The party still goes on. Sitting in my car at the curb, blending between two SUVs, I can’t take my eyes off the firehouse about thirty yardsdown the street.
Green Street.The name of the road, the firehouse, and the people inside. The headquarters of Weston’s racketeering, which according to my research, includes crime that isn’t as petty as I’d hoped it had become in Drew’s absence. Hard drugs, weapons, embezzlement, thievery, prostitution…
Hugo Navarre runs it now, and I guess that’s who’s been trying to call me. It’s a local phone number that I didn’t have saved, and with the car parked outside of my house a couple of days ago, it’s a safe assumption they know I’m back.
Green Street wasn’t always bad, and Weston wasn’t always rundown. The faded red brick firehouse still stands three-stories tall, surrounded by a parking area overrun with grass and weeds, unmanicured trees, and a quiet road, dilapidated from years of neglect. The town is a quarter of what it used to be. Maybe two-thousand people now. There are no police, and barely any businesses to service the community.
This mill town across the river from Shelburne Falls was once an eclectic place, I’m told, with hiking trails, restaurants, and community gatherings like carnivals, car cruises, and bingo nights at the VFW. Always a little poorer than Shelburne Falls, but it had its own character.
Unfortunately, a flood more than twenty years ago instigated a mass evacuation, and most of the citizens never returned. There’s a spot in the forest full of cars that had to be moved off the streets when they were abandoned in traffic because no one could get out, and people needed to find higher ground quickly.
Many houses were destroyed, but the buildings downtown still stand. The massive warehouses, mills, and anything made of brick. The thousand or so windows that once had lives and stories playing out behind them are now just views into rooms of silence.
I glance down at my shoes, the ones I wore to the gym when I tried not to look for her, or wait for her, when I was there earlier. Caked in fresh earth, I shouldn’t have worn them out to the forest tonight. They’ll leave easily identifiable tracks.
With the rain, I’m hopeful my prints are already gone, along with any other evidence of my visit to the grave. I shouldn’t have driven out there at all, but I needed to face it one time before I left.
It’s such a lonely place. Dark. And cold.
Forgotten.
Engines zoom past, and I count four motorbikes speeding to a halt in front of the firehouse. My elbow rests on the door as I rub one of my fingers over my lips, watching Farrow Kelly climb off his bike. No helmet and his hat on backward, he swings open the door that I put on that fucking place twelve years ago. Three others follow him in.
Quinn won’t have the future she deserves with someone like him. I don’t want Green Street to touch her at all, and if that means I can’t be in her life either to ensure my past doesn’t spill over onto her, then I’ll continue to live without all of them.
Even though it feels like it’s going to hurt to leave this time a little more than it did the first.
I was so desperate for something of my own back then that I sold my integrity for nothing.
It didn’t seem like it at the time. Young and excited, we only saw life getting better and better. Remembering that first day, it’s amazing how little I anticipated what Green Street would become.
Or how shit would change for me.
“What are we doing here?” I griped, climbing out of Lance’s 4Runner.
“I’ve got something to show you,” he called out, running for the old building. “Come on.”
Drew Reeves jumped out from the back seat, leaving his black ski cap and buffalo plaid button-up on even though it was clear we weren’t hitting the slopes. At least, not yet.
Lance broke his arm last week falling wrong on a black diamond run, and I thought he insisted on coming today so he could sit in the lodge and get drunk, watching us have fun.
Instead, we were in Weston, or what was left of it. This town had been dead since I was a kid.
Following him around the side of the building with its door missing and all the windows broken, I winced at the stench that hit me as we entered.Damn, did an animal die in here?
The water line from the flood more than a decade before rose up the walls about two feet, and various pieces of furniture sat broken, ripped, and decaying. I wandered deeper in, the large cement floor and closed garage door to my right allowing for one fire truck, or a few smaller vehicles, to fit inside. I let my head fall back and gazed up at the fireman’s pole.
“It’s the old firehouse,” Lance explained, “but it’s got a kitchen, bathrooms, and a shitload of space.”
“For what?” I asked.
Drew kicked a piece of wood out of the way, hands in his pockets as he strolled.
“A hangout.” Lance grinned.
Drew and I stared at him.
Like a biker clubhouse? I laughed to myself.
