by Mark Tufo
“Hello?” I said, trying my best to sound tired and not drunk.
“Hi honey,” my mom said through the phone line. “We’re going to be playing late tonight, I’ll be home in the morning.”
“Okay Mom.”
“Is everything alright?”
Oh no, did I slur? “Yeah everything’s fine Mom, I’m just really tired.” And I did my best exaggerated yawn; I even moved my arms much to the delight of the anticipatory crowd.
“Alright honey.” Thank God nobody else could hear this. “Sleep good.”
“Thanks Mom. Bye.”
“Bye.”
I hung up quickly because I knew Paul’s hand was on the stereo volume control. He had the music cranked back up before I had the phone in the cradle; luckily I had pushed down the tab first. The crowd did a collective “hurray” and resumed their previous business. Whether it was drinking, smoking, sucking face, or as in poor Chris’ case, just plain old puking.
Dennis came up to me. “Hey Mike, great party.”
“How could you tell, your face was planted in that girl’s.” We laughed.
“Yeah, pretty good huh? I had to come up for air and beer. Thanks for inviting me.”
“Hey, one thing Dennis.”
“Yeah, what’s that?” as he turned to face me.
“My friends call me Talbot.”
He looked for a second at me before the light of recognition lit up; beer can significantly affect this by the way.
“My friends call me Wags, short for Waggoner.”
“Good to meet you, Wags,” as I extended my hand.
He took it. “And you too Talbot.”
“Dude, I wouldn’t leave that girl for too long, I think she’d suck face with whoever walked by next.”
“Kiss my ass,” as he laughed and headed for the fridge.
The party rolled till around the 2:00 a.m. hour, I can’t be sure because it was very difficult to focus on a clock face. That was roughly about the time the beer dried up and curfews became an issue. Dennis and Paul stayed the night. Much to their chagrin, their dates did not.
The next morning was the realization of what fifty drunken teenagers can do to a house. The place was trashed. And I had somewhere in the neighborhood of two hours to get it looking like home again. With this crippling hangover I didn’t see the point in even trying. I heard noise in the kitchen, loud bottles rustling around. Oh man, was somebody still looking for beer to drink? They were some hardcore mothers, I thought to myself. I pulled myself up from the grasp of gravity, damn she was unrelenting. I strode my green-gilled self to the kitchen to see what was going on. I was pleasantly surprised to find Dennis in the midst of throwing out the first of many trash bags.
“Thanks man, I appreciate that.”
“That’s what friends are for.”
And then it was my turn to reflect on his words; yeah I guess that’s what they were for. Friends were there for you when you couldn’t do it alone. What an awesome concept, hardly new, but new to me.
“Where’s Paul?” I asked groggily.
“That Ginner guy?” Dennis responded in kind.
“Yeah.” I figured he had split hours ago.
“I think he’s in the bathroom cleaning up some mess.”
“Ooohh, better him than me.”
“Smelling old beer is hard enough, smelling vomit would put me over the edge.”
“Just talking about it is killing me.”
“Hey Talbot, do you have the key to your parents’ liquor cabinet?” Paul asked as he came out of the bathroom holding a trash bag as far as humanly possible away from his face. He even had huge rubber gloves on. I was tempted to ask him where he had found those but that seemed like entirely too much effort.
“Yeah, I’ve got the key, but why do you want in there?”
“I learned a little trick of the trade from my dad.”
I opened up the cabinet and Paul started mixing away.
“I have no idea what you’re doing but I don’t want any part of it. I don’t like vodka and I hate tomato juice.”
“Dude, trust me on this one.”
Dennis wasn’t even looking over at the bar, so intent on hoping that one of those wasn’t for him.
“Alright guys, come on over.”
‘Me too?’ Dennis’ eyes seemed to say.
Paul held up his concoction proudly. “This is called a Bloody Mary, or in other words, ‘hair of the dog.’”
“Are you sure about this?” My stomach was quaking at the notion of putting more alcohol into it.
“Trust me man, try it. We’ve got maybe an hour or so till your mom gets home, and at the pace we’re going at, we’ll never make it.”
He was right and I was feeling entirely too shitty to have my mother rag on me for the rest of the weekend. So I opened up the hatch; the drink was refreshingly good. Dennis seemed to enjoy his too. We spent the next few minutes intent on finishing our wonder elixirs. And damn if Paul wasn’t right, I felt like a new man. Everybody seemed to have an extra bounce in their step. We finished cleaning the house at least a full thirty minutes before my mom’s due back time. But I had no desire to stick around just in case she found something.
“Paulie, what do you have going on today?”
“Well, there is homework.” Dennis and I both looked at him before we pushed him off of his chair. “What’s the temperature outside?”
“It’s warmer than it has been,” Dennis said.
“Hold on, I’ll check.” I went to the kitchen window to see the strategically located thermometer outside. “Damn it’s thirty two.”
“It’s a heat wave!” Paul yelled a decibel or two higher than I really wanted to hear. “Let’s go to the S&S.”
CHAPTER 8 – Journal Entry 8
“The S&S?” Dennis asked.
“You’ll see, it’s kind of our home away from home,” I piped in. “Cause I sure don’t want to be at this home when my mother shows up.” We bundled up in layers, the only appropriate way to dress in New England, and headed out. It would be the first of many in our exploration of new realms. The roof of the Stop and Shop was another ten degrees warmer than the surrounding air, which made the day seem even warmer after the cold snap we had just endured. We had even taken a few layers off by this time. To be young again, those were the days when you could drink all night and get up the next morning and start all over. Nowadays, if I were to drink on a Friday night I might start to feel human by late Monday, early Tuesday. How bad does it get if I make it to my thirties or forties? We had been on the roof for an hour or so, when Dennis asked what ‘that’ was.
“What’s what?” I asked, now seriously starting to catch a buzz. It doesn’t take much if you already started off with alcohol in your blood stream.
“That,” as he pointed off into the distance. It was a field maybe a mile away, straight back from the rear of the store. The majority of Paul’s and my time was usually spent in the middle talking or towards the front of the store where we could see down the shirts off some of the hotter women. Even some not so hot, we were teenagers, what did we care. But you had to hide behind the Kihei sign, (The local Chinese restaurant) to make sure no one spotted you. Once Paul had drooled, I’m sure it was by accident but she was pretty. We almost got busted that time, but when her boyfriend looked up he must have thought it was condensation from the a/c, he didn’t look too bright anyway.
“I’m not sure what that place is, I’ve kinda never noticed it before,” Paul answered, a little embarrassed for not even knowing a place in his own hometown.
“You guys ever been up there?” Dennis asked.
“No dude, to be honest it’s never even caught my eye before,” I added.
“I think we should go check it out,” Dennis said with a gleam in his eye. Paul and I weren’t too thrilled.
“But what about our folks?” I whined (just a little). The thought of hiking in eight inches of snow didn’t entice me too much. And there would be no
hot heat exhaust vents to lean against if it got too cold. What could I say, I was a city boy; not much hiking goes on in downtown Boston.
“Come on Talbot,” Dennis goaded. “I can pretty much guarantee my parents aren’t going to be up there, do you seriously think your mom is going to be up there slogging around looking for you?”
“He does have a point bud,” Paul chimed in, with a smile I might add.
“Yeah, you’re right, I guess.” But I still didn’t feel good about it. We climbed down off the roof and the temperature immediately plummeted, back on went the layers. “How are we going to get over there?” I asked, hoping that this one little fact might thwart the whole attempt. “There’s a river between us and the embankment.”
From the back of the Stop and Shop was a small alleyway that the cargo trucks used to transport the food and beverages, and past the alley there were wetlands and woods for a quarter or so of a mile. Then we would have to go down a fairly steep embankment to the river, which wasn’t the Mississippi, but at sixty to seventy feet across was still formidable. And to fall in at these temperatures could be near fatal without proper attention. I was liking this idea less and less. But the more faults I listed, the more reasons Paul and Dennis found to make this journey.
“There’s got to be a bridge or some way across,” Paul said.
“Yeah, how else would our parents make it over to bust us?” Dennis emphasized parents just to let it sink in a little bit more.
“Are you messing with me?” I asked as I ran at him.
“Of course I am,” as he danced away from my halfhearted jabs at his arm.
“Ass,” I answered, but I felt better anyway. “I think they’d come in from the other side anyway.”
“Really, you don’t think there is an entrance this way?” Dennis asked incredulously.
“I don’t know man, we’ve never been up there,” I answered.
“Come on!” Paul threw in. “We’re never going to find a way in if we sit here and debate about it. I don’t think we should go straight back, we’ll end up in the swamp and I’m definitely not in the mood to be wet.”
“Then I guess we should decide which way we should go along the river to find a crossing,” I said, finally giving my two cents’ worth. Better to be part of the team than to sit on the bench watching.
“Which way goes where?” Dennis asked.
“Well if we head that way,” Paul said, pointing south, “we’ll end up in the center of town, and that could be scarier than running into the principal on a skip day.”
“Yeah, I’d rather fall into the river than run into him or any of our parents,” I said.
“Alright, so south is out,” Dennis noted. “So north it is. Where’s that head?”
“Into the woods,” Paul said as we all turned to the north. The woods were dark and quiet and somehow foreboding, but with three of us together what could possibly happen? That was the best argument I could come up with to allay my fears. The bluster seemed to wane a little in Dennis and Paul both, but nobody was going to back out now. So into the woods we went and we never even saw Little Red Riding Hood or the Big Bad Wolf.
We had walked roughly a mile with the river always on our right hand side, but not once did we see a way to cross, not a bridge, not even a fallen tree like in the movies. We had been tempted to turn around when Paul noticed up ahead a train trestle that crossed over. We were thrilled, we were like nine year olds on Christmas day. Or possibly fifteen year old drunks, either way the euphoria was the same. We started running towards the trestle overhead, but much to my impending chagrin being the fastest of the trio I was out in front. My foot plunged into icy coldness; it felt like little leprechauns were stabbing me through my boots. I had crashed through the ice of an offshoot stream. I wasn’t in danger of drowning but I now had the uncomfortable feeling of having an icy wet foot. At the time the thought of frostbite never entered my mind. Dennis and Paul, having seen my slip-up, easily jumped the six foot wide stream and then had enough energy left over to turn and laugh at me as I pulled my foot out of the darkness.
“Son of a bitch!” I yelled.
“Yes you are,” Paul laughed, and smacked Dennis on the shoulder.
“That’s jacked up,” Dennis said, but it didn’t stop him from laughing. I wiped off most of the mud and leaves that were stuck to my boot and finished the jump.
“I’d kick your ass with my wet foot if I didn’t think you’d go crying home.”
And we all shared in the laughter. We scrambled up the embankment as best we could. It was slick with snow and ice and the fact that it was a 30-degree pitch didn’t help either. We reached the top and viewed our next endeavor. The trestle crossed over the river at an angle, making the bridge easily a hundred and fifty to two hundred foot span of metal and wood with a fifty foot drop into icy water. But that wasn’t the scary part. The scary part lay in the fact that once in the middle of said trestle there was nowhere to go. With a bend in the tracks roughly a quarter of a mile up that would obscure our vision of any oncoming trains, that didn’t leave much room for error.
“Oh hell no!” Dennis moaned. “There’s no way I’m going over that thing! There has to be another way.”
“You saw yourself there is no other way. We’ve been walking down this river for a while now and there is nothing else. You’re not gonna puss out now are you?” Good old Paul, he could always be trusted to pull out the peer pressure card.
“No, I wasn’t going to puss out, I was just hoping there was another way across,” Dennis said staunchly.
“Well, we either go this way or find another way, but I’m not standing here too much longer. My foot is starting to freeze,” I said. The trestle didn’t look like that much fun to me either, but Wags was on the short end of this argument.
“Wait, I think there is another way across,” Paul said as relief flooded Dennis’ face. “If we stay on the tracks going the other way, we should come to Plimpton Street and then there’s a car bridge that goes over this.”
“Yeah, let’s try that,” Dennis said just a little bit too eagerly.
“We’ll have to be careful,” I added. “That exposes us to passersby and this town is small enough that our parents could find out. Make sure the beers are hidden.”
“Alright, let’s give it a shot,” Paul said and then he started whistling. I was about to yell at him. What the hell was all the racket about, we were trying to be stealthy. It only took me a moment to realize it wasn’t Paul, it was a passenger train coming from the center of town. It whipped around the bend and was heading straight towards us. We jumped off the tracks and melted into the woods a few yards away and waited for it to pass. The sight of the huge metal machine roaring by scared me deep within. To see something that big moving that fast chilled me even more than my boot. Nobody said anything but had Dennis not hemmed and hawed about crossing we would have been dead smack in the center of that thing when the train came. It would have been a near suicidal plunge fifty feet into icy cold water or a race to the finish on slippery wood and metal. Both thoughts made my stomach turn. The next few moments we traveled in silence as we all thanked whatever higher force had been responsible for that lifesaving delay. After another quarter mile or so we came to the intersection where the tracks went over Plimpton Street, so down the embankment we went. We waited by the edge of the woods to make sure the coast was clear, then sprinted across the bridge and back into the woods. Whether or not anybody saw us or even cared didn’t matter, we were on a mission. The woods were entirely too thick with brush to try to get in from here, so we hugged the tree line near the road where it wasn’t too dense. We jumped deeper in whenever someone passed by. We had almost given up all hopes of finding any inroads into Indian Hill as we later found out it was called, when we quite literally stepped onto a small path. It was absolutely invisible from the road. We went onto the road and checked. A huge oak tree had been strategically placed at the head of this small footpath. I had to think to mys
elf that there were probably only a handful of people that knew about this, and of that handful none had been up here lately. The snow was pristine. The path was no more than two feet across but straight through the brush it went. We reasoned that it had to have been used, but from the condition of the snow we knew it hadn’t happened in the last few days. Wet, scratched, tired and buzzed, we headed up the hill. The snow seemed to get deeper the further in we went, it seemed mystical but more likely it was just that we were getting more tired and therefore couldn’t get our feet as high as we previously could. A few hundred yards later we came out from the woods and discovered one of the most awesome sights I had thus far encountered. Indian Hill spread out before us in a meadow to the left and right, with another rise directly in front of us, albeit it was another three or four hundred yards or so across the field. It was gorgeous with the snow and ice hanging from the trees. But what immediately caught our attention was a huge solitary oak tree in the center of the field. It was enormous, gnarled and twisted; ice clung to it like a lover on a spring day. We were transfixed.
“The hobbit tree!” Dennis yelled.
“What?” I said as I was shocked out of my reverie.