by Hannah Tinti
The night of the party Loo waited at the kitchen table with a book in front of her, pretending to read, while Hawley showered and got ready to meet Fisk down at the Flying Jib. She tilted her head and nodded as he said goodbye, and as soon as his truck pulled out of the driveway she stripped off her clothes and put on the outfit she had spent all week organizing, a practiced combination of nonchalance—jeans and a T-shirt with the neck ripped out and the sleeves rolled over her shoulders, a pair of large hoop earrings she had lifted from the drugstore and her steel-toed boots. Then she went to the bathroom and smeared on her mother’s bright-red lipstick, the texture stale and hard. She pulled back her hair. She was sixteen but in the mirror she looked nearly twenty. She thought, Here I go.
She put Marshall’s map and a flashlight in the pocket of her sweatshirt and then got her bike out of the shed and started across town. It was dusk when she left their house, and by the time she reached the edge of the woods the sky had darkened and cars had turned on their headlights. The side road that led to Dogtown was lined with vehicles of every size and shape, parked one after the other under the trees. The cars were cold and empty and quiet; they had been there for hours.
Loo was sweaty from the ride. She leaned her bike against a tree by the entrance, turned on her flashlight and started down the trail. As soon as she stepped away from the road, the trees closed in, blocking the stars and the moon. All she could hear was her own breathing and the sound of her feet in the leaves. Then her flashlight passed over a giant boulder on the side of the path. The rock looked out of place and time, like an abandoned spaceship from another world. Loo came closer, and saw letters carved into the side. Two words six inches high and perfectly cut, as if for a statue or a grave.
BE TRUE.
Loo took Marshall’s map out of her pocket and held it under the light. There was a small round dot close to the trailhead with the same words. Farther along on the path she found other stones, each next to its own corresponding black dot on the map: BE CLEAN. SAVE. TRUTH. WORK. LOYALTY. KINDNESS. INTELLIGENCE. IDEALS. IDEAS. INTEGRITY. SPIRITUAL POWER. And PROSPERITY FOLLOWS SERVICE. They were markers, and she followed them through the forest, each giving her courage, until she heard voices and music and came to a clearing and saw the whale lit up in the dark.
The bonfire was right underneath the jawbone, flickering against the granite. There were nearly a hundred teenagers gathered around different parts of the stone whale, clambering up its side or perched on top of its nose or leaning against the blowhole. Now that she had gotten herself here, Loo wasn’t sure what to do. She had never been to a party before.
She expected to see kids from her class, and she did spot a few but didn’t know them well enough to go up and say hello. Most were older. Everyone was holding red plastic cups and drinking and some of them were smoking cigarettes and some of them were smoking weed and some were roasting marshmallows. Loo saw a girl catch a marshmallow on fire, turn it until all the sides were blackened, then blow it out, peel the goo off and stuff the whole thing in her mouth before turning to the boy next to her and kissing him, the white insides dripping between them and the rest of the crowd hooting their approval.
Marshall was back in the woods, pumping the keg and serving beer. He was wearing a Greenpeace T-shirt and a pair of faded jeans. Loo stood in line and took a cup from him.
“You came,” he said.
“I got lost. But the boulders helped. They’re huge.”
“I know. My stepdad used to bring me here to hike when I was little. This place is like Stonehenge. These giant rocks got picked up someplace else a million years ago and then dropped here when the glaciers melted. They’re called ‘erratics.’ Some guy named Babson carved slogans into them in the thirties.”
Marshall’s words came out hurried and slurred and Loo realized he was drunk. His eyes looked straight at her, not ducking away as they usually did in science class.
Loo took a sip of beer. It was warm and flavorless. She wiped her mouth.
“Do you have a favorite?”
“ ‘Never try,’ ” he said, “ ‘never win.’ ”
Some kids came forward and asked for drinks. Loo stepped to the side and watched Marshall work the tap, holding the spigot in place with the finger she had broken. If she touched it, she was sure she would be able to feel the split in the bone. Marshall poured her more beer, tipping the cup to keep down the foam, and then he told another kid to take over and walked with Loo to the fire.
“Who are these people?” she asked.
“My cousin’s friends,” Marshall said. “He graduated last year.”
“I thought Jeremy and Pauly junior would be here.”
“They don’t talk to me anymore. Not since my mom started that petition for the marine sanctuary.”
“Want me to beat them up for you?”
Marshall laughed. “No thanks.”
They sat down on a log in front of the fire, not touching but close. The heat felt good after the long walk through the forest. Everyone was in silhouette, the flames animating their faces.
“My stepfather showed me how to tap the trees in these woods,” said Marshall.
“For maple syrup?”
Marshall nodded. “The sap runs when it’s below freezing at night, but above freezing during the day. I’m out here most of February and March. It’s a lot of work.”
“I can imagine,” said Loo, and for a moment she did imagine—the branches dropping their leaves and turning bare, the snow rising up around them, and Marshall passing through the icy drifts in his boots, carrying his buckets and a small mallet to drive the spiles into the bark.
“Do you want to see it?” Marshall asked.
“See what?”
He kept his eyes on the fire and took a long gulp of beer. “ ‘Never try, never win.’ ”
Loo watched the smoke rising, splitting around the whale’s jaw. “Sure,” she said.
Marshall led her away from the party, down the path. They passed a few more carvings and read them with their flashlights: USE YOUR HEAD; BE ON TIME; IF WORK STOPS VALUES DECAY.
“Do you think any of these slogans made a difference?”
“Probably not,” said Marshall. He finished his beer and threw his cup into the woods and then he took her hand. She could feel the hard bump of his broken finger against her palm. His finger will be like that the rest of his life, she thought. But she still didn’t feel bad about breaking it.
“If I lived here I would have hated Babson. For trying to tell me what to do.”
“Come on,” Marshall said, and pulled her into the trees.
The music from the party was softer now and the light faded as they moved away from the bonfire. They walked through the bushes and along a trail until the woods got dark and quiet. Eventually they reached another boulder, half buried in the earth. Marshall ran the beam of his flashlight along the length of it—the words were barely recognizable underneath the moss. NEVER TRY NEVER WIN. “That’s it,” he said and then he turned off the flashlight. Blackness closed around them. Loo could hear everything. The rustle of the trees and Marshall breathing beside her and then she felt his hands and he pushed Loo against the rock and then he kissed her.
His mouth tasted like beer. His lips pushed hers open, his tongue exploring her teeth. It was strange but not terrible. He touched her hip and this time she took hold of his thumb and held it tight. She could feel his pulse, just underneath the skin—a silent, insistent beating. And at once the familiar rusted flavor was there, flooding Loo’s mouth and washing away his beery kisses. She squeezed his thumb. Marshall’s body went stiff. He pulled away from her.
“Don’t,” he said.
Someone shouted in the distance. There were footsteps close by, and then the woods around them were suddenly full of movement. People rushing down the path, flashlights going in all directions, boys calling out and girls screaming.
“Cops!” someone yelled as they hurried past. Loo released Marsh
all’s finger. And then she ran, leaving him behind in the dark. She dug her flashlight out of her pocket and dove into the bushes, crawling on her hands and knees through the thicket until she was far away from the path and the bonfire was nothing but a glimmer through the branches.
The police had driven out on a couple of ATVs, and she could hear one of them taking the names of the kids they had caught while the others loaded the keg onto one of the racks. The cops’ flashlights were stronger than anyone else’s and cast sharp beams that cut through the forest. She was about a hundred feet away, her knees wet and her nails thick with dirt, when the earth dropped out from underneath her feet and she stumbled into a hole.
Loo thought she’d fallen into a grave but it was the cellar of an old homestead, lined with rocks. The hole was muddy and cold, the stone walls still supporting the base of the foundation, six feet down. There was a pricker bush and the thorns raked her hands. Loo watched the beams of the flashlights pass overhead and listened to the police talking to one another. The men found a few more teenagers and then they went back and put out the bonfire, and everyone was rounded up and the police left, a few riding in the ATVs and the others walking out with the kids. One of the girls was crying and another was begging them not to call her parents, and then their voices grew faint and they were gone, and Loo was left alone in the forest.
She struggled through thickets and over logs, a trail of mosquitoes and moths following her and swooping after the flashlight as she searched for the path. She scrambled over rocks and got a mouth full of cobwebs. It seemed like she was lost for hours. All the while shadows just beyond her flashlight moved, until she was sure that someone was tracking her, watching her from the trees. She turned off the light and hid. She waited. And then she ran right into one of Babson’s boulders. It smelled of earth and metal and glass. She clicked on her flashlight and touched the words. USE YOUR HEAD. Loo pulled out Marshall’s map and found the trail again. She followed the stones, from IDEAS and KINDNESS to LOYALTY and COURAGE until she returned to BE CLEAN and BE TRUE.
Loo stepped out of the woods, relief easing into her bones. It was late, and all of the cars that had lined the street when she arrived had disappeared. She hoped that her father was still out with Fisk; she needed at least forty minutes to ride back to Olympus. Loo took off her sweatshirt, wiped her face and tied the sleeves through her belt loops. Then she went over to the tree where she had left her bike and saw that it was gone.
She checked the woods, searched up and down the road, rooting in the bushes, even walked back down the path before giving up and sitting on the curb. She could try to thumb a ride out on the highway, but the thought of hitching made her nervous. She would have to walk back across town. It was going to take all night and Hawley would be home by the time she opened the door. She’d have to think of some excuse along the way.
Loo stood up and brushed off her jeans. They were covered with dirt and prickers. Her socks were soaked through. Her boots made a squishing noise with each step down one dark road and then another. There was a broken streetlamp ahead, shards sparkling in pieces across the asphalt, covered with dead moths and bird dung. But just beyond this pile of glass was a house, and that house was glowing. Every window, every switch turned on. The house was flaking paint, the front porch crooked. A rusted-out car was in the driveway. Loo would have thought the place was abandoned if it wasn’t for all the lights. Then she recognized the pineapple knocker.
If she’d seen Mabel Ridge’s house on the way into Dogtown, there was no way Loo would have stopped. But she was desperate without her bike—as well as tired and shaken and covered with brambles—so she turned and headed straight for her grandmother’s door. The stairs creaked. The brass pineapple was heavy in her palm as she lifted it and let it fall. A moment passed and then the door opened and Loo was face-to-face with the old woman. Mabel Ridge was in her seventies now, her hair white, her spine curved, her nose and cheeks spotted with rosacea. She was wearing a cardigan sweater and a long black rubber apron and a pair of plastic goggles were pushed back on her forehead.
“Well?”
Loo tried to smooth her ponytail. She was missing one of her hoop earrings. She thought of the dress her father had made her wear on her last visit. How the blood on Hawley’s shirt had taken days to scrub out.
“I’m Loo.”
Mabel Ridge put her palm against the doorframe, as if she might slam it shut at any moment. The skin of her hand was dyed blue, all the way to the wrist.
Loo tried again. “Your granddaughter.”
There was a change in the air between them then and Mabel sucked in her cheeks. Loo wondered if the woman was going to cry, but Mabel’s chin slid out and the moment passed. She checked the girl over. She took in all the mess. “You look like you’ve been in a fight.”
“I got lost in the woods.”
“You were at that party.” Mabel Ridge pulled a tissue from her sleeve, wiped her nose, then tucked it back up the same sleeve. “Your friends smashed my streetlight.”
“I don’t have any friends,” said Loo.
Mabel Ridge opened the door and took a step onto the porch. She glanced over the girl’s shoulder, and when she found no one waiting in the shadows, she scratched her chin with her blue fingers. “Well, I guess you’d better come inside, then.”
The house seemed smaller once Loo stepped into the living room. Set in one corner was a spinning wheel on three legs, and set in the other, between an overstuffed couch and an old television set, was a gigantic wooden loom. The loom stretched across the wall, taking up most of the space, a square frame of interlocking pieces of wood, a foot treadle and a small bench in front where the weaver could sit and work. It was an enormous machine, imported from another time, the comb holding the threads apart and grinning like a giant mouth.
Mabel Ridge shut the front door and locked it, then wiped her feet on the hallway rug. “You’re a little young to be going out to parties.”
Loo didn’t answer. She squeezed her flashlight tightly with both hands and tried not to stare. Mabel Ridge had the same green eyes as her mother. The same eyes that Loo saw when she looked into the mirror.
“You want to use the phone?” Mabel asked. “Call your father?”
“No,” said Loo.
The old woman snorted, then waved her down the hall. “I’ve got a sink in there. You can clean up.”
She led the girl to the kitchen. The counter was lined with jars stuffed with herbs. Four large pots were set on the stove, boiling and steaming. The room smelled of lavender and old potatoes.
“Careful,” Mabel said. “You don’t want to breathe this stuff.” She put the goggles over her eyes, grabbed a towel from the back of the chair and used it to lift one of the lids. She turned off the heat, checked the temperature with a gauge, then picked up a long wooden spoon and used it to dip a skein of blue wool into the pot. As she pulled the yarn out again, the color began to shift, until it had turned an even deeper shade of indigo. Loo peered inside. She expected the liquid to be dark but it was yellow, with a slight milky tinge.
“Are you washing it?” Loo asked.
“No,” said Mabel. “I’m turning it blue.” She set the twist of yarn onto a small wooden rack. “Indigo is the hardest color to get right. Yellows, greens, reds—they’re more reliable.” She uncovered the other pots and revealed boiling vats of primary colors, the yarn floating and turning like some kind of strange soup. “Blue has to be added in layers. You dip it over and over and over again, forty or fifty times, until you get the darkness just right.” She turned down the burners to simmer, put the lids back on and pushed the goggles to her forehead. Then she handed Loo a bar of Ivory soap and the towel she’d been using.
“You should clean your face, at least.”
Loo took the towel and soap over to the sink and wet them both. There was a small hand mirror nailed to one of the kitchen cabinets. She leaned down and went to work. The red lipstick had rubbed off. There was a deep
scratch on her forehead that was bleeding, dark mud smeared across her face and neck and a rash of mosquito bites on her left cheek. Loo cleaned herself as best she could, then wet her hands and ran them through her hair, shaking out burrs and twigs and even a beetle that landed in the sink and began frantically running in circles, flapping its tiny iridescent wings. Loo turned the water on and watched the bug get swallowed down the drain.
“That’s better,” said Mabel. “You looked like some kind of swamp monster. I thought you were the police—otherwise I wouldn’t have answered.”
“You called them?” Loo asked.
“Of course I did. That party was getting out of control. I keep track of things around here. People think no one’s watching, but I always do.”
The old woman said this while folding and refolding the towel, and Loo began to wonder if she was touched. There was something off about the way Mabel Ridge moved, her fingers reaching out like a spider feeling around a corner.
“What’s all the yarn for?”
“People order my hand-dyed yarn from all over the country. It’s simple, but it pays the bills. Kept me in this house after Gus lost all our money.”
“Gus?” Loo asked.
“Lily’s father.”
My grandfather, Loo thought. “Does he live here, too?”
“He’s dead,” said Mabel Ridge. “Thank God.”
Her blue fingers pushed open a door next to the sink. Behind it was a bathroom about the same size as the one in Loo’s own house, but instead of pictures and scraps of memories it was filled with color. Skeins of yarn stretched across sets of wooden racks—green, purple, yellow, orange—dripping and mixing hues onto newspaper spread across the floor. Loo reached out and touched one of the loops, and her fingers came back stained. When she glanced up the old woman smiled.
“Come on. I want to show you something.”