Laughing Waters, Roaring Thunder by Patrick Sean Lee (free e books to read TXT) 📖

Chapter Fourteen
Laughing Waters, Roaring Thunder

As part of our summer routine, Pop would empty the piggy-bank, pack Mom, me, and sometimes Jimmy, into the car, and off we’d go into the high country for a week’s vacation. Our destination? A small cluster of utterly charming cabins built in the 1920’s and 30’s, in a remote, idylic place called Cabin Creek, nestled high up in the mountains west of the city.
That year, near Labor Day, Jimmy had been invited. After several minutes of mighty celebration following this windfall news, he and I went back to Mom and pleaded and cajoled her into allowing Mickey to come along, too. We labored to convince her it’d be a great idea, and after a warlike assault on her from two fronts she finally relented and gave us permission to invite him as well. Of course we already had, so all that needed to be done was to have her give Mrs. Fumo a courtesy call.
“You guys promise to stay out of trouble if I let him come?” Mom stated more than inquired as we stood before her like miniature saints that evening before we left for the mountains.
“Well, yeah, Mom. Of course. We’re just going to fish…and stuff,” I assured her.
She gave it a little more thought, closing her eyes, scrunching up her mouth as though she’d just drank a glass of vinegar. “Well, ok, then. I’ll call his mother and ask her. Goddam woman. Probably won’t do much good, though. She’s so uppity…and I still think she goes to that Calvinist church, or whatever it is, up on 2nd Avenue. I don’ care what anybody says.” She mumbled more ugly remarks about the woman as she walked away to look up the Fumo’s telephone number.
“Hot-diggedy!” Jimmy said, punching me in the shoulder.
I wanted to somehow include Carol (who was once again back in the forefront of my thoughts, even though she was nowhere to be found), but for the life of me I couldn’t think up a convincing enough reason to get her invited as well. It had been troublesome enough for Jimmy and me to talk Mom into letting Mickey join us; bringing Carol into the conversation, I knew, would be pushing my dear mother to the limits.
I was certain the three of us couldn’t possibly find anything up there in the wilderness to destroy. There was nothing but forests of pines, the tiny meandering creek a middling walk from the cabins, and a few cows in the mountain meadow pasture a short hike away from the buildings. Ok, the little General Store and office owned by Mr. and Mrs. Trumbull who rented Pop whichever cabin he wanted for fifteen dollars a night. That, too. But surely, in even one of our most awful moments we wouldn’t bring it tumbling down. No, never. It’d be safe.
After the conversation between Mrs. Fumo and my Mom ended, she came back out onto the front porch where Jimmy and I had been waiting with our fingers crossed, and announced the good news.
“That old bat said yes. He can go. Now, let me tell you in no uncertain terms before we even get started here! If the three of you even think

about gettin’ into any trouble, I’ll skin ya’ alive. I promise. You understand me?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“We do, Mom. We’ll be like angels, I swear it!”
“Alrighty then. He’s on his way down right now. The three of ya’ sleep downstairs. We’re leavin’ at five o’clock sharp. Mind what I told ya’! No pranks or trouble.”
I couldn’t let a good idea die. “Can I invite Carol?”
“WHAT?” Mom’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.
“Just kidding,” I tried to redeem the question spoken without any thought. Jimmy scowled, and Mom loaded up her rifle.
“You’d best get that girl outa’ your head right this minute, Skippy. Your way too young to be thinkin’ about girls like you’ve been doin’ with that

one all summer. ‘Course you can’t invite her! Whatdya’ think I am…”
And so I received a long lecture, despite my continued explanation that I’d only been kidding about having my heart’s deepest desire come along with us. The goddess who was missing. The creature I loved, who would no doubt spoil any ill-conceived notions us boys might have to burn down Rocky Mountain National Park, or shoot the cows between the eyes with our Whamos, or execute whatever scheme Jimmy might dream up and talk Mickey and me into. Honestly, I knew in the deepest part of me that tromping over the brush-infested banks of Cabin Creek, untangling a fouled fishing line every fifteen steps, falling into the water, getting eaten alive by mosquitos, all of that would only appeal to Jimmy for about ten minutes—if that long. Besides, standing there in front of Mom, I noticed he still had his fingers crossed behind his back. He was plotting something already. A girl among us might make all the difference in the world. Silly me.

The next morning at precisely 4:33 a.m., as promised, Mom woke us up, fed us each a bowl of Wheaties, and then packed us, bleary-eyed, into the backseat of the station wagon. Mickey, Jimmy, and I slept for most of the interminably long trip, but awakened just east of Estes Park, a world renowned resort that, rumor had it, had been built by Buffalo Bill many years earlier. I didn’t think that was true, but we raced through the charming town anyway on the way to our bucolic destination. Cabin Creek lay a few miles farther west up the canyon which had been carved a trillion years or so ago by the St. Vrain River. That, I believed, was true. Though it wasn’t the Mississippi by any stretch of the imagination, the St. Vrain was an impressive body of water nonetheless, rifling down the steep, narrow, granite-walled canyon on its way to the plains below.
“They pulled two fisherman out of the drink a couple of months back,” Pop said, turning his attention to the baskseat briefly as we passed alongside a particularly nasty looking area of rapids. “The papers said the men must have slipped on a rock casting their lines out. River was higher then. Run-off was still heavy in June. I can’t figure out for the life of me, though, how two grown men could both fall in at the same time,” he finished up.
Jimmy had his nose stuck out the window by then, staring down at the broiling foam below us. “Maybe somebody murdered ‘em an’ tossed ‘em into the river.”
I thought that was a possibility.
“I doubt it,” Pop answered him after a short pause and a laugh. “People don’t murder fisherman. Least ways not up here. Never heard of any

murder in these parts that I can remember.”
“Well, maybe you have now!” Jimmy quipped. His statement gave rise to a series of unbelievably ridiculous questions and answers. Us four men—mom could have cared less, and was still dozing—discussed criminal activities possible in “these parts” for the remainder of the drive, none of which bore any resemblance to reality, probability, or even rationality.
A couple of miles up the highway Pop stuck his arm out the window, signaling our turn, and we rolled across the river over a narrow, ancient bridge built out of timbers and a lot of prayers. Ten minutes later we crossed another tiny bridge spanning Cabin Creek, and Pop pulled to a stop in front of Mr. and Mrs. Trumbull’s General Store. He left the car, and five minutes later, exited the store, motioning that our cabin was “Laughing Waters”, fifty yards up the dirt road. Good fortune. Of the half dozen cabins, Laughing Waters was the nicest—two stories tall, with a rock fireplace in the living room, and a real toilet—inside.
Jimmy, Mickey, and I whooped it up and left the car at a dead run, thankful to be free of the rear-end paralyzing confinement of the backseat. I whisked the keys to the cabin out of Pop’s hand as I passed by him, tripped Mickey as I passed by him, and arrived in a dead heat with Jimmy at the base of the flight of rough pine stairs leading up to the entry door. We looked quickly at one another, then galloped up to the top.
Laughing Waters sat nobly among the stand of trees, tucked into a natural hollow in a steep, rocky hill leading off into the forest. The old cabin smelled more delicious inside, even, than the fragrant pine-scented outdoors. I stepped across the doorway threshold into a large, open room. On the left lay the living room with the massive stone fireplace. A pair of antlers sacrificed God knows how long ago by an elk, hung over the firebox and its highly polished, hewn mantle. On the floor in front of it, a ten foot-wide, oval rag rug had been placed for the comfort of guests to lie on and gaze into the roaring fire on chilly autumn, and freezing winter evenings. To the right stood the dining room with its rows of sparkling clean windows overlooking the breathtaking vista outdoors, and beyond the dining room, a small but functional kitchen with its wood-burning stove, a geriatric ice box, and another smaller table for quaint, informal breakfasts. A backdoor with gingham curtains partially covering the glass led out to a leveled-out spot for chopping wood, and beyond…the infiniteness of the forest.
The wide staircase leading up to the three bedrooms separated the living room from the dining room like a priest standing between a blushing bride and her groom. This was indeed God’s country, and my Laughing Waters had a peaceful sanctity about it that humbled and performed magic on me whenever I entered