One More Spring

(March 2017)

3. In like a Lion

The old saying about March was very nearly true. February ended and March began with blustery winds, some rain, and fluctuating temperatures, from the thirties into the sixties and back again. OK, it was not a master-of-the-pride kind of lion, more like a mellowed-out older lion, but still he roared a little.

Fortunately, the unsettled weather seemed to be external only. Billy and his friend China became an item (in a sixth-grade sort of way) and he perked up and was happier than Mabel had seen him in months. Teek called her so frequently that Mrs. Pines finally suggested she was going to ration Mabel's telephone time if she didn't cut it back a little herself.

Mabel arranged with Teek to set a timer for their nightly talks—thirty minutes. In a way that bothered her, but on the other hand, she found that, knowing their chat times were limited, Teek put a lot more fervor and eagerness into his side of the conversation, and she really liked that.

One Wednesday evening she hung up, sighed dreamily, and danced pirouetting, ballerina fashion, into Dipper's room, without knocking, because she was Mabel, and said, "It will work, Broseph! It will work!"

"Humh?" asked Dipper, who was threading his way through a complex and advanced problem in probability in his calculus textbook. "What will?"

"My and Teek's long-distance relationship!" she said. She laughed in a mad-scientist bwah-hah-hah sort of way. "This relationship is alive, I tell you! It's alive! It's a-li-hi-hi-hive!"

She curtsied and danced out of the room.

Because of Mabel's impression of Dr. Frankenstein's birth announcement for his creature, Dipper had just bitten his Ticonderoga Number 2 in half. He spat out the splinters, reached for a fresh pencil, and told his calculus text, "I think I've created a monster." However, he was smiling when he said that.

During the second week in March, Mabel pasted an article from the school newspaper into a special scrapbook she was compiling not for herself, but for Dipper. It read, in part,

If you haven't noticed, Piedmont has a hot sports team. Not football, that's so last fall. Not baseball. No, the team burning up the stats is our Varsity Track Team.

Coach Dinson says, "This is one for the record books. Our men's and women's track teams are leading the district."

Dinson says he doesn't deserve credit for the winning streak, though. He praises the runners and the team captain, Dipper Pines. "They've got the ability, and he's got the spark that sets the fire," Dinson said.

Dipper Pines, a Senior, in turn says, "The team members deserve the glory. They train hard, and they run their hearts out." His role, he says, is just to organize everything.

But the runners themselves disagree. "Dipper all the way, man," says Charles, "Chuck" Macavoy, Piedmont's ace distance runner. Macavoy so far has clocked three first-place wins, with a second-place and a third as sides. In other words, he's won a ribbon in every meet the team has participated in this year.

"Dipper's the man," Macavoy said. "We joined the JV together as freshmen, and just watching him grow into his strengths as a sprinter has been an inspiration."

The other team members eagerly agree . . . .T

There was more, but Mabel had circled all the mentions of Dipper's name. "I'm so proud of my modest brother," she wrote underneath the clipping.

She didn't let Dipper know what she was doing with the scrapbook. It was going to be her graduation present to him. And every day it grew a little thicker.

Dipper, who put a lot of time into studying (Seniors with an A overall average could choose to exempt a few finals) and a lot of time into track practice and meets, was aware in an abstracted sort of way that Mabel was also chairing the annual student art show. What he did not realize—because Mabel had kept it a deep, dark secret—was that she was entering two works of art herself. One he had seen, a sculpture she had made of Waddles and Widdles asleep, with Tripper curled up on Waddles's back.

Looked at from one point of view, it was pure kitsch. But then looked at a little more closely, it was a carefully-observed study, with the pigs and the dogs all displayed in their minute similarities to and differences from each other.

They hadn't been prettied up. The pigs were a little dirty, and if you looked closely, you could see straws clinging to their sides and backs. The dog, lying nearly draped over Waddles's broad back, was obviously a mutt, but a contented and happy mutt. Mabel hadn't produced an imitation. She had captured in soapstone three animals utterly content and at peace with themselves, each other, and the world—it was, in a way, a post-postmodern piece of realism.

She was also entering an oil painting that she had worked on at school for months. Literally months. It was on a twenty-two by eighteen-inch canvas, and it was a landscape. Oils were a recent medium for her. She had done water-colors (the most unforgiving medium) and acrylics, but oils demanded a special touch. Mabel discovered she had that touch. She was critical of the finished painting, but Mr. Stottard, her art teacher, told her she had done well.

Nobody, not even Mabel, knew that Ben Stottard and Mrs. Hesketh, the principal, were so impressed they had sent photos of the painting to the Visual Arts Department at Olmsted and that, based on the photos and an enthusiastic letter from Stottard, Mabel was high in contention for a special scholarship for the gifted that, if she got it, would help pay her way through college.

The art had been finished in February. As mid-March came on, Mabel got more and more involved with staging a student art show to be remembered. Meanwhile, her whole family was in the dark about the oil painting.

No one, not Mom, Dad, or Dipper had so much as seen the work yet. Mabel, who thought it was just OK, still believed they would like it, and she wanted the unveiling to be a surprise.

Dipper continued to rack up first-place wins in the 200-meter race, which in some ways he found more suited to his abilities than the 100-meter, the race that he'd almost always run in his Junior Varsity years. He didn't know why.

Maybe it was that the 200-meter got him to the point of a second wind at an ideal time, roughly two-thirds of the way in. It was almost mystical, that runner's high, when the struggle became an easy pace, when energy surged through him, when it seemed as if he could run that way for a hundred miles.

Anyway, in eight meets he had taken the gold six times and had placed second twice, both times losing to much taller and longer-legged competitors. Even at that, he'd lost by only a stride or two, neither time by more than two. Once he had the feeling that if the race had gone on another twenty meters, he would have pulled ahead—the guy in the inner lane had sped to an early lead, but Dipper gained as they neared the finish line, his rival visibly faltering.

That was the one he lost by a stride or even less. Very nearly a tie. That loss hurt because Dipper knew that he had almost, almost pulled off the win.

Still, he couldn't complain. He couldn't have asked for more devoted or dedicated runners on the team. They were going into the CCC semi-finals with a wide lead over the next school. Dipper knew they were headed for State, and it made him feel great.

And also made him worry his head off. As he told Wendy when they face-timed after the eighth meet and his sixth first-place finish, "It's not our chances or the track team or anything. It's just . . . me being me, I guess. When things are going this good, I can't help feeling that something terrible's right around the corner."

"Come on, man," Wendy—sitting leaning back against her bed's headboard in her own room up in Gravity Falls, her red hair cascading over both her shoulders—said. "Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you're doing so good 'cause you're so good at what you do?"

"Is that Zen?" Dipper asked with a smile.

"Nope, it's Wen," she said. "Come on, man. I believe in you, Dip. Believe in yourself! What is it with you that makes you such a worrier, dude? You're riding high right now. Enjoy the ride! Hey, there's not a track meet on for the Prom weekend, is there?"

"No, that's a down week for us," Dipper said. "So I'm not gonna be worrying at all about anything except trying not to step on your toes!"

"We'll wow them all," Wendy said with confidence.

And that was true; because when they touched, they could hear each other's thoughts and, even more, could sense each other's intentions, emotions, and movements. That made them incredibly graceful together. True, whenever Dipper danced with any other girl, he tended to be a little bit clumsy and, let's face it, awkward, but he and Wendy—Well, Fred and Ginger could watch them and wonder how they did it and never, ever guess their secret.

On the evening of the art-show opening, Dipper and his mom and dad attended the Art Club banquet (nothing special, turkey cutlets, mashed potatoes, and mixed veggies with a dessert of brownie bars topped with whipped cream). Mr. Stottard announced various awards and honors.

Dipper wondered because Mabel, whom everyone said was excellent at art, was passed over for Graphic Design, Color Media, Three-Dimensional Media . . . he started to fume. However, at last, Mr. Stottard said, "Now the very special award: Art Student of the Year. Mabel Pines, please come forward."

He made a little speech about how Mabel was so good in so many fields that she deserved this special award, one not always given. "But this year," he said, "it's my honor and my pleasure to present this award to a young woman who not only mastered her art—but also taught me so much. Mabel, thank you."

Mabel accepted the plaque and gave her thank-you speech.

Here we go, Dipper thought, equally pleased that his sister had won the award and apprehensive about what would come out of her mouth.

But she said, "Thank you, Mr. Stottard. Thank you, fellow students. Thank you, Dad and Mom and my brother."

And sat down to tremendous applause.

The library had been transformed into an art gallery. Sketches and paintings hung on the walls. Sculptures stood on the low bookcases, every work spotlighted by a small high-intensity lamp. Mobiles hung from the ceilings.

At the very back, in a place of honor near the librarians' desk, hung Mabel's painting. Mr. Stottard had arranged things so a banner concealed it until you were just at the right viewing angle. When they reached it—

"Oh, my gosh!" Dipper murmured.

"You like it?" Mabel asked.

He nodded because he was too full of wonder and joy to speak just then.

Mabel had painted the Mystery Shack, not with all the improvements, the new roof, the added wings and rooms that Soos had built over the years, but exactly as it had appeared when she and Dipper first saw it, that June back when they were twelve.

As with the pig sculpture, it was a work of realism: The Shack, seen through a frame of pine boughs, dappled in summer sunlight. The view angled diagonally toward the museum porch and the gift-shop porch, lovingly detailed—even Grunkle Stan's half-assed patching of the roof, just random boards nailed over missing cedar shingles, was there.

Dipper saw the totem pole, half-concealed by pine branches and morning haze, but he knew it well. He read the signs, in all their chintzy glory—the big MYSTERY SHACK (the red S in SHACK had been in place the first day they showed up, but fell off not long afterward), and the exaggeration WORLD FAMOUS in a hand-lettered sign on the gift-shop roof, and GIFTS above the door. There sat the cooler and the Pitt's vending machine. On the roof he saw the question-mark weathervane.

It was all there, in full detail, everything as if glimpsed early on an endless bright morning with a few wisps of fog still clinging to the pine boughs. Here an orb-spinning spiderweb sparkled, diamonded with dew. There a Gnome stood quiet on the lawn—most people would have thought it was a lawn ornament, but Dipper recognized Shmebulock. He saw the hint of an attenuated humanoid figure against a tree—or was it merely highlights and shadows? No, Dipper somehow recognized the elusive Hide-Behind—but a viewer had to know what to look for to have a hope of noticing it.

He got the impression that in the painting it was so early the lights had just been turned on—the gift-shop window glowed in diamonds of yellow and orange (Soos holds a power drill as he prepares to put up a new wall shelf. Wendy is yawning and propping her feet up on the counter just inside!), the lantern over the announcement board off the museum porch glowed warmly (Grunkle Stan just stepped back through the door after lighting it and putting up the new big NO REFUNDS sign!), and the triangular window in the peak of the roof—their room—is lit up, too, as if the twelve-year-old Mystery Twins have just that moment awakened (Mabel is saying good-morning to the mold spots on the rafters—"Hello, Daryl!" and I'm about to be sent into the spooky part of the forest to hammer up some direction signs to the Shack, and I'll find the Journal, but I don't know that yet!)

Finally Dipper could speak, though all he could manage was a whispered, "Oh, Sis!"

Mabel's painting is the kind of work that an observer can look at for an hour and still keep noticing little things: the way one of the triangular pennants on the long curving rope is frayed, or the strange little goat peeking around the corner, or the way a distant bird in the sky really looks more like a pterosaur.

It was as if you could tell some mystery lurked in each soft dark shadow. After a while you wished you could step into the painting, open the gift-shop door, and see what this place was all about. Or at least Dipper had that feeling.

He teared up when he read the print-out label beneath the frame.

Mabel had titled her painting Where the Dreams are Real.

Dipper hugged her. He would tell her how wonderful it all was later. Just then he could only repeat—

"Oh, Sis!"