That Day in May
(April-May 2018)
8-Supposes
"Agh!" Wendy grunted, holding a hand to her forehead. "It's gettin' in my head again! I want so bad to run in there and start chopping at it!"
Stan looked purple with fury. "Me, too! You and me, we could—"
"No!" Dipper insisted. "It takes whatever in us would help it and makes that stronger! My uncertainty, Wendy's skill with an axe, Grunkle Stan, your anger, Grunkle Ford, your ability to reason!"
Stanford, absolutely pale beside his brother, nodded. "That . . . forgive me, I'm struggling to make this non-theoretical—"
"Yeah," Stan said. "Algebra won't help us now!"
"All right. If Mason is correct—and indications are that—sorry, too wordy. I think Mason's right. I think when the Witch, ah, stimulates our various propensities, the barrier identifies them as something that should be contained. That's why we couldn't get through at first."
"Wendy and I can get out," Dipper said. "When we work together. But we have to share our feelings—my caution sort of damps down her, uh—"
"Axe-craziness," she said. "No shame in that!"
"Right, and her courage counteracts my timidity, so we're close enough to normal to get through the barrier. Um. I don't know how you two can even each other out."
"Perhaps through an act of will," Ford said. "If we tried leaving together—"
"Oh, great. What, you want to climb on my shoulders, Poindexter?"
"Let's first try arm in arm."
With Stanley growling and grumbling, they linked arms and rushed down the steps and toward the parking lot, only to hit the invisible barrier and be knocked back on their butts. Stan got up, fuming. "Any more brilliant ideas, Einstein? Maybe saw off the tops of our skulls and switch brain parts?"
"I doubt we have time for that," Ford said as Stan gave him a hand up. "The best thing is for Mason and Wendy to escape and this time stay out, and if you and I can just hang on without succumbing to our natural propensities regarding cognition or pugnaciousness—"
"I oughta punch you out!" Stan said. He rubbed his eyes and in a rueful voice added, "I didn't mean that—your six-dollar words are just—just—"
Wendy said, "Dr. P! Do you have your, like, quantum pistol?"
"Yes," Ford said, drawing the weapon from beneath his coat. "No, wait, that's the magnet gun. The destabilizer's in my right-side holster."
"Set it to stun!" Wendy said.
"Simplicity itself," Ford said. "Fiddleford discovered that routing the charge through reductive quartz of a gradated thickness can attenuate—"
"Give it to me, please," Dipper asked meekly.
Ford handed it over. "I fail to comprehend—" he said.
Dipper turned the dial. "I'm so sorry!" he said before blasting Ford, who crumpled in a heap.
"Ha!" Stan said. "That's one way of shuttin' him up! OK, let's go get that witch!"
"Sorry, Grunkle Stan!" Dipper said before shooting Stanley, too. "Wendy—let's do that sharing again. Then if they're not conscious, maybe we can drag them through!"
They did it. Emotionally draining as it was, they opened up to each other. They pulled Ford first, and, glory be, they got him out on the grass. When they grabbed Stan's arms and pulled him—like hauling a heavily laden sled over gravel—the barrier slowed them, as if they were trying to struggle through a thick liquid, but they made it through and then collapsed next to the two inert Pines twins.
"Dipper," Wendy said, "I hate that. I mean—I know you must be afraid of me when I lose control like I did. And exchanging our feelings—I can be pretty horrible."
"Not to me," Dipper told her. "I just worry about being too pathetic."
"We're both kinda busted, aren't we?" she asked, sounding as if she were on the verge of tears.
"Not when we're together," he said. He kissed her. There. Now we're back to normal.
—For us. I love you, Dip.
Love you, too. Let's see if we can wake these guys up and get down to Ford's house. We have to find a way of fighting this thing.
They shook Ford and Stan, slapped them—lightly, but more than pats—and finally they both began to groan and flutter their eyelids. At last Ford, with Dipper's assistance, sat up, both hands at his temples. "I've never tried that before. It's a fairly painful experience."
A moment later, Stan also managed to push himself up. "My mouth tastes like a cat's been sleeping in it, and she ain't housebroken. Also, I want to thank you so much. I never had a hangover in my life, and now I know what one feels like."
"We got you out of the unicorn-hair barrier," Wendy said. "C'mon. You're both wet with dew."
"Oh, is that dew?" Stan asked. "That's a relief!"
"Let's go to Grunkle Ford's," Dipper said. "I can drive."
"Nah, we'll go in my car," Stan said, taking a wobbly step. "If the Shack blows up, I don't want to lose the Stanleymobile." He leaned heavily on Dipper's shoulder. "But I'm in no condition to drive, even just down the hill. Pile me and my brother in the back seat." He fumbled in his pocket. "Here. I trust you to drive."
"Thanks," Dipper said.
But Stan tossed the keys past him, to Wendy, who was helping Ford. "Thanks, man. I'll try not to hit any pedestrians."
Ford, obviously still a bit woozy, said, "The time must be around four in the morning. It's unlikely that anyone would be out for a stroll at this time of day."
"I'll be careful, anyhow," Wendy promised.
Though thanks to each having taken a nip from the Fountain of Youth, Stan and Ford were both fiftyish, getting them into the back seat of the Stanleymobile was like helping a couple of nonagenarian outfielders into the van for their ride to the Old Timers' Game. Wendy drove past Stan's driveway and down to Ford's. Lorena must have been waiting up, because, wrapped in a quilted robe, she came out to help Wendy and Dipper get the boys in. They helped Stan pull off his shoes, and he sacked out on the living-room couch.
Ford said, "I think we need about half an hour to recover. Dear, let Wendy and Dipper use the guest room."
"Of course," Lorena said.
They knew where it was, but she escorted them there. "If you need to shower, there are fresh towels in the linen closet," she said.
"I think we just need to rest for a few minutes," Wendy said. "It's reaction, I guess. I don't know about Dip, but I keep getting short fits of the shakes."
"Same here," Dipper said. "If we could lie down—like Grunkle Ford said, for just half an hour—"
"Of course," Lorena said. "I'm going to put on a pot of herbal tea."
"Peppermint," Wendy murmured. "If you have it."
"I'm pretty sure we do." Lorena softly closed the door.
Dipper and Wendy kicked off their shoes without unlacing them and collapsed, hugging each other. Dip! We're OK now. Are you crying?
—A little.
I got you now. We're safe. Calm down.
—No, it's not that. I think—it's like you said, just reaction. And what Grunkle Ford said.
What was that?
Aloud, sounding like an awestruck kid, he told her, "Dipper. He didn't call me Mason, but Dipper."
Wendy felt what he was feeling. "Yeah, he loves you, Dipper. And you know Stan does, or he wouldn't tease you. You're family."
"So are you," Dipper said. "Wendy—you're the bravest person I know."
"Yeah, yeah," she said mildly. "You're the guy who's scared out of his wits and still stands up to the danger. That's bravery, Dip. That's courage. And your smarts keep me balanced."
They embraced silently, and then Dipper chuckled. "Man," he said. "If I put this stuff in one of my books, the readers would be throwing up!"
Huh. Just shows how much you know, kid. Oh, I forgot, the narrator doesn't get any lines. So forget that. Let's go to a puppet show.
Mabel had spent about half the money she had bought to last out the week on items from the Puppetry Arts Center gift shop—trinkets and toys and puppet on puppet. Oh, not the Avenue Q brand of hot puppet on puppet action, just some irresistibly cute lambs and a dwarf that she could easily repurpose to be a Gnome with just a change of outfit and a beard, and some Muppet figurines, and a whole batch of puffy puppet stickers—
It was so much of a load that she and Teek stored the swag in the trunk of his borrowed car before going back inside. The Henson museum was great, and Mabel marveled at seeing the actual puppets that had brought so many of Jim Henson's fantasies to life, but wait, there was more—a separate museum of world puppetry, everything from Renaissance marionettes to Indonesian shadow puppets, from a Lamb Chop (Mabel started humming "The Song that Never Ends") to an actual Norwegian Troll who had spent his life on stage menacing the three Billy Goats Gruff, and tons more.
"I feel like a kid in a toy store," Mabel said. There was even a puppet stage where you could manipulate a hand-and-rod puppet and then see your performance on a monitor. And toward the end, in a glass case stood rod-and-hand puppets that had appeared in the original Broadway run of Avenue Q. A helpful docent came over and said, "These look like Muppets, but they're actually from a puppet show for adults."
"I know!" Mabel said. "I played Kate Monster in our college's fall production!"
"Really?" the lady asked, visibly delighted.
Mabel quoted a line: "I have to grade term papers, but my students are in kindergarten, so they're really short."
"I wonder if Jillian is here," the docent said. "She played Kate and Lucy on Broadway a few times—she was an understudy."
They checked, but alas, Jillian was off that day. But Mabel left her a note.
She and Teek got tickets for Pete the Cat, the mainstage production. They weren't the only adults in the audience, either, and at the end the puppeteers came out on stage and talked about the production, the story, the book from which it was adapted, and how the puppets worked.
"That was so much fun!" Mabel said when they went back to the car. "It looked so professional!"
"Well," Teek said reasonably, "it is a professional theater. It's noon. Want some lunch?"
"What did you have in mind?"
"Tired of Southern cooking?"
She gave him an oh-come-on sort of look. "Bring it on! What do you have in mind?"
He had in mind another non-chain restaurant, a place near the state Capitol building—"The roof is real gold," he said.
Mabel stared at the gleaming dome. "Really? Must weigh a ton!"
"Not as much as you'd think. They told me it's only one-five thousandth of an inch thick."
"Huh. Shatter my illusions. Well, mental note: Never let Grunkle Stan lay eyes on it, or he'll find some way to swindle them out of the roof."
He took Mabel to a barbecue place where local politicians and business leaders often had lunch. She passed on the specialty of the house, ribs—she didn't exactly keep kosher, and she wasn't averse to the occasional bacon strip or two, but out of loyalty to Waddles, she had pretty much given up most pork products when she was twelve—and instead had a very tasty brisket sandwich.
From there they cut back north and toured the High Museum of Art, a delight to any self-respecting art student like Mabel. She got the brochures and wondered aloud how she could work any of this experience into her art classes when she got back to California. She'd find a way.
They planned the next day. At the moment, two big movies were filming in Atlanta studios, and Teek had wangled an outdoor set visit to one of them, a superhero flick in which an old-fashioned street in an Atlanta suburb was going to represent the midwestern hometown of an adolescent who would one day grow up to be Magnificent Man.
"We'll have to pay attention and stay behind the ropes and be really quiet," Teek cautioned Mabel. "And it'll probably be real dull—they shoot scenes five or six times at a minimum, and they spend a couple of hours just setting up the camera and lights before each shot. But we might glimpse one or two of the stars. Ken Craig's playing the teen-aged Johnny Fox, and Alanna Evert is his mom. I don't know which scene this is, but our professor had a copy of the script, and I've got photocopies of the three scenes that will probably include the one they're shooting tomorrow. Of course, if the weather's bad, they'll do some indoor shooting instead, and then we're out of luck."
"I'll keep my fingers crossed," Mabel said. By then it was getting on toward three in the afternoon. On the way back to her motel, Teek stopped for gas, checked the oil—a little bit low, so he bought a quart in case he needed to add any in the next couple of days—and they found a park where they could just relax in the sun—warm day, high in the upper seventies—and talk about their schools and their families and their futures and in between, just smooch a lot.
Soos felt bad about imposing on Stan and Sheila, though the older couple didn't mind at all, and finally, when Stanley assured them that one way or the other, they were gonna clean out that mess in the Shack in the next couple days, Melody came up with a solution.
The Ramirezes would go to Portland until Friday, where they could visit family. Abuelita could even spend some time with Soos's cousin Reggie and his wife and their baby girl.
"Well," Soos said reluctantly, "I guess the Shack's in good enough shape to open up on the sixteenth."
"If it ain't," Stan reassured him, "we'll all pitch in and give it a good spit and polish as soon as we get that machine out of the place."
Soos lowered his eyes. "I messed up," he muttered.
"There was no way of telling something was awry," Ford reassured him. "Whatever evil force is there didn't even show up when I first checked. I'm beginning to speculate that it actually resides in, or channels itself through, the cards."
"Hey," Stan said to Soos. "Cheer up. You can fix it up. We'll get a department-store mannequin cheap, get Mabel to do a real repulsive make-up job on her, pose her with a regular old spooky-card deck, and bada-bing! That will be your new witch exhibit. And we won't put any moving parts in it, either!"
"Or use those cards," Ford added.
"Yeah," Soos said. "Too bad. Mr. Braun told me those were real antique cards. The deck used to belong to some magiciany, wizardy dude back in the real old days. I can't remember the name. It wasn't Merlin or Dumbledore or Gandalf, though."
If Ford had been a bird dog, he would have pointed. "Is there any way of finding out?"
"Oh, sure," Soos said. "I can call him."
With Ford on the extension, Soos found the card with Braun's address and telephone number. He dialed it, and on the fifth ring a man answered with a clipped, "Hello?"
"Hi, Mr. Braun?" Soos said. "This is me, Soos Ramirez, remember from the fishing boat? I have a question."
"This isn't Braun," the man said. "This is Lieutenant Alvarez, Homicide."
"Huh?" Soos said.
"Somebody murdered Mr. Braun," the man said. "Last night. Now I have a few questions for you."