Summerwind Magick: Making Witches of Salem

by Rick Bettencourt

  “That guy back there in the corner kind of looks like my dad,” she said to me last time we saw it—not tonight. Tonight, she was fixated on the singing.

  Anyway, like I said, we just got back and I’m exhausted. I have a Spanish test in the morning that I haven’t even studied for. ¿Como esta Luis? En la boca cerrrada no entran moscas. Ugh, I should be practicing; instead, I’m writing. Oh, well. First, I have to tell you what happened to me and Seth yesterday…

  Mr. Journal, you know I have like a major crush on you (okay, him). And that he lives just two houses down from me, plays football for the high school, graduating in May, popular, and hot! I just can’t stop thinking about him.

  I still don’t understand why the freshmen in this stupid town don’t get to go to the high school. We have to go to the “junior high” in South Peabody with all the kiddies. I’d give anything to be in the same gym class with him. Instead, I get fat-ass Marty Bornstein farting in the showers. God, help me!

  Yesterday Seth and I went out to smoke cigarettes in the shed behind his house. I stole a pack of Marlboros from my aunt. I don’t really like them, but I know he does. It’s kinda becoming our little ritual, date thing. Go for a walk, smoke cigarettes, talk, and hang out by the pond or something. We’ve had some really good conversations, once I get my mind off his crotch.

  Michael shook his head and turned the page. Josefina had the vacuum running—will wonders ever cease?—and he kicked the door closed so he could concentrate.

  Last week, I told him I thought he was sexy. He laughed. I also told him that I’ve done it before…with guys back in California. I told him that back there, it’s pretty commonplace for guys to do each other. Unfortunately, that hasn’t persuaded him YET to show me his…but yesterday we got pretty damn close!

  We had had a couple cigarettes. It was cold out but warm inside his parents’ shed. He had a couple nips of whisky that he stole from his dad. I took a swig of one but didn’t much care for it. He laughed at my choking, then took mine and gulped it down.

  “So tell me more about the California girls,” he said.

  And I started in with my made-up dirty stories. He loves to hear them. I made up something about having sex with this “hot blonde chick” back in California. (Lie! The only female I’ve ever seen naked was my aunt Judy. I caught a glimpse of her cooch when she fell down drunk wearing a housecoat with nothing underneath. The horror!)

  Anyway, I told him about this time this girl (I named her Rachel) blew me. And I was telling him how hard I was, how big her boobs were. How she was dripping…because someone once told me that’s what girls do. Then, I started acting it out. I was telling him how she came over to me and started rubbing my crotch through my pants, unzipping my fly. At this point, Seth was noticeably aroused. I was sitting beside him on an upside-down pail. He was leaning on the shelf above me. I swear, the zipper on his faded, brown Levi cords looked like it was going to come apart at the seams. He threw his head back and moaned. “Man, that’s hot shit!”

  I went on with my story, describing how Rachel was moaning, wanting me to do it to her.

  He inched closer to me and wanted me to act it out.

  “Give it to me, big boy,” I said.

  “What she do next?” He had his eyes closed and rubbed himself slightly through his pants.

  “Well,” I said, starting to unzip my pants. “I took her head and buried it in my crotch and told her to do me good.”

  His eyes opened, those beautiful blue eyes, yet they were a little bloodshot, likely from the drinking. He then grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and shoved my face into his crotch.

  The pail flew out from under me as I fell to the ground.

  “Oh, God!” he yelled.

  I could feel his manhood through his pants pressing against my face. Then he yelled, “Oh, shit!” And with one thrust to my face, my cheek became wet.

  Michael laughed and shook his head. “Jerk.”

  He then picked me up by the collar. He’s so strong, and he threw me up against the wall. His father’s rake fell to the floor.

  “He was such an ass. What the hell did I ever see in him?”

  “Mr. Michael?” Josefina yelled.

  “I’m in here.”

  “What you doing?”

  “Nothing. You can come in.”

  The vacuum started again, and Michael went back to his journal.

  Seth grabbed me by the hair. “What the fuck’s wrong with you? You fucking faggot!” He kicked the metal pail, and it clanged against the side of the lawn mower. He looked down at the stain on his pants and then bolted.

  I just sat there kinda mesmerized, then left. He called me three hours later to apologize and wants to get together again tomorrow.

  All right, I really need to get back to my español.

  Michael flipped the page. “God, I had such a thing for him.” He shook his head and read the next entry:

  November 22, 1979

  Dear Mr. Journal,

  I did you.

  Michael + Seth

  Art for Art’s Sake

  Having spent the past few weeks on Summerwind, Carolyn enjoyed a newfound sense of purpose, assisting Viola with food preparations. The hubbub of workers—who took to the island to help Michael and Terrence renovate the inn and make the changes Viola wanted to her home—needed to eat. Oddly, the simplicity of the kitchen tasks she carried out helped find her voice. Singing in bits and parts again.

  “But they have to be Maine blueberries.” Viola ducked under a branch. A few birds scattered. “You can pick great ones over on Goosehead.” Viola’s description of blueberry pancakes made Carolyn’s stomach growl.

  Rebecca swung two wicker baskets, each lined with red-checked cloth—one for Viola and the other for herself. Carolyn swayed a matching one. A warm glow filled the actress.

  “After beating the eggs and flour,” Viola said, “you gently fold in the blueberries.”

  Carolyn kept pace with the older woman walking alongside Rebecca, as the three trudged through the lowlands of Summerwind Island.

  “Goosehead?” Carolyn’s basket scraped a bush to her right, and she stopped to take in the crashing ocean.

  “That’s where we’re going,” Rebecca said, and when Carolyn turned to face her, the witch walked backward saying, “Goosehead is the northernmost tip of the island. You’ll love it.”

  “I’m sure.” Carolyn followed. She loved everything about the island. Without the fanfare of a film production, the place radiated serenity.

  “Excellent, excellent blueberries…” Viola put her hands in the pocket of her sweatshirt—one Carolyn bought for her—a blue hoodie with a zipper cutting through the words NEW and YORK.

  “You really think I can make them?” Carolyn doubted her baking skills. It’d been so long.

  “Those construction workers love fresh pie.” Rebecca held aside a branch for the two to traipse past. “Maybe you’ll find a man. Surest way to the heart is through their stomach.” The witch giggled.

  Carolyn was glad for the cover of trees to conceal the blushing she felt on her cheeks. “I don’t need a man.” While she’d confided in the witch about her relationship with Rudy—or lack thereof—and how she sometimes longed for domesticity and settling down, her career never seemed to be conducive to doing so.

  Viola turned. “Are you fancying one of the construction boys at the inn?”

  “No.” Carolyn waved a hand. In truth, no islander or construction worker rehabbing Michael and Terrence’s new place interested her. That didn’t matter. She didn’t need a man. What she liked was the domesticity of island living and wondered if it played on her face like a teenager in love—surely the two saw something.

  “I think the construction workers will like blueberry scones,” Viola said. “We’ll put them on my menu, too.”

  The menu. The old lady had been clamoring for Carolyn to live on the island and turn the old cottage—the location used for her character Marigold in
the movie—into a café. “Scones?”

  “They’re easy.” Viola shuffled past thorny brush. “You can handle it.”

  When they descended upon the clearing at Goosehead, they spent an hour or more filling their baskets with blueberries, after which they meandered westward toward a body of brackish water.

  “Is this the Pool?” Carolyn recognized it from having fished with Food, Terrence, and Michael around Thanksgiving. “It looks familiar.”

  “That’s the Pool.” Rebecca climbed atop a rock, took out a pair of binoculars, and looked through them toward Bar Harbor.

  “You see the mainland?” Viola picked a few leaves out of the baskets resting on the rock.

  “I can see the old bridge.” Rebecca handed Carolyn the lenses.

  Carolyn took them and eyed a dilapidated dock Rebecca had pointed toward. A gravel road led down Wisteria Beach.

  “That was where the old bridge used to be,” Rebecca said.

  Just a dock remained. Two boats were moored to it and jostled against its side.

  “The Ole Summerwind Bridge,” Viola said. “It used to connect us to Bar Harbor but burnt down in the Great Fire of ’47.”

  Carolyn passed the binoculars back to Rebecca. “The fire you told me about?” she asked Viola and then looked to Rebecca, unsure if the woman had disclosed to Rebecca what the mainlanders thought of her.

  “Rebecca knows.” Viola popped a blueberry in her mouth.

  Rebecca slid off the rock. “That fire burnt more than seventeen thousand acres of land in Bar Harbor alone. A lot of the grand homes of the mainland were destroyed, yet most of ours were spared. Thank God.”

  Carolyn liked the way Rebecca included herself as part of Summerwind. “Why don’t they rebuild the bridge?” asked Carolyn.

  Viola handed a basket to Rebecca. “Nobody ever wanted to.”

  Rebecca grabbed the baskets. “They…I mean, we sort of like it that way.”

  The trip back didn’t take long. The island wasn’t all that big to make walking it a chore. Carolyn liked that about Summerwind. “Everywhere you go, there I am,” she muttered, recalling what Viola had said to her when they first met during filming.

  “Huh?” Viola limped, her hip acting up from the hike.

  “Oh, nothing.” Carolyn put her arm around the woman. “I like it here.”

  Viola smiled. “I knew you would.”

  Rebecca walked ahead, and Carolyn and Viola meandered behind.

  “Does that mean you’ll stay?” Viola asked. “I’m getting used to our afternoon-tea chats.”

  The thought of leaving it all behind—a career, New York, the hubbub—enticed the actress. “And bake cookies in a café?”

  Viola shrugged. “Things could be worse.”

  “I don’t know.” The sun dipped closer to the edge of the ocean and purple rays cast through clouds along the horizon. “It is beautiful here.”

  Viola put her hand through Carolyn’s arm. “It’s magical.”

  When they got back to the area around the inn, the women dispersed—Viola to her house adjacent to the inn, Rebecca to find Derek, and Carolyn to the cottage she’d been staying at across from Viola’s house. The cottage was a two-story structure built mid-century as a store and restaurant. It had a studio apartment above it.

  Through the storefront window, Carolyn watched Michael and Terrence traipse the inn’s porch. They looked in deep discussion with the contractor heading up their renovations.

  Terrence put a hand on the guy’s shoulder and they shook hands. Michael shook the contractor’s hand next.

  They look so happy. Carolyn sat on the window’s ledge. She eyed the dusty old shop. The turquoise paint peeled in spots. Her dangling legs swung along the wall. “Leave show business…for this?” She took in the counter topped with boxes, practically hiding the old kitchen behind it, where the day before a mouse had scurried out from.

  The front door creaked open. “Carolyn?” Michael said.

  Carolyn rose. “Oh, hey.”

  Michael shut the door behind him. An old bell atop the transom rang. “Any more mice?”

  “No, thank God.” Carolyn shoved her hand in her jeans pockets.

  “Good.” He pulled out a chair near the door, spun it around, and sat in it with his arms rested on the back. “The contractor says the hardwood under the rugs looks salvageable.”

  “Oh, nice.” She leaned against the doorframe.

  “They’re going to move the piano out tomorrow.”

  Carolyn nodded. They’d talked about her singing in the old parlor where the piano stood before the workers moved it out of the way for the renovations.

  “I’d love to hear you sing. I think we all would.”

  The inn’s parlor walls had holes in them for wire installation. The floors, uncovered in some spots, had reams of thick green paper where the blue carpeting had been removed.

  Alone, Carolyn went to the piano, sat, and played a few notes. She cringed. It needed tuning. She played a lower register. “It’ll do.”

  When she sang, it now came without effort, unlike the many times she tried back in New York. She continued for a time, and when she got to the song’s chorus—a piece from the musical Godspell—she looked up to notice a small group had gathered in the inn’s hall to watch her.

  Josefina, Rebecca, Viola, and Derek stood, seemingly mesmerized.

  She smiled and let them watch.

  Michael and Terrence edge their way through the group, and they all entered the room.

  Outside, construction workers stared through the windows.

  Carolyn let the energy of the song flow, and for the first time in a long time, sang to others out of pure enjoyment.

  The next morning, inside the Tulip Café, as she nicknamed it, Carolyn handed Derek a lunch packet for the boys. The Mercedes’s tires marked its arrival in pop sounds along the gravel driveway, and it drew to halt in front of the inn. Michael and Terrence got out.

  The Closed for the Season sign that Viola religiously put out after Labor Day had been altered: Closed for Renovations.

  “Thanks, Food.” Carolyn held the door open for Derek and his roommate as they left the café carrying drinks and snacks for the construction crew.

  “Coffee is on the way.” Food trudged across the dirt path leading to the inn and Viola’s house. He carried a makeshift tray: the bottom of a cardboard box Carolyn found.

  “What a pair.” Carolyn liked Food; Derek and he an odd mix of friends.

  They walked past Food’s beat-up, blue Ford pickup. Derek lumbered behind carrying Styrofoam cups of coffee.

  Viola’s dog scurried across the way, barked at Derek and Food, and stopped in front of the café.

  Carolyn opened the door. “Hi, Sam.” She knelt and petted him. “Your momma must be on her way for afternoon—”

  “There he is.” Viola’s voice warbled from age yet Carolyn found it comforting.

  “He knows the routine.” Carolyn stepped back so Viola could enter. “He just wants his treat.” She went to the cookie jar where she kept dog bones, took one out, and gave it to the dog.

  “Can’t you say thank-you?” Viola addressed the dog like a child. She opened the door, and the dog scurried out. Viola moved to her favorite spot by the window where she could watch the inn be “cleansed of its decades of disrepair,” as she would often say.

  Carolyn pulled out teacups from a shelf by the entrance to the kitchenette. “And how is Ms. Atwood-Dorr today?”

  “Amazing,” Viola muttered, staring out the window. “I neglected to see how in shambles the inn really was. God, so fast it’s all happening. I still can hardly believe it. Practically alone, and now I have you, all of you.”

  The teakettle whistled, and Carolyn went to it. “So when you say ‘amazing,’ are you referring to the inn or yourself?”

  “Both! It’s like a dream. I just can’t explain it. You must think I’m crazy, Carolyn. Some batty, old lady trapped on an island.”

  �
�I think, nor thought, anything of the sort.” Carolyn poured the water.

  A rap on the window could be heard—no doubt Viola waving to someone. “Hi, Rebecca,” the old lady said.

  Carolyn emerged from the kitchenette, carrying a tray with their tea.

  Rebecca waved, put her arm through Derek’s, and headed for the inn.

  “I know the mainlanders think I’m some wild, crazy old coot.” She watched Carolyn center the tray on the table. “Things don’t usually happen so quickly ’round here…that’s why I’m in awe of this renovation.”

  “Viola, you’ve been thinking of renovating ‘her’ for decades.” Carolyn liked the way Viola anthropomorphized the property and her dog.

  “Well yes, but the renovation process itself seems so quick.” Viola’s head shook, the way an elderly person’s sometimes does, as Carolyn sat across from her.

  “We have Darjeeling tea today.” Carolyn pulled her chair in.

  “Now you’re going to have to let it sit for a bit,” Viola said. “I know you like it strong. I’ve got all afternoon. My HTML class doesn’t start till six.”

  “Your what?”

  “Didn’t I tell you? I signed up for another internet class for my webmaster certification. It’s still on the computer, but instructor-led. You watch him in a little window on the PC. I downloaded the program and already tested it all last night before I went to bed. My system’s configuration was perfect. I just hope I can understand the man—some guy from India.” She looked to the teapot. “We should give him some Darjeeling.”

  They laughed.

  “Viola, you never cease to amaze me. You’re what? Eighty-one?”

  “Eighty-two…be eighty-three next January.”

  “Eighty-two going on thirty-two.”

  “Keeps the ole noggin ticking.” Viola tapped her finger against her head.

  “I must say.”

  “You know, my grandmother, Nana Atwood, went up to Bangor every semester, mostly Thursdays, to take a course at the college. Little community classes like needlepoint, watercolor art, photography. Oh, God, she was a terrible photographer. She took the class four or five times, would open the darkroom door and expose everyone’s film.”