Veronica signaled and turned right into the parking lot before the iron bridge. "We're here!" she announced. The destination was Drake Well, Titusville, Pennsylvania. Greg called it a "roots" road trip: Drake Well, petroleum, internal combustion engine, automobile, road trip.
"Roni," Greg said, "the museum is over the bridge and up the lane."
"Right," Roni replied, "but I saw this parking lot, with a grass island, on satellite. We're stopping for a picnic."
"We should have time; we got here almost fast enough. I wish they would take the idiots off the road."
"Be careful what you wish for, Greg, you just might get it!" Roni said.
"Meaning?" Greg asked.
"Meaning you might be one of the idiots!"
"Yeah, right. So, you brought picnic stuff?"
"Bag and blanket in the trunk, wine under the passenger front seat, up against the air conditioning duct."
Greg gathered the supplies, spread the blanket, and placed the bag on it. He and Roni sat, and Greg started unpacking. "Tinned oysters, those would be for me. Tinned herrings for you? Crackers. Wine. Red wine? With seafood?"
"Don't worry. You can't get a white nearly cold enough on air conditioning ducts."
"I suppose not. Great choices," Greg answered. They proceeded with their nibbling, sipping, and casual talk: whether to backtrack, south and east to Washington, D. C., their starting point, or loop east then south; whether to make it a one-day trip or to overnight somewhere. They heard an engine roaring up the road and tried to talk over it, with increasing difficulty. They turned to see who the problem was.
Not one, but two 1970's vintage muscle cars were just turning into the parking lot. They screeched their tires as they turned in, then, one following the other, they did giant rubber-burning doughnuts all around the grass island. A cloud of rubber smoke drifted across the grass and blocked Greg and Roni's view of the cars as they left the lot. Their "scree-ee-ee" diminished, but did not disappear. In its place was a "chih-chih-chih" sound.
Slowly the rubber smoke dispersed, but there was still a thin fog in the air. Greg looked around, and listened, uneasy about what he was recalling. "I don't think we're where we were. I don't think we're when we were, Roni."
"What? Well, where and when?"
"This is 'the island,' almost surrounded by water. Number fourteen green on Echo Glen Golf Course. The 'chih-chih-chih' is seventeen year cicadas, so it is either 1987 or 1970; the course wasn't built until 1965."
"OK," Roni said, "That's the place you worked at in high school, Tannersville, Pennsylvania, right?"
"Right."
"Why not 2004?"
"They swapped the front nine and back nine in 1992. In 2004 this was the fifth green. There's a '14' on this flag."
"And the cicadas, they're about an inch long, they fly, and they form up in swarms?"
"They fly, but they don't swarm," Greg replied, "what are you looking at?"
Roni pointed across the water to the nearby tree-line. The cicadas were flying around, but in their thousands, they were taking shape. They flew into human-sized clouds, and took the form of women, in dresses, gowns and pants. The "chih-chih-chih-chih" swelled with each manifestation, then faded as the bugs dispersed from their formations. "We're not alone, Greg. It's the Daughters of Jerusalem."
"And what will this round of play bring us?"
The Daughters of Jerusalem were an otherworldly cabal of significant women who intervened in the normalcy of Roni's and Greg's lives.
