I grab a bottle of scotch, a bag of chips, and a Bluetooth speaker, and get back in my truck. I don’t really have anywhere in mind, I just don’t want to be there. If I’m going to be alone, I’d rather be outside.
I just drive, at first.
After a few minutes, it becomes obvious where I’m going: The Spot.
As kids, Dell and I created a “clubhouse” in the woods behind our properties—a real, honest-to-god hundred-acre wood. We hauled all sorts of stuff into a clearing and created a place just for us to hang out and dick around. Milk crates, storage tubs, an old bookshelf, a broken Lay-Z-Boy, a Stop sign we stole, a dirty white Igloo cooler we’d keep filled with lukewarm beer. Then, when we hit high school, we upgraded it from a kiddie clubhouse into a teen hangout. We dragged a couch out there, strung some white Christmas lights from the tree branches and connected them to and a gas generator. We even stole a stoplight and leaned it against a tree trunk. We tried out a bunch of cool names for it, but in the end, the kids we invited to parties there named it for us: The Spot. It wastheplace to be, back in the day. You hoped and prayed Dell and I would invite you to one of our parties, which I imagine are still legendary. The Spot is where the snake incident happened.
I haven’t been back since returning to River Gulch. I’ve been meaning to, but my deep dive into the world of working at McKenna Construction has taken up all my time. This is the first day since coming back that I’ve put work aside before I physically passed out.
It’d shock Delia, probably, but when I do find something I like doing, I tend to be a workaholic about it.
I have no intention of seeing my parents at the moment, so I go the back way—there’s a path to The Spot from the other side of the woods from the houses, and when Dell and I were setting up a party, we’d use the back way so we didn’t risk alerting our parents that we were up to anything. It’s just a barely visible two-track through the trees, which you have to know about to even know how to find. It’s been almost a decade and it’s overgrown from disuse, so it takes a while to find it. I flick on my brights and aim them at the tree line—no way my truck is getting in there. Not without totally ruining the paint, at least, and I just got this thing. So I shut it off, grab my stuff, pocket my keys, and head out on foot.
It’s farther than I remember. A full ten minutes of walking down a dark, overgrown trail, which my cell phone flashlight only dimly illuminates, and then I finally emerge into the clearing. The couch is still there, but it’s garbage now, rodent-eaten and -infested, likely. Avoid that. The stoplight is still there, rusted and much worse for wear. The firepit still has old ashes in it, rotting stumps where we used to sit.
Man, this place seemed alotbigger back in the day. Now, it’s just a tiny little clearing in the forest. I could toss a pebble underhanded across the entire space. It used to feel so big, so cool. We were gods, back, then. Kings of the world.
There’s a stacked pile of firewood—I check it, and a lot of it is rotted, but the stuff in the middle seems like it’d burn okay. We used to keep a Zippo in a little hollow in the old dead tree near this stack of wood…still there, and it still works. It’s been an age since I made a fire, but old skills come back easily. Make a little nest with dried leaves and bark, gradually feed larger and larger sticks to it…within a few minutes I’ve got a nice little fire going.
Put some Miles Davis on the speaker, kick back in my old spot under the tree.
Not as fun alone, but better here than that empty condo. I don’t sayhome, because it’s not, not really.
I sip scotch and let my mind wander, thinking back to the good old days with Dell, when were the kings of River Gulch. All the guys wanted to be our friend, and all the girls wanted to get with us. Or…most did, at least.
A stick cracks, followed by a flashlight beam, bright and white, a spear in the darkness. Behind the beam comes Delia, double-barreled shotgun under one arm.
“Oh.” She lowers the flashlight. “It’s you.”
I eye the shotgun. “Who’d you expect? Sasquatch?”
She shrugs, gestures around with the now-off flashlight. “There’s actually been quite an increase in black bear activity in these woods, last couple years. I’m not about to go traipsing around in here unarmed.” She gestures at the fire. “Saw the fire from Mom and Dad’s back deck, and I came to see who was making a fire in our woods.”
“Just little ol’ me.” I frown. “You can see this from the house?”
“If you’re looking.” She smirks. “You and Dell weren’t as sneaky about those parties as you thought. Our parents just didn’t care.”
I grin. “As a punk kid, I thought it was the best. As an adult looking back? I kinda wonder if maybe someone should have shutsomeof those parties down. We gotblastedin here, back in the day, man.”
She laughs at that and edges closer, her gaze flicking to the bottle in my hands—it’s nothing special, just some 10-year Lagavulin. “Yeah, someone should have, for sure. I guess they all just figured kids would be kids.”
I extend the bottle toward her. “Peace offering?”
She sits on the log with me but leaves a full arm’s length between us. Takes the bottle and swigs from it, two good pulls, swallowing with a hiss that tells me she’s no stranger to whisky. “Thanks.”
“It’s kind of a wonder to me that we never really got into any trouble, you know? Like, there never any real fights, just some drunk scuffles. No one ever got pregnant that I know of. No one wrecked or hit anyone.”
She hands the bottle back. “Leslie Donovan got pregnant.”
I laugh. “That explains where she went senior year. But are we honestly surprised, though? Leslie was…”
Delia snorts. “No, I can’t say I’m surprised. She was the first girl I knew of who claimed to have had sex…in eighth grade.” She looks at me sidelong. “You and her ever…?”
I stare back. “You really want to know, or are you just looking for an opening for a dig?”
“I’m genuinely curious. I know Dell says he did, once, at a party. That was…junior year, though, according to his claims, and she got pregnant start of senior year. So, you know, it wasn’t his.”
“Do you know whose it was?”
