Punxsutawney Sucks - Chapter 2
And here's the next bit...one particularl famous groundhog, a teen hockey star, and more fraternal ribbing. Dean gets into trouble at the library. Again, contain your excitement.
a/n: A reviewer asked if Punxsutawney actually looks like I’m describing it, what with all the groundhog stuff. I’ve taken some liberties, of course, but most of this crap I really couldn’t make up if I tried. Visit the town’s web site if you want to see the fiberglass Phils, or the “Official Site of the Puxsutawney Groundhog Club” to find out more about whole event. The dead deer at the side of the road, the ‘home made porn’ sign and the factory worker vignette from last chapter were all spotted on a road trip I made through rural Pennsylvania a couple of years back.
Disclaimer: I’m trying not to veer off into Libel Land, so all the characters that populate this story are totally, completely figments of my imagination (and bear no resemblance to people living or dead). Oh, except for all things Supernatural, which belong to media conglomerates.
--
Sam was a little worried that Dean was going to get kicked out of the library. First off, they hadn’t even made it to the card catalogue - and this was the sort of library that had a card catalogue - before Dean said, in a voice way louder than was necessary, “Shit! Would ya look at that?” Granted, the instigating factor happened to be yet another groundhog statue next to the checkout desk, but a class of kindergarten students were getting their picture taken in front of it, so that pretty much screwed him in the eyes of the library staff.
And, really, shouldn’t Dean be getting inured to the furry bastard by now? They had booked a room at Phil’s Daybreak Inn, had breakfasted at The Burrow, and just now bought toques at the Gopher Gear store. Dean had cut off the little groundhog patch on his with his Swiss army knife before they were even out of the store. In addition to the toques, they’d bought another scarf and some mittens. They’d had to settle for mittens, not gloves, because - as the shopkeeper had pointed out at least three times - she’d had a run on gloves. In the car, on the way to Barclay Square and the library, Dean had declared mittens better for cold, anyway, because for your fingers to remain warm, you had to ‘keep your guys together’. Then Sam was told to shut his cakehole because what did some Stanford geek know about cold?
So Sam said nothing about swearing in front of little kids. They set up at a long table, Sam with his notebook, and a pile of microfilm boxes and one of those old readers that must have been made at the same factory and in the same year as the Impala, because it probably weighed as much and certainly sounded as loud. For the first hour or so, Dean pretended to take some interest, looking over Sam’s shoulder, even attempting to loop one of the microfilms into a second reader to help out. That had earned him another reprimand from the librarian, for cursing at the machine.
Dean cast a long-suffering look to his brother, begging for release. Sam, who had just found a mention of an ‘accidental’ burning in a March 1955 edition of the Punxsutawney Spirit, waved him off distractedly. Fine, he’d get more accomplished without Dean hovering, or provoking the library staff.
Even at Stanford, Sam had been labeled as particularly studious; he could easily - happily - spend hours at a piece of research, ruling out specious citations, hunting through arcane reference volumes, employing a fine academic instinct to leap from one source to another. His head was addled with dates and facts, and his notebook pages covered in his tight, almost indecipherable scrawl, and he thought he was seeing a pattern, when...a child’s scream shredded his concentration.
His head snapped up, and he felt groggy for a second, not an unpleasant feeling, but as though he was swimming up through jello. The scream was more of a shriek, he decided, hearing it again from somewhere across the library, but it carried remarkably well. Sam got up, leaving his notes on the table, and their coats hung across the chair backs - this was Punxsutawney, after all, not the reading room at Stanford and who in their right minds would steal some crappy old parkas? - and headed toward the sounds of escalating chaos coming from the children’s section.
Had Sam been a betting man, he’d have put money down that any commotion in a library would involve Dean. He wasn’t wrong, though it took him a few minutes to put it all together.
He jumped back - not in fear, but in surprise - when a large creature the size of well-fed cocker spaniel came bolting out from between the stacks, bounced off an oversized atlas on the lower shelf, and wedged itself under the trophy case located between the drinking fountain and the handicapped elevator.
A split second later, a harried woman stormed around the same corner, cast wildly about before resting her eyes on Sam. He recognized her: the kindergarten teacher. And not one of those comely, wouldn’t-teaching-little-kids-be-lovely-before-I-get-married? type of kindergarten teachers, either. This one looked as though kicking the little monsters into submission was more her style. So Sam maintained his composure and made her ask.
“Did you see...” and she trailed off, only to take a deep breath. “Did you see a groundhog?”
Sam knew what Dean would have said to that. Instead, he nodded. “It’s, ah,” and waved his hand at the trophy case. At least ten little kids crowded behind her, followed by an older guy in a plaid shirt with a nametag that said, “Henry” underneath which read, “Handler”. It was unclear how these two words were related.
Leaving the teacher and the groundhog handler to manage the rescue, Sam sidled down the stacks in the direction from which the groundhog had come, instinctively knowing he’d find Dean there.
The row of books opened out into the children’s section, colorful banners and large posters advertising the Raise-a-Reader program and the Mom n’ Tots storytime series. A few large beanbag chairs littered the floor, as did a bunch of scattered cushions, but what really demanded Sam’s attention was the fact that Dean was standing behind a plexiglass wall in a sea of wood shavings looking down at an enormous groundhog. Above the plexiglass enclosure, a sign read: “Groundhog Zoo - Home of Punxsutawney Phil”.
And Dean accused him of being a magnet for the weird.
Pressed up against the plexi, a dozen little kids - mostly boys, Sam noted with a stab of sudden understanding - watched Dean bend down to silently stare at the groundhog snuffling the tip of his boot. A young woman stood beside the latched gate, and she was wearing the same pattern of plaid shirt as Henry the Handler, albeit with considerably more style. Sam wondered what her nametag said.
Just as he came up, the little boys - the disruptive and rebellious remnants of the kindergarten class, the ones that wouldn’t follow their teacher if she’d been guiding them into an all-you-can-eat chocolate factory - made a collective, appreciative sound, something between ‘cooooool’ and ‘sweeeeeet’. Dean had taken out his knife and was cutting an apple to feed to the groundhog, but he did it with such flourish, such speed, that the apple skin flew off in one huge, single curl, a miracle of skill. He was such a fucking awful influence, Sam thought, raising his knuckle to tap on the glass.
Looking up, Dean smiled that hundred-watt grin of his, pocketed the knife and threw the remainder of the apple to the bottom of the pen. Hungrily, the groundhog waddled over to it. It looked like a cinderblock with fur and probably weighed as much. Nodding and saying something unintelligible to the girl (“Britni” Sam could now read, “Assistant”), Dean unlatched the door and came out of the Groundhog Zoo, trailing wood shavings across the carpet.
“Can you believe it?” he said as soon as he was out, ignoring the massed pod of boys who followed his every move with eyes round and adoring. “That’s Phil in there. Only comes out on February 2nd. Rest of the time, he’s kicking back in his climate-controlled pad being hand-fed by the blonde. Nice fucking life.” And Sam grabbed his brother’s shirt so fast and so hard he heard a tiny rip as he pulled Dean bodily out of the children’s section.
Releasing him as they returned to their table, Sam managed to find the humour in it - nosing through old newspapers while Dean set wild animals free in the public library. “So, if the big guy was Phil, who was the escapee?”
Dean looked sincere, which wasn’t comforting. “That so wasn’t my fault, you know. Mrs. Phil has a mind of her own. Phyllis, I think they call her.” And a grin spread way out to there. “Books like an Indy driver, doesn’t she?”
Privately thinking that that was the only time Dean had ever uttered the word ‘book’ in a library, Sam drew his brother’s attention to the newspaper article he’d deliberately left on the microfilm reader screen. The headline read: Fourth Teen Dies in Fire. The date was March, 1965.
“Okay, Mr. Free Willy, follow the bouncing ball, will you? We have a series of fire-related deaths over the years, always young men, always this time in March.”
To his credit, Dean settled down, drew a chair over. “What else?”
Sam adjusted the screen, twirled the focus knob and pointed to the item on the corner of the same front page: ‘Deep Freeze Continues’. Dean’s eyebrows rose slightly. “And when does the deep freeze end?”
“Six weeks to the day after Groundhog Day,” Sam said, knowing it sounded stupid. If it weren’t for the dead bodies, it would be stupid.
“What did our friend Phil predict those years?” Dean asked, and Sam had the answer, because he’d followed the same line of reasoning.
“Six more weeks of winter, every time. But,” he continued, anticipating Dean’s protest, “Phil sees his shadow every few years, and that doesn’t necessarily mean deaths, or a deep freeze. Since he’s been doing the predicting, over a hundred and twenty years, it’s only happened five times that I can find. This latest spate makes it six.”
Dean nodded, and laughter writhed beneath his mock-serious façade. “Britni told me that the Inner Circle - those dudes in the top hats that run the prediction racket and look after Phil? - claim it’s the same fucking groundhog now as in 1886. They give him a sip of magic ‘groundhog punch’ every seven years that keeps him going.”
Dear god, Sam thought, I am going to be paying for this visit for years.
Despite the ridiculousness of the situation, there was the fact that in addition to being wacky, the whole gopher thing was also weird. Weird in their way, weird. Dean looked as though he could use a cup of coffee, rubbed his hand across his face. “So what’s the difference? Why some years and not others?”
Sam shrugged, shook his head lightly. “All young men. All out at night for one reason or another, sometimes alone, sometimes with friends. Just one at a time. In 1897, six people died. In 1936, only two, same as in 1943. 1955, three. 1965, four. No obvious pattern.”
Dean wasn’t listening. That’s because he was thinking in archetypes, not so much on statistics, but on mythology. “What’s the origin of Groundhog Day, anyway? The whole ‘sees his shadow’ thing sounds pretty, you know...dark.”
Candlemas, it turned out. St. Brigid and early Germanic settlers bringing their beliefs about surviving the last half of winter to this part of America. Early February was the turning point in the season, the time when things could go either way. Better have enough hay stored to last out the winter. Meteorologically speaking, if the sun was bright enough to cast a shadow, it meant the weather was clear, which probably meant cold; there was not enough cloud cover to trap heat. A cold, long winter meant offerings to those who brought warmth: St. Brigid was a hearth saint, one for whom sheaves of grain were braided and left.
Sam was guessing and he was skeptical. “Keep St. Brigid happy? You think a Christian saint is offing Punxsutawney’s boys?”
Dean sighed mightily. “We’ve seen stranger, Sam, god only knows. These Christian holidays are usually cover dates for older pagan rituals, though.”
“Sacrifices to help get the community through winter?” Sam started to rewind the microfilm. “Yeah, we’ve seen that before, but this is a huge, national event. Punxsutawney Phil’s been on Oprah, Dean. And I’m not even going to mention the movie. This is too high profile for an evil cabal to control, don’t you think?” They were running out of easy answers, running full into pure conjecture. “C’mon. I need something to eat. Let’s see if we can get through lunch without offending the locals, okay?”
“We should talk to some teenagers,” Dean muttered as Sam returned the film boxes to the reference counter.
“We could come back here after school lets out,” Sam suggested, smiling at the reference librarian, who was looking damn happy they were leaving. “Find a few then.”
Dean, who was already heading for the door, pulling on his mitts, turned briefly. “And that, Sammy, is why you never got lucky in high school.”
--
There were actually a good number of reasons why Sam hadn’t made past second base until college, but most of them involved moving a lot, having a conscience, and liking books more than sports. Oh, and Dean of course.
It was hard, especially around girls, especially in high school, having a brother like Dean. He was the type of guy little undomesticated boys and teenaged girls loved. Dean got into a lot of fights, knew his way around a compliment, and had that fucking smile. Most of the time, Sam didn’t mind; it was easier than making idiotic small talk - a specialty of Dean’s for which he was genetically programmed to excel - and trying to feign interest in whatever....zzzz.
And there, he’d just tuned out what they were saying again. Something about Spring Break and Daytona, maybe. He would have fallen asleep, except that Dean kicked him under the table. Hard. He caught Sam in his stare: Step up to the plate, Sammy.
“So, I’ve been hearing about some weird stuff going on,” Sam blurted out, earning a reproving look from Dean as the table - three girls in camo pants and puffy down coats - shut completely up.
The hollow clatter of pins falling, the roll of a heavy ball against metal rails, and the smell of bowling shoes was perhaps one of the least palatable combinations of sounds and sensations Sam had encountered. Dean seemed utterly unfazed at how uncool this whole situation was: scamming sixteen-year-old girls in a bowling alley. Named Groundhog Lanes, of course.
But he’d been right: it was where the teens went after school, to bowl, or play pool, or just hang out with a coke and a basket of fries.
“Yeah,” Dean agreed, “one of the football team?”
“They’re great,” one of the girls immediately gushed. The Punxsutawney Chucks were apparently one of the town’s big attractions - the teens having no interest in groundhogs, of course - and now that the football season and Groundhog Day were well over, there wasn’t much else to gossip about other than MTV. Sam knew the role football played in towns like this, how the boys would be just the same as gods, with the same adulation and the same responsibilities.
He had a brief pang of regret then, as he watched his brother work the table, the smile fixed on his face, a certain keen longing in his eyes. Dean had wanted to play football, had wanted it so much. Sam had been twelve, and Dean four years more than that, and the junior squad tryouts had gone well. Then a hunt had ended horrifically for them, and Dean had been in the hospital for weeks, it had seemed, and that was that. The next year, at a different school in a different state - Texas, of course - it was obvious that Dean just wasn’t big enough for the first string, and if it wasn’t first string for Dean, it was nothing. The baseball mitt had come out again.
There were so many things that were off limits as conversation starters with Dean, and this was one of them.
Sam noticed the slight shift in Dean’s attitude, but the girls didn’t; they were on a roll. “Oh, yeah, I mean, Austin was so cute and all. And Darrin,” the girls were silent, like chickens at night, present, watchful, fearful.
“Ben,” one of them sniffed.
“Don’t forget Lyndon,” a new voice broke in, almost harsh. A tall teen stood beside the table, hands deep into the large pockets of an army-issue winter parka, baseball hat too big for what was a small head, headphones resting on wide shoulders, disingenuous blue eyes roaming the table, daring any one of the girls there to say a word. “Lyndon died first. But he wasn’t a Chuck, was he? So maybe he doesn’t count.”
The girls remained silent. Sam smiled awkwardly. “Who’s counting?”
It was like they had some internal mode of communication, young girls. Dean had warned him about that, years ago, when Sam still took advice from Dean on these matters. Sam had been more like those kindergarten boys in the Groundhog Zoo than he cared to remember.
So they left, en masse, and on cue. One of them, though, bent down to Sam before she left, and he could see a floating heart pendant slide forward on her necklace as she came close, overpowering scent of vanilla and gum. “You are so cute. You should come to skating Friday night, you know.” She balanced her weight between one hand on the table, and one on the bench back, face inches from Sam’s. “Really. It gets really boring around here,” and what she meant by it was so obvious, so literally in his face.
Words did not come. Sam sat there, pole axed, unable to cough up anything, knowing Dean was an arm’s length away, hearing everything. He was so bad at this, so completely useless, even if he’d wanted to - which he, comprehensively, did not.
“For heaven’s sake,” the army-parka said, sliding into the booth as the girls shot venomous looks over their shoulders. “You’d think they didn’t have a football team to choose from.”
Difficult to determine many things about this newcomer. Sex, for example. Age. Whether or not he - she, Sam thought suddenly - was amused or angry. A little of both. Holy shit, this kid’s life in small town America would not be an easy one.
“Kris,” the teen identified herself, natural confidence expecting a response.
Dean introduced them as reporters for an online magazine, though it was difficult to tell if Kris was buying it. By the time Sam worked up the nerve to look at Dean, his brother was wholly concentrating on Kris, which was better than him concentrating on the girl’s parting comments to Sam.
“Lyndon was president of the debating club,” Kris said, picking at the abandoned fry basket. “He was a good guy, and he didn’t deserve to burn up like that.”
Who does? Sam thought. “You think you know what happened?” he said instead.
Kris shrugged. “No. First of all, I thought it might have been a Chuck prank gone wrong, but those guys don’t have it in them, really.” She wore a wry smile, displaying an intelligence, an observer’s dry wit. Older than her years, made to be by circumstance. “I used to play hockey with most of them, until I hit twelve and had to play for the girls team.” She shrugged. “Still, full ride to Penn State next year playing for the Women’s Varsity, which is more than I can say for any of the Chucks.”
“They give you a hard time, the guys?” Sam asked, mostly because Kris seemed so open for it.
She chewed thoughtfully on a cold fry, grinning. She’s more like Dean than I am, Sam thought with a smile. “Girls give me a worse time.”
“And Lyndon? A friend?”
Kris shrugged. “I look out for him.” Cleared her throat, looked around for a drink to finish. Sam remembered himself at that age, not so many years ago, eating anything that wasn’t nailed to the floor, drinking milk straight from the carton, devouring an entire package of hot dogs at once. “Looked out,” she corrected herself. “He’d stopped his car to get the family’s mail at the end of his farm’s drive. All they found was ash.” She snagged to a halt, suddenly, her voice catching on something hard. She took a minute, all angles and sharp edges. “He was a good guy.” Looked up, but there were no tears in her eyes. “They were all good guys. That what you’re wanting to hear?”
Rarely had Sam felt so shabby about their lies. This was real grief and though their intentions were good, their means were so spurious that he felt he had to say something.
“What’s going on here, Kris?”
For the first time, the kid looked uncomfortable. “You don’t mess with the groundhog in this town,” she said, serious. “You just don’t do it. What would we be without it? But there’s something fucked up with the whole thing, the weather, the dying, and Gobbler’s Knob. That fucking Phil’s at the center of it.”
TBC
a/n: A reviewer asked if Punxsutawney actually looks like I’m describing it, what with all the groundhog stuff. I’ve taken some liberties, of course, but most of this crap I really couldn’t make up if I tried. Visit the town’s web site if you want to see the fiberglass Phils, or the “Official Site of the Puxsutawney Groundhog Club” to find out more about whole event. The dead deer at the side of the road, the ‘home made porn’ sign and the factory worker vignette from last chapter were all spotted on a road trip I made through rural Pennsylvania a couple of years back.
Disclaimer: I’m trying not to veer off into Libel Land, so all the characters that populate this story are totally, completely figments of my imagination (and bear no resemblance to people living or dead). Oh, except for all things Supernatural, which belong to media conglomerates.
--
Sam was a little worried that Dean was going to get kicked out of the library. First off, they hadn’t even made it to the card catalogue - and this was the sort of library that had a card catalogue - before Dean said, in a voice way louder than was necessary, “Shit! Would ya look at that?” Granted, the instigating factor happened to be yet another groundhog statue next to the checkout desk, but a class of kindergarten students were getting their picture taken in front of it, so that pretty much screwed him in the eyes of the library staff.
And, really, shouldn’t Dean be getting inured to the furry bastard by now? They had booked a room at Phil’s Daybreak Inn, had breakfasted at The Burrow, and just now bought toques at the Gopher Gear store. Dean had cut off the little groundhog patch on his with his Swiss army knife before they were even out of the store. In addition to the toques, they’d bought another scarf and some mittens. They’d had to settle for mittens, not gloves, because - as the shopkeeper had pointed out at least three times - she’d had a run on gloves. In the car, on the way to Barclay Square and the library, Dean had declared mittens better for cold, anyway, because for your fingers to remain warm, you had to ‘keep your guys together’. Then Sam was told to shut his cakehole because what did some Stanford geek know about cold?
So Sam said nothing about swearing in front of little kids. They set up at a long table, Sam with his notebook, and a pile of microfilm boxes and one of those old readers that must have been made at the same factory and in the same year as the Impala, because it probably weighed as much and certainly sounded as loud. For the first hour or so, Dean pretended to take some interest, looking over Sam’s shoulder, even attempting to loop one of the microfilms into a second reader to help out. That had earned him another reprimand from the librarian, for cursing at the machine.
Dean cast a long-suffering look to his brother, begging for release. Sam, who had just found a mention of an ‘accidental’ burning in a March 1955 edition of the Punxsutawney Spirit, waved him off distractedly. Fine, he’d get more accomplished without Dean hovering, or provoking the library staff.
Even at Stanford, Sam had been labeled as particularly studious; he could easily - happily - spend hours at a piece of research, ruling out specious citations, hunting through arcane reference volumes, employing a fine academic instinct to leap from one source to another. His head was addled with dates and facts, and his notebook pages covered in his tight, almost indecipherable scrawl, and he thought he was seeing a pattern, when...a child’s scream shredded his concentration.
His head snapped up, and he felt groggy for a second, not an unpleasant feeling, but as though he was swimming up through jello. The scream was more of a shriek, he decided, hearing it again from somewhere across the library, but it carried remarkably well. Sam got up, leaving his notes on the table, and their coats hung across the chair backs - this was Punxsutawney, after all, not the reading room at Stanford and who in their right minds would steal some crappy old parkas? - and headed toward the sounds of escalating chaos coming from the children’s section.
Had Sam been a betting man, he’d have put money down that any commotion in a library would involve Dean. He wasn’t wrong, though it took him a few minutes to put it all together.
He jumped back - not in fear, but in surprise - when a large creature the size of well-fed cocker spaniel came bolting out from between the stacks, bounced off an oversized atlas on the lower shelf, and wedged itself under the trophy case located between the drinking fountain and the handicapped elevator.
A split second later, a harried woman stormed around the same corner, cast wildly about before resting her eyes on Sam. He recognized her: the kindergarten teacher. And not one of those comely, wouldn’t-teaching-little-kids-be-lovely-before-I-get-married? type of kindergarten teachers, either. This one looked as though kicking the little monsters into submission was more her style. So Sam maintained his composure and made her ask.
“Did you see...” and she trailed off, only to take a deep breath. “Did you see a groundhog?”
Sam knew what Dean would have said to that. Instead, he nodded. “It’s, ah,” and waved his hand at the trophy case. At least ten little kids crowded behind her, followed by an older guy in a plaid shirt with a nametag that said, “Henry” underneath which read, “Handler”. It was unclear how these two words were related.
Leaving the teacher and the groundhog handler to manage the rescue, Sam sidled down the stacks in the direction from which the groundhog had come, instinctively knowing he’d find Dean there.
The row of books opened out into the children’s section, colorful banners and large posters advertising the Raise-a-Reader program and the Mom n’ Tots storytime series. A few large beanbag chairs littered the floor, as did a bunch of scattered cushions, but what really demanded Sam’s attention was the fact that Dean was standing behind a plexiglass wall in a sea of wood shavings looking down at an enormous groundhog. Above the plexiglass enclosure, a sign read: “Groundhog Zoo - Home of Punxsutawney Phil”.
And Dean accused him of being a magnet for the weird.
Pressed up against the plexi, a dozen little kids - mostly boys, Sam noted with a stab of sudden understanding - watched Dean bend down to silently stare at the groundhog snuffling the tip of his boot. A young woman stood beside the latched gate, and she was wearing the same pattern of plaid shirt as Henry the Handler, albeit with considerably more style. Sam wondered what her nametag said.
Just as he came up, the little boys - the disruptive and rebellious remnants of the kindergarten class, the ones that wouldn’t follow their teacher if she’d been guiding them into an all-you-can-eat chocolate factory - made a collective, appreciative sound, something between ‘cooooool’ and ‘sweeeeeet’. Dean had taken out his knife and was cutting an apple to feed to the groundhog, but he did it with such flourish, such speed, that the apple skin flew off in one huge, single curl, a miracle of skill. He was such a fucking awful influence, Sam thought, raising his knuckle to tap on the glass.
Looking up, Dean smiled that hundred-watt grin of his, pocketed the knife and threw the remainder of the apple to the bottom of the pen. Hungrily, the groundhog waddled over to it. It looked like a cinderblock with fur and probably weighed as much. Nodding and saying something unintelligible to the girl (“Britni” Sam could now read, “Assistant”), Dean unlatched the door and came out of the Groundhog Zoo, trailing wood shavings across the carpet.
“Can you believe it?” he said as soon as he was out, ignoring the massed pod of boys who followed his every move with eyes round and adoring. “That’s Phil in there. Only comes out on February 2nd. Rest of the time, he’s kicking back in his climate-controlled pad being hand-fed by the blonde. Nice fucking life.” And Sam grabbed his brother’s shirt so fast and so hard he heard a tiny rip as he pulled Dean bodily out of the children’s section.
Releasing him as they returned to their table, Sam managed to find the humour in it - nosing through old newspapers while Dean set wild animals free in the public library. “So, if the big guy was Phil, who was the escapee?”
Dean looked sincere, which wasn’t comforting. “That so wasn’t my fault, you know. Mrs. Phil has a mind of her own. Phyllis, I think they call her.” And a grin spread way out to there. “Books like an Indy driver, doesn’t she?”
Privately thinking that that was the only time Dean had ever uttered the word ‘book’ in a library, Sam drew his brother’s attention to the newspaper article he’d deliberately left on the microfilm reader screen. The headline read: Fourth Teen Dies in Fire. The date was March, 1965.
“Okay, Mr. Free Willy, follow the bouncing ball, will you? We have a series of fire-related deaths over the years, always young men, always this time in March.”
To his credit, Dean settled down, drew a chair over. “What else?”
Sam adjusted the screen, twirled the focus knob and pointed to the item on the corner of the same front page: ‘Deep Freeze Continues’. Dean’s eyebrows rose slightly. “And when does the deep freeze end?”
“Six weeks to the day after Groundhog Day,” Sam said, knowing it sounded stupid. If it weren’t for the dead bodies, it would be stupid.
“What did our friend Phil predict those years?” Dean asked, and Sam had the answer, because he’d followed the same line of reasoning.
“Six more weeks of winter, every time. But,” he continued, anticipating Dean’s protest, “Phil sees his shadow every few years, and that doesn’t necessarily mean deaths, or a deep freeze. Since he’s been doing the predicting, over a hundred and twenty years, it’s only happened five times that I can find. This latest spate makes it six.”
Dean nodded, and laughter writhed beneath his mock-serious façade. “Britni told me that the Inner Circle - those dudes in the top hats that run the prediction racket and look after Phil? - claim it’s the same fucking groundhog now as in 1886. They give him a sip of magic ‘groundhog punch’ every seven years that keeps him going.”
Dear god, Sam thought, I am going to be paying for this visit for years.
Despite the ridiculousness of the situation, there was the fact that in addition to being wacky, the whole gopher thing was also weird. Weird in their way, weird. Dean looked as though he could use a cup of coffee, rubbed his hand across his face. “So what’s the difference? Why some years and not others?”
Sam shrugged, shook his head lightly. “All young men. All out at night for one reason or another, sometimes alone, sometimes with friends. Just one at a time. In 1897, six people died. In 1936, only two, same as in 1943. 1955, three. 1965, four. No obvious pattern.”
Dean wasn’t listening. That’s because he was thinking in archetypes, not so much on statistics, but on mythology. “What’s the origin of Groundhog Day, anyway? The whole ‘sees his shadow’ thing sounds pretty, you know...dark.”
Candlemas, it turned out. St. Brigid and early Germanic settlers bringing their beliefs about surviving the last half of winter to this part of America. Early February was the turning point in the season, the time when things could go either way. Better have enough hay stored to last out the winter. Meteorologically speaking, if the sun was bright enough to cast a shadow, it meant the weather was clear, which probably meant cold; there was not enough cloud cover to trap heat. A cold, long winter meant offerings to those who brought warmth: St. Brigid was a hearth saint, one for whom sheaves of grain were braided and left.
Sam was guessing and he was skeptical. “Keep St. Brigid happy? You think a Christian saint is offing Punxsutawney’s boys?”
Dean sighed mightily. “We’ve seen stranger, Sam, god only knows. These Christian holidays are usually cover dates for older pagan rituals, though.”
“Sacrifices to help get the community through winter?” Sam started to rewind the microfilm. “Yeah, we’ve seen that before, but this is a huge, national event. Punxsutawney Phil’s been on Oprah, Dean. And I’m not even going to mention the movie. This is too high profile for an evil cabal to control, don’t you think?” They were running out of easy answers, running full into pure conjecture. “C’mon. I need something to eat. Let’s see if we can get through lunch without offending the locals, okay?”
“We should talk to some teenagers,” Dean muttered as Sam returned the film boxes to the reference counter.
“We could come back here after school lets out,” Sam suggested, smiling at the reference librarian, who was looking damn happy they were leaving. “Find a few then.”
Dean, who was already heading for the door, pulling on his mitts, turned briefly. “And that, Sammy, is why you never got lucky in high school.”
--
There were actually a good number of reasons why Sam hadn’t made past second base until college, but most of them involved moving a lot, having a conscience, and liking books more than sports. Oh, and Dean of course.
It was hard, especially around girls, especially in high school, having a brother like Dean. He was the type of guy little undomesticated boys and teenaged girls loved. Dean got into a lot of fights, knew his way around a compliment, and had that fucking smile. Most of the time, Sam didn’t mind; it was easier than making idiotic small talk - a specialty of Dean’s for which he was genetically programmed to excel - and trying to feign interest in whatever....zzzz.
And there, he’d just tuned out what they were saying again. Something about Spring Break and Daytona, maybe. He would have fallen asleep, except that Dean kicked him under the table. Hard. He caught Sam in his stare: Step up to the plate, Sammy.
“So, I’ve been hearing about some weird stuff going on,” Sam blurted out, earning a reproving look from Dean as the table - three girls in camo pants and puffy down coats - shut completely up.
The hollow clatter of pins falling, the roll of a heavy ball against metal rails, and the smell of bowling shoes was perhaps one of the least palatable combinations of sounds and sensations Sam had encountered. Dean seemed utterly unfazed at how uncool this whole situation was: scamming sixteen-year-old girls in a bowling alley. Named Groundhog Lanes, of course.
But he’d been right: it was where the teens went after school, to bowl, or play pool, or just hang out with a coke and a basket of fries.
“Yeah,” Dean agreed, “one of the football team?”
“They’re great,” one of the girls immediately gushed. The Punxsutawney Chucks were apparently one of the town’s big attractions - the teens having no interest in groundhogs, of course - and now that the football season and Groundhog Day were well over, there wasn’t much else to gossip about other than MTV. Sam knew the role football played in towns like this, how the boys would be just the same as gods, with the same adulation and the same responsibilities.
He had a brief pang of regret then, as he watched his brother work the table, the smile fixed on his face, a certain keen longing in his eyes. Dean had wanted to play football, had wanted it so much. Sam had been twelve, and Dean four years more than that, and the junior squad tryouts had gone well. Then a hunt had ended horrifically for them, and Dean had been in the hospital for weeks, it had seemed, and that was that. The next year, at a different school in a different state - Texas, of course - it was obvious that Dean just wasn’t big enough for the first string, and if it wasn’t first string for Dean, it was nothing. The baseball mitt had come out again.
There were so many things that were off limits as conversation starters with Dean, and this was one of them.
Sam noticed the slight shift in Dean’s attitude, but the girls didn’t; they were on a roll. “Oh, yeah, I mean, Austin was so cute and all. And Darrin,” the girls were silent, like chickens at night, present, watchful, fearful.
“Ben,” one of them sniffed.
“Don’t forget Lyndon,” a new voice broke in, almost harsh. A tall teen stood beside the table, hands deep into the large pockets of an army-issue winter parka, baseball hat too big for what was a small head, headphones resting on wide shoulders, disingenuous blue eyes roaming the table, daring any one of the girls there to say a word. “Lyndon died first. But he wasn’t a Chuck, was he? So maybe he doesn’t count.”
The girls remained silent. Sam smiled awkwardly. “Who’s counting?”
It was like they had some internal mode of communication, young girls. Dean had warned him about that, years ago, when Sam still took advice from Dean on these matters. Sam had been more like those kindergarten boys in the Groundhog Zoo than he cared to remember.
So they left, en masse, and on cue. One of them, though, bent down to Sam before she left, and he could see a floating heart pendant slide forward on her necklace as she came close, overpowering scent of vanilla and gum. “You are so cute. You should come to skating Friday night, you know.” She balanced her weight between one hand on the table, and one on the bench back, face inches from Sam’s. “Really. It gets really boring around here,” and what she meant by it was so obvious, so literally in his face.
Words did not come. Sam sat there, pole axed, unable to cough up anything, knowing Dean was an arm’s length away, hearing everything. He was so bad at this, so completely useless, even if he’d wanted to - which he, comprehensively, did not.
“For heaven’s sake,” the army-parka said, sliding into the booth as the girls shot venomous looks over their shoulders. “You’d think they didn’t have a football team to choose from.”
Difficult to determine many things about this newcomer. Sex, for example. Age. Whether or not he - she, Sam thought suddenly - was amused or angry. A little of both. Holy shit, this kid’s life in small town America would not be an easy one.
“Kris,” the teen identified herself, natural confidence expecting a response.
Dean introduced them as reporters for an online magazine, though it was difficult to tell if Kris was buying it. By the time Sam worked up the nerve to look at Dean, his brother was wholly concentrating on Kris, which was better than him concentrating on the girl’s parting comments to Sam.
“Lyndon was president of the debating club,” Kris said, picking at the abandoned fry basket. “He was a good guy, and he didn’t deserve to burn up like that.”
Who does? Sam thought. “You think you know what happened?” he said instead.
Kris shrugged. “No. First of all, I thought it might have been a Chuck prank gone wrong, but those guys don’t have it in them, really.” She wore a wry smile, displaying an intelligence, an observer’s dry wit. Older than her years, made to be by circumstance. “I used to play hockey with most of them, until I hit twelve and had to play for the girls team.” She shrugged. “Still, full ride to Penn State next year playing for the Women’s Varsity, which is more than I can say for any of the Chucks.”
“They give you a hard time, the guys?” Sam asked, mostly because Kris seemed so open for it.
She chewed thoughtfully on a cold fry, grinning. She’s more like Dean than I am, Sam thought with a smile. “Girls give me a worse time.”
“And Lyndon? A friend?”
Kris shrugged. “I look out for him.” Cleared her throat, looked around for a drink to finish. Sam remembered himself at that age, not so many years ago, eating anything that wasn’t nailed to the floor, drinking milk straight from the carton, devouring an entire package of hot dogs at once. “Looked out,” she corrected herself. “He’d stopped his car to get the family’s mail at the end of his farm’s drive. All they found was ash.” She snagged to a halt, suddenly, her voice catching on something hard. She took a minute, all angles and sharp edges. “He was a good guy.” Looked up, but there were no tears in her eyes. “They were all good guys. That what you’re wanting to hear?”
Rarely had Sam felt so shabby about their lies. This was real grief and though their intentions were good, their means were so spurious that he felt he had to say something.
“What’s going on here, Kris?”
For the first time, the kid looked uncomfortable. “You don’t mess with the groundhog in this town,” she said, serious. “You just don’t do it. What would we be without it? But there’s something fucked up with the whole thing, the weather, the dying, and Gobbler’s Knob. That fucking Phil’s at the center of it.”
TBC