Page 79 of Fade into You
“Bird, what do you know about mill towns?”
“Um, kinda like coal towns, they’re company-based, but centered around a mill.”
“Okay smarty-pants. Spot-on. So the company essentially owned everything and set things up where people lived, worked, and played all on company property and with resources from the mill owners.”
She sings out a phrase,“I sold my soul to the company store.”
“Hell yeah!” I smile and nod, loving the way she knows old-school tunes too.
“Well, welcome to Gold River Mill Village,” I say as we approach the first house, the aged weatherboard siding perforated with holes and grayed over time, and the rusted tin roof pockmarked from time and abandonment. “Built in 1905, mill closed in 1970, and the mill burned in ’77.”
“Is it haunted?”
“People say so, but I think it’s just lonely more than anything.” I stop the car in front of another old house and hop out. “Definitely a liminal space.”
“What’s it transitioning to?” she says, stepping out and stretching, her shirt lifting up to show a tiny swath of creamy skin, igniting something in me.
“Either back to nature, or if I had my way, it would become a musicians’ retreat, where bands and artists could stay and work on their albums. It’s a silly dream, I know, but one I had the first time I heard about the place.”
She takes my hand, our fingers intertwine, and I’m reminded of how well we fit together. “Is there room for poets, too?”
“Always,” I say, and we lean in and kiss, the ghostly structures bearing witness to our happiness.
I break away and pop Betty’s trunk, revealing a big-ass duffel I picked up at Goodwill ages ago and covered with permanent marker and patches. I haul it to my shoulder, and then toss Bird the other item, a Polaroid camera, filled with film and ready to go.
She does not catch it.
“Oh shit,” she says, pulling it from the dirt and brushing it off.
“Don’t worry, that thing is a beast,” I say, and walk toward the house, which I’d scoped out last week, preparing for this.
She holds the Polaroid up and clicks a picture of me, and I’m just in time to flip off the camera.
“You don’t have to always be a badass!” She’s smiling, and I love the way the sunlight is hitting her face, like a picture off an album cover.
“I hate photos of me, I look terrible.”
“You look fucking gorgeous,” she says seriously, and I don’t laugh at her because she’s so serious she actually said “fucking.”
“Come on,” I say, leading her into the house. I drop the bag on the table, a big wooden sturdy thing left behind by the previous occupants. I start pulling out the necessities: picnic food, extra film, wood for the old stove, lighter, my small boom box, a pack of D batteries, and a sleeping bag.
“Um, that looks like we’re spending the night,” she says, a blush blooming on her cheeks.
“It’s an option,” I say, removing the pressure of anything. “Like Boy Scouts, I’m prepared. Now let’s get some photos!”
We spend the next hour exploring the town, looking into the houses, snapping photos and waving them as we wait for them to develop. I get a candid of her in the old general store, in front of a big wavy glass window with a few panes missing, like a future visitor of history, out of place yet so meant to be there. It’s a wonderful date. A date, yeah. I’m on a date I planned and it’s amazing. For a second I forget about movie marathons and piles of mini candy bars and Dade. It’s me and Bird and we are existing in this place that very barely exists and she is incredible and opening up my world and I’m here soaking it in like a thirsty tree root finally out of a drought.
When we get back to the house, the sun is setting and we’re getting cold. I throw the wood in the stove and abysmally fail to light the fire.
“You gotta start with tinder and kindling and then bring in the logs, and there’s a pyramid you need to make…. Here, let me.” Bird takes the lighter out of my hands, empties the stove, and starts over. I watch her tear out a piece of notebook paper and crumple it up, then put over it small twigs she gathers from the yard. She adds larger ones in the shape of a pyramid, without even setting the firewood in. She sparks the lighter and ignites the paper. It catches, the flame jumping from paper to twig to stick, and once it’s lit up nice and hot, she drops in a couple of logs.
“How’d you learn to do that?” I am stunned. This issoun-Bird-like.
“My dad. He liked taking us camping when I was a kid,taught us a lot about survival.” She stands back, admiring her work, then guides me to the fire and rubs her hands on my arms, warming me.
“Roller-skating and survival, very cool. Sounds like someone you’d want in the zombie apocalypse.”
“Yeah…” she agrees, and I can see her go distant, thinking about him. A dim sadness takes over her face.
