Fullepub 
Chapter Four
chapter four
June 14, 1929
Brandenburg, Vermont
We found the town of Brandenburg without any problem by following the map: I navigated while Will drove, coaxing our Franklin touring car over the hills and around the bends, the backseat full of suitcases and hatboxes. I traced our route along the map with my finger—the road twisting and turning like a great black snake as it made its way through the mountains. It was a lovely day, and we drove with the top down. I wore my new black wool cloche hat to keep my hair from getting too mussed. We passed more cows and sheep than people on the four-hour journey from our home to Brandenburg through fields and woods, with a few villages scattered along the way—tiny places with just a scattering of homes, a church, and a general store. The sun beat down on the hills we wound our way through, lighting up a thousand different shades of green. We caught sight of train tracks running perpendicular to the road at times.
The town of Brandenburg was quite quaint: a small fire department, two churches (Methodist and Presbyterian), a post office, and a general store where Will and I stopped in for sodas and directions. The store had uneven old wooden floors that creaked. There was a moose head on the wall with an enormous rack of antlers. I elbowed Will, nodded in the poor creature’s direction, whispered, “What do you suppose his name was?”
“Looks like a Stanley to me,” Will whispered back.
“Poor Stan,” I said.
There was a woman in a battered-looking wide-brimmed straw hat filling a basket with eggs, milk, and flour. The place seemed to sell everything: molasses, hats, fishing reels, tobacco, buttons and thread, large blocks of ice. Next to the cash register was a wooden crate of jelly jars full of water. A hand-lettered sign said: Genuine Brandenburg Springs Water, 5¢, SURE TO CURE WHAT AILS YOU!
“That’s the real stuff. Got it right from the springs. Has a funny taste, but it brings good luck and good health,” said the old man behind the counter when he saw me looking at them. “Cured my wife’s gout. I burned my hand real bad, back when I was young and foolish—the skin turned black, and the wound wept something awful. I soaked my hand in the springs every day, and it was healed in a week.” He held up his hand for inspection. “I don’t even have a scar.”
Will leaned in to study his hand. “Incredible,” he said. “Do you know the mineral content of the waters?”
The man shook his head, held out a jar of water. “Don’t know what’s in it, but I swear it works. People have been traveling to the springs to take the waters since before the town was founded. World famous, it is. Would you like one? Cost you just a nickel.”
“No, thank you,” I said, giving him my best smile. “We’re actually on our way to the Brandenburg Springs Hotel. We have a reservation for the weekend, so we’ll be enjoying plenty of the water soon enough.”
“You have to be a paying guest to get to the springs these days.” He scowled, accentuating the lines in his face.
“How do you get these jars to sell, then?” Will asked.
“I got my ways,” he said. He clenched his jaw. “That Benson Harding can put up fences, but that water, it don’t belong to him. You can’t own the springs.”
“No, you can’t,” said the woman in the hat, who’d come up behind us and was looking at sweets kept in jars on the counter: lemon drops, puffed peppermints, horehound drops, licorice. Beside them was a box of Teaberry gum. “Last man who called the springs his own paid a terrible price.”
“What’s that?” I asked. “Who?”
“That’d be Nelson DeWitt,” said the shopkeeper. “He owned the land before Mr. Harding. A bit of an odd man. He ran a boardinghouse and bottled the water, had it taken by the trainload into New York City and Boston. ‘DeWitt’s Elixir,’ he called it.”
“So what happened to DeWitt?” Will asked.
“Drowned.” The man shook his head. “Like I said, you can’t own the springs. That’s not what they’re there for.”
“Those springs are a dark place,” the woman said. “You’d do best to keep away from them.”
“Oh, Harriet, come on now—”
“It’s true and you know it,” she said, flashing him a don’t-you-dare-contradict-me look. The shopkeeper looked like he was going to say something more but thought better of it.
“There’s a fine hotel out on the lake, the Pine Point Inn. You can swim, boat, fish,” Harriet went on. “There’s a dance hall! You’re better off heading there for the weekend.”
“Thank you for the recommendation, but I think we’ll stick to our original plan,” Will said as he dropped a dime on the counter for our sodas. “Could you tell us how to get to the Brandenburg Springs Hotel?”
The shopkeeper nodded. “Make a left out of here and bear right at the fork. That road will take you all the way to the hotel. You’ll probably pass the carriage on the way—they drive down every day at five to pick guests up from the train.”
The woman in the hat, Harriet, shook her head in disappointment. As we left, she said in a low voice, “At least I warned them.”
“Well that was a bit odd, wasn’t it?” Will said once we were back in the car. We each held a bottle of ice-cold Coca-Cola. “Did you see his hand? Not a trace of a scar. If it’s true that he burned it as badly as he said, that’s amazing.” He turned the Coke bottle in his hand. “There’s got to be a mineral in there with antiseptic properties. Or perhaps it’s the combination of minerals? I wonder if the water has ever been tested to discover its true contents.” He looked into the soda bottle as if it had the answers.
“What did you make of Harriet and her warning?”
“That the long winters here are good for storytelling,” he said. “I told you, there are lots of foolish stories about the springs.”
A dark place, I thought as we followed the dirt road from the center of town up into the hills. There were no houses up here—only trees and rocks, low stone walls that had toppled in places. The air got cooler as the trees grew thicker, seemed to almost overtake the road. The whole time we were traveling, we thought we must be lost—that there couldn’t possibly be a luxurious hotel out here. The dirt road grew narrower and narrower, more and more rutted and muddy from spring floods. The wheels caught in the ruts, making it sway this way and that; it felt as if the road itself was pulling our car along. I was afraid we’d sink too deep and get stuck. We did not pass another motorist, or the coach from the hotel, which was good because the road was far too narrow for two cars.
“Maybe we should turn back,” I suggested, but just then we saw a hand-painted white board nailed along the roadside telling us the hotel was just ahead. We crept along at a snail’s pace, the trees thickening, the forest seeming to swallow us deeper and deeper. We passed another white sign. I began to wonder if it was some sort of trick, if we were being drawn to our demise. Silly, really, but my fear was getting the better of me.
“Maybe this isn’t right,” I said.
“It must be right. We’re following the signs,” Will said, gripping the wheel too tightly. “Besides, the road’s too narrow. There’s no way to turn around.”
But then, the trees thinned, and the building appeared like a vision from a dream; it actually took my breath away. I squealed like a schoolgirl, clutched Will’s hand in excitement. And he squeezed back, seeming as excited as I was. The hotel was in a clearing completely surrounded by forest. There were two large hills looming behind it, so green against a sky so blue that it all looked like the backdrop to a play. The building was as grand as the brochure had promised—three floors, painted pure white with a lovely wraparound porch. It seemed to glow against the backdrop of lawn and trees, like a moon in the night sky. Directly in front of the building was a fountain surrounded by luscious flower gardens. Off to the right was the rose garden, set in concentric circles with a gazebo at the center walled with trellised roses. And the best part—peacocks roamed the grounds! They strutted to and fro, crying out and flashing their spectacular tail feathers.
Will pulled the car up the circular drive of crushed stone. The bellboy took our luggage, and we made our way to the front desk to check in. The lobby was beautiful! Polished wooden floors and counter, landscape paintings on the walls, and a gorgeous cut-glass crystal chandelier. The curtains were of heavy red velvet. The desk clerk helpfully pointed out the tennis court, the walking paths, the arboretum, and the springs on a drawn map of the grounds.
“Can we go to the water right away?” I asked Will. The map showed the springs behind the hotel at the edge of the woods.
The clerk shook his head. “I’m sorry, but the springs close every day at five for the safety of our guests.” He looked away, seeming suddenly nervous, almost frightened. Then he seemed to recompose himself. He turned back and smiled right at me. “They’ll reopen tomorrow morning at eight.”
Will seemed almost more disappointed than I was to hear this bit of news. “Oh, that’s too bad. Is the water piped into the hotel truly from the springs?”
“Oh yes, sir. You’ll be drinking it and bathing in it the entire time you’re here.”
The first thing we did when we got up to our room was pour two glasses of spring water.
“Cheers,” Will said, clinking his glass against mine.
The water was clear and cold and tasted slightly metallic. The rusty tang lingered at the back of my throat like blood.
“What do you think?” he asked. “Do you feel any different yet?”
I laughed. “I don’t think it works like that.”
He frowned, finished the water in his glass. “Tastes a bit like nails.”
Our room was on the second floor, at the front. There was floral wallpaper, an enormous canopy bed, and a private bath with a claw-foot tub. We had a balcony overlooking the fountain and gardens. As Will led me out onto the balcony, I had the oddest sensation. Not déjà vu, exactly, but something akin to it. The feeling brought with it a sense of vertigo. I swayed slightly, and Will steadied me with an arm around my waist.
“Easy there,” he said. “That was water we drank. You can’t be tipsy.”
“It’s this place!” I said. “It’s like something out of a storybook! I feel like… like I know this place.”
Below us, a peacock cried out. The sweet, heady scent of the rose garden drifted its way up.
He kissed my head. “You’ve been studying the brochure for days.”
“Not the way it looks,” I struggled to explain. “The way it feels. Like we’re meant to be here. Like coming home when you’ve been away a long time.”
Will gave me an odd look. “You have the most fanciful thoughts sometimes.” He kissed me again, on the lips. I kissed him back, let myself melt into him, his arms around me solid and sure, holding me tight while the world seemed to spin around us.
