Blast from the Past
From the Journals of Dipper Pines: Monday, August 5, 2013: When I told Mabel what I wanted to do, she was the one who thought it was a bad idea. That's a change! But after I saw the story in the Sunday paper yesterday, somehow I felt I owed the favor. Wendy was up for it, but we didn't involve anyone else this time. So after she gets off work at six this afternoon, we're going to go into danger again.
And I mean real danger. Mabel and I aren't twelve any more . . ..
They talked it over and decided they shouldn't make their move until after dark—someone could see them, and that wouldn't be good. Wendy called her dad and told him she'd be late, and he told her to get something to eat before coming home because he and the boys would order pizza.
"Great," she grumped after getting off the phone. "That means tomorrow morning before I cook breakfast for them I'll have to wash up. I don't know why my brothers can't use paper plates for pizza." But she said it was OK, she was used to it.
Dipper and Mabel asked Soos if they could go with Wendy to a burger place and then to a movie, and of course he said it would be fine. They left the Shack about 7:30, drove to Badger's Burgers, and sat in a corner booth. Mabel engulfed a Big Badger Bad Boy Burger—half a pound of meat (possibly beef, possibly badger) topped with three kinds of cheese, three kinds of pickles, hot sauce, grilled onions, and chopped tomatoes. They took their time, waiting for sundown and full dark.
Dipper and Wendy split a regular burger between them, and everyone ate from the Bucket O' Fries. Mabel ate determinedly and drank three colas. "You're gonna have trouble sleepin', all that caffeine," Wendy warned.
"Never do!" Mabel said cheerfully, and she burped.
"Yeah," Dipper said, "caffeine sort of works in reverse with Mabel. It makes her lazy and sleepy."
"Really? Mabes, at least try to keep awake until we're done with this," Wendy advised her. To Dipper, she said, "Dude, are you sure about this? It could get very hairy, you know."
"Yeah," Dipper said. "But really, they were pretty nice, all things considered, and they had their reasons. I think I have to warn them. You guys can stay outside."
"No way," Mabel said. "Let my brobro gogo where no brobro has gone befofo? Ho! Ho!"
"Yeah," Wendy said with a chuckle. "Caffeine doesn't key her up at all."
They killed a little more time at the Arcade, waiting for dark—which finally came around 9:30. Then Wendy drove them to the condemned Dusk 2 Dawn convenience store.
"Wonder if anybody's been in it since last year," Dipper said as they got out of the Dodge Dart.
"Dunno," Wendy said. "Nobody at school's talked about it. I know you couldn't get Lee, Nate, or Thompson back into this place for, like, a million dollars. Tambry and Robbie, I guess maybe if they thought it would be a quiet place to make out, they might risk it."
"Man," Mabel said, "when I make a match, I make it good!" She had confessed to Wendy about how she'd caused Wendy's two friends to become infatuated with each other. But then the fine print on the love potion she'd used said that its effects would wear off after three hours—unless the pairing was Meant to Be.
Of course, the normal dose was a tiny bit flicked on the two from one's finger tips, not a quarter of a pound dumped on French fries and consumed by them . . ..
But Wendy was cool with the whole Rombry thing (as Mabel called it). She admitted that Robbie and she weren't really suited, and Tambry and Robbie had been much happier since they first got together. Of course, Robbie had to practice scowling and being sullen now, because he was almost always in a good mood, and almost every one of Tambry's status updates had a picture of Robbie practicing scowling. And the two were always in detention for having too many, uh, intense public displays of affection at school. But, as Mabel said, you paid a price for an epic romance.
This time Dipper climbed the chain-link fence and jumped down with no trouble. Mabel decided she'd climb up, over, and then climb down upside-down, because she had seen a squirrel descend from a tree that way.
It wasn't a good idea, but she didn't hit too hard and when she picked herself up she seemed no goofier than usual. Dipper had recently had a concussion, and after she told him he was holding up nineteen fingers, he responded that in his opinion all she'd received was a bump on the noggin.
Dipper tried the front door, expecting it to be locked, but to his surprise it swung open easily and noiselessly. "Huh. Guess the old couple didn't lock it behind us last summer," he said.
The three of them stood in the doorway of the dark convenience store, and Dipper called, "Mr. and Mrs. Duskerton! Hello? Remember us?"
Mabel punched him in the back. "Do it!"
"No!" he said. "Uh—hi! We were here a while back. Are you there?"
"Do it!" Mabel urged.
"No!"
Wendy said, "Dude, I think you gotta."
With an exasperated sigh, Dipper began to sing, "Welllll, who wants a lamby, lamby, lamby?"
Immediately two faintly glowing, greenish forms materialized inside the store—an elderly man and his elderly wife, floating about four feet off the floor. The man gave a throaty, grandpa-like chuckle. "Gracious sakes, look who it is, Ma! The boy who does the funny little dance!"
"Hello, dear," Mrs. Duskerton said. "Come on in, come on in! It's nice to see you again."
"You haven't been in the store for days," Pa Duskerton said. "Always good to have company."
"Days?" Mabel asked, squinting one eye. "It's been a year! We're real teens now—oops."
"But we're not bad teens!" Dipper insisted quickly, feeling sweat breaking out on his forehead, neck, and chest. "We don't want to upset you."
"Yeah, ghost dudes," Wendy said. "We don't have a—uh, a boomy box, and none of us even like rap music!"
For a few moments the ghosts looked at each other, at the kids, then back at each other.
"Please," Dipper said quietly. "Just hear us out, and then we'll go. We want to tell you something important."
Mrs. Duskerton nodded, and her husband said, "Oh, horsefeathers, all right, sonny. But we still don't like teen-agers."
"Most teen-agers," his wife corrected with a smile.
"Last bunch came in left the place in an awful mess," Mr. Duskerton complained.
"Yeah, that was our fault," Dipper said, rubbing the back of his neck. "We were kinda scared and ran off without cleaning up. But we'll do that tonight, if you'll let us."
"Say now, that's neighborly of you," Pa said, beaming. "Can't do so much ourselves these days, you know. Try to hold onto a broom, it just falls through our hands."
"And we never got the knack of making things move on their own," his wife added. "Unless we were throwing a scare into those horrible teen-agers." The elderly couple rubbed their noses together and giggled.
"Right, right," Dipper said. "Well, sir, I read in the paper yesterday that the city has decided to demolish your store. I wanted to warn you."
"Criminently! Not again!" Pa snapped.
"Now, Pa," his wife said, putting a hand on his arm. "Your blood pressure."
"That's about the fourth time—what about my blood pressure, Ma?"
"You don't have any."
"Oh, flummery, Ma, I know that."
"But I still worry about you."
"You're a sweet woman, Ma."
They kissed, and Mabel said, "Awww! Phantom smoochies!"
"So—if they tear the place down," Dipper said, "what happens to you? I mean, you scared us, but you seem like nice people, so—uh. Let us know if we can do anything."
Still floating next to Ma and holding both her hands in his, Pa chuckled. "Sonny, you've got a good heart, but don't worry about us. Those flim-flamming town bureaucrats won't do a thing to our store."
Ma smiled. "Bless you, the minute they show up here with their silly bulldozers, things will happen."
"Engines blow up," Pa said, with a wistful reminiscent grin.
Ma nodded agreement. "Land sakes, yes. Packs of ravening wolves come howling out of the forest as soon as men with hard hats arrive."
"Lightning strikes the job foreman." Pa laughed heartily. "Jinkies, that was one surprised galoot!"
Ma glanced at her husband with deep affection. "You see we have our little ways." They kissed again.
"Oh," Dipper said. "Well—I'm glad. This is a great place. Sort of old-fashioned and cozy."
"We always liked it," Ma told him. "Gracious, when we first started the store, there was nothing here but a little old one-room log shack, not half the size it is today."
"Yep," Pa said proudly. "But we worked, side by side, for more'n fifty years!"
"And gradually we made the store into what it is today."
"A mess," Mabel said. She quickly added, "But that's our fault! We'll clean it up, really."
"Thanks, little missy," Pa said. "And maybe when you're done, could the boy sing his little song and do the funny dance one more time?"
Dipper sighed. "Yeah, somehow I knew it would come to that. Whatever, fine. Where are the brooms and dustpans?"
The ghosts turned on the lights—"But this time," Ma said, "anybody outside the store won't see them. It will look all dark and empty."
"Spooky-like," said Pa with a wicked grin, wriggling his fingers.
They picked up stacks of wrapped sponge-cake snacks, Twinkles, probably just as edible today as they'd been when put on the shelves nearly twenty years before, which is to say not very. They carefully restacked them according to their alleged flavors. As she swept up piles of red and pink candy envelopes and sparkly powder, Mabel said, "Man, I can't believe I ate so many packs of Smile Dip!"
"Yeah, you were tripping," Dipper said.
"I kinda miss Aoshima, though," Mabel told him as she leaned on her push-broom. He noticed she slipped a few unopened Smile Dips into the pocket of her shorts. She noticed his noticing and said, "Just in case I really miss him!"
They picked up the scattered plastic bags that had once held ice, now long empty and dry. Wendy even found three mops, and they cleaned the linoleum. After about an hour they'd done their best.
"That's splendid!" Ma Duskerton said.
"Tippy-top! Say, how about a hot dog on the house for each of you?" Pa asked.
An eighteen-year-old hot dog. Dipper said, "Gee, thanks, sir, but we've already eaten. I guess that's all we can do. We'll be on our way now. Good luck in scaring off those demolition workers when they—"
Pa snapped his fingers. Dipper puffed out his cheeks. "Annnd I'm in the costume."
So once more he asked who wanted him, he greeted his mammy, he marched around the daisies, and asked them all not to forget about the baby.
Both ghosts laughed and applauded. Their clapping sounded like the distant beating of blackboard erasers. "You did a fine job," Pa told them, making a circle with his thumb and forefinger as Dipper's costume vanished. "You three are welcome to come back to visit any time. And don't worry, we'll still be here!"
Dipper hesitated and then asked, "I don't want to pry or anything—but what the heck is that brain thing with the eyeballs and teeth that shows up in the ice cooler?"
Ma laughed. "Oh, him?
"We don't know," Pa said.
"He's just always been there."
"We saw him the first year we opened."
"And he showed up from time to time ever since."
"He never bothers us, though, does he, Ma?"
She said fondly, "Not at all. He's very quiet and respectful. He used to appear over by the magazine section. I don't know why he moved into the cooler."
Pa shrugged. "The cold never bothered him, anyway."
"So—just another mystery in Gravity Falls," Dipper said.
"Say, you want mysteries," Pa said brightly, "go to the Murder Shack and see that Dr. Pines. He's got a passel of 'em!"
"Tell him we sent you," Ma advised.
"Uh—sure," Dipper said with a smile. "Well, we'd better go. It was, uh—you know, it actually was nice talking to you?"
"You guys are my favorite ghosts," Mabel said. "I'd like to hug you—but I don't guess that's possible, so I'll just throw you a couple of kisses. Mm-wah! Mm-wah!"
Wendy said, "You guys go on back out. I want to say just a word or two, if you don't mind. That OK with you, ghost dudes?"
"Oh, we've got all the time in the world," Ma said.
Dipper gave her a worried glance, but he and Mabel went out and clambered back over the fence.
Wendy said, "You know, you two have been married, like, forever, right?"
"We were married for fifty-two years," Pa said proudly.
"And in all that time," Ma added, holding his arm, "we only had one fight."
"Yep," Pa agreed. "'Course it lasted fifty-one years and eleven months!"
They laughed, and Wendy joined in. "Funny," she said. "But, look, I—well, I don't much remember my mom, and I haven't had any advice from older folks who know what it's like, so I'm just curious—how do you love another person for so long?"
"It's easy," Pa said, patting Ma's hand.
"Land sakes, yes," Ma said with a smile. "If it's meant to be, it lasts forever."
"Forever," Pa said, and the two figures faded out.
Wendy went outside—and from the chained-off parking lot, the Dusk 2 Dawn did look cold, empty, abandoned. But she felt sure that, no matter what the town council decided, it wasn't going anywhere. She sauntered over to the gate, opened it, and stepped out.
"Wait," Dipper said, sounding exasperated. "The gate wasn't even locked?"
"Nope," Wendy told him. "But climbin's good exercise. That reminds me, Dip, we're runnin' tomorrow morning. Be ready!"
"OK, OK," Dipper said as he got into the car. "Well. That went better than I thought. Except for the dancing part."
"It was adorable!" Mabel said, slipping in beside him and buckling her seat belt.
"Uh huh, right," Dipper muttered. "But as of tonight, the Lamby Lamby dance is retired. For good."
Wendy slammed the driver's door—sometimes it needed a couple of hard slams to catch. "'Kay, I'll drop you two off at the Shack, an' I can still get home in time to wash my dad's and brothers' dishes before bedtime." She started the engine, humming a little tune.
"You seem happy," Mabel said.
Wendy shrugged as she turned the Dart out onto the highway. "I got some good news," she said.
"What?" Dipper asked.
With a chuckle, Wendy said, "I'll tell you, Dipper. Just ask me again in fifty-two years."
The End