Applewood (Book 1)

by Brendan P. Myers

  “Can’t…breathe,” he said half jokingly over his shoulder and she laughed but only released him a little. They rode up the street and under the dark tunnel at the top formed by the massive elms on either side, and then on out to the state highway.

  Dugan had knocked on Andy’s door around 9:00 the night before and was surprised when her father greeted him. He was not much taller than Dugan and wore his bifocals at the end of his nose. Mr. Rourke welcomed Dugan into the house and invited him to sit for a while. He spent the next few minutes scrutinizing Dugan down his nose and peppering him with questions. Andy’s mother was obviously on Dugan’s side. She smiled over to him, asked if he wanted anything, and generally did her best to make his inquisition a little more pleasant.

  Andy came down after a few minutes, freshly showered and filling the room with the aroma of talcum powder. Dugan promised her parents to have her back before eleven and escaped the grilling unscathed. Before they left, Andy’s mother reminded Dugan that they expected him to come over for tomorrow afternoon’s cookout.

  “Sorry about that,” Andy said as they left the house. Dugan just laughed.

  He took out his flashlight and the two of them wandered deep into the woods and up the hill to the tower. He put his arm around her as they walked up the stairs, telling her where to watch her step. When they arrived at the top, they saw that a few of the other kids had already arrived.

  Mike Dolloff was there with his friend Moon Lombard, although Dugan hated calling him that. The pear shaped kid with the big head didn’t seem to mind at all, though, and Dugan thought he understood why. His theory was that having his friends call him “Moon” took some of the sting out of it when the assholes that had given him that nickname did. It was the smart thing to do, and Moon was nothing if not smart.

  After he introduced Andy to everybody, a group of older teenagers led by Mark McCaffrey showed up with a cooler and offered beers all around. Dugan declined, opting for a Coke instead while remembering the third degree from Mr. Rourke. The fireworks began at exactly 10:00.

  They launched them every year from the Grantham High School field about six miles away. The booms shook the tower and they could smell the acrid scent of gunpowder drifting in their direction. Not long after Grantham’s display got underway, they saw the neighboring town of Dutton’s show begin four miles further off. Andy turned her head to look at Dugan, and he smiled when he saw the flashing fireworks of two towns reflected in her eyes.

  “Two for the price of one!” he said.

  As they stared out into the blazing night skies, he felt her hand almost imperceptibly brush against his, then her pinky began stroking the back of his hand. He reached out with his own pinky, and the two fingers brushed up and down against each other. Dugan smelled rope burning and felt the tap on his shoulder—Mark McCaffrey offering him a toke. The memory of Andy’s father again invaded his thoughts and he politely declined.

  Dugan dropped Andy off at her door at the time promised. Mr. Rourke was slightly more pleasant when he arrived to pick her up this morning for the parade.

  As they rode down the state highway, Dugan gave Andy a tour of her new town while sharing with her something of his own boyhood. He pointed out his old elementary school and the dairy farm. He showed her where Larry had been hit by a car when he was a kid but didn’t get a scratch on him, then the place where his own poor dog had been hit and died. They rode into town, zigzagging through the stopped cars that were going nowhere now that the annual July Fourth detour was in place.

  Dugan locked his bike in the bike stand at the new library, and they wandered among the gathering crowds. Lawn chairs dotted the sidewalk, laying claim to the best viewing spots along the route. The two walked up to Grantham Green where they saw a large number of tents and booths, many of them operated by the nonprofits in town: the Lions Club, the Kiwanis, and the Olde Grantham Musical Society. The aromas of cotton candy and fried dough hung heavy in the air, making Dugan’s stomach growl. “You wanna get somethin’ to eat?” he asked.

  He bought her a slush drink and got himself a big piece of fried dough with extra confectioner’s sugar. They went and sat in a quiet corner, underneath one of the ancient elms that lined the green. Andy was quiet for a while.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked.

  She smiled. “You guys take this stuff seriously, don’t you?”

  Puzzled by the question, Dugan had to think a moment about his answer. “Well, first of all, you better start using ‘us guys’ when you talk about this stuff now, remember?” Her smile took some of the sting off. “But I guess you’re right, it is a big deal around here, probably ‘cause there’s so much history. You can’t turn around in this town without bumping into some of it.

  “Coupla years ago, there was this high school teacher shot himself out in the woods over by the school. They never did figure out just why he done it, shot himself I mean, but to close the case, the cops needed to find the bullet. They looked for weeks out in those woods, and recovered seventy-eight bullets. Some of the bullets they found went all the way back to Revolutionary War days. But they never did find his bullet.” She looked thoughtful as Dugan went on.

  “The place you’re sittin’ right now is the same place that the volunteers came when the Revolution broke out, and after that the Civil War. I’ll bet if we went back far enough, we’d find out that some kinda Indian thing happened right there too, long before the white man set foot on these shores.”

  He looked over at her and smiled. “Like I said, you can’t get away from it.”

  She smiled too, but met his eyes squarely. “How do you know so much about it?”

  “Oh, you’ll learn it too, and you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Next July Fourth, the town turns two hundred and fifty years old, and that’ll be the biggest one yet. There’s gonna be a whole curriculum built around it next school year.”

  After finishing their snacks, the two began walking toward the town center. An old man approached them, riding slowly down the street on an old-fashioned bicycle. His long white hair flowed from underneath a red checked hat of the sort favored by hunters. He had a long, untended beard and wore a coat of now indeterminate color, and because they were downwind, they smelled him coming long before he passed. Andy turned away and pretended to gag.

  “Who the heck is that?” she asked.

  Dugan smiled. “Skunk.” She gave him a puzzled look, but he said, “That’s enough Grantham history for one day. I’ll tell you about him some other time.”

  Not that he could tell her much. Skunk had been a fixture around town for as long as anybody could remember. Nobody seemed to know anything about him, and the deepest mystery about him was where he lived. Some said he lived in the woods, and Dugan and his friends had sometimes hunted for traces of him. They never did find anything. Skunk had also become something of a boogeyman to the younger kids in town, with parents warning, “Skunk’ll get ya!” if they didn’t eat their peas or go to bed or otherwise do what their parents wanted.

  A moment after Skunk had passed, the two heard the sound of the fire engines signaling the start of the parade. They headed downtown and found a place to stand near the cinema. The parade itself usually lasted about forty-five minutes.

  There were fire engines and marching bands followed by a series of large floats with flashy late model cars on the back of flatbed trucks, sponsored by local car dealerships. Smaller floats sponsored by the Police Auxiliary and the Firemen’s Benevolent Association followed. National Guardsmen from the Grantham Armory rode by in large military vehicles. The Boy Scouts marched in their crisp khaki uniforms, followed by the Ancient and Honorable Grantham Fife and Drum Corps dressed in Revolutionary War garb. It was at about the parade’s midpoint that a float sponsored by St. Anselm’s School appeared.

  “Hey that’s my school!” Andy said.

  Dugan froze a moment. “What?”

  “I’m going to St. Anselm’s in the fall. Didn’t I tell you?”

/>   He looked away, not wanting her to see that he was crushed. He had just assumed. “Oh, yeah, yeah, that’s right.”

  That year’s Miss Grantham rode on top of the town’s antique hook and ladder truck, while horsemen from the Circle L Ranch performed rope tricks beside it, delighting the crowd. Toward the end of the parade, the Grantham High School varsity rode by on a float proclaiming them “Hard as Granite and Ready for Action,” to more than a little snickering.

  The final float was the largest of all, sponsored by the Grantham Historical Society. It had men dressed in the uniforms of all previous wars, waving to the crowd. The signs on the float reminded the town of next year’s two hundred and fiftieth bash. The largest sign trumpeted the town’s new motto: “Grantham: It Just Gets Better All the Time!”

  Dugan dropped Andy off at home after the parade, promising to return later on for the cookout. A few hours later, freshly showered and combed, he walked into her backyard. Andy and her Mom were sitting in lawn chairs watching five-year old Alex splash around in a plastic Looney Tunes pool. There were some adults and a few younger kids that Dugan didn’t know. He figured they were friends of Mr. Rourke from work, or family members coming by to see the new house. Mr. Rourke was dressed in an apron that looked like a Red Sox uniform and was in a great mood. When Dugan went over to ask if he could help, Mr. Rourke told him to grab a soda and a burger and have a seat.

  To Dugan’s surprise, Andy’s brother Alex took an immediate liking to him. The two played hide and seek for an hour underneath the picnic table and later, the five year old crawled up into his arms and fell asleep. Dugan got all warm and fuzzy again seeing the way Andy looked at him with her brother asleep in his arms. Later in the afternoon, after everyone had eaten and the sun was just beginning to set, Mr. Rourke asked Dugan what his father did for a living.

  “Raytheon…missile systems,” he answered, thinking fast on his feet. He told himself it was only a white lie, and at least had been true once. Unfortunately, Mr. Rourke was very impressed. He went on and on about how busy his father was going to be when Reagan was in the White House and ended the conversation by saying how much he looked forward to meeting his father. For Dugan, the whole conversation cast a big pall over what had been otherwise a fun afternoon.

  After the sun went down and the bugs came out, Dugan thanked Andy’s parents for a wonderful time. He said goodnight to Andy out in front of her house. Looking her in the eye, he took her hands in his and thanked her for spending the day with him, before leaning forward to kiss her on the cheek.

  Early the next morning, Dugan was in the sunroom watching oil company executives squirm on Phil Donahue when he heard the sound of slow footsteps crunching up his driveway. He waited for the knock on the screen door before getting up. It was Jimmy, home early from CYO camp. Dugan walked to the door and his automatic smile faltered. He forced it back onto his face, smiling even more broadly when the two friends shook hands. “Good to see you, man.”

  After motioning Jimmy to have a seat in one of the plastic chairs, Dugan took one as well. The two fell into a companionable silence before Dugan finally spoke.

  “You’re home a few days early.”

  Jimmy smiled and shrugged. “It didn’t work out.”

  Dugan looked across at his friend’s battered face. “At least your father seems to have taken it well.” Jimmy didn’t smile at his lame attempt at humor, so Dugan tried a different tack. “At least…you know he loves you. I mean, he cares enough about you, to…you know.” Jimmy lifted up one shoulder in a half shrug, more in acknowledgment than agreement. After a few more quiet moments, Jimmy changed the subject entirely.

  “You been visitin’ the Archbishop while I been away?”

  Dugan laughed. “The Archbishop has not lacked for company.”

  After they stopped laughing, Jimmy asked, “So really man, what’d I miss?” Dugan smiled and began telling him all about her.

  9

  Diversions

  The romance between Dugan and Andy continued to simmer at a slow burn through the summer, though they kept it mostly to themselves. The two would occasionally sneak off to the tower or the dairy barn, or up to the Korner store to share a Coke. Sometimes, they would go up to the quarry and lay intertwined for hours, making out, until Dugan would have to excuse himself and take a running leap into the icy waters below. He would dive deep, to where the water was coldest, before he dared climb out to walk back up the hill and do it all over again. In this and other ways, the summer flew by.

  When the steam heat of July melted inexorably toward the dog days of late summer, Dugan and his friends took Andy to the carnival that came to St. Michael’s every year the first week of August. Dugan and Jimmy took turns throwing baseballs at furry trolls, vying to see who could win for Andy the biggest trophy.

  As Labor Day approached, Larry began pestering Dugan about joining him and his family for the holiday up at his family’s house off the coast of Maine. Dugan couldn’t, of course, because of his paper route, and that was the end of that. One morning toward the end of August, Dugan awoke as usual at 4:30 and rode his bike through the darkness up to the Korner.

  When he got closer, he was startled to see Moon and Mike sitting together on his hutch. He pulled his bike over and saw his newspapers stacked and folded, as carefully as he had ever done it.Over the next three days, Moon on his bike and Mike on his skateboard accompanied Dugan to learn the intricacies of his route. It was only on the last day, after he was satisfied they were going to get things right, that he showed them where they could find the hidden Coke.

  On the Friday morning of Labor Day weekend, Dugan filled an old army knapsack with some shirts and shorts and walked over to Larry’s house. A half hour later, Dugan, Larry, and Larry’s parents climbed into the family station wagon to make the drive up I-95. Just across the New Hampshire border, they passed the twenty-four hour outlet stores and headed east.

  When they went past Bowdoin College, Larry’s father sang the fight song and tried to get Larry to join in, reminding him he would have to sing it eventually. It had already been worked out that Larry would go to Bowdoin, like his father and grandfather had before him. They stopped at a small liquor store for beer and snacks before driving on to the house on Bailey Island off Casco Bay.

  When they pulled into the driveway, Dugan saw a large, two story weather-beaten clapboard house. Larry took him around back and onto a porch that jutted thirty feet out over the cliffs below that lead down to the ocean. From the back porch, he saw a long dock connected to the property and a swimming raft about seventy-five feet out in the bay.

  Larry spoke often of his family’s house up in Maine, but never in a bragging way. The house had been in his family for generations, built by his great-great grandfather who had purchased the land with his Civil War bonus money. The property was divided between two houses with a large expanse of lawn between. The other house belonged to Larry’s cousins, descended from the brother of the man who built Larry’s house.

  It couldn’t help but make Dugan just a bit jealous. He knew nothing about his own grandparents, aside from being told he had a little German in him and maybe a little Irish. The combination let him joke that though his family may drink, they knew how to follow orders.

  The boys spent the next few days swimming in the icy waters of Casco Bay, canoeing in the open ocean, and wandering through the inlets and rocky shoreline. They spent their evenings playing take-no-prisoners games of whist, teamed up against Larry’s parents. Larry’s father was a gray-haired corporate executive with a gentle manner and booming laugh. His mother worked with special needs students at the state hospital, but she was ruthless with cards in her hands.

  Later in the evening, after the parents had gone to bed, Larry and Dugan drank bottle after bottle of Haffenraffer and tried to solve the puzzle inside every cap.

  On the second night, Larry took a framed portrait off the wall, to roll up a little something he had gotten from Mark McCaffrey. As he
did so, Dugan thought he saw something interesting on the back. Turning the painting over, they found that the frame had been stuffed with yellowed newspapers as a filler material. The boys carefully removed the old newspapers and regaled each other for an hour with tales of scandal within the Grant administration.

  They laughed at the old ads and surprised each other with the price of things. They found an old Grantham Chronicle from 1865, a time when the good people of “Grantham Village” were debating a new tax in support of a school that would become the original Grantham High School building. There were opinion pieces about the care of returning veterans, and lamentations about the martyred President. Beneath a recipe for cornbread was an article about missing children, and another article mentioned something about animals that had gone missing from local farms. There was a poem about mothers above a warning about nighttime travel. They stuffed the newspapers back into the frame after they were done, laughing that someday Larry’s kids would probably find them for the same reason they had.

  Larry’s uncle came to the dock on Sunday to take the two of them water skiing. Larry was a natural, but Dugan had never been on any kind of ski before. The slick speedboat would no sooner get up to speed than Dugan would find himself falling, getting sucked under, and hanging on for dear life, sometimes even scraping along the rocks at the bottom. Larry and his uncle were patient, attempting dozens of runs with Dugan on the back. No matter how hard he tried, Dugan could not get himself to stay upright. From that day forward, the two friends would only refer to water skiing as “going for a scrape.”

  Later that night, as the two lay quietly awake in the twin beds of the guest room, Dugan asked Larry, “Tell me somethin’ I don’t know.”