The Writing on the Wall A Novel - By W. D. Wetherell Page 0,48

I didn’t feel as lonely and abandoned as you might think. My dead flowers bothered me. The heat bothered me. And very faint and almost forgotten that other kind of heat the kind that comes with needing a man.

Okay so I’m crying on your shoulder. Let me cry. I needed a friend and still do for that matter. There’s Mrs. LaBombard up the road and the nurses at work but not many besides that. YOU NEED ANOTHER FRIEND! I told myself and no sooner had I wished it than it happened.

She was delivered by bus that was the strange thing. Buses never go by here except when there’s construction out of the highway and they use our road as a detour. A big Greyhound so silver and shiny it seemed to push away the heat stopping right by my house which surprised me considerably. The brakes squealed the door swung open and in the whoosh of cool air emerged a girl of about eighteen or nineteen. She turned around to take the knapsack the driver handed out to her which was the Boy Scout kind crammed so full it was impossible to understand why it didn’t burst.

I knew from that first glimpse of her she was the prettiest girl who ever stepped foot in our town. She was barely five feet high and seemed even shorter because of the dress she wore which was soft and summery and clung to her in a way that was Kewpie doll perfect. Her hair was long down past her waist and straight as you can imagine not a curl in sight being the color you would get if you mixed buttercups with silk. Her face was round and full almost Russian I thought with eyes so big it was like she carried her own mirrors. Not mirrors she could stare into like so many vain girls but mirrors you could stare into yourself lit up by her warmth. She had that way about her. Freckles clustered around her nose just the right number and old-fashioned Valentine-shaped lips.

“Can I ask you a question?” she said in the softest voice imaginable. She set her knapsack down on the grass.

“You just did.”

She turned and pointed. “How come those dark splashes appear over the hills and go away and come back again? Some look like maps and others look like butterflies. I watched them all the way along the highway. I never took my eyes off them.”

It was a silly question a lot of her questions were silly and yet she always asked them with so much curiosity they didn’t seem silly after all.

“Shadows from clouds,” I said. “The hills are down here, the clouds are up there, and the sun is even higher so when they blow apart that’s what happens.”

She took that in very gravely hugged herself almost shivered. “It’s the most beautiful sight I ever saw.”

Probably nobody in three hundred years had stared at these hills without either hating them for blocking their way or appraising their potential to generate money. After all these centuries they had their first lover.

“Dottie Peach,” I said sticking out my hand.

She smiled at the Peach part then hesitated. “My name is August,” she said at last. “August,” and she nodded emphatically up and down.

“Augusta?” I said.

“August.”

Don’t ask me how but I knew right away she had just invented it on the spot. New name new place new life. She put her hand on my shoulder for balance stooped down took off her city shoes and threw them as far as she could into the meadow so she was barefoot. She had taken the bus from New York she explained and now if I could help her with directions and maybe fill her canteen she would be on her way.

She had a map the kind the gas stations issue and she kneeled down to spread it open across her knapsack. “I need to find the Wooden Shoe,” she said which was funny because the last place that would be plotted on any map was the Wooden Shoe.

I knew as much about the Wooden Shoe as anybody in town which means not a lot. Most people call it a camp because of the young people living there or because they use an abandoned logging camp as their headquarters. It’s a huge piece of land they’re squatting on maybe three thousand acres butting up against the border though it’s all cut down and burned over and not much use to anybody.