How is the Weather?


(January 2019)

1 Happy New Year!

As Mabel put it, "New Year's Day is on Tuesday. Blarggh!"

Mainly because that meant her art college and Wendy and Dipper's University would start classes on Thursday. Had January 1 fallen on a Wednesday, they would have had the rest of the week off.

Oddly, Mabel loved art school and was doing very well in it, except that she had a yearning to go back on stage, and her crowded schedule just wouldn't allow that. Maybe, she thought, come summer she and Teek could start a Gravity Falls Community Theater. They ought to be able to scare up enough talent for at least a production of Waiting for Godot. And maybe she could even turn it into a musical!

A girl can dream.

She got together with some of her college friends to celebrate New Year's Eve, while Dipper and Wendy, old married couple that they were, contented themselves with staying up with the dogs until about 12:05 and then going to bed happy that they'd welcomed in the year with a minimum of excess.

Until Mabel called at—ugh!—3:20 A.M. "Are you OK?" Dipper asked in lieu of "Hello." As Grunkle Stan had once told him, "Any phone call between two and four in the morning's gotta be bad news."

"Listen," Mabel said very clearly, "I have to ask for a big favor, Brobro. Don't get mad, OK?"

"What is it?" Wendy asked, sitting up next to him in bed.

"Mabel," he said to her. To Mabel, he said, "What is it?"

"OK, I'm not sure, but I think I drank a tiny-teeny too much bit of champagne. I'm afraid to drive myself home, and I think everybody else at the party is a little bit d-r-u-n-k-y. I mean I'm not, little buzz, but just to be safe—could you and Wen possibly come over and one of you drive me back in my car? Please?"

"Where are you?" Dipper asked, reaching for the notepad on the bedstand.

She gave him the address, then said, "That may not be just right, but it's a short street, and I think the house is on the very end next to, you know, the circle thingy where you turn around, and, and you can't miss the house."

As they got dressed, Dipper first explained and then said to Wendy, "She's at that stage where's she's not slurring, but she's talking too slow and keeps losing track. Please have a talk with my sister."

"She's your sister," Wendy said, but good-naturedly.

"Kind of my point," Dipper said. "She tunes me out."

Tripper and Don Coyote (genetically just a quarter-coyote, since his mom was a feral coydog) got excited. "Do you need to go outside?" Dipper asked Tripper. He tapped his paw twice. No. "OK, we're gonna go get Mabel. You guys guard the house."

Tripper led DC to the sliding-glass deck door and stationed him there. Tripper himself lay stretched on the floor halfway between the front door and the mud-room hallway. That dog knew his business.

"Let's take the Green Machine," Wendy said. "You OK to drive her car back?"

"Sure," he said. "It's not all that far. Watch out for drunk drivers, though."

Good advice. They drove on dry pavement, though under a pretty heavy cloud cover. The night was dark.

At the intersection with Madison, a pickup truck full of guys tossing fireworks onto the roadside blew through a stop sign and careened away south on the wrong side of the highway. "Dude," Wendy said, "call this in to 911. Gray 2014 Neko pickup, four guys in the bed, reckless driving, fire hazard, heading south on Old Mill about sixty miles per hour. Nevada plates, HA8 818. Hotel Alpha Eight, Eight One Eight."

Dipper did. They didn't catch sight of the pickup again.

When they reached Prairie Trail—the street on which the party house stood—Wendy carefully made the left turn. "See her car?" she asked.

Pretty much the whole street was bordered with parked cars. The houses, all one-story California-style, were spaced out, though, and two in a row were up for sale, leaving only the one at the dead end of the street.

That was unmistakably the party house, or at least a party house. All the lights on, music playing loudly, dancing people visible through the windows, and in the front yard the porch light showed that a raucous volleyball game—though without a net—was in progress. "Neighbors'll call the cops any minute now," Wendy murmured.

"I see her," Dipper said. "She's waving."

He got out and Mabel came toward him with a little stagger. "I'm really grateful, Brobro," she said, hugging him. "I shouldn't drive, but I don't think I'm over the limal legat. Uh, legal limit. Hi, Wendy! Happy New Year!"

"Where's your car?" Wendy asked.

"Um, up the street. You, you, I guess you have to back."

Looking out the passenger-side window, Dipper said, "The girls are playing topless!"

"Skins against skirts," Mabel said. She burped softly. "Shirts, I mean. I didn't play. They asked me to, but I didn't want to, to show off, umm . . .." She trailed off.

Wendy, no slouch as a driver, backed until Mabel spotted Black Beauty, slotted pretty tightly between cars fore and aft. "Think you can work it out, Dip?" she asked.

"Yeah, it'll take some fiddling, though."

He got out, Mabel found her keys after a complicated search, and he see-sawed, turning the steering wheel incrementally, until he got the car free. "Lucky you parked heading out, Sis," he said as Mabel got into the passenger seat and after a false try, slammed the door.

"Yeah, I drove allllllll the way down and had to turn in the cul-de-sac to come'n find a place where I could park." She yawned. "No fair I feel this way. I didn't have that much champagne."

"It doesn't take very much, and it sneaks up on you," Dipper made the turn toward home, Wendy's Dodge Dart right behind him. "Looks like a wild party."

"The—theater kids," Mabel muttered. "They, you know how—I think I'm gonna be sick."

"Then roll down the window and lean out."

"Good advice." She took it just in time.

After a few seconds, Dipper asked, "You OK now?"

"No, but that's a load off," she said, settling back. "Air feels good. What, what time is it?"

"About three-thirty by now," he said.

"What? Oh, man! I'm so sorry, Dipper. You're a good brother. I won't ever do that again. Hey, if it's three-thirty here, what, what time is it in Georgia?"

"Half-past six in the morning. Teek's only been back there about eight hours, and it was a long flight. Too early to call him, Sis."

"Yeah, I talked to him when, when he landed at you know, the air place, airport I mean, an' he said, he said, 'Go an' have fun.' Dipper, I miss him so much." Mabel stifled a sob. "I wish he wasn't so far away. I bet he didn't go to a stupid party and get drunk. I'm a disgrace."

"Whoa!" Dipper said, staring ahead through the windshield. "Is that a fire?"


It was a spreading grass fire. He pulled off on the shoulder opposite it and made his second 911 call, reporting the blaze off Old Mill Road and gave the approximate location. Wendy parked behind him just as he finished the call.

"Dude," she said as she ran up to the RAV4, "I got a fire extinguisher, but that's already too wide for it!" Across the road, maybe a quarter-acre of long pasture grass was burning. An old wooden fence already smoldered.

"Fire trucks are coming," Dipper said. "I called."

"Man, December's usually a wet month here, but there's been no rain for a couple weeks."

"Air feels damp, though," Dipper said. Ahead and off to the left of the highway, a small pine caught fire. It looked as though a whole pasture was going to be involved.

"They better hurry!" Wendy said. "Come on, clouds up there! Give us some rain!"

A billow of smoke made Dipper cough. "It was those idiots in the truck. Wen, maybe we'd better drive on ahead a little way. The wind's coming toward us, and if embers cross the road—"

"Yeah, you're right," Wendy said. "You keep Mabel safe!"

"I think she just went to sleep," Dipper said. "About a quarter-mile past it?"

"To start with." She turned and ran back toward the Green Machine. Dipper checked the rear-view mirror and, not bothering to roll his window back up, pulled out and passed the fire. There was a wide enough shoulder for him to pull off there, and as he did he heard the faint Weeee-owwww of sirens coming from the city.

Wendy parked right behind him again and came running to the RAV4. "Think we oughta volunteer to—hey! Wow!"

Because out of nowhere—well, really, out of that high cloud cover—as if someone had turned a faucet, a heavy rain pelted down, smacking against the car.

"Get in back!" Dipper said.

Wendy climbed in. "Man, I'm already about as wet as I could get. It just opened up! That was sudden!"

Hard though it was, the downpour didn't last long. The fire trucks, two of them, stopped and firefighters spilled out, and a few minutes later the rain slacked and ended, leaving behind a smolder of wet grass. One of the firefighters came up to the car. "Are you the ones who reported this?" he asked.

"Happy New Year," Mabel said from the passenger seat.

"I called it in, sir," Dipper said.

Wendy got out. "Earlier tonight we saw a pickup with a bunch of goofs in it along in here, tossing firecrackers off to the side," she said. "We got the plate number and my husband here called it in."

"We just heard about them," the man said. "CHP caught them south of town. They'd started a couple other yard fires, but this one's the biggest. We would have had a tough time controlling it, but the rain came in handy!"

A CHP car pulled off and the highway patrolman came over to get their names, addresses, and license numbers. "Hey," Wendy said, "when we saw those guys, my husband and I were in the Dart back there on the shoulder, and I have a good dash-cam. If you want, I can send you the footage. I know they threw three or four firecrackers while they were in sight."

The cop and Wendy walked back, she reran the recording and saved it, and he said he'd be in touch the next day about the matter. "But," he said, "we got them cold, DUI, attempting to evade, reckless driving, public endangerment, illegal fireworks, list as long as your arm. This is a great old car, by the way."

"Thanks," Wendy said. Then she had to explain her and Dipper's compassionate mission.

He said, "Good for your sister-in-law to call for help. You or Mr. Pines been drinking?"

"No, sir!" Wendy said. "My husband and I didn't even toast the New Year in."

With a chuckle, the policeman replied, "I didn't think either of you was impaired. All right, I'll let you all go along now. Busy night for us!"

The rest of the drive home was without incident.


But late the next morning—

"This is worse than a Smile Dip crash!" Mabel moaned. "Why didn't somebody tell me about champagne headaches?"

"It's called a hangover," Dipper said. "And you had one once before, remember?"

"Champagne makes you feel so good for a while and then so rotten," Mabel said. "What time is it now?"

"Nearly noon," Wendy said. "You can call Teek now."

"How do I look?" Mabel asked them.

"Little bit like a raccoon," Dipper told her.

"If you're gonna face-time Teek, wash your face and use a little makeup," Wendy advised her. "Just a touch. And if he asks if you went out celebrating, don't fib to him."

"Me? Fib?" Mabel asked. "Never! Well—hardly ever."

"Hey, Sis," Dipper said. "I forgot to tell you—Billy Sheaffer called us last night around eleven-thirty to wish us all a happy new year. He got to stay up this year."

"That's nice," Mabel said. She yawned. "Maybe I'll call him after I've talked to Teek. Hey, I must be sober! I said it right and not 'Teek to talk.' Didn't I?"

"Perfect," Wendy said.

The rain that had given them a strong promise the night before had set in before daylight, not hard but cold—well, cool, but for California it felt cold—and steady. "Just as well," Dipper said, standing by the sliding-glass door and looking out on the back yard. "I don't feel rested enough to do our regular run today."

Wendy came up behind him and hugged him. "Me, either," she said. "We got like four hours of sleep in all." She nuzzled his neck. "Want to take a nap? Maybe snuggle some? I've felt cold ever since I got caught in that weird rainstorm."

"I'd love to," Dipper said. "Hang on just a second." The dogs had been outside. They came up onto the deck and vigorously shook. Dipper and Wendy knelt with towels and gave them the obligatory rub-down.

It was funny, but Tripper disliked baths—he didn't struggle or yap or anything, but he clearly had to resign himself just to tolerate the tub. Yet neither he nor the pup minded going out into a driving rain at all. Not that this was a driving rain—more a drifting one, but more than enough to make puddles here and there. Back under the nut trees at the rear of the yard a small pool had run off from the gently sloping hillside.

"At least the fire hazard's lower now," Dipper said, yawning.

"Who's that?" Wendy asked. A car had stopped outside—rare, since theirs was the last occupied house on the road.

It turned out to be another CHP officer. Dipper had already duplicated the dashcam footage on a usb memory stick. He talked to the couple on the front porch, then came inside to see the video. They sat at the table and reviewed it on the laptop. "Good," the guy said. "Very clear on the plates." He filled out a chain-of-custody form and had Dipper and Wendy sign it, then said, "I don't think you folks will have to worry about appearing in court later on. The guys have admitted everything already. But this is good to have. I'll leave you in peace now."

They saw him to the door. Then Wendy stretched. "Whoof, I feel like we've run ten miles today! OK, couple hours for a comfortable, long, slow cuddle and nap, and then we'll laze and decide what to have for our New Year's dinner tonight."

"Chinese," Dipper said.

She raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

He shrugged. "In our family, every Christmas and New Year's dinner was Chinese!"

She gave him a little shove. "I know that's not true. On the other hand, I'm not up for anything like a roast turkey, and there's no time anyhow. How about a big pot of Corduroy's Famous Chili?"

"Perfect day for it," he said.

Wendy went and tapped on Mabel's door. She opened it, her phone in hand. "Hey, Teek, wish Wendy and Dipper a happy new year."

Teek did, but then said, "Thanks for helping Mabel out last night."

"Yeah, 'cause I had car trouble," said Mabel meaningfully.

Wendy didn't lie. However, she also did not tell Teek that the trouble was Mabel had been too tipsy to drive, or how wild the party had seemed.

She was a good sister-in-law in ways like that.

Wendy merely got Mabel's approval for the dinner menu and then said, "Dip and I are gonna nap for a while, OK?"

"Gotcha," Mabel said. "Do not disturb. I'm gonna talk to Teek a little more and then call Billy. You two—misbehave yourselves, now!"

Wendy grinned. She could accept a little joshing from Mabel without minding it.

Also, she was eager to join Dipper for that nap.

Yeah, nap, that's the ticket.