July Heat
(June-July 2017)
2: Sunny Day
Back when Stanley Pines was not only Mr. Mystery, but also (as far as anyone, including his own family knew) Dr. Stanford Pines, the Mystery Shack was open six days a week, Tuesday-Sunday. Of course back then the Shack pulled in only a few hundred each week, rarely more than $1,500. These days that much would come in, usually, before noon on a single, typical summer morning.
Soos, who was faithfully Catholic, and Melody, who had been Episcopalian but who converted before marrying Soos, chose to close the Shack on Sunday. And Mondays were never much for business, anyway—tourists were generally either back home or heading that way, pockets depleted—so Soos kept up Stan's tradition of "dark Mondays." Nowadays anyone who worked for the Shack got a regular weekend off, but shifted one day, so Saturday was a workday, and the weekend was Sunday and Monday.
That hot June morning, Dipper and Wendy were grateful that it had come round at last. What with the ever-building crowds of customers and the wear and tear of Mabel's Summerween party—kids in town, who really had just the foggiest memories of it, kept telling Mabel she had to come back next summer and make the party a tradition—what with all that, Dipper and Wendy were ready to wind down.
Did I mention that it was hot? It was hot. The mercury stood at 82 at 8:00 that morning, and the weatherman direly promised that it would touch 102 before evening. The sky glared down a kind of yellowy-blue as they started out, the sun low but shining hard. They took the route down the nature trail, across the rolling hills, around Moon Trap Pond, and then back—but both of them were huffing with effort as they left the pond behind them and chugged up the first of seven hills.
"It's not only hot," Dipper complained, "it's humid!"
"Yeah," Wendy agreed. "This kind of weather, I wouldn't be surprised if a thunderstorm or two didn't roll in later on today or tomorrow. Whoosh!"
By the time they topped the seventh hill, Dipper was blinking away sweat—he and Wendy both wore headbands, but in the muggy, still air, these had already become too soaked to hold much more moisture. "Tell you what," he said. "Let's just walk back from here. I'm not on a track team any longer, and at this rate I'll be wrecked until late afternoon."
"I feel you," Wendy agreed. They reduced speed and instead of jogging, just hit the top of the Mystery Trail—though the tram really didn't run that far—at a not-quite-leisurely walk.
"At least we don't have to work today," Dipper said. Though Soos had air-conditioned the Shack, the gift shop, in its own wing, got the tail end of the cool air and when crammed with tourists, the HVAC system fought a losing battle.
They passed the Talking Rock, a standing stone that Stan and Soos both exhibited as having mysterious untranslated Native American petroglyphs on it, though in truth Stan had chiseled these on himself. He'd picked the symbols randomly out of an old encyclopedia volume. Dipper, who had a weakness for codes and ciphers, had once spent most of a week copying them down and translating them. He retranslated them and then re-retranslated. Even so, the six lines failed to cohere. The closest he'd come to making sense of it was the last line of all:
Deer lightning hill fish moccasin sun copyright pine tree ampersand asterisk snake.
Though that too was incomprehensible, only a little less so that the other lines, Stanley had always assured tourists that the inscription meant the stone had powerful magic—fertility magic, he'd add, waggling his eyebrows.
A few steps down the trail, Wendy said, "Let's go down to the creek when we get to the bonfire clearing. We won't go skinny-dipping, 'cause there's not enough water, but we can at least go wading."
"Skinny-wading?" Dipper asked.
"Mm, never can tell," she said with a grin.
On the way, they retrieved a few stray pieces of costumes left over from the Summerween party—Pacifica, under the influence of a rogue genie wish and perhaps of Smile Dip, had led quite a few teens down there in the dark to skinny-dip, though the deepest pools in the creek were only knee-deep. Now they found a scarecrow's face—a burlap bag with holes for eyes and patches for nose and mouth painted on—along with a tiara (plastic) and three shoes, though not a matched pair.
"Pick 'em up on the way back," Wendy said, piling up the pieces at the foot of an oak. "We'll toss 'em in the Lost and Found bin, but I doubt anybody'll ever claim them."
"Still didn't find Pacifica's bra," Dipper said.
"You disappointed?" Wendy asked.
"No, I know what a bra looks like now," he said, grinning—blushing a little, but still grinning. He vividly recalled his first glimpse of Wendy's bra. He had been lying on it while they watched a TV movie. Not that she'd taken it off in his presence, just that it was laundry she hadn't got around to putting away yet, but still . . . those were the days.
"Least it's cooler in here," Wendy said as they made their way down a deeply shaded, ferny slope to the stream bed. The creek—as far as Dipper knew, it didn't have a name, though it might have been a tributary of Rock Creek or Cold Creek—trickled and tinkled over round, mossy boulders in a bed worn down over centuries.
The green-tinted shade did feel a lot cooler, and the scent of all the growing things was soothing in a way. They found the relatively level bed of—not sand, exactly, but sediment that had built up during heavy rains—that shelved into the creek, sat on a log and took off shoes and socks, and then waded in.
At first the water flowed so cold it was almost painful, but then it felt wonderful. Wendy led the way, sloshing from ankle-deep to calf-deep water before reaching the foot of a miniature waterfall, only two feet high, but strong enough to have worn a somewhat deeper basin. She bent down, scooped a double handful of water, and splashed her face. "Ahh! Refreshing. Wanna try it, man?"
"Sure," Dipper said. He bent over, putting himself in an excellent posture to be surprised when she scooped more water and tossed it into his face. He sneezed but admitted, "That does feel good!"
They wound up in a splash fight, laughing and finally hugging, their shirts soaked, their hair plastered to their foreheads. But anyway, they felt a lot cooler.
They waded back out again, gathered their shoes and socks, and then, since their feet were wet already, walked barefoot back toward the bonfire clearing. Wendy took it in stride, so to speak, but Dipper had to adjust to barefoot woods-walking—the pebbles, loam, leaves, and twigs under his soles gave him a strange crawly sensation in his stomach.
They had nearly reached the clearing when they heard a humming, and a Gnome appeared around the bend—Jeff, without his hat (a rarely-scene sight) and carrying a towel, a scrub brush, and wearing crude sandals. "Oops!" he said when he spotted them. "Don't look, don't look—there."
When they did look, he had draped the towel over his head. He might have been wearing undershorts, too, but there was no good way of telling—his beard hid a multitude of Jeff. "What are you doing?" he asked, sounding irritable. "The creek pool is my private bathing spot!"
"I thought you bathed in squirrels," Dipper said.
"Live squirrels?" Wendy asked.
"Dead ones wouldn't work, would they?" Jeff asked.
"That's kinky, dude."
"Look," Jeff said, "first, squirrels are hot, and second, they give me more of a massage than a bath! Gnomes want to be clean just like you humans do. Once a week I come down to my personal pool and take a long, relaxing bath. Except in winter."
"Why are you wearing a towel folded over your head?" Wendy asked.
"Because I'm not wearing my cap!" Jeff snapped. "Don't be pervy."
"Whatever," Dipper said. "Should we look away as you pass by?"
"If you want," Jeff said.
He rustled on past them and vanished in the ferns. "I don't think I'll ever understand Gnomes," Wendy said.
"They're different," Dipper agreed. "I nearly sneaked a peek to see whether he was wearing shorts or not."
"Nope, he isn't," Wendy said.
"You didn't!"
"I did, too. Looked like a couple of peaches."
In the clearing they sat back to back on the log with their legs stretched out, letting the air dry their feet. Once they heard two people, a guy and a girl, talking softly and giggling out on the trail, but they didn't stand up, so they didn't see who it was, and vice-versa. "Tourists?" Dipper guessed.
"Mm, I'd say not," Wendy told him. "Probably a young married couple. Maybe even an older one. The Talking Rock has that reputation, man."
"What? What reputation?"
"Well—Soos doesn't do it anymore, but Stan led people to believe—you know the story he made up about the stone, right?"
"That it was a Native American fertility idol or something," Dipper said. "But the symbols don't make sense, and anyway, he put them on it himself."
"Right, well, Stan told people that if they wanted to have a baby, they should bring a beach towel out and spread it in front of the stone and—you know—get busy."
"Out in the open?" Dipper asked.
"Yeah, well, Stan did recommend they do it at night," Wendy said. "Charged 'em twenty bucks a pop. So to speak. Like I said, Soos doesn't do that, but the story took hold and now sometimes a couple wanting a kid will, you know, come out and give it a try."
They were a fair distance from the stone, but Dipper heard a woman's urgent voice yell, "Yes!"
"Sounds like they're—um, testing the theory," he said.
Wendy giggled. "You're so cute when you get all blushy." She wriggled her toes. "My feet are dry enough. Help me put on my socks so I don't get dirt on my soles?"
Dipper socked her feet, she put on her shoes, and then he sat back while she dusted the grit off his soles and put his socks on for him. "I oughta pay you back some time for the foot rubs you give me," she said as he got his sneakers back on. "Man, I gotta tell you Dipper, you're like a great boyfriend. I'm glad we gave the age thing a chance to even out!"
"Me, too," he said, taking her hand.
They might have become even more affectionate, but the unknown woman's shouts of "Yes! Yes! Yes!" distracted them. They cut through the woods, not risking coming out on the trail until they were close to the Bottomless Pit and the Talking Rock was way out of sight.
Tripper leaped off the gift-shop porch and met them. He ran across the sunny lawn, accepted their pats and assurances that he was a good boy, and then found a pool of shade—provided by the totem pole—and collapsed on his belly with his legs spread out.
Mabel was up and awake by then—Soos and his family were at Mass—and she had made some fairly successful waffles, with batter left over. Wendy and Dipper cooked up some turkey sausage, Dipper made two waffles, using up the last of the thick batter, and Mabel said, "Cook up two extra links for me! I didn't think about sausage, and that smells great!"
Wendy and Dipper had a good breakfast, Mabel had a half-breakfast to add to the one she'd already eaten, and then Mabel said, "Hey, Wen, I'm driving up to your Aunt Sallie's farm to see Waddles, Widdles, and Gompers. You two want to come?"
Wendy glanced at Dipper.
"Sure," he said. "I like Aunt Sallie. Tripper coming?"
"Oh, yeah, he wouldn't miss it! He's already called shotgun," Mabel said. "Teek's family is off visiting relatives today, so Tripper's my date."
The weather remained steamy-hot, but even so, that Sunday turned into a good, lazy day. Dipper and Wendy took showers and changed to lightweight, cool clothes, Mabel put Tripper into his car harness and safety-buckled him in, Dipper and Wendy got into the admittedly somewhat cramped back seat of Helen Wheels, Mabel's fluorescent green Carino, and with the air-conditioning dialed way high, they set off for the farm roughly twenty miles north of the Falls, Mabel taking the lead while they sang car-karaoke for the whole trip.
Nice to have a day, Dipper thought, when nothing serious or troubling happened.