Forty Nine

August 1974

The Fireside Inn, a restaurant and bar, sits on a hill off a country road--Pennsylvania Route 191.  There is nothing but a rural five mile stretch between The Fireside and the closest bona fide town to the south. Beyond the Fireside going north, east and west there is next to nothing.  Monticello, New York is 35 miles to the east. Scranton, Pennsylvania about the same distance to the southwest.   

I often wondered how the Fireside survived in the winters. I heard that hunters would come to the area during various hunting seasons, but beyond hunters there was not much in the way of potential customers. Villages like Rileyville and Lookout were little more than signs on the road.  Rileyville, the bigger of the two, has-- even now--a tiny population, six hundred and forty-one residents.

In the summers, the population in the area swells.  There are dozens of children’s sleep-away camps near the Fireside.   Must be at least forty.  Equinunk, Tyler Hill, Swago, just three of the many.  In 1974, these camps operated for eight consecutive weeks starting in the early days of July and ending three and a half weeks into August.  Each camp employed counselors, swimming instructors, kitchen staff, and coaches of various stripes. Employees at these camps typically were relieved of their duties at 9 pm.  And then the staffs would jam into autos and drive to a tavern to do what people do in taverns.

The Fireside was a popular spot.  When you entered there was an informal restaurant to the left and a Cheers looking horseshoe bar to the right.  Counselors and staff from the various camps would arrive well after the dinner crowd, to whatever extent there was a dinner crowd, and commandeer tables to the left of the bar.  Groups would gather around these tables knocking back bottled beers and playing drinking games. Come about 1145, the patrons would stumble into their vehicles and return to the camps where they were employed.  

For seven days a week in the summer, the Fireside enjoyed robust business.  You still had year-round regulars parked at the bar each night. And in addition to the year rounders, to the left of the bar were these noisy clusters of camp women and men toasting this and that, laughing raucously, and hoping to pair off for steamy embraces when they’d return to their respective camp homes.  

In the first days of July, there could be minor tensions between the year-round regulars at the Fireside and the camp crowds.  There never would be a love affair between the groups, but camp folk got to know the regulars. By the end of July, there were comfortable, even friendly, bantering exchanges between the year rounders and the camp people.

And there I was in the middle of August at the Fireside Inn with a crew of buddies from the camp where I was employed as an athletics coach.  It had been an enjoyable summer. I ate well, enjoyed the fresh air of the Pocono mountains, and made friends for life. My cross-country odyssey, while only a few weeks past, seemed like years ago. I’d never written to anyone about Mike.  Except for a few times when I regaled interested others in stories of the road, I had not even thought about him or anyone else from that journey.  

Around ten pm this one evening it was my turn to buy beers for the crew.  There were five of us at a table.  I stood from where I had been sitting and made my way to the bar to order the drinks.

“How you doing, Al?” said a fellow at the bar I’d seen nearly every time I went to the Fireside that summer.  He was a heavy-set guy who always wore a fisherman’s hat. I couldn’t remember a time when I’d seen him when a bottle of Yuengling wasn’t in his grasp.  

“Marty, how is it going?”  I said.

“Good, good.” Marty replied. “You going to score tonight?”

“Not likely,” I replied.  

“Well damn it. Go get your beer and get back to work.”  

We shared a chuckle.  Marty returned to talking with a crew of his cronies, one sitting at the bar and two or three standing behind them. Marty and the other sitter had swiveled their barstools around so that they could converse with their brethren. I waved and grinned at Marty’s friends. They gestured similarly.

I turned my attention to the bartender.  We nod and smile familiarly.  I asked for four Buds and a sweet drink. The bartender acknowledges the request and goes to grab the beers from a cooler.  I slap a 20 on the bar and stand there waiting. I overhear a conversation that Marty is having that causes me to pause.

The group of them are discussing a drowning.  There’s talk of police going up to a nearby town, and tape cordoning off an area somewhere.

“Someone drown, Marty?”  I ask. 

“Well, you can say that.”

“What happened? A kid at one of the camps?”

“Not hardly.” Says Marty.  “A woman. Young woman. And Tommy here says they think it might not be an accident.”

I pull my head back and turn toward Tommy, another fellow who is a regular in the bar. I’ve seen him throughout the summer.

“Not an accident?” I say.

“No, they found the body. Drowned.  Doesn’t look like she went there to take a dip.”

“Really.” I say. The beers are up at the bar.  The bartender asks me again what mixed drink my friend wants. I tell him and turn back to the chatting cluster.

“Yeah” continues Tommy.  “Seems like a couple of teenagers went down to a pond to, you know, to be alone.  They do the hokey pokey and then go skinny dipping and the girl notices something that is not supposed to be there.” Tommy takes a gulp of his beer.  “It aint no fish. Dead woman. Completely nude. Completely dead.”

“Wow.” I say “really.” Members of Marty’s group nod. One raises his eyebrows as if to say, “True that.”

Tommy goes on. “This is like, mid-July, when the kids see the body.  Well, the girl doesn’t want her parents to know that she was doing the hokey pokey with this guy, so she makes the boy promise to keep his mouth shut.” Tommy takes another swig. He wipes the beer from his lips with the back of his hand before continuing “But the boy, he has the heebie jeebies about it. He goes back to the pond two weeks later, and there is the naked dead gal still in the water, but now she’s washed up stuck in what used to be boat locks.  It was over at Cline Pond. Used to be a lake for a summer camp.  The camp’s out of business now—been closed for what four or five years-- but the swimming dock with the boat locks are still there. The dead body is tangled up in one of the locks all the way to the side. If you’re standing in front of the pond, you can barely see the lock where the body’s caught. Real close to the edge of the pond.”

I am listening attentively to Tommy’s narrative. “Tangled up in one of the locks” I repeat.

“Yep.  Anyway, the kid is real spooked by what he saw. The body is disfigured and he thinks nobody is going to find it now, because it is tied up in this corner of the pond. The body’s been pecked at by animals.  It’s a mess.  If it wasn’t in the water it would smell to high heaven and it’s still no rose.  But, he doesn’t tell the cops yet because of his promise to his girlfriend. He does try to persuade her to go and tell someone.  She still says no, her dad will kill her, blah blah. 

“But eventually, the boy convinces her that they got to come clean, just say they were taking a swim, blah blah.  So, they tell the police.  Officers of the law come and find the body and she, or now it, is absolutely unrecognizable. What is left of her face is, well, just awful.”

I’m startled.  I mumble something. Don’t know what. I turn to the bar and there is the beer and the drink. Change has been laid from my twenty.

I slide the change from the bar. I turn to Marty.  “They identify the woman?”

“Not much to identify. No clothes, face is swollen something terrible. Nothing to identify.”

I nod and numbly place my hands around the four beers and cocktail. 

“Well, except for that one thing, Marty” says another of the friends.  There’s a bit of a chuckle from the group. 

“What’s that?” I say. I turn my neck in their direction. Hands are still around the drinks.

Marty speaks, gesturing with his Yuengling. “Tommy here has an old high school friend who works for the force.  The woman. The dead woman, had a tattoo on one of her tits.”

I freeze with my hands around the beer.

“You okay, Al?” Asks Marty

“Which one?” I blurt.

There’s a pause and then a collective howl.

“Which one?” repeats Marty, practically choking. “It matter which one?”  The group is hysterical.

I had indeed meant which one, but I can see how the question would seem bizarre.  I do have another relevant question which will make my first inquiry seem a little less absurd.  “Which tattoo? What kind of tattoo was it?”

“Ah.” said Tommy still wiping away tears of laughter. “That’s a little better. I guess. I don’t know.  They don’t know. My buddy said there were cuts through the ink and the area got infested with something or other. They thought the tattoo might be someone’s name and would give a clue.  But it’s not a name. They just can’t tell what it is. What it was.”

“Which one?” repeats Marty. This reignites the laughter. “Which one?”

***

“Hurry up with those beers” I hear from one of my camp co-counselors at the table.

Someone comes over and retrieves the beers and drink from me. I’m staring straight ahead stunned.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Zeke?”

“Be there in a minute” I mumble.

I turn back to Marty.  “What’s the name of the pond again?”  

“Happened up at Cline Pond.”

“Where is that?”

“In Galilee.”

“Where’s Galilee?” I ask.

The group chuckles again.

“Galilee is two gas pumps and a general store.” Says Marty. “Cline is about a mile from the store.”  

“Can you tell me how to get there?”

“Well, sure, not sure you can see anything. They took the body away.”  Marty turns to the bartender.  “You gotta pen?” he says. Back to me, Marty says that he will draw a map on a napkin.

***

The next day, I make some excuse that I have to leave camp in the middle of the afternoon. I promise to be back in an hour and I am.  I go to the site, and there is nothing to see. I look at the pond.  I can see the boat locks. There is some police tape around the area, but there is nothing to see.

I have a day off later in the week. I contact the police. I ask about the drowning. They want to know who I am.  I get the sense that they think maybe I’m involved.  I become unnerved and tell them that I was curious. They respond very originally telling me that curiosity killed the cat.

I say, “I heard that there was a tattoo on the breast of the victim.”

The officer snorts. “And this is of concern to you, how?” He says.  “Sorry Mr. Curious, we are not divulging information about the incident.  Are you related to someone who is missing?”  

“No” I say.

“Okay then. We are not divulging information to the general public about the incident.”

***

Maybe it is not her. 

There’s nothing much in the local paper, The Wayne Independent. A drowning was reported in Galilee. That’s all. Nothing in the Scranton newspaper.

Maybe it is not her. Probably not her. Very unlikely it is her.