“I hate to say this,” I said, “but I have to pee.”
Pia tapped the brakes, heeding signs that signaled sharp turns ahead. “We all do, I think. Want to practice going in the woods?” She glanced over at me with a smile.
I shivered. “There has to be something around here.”
More green flew past, broken only by vast unnamed lakes bordered by tall pines standing sentry. Ignoring the double no-pass lines in the road, a truck loaded with Porta-Johns roared by. Pia’s hands whitened on the wheel.
We drove another half hour, then forty-five minutes, everyone’s bladder bursting by then, as we bumped along on pitted tar dead level with the earth. I had the sense that anything could come brawling out of the woods, snarl across our path, then disappear into the forest on the other side.
Down a short dirt drive, a log cabin butted up into a hillside, a satellite dish stuck to its flank like a wart. A wooden sign that read SUNDRIES/GUNS/TACKLE/BAIT hung askew over the door. A smaller sign underneath—an afterthought—read CARHARTT QUALITY BOOTS. A yellow light burned behind glaucous windows. Heavy pine branches clawed at the car as Pia crawled along the shoulder. I was struck by the sameness of the view in all directions, the sheer density of growth, and how easy it would be to lose our way just steps from where we sat. I felt watched, though I couldn’t remember feeling farther from civilization.
Pia turned to us. “Ladies? Your thoughts?”
“Perfect setting for the next Saw movie,” Sandra said.
Pia rolled her eyes. “That’s the spirit, Katy-Loo.”
“I’d like to say I don’t have to go that bad, but . . .” I shifted in my seat as I watched Rachel’s jaw work at her gum.
She cursed under her breath as she reached for the door handle.
“When in Maine . . .”
The rest of us got out of the car in thick silence, shaking out our stiff limbs and brushing ourselves off. Daylight lingered, a peach-colored glow through blackened trees. Pia did some kind of runner’s stretch, groaning a bit. We waited until she was done, then followed her down the dirt path to the entrance of the store.
A muscular metal spring slammed the torn screen door behind us as we stood awkwardly in front of a vast candy display. Necco wafers, Rolos, giant Hershey’s bars, Bonanza taffy, Now & Laters, licorice pipes, all coated with a gray film of dust. Behind the counter in the receding darkness a lightbulb ticked and swayed over a display case of sausages coiled like snakes in a white metal pan. Flies buzzed behind the glass or turned quietly on yellow strips that curled from the ceiling.
Claws scratched across a wooden floor. A filthy dog, a mix of pit bull and something hairless and bigger, scrambled out from behind the display case and galloped at us, tongue flapping. It licked our hands as if frantic for our love, wagging hard its half-a-tail, which looked lopped off for no particular reason.
Pia and Rachel cooed at it. They lifted its pig-pink muzzle up to their faces and accepted every kiss, while Sandra and I more or less backed away after a quick pat or two. We wandered past wooden bins overflowing with potatoes, carrots, and radishes still wearing their sooty coats of earth. Jars of homemade bread-and-butter pickles, pots of “Marge’s Blubarb Jam” cinched with cloth checkerboard hats, knitted dolls staring through button eyes, and moose-themed ashtrays crowded the shelves. Coffee burned in a crusty pot on a glowing hot plate.
“You get offa them ladies, Corky.” A squeak, followed by a whiff of acrid body odor mixed with a sweetish onion smell.
We all turned to the source of the voice, the smell. Another squeak, more shrill this time, like rusted metal parts grinding together. A circle of light cast by a banker’s lamp on a glass counter illuminated a massive pair of hands spread open on a magazine. We followed the light up to a gelatinous mountain of a man, maybe five or six hundred pounds, wearing overalls and no shirt, sitting in what looked like a mattress folded in half and fitted into an armchair of sorts. Uplit, his tufted red eyebrows grew untended. His features nestled close together, a face meant for a smaller man but tucked in between rolls of flesh and jowls. A neat, oddly fussy mustache had been waxed into two perfect tips. I doubted he could get out of the chair contraption on his own.
“That’s okay,” Pia said, trying to shed Corky, who had begun to hump her leg, its age-spot-stained back curved and straining. “I love dogs.”
As we approached, he flipped his magazine shut and slipped it somewhere under the counter, a practiced move. Underneath the glass shelving all manner of bullets glowed copper and silver in rows of cardboard boxes. A crossbow hung from the ceiling. Girlie magazines, scratch tickets, chewing tobacco, and more candy and gum filled the racks and displays behind him, disappearing into the gloom.