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A Chilly Night
By
Eugene Taitelbaum
A brilliant crescent moon rising in a backlit iridescent gem-facet dawn. A sweet-smelling hillside meadow deep in the Canadian woods. It was a romantic setting, a place where the glory of life should have seared clear through daily ritual, allowing the great machinations of serendipity, providence, passion, and grace to move me to tears.
My stomach was bile, revulsion, and anger. Ugliness and corruption dragged my tired eyes down from the smiling moon, past the billion twinkling dewdrops, to a ruined bag of marshmallows, soaked in a morning dewfall, opened but never roasted in misguided midnight excess.
Five hours earlier, my sister Margaret, our friends, and I had nestled near sumac bushes at the top of the field. vibrated the newly mowed amphitheater, probably guitars and fiddles and drums, but we weren't paying attention. The music was always the same at the Finger Pluck Festival, always fine and I could dance to it but mostly just background for the stars and friends and life. As the night went on, Margaret and Andrew and I talked and shared stories and jokes. I eventually slumped back on a bag of marshmallows, a pillow on the chilly hillside, comfort for a boy without a lover. My sister laid back on Andrew. At last.
We were not looking for music. I guess we thought we could find friends, love, community, or just a sweet-smelling weekend in the country. Maybe we were idiots who thought that we could drive 70 miles to childhood -- go back to the hillside and get taken to the pleasures we had known there six years earlier, when I was 10, Margaret was 12, and we all had friends and lovers and what felt like energy that generated itself.
Margaret, Andrew, I, and most of our friends had gone to the same field every year when we were kids. An annual bluegrass festival attracted our parents -- it was a safe place where they could play with one another, get high, dance, and camp out, knowing the kids were safe and keeping themselves busy. I spent those mosquito-filled late summer weekends volunteering at food stands, running around the hidden corners of the fresh-mowed fields, roasting marshmallows over late-night coals, and trying to sleep in the hot, humid canvas tent where no matter how hard we tried, we always had spiders and mosquitoes.
When I was 10, Margaret and I were moved to the States, we didn't make it back to Finger Pluck for five years. We talked about it every summer, wondering what we were missing. When the opportunity finally came up, in 1987, Margaret and I were both out of high school and ready for college. We were both visiting our father in Canada, and we had a chance to go back; I didn't have second thoughts.
The first afternoon of Finger Pluck, we found a campsite and I looked for something to do. As a kid, I had always helped out by chopping french fries or cleaning carrots. But at 16, nobody wanted me. I asked "who needs help" and got only suspicious looks. I couldn't tell if things had changed in the 80s, or if it was me. Every guy running a chip stand assumed I wanted to get paid for my work. Most hinted they didn't want to share the loot, but one clearly told me he didn't want me near his wife. The music was weak, the weather was hot, and I didn't know anyone. I couldn't wait to find my friends.
I finally passed the time, directing traffic. The August sun warmed me through the thick deciduous forest of the backwoods, making the constant hum of mosquitoes almost worth it. I helped people find parking in the glacial meadows among old ironwoods and maples.
As the slow sunset headed for dark, I found Margaret walking near our tent with our old friend Andrew. The tent was near the stage, in an area where we weren't allowed to go when we were kids. It was where people went for rowdiness and drinking. We had always stayed at the far end of a distant meander of hayfield, in the kind of darkness that hid even the nearest tents. We went to bed at 10 after a campfire. We were surrounded by kids, families, and bugs, and the closest organized events were quiet yoga workshops somewhere across a stand of trees.
Andrew said Michelle and Lara couldn't make it. Michelle was Andrew's sister, and Lara was their cousin. When we were kids, Margaret had a crush on Andrew and I had a crush on Michelle. I hadn't thought about her much over the years, but when I found out she wouldn't be coming, I felt like catching the next ride back to Ottawa.
When I was eight, Margaret married me to Michelle in a wheelbarrow. She had us sit there, told us we were married, and pulled her maroon velvet cape over us. Michelle and I hid in the dark, warm space under the velvet, barely touching, as Margaret wheeled us down the gravel driveway. We could hear Margaret say, "Now you can kiss -- you're on your honeymoon." We didn't kiss. No matter what sort of crush we had, we were more scared than thrilled by being thrown into a rusty wheelbarrow and covered with expectations.
Back then, Andrew and I were best friends. His parents separated at the same time as mine, and his aunt was my mother's best friend. Andrew taught me how to build a go-cart, how to shoplift, how to sneak into movie theaters. Our go-cart had wheels from a stolen shopping cart, but it was slick enough to win a whole series of races in Ottawa. Andrew and I were vicious together, ditching my brother Bernie at every chance, leaving him in the bathroom while we darted from an ice-cream shop, or ducking into a clothes rack to get away from him in a store. We used to run, exhilarated, laughing, burning our lungs on cold winter air as we left Bernie sobbing behind to find his way home. Sometimes, we'd head to the comics shop and sneak long looks at porno mags we found under the racks.
Over the six years I lived in the States, Andrew and I maintained contact. I sometimes saw him when I visited my father in Ottawa. But we were also growing apart. We had both moved to bigger towns, but where I was isolated and became a hacker and bookworm, he had sharpened his fists. As kids, we were both excited whenever we could get pot or beer. But all through high school, drugs were rare enough to still be exciting for me. Andrew had found an identity with them. When we finally got to spend quality time together at Finger Pluck, I was 16 and he was 18. While I could pine for Michelle, Andrew was ready to make good on his and Margaret's dusty old crush.
Laying back on the marshmallow sack, looking at the stars, hearing music, not moved to dance, I dozed off around midnight. I was full of pot smoke, the smell of summer night, the smell of trees dreaming, I was done with high school, and the world was one vast connection.
It was dead dark when I woke up in the tent. I didn't remember going there, just the discomfort of dew on my face, and then waking to a rustling, a foreign sound that was not an animal. A wet, soft sound. Sound inside the tent. Not a raccoon; my slightest stirring stopped the sound. Not an animal, but a person.
Breaths from mouths. Who? My pulse bubbled up into my earballs and stayed there an hour.
Margaret and Andrew were doing something rhythmic. I couldn't tell. Kissing. Sucking. Fucking. I couldn't bring myself to look. I figured it would end.
Breathing. Margaret breathing. My sister, my friend, the girl I knew best in the world, with Andrew, my old friend. It was hot. I was turned on. They were going at it right next to me. The sex smell was in the air, and I hoped it would become beautiful.
More moist sounds. I laid still, pretended to sleep. I got good at that when I was a kid. Could Margaret tell I was faking? She taught me all about it. I just laid there. The black night verged into the slightest grey of dawn. Kissing. Heavy breathing.
Then whispers. "Nah," I heard her say, in her hesitant voice.
"Oh come on," he said. "Just a little bit."
The satisfying sexy tingle in my abdomen became a gripping anger. What the fuck was that?
Again, his whisper. "Yeah, come on, it's OK."
"But --"
"Oh man, come on."
The wet sounds were rhythmic, repetitive. Was she gagging? Was he panting? A mosquito landed on my forehead. I didn't dare move. The stinger went in. I winced but stayed still. When would she stand up for herself? This was the big sister I loved and respected. It couldn't embarrass her by trying to protect her. I couldn't let her know I knew what she was going through. She couldn't live it down. She had to do what she wanted, had to stand up for herself.
My stomach was sick and knotted. With every minute, I got more nervous, my stomach getting heavier with bile.
At last, I got up, pulled on pants and a shirt, not looking around at their shades of grey in the hinting dawn.
"Where are you going?" asked Margaret.
"I don't know," I said. "You need the privacy more than I do, anyway." I tried not to let them hear that I was ready to puke. But I don't think I said it with love or respect. Just disgust, anger, and horror. I hoped I could wake them up to what they were doing. But they might have been in a late-night, stoned haze where they didn't much care.
"Oh come on," Margaret said, "We were just about to stop." She sounded like she meant it. She sounded mortified, contrite. She sounded embarrassed.
"Whatever," I said, as I left the tent and zipped it from outside.
As morning brightened, I walked around the abandoned, quiet hillside. Under the rising, disappearing moon, I saw a hill scattered with half-empty beer bottles, ill-supported tents damp inside and out with sleep and dew, a tired, sagging bandstand awaiting its last use for the year, and a crystalline sky full of truth.
Copyright ©
2003 2003 Eugene Taitelbaum
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