Strelnikov
4th Level Red Feather
- Joined
- May 7, 2001
- Messages
- 1,812
- Points
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by Strelnikov
Copyright 2004 by the author
Author’s Note: As often happens, the characters took this story away from me. It ended up almost novella length, 36 pages of 10-point type. I’ve split it up into three posts – you may want to download it and read it offline. Enjoy!
Friday
Meghan Williams took her book out onto the screened back porch after lunch. Meghan had graduated from high school in this Toronto suburb a few days before. She was slender and attractive, a little taller than medium height. She had shoulder-length wavy dark brown hair, gray eyes, and the sort of fair skin that freckles on the way to a suntan. At age 18, Meghan was a work in progress, pretty enough but no great beauty. In a few more years, she would be absolutely stunning.
Meghan sat on the wicker sofa and drew her feet up. She was wearing a t-shirt and shorts. Spring came late in this region near the Great Lakes, but the June Friday afternoon was warm – she hadn’t bothered with shoes.
She looked up from her book when her brother Adam came onto the back porch. “Looking forward to your summer job, sis?” he asked. He was 20, dark-haired and gray-eyed like his sister, a big guy who had played high-school hockey and the Canadian version of football. He had just finished his sophomore year at Commonwealth University in the States – like many schools in the Northern USA, CU aggressively recruited Canadians for their hockey program. She had been accepted there too, and would be joining him the coming fall.
Meghan’s smile was dazzling. “I sure am,” she replied. “Mom always said what a great time she had when she worked at the Lodge years ago.”
“Well, I guess we won’t see much of each other this summer, so…”
Adam lunged and grabbed up Meghan’s ankles in an arm lock.
“Hey! Take off! NOOOOO! HAHAHAHA-HEEHEE-HAHA-HAHAHA!” Meghan laughed as his tickling fingernails flicked and scratched her sensitive soles. Her tickle laugh was like her singing voice, musical and not the least bit scratchy.
Meghan hated to be tickled, which of course just encouraged her brother. He had tickled her feet at least once a week the whole time they were growing up. The time he had spent at college had been a welcome relief, but he more than made up for it when he was at home. Now, she laughed helplessly while his nails traced circles and other tickling shapes in her arches, not making much contact but tickling like crazy.
Adam shifted down her arches onto her heels, tickling both with one big hand. He let her catch a breath, then tickled up onto her arches again, and she knew from experience what was coming next. She struggled, squirming like a worm and laughing like mad, but he was just too strong – she was had.
Adam tickled Meghan’s soles, left-right-and-repeat, watching her toes twitch and curl. He tickled the balls of both feet, and her laughter went off the scale. It tickled unbearably – she was helpless now, red-faced, laughing at the top of her lungs, with tears of laughter running down her cheeks. He kept it up until Meghan thought she would go crazy.
“Adam! Stop it!” Dad said. Like Adam, he had ditched work to see Meghan off.
Adam quit and released the arm lock. “That should hold you for the rest of the summer, eh?” he said with a grin.
“Hoser!” Meghan said angrily.
Mom gave both of them an odd look. “It’s about a two hour drive, Meghan,” she said. “We better get going.” Her eyes were brown, but otherwise she was an older version of her daughter, still trim in her mid-40’s.
The car was already packed. Meghan wasn’t really angry at Adam – the tickling was old custom, something she had learned to endure. She hugged him and promised to call.
“Keep the shiny side up, Cheryl,” Dad said. “Drive hard – drive fast – stay between the ditches,” Adam added. The men waved to the women as they drove off.
Their destination was Lakeshore Lodge, a small resort in the Muskoka region, on the south end of Sparrow Lake. It catered to budget-conscious families with children – school was finally out for the summer, so it opened for the season tomorrow. It was run on the so-called American Plan, with housekeeping and all meals provided as part of the package – that meant that the moms got a vacation too.
Lakeshore Lodge was a mom-n-pop operation; the proprietors, Bob and Sue McKenzie, were the third generation of owners, taking over after Bob’s parents retired. Meghan had found the job through the most basic form of networking: Young Cheryl Flynn and Sue Palmer had worked there together years ago, and they still stayed in touch with Christmas cards and email.
They headed north on Highway 400, suburbs shading off into scattered houses and then to farms and orchards. They came to the Highway 11N exit in about an hour. Another 20 minutes took them to the outskirts of Orillia, on the northern end of Lake Simcoe. The afternoon sun shone brightly over the blue water.
“Sparrow Lake isn’t blue like that,” Mom said. “Peat bottom instead of sand. But it’s pretty in its own way, lots of trees. Lake Simcoe is too developed to suit me.”
They continued north on Highway 11 for another 20 minutes, running parallel to Lake Couchiching. This region was in the transition zone between northern temperate forest and boreal forest, hardwoods giving way to pine and silver birch. The soil was thin, scraped away by glaciers 10,000 years ago, exposing the black-figured pink granite bedrock in places.
A mile past Severn Bridge, Mom turned off on a two-lane blacktop regional road. “Fifteen more minutes,” she said.
The road ran west past dairy farms, which gave way to cottages and summer homes where the road turned south parallel to the Severn River. A mile further on, they turned west and crossed an old concrete bridge. The road on this side was narrower, rougher, without a center stripe.
“This road was gravel when I was working here,” Mom said. “The blacktop doesen’t look much better.”
They paralleled the Canadian National Railroad tracks, heading northwest. Northeastward across the tracks was a big complex of white clapboard buildings, and beyond them the lake. It appeared to be longer than it was wide. The water reflected the blue sky, but not as brilliantly as Lake Simcoe had.
“We’re almost there,” Mom said. “That’s the Collishaw House Resort. They have a convenience store, a gas dock and a bait shop too.”
“And a sushi restaurant, right?” Meghan said. “Today’s bait is tomorrow’s plate?”
Mom laughed. “Something like that,” she said.
The road crossed the tracks and headed northward. A quarter-mile later, they turned right onto a narrow graveled road marked with two mailboxes and a painted wooden sign: Lakeshore Lodge. The gravel was extremely fine, almost a very coarse sand, with calcium chloride mixed in to lay the dust.
The entrance road went through woods for 50 yards before crossing a marshy stream bed on a raised earthen causeway with a culvert in the middle. Just before the causeway, a narrow driveway went to the right toward the lake – there was a cottage with a car parked behind it. The woods closed in again just past the stream bed.
Mom went straight. The woods thinned out on the right, giving Meghan glimpses of the lake not far away. Then into an open area canopied by big old hardwood trees, with a sand beach on the right. On the left, well back from the entrance road, was a big white clapboard building with red shingles on the peaked roof. Another driveway split off to the left on the near side of the building. The road continued past the building, paralleling the shore.
“That’s the Lodge. End of the line,” Mom said, and parked in front of the building. Meghan checked her watch: 2:45 PM.
The building was H-shaped, with a screened porch that completely filled the space between the near-side legs; over the door was a sign with Lakeshore Lodge painted in Steamboat Gothic letters. Past the porch, the crossbar of the H held a corridor that faced an old-fashioned dark wood hotel registration counter. A sign on the counter proclaimed that fishing licenses were sold here, and there was a sales rack of summer stuff: post cards, cheap sunglasses, ball caps, sun block, bug dope. To the right, an archway gave onto a dining room furnished with big round tables. To the left, another archway opened into some sort of lounge. The interior of the place was painted a sunny yellow. The linoleum tile floor screamed its 1940’s vintage: alternating squares of teal green streaked with burnt orange, and burnt orange streaked with teal green.
No one was behind the counter. Mom dinged the hand-bell, and a woman came out of the office. She was about Mom’s age, with brown eyes and a few streaks of gray in her brown hair.
“Can I help– Cheryl! It’s been too long!” the woman said with a big smile. “And this must be Meghan.”
Mom smiled back. “Hi, Sue. Meghan, meet your boss, Sue McKenzie.”
Introductions made, Sue gave Meghan a clipboard with all those forms the tax-man needs. Meghan went into the lounge to fill them out while Mom and Sue caught up on the news in each other’s lives.
The lounge filled this whole upright of the H. It was bright and sunny, with lots of big windows, now open to the late spring air. At the end away from the lake was a stone fireplace with a dusty deer-head mount over the mantel. On one side of the archway was a book case filled with tattered summer-reading castoffs; on the other was a shelving unit that held rainy-day activities – board games, chess and checkers sets, playing cards and so forth. There were two card tables, each equipped with four straight chairs. The rest of the furniture was the ugly but indestructible sort found in the lobbies of budget hotels everywhere.
Another young woman stood up from one of the card tables, where she had been filling out paperwork like Meghan’s. She was a brunette with a few lighter highlights in her curly hair, very attractive, with a Rubenesque figure, bright hazel eyes, long dark lashes and the start of a summer tan. Like Meghan, she wore shorts, t-shirt and flip-flops.
“Hi,” the girl said. “You must be the other new girl. I’m Melanie Laurier – this is my first year here too.”
Meghan introduced herself. She found out that Melanie had found her job the same way as Meghan had: Gordon McKenzie, Bob and Sue’s younger son, roomed with Melanie’s brother Marc at York University in Toronto. Melanie was 18, and half way through Québéc’s CEGEP program, an education system similar to the junior college system in the States. She would finish a year from now and enter McGill University as a sophomore.
The name was québécois, but Melanie’s English was flawless – she was obviously a native speaker of the language. She said that she had grown up in a Québéc border town, and had relatives on both sides of the border. But she didn’t sound Canadian – rather, like a New Englander.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Melanie said. “We speak French at home. But Mom’s from Maine, and she made a point to speak English with Marc and me when we were little so we’d learn it painlessly.”
Meghan sat down to fill out the papers. Melanie sat in one of the armchairs and waited. They went back to the counter together.
The two women were still conversing, behind the counter now, laughing and joking with each other. Another girl had joined them – about medium height, pretty, brown-eyed, with wavy shoulder-length brown hair and a touch of olive in her complexion. She was dressed like the other girls – her t-shirt was pale blue, with a stylized Canada goose and Lakeshore Lodge printed on it in dark blue. She looked to be in her early 20’s.
“Finished? All right then,” she said, and took both sets of papers. “I’m Melissa Turner. Come with me, and I’ll get you set up.”
Melissa came around the counter and led the girls toward the dining room. This leg of the H had a corridor leading toward the back of the building – they turned left and headed back. Just inside the back door were two facing doors, the left one leading to the office and the right to the kitchen.
“Here’s how things work,” Melissa said as they went outside. “There’s eight of us, all girls. Three housekeepers, me and two others. Four kitchen staff – that includes you two – who also wait tables. One more who fills in for each of us on our off day.”
Outside the back door was a concrete stoop maybe 15 ft long and 5 ft wide, parallel to the upright of the H, with a set of concrete steps leading down parallel to the cross bar of the H. A double screen door opened onto the stoop from the kitchen – the stoop also functioned as a loading dock.
“Sunday through Friday, we each work five 6-hour days with one off day,” Melissa continued. “Housekeepers start while the guests are at breakfast and finish in early afternoon. Kitchen staff work two hours at each meal time. Two of you will come in early to help with the meal prep and cooking, the other two stay late to clean up.”
The three girls crossed a narrow graveled track behind the lodge and walked toward a smallish wood frame building about 25 yards behind. “Nobody gets Saturday off,” Melissa said. “That’s turnover day, and we all put in 10 hours. The last week’s guests have to check out by 9 AM, the next week’s can check in after 1 PM. You’ll work your regular breakfast and dinner shifts. In between, you’ll be cleaning and making up guest rooms, and whatever else needs doing. The guests who stay over have to make do with sandwiches and soft drinks for lunch.”
The building was clapboarded, red-shingled, with the roof ridge perpendicular to the lake shore. A screened porch covered the full length of the south or left side. There was already a car parked next to the building. Mom drove up just as they reached it.
Two guys came down off the porch to help with the luggage. Melanie introduced Meghan to her brother and Gordon. The guys unloaded both cars and moved the gear onto the porch just outside the inner door.
Mom hugged Meghan and left – she had another two-hour drive home ahead of her. The guys stayed – they would be working at the Collishaw House this summer, but didn’t have to report in for another hour or so. They introduced Meghan and Melanie to another of their co-workers, Ashley Collishaw.
Ashley’s family owned the Collishaw House – the Collishaws and McKenzies had traded heirs for the summer, old custom that avoided any resentment with their co-workers over nepotism. She was a pretty girl with straight light brown hair in a pony tail, blue eyes and the beginning of a tan. She was 20, the same age as Gordon and Marc, a student at Carleton University in Ottawa – she planned to enter the family business when she graduated. She was barefoot, in shorts and a t-shirt like Melissa’s.
Ashley and the guys sat in three of the cheap white plastic chairs and resumed their conversation. Meghan checked out the porch. It had five more chairs, a short clothesline at each end, and two bicycles leaning against the wall, the old-fashioned kind with foot brakes and no gears. A row of windows opened out from the interior of the building. The door was centered on the wall, with four pegs on the wall on either side. Six of the pegs held summer-weight jackets – evenings here were cool. Below each peg was a square cubby.
“Lose the shoes, ladies,” Melissa said, and kicked hers off into one of the cubbies. “Old custom.” Meghan and Melanie followed suit, gathered up their gear and followed Melissa inside.
“Welcome to The Swamp,” Melissa said. “Grab a bunk – the top two on the end near the bathrooms are open.”
The building was pretty basic, Meghan saw. The floor was bare planks, polished smooth by 60 years of sweeping and mopping. The joists and rafters were uncovered, exposing the inside of the plywood wall sheathing and roof. To the right of the door, just inside, was a wall mounted telephone next to a whiteboard for messages, and a small wooden table with four bent-cane chairs. To the left, the west end of the room had two bathrooms, with a washer, dryer and linen cabinet filling the space between the doors. Along the north wall, aligned with the windows, were four double bunks, with two footlockers at the end of each and free-standing wall lockers against the walls in between. The end of the building closest to the lake was furnished with a battered sofa and four arm chairs, rust-speckled chrome tubing and upholstered in green vinyl. Between the windows on that end was an entertainment center: TV, VCR, DVD, and a boom box stereo. A mock-Turkish rug completed the furnishings, in the middle of the seating group near the TV.
“Old Mr. McKenzie – Bob’s grandfather – was from Scotland,” Melissa said. “He knew the value of a dollar. He bought most of this stuff as army surplus right after World War II. The kitchen and dining room stuff too.”
Meghan looked closer at the bunks and lockers. They had been painted red long ago, but enough paint had chipped off to reveal the olive-drab paint underneath.
The blankets were surplus too, faded but clean, the black military C-Broad-Arrow mark barely visible against the olive. “Take two,” Melissa advised. “It gets down into the 50’s at night this time of year, and there’s no heat. D’you know how to make hospital corners?”
Each girl got a foot locker and two wall lockers. They made up their bunks and unpacked. Melissa told the others that she was 21, had worked here the past three years, and this was her last summer here. Next spring, she would graduate from Queen’s University in Kingston, with a degree in business. She worked extra unpaid hours, learning the business and getting academic credit for it. Someday, she hoped to run a place like this.
“Why all girls?” Melanie asked.
“The old man hired an all-girl crew the first year, in 1946, because girls would work cheaper back then,” Melissa replied. “It’s old custom by now. It probably violates some employment discrimination rule, but Bob and Sue have an arrangement with the Collishaws. The Collishaws have a much bigger staff, about half of them guys – our employers send qualified guys to them, and everybody’s happy.”
The final item was work clothes.
“Looks like you both wear a Medium. Change into one of these,” Melissa said, and gave each girl half a dozen t-shirts like her own. “You’ll both be working in the kitchen and waiting tables. Wear one of these shirts, jeans or dark pants, and closed toe shoes. We do our laundry every day here. Aprons are in the kitchen – those go to a laundry in Orillia, like the bed linen, towels and tablecloths.”
Meghan had just finished changing when she heard a burst of female laughter from the porch. The laughter got louder, wilder – the girl was laughing her head off.
“What– ” Meghan started, alarmed. It sounded like someone was getting tickled silly!
“That’s old custom too,” Melissa said. “Ashley’s playing with the guys.”
Meghan padded back out onto the porch, with Melanie and Melissa following behind. She saw that Ashley and the guys had their chairs arranged in a triangle. Ashley’s hands were tied behind her back. Marc had hold of Ashley’s left ankle, with her foot in his lap. Gordon had the other foot. Both were tickling her feet with skill and enthusiasm – she laughed helplessly, tears of laughter running down her cheeks.
“Why is she tied up? Why are they tickling her?” Melanie asked.
“She loves it,” Melissa answered. “Gordon’s been tickling her for years. As for why she’s tied up, it’s to keep her from hurting herself or the guys. They learned that the hard way.”
Bondage was something new for Meghan, something she had never considered. Adam was so much stronger that he just overpowered her, and took the occasional bump or bruise she inflicted in stride.
Gordon held back Ashley’s toes and tickled the soft skin underneath, then down onto the stretched-out sole. Marc tickled the other sole, watching the toes twitch and curl, then down the arch to the heel and back again. Ashley howled with forced mirth, her face turning pink from laughter.
“Great laugh, eh?” Gordon said, grinning. “Want us to save you some of this?”
Meghan stammered something in reply, but found she couldn’t look away. This was horrible! Poor Ashley! But… the girl wasn’t struggling, and didn’t seem to be in any distress. Maybe she did like being tickled.
“I guess not,” Marc said. “Let’s finish her off, Gordon – we have to leave soon.” Like his sister, he sounded like a New Englander.
The guys shifted their tickle target onto Ashley’s heels, their nails flicking and scratching. Ashley threw back her head and laughed at the top of her lungs. She was red faced and sweaty, laughing like mad, completely helpless. The guys picked up the pace, tickling as fast as they could. Ashley lost it and laughed herself breathless.
“Good one, guys,” said a female voice. Meghan looked around, startled, and saw that two more of her co-workers had come in to the porch.
“Wooo! That really tickled!” Ashley said, a little breathless. “I can still feel it. Come visit any time.”
Melanie hugged her brother, and the guys left. The others introduced themselves.
Andrea Turner was Melissa’s sister, 19 yrs old. She was a little shorter than Melissa, but had her sister’s build, coloring and features. Holly Nicholson was 20, and Ashley’s room mate at college – she was studying Mechanical Engineering. She was a pretty girl, not quite medium height, fit and trim looking, with curly shoulder-length brown hair, blue eyes and flawless fair skin. Both wore shorts, flip-flops and Lakeshore t-shirts.
“Hey!” Ashley said. “Don’t just stand there! Give me more!”
Andrea laughed. “She’s weird, but we like her anyway,” she said.
“Yah, I’m weird,” Ashley said, grinning. “You newbies don’t know the half of it. But you’ll learn. Welcome to Lakeshore.”
Holly and Andrea kicked their flip-flops off into their cubbies. Holly went inside, returned with what appeared to be the cut-off legs of a pair of old nylons. Andrea and Holly took the seats the guys had vacated and used the nylons to tie Ashley’s ankles to the arms of their plastic chairs. That would let them tickle with two hands, Meghan realized – they were serious about this.
The girls started slow, teasing Ashley, light nail flicks that produced a stream of girlish giggles. “Don’t– hehe! –tease– haha!” she protested through the giggles. “Tickle– haha-hehe! –me– haha!” –sillee– hehehe!”
“No problem,” Holly said, and dug in. Andrea joined in, nails flicking. Ashley arched her back and laughed her head off.
Meghan didn’t know what to think. She hated tickling! Had she made a mistake coming here?
Both girls tickled two-handed, covering both of Ashley’s feet with unbearable tickling. They shifted their effort to Ashley’s heels, and Ashley went wild, laughing at the top of her lungs.
Melissa checked her watch. “Get your shoes,” she said. “I’ll take you over to the kitchen and introduce you to the rest of the crew.”
The sound of Ashley’s ticklish laughter followed them. It dropped back to little giggles – the others were giving her a breather. Then she was laughing wildly again as they picked up the pace.
“D’you do this all the time?” Meghan asked as they walked.
Melissa saw Meghan’s unease. “Relax,” she said. “It’s only tickling – she enjoys it, and it won’t hurt her. She’s our friend – we’re happy to do it.”
Better her than me, thought Meghan. Ashley kept on laughing, loving every bit of it.
They met Bob McKenzie supervising the kitchen. He ran the food service here – his wife had charge of the housekeeping. He was a balding middle-aged guy whose impressive bay window suggested that he liked his own cooking a little too much. Melissa introduced the girls and left.
Bob introduced their other two co-workers. Meredith McKay was a petite girl with a cute shape, fair skin, bright blue eyes, shoulder-length silky blonde hair, and the wholesome good looks that one associates with “farmer’s daughter”. Tammy Reid was the same physical type, a little taller, with a long dark brown pony tail, green eyes, a girl-next-door face and a cheerful smile. Both were 19 yrs old – this was their second summer here.
They got to work. The time passed quickly. Meghan loaded potatoes into an industrial peeler, then cut them up for cooking. She cored and chopped lettuce for a salad, sliced tomatoes and onions. Before she knew it, it was 5:30.
The whole staff, Bob and Sue included, had dinner together at one of the big dining room tables and went over the next day’s program. Meghan and Melanie were the new kids, so they had kitchen cleanup detail. They got back to The Swamp around 6:30.
There was plenty of daylight left. At solstice, the sun didn’t set until after 9 PM, and it wouldn’t be completely dark until an hour later. But the westering sun didn’t provide much warmth. It was already starting to cool off.
The girls watched a movie on DVD, a sappy romantic comedy. Afterward, Ashley changed into jeans. “Come on, change clothes, and I’ll give you a tour of the property,” she said, and added a pair of socks. “You’ll want a jacket or sweat shirt too.”
Melanie followed Ashley’s example. Meghan didn’t bother. It was still 45 minutes before sundown, and it wasn’t all that chilly yet. And besides, she was warm natured.
The three girls went outside together. Ashley faced them toward the lake. They were on a gentle rise, looking over the lodge roof toward the beach and the lake beyond, with the setting sun behind them.
“We’re facing east, more or less,” Ashley said. “Let’s start at the beach and work our way around.”
The graveled track behind the lodge curved around the south side of the building. About even with the crossbar of the H was a broad avenue cut into the woods. Another white clapboard building stood there, its long side backed up against the woods on the west. It looked like the Bates Motel, a prime example of 1950’s motel architecture. There was a wide roof overhang on the front, with concrete pavement from the front of the building to the edge of the overhang and scraggly grass to the woods on the lake side. A Steamboat Gothic sign on the near end said Oriole.
“This is the newest building on the site,” Ashley said. “Eight guest rooms.”
They came to the entrance road and continued toward the lake. The area near the road was tree-shaded, thin grass growing in sandy soil; beyond that was the beach. To their right was a swing set, monkey bars and a slide. Just past the playground was another wood frame building, about the size of The Swamp, oriented parallel with the shore.
“Boat house,” Ashley said, and led them inside. The boats had been moved out, but there were racks that held oars and canoe paddles, a row of pegs with life jackets hanging from them, and a pile of flotation cushions. There was battered foosball game table to the right of the door, and a ping-pong table in the middle of the room. A dozen garbage cans stood along one wall. Four tall stacks of nesting green plastic mock-Adirondack chairs stood in a corner.
Back outside, they walked down the beach to the water’s edge. The beach was bordered on the south by a patch of scrub willow, on the north by more tree-shaded lawn. There was a metal slide in the shallow water to their left, a wooden platform a short distance offshore, and another platform further out on an anchored oil-drum raft. The dock was on their right, on the south. Three aluminum row boats were tied to the dock, two aluminum-framed plastic canoes were drawn up on the shore to the right of the dock. Another canoe, this one aluminum-skinned, was upside down at the edge of the scrub willow patch – it leaked, Ashley said. They walked out onto the floating dock – the water was clear, sand bottomed.
“This is an artificial beach,” Ashley said. “Ours is too, at Collishaw House. The trick is to wait until mid-winter, then dump truckloads of sand on the ice and grade it out. It places itself when the ice melts.”
Meghan swatted at a mosquito – the willow scrub must be full of them, she thought. The girls walked back toward the lodge and turned right onto the access road. The road curved slightly, closer to the shore, lined on the lake side by a row of silver birch trees. To the left was more tree-shaded lawn.
Another clapboard building stood on the left, about 25 yards north of the lodge, separated from it by an upthrust of exposed granite bedrock. It was big, two-storied, with a porch all the way across the front. The sign over the porch entrance said Alouette.
“Sixteen guest rooms, eight on each floor,” Ashley said.
They continued along the road. “Mind if I ask you something, Ashley?” Meghan asked.
“Go ahead.”
“Why do you let people tickle you like that?”
“I like to be tickled – always have. It’s the way I’m wired.” She paused. “No, that’s not an answer. Let’s see...”
“OK,” Ashley continued. “Sensation is what lets us know we’re alive, right? Well, a good tickling produces an overload of sensation. It drives me crazy while it’s happening, but... At the same time, it doesen’t. I just let go and let it carry me away. It’s exhilirating and... liberating, I guess. Does that make any sense?”
“I never thought of it that way,” Melanie said, “but it does make sense. It can even be fun – sort of – depending on who’s doing it to me.”
But it didn’t make sense to Meghan – she thought of tickling as “sadistic torture inflicted by siblings”, and nothing she had heard encouraged her to change her mind.
Forty yards further north was a similar two-story building, but smaller. The sign on this one said Bobolink. Across the road, near the lake, was another clapboard structure about the size of a big walk-in closet.
“Twelve rooms, six and six,” Ashley said. “The little building across the road is the well house. Now look over here.”
She led them to the shore near the well house. Here, it was armored against the winter ice with gray stone rip-rap, oblong rocks the size of a carry-on suitcase. The rocky border extended north, and terminated at the edge of the beach on the south. But here, someone had laid three blocks as steps and upended two more, one on either side. At the bottom was a narrow strip of sand, a few feet wide. The lake bottom here appeared to be exposed granite bedrock. Twenty yards offshore was a huge, partially submerged flat-topped boulder, deposited there by the glacier, with a few water lilies growing around it. The portion above water was about 10 ft long and 7 ft wide.
“The beach is for the guests,” Ashley said. “If you want to swim, come here. No one will bother you.”
Except the mosquitos, Meghan thought, and slapped another one off her neck.
Ashley led them back to the road and 25 yards further north. To the left were two double cabins, like something out of a 1930’s tourist court, each with two guest rooms – the signs on these said Chickadee and Goldfinch. To their front was a tall hedgerow, with an opening closed with a cyclone fence double gate. A house was visible beyond, with a dock extending from the shore. The road continued past the gate to the house.
“Bob’s parents built the house,” Ashley said. “They have a place in town now that they’re retired – Bob and Sue live here now.” She indicated a middle-aged man putting a cover on a boat tied up at the dock. “That’s Bob’s brother Doug – he comes here on weekends to fish. He’s a beer distributor in town – Bob bought him out when he and Sue took the place over.”
They turned back, walking southward past the cabins. “These are actually the oldest buildings on the site,” Ashley said. “We get a lot of fishermen here – there’s bass, pike, walleye, and even a few muskies. Those are pretty rare, one meter is minimum “keeper” size these days. And panfish too, bluegills and perch mostly. The cabins were part of a fishing camp in the 1930’s. These were the best ones – the old man kept them when he tore the rest down to build the resort.”
The sun was already down behind the rise to the west of the site. Ashley led them between the cabins and Bobolink. The bedrock was exposed here and there behind the buildings; a graveled parking lot had been laid out in the most level spot. They crossed the parking lot – the driveway to it, Meghan realized, was the same one that ran along the back of the lodge. Three cars were parked in the back of the lot – Holly’s, Tammy’s, and another shared by the sisters, Ashley said. Her own was parked at her family’s place – it was an easy walk, a little under a mile.
Suddenly Meghan found herself swatting mosquitos. Swarms of them were coming out of the woods. She ran toward The Swamp. The flip-flops were no good for running – she stumbled, kicked them off and, abandoning all dignity, sprinted flat out for the safety of the screened porch.
Meghan was inside, scratching, when Ashley and Melanie came in. “Gonna listen to me next time?” Ashley asked.
“Take a shower,” Meredith said. She and the others who had stayed behind were already in their pajamas. “I’ll put some cortisone cream on those bites when you get out.”
Meredith had a lower bunk. After her shower, Meghan treated the bites she could reach, then plopped herself down on the bunk on her tummy. She was wearing a pair of old gym shorts and one of her brother’s t-shirts, both soft from many washings.
Meredith started applying the cortisone to the mosquito bites, starting at the top and working her way down. “They ate you alive, eh?” she remarked.
“Are they always that bad?” Meghan asked.
“Only after dark,” Meredith answered. “Unless you go walking in the woods – that’s just as bad during the day. OK, last one– ”
Meredith applied cream to a bite on the back of Meghan’s right ankle, then playfully danced her nails from heel to toes.
“Hehehe! Quit!” Meghan said sharply, and snatched her foot away.
“Knock it off, Meredith,” Melissa said. “We don’t have time to play – we have to be up early tomorrow. Lights out in 10 minutes.”
Melissa had the bottom bunk nearest the front wall of the building – Ashley, Tammy and Meredith had the others. Andrea bunked above her sister, Holly above Ashley, then Meghan and Melanie, who was closest to the bathrooms.
Ashley flipped the light switch and called out, “Good night, all!” Within minutes, Meghan had drifted off to sleep.
Copyright 2004 by the author
Author’s Note: As often happens, the characters took this story away from me. It ended up almost novella length, 36 pages of 10-point type. I’ve split it up into three posts – you may want to download it and read it offline. Enjoy!
Friday
Meghan Williams took her book out onto the screened back porch after lunch. Meghan had graduated from high school in this Toronto suburb a few days before. She was slender and attractive, a little taller than medium height. She had shoulder-length wavy dark brown hair, gray eyes, and the sort of fair skin that freckles on the way to a suntan. At age 18, Meghan was a work in progress, pretty enough but no great beauty. In a few more years, she would be absolutely stunning.
Meghan sat on the wicker sofa and drew her feet up. She was wearing a t-shirt and shorts. Spring came late in this region near the Great Lakes, but the June Friday afternoon was warm – she hadn’t bothered with shoes.
She looked up from her book when her brother Adam came onto the back porch. “Looking forward to your summer job, sis?” he asked. He was 20, dark-haired and gray-eyed like his sister, a big guy who had played high-school hockey and the Canadian version of football. He had just finished his sophomore year at Commonwealth University in the States – like many schools in the Northern USA, CU aggressively recruited Canadians for their hockey program. She had been accepted there too, and would be joining him the coming fall.
Meghan’s smile was dazzling. “I sure am,” she replied. “Mom always said what a great time she had when she worked at the Lodge years ago.”
“Well, I guess we won’t see much of each other this summer, so…”
Adam lunged and grabbed up Meghan’s ankles in an arm lock.
“Hey! Take off! NOOOOO! HAHAHAHA-HEEHEE-HAHA-HAHAHA!” Meghan laughed as his tickling fingernails flicked and scratched her sensitive soles. Her tickle laugh was like her singing voice, musical and not the least bit scratchy.
Meghan hated to be tickled, which of course just encouraged her brother. He had tickled her feet at least once a week the whole time they were growing up. The time he had spent at college had been a welcome relief, but he more than made up for it when he was at home. Now, she laughed helplessly while his nails traced circles and other tickling shapes in her arches, not making much contact but tickling like crazy.
Adam shifted down her arches onto her heels, tickling both with one big hand. He let her catch a breath, then tickled up onto her arches again, and she knew from experience what was coming next. She struggled, squirming like a worm and laughing like mad, but he was just too strong – she was had.
Adam tickled Meghan’s soles, left-right-and-repeat, watching her toes twitch and curl. He tickled the balls of both feet, and her laughter went off the scale. It tickled unbearably – she was helpless now, red-faced, laughing at the top of her lungs, with tears of laughter running down her cheeks. He kept it up until Meghan thought she would go crazy.
“Adam! Stop it!” Dad said. Like Adam, he had ditched work to see Meghan off.
Adam quit and released the arm lock. “That should hold you for the rest of the summer, eh?” he said with a grin.
“Hoser!” Meghan said angrily.
Mom gave both of them an odd look. “It’s about a two hour drive, Meghan,” she said. “We better get going.” Her eyes were brown, but otherwise she was an older version of her daughter, still trim in her mid-40’s.
The car was already packed. Meghan wasn’t really angry at Adam – the tickling was old custom, something she had learned to endure. She hugged him and promised to call.
“Keep the shiny side up, Cheryl,” Dad said. “Drive hard – drive fast – stay between the ditches,” Adam added. The men waved to the women as they drove off.
Their destination was Lakeshore Lodge, a small resort in the Muskoka region, on the south end of Sparrow Lake. It catered to budget-conscious families with children – school was finally out for the summer, so it opened for the season tomorrow. It was run on the so-called American Plan, with housekeeping and all meals provided as part of the package – that meant that the moms got a vacation too.
Lakeshore Lodge was a mom-n-pop operation; the proprietors, Bob and Sue McKenzie, were the third generation of owners, taking over after Bob’s parents retired. Meghan had found the job through the most basic form of networking: Young Cheryl Flynn and Sue Palmer had worked there together years ago, and they still stayed in touch with Christmas cards and email.
They headed north on Highway 400, suburbs shading off into scattered houses and then to farms and orchards. They came to the Highway 11N exit in about an hour. Another 20 minutes took them to the outskirts of Orillia, on the northern end of Lake Simcoe. The afternoon sun shone brightly over the blue water.
“Sparrow Lake isn’t blue like that,” Mom said. “Peat bottom instead of sand. But it’s pretty in its own way, lots of trees. Lake Simcoe is too developed to suit me.”
They continued north on Highway 11 for another 20 minutes, running parallel to Lake Couchiching. This region was in the transition zone between northern temperate forest and boreal forest, hardwoods giving way to pine and silver birch. The soil was thin, scraped away by glaciers 10,000 years ago, exposing the black-figured pink granite bedrock in places.
A mile past Severn Bridge, Mom turned off on a two-lane blacktop regional road. “Fifteen more minutes,” she said.
The road ran west past dairy farms, which gave way to cottages and summer homes where the road turned south parallel to the Severn River. A mile further on, they turned west and crossed an old concrete bridge. The road on this side was narrower, rougher, without a center stripe.
“This road was gravel when I was working here,” Mom said. “The blacktop doesen’t look much better.”
They paralleled the Canadian National Railroad tracks, heading northwest. Northeastward across the tracks was a big complex of white clapboard buildings, and beyond them the lake. It appeared to be longer than it was wide. The water reflected the blue sky, but not as brilliantly as Lake Simcoe had.
“We’re almost there,” Mom said. “That’s the Collishaw House Resort. They have a convenience store, a gas dock and a bait shop too.”
“And a sushi restaurant, right?” Meghan said. “Today’s bait is tomorrow’s plate?”
Mom laughed. “Something like that,” she said.
The road crossed the tracks and headed northward. A quarter-mile later, they turned right onto a narrow graveled road marked with two mailboxes and a painted wooden sign: Lakeshore Lodge. The gravel was extremely fine, almost a very coarse sand, with calcium chloride mixed in to lay the dust.
The entrance road went through woods for 50 yards before crossing a marshy stream bed on a raised earthen causeway with a culvert in the middle. Just before the causeway, a narrow driveway went to the right toward the lake – there was a cottage with a car parked behind it. The woods closed in again just past the stream bed.
Mom went straight. The woods thinned out on the right, giving Meghan glimpses of the lake not far away. Then into an open area canopied by big old hardwood trees, with a sand beach on the right. On the left, well back from the entrance road, was a big white clapboard building with red shingles on the peaked roof. Another driveway split off to the left on the near side of the building. The road continued past the building, paralleling the shore.
“That’s the Lodge. End of the line,” Mom said, and parked in front of the building. Meghan checked her watch: 2:45 PM.
The building was H-shaped, with a screened porch that completely filled the space between the near-side legs; over the door was a sign with Lakeshore Lodge painted in Steamboat Gothic letters. Past the porch, the crossbar of the H held a corridor that faced an old-fashioned dark wood hotel registration counter. A sign on the counter proclaimed that fishing licenses were sold here, and there was a sales rack of summer stuff: post cards, cheap sunglasses, ball caps, sun block, bug dope. To the right, an archway gave onto a dining room furnished with big round tables. To the left, another archway opened into some sort of lounge. The interior of the place was painted a sunny yellow. The linoleum tile floor screamed its 1940’s vintage: alternating squares of teal green streaked with burnt orange, and burnt orange streaked with teal green.
No one was behind the counter. Mom dinged the hand-bell, and a woman came out of the office. She was about Mom’s age, with brown eyes and a few streaks of gray in her brown hair.
“Can I help– Cheryl! It’s been too long!” the woman said with a big smile. “And this must be Meghan.”
Mom smiled back. “Hi, Sue. Meghan, meet your boss, Sue McKenzie.”
Introductions made, Sue gave Meghan a clipboard with all those forms the tax-man needs. Meghan went into the lounge to fill them out while Mom and Sue caught up on the news in each other’s lives.
The lounge filled this whole upright of the H. It was bright and sunny, with lots of big windows, now open to the late spring air. At the end away from the lake was a stone fireplace with a dusty deer-head mount over the mantel. On one side of the archway was a book case filled with tattered summer-reading castoffs; on the other was a shelving unit that held rainy-day activities – board games, chess and checkers sets, playing cards and so forth. There were two card tables, each equipped with four straight chairs. The rest of the furniture was the ugly but indestructible sort found in the lobbies of budget hotels everywhere.
Another young woman stood up from one of the card tables, where she had been filling out paperwork like Meghan’s. She was a brunette with a few lighter highlights in her curly hair, very attractive, with a Rubenesque figure, bright hazel eyes, long dark lashes and the start of a summer tan. Like Meghan, she wore shorts, t-shirt and flip-flops.
“Hi,” the girl said. “You must be the other new girl. I’m Melanie Laurier – this is my first year here too.”
Meghan introduced herself. She found out that Melanie had found her job the same way as Meghan had: Gordon McKenzie, Bob and Sue’s younger son, roomed with Melanie’s brother Marc at York University in Toronto. Melanie was 18, and half way through Québéc’s CEGEP program, an education system similar to the junior college system in the States. She would finish a year from now and enter McGill University as a sophomore.
The name was québécois, but Melanie’s English was flawless – she was obviously a native speaker of the language. She said that she had grown up in a Québéc border town, and had relatives on both sides of the border. But she didn’t sound Canadian – rather, like a New Englander.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Melanie said. “We speak French at home. But Mom’s from Maine, and she made a point to speak English with Marc and me when we were little so we’d learn it painlessly.”
Meghan sat down to fill out the papers. Melanie sat in one of the armchairs and waited. They went back to the counter together.
The two women were still conversing, behind the counter now, laughing and joking with each other. Another girl had joined them – about medium height, pretty, brown-eyed, with wavy shoulder-length brown hair and a touch of olive in her complexion. She was dressed like the other girls – her t-shirt was pale blue, with a stylized Canada goose and Lakeshore Lodge printed on it in dark blue. She looked to be in her early 20’s.
“Finished? All right then,” she said, and took both sets of papers. “I’m Melissa Turner. Come with me, and I’ll get you set up.”
Melissa came around the counter and led the girls toward the dining room. This leg of the H had a corridor leading toward the back of the building – they turned left and headed back. Just inside the back door were two facing doors, the left one leading to the office and the right to the kitchen.
“Here’s how things work,” Melissa said as they went outside. “There’s eight of us, all girls. Three housekeepers, me and two others. Four kitchen staff – that includes you two – who also wait tables. One more who fills in for each of us on our off day.”
Outside the back door was a concrete stoop maybe 15 ft long and 5 ft wide, parallel to the upright of the H, with a set of concrete steps leading down parallel to the cross bar of the H. A double screen door opened onto the stoop from the kitchen – the stoop also functioned as a loading dock.
“Sunday through Friday, we each work five 6-hour days with one off day,” Melissa continued. “Housekeepers start while the guests are at breakfast and finish in early afternoon. Kitchen staff work two hours at each meal time. Two of you will come in early to help with the meal prep and cooking, the other two stay late to clean up.”
The three girls crossed a narrow graveled track behind the lodge and walked toward a smallish wood frame building about 25 yards behind. “Nobody gets Saturday off,” Melissa said. “That’s turnover day, and we all put in 10 hours. The last week’s guests have to check out by 9 AM, the next week’s can check in after 1 PM. You’ll work your regular breakfast and dinner shifts. In between, you’ll be cleaning and making up guest rooms, and whatever else needs doing. The guests who stay over have to make do with sandwiches and soft drinks for lunch.”
The building was clapboarded, red-shingled, with the roof ridge perpendicular to the lake shore. A screened porch covered the full length of the south or left side. There was already a car parked next to the building. Mom drove up just as they reached it.
Two guys came down off the porch to help with the luggage. Melanie introduced Meghan to her brother and Gordon. The guys unloaded both cars and moved the gear onto the porch just outside the inner door.
Mom hugged Meghan and left – she had another two-hour drive home ahead of her. The guys stayed – they would be working at the Collishaw House this summer, but didn’t have to report in for another hour or so. They introduced Meghan and Melanie to another of their co-workers, Ashley Collishaw.
Ashley’s family owned the Collishaw House – the Collishaws and McKenzies had traded heirs for the summer, old custom that avoided any resentment with their co-workers over nepotism. She was a pretty girl with straight light brown hair in a pony tail, blue eyes and the beginning of a tan. She was 20, the same age as Gordon and Marc, a student at Carleton University in Ottawa – she planned to enter the family business when she graduated. She was barefoot, in shorts and a t-shirt like Melissa’s.
Ashley and the guys sat in three of the cheap white plastic chairs and resumed their conversation. Meghan checked out the porch. It had five more chairs, a short clothesline at each end, and two bicycles leaning against the wall, the old-fashioned kind with foot brakes and no gears. A row of windows opened out from the interior of the building. The door was centered on the wall, with four pegs on the wall on either side. Six of the pegs held summer-weight jackets – evenings here were cool. Below each peg was a square cubby.
“Lose the shoes, ladies,” Melissa said, and kicked hers off into one of the cubbies. “Old custom.” Meghan and Melanie followed suit, gathered up their gear and followed Melissa inside.
“Welcome to The Swamp,” Melissa said. “Grab a bunk – the top two on the end near the bathrooms are open.”
The building was pretty basic, Meghan saw. The floor was bare planks, polished smooth by 60 years of sweeping and mopping. The joists and rafters were uncovered, exposing the inside of the plywood wall sheathing and roof. To the right of the door, just inside, was a wall mounted telephone next to a whiteboard for messages, and a small wooden table with four bent-cane chairs. To the left, the west end of the room had two bathrooms, with a washer, dryer and linen cabinet filling the space between the doors. Along the north wall, aligned with the windows, were four double bunks, with two footlockers at the end of each and free-standing wall lockers against the walls in between. The end of the building closest to the lake was furnished with a battered sofa and four arm chairs, rust-speckled chrome tubing and upholstered in green vinyl. Between the windows on that end was an entertainment center: TV, VCR, DVD, and a boom box stereo. A mock-Turkish rug completed the furnishings, in the middle of the seating group near the TV.
“Old Mr. McKenzie – Bob’s grandfather – was from Scotland,” Melissa said. “He knew the value of a dollar. He bought most of this stuff as army surplus right after World War II. The kitchen and dining room stuff too.”
Meghan looked closer at the bunks and lockers. They had been painted red long ago, but enough paint had chipped off to reveal the olive-drab paint underneath.
The blankets were surplus too, faded but clean, the black military C-Broad-Arrow mark barely visible against the olive. “Take two,” Melissa advised. “It gets down into the 50’s at night this time of year, and there’s no heat. D’you know how to make hospital corners?”
Each girl got a foot locker and two wall lockers. They made up their bunks and unpacked. Melissa told the others that she was 21, had worked here the past three years, and this was her last summer here. Next spring, she would graduate from Queen’s University in Kingston, with a degree in business. She worked extra unpaid hours, learning the business and getting academic credit for it. Someday, she hoped to run a place like this.
“Why all girls?” Melanie asked.
“The old man hired an all-girl crew the first year, in 1946, because girls would work cheaper back then,” Melissa replied. “It’s old custom by now. It probably violates some employment discrimination rule, but Bob and Sue have an arrangement with the Collishaws. The Collishaws have a much bigger staff, about half of them guys – our employers send qualified guys to them, and everybody’s happy.”
The final item was work clothes.
“Looks like you both wear a Medium. Change into one of these,” Melissa said, and gave each girl half a dozen t-shirts like her own. “You’ll both be working in the kitchen and waiting tables. Wear one of these shirts, jeans or dark pants, and closed toe shoes. We do our laundry every day here. Aprons are in the kitchen – those go to a laundry in Orillia, like the bed linen, towels and tablecloths.”
Meghan had just finished changing when she heard a burst of female laughter from the porch. The laughter got louder, wilder – the girl was laughing her head off.
“What– ” Meghan started, alarmed. It sounded like someone was getting tickled silly!
“That’s old custom too,” Melissa said. “Ashley’s playing with the guys.”
Meghan padded back out onto the porch, with Melanie and Melissa following behind. She saw that Ashley and the guys had their chairs arranged in a triangle. Ashley’s hands were tied behind her back. Marc had hold of Ashley’s left ankle, with her foot in his lap. Gordon had the other foot. Both were tickling her feet with skill and enthusiasm – she laughed helplessly, tears of laughter running down her cheeks.
“Why is she tied up? Why are they tickling her?” Melanie asked.
“She loves it,” Melissa answered. “Gordon’s been tickling her for years. As for why she’s tied up, it’s to keep her from hurting herself or the guys. They learned that the hard way.”
Bondage was something new for Meghan, something she had never considered. Adam was so much stronger that he just overpowered her, and took the occasional bump or bruise she inflicted in stride.
Gordon held back Ashley’s toes and tickled the soft skin underneath, then down onto the stretched-out sole. Marc tickled the other sole, watching the toes twitch and curl, then down the arch to the heel and back again. Ashley howled with forced mirth, her face turning pink from laughter.
“Great laugh, eh?” Gordon said, grinning. “Want us to save you some of this?”
Meghan stammered something in reply, but found she couldn’t look away. This was horrible! Poor Ashley! But… the girl wasn’t struggling, and didn’t seem to be in any distress. Maybe she did like being tickled.
“I guess not,” Marc said. “Let’s finish her off, Gordon – we have to leave soon.” Like his sister, he sounded like a New Englander.
The guys shifted their tickle target onto Ashley’s heels, their nails flicking and scratching. Ashley threw back her head and laughed at the top of her lungs. She was red faced and sweaty, laughing like mad, completely helpless. The guys picked up the pace, tickling as fast as they could. Ashley lost it and laughed herself breathless.
“Good one, guys,” said a female voice. Meghan looked around, startled, and saw that two more of her co-workers had come in to the porch.
“Wooo! That really tickled!” Ashley said, a little breathless. “I can still feel it. Come visit any time.”
Melanie hugged her brother, and the guys left. The others introduced themselves.
Andrea Turner was Melissa’s sister, 19 yrs old. She was a little shorter than Melissa, but had her sister’s build, coloring and features. Holly Nicholson was 20, and Ashley’s room mate at college – she was studying Mechanical Engineering. She was a pretty girl, not quite medium height, fit and trim looking, with curly shoulder-length brown hair, blue eyes and flawless fair skin. Both wore shorts, flip-flops and Lakeshore t-shirts.
“Hey!” Ashley said. “Don’t just stand there! Give me more!”
Andrea laughed. “She’s weird, but we like her anyway,” she said.
“Yah, I’m weird,” Ashley said, grinning. “You newbies don’t know the half of it. But you’ll learn. Welcome to Lakeshore.”
Holly and Andrea kicked their flip-flops off into their cubbies. Holly went inside, returned with what appeared to be the cut-off legs of a pair of old nylons. Andrea and Holly took the seats the guys had vacated and used the nylons to tie Ashley’s ankles to the arms of their plastic chairs. That would let them tickle with two hands, Meghan realized – they were serious about this.
The girls started slow, teasing Ashley, light nail flicks that produced a stream of girlish giggles. “Don’t– hehe! –tease– haha!” she protested through the giggles. “Tickle– haha-hehe! –me– haha!” –sillee– hehehe!”
“No problem,” Holly said, and dug in. Andrea joined in, nails flicking. Ashley arched her back and laughed her head off.
Meghan didn’t know what to think. She hated tickling! Had she made a mistake coming here?
Both girls tickled two-handed, covering both of Ashley’s feet with unbearable tickling. They shifted their effort to Ashley’s heels, and Ashley went wild, laughing at the top of her lungs.
Melissa checked her watch. “Get your shoes,” she said. “I’ll take you over to the kitchen and introduce you to the rest of the crew.”
The sound of Ashley’s ticklish laughter followed them. It dropped back to little giggles – the others were giving her a breather. Then she was laughing wildly again as they picked up the pace.
“D’you do this all the time?” Meghan asked as they walked.
Melissa saw Meghan’s unease. “Relax,” she said. “It’s only tickling – she enjoys it, and it won’t hurt her. She’s our friend – we’re happy to do it.”
Better her than me, thought Meghan. Ashley kept on laughing, loving every bit of it.
They met Bob McKenzie supervising the kitchen. He ran the food service here – his wife had charge of the housekeeping. He was a balding middle-aged guy whose impressive bay window suggested that he liked his own cooking a little too much. Melissa introduced the girls and left.
Bob introduced their other two co-workers. Meredith McKay was a petite girl with a cute shape, fair skin, bright blue eyes, shoulder-length silky blonde hair, and the wholesome good looks that one associates with “farmer’s daughter”. Tammy Reid was the same physical type, a little taller, with a long dark brown pony tail, green eyes, a girl-next-door face and a cheerful smile. Both were 19 yrs old – this was their second summer here.
They got to work. The time passed quickly. Meghan loaded potatoes into an industrial peeler, then cut them up for cooking. She cored and chopped lettuce for a salad, sliced tomatoes and onions. Before she knew it, it was 5:30.
The whole staff, Bob and Sue included, had dinner together at one of the big dining room tables and went over the next day’s program. Meghan and Melanie were the new kids, so they had kitchen cleanup detail. They got back to The Swamp around 6:30.
There was plenty of daylight left. At solstice, the sun didn’t set until after 9 PM, and it wouldn’t be completely dark until an hour later. But the westering sun didn’t provide much warmth. It was already starting to cool off.
The girls watched a movie on DVD, a sappy romantic comedy. Afterward, Ashley changed into jeans. “Come on, change clothes, and I’ll give you a tour of the property,” she said, and added a pair of socks. “You’ll want a jacket or sweat shirt too.”
Melanie followed Ashley’s example. Meghan didn’t bother. It was still 45 minutes before sundown, and it wasn’t all that chilly yet. And besides, she was warm natured.
The three girls went outside together. Ashley faced them toward the lake. They were on a gentle rise, looking over the lodge roof toward the beach and the lake beyond, with the setting sun behind them.
“We’re facing east, more or less,” Ashley said. “Let’s start at the beach and work our way around.”
The graveled track behind the lodge curved around the south side of the building. About even with the crossbar of the H was a broad avenue cut into the woods. Another white clapboard building stood there, its long side backed up against the woods on the west. It looked like the Bates Motel, a prime example of 1950’s motel architecture. There was a wide roof overhang on the front, with concrete pavement from the front of the building to the edge of the overhang and scraggly grass to the woods on the lake side. A Steamboat Gothic sign on the near end said Oriole.
“This is the newest building on the site,” Ashley said. “Eight guest rooms.”
They came to the entrance road and continued toward the lake. The area near the road was tree-shaded, thin grass growing in sandy soil; beyond that was the beach. To their right was a swing set, monkey bars and a slide. Just past the playground was another wood frame building, about the size of The Swamp, oriented parallel with the shore.
“Boat house,” Ashley said, and led them inside. The boats had been moved out, but there were racks that held oars and canoe paddles, a row of pegs with life jackets hanging from them, and a pile of flotation cushions. There was battered foosball game table to the right of the door, and a ping-pong table in the middle of the room. A dozen garbage cans stood along one wall. Four tall stacks of nesting green plastic mock-Adirondack chairs stood in a corner.
Back outside, they walked down the beach to the water’s edge. The beach was bordered on the south by a patch of scrub willow, on the north by more tree-shaded lawn. There was a metal slide in the shallow water to their left, a wooden platform a short distance offshore, and another platform further out on an anchored oil-drum raft. The dock was on their right, on the south. Three aluminum row boats were tied to the dock, two aluminum-framed plastic canoes were drawn up on the shore to the right of the dock. Another canoe, this one aluminum-skinned, was upside down at the edge of the scrub willow patch – it leaked, Ashley said. They walked out onto the floating dock – the water was clear, sand bottomed.
“This is an artificial beach,” Ashley said. “Ours is too, at Collishaw House. The trick is to wait until mid-winter, then dump truckloads of sand on the ice and grade it out. It places itself when the ice melts.”
Meghan swatted at a mosquito – the willow scrub must be full of them, she thought. The girls walked back toward the lodge and turned right onto the access road. The road curved slightly, closer to the shore, lined on the lake side by a row of silver birch trees. To the left was more tree-shaded lawn.
Another clapboard building stood on the left, about 25 yards north of the lodge, separated from it by an upthrust of exposed granite bedrock. It was big, two-storied, with a porch all the way across the front. The sign over the porch entrance said Alouette.
“Sixteen guest rooms, eight on each floor,” Ashley said.
They continued along the road. “Mind if I ask you something, Ashley?” Meghan asked.
“Go ahead.”
“Why do you let people tickle you like that?”
“I like to be tickled – always have. It’s the way I’m wired.” She paused. “No, that’s not an answer. Let’s see...”
“OK,” Ashley continued. “Sensation is what lets us know we’re alive, right? Well, a good tickling produces an overload of sensation. It drives me crazy while it’s happening, but... At the same time, it doesen’t. I just let go and let it carry me away. It’s exhilirating and... liberating, I guess. Does that make any sense?”
“I never thought of it that way,” Melanie said, “but it does make sense. It can even be fun – sort of – depending on who’s doing it to me.”
But it didn’t make sense to Meghan – she thought of tickling as “sadistic torture inflicted by siblings”, and nothing she had heard encouraged her to change her mind.
Forty yards further north was a similar two-story building, but smaller. The sign on this one said Bobolink. Across the road, near the lake, was another clapboard structure about the size of a big walk-in closet.
“Twelve rooms, six and six,” Ashley said. “The little building across the road is the well house. Now look over here.”
She led them to the shore near the well house. Here, it was armored against the winter ice with gray stone rip-rap, oblong rocks the size of a carry-on suitcase. The rocky border extended north, and terminated at the edge of the beach on the south. But here, someone had laid three blocks as steps and upended two more, one on either side. At the bottom was a narrow strip of sand, a few feet wide. The lake bottom here appeared to be exposed granite bedrock. Twenty yards offshore was a huge, partially submerged flat-topped boulder, deposited there by the glacier, with a few water lilies growing around it. The portion above water was about 10 ft long and 7 ft wide.
“The beach is for the guests,” Ashley said. “If you want to swim, come here. No one will bother you.”
Except the mosquitos, Meghan thought, and slapped another one off her neck.
Ashley led them back to the road and 25 yards further north. To the left were two double cabins, like something out of a 1930’s tourist court, each with two guest rooms – the signs on these said Chickadee and Goldfinch. To their front was a tall hedgerow, with an opening closed with a cyclone fence double gate. A house was visible beyond, with a dock extending from the shore. The road continued past the gate to the house.
“Bob’s parents built the house,” Ashley said. “They have a place in town now that they’re retired – Bob and Sue live here now.” She indicated a middle-aged man putting a cover on a boat tied up at the dock. “That’s Bob’s brother Doug – he comes here on weekends to fish. He’s a beer distributor in town – Bob bought him out when he and Sue took the place over.”
They turned back, walking southward past the cabins. “These are actually the oldest buildings on the site,” Ashley said. “We get a lot of fishermen here – there’s bass, pike, walleye, and even a few muskies. Those are pretty rare, one meter is minimum “keeper” size these days. And panfish too, bluegills and perch mostly. The cabins were part of a fishing camp in the 1930’s. These were the best ones – the old man kept them when he tore the rest down to build the resort.”
The sun was already down behind the rise to the west of the site. Ashley led them between the cabins and Bobolink. The bedrock was exposed here and there behind the buildings; a graveled parking lot had been laid out in the most level spot. They crossed the parking lot – the driveway to it, Meghan realized, was the same one that ran along the back of the lodge. Three cars were parked in the back of the lot – Holly’s, Tammy’s, and another shared by the sisters, Ashley said. Her own was parked at her family’s place – it was an easy walk, a little under a mile.
Suddenly Meghan found herself swatting mosquitos. Swarms of them were coming out of the woods. She ran toward The Swamp. The flip-flops were no good for running – she stumbled, kicked them off and, abandoning all dignity, sprinted flat out for the safety of the screened porch.
Meghan was inside, scratching, when Ashley and Melanie came in. “Gonna listen to me next time?” Ashley asked.
“Take a shower,” Meredith said. She and the others who had stayed behind were already in their pajamas. “I’ll put some cortisone cream on those bites when you get out.”
Meredith had a lower bunk. After her shower, Meghan treated the bites she could reach, then plopped herself down on the bunk on her tummy. She was wearing a pair of old gym shorts and one of her brother’s t-shirts, both soft from many washings.
Meredith started applying the cortisone to the mosquito bites, starting at the top and working her way down. “They ate you alive, eh?” she remarked.
“Are they always that bad?” Meghan asked.
“Only after dark,” Meredith answered. “Unless you go walking in the woods – that’s just as bad during the day. OK, last one– ”
Meredith applied cream to a bite on the back of Meghan’s right ankle, then playfully danced her nails from heel to toes.
“Hehehe! Quit!” Meghan said sharply, and snatched her foot away.
“Knock it off, Meredith,” Melissa said. “We don’t have time to play – we have to be up early tomorrow. Lights out in 10 minutes.”
Melissa had the bottom bunk nearest the front wall of the building – Ashley, Tammy and Meredith had the others. Andrea bunked above her sister, Holly above Ashley, then Meghan and Melanie, who was closest to the bathrooms.
Ashley flipped the light switch and called out, “Good night, all!” Within minutes, Meghan had drifted off to sleep.
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I loved it.
