Adeline Chapter Two: The Road

The road to paradise was narrow, dangerous, and impossible to resist.

Now, the road leading to the lake was steep and narrow, winding and twisting with hairpin turns on one side and cliffs dropping straight down into the deepest parts of the lake on the other. It was a dangerous road, the sort of road that demanded one’s undivided attention.

The Bible says the narrow road leads to life, and I believe this to be true. My life, or at least the best parts of it, was found every summer at the end of that long, narrow road, difficult and less traveled as it was.

Everyone who summered there believed their lives were waiting at the end of that horrible road too, provided we all got there in one piece.

Unfortunately, there were a few over the years who did not.

A few lost their lives along the way, driving off the cliffs in an alcohol-induced stupor deep in the dead of night. But there was no other way to get there. There would be no straightening the road. No widening it into something sensible. As long as a person was sober and minded the speed limit, which was twenty impossibly slow miles per hour, everything would be fine.

But, of course, our little lakeside community had its share of fools, just like everywhere else in the world, and I’m sorry to report that one or two cars had careened off the cliffs over the years.

I imagine there could be a whole wrecking yard worth of rusted-out automobiles sitting at the bottom of the lake right now. I often wonder if the big fish get the big cars and the little fish get the tiny cars.

Once, the lake swallowed up a bus.

I’ll bet the sturgeon get to live in that.

Anyway, alcohol was always the cause, naturally. Not the intoxicated drivers, mind you, but the alcohol itself. If only it would leave us summer folk alone.

How to improve the safety of our community as we all traveled to and fro by way of the devil road was discussed at the annual homeowners’ meeting each June. Our road was a conundrum. Did we love it, or did we hate it?

It was the Yellow Brick Road, the Road to Paradise. Yet it was also the road from hell, a lying snake of a road.

It seemed that every year we allocated a little more money to put up even more guardrails and red flashers. Guardrails that cars would careen right on through, and flashers that would fail to warn a person of their dangerous flirtation with the cliffs as they sped around the corners and felt the gravelly edge slip away beneath their tires.

It didn’t seem to matter what we did or how much we cautioned. What is it in human nature that causes a person to ignore the truth? Why do so many pretend to be surprised when the terrifying inevitable occurs?

I guess most folks just figure bad things will never happen to them.

Especially when they’re young.

Following the annual meeting, we’d all get together for potluck and serve each other cheap wine and Schlitz Beer. Later, the music would start, and all the old people — that would be anyone over thirty years of age — would gather up their leftovers and scramble out like a plague was heading our way.

Hurry home before the loud rock and roll music infected our very senses and brainwashed us as it evidently had our children.

Hurry home before we lost our hearing and our minds.

Hurry home before the inky darkness settled on the fire-breathing dragon as it reared up and whipped its tail, spilling us all over the edge, over the cliffs, and into the hungry black hole below.

The young people, of course, danced and drank the night away, oblivious to the danger they refused to acknowledge or accept. They were just young and full of romantic anticipation for the warm summer evenings that lay ahead.

I guess I understood them.

I remember being young, a long, long time ago.

Sometime before sunrise, as the campfires finally died out and exhaustion took hold of their bodies, they would wander on home. Some of them walking, some of them driving. It didn’t matter which they were doing. They were in danger all the same.

The road snapped itself like a whip, confusing the drivers who were most assuredly under a variety of bad influences, and it buckled under the feet of the walkers, causing them to stumble in the ruts and crumbling asphalt.

Our prayers alone, I have no doubt, are what brought them home in one piece.

Regardless of the menace, it was a magical place and a magical time of our lives.

I loved everything about it.

The warm night air. The campfires. The silly songs and terrible guitar playing.

And the presence of the moon.

Oh, that glorious moon.

I will carry the moon inside me forever. A globe so enormous rising over the mountains, casting shadows and mystery everywhere you looked.

Sometimes at night I would wake up to find the moon rising late, rising up from the back side of the dark, looming mountains.

“Adie,” Jack would whisper, “why are you awake?”

“Why are you awake, Jack?” I would ask in return.

I could hear his smile.

I would watch the moon from the warmth of our bed as it crept slowly across the sky, illuminating everything as it went. The neighboring cabins. The boats lying still in their liquid bed. The infinite canopy of evergreens. And the owls, those wonderful barn owls on the fence posts, hooting softly into the night.

“I can’t help it, Jack. It’s the moon.”

And we would spoon a little tighter.

The mountains linked together their outstretched arms like giants in a huddle and surrounded the black bowl of a lake, keeping us cocooned against the rest of the world.

“It is a beautiful moon, Adie,” Jack would mutter, sighing deeply.

Loons made their presence known, mournful and beautiful, sending shivers down my spine as they called across the still waters to each other. Called to their mates to be found in the night, while making delicate splashes on the surface of the water.

Water so still I swear it was possible to see the tracks of a mosquito skip across the top in that moonlight.

And always, hiding under the surface of everything beautiful, lay the dangers of the never-ending road.

A road to make you crazy.

A road of confusion.

Yet one that led to a sanctuary so intricately woven into our very souls that we willingly risked everything for it, time and time again.

I shivered.

“Trevor will be driving in another year, Jack.”

But Jack was asleep.

Run down the road, little dog.
Run away from the hungry coyote in the dead of the warm summer night.
Down the narrow winding road leading you home.

Adeline continues next week with Chapter Three.