THE QUINAULT RAIN FESTIVAL
1
THE QUINAULT RAIN FESTIVAL
The Previous Year
On the last day of May, Truman “Tip” Starkey left his Seattle studio apartment with a single suitcase, a guitar, and enough money for bus fare. Unbelievably, it had been two years ago to the day that his old high school buddy Jacob Platt had retired from Microsoft, sold his stock options, bought a small resort on the Olympic Peninsula, and asked Truman to join him. Now, he was finally taking Jacob’s offer.
Truman had split with his ex-wife Melissa, a fellow musician and composer, a year before the decision to join Jacob in Quinault. He called her Hurricane Melissa because whenever they were together, he got caught up in her whirlwind lifestyle; inevitably, he came out on the losing end, his things scattered in the wreckage.
Stolen: one symphony, after years of working on it together. Culprit: Hurricane Melissa.
Now here he was again, alone, coming out to see Jacob’s resort. It was better than sinking in despair, nothing to show for his thirty years of life, and fighting the feeling of failure at having lost both Melissa and his symphony.
“Tip,” Jacob said on the phone, “you’ve got to come out here. Quinault’s beautiful, it’s quiet, and you’ve wallowed in your poor-musician routine long enough. You’re thirty years old. You’re over Melissa, right?”
He was over her, he said. But not her betrayal.
But Jacob was right. He could quit playing open mike gigs and dig in on writing some serious music. A symphony. Make up for what Melissa took from him.
“So you coming? My busy season’s coming up and I could use your help. And God, it would be great to see you again, my friend.”
Truman paused, thinking about the phone messages his landlord had left him during the past week—he was two months behind on rent. He glanced wearily at his studio apartment and figured he could cram most of his important stuff in a suitcase. The rest he could sell or leave behind, and Jacob had offered to deal with the back rent.
“Yeah, I’m coming,” Truman said.
“How soon can you get here?”
“Give me a few days.”
“Awesome. You know where we are, right?”
“Mostly. I’ll figure out the fine details.”
After two long hours on the bus out of Seattle, he arrived in Aberdeen, a sad, quiet town forty miles south of Quinault. He transferred to a city bus. Four other people boarded the bus between one side of town and the other, but no one got off on the way to the Quinault River valley. Forty minutes later, the bus topped a rise on U.S. Highway 101, and Lake Quinault lay in the valley before him. This was the heart of the Olympic Peninsula, and that meant rain. Lots of rain. But as he descended into the valley during the last breath of May, the sun shone like a sign from God, nearly washing out the green of the tall cedar trees lining the road.
The bus rambled past a sign announcing entry into the National Forest, then coasted into the small town of Amanda Park nestled at the foot of the lake. A river outlet cut past several houses before crossing the highway. Pulling out the map he’d picked up in Aberdeen, Truman traced the river’s course with his finger through tribal reservation lands until it merged with the dark line of the Washington coast and the blue ink of the Pacific. The bus slowed down, and when he looked up from the phone, the bus had crossed the river and was pulling over at its stop on the highway, a hundred feet from a rustic general store. Besides the store, there was a cafe, a pizza joint, liquor store, and a bar. On the other side of the highway was a gas station.
Truman stood up. He hefted his guitar, grabbed his suitcase from the overhead rack, and moved to the front of the bus. He asked the driver how to get to the Cedars Resort.
“Go back to the highway, head back the way we came, across the bridge, then take the first left past Amanda Park. That’s the South Shore Road, and it’ll take you to The Cedars. It’s a good three miles or so. You don’t have a ride?”
“It’s okay.”
He thanked the driver, picked up his guitar, and stepped outside. He was grateful for the directions, but, looking up at the sky, he wished the bus’s route wound down around the lake instead of further north up the highway. The earlier sunshine had lost its brilliance. An odd sense of foreboding came to him then, like something had reached from behind and grabbed him by the collar. Gray clouds stretched across the valley like a wool blanket, and rain dripped onto the pavement. He walked quickly, but by the time he’d traveled a mile down the South Shore Road, the shower became a downpour, soaking Truman to the skin.
Rain. More than he’d ever experienced. If he hadn’t had to walk miles in it, he might have found it soothing, like the first snow of winter. He opened his suitcase and fumbled for a hat. Luckily, his guitar case was waterproof. He discovered he hadn’t packed a hat and stopped searching. He didn’t want to drown his modest collection of clothes, books, and music staff paper. He closed the suitcase, swearing at the rain.
Then he heard someone say something.
He jumped, his heart pounding. Was someone following him? He glanced at the dark line of trees on either side of the road. He wished he were inside, banging out power chords on his guitar, or at the piano, filling up the entire rain forest with his music, drowning out all the uncertainty in his life. Had he imagined the voice? That would figure. Come out here to find himself, write his music, and start freaking out.
But no, there it was again. Quite loud, nondescript, but definitely a voice. Raindrops trickled down the back of his neck, but the sudden voice caused the tingling sensation running up his spine. Male, female? No, wait—two voices. One male, one female. But where the hell were they? He was in the middle of a rainstorm, for Christ’s sake, so they had to be within yards of him. They had to be right there. He spun in a circle, squinting into the rain, and his heart pounded a little faster.
No one out there. He tried to filter out the sounds of the rain, listening for the voices, and he managed a nervous laugh, ready to dismiss the voices as some stupid trick Jacob had played on him.
It was not a trick. Voices were speaking, even though no one lurked nearby. The rain hit his bare face, and he ran headlong down the South Shore Road. He needed to find shelter. Get out of the rain, away from the voices, wherever they were.
He ran until his legs refused to carry him any farther, his lungs aching and his breath wheezing out in ragged gasps. He came upon a small garage and gas station, and it was closed. He leaned against the wall under the eaves of the building, his back against hard cedar shakes, but the voices didn’t go away. His skin crawled with the cold, and shivers wracked his body.
Had to be crazy. Hearing voices out here in the middle of nowhere? He slid down and sat on the pavement, his knees tight against his chest. Maybe it was to stop the shaking he felt inside. The rain didn’t let up—in fact it came down harder, and was it his imagination, or had the voices become louder? Yes, but still undecipherable. He listened so intently, his head hurt. When he was about to give up making sense of it, he made out a single word:
Dancer.
No mistaking the word. It had come through loud and clear, maybe because both voices had said it together. The female’s voice was soft and melodic, and now that he paid closer attention, he could tell she was actually singing, and he thought it just might be the most beautiful thing he’d ever heard. In contract, the male’s voice was harsh and ragged and angry.
Truman held his head in his hands and sighed, suddenly weary. He didn’t know if the voices were really intended for him—it certainly didn’t seem possible, considering he had just arrived. He had come here to work for Jacob, rent-free. He could finally write his music. Okay, so hearing voices was really fucked up, and it scared him. Especially after feeling the call to Quinault a few days before getting the call from Jacob. The voices seemed to echo some mystical, almost magical current that thrummed inside him, but he was wasn’t sure it was a good thing. He was afraid, but he had to know what hearing these voices meant.
The garage’s parking lot had transformed into a system of tiny ponds and running streams. Reaching out with one foot, he tapped his tennis shoe in a nearby puddle. He gazed back up at the sky, blinking water out of his eyes, and waited.
About thirty minutes after taking refuge next to the garage, the voices stopped. The woman’s unintelligible song and the man’s harsh, guttural voice weakened little by little, then died completely. The next half hour the rain went on without its musical accompaniment, and an unexplainable sadness came to Truman. During the entire hour, no cars drove by the garage. It was as if everyone knew to avoid the rain. That it wasn’t safe to be out in it. The voices will get you.
When the rain dwindled enough, he looked down the road, and there, maybe 500 feet away, was the sign for the Forest Lodge, a resort owned by some big corporation. A half-circle driveway arced around a large cedar, and in the middle of the circle, just off the road, was the Lodge itself.
He cursed himself, upset he hadn’t struck out a little farther during the rainstorm. Inside the Lodge he would’ve been completely out of the rain and, he assumed, cut off from the voices. He could have used their phone, called Jacob, and told him to get the hell down there and pick him up. He considered going in there now to look around, but the rain had stopped. No excuse not to be on his way. Looking down the road, he also spotted the Quinault Ranger Station. That could have been another possible sanctuary to wait out the storm.
He had another mile to go before he reached the Cedars Resort. If he waited any longer, he might get rained on again, so he picked up his suitcase and guitar and continued down the road.
The Cedars Resort was its own community on the east end of Lake Quinault. Truman came upon the resort after rounding a long bend in the road. On one side he spotted a two-story motel, painted a brick red, then three cabins painted the same color, and a store and gift shop. Just past that was a post office and a laundromat. A restaurant and lounge hugged the lake road on his left, and an expansive lawn sloped gently down to the beach. The sun managed to peek through the ominous clouds, and the lake sparkled. Two Hobie Cat sailboats sat on the beach, sails gone. Jacob had told him they had an RV Park and campground, so he figured that was down near the beach somewhere. Jacob had also told him that, somewhat famously, the resort was home to the world’s largest spruce tree.
If he’d kept walking, he’d find himself in Olympic National Park. The park bordered the lake on the north and east, with Forest Service land on the south, and the Quinault Indian reservation on the west. The Cedars Resort was one of the few independently owned properties on the lake. The previous owners of the Cedars had lived there for twenty years before Jacob Platt bought it, ready to retire from Microsoft and get out of Seattle.
Truman climbed the steps to the store and walked in. Grocery store on his right, gift shop on his left, registration desk in front of him. Doors behind the desk on either side led to the back, probably to the resort offices.
A thin woman who looked to be in her fifties hurried through the left door, closed it behind her, and found her way to the counter. She smiled broadly. The lines around her mouth were laid out like tiny frontage roads. “Sorry to keep you waiting. Can I help you?”
Truman stepped up to the front desk, put down his stuff and said, “Yes. I need to see Jacob Platt?”
The woman stared at him for a moment before saying, “You’re Truman, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Guilty.”
She put her hands on her hips and shook her head. “The guitar gave it away.” She smiled again. “It’s great you’re here. I’m Andrea Cook, Jacob’s mother-in-law. Jacob has told me all about you.”
It was Truman’s turn to smile. “Probably guilty there, too, whatever he told you. Is he here?”
“He’s down in the RV park working on the sewer hookups.”
“Can I just walk down there?”
She came around from behind the desk, nodding. “Sure. You can leave your stuff here.” She led him back outside, and on the front steps she pointed across the street, to the right of the lounge. “Follow the road down between the cabins until it loops around to the right. You’ll see the RV park there.”
“Thanks,” Truman said.
He found Jacob hunched over a white plastic sewer pipe next to the restrooms. He had rubber gloves on and wore a blue windbreaker with the resort logo printed on the back in white. The logo, a circle containing the outline of the shoreline and Olympic mountains as seen from the motel, was printed in white, the words Cedars Resort in flowing script beneath it.
“I wouldn’t have expected the owner to have to deal with this shit,” Truman said. “So to speak.”
Jacob Platt turned, saw Truman, and broke into a grin. “Tip!” He stood and extended his gloved hand. “How goes it?”
Truman pursed his lips and scrunched up his nose as he considered Jacob’s offered hand. “It’s going,” he said, waiting for Jacob to take off his gloves. “Don’t you have help for this kind of thing?”
Jacob laughed, removed the gloves, and they shook hands. He was thin and gangly, and his dark brown hair hung straight past his shoulders. He had a young face and a soft voice. He didn’t quite fit the image of a resort-owner, but more of the young kid he’d hung out with in high school.
“Sure, I have employees who help out. And a few in-laws.” He stared out at the lake and was silent a moment; he seemed to breathe in the sudden appearance of the afternoon sun. “But there’s nothing like getting in there and doing it yourself. I get a little shit on my hands, fix leaky roofs, wash bedsheets, run the cash register in the store, work in the kitchen, and pour drinks in the lounge. Tip, this is my place. My dream.” Jacob spread his arms suddenly. “Is this beautiful, or what?”
“It’s beautiful. And peaceful. Thanks for having me out here.”
“Peaceful? Oh yeah. Just the calm before the storm.”
Truman thought back to the wild rainstorm he’d already endured, and the other storms he’d endured with Melissa and his family. He wanted calm. “It’s going to rain again?”
“Sure it will,” Jacob said. “This is the rain forest.” He started back up the hill and Truman followed. “No, what I mean is, tourists. Be here in a few weeks for the summer season. We’re booked solid every night in July and August. You’re going to be working with Andrea at the front desk. Did you meet her?”
“She sent me down.”
“Lisa, when she’s not working the books, will also put in shifts.”
Truman had met Jacob’s wife only a few times in Seattle.
“You’ll be swamped when you’re on shift,” Jacob continued. “But afterwards? The place is yours. You’ll bunk in the living quarters above the store. Room and board and fifteen bucks an hour, like we agreed. You’ve got anything you want from the restaurant or store for meals and, most importantly, you’ll have time to write your tunes.”
They walked past the fireplace cabins, all with cedar siding, painted a dark red. There were several large ones, some smaller ones, and they all sported covered porches with cedar railings. Many were occupied. They crossed the lake road back to the store. Jacob stopped on the front porch.
“We brought Lisa’s piano out here,” he said.
“Yeah?”
He pointed in the general direction of the store. “I had it moved upstairs where you’ll be staying. We close up at 8:00 right now, 9:00 starting next week. There’s a buzzer by the door for late check-ins. You’ll hear it upstairs and down. You’ll have to deal with that. Lisa and I live in the house behind the store.”
Truman nodded, getting a little misty-eyed now, taking in this outpouring of generosity from his old friend. “It’s perfect,” he said. “I can’t believe you’re doing this for me.”
Jacob grinned. “It was your choice. But someone had to save your ass.”
The rain started again, but so lightly that it was little more than a mist. Truman heard no voices.
“You don’t mind the rain?” he asked Jacob.
“Gets a bit much during the Quinault Rain Festival.”
“When’s that?”
“September 1st through August 31st.” His grin spread across his face like a crack in the clouds. “Actually, the summer’s not too wet. You know how much rain Seattle gets in a year?”
Truman shrugged. “Forty inches?”
“We average a hundred and forty inches. Twelve feet a year.”
“Jesus,” Truman said.
“In contrast, just a stone’s throw from here beyond the Olympic Mountains is a small town called Sequim. Their yearly rainfall is only twelve inches because it lies in the middle of the rain shadow.”
Maybe he should’ve found a job in Sequim instead. At least he would have stayed dry.
“It can be depressing,” Jacob said, “no question. The locals—well, I’m a local now—but the old guard, those whose families homesteaded here, they’ll tell you the rain’s like an old friend. A comforting presence, like a faithful dog that’ll fetch your newspaper and slippers, curl up next to your chair, and chase away the bad mailman when asked.”
Sure, Truman thought, thinking of the man’s voice in the rain, but what bad mailman attacked him this afternoon? “Do you ever hear voices in the rain?” he asked.
“Voices like what? Kids outside during the rain?”
But he’d made up his mind to drop it. He shrugged it off and asked if he could settle in upstairs. Jacob said sure and led him back up the hill and inside the store.
He couldn’t talk to Jacob about it. Voices. The rain people out to get him. It struck Truman as the dumbest thing he’d ever let himself believe over the course of his life. So determined was he to leave his past behind him in Seattle, he decided to keep this new madness secret from one of his oldest friends. He wished he hadn’t heard the voices. That he hadn’t heard her voice.
The woman’s song in the rain had been too brief, like an unfulfilled promise, even in the long, interminable agony that had been that rainstorm. It threatened to drown him.
After getting squared away in his room above the store, he ate in the restaurant, nursed a beer in the lounge, and walked around the resort. He climbed back upstairs later. His bedroom faced the lake road. The piano was here, pushed up against one wall near the door. Another room in the back had a large TV, couch, a Soloflex weight machine, and an exercise bike. He plunked out a few notes on the piano, an upright Yamaha that had excellent sound. Jacob came up a little later and found him improvising some jazz tunes.
“I had a piano tuner come up from Aberdeen and work on it.”
“I can tell,” Truman said. “Thanks. It’ll make a difference.”
“If you get hungry,” he said, “grab something from the store. You saw the kitchen downstairs. Bathroom and shower are down there too. I gotta get back up to the house. We’ll break you in downstairs tomorrow.”
Truman thought about doing some actual composing, but his heart wasn’t in it. He stripped his still-damp clothes, crawled into bed with a paperback borrowed from the gift shop, and read until he nodded off.
Truman says goodbye to his parents at the front door, anxious for them to be on their way for the New Year’s party. Their decision to let him stay on his own, trusting him to watch over his sister Tina, came only after he spent the last several days convincing them it would be okay. I’m fifteen. Go, already, I’ll be fine!
He closes the door, then gazes out the living room window, watching until they’ve pulled out of the driveway and disappeared down the street. Rain is falling and it seems the weather might worsen before the night is through.
Truman turns to his six-year-old sister. She’s sitting on the living room couch, all smiles. The woodstove is burning the logs his dad stuffed in there before leaving. It would be fine just left alone. The room is warm and cozy.
“Do you want to play a game?” he asks.
Tina nods vigorously. “Clue?”
“Well, it’s a pastime for kids and grownups, played on a board, or with cards, or online, a competition to while away the hours—”
“No, the game Clue.”
Truman smiles. “I know. Just kidding.”
A gust of wind rattles the house. Tina looks out the window, eyes widening.
“It’s okay,” Truman assures her. “So let’s play. Clue it is. But,” he says, pointing a warning finger at her, “I get to be Colonel Mustard.”
He woke in the night, and the rain came down hard enough to rattle the windows. He frowned. That was weird: almost exactly like the dream, which had already faded from memory, as most of his dreams did. He remembered enough to know it was about a fateful night that fractured his family. A loved one gone. Perhaps the dream faded so quickly because Truman had never wanted to remember the truth of that night. Had never mourned the loss—
Truman shook his head and refused to think about it. He pulled himself up on one elbow and squinted at the clock on the side table next to the bed. Three in the morning. On the wall next to the door, he spotted himself, vague and insubstantial in the full length mirror. He groaned and lay back down, staring at the knotholes in the ceiling.
The rain pounded against the house, and it wasn’t letting up. It insisted he pay attention to it, and he did, crawling out of bed and stumbling to the double-hung window. He unlatched it and pushed up the bottom pane.
The rain fell straight down, so he stayed dry, but there it was: her song washed over him. He’d really expected to hear it—hoped to hear it—and she hadn’t disappointed him. Her voice slashed through the window and it had more power this time, more clarity. Low, dark, with a hint of vibrato. The man’s voice wasn’t there, he realized, and her voice came through clear.
Dancer.
The word breezed in through the window with such force that he backed up a few steps. New words came through now.
Moon.
Key.
Truman closed his eyes and concentrated on the song, trying desperately to understand more.
Circle.
Lake.
She continued singing, but no more words came through. It wasn’t until he gave up trying to make out her words that the realization hit him. He’d been so intent on her words that he’d completely ignored the one thing he should have naturally paid attention to.
The song itself.
Now that he listened closely, the melody carrying the words through the rain had such a beauty to it that he felt sadness and joy all at once. Few melodies had ever moved him. Samuel Barber’s Adagio. The intermezzo from Mascagni’s Cavelleria Rusticana. Like that, but without the strings or the underlying harmonies. Seven simple notes, all different, ascending in various intervals.
“My God,” he whispered, leaning out the window. The rain had let up a little, and the drops hitting his face kept a soothing rhythm in time to the song. “You are beautiful,” he said.
He left the window open, ran to the back room, opened the two windows there, then rummaged through his pack for music staff paper. Quickly, before he forgot it, he plinked the piano keys until he found the exact notes.
He had it. He wrote it down.
His symphony had begun.