by Peter Straub
“You don’t have to apologize. I liked talking to your father.”
“Did you especially like the interesting facts?”
They both sipped from their drinks.
“At least now I understand what you were saying about other people making you do things.”
“Well, that’s something,” Sarah said. “It’s not just my parents, who are so thrilled they can’t contain themselves, it’s his parents too. Ralph Redwing sends his carriage to pick me up after dancing class! I’m escorted home! Katinka Redwing wants to give me golfing lessons! Why do you think we’re in this plane?”
“They can’t make you marry Buddy,” Tom said.
“Ah, but it’s like being the Dalai Lama. They pick you out in childhood, and plan the whole rest of your life. They surround you with thoughtfulness and gifts and their wonderful conviction that you’re really special because you can be one of them, and then you are one of them. And your father gets a great new job, and your mother just assumes that—well, she just assumes, that’s all. All of a sudden she’s the Queen Mother.”
“You still don’t have to marry him,” Tom said.
“Drink some more of that,” she ordered.
He drank.
“More.”
He took two swallows, and Sarah pointed at his glass. He drank again. Sarah’s glass was empty.
Then her arms were around him, her face was a blur against his, and her mouth brushed his. Her tongue slid into his mouth. They kissed for a long time, and then she moved onto his lap, and they kissed even longer. Tom heard the Spences’ voices come to him from a great distance away. “What do you think these compartments are for?” Sarah whispered. “We can barely hear them, and they can’t hear us at all.”
“Won’t they come back here?”
“They wouldn’t dare.” Their faces were so close that Tom felt engulfed by Sarah Spence. “Do this,” she said, and licked his upper lip. “And do this.” She closed his right hand on her left breast.
It was as if a warm cloud had settled around him, infusing him with its warmth and softness. The Spences’ voices receded. Sarah’s face swam before him, ideally beautiful. Her shoulders, her small round breasts, her straight slim back and her round slender arms, all of these surrounded him. Sarah hitched herself up on her knees, straddling him, and quickly, smiling, undid his belt. “Get rid of those clothes,” she whispered. “I want to see you.”
“Here?”
“Why not? I can feel you.”
Her hand slipped under the waistband of his underwear, and she ran her fingers along the length of his erection. Her fingers wrapped around him. “You feel beautiful,” she breathed into his cheek.
“You are beautiful,” he said, uttering the truest thing he knew.
She rubbed the tips of her breasts against his chest, and he levered himself up and pushed down his trousers. “Well, what shall we do with this thing?” Sarah said. “Here we are, aren’t we? In this traveling Redwing love nest.” In a flash she was naked, and all of her beautiful body had wrapped around him. She guided him between her legs, and they held to each other and moved as much as they could. Tom felt his entire body gather and gather itself, and she twisted back and forth upon him; and it felt as if he were exploding. Sarah bit his shoulder, and he stiffened again instantly. She tightened around him; her body quivered; and he felt all her warmth embracing him, and after some endless minutes it was as if he turned inside out, as if he were a tree turning into a river within her. Trembling and shaking with passion and what felt like a final, ultimate blessedness, he felt her trembling too. Finally she collapsed against him. Her face was wet against his cheek, and he saw that she had been crying.
“I love you,” he whispered.
“I’m glad,” she said, and he remembered her saying it at Miss Ellinghausen’s.
She pulled away from him, and kissed him; and stepped into her shorts and hooked on her bra and pulled her shirt over her tender shoulders. He rearranged his clothing, feeling as though an aura clung to him. And then they were seventeen years old again, seated side by side and holding hands, but everything had changed forever.
“I can still feel you inside me,” she said, “How can I marry Buddy Redwing, when Tom Pasmore is still inside me? I’m branded. There’s this big TP on me somewhere.”
They sat in silence, and the jet pushed its way through the air.
“How are you kids getting on?” Mr. Spence yelled from the bar.
“Fine, Daddy,” Sarah called out in a clear, high-pitched voice that sounded like bells and made Tom’s heart dissolve. “We have a lot to talk about.”
“Enjoy yourselves,” he yelled back. “Within reason, of course!”
“Reason had nothing to do with it,” she whispered, and they leaned against one another and laughed.
Mrs. Spence shouted down the length of the plane: “Why don’t you kids come up here and be sociable?”
“In a minute, mother,” Sarah called back.
Again they sat in silence, looking at one another.
“I think it’s going to be an interesting summer,” Sarah said.
Grand Forks was a small town twenty miles from Eagle Lake, and because of travelers from Canada as well as Mill Walk, its little airport had a Customs and Immigration section, located in a concrete block shed adjacent to the terminal. Captain Mornay escorted his passengers and their bags to the Customs desk, where the inspector greeted him as Ted and chalked their bags without bothering to open them. Immigration stamped their crimson Mill Walk passports with tourist visas.
“I suppose Ralph sent a driver?” said Mrs. Spence, managing to sound offended by the necessity of asking the question.
“He generally does that, yes, ma’am,” the pilot said. “If you’ll take your bags through that glass door just ahead and take them into the main terminal, you should find the driver waiting for you.”
The customs inspector and the Immigration official were staring raptly at Mrs. Spence’s long legs, as was a young man in a brown leather jacket sprawled out in a chair against one of the grey walls of the shed.
Mrs. Spence covered most of her handsome face with the enormous sunglasses and swept toward the glass door, carrying nothing but a handbag.
“Enjoy your stay,” the pilot said, and turned away to walk toward the grinning man in the leather jacket.
Mr. Spence picked up the Papa Bear suitcase and went after his wife.
One of Tom’s cases had a long strap, which he put over a shoulder. He picked up his other, heavier suitcase by the handle, and with his left hand took the leash of the Mama Bear suitcase.
“Oh, let me do it,” Sarah said. “After all, she’s my awful mother, not yours.” She took the thin strap from his hand, and Tom rearranged his own cases to balance the weight, and they went through the glass door.
Between the jet and the customs shed Tom had been too preoccupied with Sarah Spence to notice anything else except the freshness of the air and the unusual intensity of the sky; in the shorter distance between the customs shed and the terminal building, he felt the edge in the air, the hint of chill at the center of its warmth, and realized that he was thousands of miles farther north than he had ever been before. The sky here made the sky over Mill Walk seem to have been washed a thousand times. Sarah opened the door to the terminal with her hip, and he went in before her.
Mr. and Mrs. Spence stood at the opposite end of the terminal, talking with a stocky young man in his early twenties with a chauffeur’s hat jammed low on his forehead and a dark blue sweatshirt that bulged over his belly. All three scowled at Tom and Sarah.
“Come on, kids,” said Mr. Spence. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
“Give him my bag, Sarah,” Mrs. Spence said.
The young man came forward and held out a thick hand for the strap of Mrs. Spence’s suitcase. Mr. Spence coughed into his fist, and the young man picked up the big case with his other hand. He began moving toward the door.
A
long black Lincoln sat at the curb. A policeman in a tight blue jacket and a Sam Browne belt jumped up from the fender. The chauffeur loaded the bags into the trunk and came around to open the back door. The Spences got into the back of the car, and Tom climbed into the passenger seat.
The Spences began talking to one another as the Lincoln rolled away from the curb. Tom leaned back and closed his eyes. Mrs. Spence was saying things she wanted the chauffeur to hear, and now and then some of the words blurred together. Tom opened his eyes, and caught the chauffeur glancing at him stonily.
They came out on a four-lane macadam highway. Thirty-foot pines crowded up to the gravel shoulder on both sides. Little tourist motels and fishing camps appeared at wide intervals, set deep down narrow gravel drives in the spreading trees as if far back in caves. Hand-painted signs shouted their names to the empty highway: MUSKIE LODGE and GILBERTSON’S HARMONY LAKE CAREFREE CABINS, LAKEVIEW RESORT, and BOB & SALLY RIDEOUT’S AAA FISHING CAMP & GUIDES. Little bars and bait shops sat back from the highway in sandy parking lots filled with old cars, LAKE DEEPDALE—DEEPDALE ESTATES, read a larger, professionally painted sign beside a glistening asphalt road on the right side of the highway. YOUR KEY TO THE NORTH COUNTRY! Dead raccoons lay flattened on the highway like overgrown cats.
“Jerry,” said Mrs. Spence, who had fallen asleep for several minutes, “is Mr. Buddy at the compound yet?”
Tom turned his head to look at the scowling profile beside him. The chauffeur’s right eye drifted toward him. He had small scars like tucks in his skin beneath the corner of his mouth.
“Yeah, Buddy’s there. Got in two weeks ago with a bunch of friends.”
“I thought you called him ‘Mr. Buddy,’ ” said Sarah’s mother, sounding a little put out by the chauffeur’s tone.
“Some of the older help call him that,” the man said. The shadowed eye drifted toward Tom again.
“Do you good to meet some of Buddy’s friends, Sarah,” her father told her. “You’re liable to be seeing a lot of these people.”
“Most of ’em left Friday,” Jerry said. “Drove ’em to the airport myself. Had to spend about a hour cleaning out this car. One of those dopes drank about half a bottle of Southern Comfort in ten minutes, blew his guts apart right back where you’re sitting.”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Spence. “Where who is sitting?”
“I had to drive him back to the compound. Buddy threw him off the dock to clean him off.”
“Oh, my.” Tom heard the rustle of Mrs. Spence moving around to inspect the seat.
“You ever try to clean puke off cloth?” asked the driver. “The Cadillac’s got fabric seats, I think that’s why Ralph always sends the Lincoln for Buddy’s pals.”
“You must see a lot of Buddy,” said Mr. Spence in a bright, hollow voice.
“Well, I do a lot of other stuff for Ralph most of the year. I hang out with Buddy when he’s around.” The eye shifted toward Tom again.
“Haven’t we met?” Tom asked.
The eye seemed to widen and flare like the eye of a horse.
“I’m Tom Pasmore. I came to your house once.”
“Never happened,” Jerry said.
“Your friends Nappy and Robbie chased me around the corner and out into the traffic on Calle Burleigh, and I got hit by a car. They must have thought I was dead.”
Shocked and outraged noises came from the back seat.
Jerry smiled at him, reminding Tom of the glassy eyes and needle teeth of the mounted fish in the Grand Forks airport. Was this how you stirred things up? Tom felt his face grow warm. It seemed to him that he was fading from view beneath the weight of Jerry’s smile.
Jerry turned back to the road and drove into a tunnel of dark green. They had not passed or met another car since leaving the airport. A large white sign proclaimed the existence somewhere back in the woods of the WHITE BEAR NORTHERN INN & LODGINGS. A polar bear with a red napkin around its neck tipped a top hat.
“Oh, the White Bear!” said Mrs. Spence. “Is the food still so wonderful at the White Bear?”
“We generally eat in the compound,” Jerry said.
“Lately, I’ve been wondering about what happened to the dog,” Tom said.
The little scars beneath Jerry’s mouth tightened as if the stitches had been pulled taut. His lips moved, and the eye drifted toward Tom.
“What?” Tom said.
“The dog died,” Jerry said in a barely audible voice.
“Oh, it can be a blessing when an old dog passes away,” said Mrs. Spence. “You hate to see them suffer.”
Eventually they passed a small brown sign with the words EAGLE LAKE—PRIVATE PROPERTY—NO TRESPASSING—NO SOLICITATIONS burned into the wood in ornate curving letters, and Jerry turned the car onto a bumpy narrow track between tall pines and oaks.
“Did I fall asleep?”
“Yes, Daddy,” Sarah said.
Boughs scraped the top of the car.
“Don’t you love that it looks so secluded?” asked Mrs. Spence. The question was addressed to no one in particular, and no one answered it. “I love it, that it looks so secluded.”
On either side of the car, the gaps between the pines and leafy oaks showed endless ranks of trees stretching upward and extending into endless, random, overgrown forest; sunlight slanted down to strike the trunks and make shimmering pools on the soft ground. Squirrels darted along branches and birds swooped beneath the canopy of green. The car went into shadow around a slight bend in the road, past a clearing with a long wooden bench strewn with dry grey leaves; then past a long row of mailboxes on a metal pipe. Tom glimpsed familiar names on the mailboxes: Thielman, R. Redwing, G. Redwing, D. Redwing, Spence, R. Deepdale, Jacobs, Langenheim, von Heilitz.
A crow cawed off in the woods, and leaves pattered down on the top of the car. Golden light flashed into the windshield, and the trees before them suddenly seemed spindly; then the trees parted and Tom saw a long expanse of deep blue beneath him, and a wake spreading out behind a motorboat just entering the path of the sun on the water. Tall solid buildings stood at wide intervals around the lake, each with a wide wooden dock protruding into the smooth glimmering water. On the broad terrace of a large multileveled structure with rows of high windows and several smaller terraces a waiter in a white coat carried a tray past a towel-sized pool toward a gentleman, a tiny pink pear supine on the bright yellow pad of a lounger. Next to that building, tall pilings like those around a stockade walled off the Redwing compound. A slim figure on a horse came into view from behind one of the lodges and passed out of sight behind a stand of fir trees.
“Buddy’s out in his boat,” Sarah said.
“And Neil Langenheim’s getting pickled at the club,” said her mother.
“Who’s that with Buddy?” Sarah asked.
“His friend Kip,” Jerry said. “Kip Carson. From Arizona. He’s the one that stayed, when I took the other kids to Grand Forks.”
“I wonder if Fritz is here,” Tom said.
“Fritz Redwing?” Jerry shook his head. “He ain’t here yet—him and his family come up in about two weeks. This is early. Lots of people ain’t here yet. A bunch of the lodges are still empty. Even the compound’s kinda empty.”
The slim rider on the chestnut horse appeared between tall oaks on a trail extending past the rear of the lodges on the far side of the lake, then disappeared again behind a narrow lodge. Jerry steered the Lincoln slowly downhill toward the lake.
“Who is that on the horse?” Tom asked.
“Samantha Jacobs,” said Mrs. Spence.
“Looked like Cissy Harbinger to me,” said Mr. Spence.
“The Jacobses went to France. They won’t be here at all this summer, the way I hear it. And Cissy Harbinger got married to some mechanic or something,” Jerry said. “Her parents took her to Europe. They won’t be here until maybe September.”
“So who was that on the horse, since you know everything?” asked Mrs. Spence.
“Barbara Dean
e,” Jerry said. “See, she’d come out now because almost nobody’s around.”
“Oh, Barbara Deane,” said Mrs. Spence, sounding a bit doubtful as to this name.
Tom had straightened up to look for her next appearance, but the straight slim figure on the chestnut horse did not show herself again.
Jerry drove the Lincoln down to the bottom of the track and came out into the open at a place where the road divided at the narrow, marshy north end of the lake. The car rolled to a stop facing the water. The Spences lowered their power windows, and the buzzing of the motorboat, executing a wide, sweeping turn down at the wide end of the kidney-shaped lake, came to them across half a mile of water like the racket of a motorcycle on a quiet night. “Where d’you want to go first?” Jerry asked.
“I want to get out of this car before we go another inch,” said Mrs. Spence. “I’m sure this seat is still wet.” She opened her door and climbed out and began twisting around to try to look at the seat of her miniskirt.
Tom got out on the loose mossy soil that led down to the marshy ground at the narrow end of the lake. The air smelled of pine needles and fresh water. For several yards, lathery green scum broken by reeds covered the lake’s surface. He walked nearer the water, and the ground squelched beneath his feet. He could just see the tops of green-and-white striped umbrellas on the wide terrace of the clubhouse. The rest of the buildings stood around the long lake, their weathered grey wooden façades almost invisible behind the thick trees that surrounded them. A redwood lodge with clean modern lines at the far end of the lake perched on a treeless lawn like a green scoop out of the forest.
“So that’s the club,” Tom said, pointing across twenty yards of reedy water to the structure with all the windows. “And that’s the Redwing compound.” Over the tops of the tall stakes that enclosed the compound, the upper stories of several large wooden buildings could be seen.
“Next is our place,” Sarah said.
Smaller than the others, Anton Goetz’s old lodge was dwarfed by the large oaks and firs that surrounded it. A weathered veranda faced the lake on its second floor. “Then comes Glen Upshaw’s, where you’ll be,” said Mrs. Spence. His grandfather’s lodge was nearly twice the size of the Spences’, and seemed to loom—like his grandfather—out of the surrounding trees while being concealed by them. Two bay windows and a massive dock protruded from the lake side of the lodge. Otherwise, only its grey roof was visible through the trees.