Seventeenth Summer (31 page)

The next evening the three of us went out again, going along Willow Road far into the country and then back down the highway that runs along the lake and finally through the rutted roads of the silent, empty fairgrounds with its buildings already shuttered closed, as if they were already asleep for the winter. We even drove out to the narrow gravel road, past the field where the field daisies were still blooming and the thin trees stood still and dark and there was the same breathless mystery; the same strange quiet.

I remember Jack’s remarking, “To look at it at night you’d never know anything had changed, would you?”

But it couldn’t end as soundlessly and as painlessly as it had begun—that I knew. All the days and nights and warm weeks of sunshine couldn’t fade away into nothingness like breathy whispers as soon as they were spoken. They were too full for that. There was too much behind it. Even as I counted those last hours I knew that something had to happen. I didn’t know what it
would be but I knew it would come—somehow.

And it did. It was the third night before I left. We went on a wiener roast together, about ten of us, as a sort of farewell party for both Jack and me. Jack had his car and we stopped to pick up Swede and Dollie and then Fitz and Margie, crowding all four of them into the back seat with the kindling wood and a picnic basket, while the others went in another car. We drove out to a wooded ledge about five miles from town where the trees grew thick and the woods were as wild and overgrown as a forest preserve.

It was barely dark and the trails were easy to find between the trees as we trailed along in Indian file, each carrying something, while Jack came last with his arms heaped with kindling wood, dragging a car robe behind him. There were clearings in the trees along the path, scattered with bits of charred logs and the dark ashes of other picnic fires. As we went in deeper and deeper, the woods seemed filled with a quiet listening, as if it hadn’t heard another human sound for long years.

Margie led us to a place she knew of where the ground was flat and there was a heap of blackened stones already arranged for a fireplace. Swede pulled some paper from his pockets, bunching it together and placing kindling sticks carefully over the stones, while the rest of us scattered to look for more wood. The trees grew close together here, thick-trunked box elders with occasional slim birches slipped in between, and the dead branches on the ground were tangled with vines and matted with damp
leaves. We broke off what smaller branches we could and kicked at rotten stumps till they rooted out of the earth, sending up a damp, mossy smell. Margie was pushing along beside Jack and Fitz who went in another direction. It was the first time I had seen her for almost two weeks—since the night of the fair—and I was anxious to talk with her. Jack was a little distance away between the trees, breaking sticks sharply over his knees. He couldn’t have heard us.

“Margie,” I whispered cautiously, “I’ve meant to call you for almost a week but didn’t get around to it. I wanted to ask you how things were going with Fitz and you.”

I couldn’t see her face clearly in the half-darkness but she shrugged. “We’ve been going out as always since two days after that night at the fair. I stayed home for one night and then decided I didn’t like it so I called him up the next day. I guess he knew I would. Anyway, I’m almost glad I did.”

“So am I,” I told her. “Otherwise maybe you two wouldn’t be here tonight and it wouldn’t be the same at all.”

“Yeah, you get kind of used to having a boy around,” she answered. Jack returned then and we turned back through the woods toward the fire. It was shining through the trees, licking light around the dark trunks and up into the branches.

Margie caught up with me and whispered softly in my ear as we walked. “Thanks a lot for not telling, Angie. I could tell by the way he acted that he really didn’t know what went on at all.”

Back around the fire the others were sharpening green sticks
for the wieners and Dollie was buttering rolls with the handle of a spoon—Jack had brought them from the bakery, fresh and hot. Fitz and I spread the blankets carefully on the ground, watching out for twigs and sharp stones, and then had to fold them up again to look for a jackknife someone had laid down somewhere. We each cooked for ourselves, putting the wieners on sticks and holding them over the flame, turning slowly, carefully, till the tight skin burst, sending juice sputtering into the fire. The fragrance was tantalizing and Swede jammed his impatiently between a roll and ate it half-roasted.

“You big, old pig,” Dollie laughed at him across the fire. “No wonder you’re so fat.” The firelight dancing made dimples in her cheeks and a soft, dark fluff of her hair, thick and shiny.

Someone had brought along some bottles of Coke but no one had remembered to bring a bottle opener, so Jack twisted at the tops with the edge of his jackknife till he had to give up in desperation, muttering under his breath. No one wanted to go into town for an opener so the bottles lay untouched on the grass. “Maybe afterwards,” Jack said.

At first the fire was so hot that it crackled and snapped, sending twigs sparking out onto the grass till we had to draw our blankets farther back, out of reach. I almost forgot that we were miles from town; miles from anyone else. While we ate, everyone chattered and laughed so loudly that the circle of brightness around the fire seemed to be a room by itself in the middle of the forest darkness, walled with light. I looked
furtively behind me once, awed by the silent bushes, dark and lonely, changing shape in the flicker of the firelight. “Something the matter, Angie?” Jack asked, touching my arm. But I shook my head.

As the fire burned lower we toasted marshmallows over the flames and Dollie pulled off the first toasted skin, retoasting the soft white ball that was left on the stick, licking her sticky fingers like a baby. Margie lay back on the blanket, looking up into the darkness, and Fitz crawled over to sit down beside her. She asked him for a cigarette and held his hand to steady it as he brought a match to the tip. Then he tossed the match away and put his hand back in hers, looking into the firelight. I felt almost sorry for Fitz then, he seemed to want to be liked so badly. The others pulled their blankets closer to the fire and tossed the paper bags and bits of wax paper into it, watching them go up in a quick blaze.

One of the boys suggested we sing for a while but the suggestion died away without an answer. We talked quietly and Jack sat close beside me with his knees hunched up, staring at the flames. He had been silent all evening long, and several times I caught him looking at me strangely, as if he were just going to say something and had suddenly changed his mind. Swede came over to sit on our blanket, too, and Dollie curled up beside him with her head on his knee. He bent over to whisper something to her, laughing and tangling his fingers in her hair.

Someone had picked up an old wooden wagon wheel in the woods and laid it over the glowing embers of the fire, and we all
sat watching till it burst into slow flame. “Looks like a big Fourth of July pin wheel, doesn’t it?” Swede whispered down to Dollie.

The trees stirred restlessly and the night was filled with a sense of uneasiness that made me feel uneasy myself, almost afraid of the darkness around us. The firelight sent shifting shadows onto the bushes and tree trunks so that the whole forest seemed to be full of silent things, watching. I couldn’t tell what was wrong with me. It sent a queer panicky beating in my throat and my hands were hot and dry. Above us the sky was a dark velvet with pale small stars. The trees hid the moon.

The night was torn between the comforting warmth of the fire and the weird, restless shadows beyond the circle of light, but the others didn’t seem to notice it. Only Jack was moody. He sat breaking up bits of twig and flipping them into the fire, his eyebrows knit together in thought. Once he looked at me and then ran his hand over his hair with a tired, unhappy gesture. The fire was burning low now and the wooden wheel lay flat in the ashes, the spokes still glowing red. The burned wood crumbled and settled down into the embers with an eerie sound like a soft sigh. As the fire burned low, the darkness closed in silently around us and a night wind blew over the coals, turning the ashes gray. Jack flipped the last twig into the fire.

“Someone want to go look for more wood with me?” Swede suggested.

Jack jumped to his feet. “Let Angie and me go, will you? I feel like a little walk anyway.”

“In the darkness?” Something inside me went suddenly alarmed, cautious, and sent a chill around my heart. I didn’t know of what I was afraid but there was something there. It seemed almost as if the darkness beyond was listening, waiting. My mind warned again and again with quick, sure thoughts not to go out of the protective circle of the firelight, out past the bushes where the trees grew close. I wanted suddenly to stay very near Swede and the others, away from the gentle, dark sway of the bushes and the quiet shadows that lay beyond. But yet there was something about Jack’s voice that made me go.

“You aren’t afraid to go with me, Angie,” he said insistently, his voice warm with persuasion as he took my hand to help me to my feet.

At the edge of the circle of firelight he turned to call back to the others, “Better put on what wood you have there. This may take us a long time … in the dark.”

We went out of the clearing and the bushes brushed against me as we passed, stretching out and touching my legs with their cool, damp leaves. Dead leaves were silent beneath our feet and trees leaned together like tall dark pillars, the light between them thin and eerie. I held tight to Jack’s hand and stumbled after him. “Jack,” I said. “Jack, this is silly. Please, please let’s not go!”

He pulled at my hand, almost pleading, “Come on, Angie,” he urged. “Oh, come … I really want you to!”

So I hurried along with one hand in his and one hand before
me to feel for the trees in the darkness, and the bark was dry and rough beneath my touch. Once I tripped over a vine and it coiled around my ankle like a wet rope. “Jack,” I cried, “Jack!” I was really frightened now and I didn’t know why but I couldn’t keep the fear out of my voice.

“I’m with you, Angie,” was all he said.

We walked on cautiously, feeling between trees, stubbing against stones and breaking through bushes that scratched against our legs and cracked under our feet. Over our heads was the almost soundless hush of the wind in the heavy foliage, uneasy with the secrets of darkness, and the rest of the night was so quiet we could hear ourselves as we breathed. The firelight was far behind by now and the darkness had closed in around.

Suddenly ahead of us the trees parted, and beyond I could see a flat, rolling field high with wheat. And ahead we could see the moon that had been hidden in the trees and it hung very low, yellow and solemn, as if it were too heavy for the sky. Along the edge of the field ran a low wooden fence and we broke through the woods, leaving the darkness behind us. Jack held apart the last bushes and I stepped through them into the little clearing. The woods behind us was like a black wall. My breath came short and quick from running and I sat down on a fallen fence rail while Jack stood beside me, lighting a cigarette, but neither of us spoke.

Around me the weeds grew tall, almost up to my knees and
cool with a night dampness, and reaching down I felt the leaves of one, knowing by the hairy softness and the fine duster of tiny that it was wild foxglove. All around the plants grew thick and lush, with a late-summer richness, and I crushed a dark leaf between my fingers. Almost instantly there rose in the air the cool, sharp smell of mint, its fragrance startlingly eerie in the darkness. Jack moved toward me and then stopped.

Along the fence rails vines grew heavy, covered with thick, flat leaves shining broad in the moonlight.

“Look, Angie,” Jack whispered. “Those are wild grapes.” I walked toward him, brushing through the weeds, and we felt through the grape leaves, our fingers quick in the darkness, till we found the hidden grape bunches. They were hard to pluck, and cool dew from the leaves shook down around our legs as we pulled them. Curling vine tendrils touched my arm like cold fingers. Some of the grapes were still green and hard but the earlier ones were ripe and soft to touch, the purple bunches oddly black in the moonlight.They were bitter in our mouths as we ate them, with a strange, wild taste, and the seeds were hard against my teeth. But I plucked them and plucked them till both my hands were full and they fell to the earth and purple stains were dark on my arms. Jack was standing back from the fence now, near the trees, and suddenly I knew he was waiting for me. And all the strength seemed to run out of me and the grapes felt cold and heavy in my hands.

Very quietly I stood. Everything around us was waiting. I
could feel the tenseness of the bushes, the hushed expectancy over the grass tops, and behind us the wheat field was still in the moonlight. Great webs of silence seemed to hang, dark and heavy, swung low from tree to tree. The great treetops above leaned together, waiting with hushed whispers. I wanted to speak but the words were dry in my throat.

I could feel Jack’s thoughts straining toward me and then I heard his voice, so low, so tense that I wasn’t sure for a moment if I heard it at all. “Angie,” he said, “Angie, please! Let’s get married…. I don’t want you to go!”

Once it had been said, the night came suddenly alive, pulsing with it; catching up the words and echoing them over and over, singing like chimes in my head. For a moment, only a brief moment that slipped by so swiftly that it meant nothing at all, desire laid warm, tremulous fingers along my throat. But it was only a moment and then the whole night melted away around me. Everything was so calmly and painfully clear. I could remember my mother standing in her bedroom looking at my clothes in neat piles, ready to be packed for school, and saying in her soft, confident mother-voice, “We’ll have no last-minute worries at all, Angie,” and again I realized how much she meant it.

And then Jack was standing beside me with his arms tight around me, pleading, “Don’t, Angie. Oh, honey, don’t do that now. I only asked you because … oh, Angie!”