Engagement Rings and Hot-Tub Flings
(July 9-10, 2016)
5. Take a Hike
Saturday was just as hectic as Friday had been. In fact, it was a little more crowded, but at least for the most part, the tourist kids weren't as destructive.
Again Teek worked the snack-bar grill past normal closing hours, and again the tourists took plates of food out to the picnic tables. Soos said, "I could, like, put French doors in that wall there opening onto the lawn, and we could make the picnic thing a regular thing. I'll think about that this winter!"
Teek finally had to close down, everything but beverages, at four because they flat ran out of supplies. He and Abuelita cleaned up the kitchen and he went out onto the lawn with a big trash bag to tidy up. Tourists tended to ignore the big trash cans Soos had left out after the Fourth of July barbecue, which Teek said was just as well, because any bits of food they tossed attracted possums, raccoons, and Gnomes. He normally finished his duties at three, but finally wound up a little before five that afternoon.
He and Mabel had a movie date for that evening, and he'd brought a change of clothes—he was uncomfortably aware that after a day over the grill, he smelled like hamburgers—and he borrowed the upstairs bathroom to shower and change.
When at six P.M. a dozen tourists were still milling around in the gift shop, Grunkle Stan expertly cut them out, like a cowboy working a herd of stubborn longhorns, and ushered three or four at a time up to the counter to pay for their purchases. Finally, about twenty minutes late, the last ones left with a big bag of merchandise.
"Bar the door!" Stan bellowed, slamming and locking the gift-shop door. "Roll that Aztec calendar over and brace the door! Get a hammer and nail it shut!"
"Wow," Dipper said, balancing his register. "Never thought I'd see Stan close the door on the possibility of more money!"
"I know, right?" Wendy asked, leaning on the counter.
With Teek standing nearby, Mabel was punching numbers into a calculator, pausing now and then to blow at a strand of her hair that kept flopping down the side of her face. "How long is this madness gonna go on?" she groaned.
"'Nother three weeks," Wendy told her.
"It's always nutso crazy right after the Fourth," Soos said, pulling a chair out from the snack bar and settling down on it. "This summer, though, it's like coocoo bonkers!"
"The economy's got better," Stan said as Sheila came up and started to massage his shoulders. "Plus, you and Melody been doing a great job of pluggin' the joint on TV and such. That's nice, honey."
"Thank you, Mr. Pines!" Soos said.
"I was talkin' to my wife," Stanley said. "But you and Melody done good, too."
Wendy smiled and told Mabel, "The traffic will ease off now. This is always the heaviest tourist week. By August we'll be about back to normal. Then there's the pre-Labor Day run-up, but that's not hardly as bad as this."
"Bad?" Stan asked, taking off his eyepatch and fez. He put his arm around Sheila. "Bite your tongue, Wendy! Nothin's bad about takin' money from guys who are eager to get rid of it! The only side to it us up! Oh, yeah, I got a little to add in—here ya go, Dipper." He put down four twenties and a ten on the counter. "Add that to your take."
Dipper, who had just totaled up, grimaced. "But—I don't have a receipt to cover that."
"Receipt, my foot," Stan said. "That represents bets I made with three separate smart-asses on a card trick!"
Sheila said, "Stanley, you didn't!"
"Look, hon, I did the trick like two dozen times. Those three wanted to bet me it couldn't be done—they brought up the wagers themselves. I suggested twenty bucks, and when one guy wanted to bet me a hundred, I was the one held it to a cap of fifty smackers! Wasn't my fault I took their dough!"
"You made the bet, you keep it." Dipper pushed the bills toward Stan.
He pushed them back. "Nah, I wanna make sure the Shack set a record this week, even with takin' the Fourth off."
Dipper pushed the bills back. "But it fell on a Monday! The Shack always takes Mondays off!"
"I'll take 'em, Grunkle Stan," Mabel said. "Teek, hand it to me, please."
Teek picked up the ninety bucks. With a nod of approval, Stan said, "See, Dipper, your sister could be a success in business, but you couldn't, 'cause you don't know how to negotiate!"
"Negotiate," Mabel said complacently, adding Stan's total to her own, "is a business term meaning 'make somebody knuckle under.'"
"Hah! That's my pumpkin!" Stan said proudly.
Dipper and Mabel compared register totals. Mabel won by ten dollars—courtesy of the ninety that she'd accepted from Stan—but Dipper let her have the little triumph without quibbling. Rubbing his hands, Stan observed that the grand total was enormous, easily the equivalent of a good week's business back in 2012.
"OK," Wendy said, pushing herself back to the vertical and arching her back. "Enough money talk. Say goodbye to me and Dipper, everybody! I'm takin' him off on an overnight campin' trip."
"Don't you need a chaperone for that?" Mabel asked suspiciously.
"I'm an adult," Wendy reminded her. "Technically. Technically an adult. So I can chaperone."
"I'll have to remember that one for later," Mabel said, smiling.
Dipper had already packed his camping gear, but when he went up to his room for it, he took time to wash his face and brush his teeth—a shift behind the register always left him a little grimy, and missing lunch except for wolfing down a really fast bologna sandwich left him with a bad taste in his mouth. He checked his bedroll to make sure he had included his little roll of peppermint Life Savers.
Yep, there they were. He tucked them into his jeans pocket and was all set.
"C'mon, man!" Wendy called from the bottom of the stairs. "We're wasting daylight. I don't want to hike out to the campsite in the dark!"
She was only teasing, because they still had hours of sunshine left—at that time of year, in central Oregon the sun set around nine PM—but Dipper hurried. They stowed his camping stuff—he was bringing the tent, one that Wendy had given him for Christmas some time back—in the trunk, next to Wendy's bedroll and knapsack of food. She added a small insulated bag with, probably, more goodies.
"You wanna drive again?" Wendy asked.
"Yeah, I'll be glad to," Dipper said, grinning.
"Here ya go." She handed him her keys.
They drove back up into the hilly part of the Valley, past the abandoned, ruined church where once a geyser had rescued Soos, Stan, Waddles, Mabel, and Dipper from a pterosaur. A little way from it and across the highway was the old cemetery where Pacifica's boyfriend, a reformed vampire, had once, um, is lived the right word here?
Anyway, finally they bounced along an old logging trail, never paved, almost up to the edge of a gorge. The ruins of an old bridge had fallen down into the stream, and on the far side they could see the bluff cliff of a mountain, a spur that concealed from view the ghost town of Plenty, once centered on a now-played-out mine.
"Lock it up," Wendy said as they got out of the Dodge Dart. They retrieved their packs and helped each other adjust the straps for a more comfortable fit. Then Wendy said, "Wagons, ho!" and led the way into the woods.
When they got close to the beaver pond, Dipper said, "It's a lot wider than it used to be!"
"Mm, yeah, all that rain back last month," Wendy said, glancing over at it. "Water level's still goin' down. Most of that's only a few inches deep, though. You can see weeds and saplings sticking out of the water."
Ghost Falls was about twice as big as Dipper remembered—still swollen with run-off rain, he supposed—and the illusion of a gigantic ghostly figure in the cascade of water couldn't even be made out, just a blotchy white area. They climbed the grassy dome of a hill that was Wendy's favorite camping spot and pitched the tent. The roaring of the falls sounded like wind in the tops of very tall trees.
By then the sun almost touched the horizon. A pale crescent moon showed above it in the western sky. It had been a fine, clear day, and Dipper could see for miles. And the temperature had topped out in the mid-eighties and wouldn't go below fifty-five that night. Good camping weather.
"There!" Wendy said, finishing with the tent. "Let's hang the food up in a tree in case there's hungry bears around, and then let's go fishin'."
The fishing hole was a fairly broad, rocky basin. "I'll take you out some time and teach you real fly fishing," Wendy promised. They were fishing with flies, but not with fly rods—just thin monofilament line tied to a short bamboo pole. Standing a little way upwind from the pond, they tossed the flies onto the surface and then twitched them. The trout were not at all suspicious, and in ten minutes Wendy had landed two good-sized fish and Dipper one. "That's plenty," she said.
Dipper collected the firepit stones and gathered deadfall wood for the campfire while Wendy filleted the fish. In half an hour, she'd cooked up a tasty dinner—fresh trout ("No better tastin' fish in the world," she told Dipper), plus a potato cut up into rounds and fried next to the fish, and a kind of veggie stew that she'd frozen in bags. As soon as the potatoes were done, she dished them up and started reheating the veggies.
In a day turned ruddy with sunset light, they sat cross-legged on the grassy hill, their plates on their knees, and ate dinner, washing it down with instant lemonade powder and water from their canteens. "This is great," Dipper said. "What's the veggie?"
"Guess you'd call it a version of ratatouille," Wendy said. "Aunt Sallie just calls it 'this and that stew.' You cook a diced-up eggplant with onions and garlic, then add some summer squash and zucchini, chopped-up tomatoes, mushrooms, whatever else, and simmer until it gets bubbly-thick. You like it?"
"It's good," Dipper said.
"Real good on a cold day," Wendy agreed. "OK, let's police the area!"
By then the sun had vanished, but Dipper obediently used a folding shovel to bury the fish leavings and the meager scraps of cooked food a good distance from the hill. Wendy scrubbed the pans and utensils.
When Dipper re-joined her, Wendy had unrolled the sleeping bags. The two-person tent had just about enough room for both of them. She had also spread a layer of dirt over the campfire embers, effectively banking the flames. She stood up and dusted her hands. "All done?"
"Yes," Dipper said. "Buried it all about a foot deep, two hundred feet from the water."
"Good man. How's about you and me hiking over to the hot spring and relaxing?"
"OK," Dipper said. "But, you know—gonna get me going."
"That's the plan," she said with a mischievous grin.
The spring lay only about a ten-minute walk from the hill, but they took a trail flashlight (and Dipper, ever cautious, made sure he had his small pocket one as a backup) and walked through the deepening twilight. The silver moon smiled down at them and vanished behind the cliffs just before they reached their destination.
The hot spring nestled in not-quite-a-cave, a scooped-out overhang up against a rocky cliff. Wendy kicked off a boot, tugged off her sock, and dipped a toe in. "Just right," she said. "It's funny, but sometimes the spring runs colder, sometimes hotter. This is great."
They turned their backs to each other while stripping. Then Dipper heard Wendy plunge in. "C'mon, man!" she said. "Water is perfect!"
Keenly aware that, dark though it was, she could see his bare backside, he stepped back and hopped into the spring, holding onto the side. Only when he was in shoulder-deep water did he turn around to face her. "It does feel good," he said.
"I checked it once with a thermometer," Wendy told him. She had sunk down so that just her head was above water. It was dark enough so he couldn't see anything of the submerged parts of her. "One hundred degrees even. And I think there's probably minerals in the water, too. Just like a spa!"
The spring was almost circular, six or eight feet across, its sandy bottom about four and a half feet down. The rim was all stone, except at the side closest to the beaver pond where a rivulet had eroded its way to form a winding, soggy watercourse where the spring run-off meandered through the marsh and into the pond. In the natural hot tub, Dipper edged around until he was shoulder-to-shoulder with Wendy.
"Feel better about skinny-dipping now?" she asked him.
"I could get used to it," he admitted. "But, you know—until we're really and truly married, I sort of want to—keep some things to, um, look forward to."
Wendy laughed. "You are so adorable," she said. "Adorkable! That's the word. Kiss me."
For a time they both enjoyed one of the peppermint candies he had packed. Then, not really doing anything erotic, they stretched out in the water. and held hands. It was probably the dissolved minerals, but something gave them extra buoyancy, so they let the water hold them up and lay with their heads on the side of the spring like two ships moored side by side. Too lazy even to use their touch-telepathy, Dipper said, "I've been thinking about that time Mom and Dad took me and Mabel to Orlando. I mentioned that the other day. You know there's a town and lake there named 'K-i-s-s-i-m-e-e?"
"Sounds like my kinda place," Wendy murmured.
"Only it's pronounced 'KisSIMMy," Dipper said.
"Aw, now you ruined it."
He smiled. "You ever been to Disneyland?"
"Are you kidding, man? With Dad working every week of the year and four kids to take care of? Not hardly."
Dipper asked, "Would you like to go?"
Wendy considered the question. "Dunno. I do like rides and stuff when a carnival comes through. But I guess I grew right past the kiddie stuff real fast—I mean the costumed characters and all. I guess if I were a mommy, I'd love to take my kids there someday. Why, dude? You asking me out for a date?"
"Sort of, in a long-distance way. Thinking about honeymoons," Dipper said.
She chuckled. "All I want for our honeymoon is a place somewhere real private with space around it and preferably a hot tub or a swimming pool. I got my fantasies about loving in the water, you know. You better look out for me this evening! Oh, and I want a place with a great big king-sized bed, too. The kind that gives you room to explore uncharted territory."
"That sounds good to me," he said.
She snuggled a little closer to him. "OK, dude," she said. "Here you are with a naked girl—"
"A beautiful naked girl," Dipper corrected.
"—thank you, and she's agreeable to anything but that one thing we promised we wouldn't do. Wanna fool around a little?"
"I wouldn't mind," Dipper confessed.
And they did stay true to their vow, but they also did a little, well, call it 'exploring' that night. When it came time to get out, dry off, and get dressed, Dipper was no longer bashful. In fact, he and Wendy helped each other into their clothes.
And the helping was probably why it took them a half hour longer than it should have.