Chapter 3: Otter Creek, 1990

by Elizabeth McWillams

After my shift was over at the pool, I walked down to the ice cream shop to meet Nathan. He was busy restocking supplies and still had to re-fill the condiments so I took a seat at one of the tables on the back porch that overlooked the waterfall.

Otter Creek is mostly a meandering, lazy river – even stagnant at parts where the water just circles around in slow, lazy pools, pollen settling on top in foamy whirls and drift wood collecting in large piles that jam up at odd corners. But this particular section of Otter Creek is fairly dramatic. The creek widens into a veritable river and then plummets, suddenly, into a large waterfall. The town is perched right above the falls, a collection of brick and stonework that adorns the top like a crown. During particularly cold winters a thick sheet of ice will sometimes form on the top layer of the falls, and you can see the water crashing and rushing beneath this icy veil – bubbles trapped in veins of frozen water that race up and down like mad mice in a maze of tunnels.

In the summer time, however, the falls soften into spray and mist. Slippery moss grows on the sides of rocks and you can make your way over little islands of sand, boulders and felled trees right to the base of the falls. Rumor has it that there are caves behind the falls and that, if you can make your way across the oil-slick rock bed, you can stand inside them and look out into the underbelly of that great torrent of water.

Nathan and I had our first kiss at the base of the falls. We were fourteen. We had been with a gang of friends, the boys skateboarding down Frog Hollow, the girls sitting together on benches with their heads inclined in gossipy tangles. After what seemed like days of sideways glances and furtive smiles, Nathan had taken my hand and led me away from the group toward the falls. We found a log to sit on and sat together in silence, watching the water and kicking our feet at the ground. The air was filled with the ripeness of summer time – dank, mossy and hot. Nathan suddenly put an arm around my shoulder and looked at me from the corner of his eyes, then shifted a little closer to me. I remember laughing out loud and then, in a permissive gesture, resting my hand on his knee. That is when he turned my face fully towards him and leaned in, kissing me softly, shyly. We paused, smiled, and then kissed again, only this time he held my face in his hands and I wrapped my arms around his back, the tone quickly changing from a bashful child seeking acceptance to two triggered teenagers finally satisfying an urge that had been growing in strength, unanswered, for weeks now. We sat on that log for quite some time, kissing frantically, knowing that our friends were probably watching from the road, skateboards leaning against their legs, girls bearing silent witness with their mouths open. The falls thundered on and Otter Creek resumed its path downstream but, for us, that moment of time stood still – suspended in the air like a bubble that floats just out of reach, trembling and quivering before it bursts into a spray of soapy particles and nothingness.

Nathan sat down beside me, waking me from my memories. “Done?” I inquired.

“Yup, all finished. And my shift tomorrow doesn’t start until 11:00 am. What should we do? Where do you want to go?”

“Uhm, want to head up to Burlington? I told my dad that I was giving Tessa a ride up there to hang out with friends from Rice. I’d feel better with at least some approximation of the truth.”

“You’ve been to Burlington a thousand times. You can make up any small detail about what you and Tessa did. Let’s take a ride. Maybe Stowe? Check out the scenery. Then we can camp out somewhere, just the two of us. What do you say?”

“Camp? Where on earth are we going to camp? And I don’t have a sleeping bag. All I’ve got is my life guarding suit.”

“I got it covered,” Nathan said, smiling. He grabbed my hand and pulled me out of my chair. “Let’s go.”

That night, Nathan and I drove up Route100 through Waitsfield and up towards Stowe. The scenery was magnificent. The road followed a river that wound through the hills, past dairy farms, across covered bridges and by small, steepled towns with brick main streets and town greens. New England villages seemed to be built around two simple constructs: community and the Protestant Church. Every town had a library, a post office, a bank or two and a handful of shops, all clustered around a village green where community events and summer concerts would be held. Punctuating each town were at least two to three churches – an Episcopal church built most often with heavy granite and truncated steeples, the Congregational and Presbyterian churches built in white-painted wood, with tall glass windows and narrow spires that pierced the sky. 

Life must have been so simple in the days when these towns were founded – simple, but not without difficulty. I imagined that time was filled with raising children, tending homes and farms, schooling, shop keeping, praying. Every experience would most likely have been kept local, radiating out a distance of only 30 miles or so. Marriages would have been to your neighbor’s cousin, business arrangements conducted with the family from the town next over, even construction supplies bought from the mill down the street.  There must have been comfort in that predictability, that assurance of everything and everyone around you. Life would follow the seasons, blooming and contracting in accordance with raising and falling temperatures, snow storms, spring rain and late frosts.

Now, modern day life cut through the valleys and townships with ribbons of asphalt and telephone wires. Planes passed overhead on their northern routes from JFK to Charels de Gaulle, passengers soaring above with a water glass in one hand, a magazine folded in the other, oblivious to the history that had been built so painstakingly beneath them. Unaware of the small, village cemeteries where most every inhabitant shared one of three last names, when children died at one and two years old, where wives were left husbandless for a stretch of 30 years or more. The cemeteries were beautiful, fenced in to neat little squares by stone walls, golden lichen growing on the headstones, soft, verdant grass contrasting the grey and gold with a bold, emerald green.

I wasn’t sure if Nathan saw any of this as we drove along Route 100. Probably not. He seemed preoccupied with his music selections, commenting on the cars and trucks that passed us in the other direction, and telling me about his friend down the street who always had the tastiest, skunkiest KGB -  Killer Green Bud. I had tried smoking pot with Nathan a hundred times and always ended up speechless and terrified in a corner, talking myself into all the reasons why Nathan really didn’t love me and was most likely just passing his time until someone better came along. Like Pam – the gorgeous red head who drove her father’s beat up blue Toyota. I felt limbless, like an egg -  a Humpty Dumpty propped up in a corner, unable to move or escape my environment, forced to observe through a haze of smoke and Dance Hall music the slow and strange movements of whoever else was around me.

After a dinner of hamburgers and fries on a restaurant patio, Nathan handed me fifty cents to call my Dad and explain why Tessa and I weren’t coming home tonight. I slipped the coins in my pocket and, trying to ignore the nagging dread in the pit of my stomach, made my way to the pay phone by the bathrooms. Before I inserted the coins and dialed my father’s number, I leaned out of the phone booth to take a look at Nathan. He cocked his head playfully to one side and beamed at me, tapping his wrist in a gesture that told me we didn’t have all day.

I dialed the numbers and cleared my throat during the two second pause before the phone rang on the other end. After three rings without answer, and feeling a gush of relief that no one was home, my father suddenly picked up.

“Hello?” he said.

“Hi, Dad. It’s Katherine,” I squeaked, my voice cracking.

“Hi, Katherine. You still in Burlington?”  His voice already sounded disappointed.

“Yeah. Tessa’s friend, Erica, invited us to spend the night at her house in Colchester. Tessa’s parents already gave her permission so, is it okay? Can I stay the night? It won’t interfere with work. I’ll be back in time tomorrow. I’ll just go straight to the pool.” The words rushed out of me in a nervous torrent, leaving me slightly breathless.

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. I shifted my weight and leaned my head against the cool glass of the phone booth, feeling my knees tremble just slightly. Still no response.

“Dad?” I asked, half expecting to hear a dial tone. I dismissed the thought – he would never hang up on me.

“Goddamnit, Katherine. You come and go as though this were a boarding house. You’re 16! And although your mother might put up with these kind of shenanigans, I don’t!” He was enraged and his voice shook.

“Dad,” I said pleading. “ I don’t understand why this is such a big deal. I spend time with you. Just the other day we all had dinner on the porch and afterwards we played Boggle. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

“The last insult I need, Katherine, is an inventory of how you are an attentive daughter. I’ll see you tomorrow.” The phone went dead – he had hung up on me. I knew that I was being a disrespectful daughter - that almost every other word out of my mouth was a lie and every action toward him slippery and oily. But he had already made it clear how much he disliked Nathan, why would I ever tell him the truth? And my mother wouldn’t hang up on me. She would stay on the line until we had worked it out, reached an agreement. Parents aren’t supposed to just cut their kids off like that. Parents are supposed to see things through, to be patient and reasonable and forgiving, Suddenly, I felt abandoned, rejected. Anger and frustration bloomed in my throat. I grabbed the loose change that jangled into the coin cup and returned to the table where Nathan was waiting.

“All good?” he asked.

“Yup, all good,” I said, reaching for my pool bag and looking him directly in the eye. 

Nathan stood and took my hand. “Well let’s go!” he said. “I know the perfect orchard. I’ve got blankets, sleeping bags, a pillow to share. We’ve got the whole night together in the wide open underneath the summer stars. We’ll have Macintosh apples for a midnight snack and dewdrops for breakfast. And I’ve got you.” Nathan reached around and pinched my backside, then drew me in for a kiss.

Feeling bolstered, even defiant, we left the restaurant holding hands and headed out into the gathering twilight.