29
On the night of the Wicker Man Festival, Fairen came by to pick up Zach, her small white car turning sharply into the driveway with a grace he had to admire. They stopped to get sandwiches, then sat in the car for a long time, heater blasting, making out. For once he didn’t mind the setting one bit. It wasn’t half bad, this business of hooking up in cars, if one respected the limitations of the space. The frustration of wishing he could take her elsewhere had its own peculiar excitement.
Once at the lake they ducked through the trees and entered the park, where the party was already in full swing. To the right a band played in an amphitheater; straight ahead, in the lake itself, scaffolding supported a high platform on which the wicker man was suspended. It looked less like wicker than like blocks of straw held together with metal bands, and, Zach guessed, the burn would be fast and messy; chunks would probably fall off, necessitating the midlake location. The pyrotechnics guys, two shadowy figures moving around a control box, looked like they were making the final preparations.
Fairen set down her backpack and unfurled a quilt onto the cold ground, a little distance from the amphitheater. She waved to a couple in the crowd, dancing to the modern-Celtic music coming from the stage, heavy on the drums. “Want to dance?”
“Not yet. Maybe when the burn starts.”
“Oh, c’mon. Don’t be inhibited.”
To distract her, he chose to deliberately misinterpret her meaning, and leaned in to kiss her. She laughed and kissed him back, and after a little more of that he playfully wrestled her down onto the quilt. A pine bough sheltered them somewhat, but people were everywhere, and so he contented himself with the sort of kissing that didn’t quite qualify as public indecency.
A whoop went up from the crowd, and Zach looked up to make sure it wasn’t a reaction to him and Fairen. Instead he saw a tongue of flame lapping at the leg of the wicker man. He rolled himself back up to a sitting position, and watched as the legs, and then the torso, gradually caught fire. Fairen moved across him, sitting backwards on his lap briefly and taking a moment to kiss him again before standing up and reaching out her hand.
“It’s started,” she said. Her smile was almost persuasive. “Come join me.”
“I liked what we
“There’ll be more of that later. C’mon.”
He grinned and hesitated, trying to think up a new way to lure her back. But then, behind her, he saw a woman walking swiftly toward them, wearing a down vest much like his own. As she came closer he realized it was Rhianne.
“There you are,” she said, clearly exasperated. “Zach, can I have a word with you privately?”
He immediately stood up, and Fairen shot him an odd smile and a small wave. “Catch up with me in a minute, okay?”
“Sure thing.” She walked off, and he asked Rhianne, “Is my mom in labor?”
“No. She’s fine. I’m glad I found you. Seems like every kid from Sylvania is here.” She took a deep breath. “Zach, listen to me. You have to break things off with Judy McFarland right away.”
His eyes widened at hearing her name from Rhianne. Immediately he felt the gut-level panic he had feared for months at being found out. He said, “I already did. There’s nothing going on anymore.”
“You’re sure she understands that. Because that woman’s not stable, Zach. She’s dangerous, and she might try to say you raped her.”
He shook his head. “She won’t really do that. She’s just upset and got her feelings hurt. I didn’t do anything to her that she didn’t want me to do.”
“Well, you need to be prepared for what she might accuse you of, if she’s crazy enough to try. Which she might be. She hit me and shoved me into her stove.”
“Really?” He half laughed, and Rhianne gave him a look of alarm. “Glad it’s not just me. She gets pissy when you tick her off.”
“I’d get a restraining order if I were you.”
Now his laugh was outright. He felt impatient to get back to Fairen. “You’ve seen her, right? She’s about the size of a twelve-year-old. I’m not worried about it.”
“I think you’re underestimating her.”
He shrugged and let his gaze wander over her shoulder. “People mouth off when they’re mad. Word getting out about what happened is the last thing she wants, trust me. It’ll blow over.”
Fairen was wandering back toward him, her gaze curious, her purple ski vest swinging stiffly in the cold air. Her flaxen hair was backlit by the wicker man in a halo of yellow. The drummers in the circle stepped up the rhythm into a near frenzy, hands striking drumskin with a force he could feel in the ground.
“Come on,” she yelled, gesturing with a broad arc of her arm. “You said you’d dance with me!”
He offered Rhianne an apologetic nod and walked over to where Fairen stood, smiling and dancing, her hair aglow in the light of the burning.
I needed to get my head together, as Scott said. To sit and think.
I drove out to the lake, where I imagined I could park in the shadowy little spot where Zach and I had often stopped, and look out at the water, and talk myself back into a clearer frame of mind. Beneath those trees I could consider the full arc of our relationship. There I could follow the trail of memories from our first covert, intoxicating visit to that space to the last, when I climbed onto his lap and felt his skin blazing hot around me, delighting in it for the last precious moments before the just universe would begin to confront me with every sorry truth about who I was. Before it dismantled the playhouse my mind had built, hoping it would serve as a for tress.
But the parking lot was jammed full of cars. I had never seen it so full. I heard music not far away and realized there was a festival going on. Gradually I remembered seeing the posters around town, a straw effigy burning in some sort of Celtic winter ritual. I parked my car illegally on the painted stripes beside a handicapped spot, and left
