Into the Woods In the Dead Of Night
We all got up early the next morning to head off to Vermont. Lucinda and I followed their car east across Interstate 90 until we got to Albany. Then we hopped on Route 7 until we got to Vermont. I believe we stopped briefly in Bennington before we headed up to the Norse Lodge located between Manchester Center and Danby.
When we arrived, my parents and their friends were all already there and had been there for a few hours. I think we took our time getting there because Mindy was hoping that my father would have looked and given up on the gold already, but there was no such luck. All of the adults were sitting on the porch waiting for us. In years past, everyone usually sat on the West porch facing the pond located on the property and the highway beyond it. Today they were on the East side facing the hill leading up to the mountain where the graveyard was. Right away you could see my father was quiet, looking up the hill and pondering how he was going to get all of his gold down from the mountain. All of us, upon just arriving, did our best to avoid any and all talk of the gold. Racing off to the liquor store for a huge bottle of wine before they closed worked at first and then showing Lucinda around was the best and most convenient excuse.
Lucinda was in love with all of it. She told me it was the first time she was truly on vacation from everything, from work, from being a mother, and even from being a wife. She had been doing all of it since she was 17 and now that she was in her 30’s, it was something she needed. I was glad because my biggest fear was still that she came all this way for nothing, and that was furthest from the truth.
Because we were last minute additions to Vermont, Lucinda and I would have to share ‘the Bunk Room’. It was a small room upstairs by the front staircase that usually the kids stayed in because it had a bunk bed. I used to stay in with Charles when we were kids for years while coming here.
It was the first time I had been to Vermont in 6 years and for once things had really changed. Most years nothing changed so that was a shock. The new owners that had purchased the land off of Olaf’s children had plans to turn the property into a wedding destination. As beautiful as the place was, it was rustic and never going to be a good place for a wedding. Regardless, they tore down acres of trees on the property up the hill from the lodge and built a wooden deck. Halfway through the project, the couple that owned the land had been going through domestic problems. On top of that, their dog drowned in the stream/pond chasing after beavers. They stopped their endeavors and got divorced. Now the property was going into disrepair.
Like tradition, the first night we get there all of the older adults go to bed relatively early after the long drive. Meanwhile, we younger adults stayed up drinking and trying to come up with a plan to avoid the issue we had concerning the lack of gold up in the mountain. We spent the night telling Kevin how dead he was going to be when my dad find out between coming up with bad ideas. Shortly before midnight and after some heavy drinking, we came up with the idea of going up into the mountain in the middle of the night, digging a hole in the far corner of the cemetery away from all the graves and making it look like the gold was already taken. In our inebriated state that seemed like a fine idea.
So my two brothers and I, along with Mindy and Lucinda prepared a midnight trek into the forest. We took the very shovel my father planned on using to dig for the treasure out of his car when we couldn’t find any shovels in the caretaker’s garage. And we were only able to find one flashlight for the five of us.
It had been raining earlier that evening, which we thought was possibly the reason my father hadn’t gone up to the cemetery already. Slowly we made our way up the hill in the darkness until we were out of sight of the lodge. Then I turned the flashlight and we entered the wooded area.
Mindy was already freaking out. She hated the darkness. She was terrified of snakes. She thought everything was going to get her and every branch that brushed up against her only heightened her fear. One even scratched her arm and made her bleed. We were about two thirds of the way up to the cemetery, trying to convince Mindy we were almost there, when an owl hooted or an animal howled. That was it. Mindy started shaking and started having a panic attack. Lucinda’s maternal instincts went into effect and she lunged at me to get the flashlight so she could bring Mindy back down the mountain immediately. Without the flashlight, it was pitch black. Knowing full well that if Lucinda got the flashlight, my brothers and I would be stuck in the woods until daybreak ran from Lucinda. She ran after me a few feet before she twisted her ankle on a tree root on the path. As Tom tried to calm Mindy, and Lucinda sat in the mud nursing her ankle, Kevin and I looked at each other and realized this whole venture had been an utter disaster. Kevin and I agreed we should abort the mission, but Mindy said she would be okay, and maybe because the alcohol muted the pain, Lucinda said she would be able to continue.
We made it up to the cemetery and went over to the far corner. Kevin stated to frantically dig a hole as fast as possible. After a little bit we switched off and I started digging. The majority of the digging consisted of big rocks a lot of them. Every other shovel full hit one of them.
I remember turning to Kevin while I was digging and saying “More gold than a man can melt in a week? Moron. How big a hole does this have to be
?” About halfway down we hit a huge tree root cutting right across our hole. Great. We convinced ourselves that if we dug out a little, it would look like they pulled the chest of gold out from the side of the root. After a half hour or so of digging, we thought we were done and went back down the mountain.
We got back to the lodge and changed out of our muddy clothes. That’s when I noticed through the rip in my jeans that my knee looked all blistered and bubbly. I ran down to the kitchen where the others were to ask them if they knew what this was and everyone thought that it was ‘a curse’. Very helpful. Lucinda’s sprain, Mindy’s cut arm, my rash. All part of ‘a curse’. I just went to bed. Things would look better in the morning I told myself,
The next morning, after we all sobered up, we all agreed that we must have dug out the most stupidest looking hole last night. No one is going to buy it. I told Kevin and Tom we had to go up there and fix it, but they said no way were they going to go up there again. You know, curse and all.