Work Text:
September 1965
There was no way Cynthia was going to miss the housewarming party at Bird Leg Cabin, so naturally she showed up too early. She’d never been good at calculating what “fashionably late” meant. It was 8:30pm, and the invite flyer said 8pm. But she was only the second to arrive, right after the Breakers. Not a good look.
The couple were young and beautiful. Well, under 30 anyway. Maybe Cynthia was getting old now that she thought mid-20s was young. She handed the bottle of wine she brought to her hostess, a lovely brunette named Barbara, and followed her into the kitchen.
Barbara spoke with a light, lilting accent and was very well dressed. She told Cynthia all about how she and her boyfriend, Tom, were artists who had been searching for the right place to settle down and live out their dreams. Tom was a poet, and she was an actress and model. It seemed strange to Cynthia that they would choose some place so rural, especially after coming up from San Francisco. She told Barbara as much, that sharp journalist’s inquisitiveness popping out before she could remember her manners.
“Oh, but it’s not about working ,” Barbara explained. “Neither of us is in it for the money, or we would’ve gone to Hollywood.”
“Fair enough,” Cynthia nodded. “Although I’ve gotten the impression it’s the same for the hippies down in SF.”
“Sure, but it’s more expensive to live down there,” Barbara said as she poured them each a glass from the bottle Cynthia had brought. “And we have big plans, Tom and I. Big dreams.”
“Oh?”
Barbara passed one glass to Cynthia and then held up the other in offering of a toast. Cynthia accepted her glass and then clinked it against her hostess’s.
“Cheers!” she said with a smile.
“ Kippis! ”
“Yes, big dreams,” Barbara went on. “We want to buy land and build up an artists’ commune.”
Cynthia leaned in, more than just professionally interested now. “Oh? Here at Bird Leg Cabin?”
Barbara shook her head. “No, I do not think so. It is much too small for what we are hoping. We will probably build a big house some place nearer to town, with space and equipment for artists of all kinds. A safe haven, a place for collaboration!”
“Wow, yeah, that is quite the vision.”
“Thank you,” Barbara preened. “But you see why the price of land in California was a bit of a problem. And the price of building.”
“Sure,” Cynthia agreed, now feeling horribly outmatched by this visionary of a woman.
“So when we found this little community with strong Finnish roots, we couldn’t help ourselves! It will take some time, though, to build everything little by little. But this cabin should be a lovely home while we chase our future. The lake is so inspiring, is it not?”
“I don’t think I qualify as an artist, but you’re certainly not the only person I’ve heard say so.”
“Oh, how rude of me going on about myself and not asking you about your own life. Tell me, Cynthia, what is it that you do with your time on this Earth?” She looked and sounded genuinely interested, and it made Cynthia feel warm and at ease.
“I’m a reporter,” she told Barbara proudly. “A junior columnist at the Bright Falls Record, in fact.”
“Oh, a writer!” Barbara gasped excitedly. “Just like my Tom! Perkele , you know, you two did not really get a chance to chat. I stole you away all to myself. Let us fix that, shall we?”
“Oh, okay.”
Cynthia followed her out of the kitchen and back to where the Breakers were chatting with Tom. So much as one could when the cabin was built in an all-one-room sort of fashion. The Breakers were sitting on a hand-me-down sofa, each with a bottle of beer in their hand, and their host sat on the worn coffee table in front of them.
As Barbara led Cynthia closer, Tom rose to his feet and beamed at her. He was strikingly handsome, so much so that now that she was looking at him properly, Cynthia felt a little tongue-tied. He wore his dark, wavy hair long and his bold, colorful patterned shirt unbuttoned enough to show an immodest yet trendy amount of skin. European, fashionable, tall, dark, and handsome…no wonder Tom had snagged a woman like Barbara. In fact it was hard to say which of them was getting the better end of things. The two had “power couple” radiating off of them in waves.
“Tom, rakkaani , Cynthia here was just telling me how she writes for the local paper!” Barbara told him proudly.
A bright smile broke over Tom’s face, making his crystal clear blue eyes sparkle like icicles. “ Jumalauta , that’s wonderful! Another wielder of the written word!”
“Oh, I don’t know that I’d say that much,” Cynthia demurred. “It’s just reporting basic facts about the local goings on. They mostly have me writing the fluff pieces.”
Tom tsked at her, frowning slightly. “Do not say this like it is not important,” he scolded. “I would love to read some of your articles. In fact I look forward to doing so every day!”
“It’s a weekly paper,” Cynthia laughed.
“Every week!” Tom proclaimed without missing a beat, making everyone in the room laugh. “Plus, you must have great command of English grammar. I could use some tips from you from time to time, if you might be willing to lend your services.”
Cynthia’s heart fluttered. She would jump at the chance to spend time with this beautiful, impressive man, especially one-on-one. Maybe read some of his poems before they get published. Not that that was appropriate in the slightest. Tom had a very serious girlfriend—even though he had for some inane reason not put a ring on her finger yet, Cynthia noticed—and this was no time to develop some silly crush.
“You don’t need it,” she replied, shaking her head. “Your grammar is much better than you’re giving yourself credit for.”
“Hell, it sounds better than mine,” Sheriff Breaker chuckled.
The group’s gentle, congenial laughter was interrupted by a knock on the front door. Barbara excused herself to answer it, leaving Tom to entertain Cynthia and the Breakers.
“So, a reporter and the sheriff. I take it you know each other, then, at least professionally,” Tom commented.
Cynthia gave Conrad a polite smile that he returned with an added dose of warmth. She was significantly younger than him, but he had been the quarterback at the high school when he was there, and Cynthia’s father had always dragged her and her brother along to the home games. Less dragging required for her big brother, but still.
Conrad was a bit of a hometown sweetheart far before he got elected sheriff. Nowadays she looked at him a bit differently, having seen the dirty side of the police force up close in her couple of years working at the paper after she graduated school. She hadn’t written anything critical of the sheriff’s department herself yet, but a healthy tension remained between the press and the police.
“Cynthia does good work,” Conrad told their host politically. “She’ll go on to do great things. I just know it.”
“I knew it!” Tom laughed proudly, as if he had discovered her raw talent himself. “You have that look about you. This one is intelligent, is she not? Perkele! ”
Barbara led George—or Doc as some of her friends had started calling him—into the party and introduced him to Tom. The conversation shifted, and it left Cynthia feeling very young and yet very out of fashion. She had arrived with all the older crowd, and the hosts were intimidatingly hip. She wished she could fast-forward through time like when you put a record on the wrong speed and skip to the part where her friends were here.
She couldn’t take her eyes off of Tom, no matter who all arrived, no matter who she was actually holding a conversation with. Her gaze kept drifting his way. Tom had time and attention for everyone. He was so charismatic. She wondered if he was a beatnik, if he had performed his poetry aloud alongside David Meltzer and Allen Ginsberg. Cynthia hoped he would read them something tonight.
Things got a lot more comfortable after Pat showed up around 9:30pm. Cynthia poured herself a third glass of wine from the bottle Pat brought, and the Anderson moonshine had started to flow. She and Pat had gotten much closer since they’d each moved back home with their degrees than they were in their school days. They’d been a couple of years apart and only casual friends, but now they were thick as thieves.
It helped that they had chosen similar careers. While Cynthia was earning her stripes at the paper, Pat had gone from intern and substitute DJ to getting his own show at the radio station last month. It was a late night slot, but Pat didn’t mind it. He’d always been a bit of a night owl. Cynthia never missed a show, staying up every Tuesday night to make sure she caught it.
Pat asked after her opinion of their new neighbors, and she laid it out for him underneath the buzz of the now thriving party. Cynthia held back her personal opinion on Tom and Barbara’s respective beauty and their love life, focusing instead on their ambition and free-spiritedness.
“Sounds like our kinda people,” Pat praised. “I sure hope they can make that compound a reality. Could do our little town something good.”
“Mhm. Can you just imagine Deerfest? It really ought to be a celebration of local art as much as nature and hunting season,” Cynthia told him.
“Oh, now wouldn’t that be something! More than just floats and folk music. There could be art, and poetry, and monologues! Tableaus!”
“Yeah,” she agreed, getting excited. “We don’t have a proper craft fair here, but Deerfest…”
“Oh, that’s a wonderful idea, Cindy,” Pat gushed, squeezing her arm. “You tell these two, and you could have a hand in shaping our little community into an artists’ haven too!”
She felt herself blushing as she glanced Tom’s way, spying him chatting with the Anderson brothers and Bob. Looking at him made her feel like an imposter, like her presence would be unwelcome, but the poet had gotten so excited when he heard about her work.
“Yeah, maybe…”
As the younger crowd got drunker and the older crowd headed home for the night, Cynthia found herself relaxing as much as if this party was held at the Anderson farm. She indulged in a little moonshine and clapped along while the group traded drinking songs.
Felix led several, slapping his knee to help the group keep time and bellowing throughout the cabin in his rich baritone. Barbara and Oskari compared the Finnish ones they knew, which seemed to have changed in the years since his parents left the old country. Linnea, Oskari’s new girlfriend who had left Finland only a handful of years ago, laughed at them both and offered yet a third iteration of the lyrics.
“It’s Jagger v Koskela v Suosalo!” Felix laughed. “Who’s keeping score?”
“There’s no way to win!” Pat chuckled, shaking his head at the drummer. “We dunno who’s right!”
“By audience vote then!” he suggested, gesturing with his bottle of moonshine.
“Magnus should judge! Hey, where is our lovely lyricist anyway?” Bob asked, looking around the room.
Cynthia lifted her head too, but she couldn’t spot Magnus’s blond head.
“He went t’ take a leak,” Felix reminded them.
“That was ages ago,” Tapio remarked.
“Must be a big shit!” Norman laughed.
Cynthia wrinkled her nose as she watched him clink his beer bottle against Oskari’s, snickering. Linnea made eye contact with her and shook her head sympathetically, but she was giggling a little too. She rolled her eyes in a way that said, “Men, am I right?”. Cynthia nodded, smiling back in agreement.
“Come t’ think of it, I need t’ drain the hose myself,” Pat said, shoving himself up to stand.
“Good!” Bob laughed. “You can rescue Magnus! He must have fallen in!”
Pat chuckled and gave him a thumbs up as he made his way towards the stairs.
The party didn’t start winding down until well after midnight, and many of them had not had the forethought to choose designated drivers. When the Andersons threw parties that went this hard, a bunch of them usually ended up crashing in the barn for the night. Their parents didn’t mind, as long as Felix and Magnus were up in time to do their chores. Sometimes Cynthia and the others even made up for the mess they made by lending a hand before going home the next day. However Bird Leg cabin was too small to comfortably accommodate so many, and she doubted their hosts had planned for this outcome.
“Wanna crash in the truck bed tonight, bro?” Felix asked Magnus.
“Sure,” the younger brother replied, sleepily dazed.
“Hey, whadda ‘bout me?” Bob grumbled.
“I’ve been working on sobering up,” Pat told them. “I could drive a couple of folks home…in a bit.”
“Nonsense, all of you are welcome to stay,” Tom assured them.
“Indeed. We may not have much to offer in terms of comfort, but you are not putting us out by sleeping on the sofa or the floor,” Barbara agreed.
“ Perkele , we could fit another person in our bed too, I think,” Tom suggested, raising an eyebrow in his girlfriend’s direction.
A couple of people whistled or purred as Barbara giggled back at him. “You come on so strong, rakkaani ,” she scolded. “It is a wonder you do not scare off the whole town and leave us with no new friends at all.”
“Nonsense, my sweet!,” he proclaimed with a sweeping gesture. “These people here? The ones who stayed past one in the morning at a housewarming? These are our people, Baba.”
Cynthia looked around at the faces that remained: the Andersons and the other guys from their so-called band, Oskari and Linnea, Pat, Norman, Tapio, and the rest. They were definitely the more creative, free-thinking bunch, but not all of them were artists, per se. Cynthia looked around and, spying the twinkle passing between Tom and Barbara, wondered if they were thinking that had found the people with which they would build their commune.
“I call sofa,” Cynthia said, knowing to get in early. “Ladies first.”
“I like the way you think, Cindy,” Linnea chuckled. “I’ll take an armchair.”
“At least gimme a throw pillow, perkele ,” Oskari slurred.
Cynthia threw one down on his head with a laugh.
Quickly everyone began to claim their beds for the night. Magnus and Felix insisted on sleeping in their truck bed across the bridge, and Bob insisted on sleeping on top of them both. However Cynthia noticed Barbara speaking to Magnus near the door with a gentle smile before he left, and whatever she said was making him blush. Curious, maybe she was hitting on him. It seemed ridiculous, Tom and Barbara seemed obsessed with each other, but…crazier things were going on in San Francisco these days.
Cynthia fought down a misplaced surge of jealousy and made herself comfortable on the sofa. Tom and Barbara’s personal life was none of her damn business—nor Magnus’s for that matter. Besides, the residents of Bird Leg Cabin went up to bed alone, encouraging them all to knock on their door if they needed anything and make themselves at home.
It was the end of the night, but it felt like the start of something.