the bridge the road climbed again, into trees and more trees, and then a sprawling valley checkered with farmland, and then more trees. All the extraneous trees of the world seemed to have been gathered here for safekeeping. I wondered if I’d be able to see the sky at all, when we got where we were going; it would be a shame to be all the way out here, a hundred miles from anything like a city, and have all that blessed darkness obscured by a stupid branch. We drove through another green tunnel until the trees opened up to an ugly stretch of road—shabby gas station, dispirited-looking convenience store, my heart sinking in disappointment. (Was this it ? Why on earth had Jack come here ?). Then we came around a corner, and I inhaled sharply.
We’d crested a tall hill that spilled downward into what looked like the edge of the world—a tiny strip of town, old red-brick buildings, and past them more blue: blue water, blue sky, blue mountains in the blue distance. It looked like a movie set, not a real place.
“That’s the downtown,” Kate said. “I’ll take you the long way—the bar’s down there, but you might as well see a few of the sights first.” She turned left off the main road and made a confusing series of turns—more hills, more trees, more long windy stretches. Wooden houses in a row. A field strewn about with tall, jagged-leaved flowers—“Opium poppies, they grow like weeds around here; come September half the town’s stoned out of its mind,” she said—and a big lagoon. A cemetery with white headstones in perfect lines.
“That’s the Fort up there,” she said, pointing from a four-way intersection at a big hill that rose behind a huge field lined with Victorian houses.
“Fort?”
“Used to be a military base, up until the end of World War Two. Lot of bored soldiers hanging out with cannons in the bunkers, waiting for somebody to try to attack Seattle. Nobody ever did. It’s been a park since the fifties.”
“It’s pretty.”
“Those houses are the old officer’s quarters. Up on that hill are all the abandoned bunkers. They have conferences and that kind of thing in the Fort itself and rent out the houses, but the hill’s all wild. Some kids broke into the old dance hall on the hill and put on a production of Marat/Sade last summer. Cut a hole through the floor and smuggled everybody in at midnight and lit it with candles. They even got a bathtub in there somehow.”
“Bathtub?”
“For Marat. Stabbed in the tub? You don’t know the story? It’s very Greek.”
I was not sure if she was telling me this anecdote to illustrate the intrepid nature of the local youth or their level of boredom. “That sounds interesting,” I said neutrally. A car honked behind us and Kate waved apologetically and moved forward through the intersection.
How was this place even real ? How had no one discovered it? “Oh, they’ve discovered it all right,” Kate said, though I hadn’t said anything out loud. “Million retirees moving up from California, buying up all the real estate and sending the prices sky-high. And the whole town depends on tourism. Back in the day it was just a half-dead old mill town—mill’s still here—and a handful of people moved out here to grow weed in the woods and live off the land. But now—” She shrugged, in a manner that was apparently meant to convey the entire weight of the town’s present tragedies, whatever they might be. I nodded as if I understood and wondered again how the hell Jack had ended up out here.
We’d come to the miniature downtown: a few blocks of pretty old buildings and a gull-dotted wharf. Kate parked her truck and I followed as she unlocked the front door of a building on the water side of the street. Her bar was dimly lit and lovely—I’d been imagining a scraggly dive, but the walls were paneled wood and the long polished bar was wood, too, with a mirror and shelves of liquor bottles behind it like an old-fashioned saloon.
We’d crested a tall hill that spilled downward into what looked like the edge of the world—a tiny strip of town, old red-brick buildings, and past them more blue: blue water, blue sky, blue mountains in the blue distance. It looked like a movie set, not a real place.
“That’s the downtown,” Kate said. “I’ll take you the long way—the bar’s down there, but you might as well see a few of the sights first.” She turned left off the main road and made a confusing series of turns—more hills, more trees, more long windy stretches. Wooden houses in a row. A field strewn about with tall, jagged-leaved flowers—“Opium poppies, they grow like weeds around here; come September half the town’s stoned out of its mind,” she said—and a big lagoon. A cemetery with white headstones in perfect lines.
“That’s the Fort up there,” she said, pointing from a four-way intersection at a big hill that rose behind a huge field lined with Victorian houses.
“Fort?”
“Used to be a military base, up until the end of World War Two. Lot of bored soldiers hanging out with cannons in the bunkers, waiting for somebody to try to attack Seattle. Nobody ever did. It’s been a park since the fifties.”
“It’s pretty.”
“Those houses are the old officer’s quarters. Up on that hill are all the abandoned bunkers. They have conferences and that kind of thing in the Fort itself and rent out the houses, but the hill’s all wild. Some kids broke into the old dance hall on the hill and put on a production of Marat/Sade last summer. Cut a hole through the floor and smuggled everybody in at midnight and lit it with candles. They even got a bathtub in there somehow.”
“Bathtub?”
“For Marat. Stabbed in the tub? You don’t know the story? It’s very Greek.”
I was not sure if she was telling me this anecdote to illustrate the intrepid nature of the local youth or their level of boredom. “That sounds interesting,” I said neutrally. A car honked behind us and Kate waved apologetically and moved forward through the intersection.
How was this place even real ? How had no one discovered it? “Oh, they’ve discovered it all right,” Kate said, though I hadn’t said anything out loud. “Million retirees moving up from California, buying up all the real estate and sending the prices sky-high. And the whole town depends on tourism. Back in the day it was just a half-dead old mill town—mill’s still here—and a handful of people moved out here to grow weed in the woods and live off the land. But now—” She shrugged, in a manner that was apparently meant to convey the entire weight of the town’s present tragedies, whatever they might be. I nodded as if I understood and wondered again how the hell Jack had ended up out here.
We’d come to the miniature downtown: a few blocks of pretty old buildings and a gull-dotted wharf. Kate parked her truck and I followed as she unlocked the front door of a building on the water side of the street. Her bar was dimly lit and lovely—I’d been imagining a scraggly dive, but the walls were paneled wood and the long polished bar was wood, too, with a mirror and shelves of liquor bottles behind it like an old-fashioned saloon.
Similar Books
