listen.
“Whoa. Slow down. I can’t see anything. It’s pitch-black,” Jack called behind me. I kept walking. “Jesus, Libby, just stop.”
I turned and waited for him. “Let’s sit here.” Just off the trail was a flat-topped boulder. He sat next to me but shuffled to sit farther away. He was breathing fast, as if he’d been running, and seemed different from the Jack I’d been with at the pool. He was rigid and upright, his relaxed confidence gone. The night was dark, and the air had become very still. I turned to face him, but he was looking straight ahead, and I knew he hadn’t brought me down here because he liked me.
“What’s up with you and Wilson McVay?”
I suddenly felt cold away from the fire. Why was everyone so obsessed with me and Wilson?
“Absolutely nothing.”
“Thomas told me he’s always hanging around your house. And Abbey said stuff.”
“No. Oh my God, no.”
“Wilson’s like twenty.”
“I know . . . It’s not like that. I don’t know why he’s hanging around. He’s sort of friends with Marie. I think he thinks he’s helping watch over us or something.”
“Well, that’s ironic. Complete head case now the Gallaghers’ guardian angel.”
“He’s not our guardian angel. And he’s not a complete head case.” I surprised myself with how I was speaking. I didn’t know why I was suddenly defending Wilson McVay and meaning it. But Jack’s judgment and sudden big-brother attitude pissed me off.
“Most people on the mountain think he is.”
“He helped my family with something. That’s all.”
“Cutting your grass?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Thomas said he did.”
“Well, anyway, it was something else. And we can mow our own lawn.”
“I’m just saying you should stay away from him. He’s coked up half the time, going around headbutting people.”
I wondered if this was true, if Wilson did those kinds of drugs. Had Jack heard about Pottstown? He must have.
“Are you serious? You dragged me out here because of Wilson?”
“No. I don’t even know why I mentioned him. He’s an asshole.”
“Okay, then. So what did you want to talk about?”
“It’s nothing. Never mind.” He stood up. “I have to go home.”
“Okay, be like that,” I said.
He paused for a moment, standing in front of me, his hands now deep in the pockets of his jeans, shoulders hunched.
“You good to get back to the others?”
Again the concerned big brother. I didn’t say anything back.
“Okay, then. I’m heading.” He turned and started to walk down the trail.
“By the way,” I said to his back, “you’re the one who said you wanted to talk. So fuck you.”
“Now I don’t want to.”
“What did I do?”
Was it because I defended Wilson? I’d half thought that maybe we had come here to be alone.
He started again. “Did you talk to Thomas?”
“Yeah. Pretty much all my life.”
“I was wondering, did you say anything?” He paused. “I mean about me?”
“No. Like what?”
“You know.”
“No. Did you?”
“No. Of course not.”
I couldn’t believe it. We were in the woods so he could tell me never to tell my brother we had kissed. It made me feel stupid for ever having liked him, and even worse because it had embarrassed him so much.
“Look, are you okay to go back up?”
I turned without answering and walked up the trail, back toward the towers. Only a few hundred yards up, I could hear the party and see the beating lights. I found another empty cup and filled it from the keg, not even bothering to rinse it this time. Our fire was still going. Tony De Martino had his arm around Sage, who was letting him, and Wilson was sitting back, legs crossed, looking way too at home. I sat down, trying to make eye contact with Sage, but she was letting Tony feed her a marshmallow from his stick. It was as if reality had been rewritten while I spent a few minutes in the woods.
“You missed marshmallows,” said Abbey.
“Here,” said Wilson. He leaned forward and handed me the stick Tony had given me earlier. There was a white marshmallow at the end. “I saved you one. These stoned savages devoured them all.” I held my marshmallow over the fire, watching the sugar skin tinge and bubble.
I tried to chew the marshmallow, but my mouth had gone dry, and it was like trying to eat sticky putty. I threw the whole stick into the fire.
“That’s ungrateful,” said Wilson.
“Too sweet,” I said. I looked over at Sage again, willing her to look back, but she was still being stupid with Tony De Martino. I could hear them talking about the Stones concert in Philly in September. He was going, too.
“The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.” Wilson was looking at me.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Did Wilson think I was learning some lesson here? Was I learning my place?
“Aristotle said it. In military school, our classics teacher was always saying it.” Another trickle of information about Wilson. So that’s where he’d disappeared to those years.
“What’s my bitter education?” I stared hard at him.
“That’s what you have to find out.”
I wanted to go home, but I was afraid to go by myself. I felt like there was nothing to look forward to.
“You guys marching in the parade Saturday?” Abbey was talking to me.
“No. Beatrice is going to camp. Ellen made a costume and a sign for her, but she’s going to let Mrs. Boucher’s little boy wear it and do up his Big Wheel.”
“So cute,” said Abbey. “Little patriots on their bikes.” She and Wilson had obviously been smoking while I was gone. Wilson was grinning at the fire, and Abbey’s eyes were nearly shut, she looked so stoned.
“D’ya still babysit them?” Abbey asked.
“My sisters?”
“No, the spawn of the lovely Mrs. Boucher.” I remembered what she had said that night at the start of the summer about Mrs. Boucher, how someone thought she was beautiful. What had that meant?
I looked over at Tony and Sage. He was whispering something to her, and she was laughing. In the firelight Tony looked half handsome, and all his Boy Scouts of America effort had clearly paid off, because Sage was leaning on him and had her hand on his thigh.
Abbey poked Wilson in the leg with her skewer. “Hey, Wilson, why didn’t you just go around the blockade? Why’d you come through the woods like a ghost to scare us all?”
Wilson just laughed. It was strange how he sat with us when across the lot at other fires there were people his age that he should be hanging out with, that he must have been friends with when he was younger, before he became different. If he was the oldest at this fire circle, I was the youngest one here, and probably only tolerated because I was friends with Sage. I looked at Abbey, her wild curly hair glinting in the firelight, her eyes still shuttered. She looked like a fortune-teller. Sage and Tony had started making out; he had cupped her face toward his. I looked away.
I wondered if Mrs. De Martino was afraid of her boys, who drank beer in their yard and took potshots at passing kids with BB guns from their lawn chairs. I had seen her with her eldest son earlier this summer, the one who’d taken the overdose, leading him by the arm to the car, his feet unsteady, his skin pallid and fleshy. Only two summers earlier, the first time I waited outside the fence while people broke into the swim club at night, I had seen him and his friends jumping naked off the diving board, young powerful bodies arcing through the air, whooping, shaking their long wet hair as they reemerged, breaking the surface of the water. It was like they belonged in a movie. Now, even though his mother was probably only five feet tall, he’d seemed small beside her, unused to light and air, dependent on her small self.
Marie said Sage had a class complex, that she was drawn to the working classes. She said it was to defy her family, to go against the grain. I didn’t think that. Sage just preferred people like Tony and Abbey and our family. I felt sorry for Tony, who must have been collecting wood for a week and had gone to get marshmallows, thinking Sage would be there. He’d obviously been waiting for her to arrive. He’d probably get his heart broken. I had started to feel woozy from the beer. I’d lost count of how many. Four or five. I wanted to go tap Sage on the shoulder and tell her to walk home with me, to ask her what the hell was wrong with Jack. Wilson must have sensed it.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll give you a ride home.”
“On the motorcycle?”
“Yeah.”
“No. You’re completely stoned.”
“Correction. Only a little bit stoned, and completely capable of steering. I’ll go slow.”
I wanted to go home. I didn’t feel well. Sage wasn’t going to be done any time soon, and I didn’t want to be up there anymore. My head was spinning.
“You won’t do any stupid shit like taking jumps or popping wheelies?”
“Definitely not. Especially when you’re drunk sitting behind me. I like this jacket. I don’t want anyone to get sick on it.”
We got on Wilson’s Yamaha. He kick-started it standing, then sat down, the heft of his body in front of mine. He turned on the gravel, and we moved into the woods, whooshing past the leaves and branches on the dirt track, past the blockade they had built and onto Horseshoe Trail Road.
Wilson downshifted as we glided down the hill and rounded the corner where just a few nights earlier Grady Adams had hit the deer. The disturbed gravel at the side of the road was still visible. Sods of earth were upturned. The township must have used some sort of machine to lift her. I looked
the other way and for a moment let my cheek rest on Wilson’s back. We turned left onto Forge Mountain Drive, and I leaned with Wilson and the bike, looking ahead as our headlight picked out a space in the dark. The thrum of the engine beneath me, our high beam finding the road, a slight breeze on my skin and through my hair, Wilson’s sturdy presence in front of me—I felt wrapped and good. For a few minutes we launched through the night, holding the road and the air and the dark. As we came around the corner after Rock Hill, a few hundred yards from my street, I tapped Wilson on the shoulder. He downshifted and pulled in, steadying the bike with his feet on the ground. He leaned his head back toward his shoulder to listen.
“In case my mom hears. I’ll get off now.” I knew I probably needed to walk the last bit before going into the house. If she woke up and saw me like this, she would know I’d been drinking, and I’d be dead.
I tried to get off the bike as if I were experienced, but I had to hop on one foot as I swung the other leg over the seat, my skin unsticking from the leather. I stood next to him on the bike.
“Thanks.” I thought for a moment and then added, “I forgot to say something. That guy was in Space Port, and he was looking around, maybe for one of you.”
“I know. Sage said.”
I tried to remember if I had seen them talking at the fire. “Tonight?”
“No. The other night. On the phone.”
“Oh.”
“Later,” he said, and he leaned forward on the bike, pushing off, freewheeling down the hill. I couldn’t see him but only heard the sound of the tires picking up speed. I walked fast. As I turned onto my street, I heard the Yamaha engine kick and accelerate, a sound muffled and remote as it moved into the distance.
My house was dark. At the end of the driveway, I chewed a stick of Wrigley’s gum. I smelled like beer. I tried the back door, and the knob turned. Unlocked. Thomas had left it open for me. It meant she wasn’t at home; she would have locked it. I moved through the rec room and opened the door into the garage. There was just emptiness where the shape of the car should be. In the kitchen, I flicked the light on for a second; the clock over the sink read 1:10. In our room, I stepped out of my Converse and climbed over Beatrice into bed.