David Gates - Preston Falls

But Jean's wondering what's going on up in Preston Falls. Could he maybe have — God, a million things. He's fallen off a ladder, lying there with his back broken, and here she is digging the last of the butter out of a little pleated paper cup for the last triangle of a buckwheat cake. Well, maybe when they get back to the house they'll find his truck parked behind Carol's, and the reason he didn't call to say he was on his way was — well, whatever it was. This just really doesn't look good.

"Why don't we do this,'" she says to Carol, for the kids to hear. "We have to go back to the house anyway, right? If we're taking Rathbone. So what I thought we could do, you could get your truck and follow me to the reservoir, I'll hike with you guys for a little, and then I thought maybe I'd take off and drive up to Preston Falls, and sort of check and see if Willis needs a hand with anything. There's always so much stuff to take care of. And then maybe he and I could caravan down tonight."

Good old Carol: doesn't even raise an eyebrow. "Actually, that might not be a bad idea," she says.

"I want to go too," says Mel. Roger just stares down at his puzzle placemat, tracing routes through the maze with his knife.

"That's nice of you, sweetie," Jean says. "But you know what that drive is like. And then we'd have to turn right around and come back. You'd be bored out of your mind."

"I'm bored here."

"And besides, I think Aunt Carol could use your help." Jean tips a quick nod in the direction of Roger. She hates herself when she pushes their buttons. Then again, it seldom works anymore.

Mel heaves a major sigh.

"While the cat's away," says Carol, giving Roger a wink he doesn't see. "Now we can stop at the video store on the way home and go bazonkers."

Carol's the good cop. The kids like their friends to see them bombing around with their hippie aunt in her little red pickup, and she lets them blast their own tapes, as loud as they want. One night she allowed

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them to rent Nightmare on Elm Street, Part Something — which in fact pissed Jean off. Roger, of course, said it wasn't scary, but Mel had trouble getting to sleep. (Jean worried more about Roger.) Still, when Carol leaves. . Oh, but then Willis will be back. Her rock. God, was there a time she really thought that?

"Crap," Jean says. "I just remembered. I totally forgot about candy for tomorrow. For the trick-or-treaters."

"We can take care of the candy," says Carol.

"That would be great if you could," says Jean. "I usually just pick up some M&M's or Raisinets, and one kind of miniature candy bar, Milky Ways or something, and then those little rolls of Smarties? And then we put together little individual bags. What we've been doing, we take this stamp — I think it's in the desk — you know, that's got our name and address? And just stamp each bag. I think it makes the mothers a little more secure."

"What a cool idea," Carol says. Willis used to say it was begging people to sue their asses.

The waitress puts the check down in front of Carol.

"Here, let me give you some money for the candy," Jean says, grabbing the check. "You sure you don't mind doing this?" She gives Carol a twenty, then lays four singles on the table for the waitress and puts an unused knife on top of them.

"It'll be a good project for tonight," says Carol.

The four singles look mingy, so Jean takes them back and puts down a five. For the working woman who has to be inside on a day like this. Whose face she never looked at.

Out in the parking lot, sunlight beams off bumpers and windshields. "All right,'' says Carol. 'Tm pumped." Fist in the air.

The kids say nothing; still, they climb in without complaint and Jean doesn't have to tell Roger to fasten his seat belt. She rolls her window down, puts on the radio — the middle of something sprightly with violins — and swings onto Route 9. But the sun looks like it's already starting down the sky.

"Listen, I hate to say this," she says, "but would you guys mind too much if I punk out on this hike entirely? It's already getting sort of late, and it's such a trek up to Preston Falls, you know?"

"Booo," Carol says. "No, you're probably right. Be nice to get there before dark if you could." She turns to the back seat. "But hey, one party pooper isn't going to poop on our party, right? No way.''

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"I really want to go with you," Mel says.

"It's going to be so late, dear," says Jean. "And you have school tomorrow. And it's Halloween."

"I can sleep in the car."

Jean shakes her head.

''lean/'

"I really appreciate you wanting to keep me company, sweetie. But I want you and Roger to get to bed early." God knows why she's pretending this is about altruism.

She takes the long way up: the Taconic to 22 to 22A. Because she hates all those trucks on the Thruway and the Northway Because she feels like indulging herself. And because whatever's wrong can't get much worse in the extra forty-five minutes. And really because she doesn't want to be doing this. As she goes north and north and north, the fierce reds and yellows give way to browns and then the leaves themselves start going and at last it's bare trees reaching up into the bright, blank blue. In the little towns, pumpkins sit on doorsteps and ghosts dangle and flap from tree branches: mostly store-bought plastic ones with cartoon faces, but here and there just a white bedsheet hung from a noose. Very Diane Arbus.

She holds out against putting on the radio until she gets off the Taconic, then holds out some more until the shortcut around Queechee Lake, and then all the way to Center Berlin, where she finally feels like it's either get something on the radio or go into an absolute panic. There's static where WQXR had been, and she hits Seek: a country-music station; a rock station, obviously for teenage boys; some man talking about the teachings of Paul, two seconds of "Dock of the Bay." She can't imagine why she would ever again need to hear "Dock of the Bay," or "Hey, Jude," or "California Girls." What it is, she's come to hate most music. She lands at last on a classical station out of Albany, where a solemn-voiced man is summarizing the plot of an opera. "The wedding party and Elvira reappear while Walton sounds the alarm and organizes the pursuit. Shock and grief at Arturo's disappearance strike Elvira senseless, and in a dreamlike delirium she imagines herself being married to him." She's driving past sagging barns and sagging trucks and cows standing in mud and a sign saying PUMKINS FOR SALE. She sees a dead raccoon up ahead, lovely round-ringed tail, body bloated huge, as if inflated. This is all too crazy. She turns the radio off and listens to the

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wind and the tires and the engine: a three-part noise that if you really listen has little parts within each of the parts. She turns the radio back on. She passes landmark after landmark. The grocery store with the magnetic-letter sign at the curb: WE HAD A 2 MILLION WINNER. The boulder somebody painted to make it look even more like an Indian in profile. The used-book store that has the post boy out front; now it's wearing a Dracula mask.

The sun is just trembling above the horizon when she comes up the last hill — the real last hill, not the hill that looks just like it — and turns onto Ragged Hill Road. Past the tumbledown barn that Willis used to call Nude Descending a Staircase Acres. Past the silver trailer almost hidden by sumacs and the blue trailer with chickens running loose and a circle of dooryard gnawed bare by a tethered goat. Past the house with pastel-green siding where you usually see the fat little boy with the Mohawk out riding his bike and every year they have a perfectly weeded garden with absolutely straight rows. Then on through the stand of half-brown pine trees, going uphill all the time, and past the trailer with the GUN SHOP sign, the junk cars, the Hog Roster and the mountains of heaped-up firewood. What's-his-name's.