of it, but I donât go down. Below is the lodge. Itâs all logs and added-on wings, with a deck jutting out behind. Fourteen rooms in all, a ridiculous number of rooms. It should look ugly and awkward, but somehow it does not. There is a brave-dowager quality to Sara, the look of a lady pressing resolutely on toward her hundredth year, still taking pretty good strides in spite of her arthritic hips and gimpy old knees.
The central section is the oldest, dating back to 1900 or so. Other sections were added in the thirties, forties, and sixties. Once it was a hunting lodge; for a brief period in the early seventies it was home to a small commune of transcendental hippies. These were lease or rental deals; the owners from the late forties until 1984 were the Hingermans, Darren and Marie . . . then Marie alone when Darren died in 1971. The only visible addition from our period of ownership is the tiny DSS dish mounted on the central roofpeak. That was Johannaâs idea, and she never really got a chance to enjoy it.
Beyond the house, the lake glimmers in the afterglow of sunset. The driveway, I see, is carpeted with brown pine needles and littered with fallen branches. The bushes which grow on either side of it have runwild, reaching out to one another like lovers across the narrowed gap which separates them. If you brought a car down here, the branches would scrape and squeal unpleasantly against its sides. Below, I see, thereâs moss growing on the logs of the main house, and three large sunflowers with faces like searchlights have grown up through the boards of the little driveway-side stoop. The overall feeling is not neglect, exactly, but forgottenness.
There is a breath of breeze, and its coldness on my skin makes me realize that I have been sweating. I can smell pineâa smell which is both sour and clean at the same timeâand the faint but somehow tremendous smell of the lake. Dark Score is one of the cleanest, deepest lakes in Maine. It was bigger until the late thirties, Marie Hingerman told us; that was when Western Maine Electric, working hand in hand with the mills and paper operations around Rumford, had gotten state approval to dam the Gessa River. Marie also showed us some charming photographs of white-frocked ladies and vested gentlemen in canoesâthese snaps were from the time of the First World War, she said, and pointed to one of the young women, frozen forever on the rim of the Jazz Age with a dripping paddle upraised. âThatâs my mother,â she said, âand the man sheâs threatening with the paddle is my father.â
Loons crying, their voices like loss. Now I can see Venus in the darkening sky. Star light, star bright, wish I may, wish I might . . . in these dreams I always wish for Johanna.
With my wish made, I try to walk down the driveway. Of course I do. Itâs my house, isnât it? Whereelse would I go but my house, now that itâs getting dark and now that the stealthy rustling in the woods seems both closer and somehow more purposeful? Where else can I go? Itâs dark, and it will be frightening to go into that dark place alone (suppose Sara resents having been left so long alone? suppose sheâs angry?), but I must. If the electricityâs off, Iâll light one of the hurricane lamps we keep in a kitchen cabinet.
Except I canât go down. My legs wonât move. Itâs as if my body knows something about the house down there that my brain does not. The breeze rises again, chilling gooseflesh out onto my skin, and I wonder what I have done to get myself all sweaty like this. Have I been running? And if so, what have I been running toward? Or from?
My hair is sweaty, too; it lies on my brow in an unpleasantly heavy clump. I raise my hand to brush it away and see there is a shallow cut, fairly recent, running across the back, just beyond the knuckles. Sometimes this cut is on my right hand, sometimes
The central section is the oldest, dating back to 1900 or so. Other sections were added in the thirties, forties, and sixties. Once it was a hunting lodge; for a brief period in the early seventies it was home to a small commune of transcendental hippies. These were lease or rental deals; the owners from the late forties until 1984 were the Hingermans, Darren and Marie . . . then Marie alone when Darren died in 1971. The only visible addition from our period of ownership is the tiny DSS dish mounted on the central roofpeak. That was Johannaâs idea, and she never really got a chance to enjoy it.
Beyond the house, the lake glimmers in the afterglow of sunset. The driveway, I see, is carpeted with brown pine needles and littered with fallen branches. The bushes which grow on either side of it have runwild, reaching out to one another like lovers across the narrowed gap which separates them. If you brought a car down here, the branches would scrape and squeal unpleasantly against its sides. Below, I see, thereâs moss growing on the logs of the main house, and three large sunflowers with faces like searchlights have grown up through the boards of the little driveway-side stoop. The overall feeling is not neglect, exactly, but forgottenness.
There is a breath of breeze, and its coldness on my skin makes me realize that I have been sweating. I can smell pineâa smell which is both sour and clean at the same timeâand the faint but somehow tremendous smell of the lake. Dark Score is one of the cleanest, deepest lakes in Maine. It was bigger until the late thirties, Marie Hingerman told us; that was when Western Maine Electric, working hand in hand with the mills and paper operations around Rumford, had gotten state approval to dam the Gessa River. Marie also showed us some charming photographs of white-frocked ladies and vested gentlemen in canoesâthese snaps were from the time of the First World War, she said, and pointed to one of the young women, frozen forever on the rim of the Jazz Age with a dripping paddle upraised. âThatâs my mother,â she said, âand the man sheâs threatening with the paddle is my father.â
Loons crying, their voices like loss. Now I can see Venus in the darkening sky. Star light, star bright, wish I may, wish I might . . . in these dreams I always wish for Johanna.
With my wish made, I try to walk down the driveway. Of course I do. Itâs my house, isnât it? Whereelse would I go but my house, now that itâs getting dark and now that the stealthy rustling in the woods seems both closer and somehow more purposeful? Where else can I go? Itâs dark, and it will be frightening to go into that dark place alone (suppose Sara resents having been left so long alone? suppose sheâs angry?), but I must. If the electricityâs off, Iâll light one of the hurricane lamps we keep in a kitchen cabinet.
Except I canât go down. My legs wonât move. Itâs as if my body knows something about the house down there that my brain does not. The breeze rises again, chilling gooseflesh out onto my skin, and I wonder what I have done to get myself all sweaty like this. Have I been running? And if so, what have I been running toward? Or from?
My hair is sweaty, too; it lies on my brow in an unpleasantly heavy clump. I raise my hand to brush it away and see there is a shallow cut, fairly recent, running across the back, just beyond the knuckles. Sometimes this cut is on my right hand, sometimes
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