Chapter Text
The July 4th of 1920 found Riverdale in high spirits. Some of this was simple byproduct of the general optimism and good feeling that held sway on a national scale. The Great War was ended, and all the American boys who’d gone overseas to lick the Kaiser were home at last (save a few thousand left rotting in France, but to dwell on that would be to spoil the sentiment). The world was safe for democracy, and democracy would surely take root and flourish. Once the internecine paroxysms of blood and fire in Greece, Russia, Mexico, China, and elsewhere ebbed.
Back home, the United States confirmed with finality its place among the Great Powers of the earth. With her burgeoning industry, verdant farmland, and teeming millions spread from sea to shining sea, Columbia could rest on her laurels and at last provide for her people peace, prosperity, and freedom within Jefferson’s long-promised Empire of Liberty.
Everywhere reason and science triumphed against superstition. Old wives tales, mutterings of ghosts and spirits, were mocked, debunked, and then explained. The universe was governed by laws. It functioned like a well-ordered machine. Its workings and broad patterns were discernible and predictable. How long before some savant synthesized all man’s knowledge thus far and produced a theory to account for everything that was, from the motion of the sun to the division of the cell?
But there was much to celebrate that did not concern the country or the world at large, and was indeed peculiar to Riverdale.
Being the little fishing town that it was, the catch was so far good this year. The fishermen paddled and sailed back to the docks, nets laden with cod and redfish. The lobstermen did as well for themselves.
The mayor’s office finally approved restoration of the crumbling seaside houses and wharfs on the south side of town and earmarked a few thousand dollars for that purpose. No one expected such an undertaking to be finished or even initiated with any alacrity, but the idea was still hearting.
Archie Andrews and Jason Blossom were back from France nearly a year now, with all of their limbs and seemingly all their minds, as well.
All this conspired to make the 4th of July a triumph for Riverdale as much as for the nation itself.
There would be a little parade through the town’s modest square, with a few of the prettier boys and girls holding up flags and perhaps playing ‘Yankee Doodle’ or ‘Hail, Columbia’. Archie and Jason would probably be asked to lead the march in their uniforms. Their elders in war, such as Constable Keller who had fought in the Philippines, would likely follow in the train. FP Jones, who had nearly died of Yellow Fever in Cuba, would not, as his penchant for lately-illegal alcohol and petty crime outweighed his service record.
The balconies and windows would be decked out in red white and blue bunting. Children would carry strips of red white and blue crepe through the streets. The enterprising youth of Riverdale would sell hot dogs and lemonade.
It promised to be a pleasant day.
Jughead Jones, for his part, struggled to shoulder the burdens the 4th of July placed upon him.
The Riverdale Register, run by the mother of his old friend Betty Cooper, had commissioned him to write a poem celebrating Riverdale for Independence Day. Alice Cooper would compensate him with $10, which was not bad going. It would be a fraction of that if Betty was not always putting in good and not necessarily deserved words for him.
In truth, he would have done it for free if Betty asked.
Right now he vacillated helplessly between ‘Grand Columbia,’ ‘Great Columbia,’ and ‘Proud Columbia’ for the poem’s fourth verse. Finally, he decided to simply strike ‘Columbia’ from the composition altogether.
His chief problem was that Riverdale did not have an especially interesting history. Said history might have been that of any other little New England fishing village. It was founded in the late 17th century by dour Puritans, ensconced between the winding Sweetwater River to the west, and the grey Atlantic to the east. Since then, the greatest thrill had been in 1813, when a particularly unpleasant captain of the Royal Navy and his marines had occupied the town for some weeks. Until Riverdale and Greendale mustered enough militia to fight a brief and glorious battle with the Englishmen just off of Hangman's Reef, and drove the lobsterbacks into the sea. But that could only fill so many verses.
Jughead sighed. He scratched out another four lines, and realized with disgust his pen was about dry.
He had finally decided to just recount the history of the United States as a whole, and note Riverdale’s contribution to each bold episode in that history, minuscule as it might be.
“Everything going alright?”
Jughead looked up and into the face of one of those few contributions, but possibly one of its greatest.
Terrence ‘Pop’ Tate laid a fried fish sandwich and a glass of coca cola in front of his best customer.
“Yeah, everything’s flowing smoothly as Sweetwater River,” he said. Sweetwater River being notoriously and roughly interrupted by a ridge of stones about two miles upstream. Then he had a thought. “Hey, Pop—can I get a quote?”
When he was fifteen, Tate lied about his age and enlisted in the 29th Connecticut Colored Regiment. Patrons of Pop’s humble little seaside eatery were inevitably surprised at the story behind the mild-mannered old gentleman’s persistent limp: the tip of a rebel captain’s saber at Petersburg. He traditionally led the 4th of July celebrations clad in his threadbare and ill-fitting but still splendorous blue coat. Lately he claimed his back was giving him too much trouble. But he could still without fail be heard singing ‘the union forever! Hurrah, boys, hurrah!’ as he worked.
“Quote about my food?” Pop Tate said.
“Come on,” Jughead smiled. “Don’t be modest. Quote about the war? Something glorious I can stick in this glorious poem.”
“Told all my stories about the Rebellion more times than I can count, Jug.”
“Well, what’s one more?”
Pop paused for a minute. He moved towards the kitchen.
“Well, I remember when I first got to camp. Some of the older fellas tried to scare me—telling me about Jeff Davis’ proclamation saying the Johnnies weren’t going to take any colored prisoners.”
“Were you scared?” Jughead asked. He sure as hell would have been.
“‘Course I was scared,” Pop laughed. “But I said that was just fine, because I wasn’t looking to be taken prisoner by the rebs, anyhow. So we went down there, and we smashed poor Jeff’s confederacy good.” He chuckles, a bit hoarse.
Jughead laughed. He nodded.
“Yeah. I think I can work that into something that fits the meter.”
Pop smiled and slipped into the kitchen.
Jughead got back to work. Technically he was supposed to have the poem finished by last night. But he figured he could get it to Alice in time for the evening paper, and hopefully Betty could convince her mother not to kill him.
Pop returned a moment later, bringing two glasses of water to the table a few over.
“So where’s your girl, Jug?” he asked.
Jughead laughed nervously. He fiddled with a lock of dark hair. His girl. It was still absolutely bizarre to have anyone refer to Cheryl as such. Surreal. Like one of those mad German paintings with the swirling colors and shrieking shadows bent over a pipe organ and wielding a rifle or something.
“She’s out for a bit of early morning sailing in with Jason,” said Jughead.
“He’s been back for…what, almost a year?" said Pop.
"But I don’t think she’s gotten her fill of him yet," said Jughead.
Pop nodded.
“Well, alright.”
A man of hotter temper might have been flummoxed by his bride-to-be choosing to spend a holiday pleasure boating with her brother rather than her fiancé.
But Jughead was usually not a man of particularly fiery disposition. And he’d grown used to Jason fiercely and not always obliquely contesting his right to the affections of the fair maiden. And he usually just let Jason win.
Because—
Cheryl Blossom and Jughead Jones. A love story for the ages. And that was not necessarily a celebratory description. Nor, in fairness, a damning one.
Jughead had never been romantically inclined. When the other boys had reached adolescence and become entranced by the prospect of girls, more than the actual flesh and blood human beings, he’d been content to remain inside, scribbling stories or poems.
That had changed as did Jughead’s father, the irascible FP Jones II. FP was not a doting father. He was a sailor of Cymric blood, who had spoken only Welsh until he was twelve, and spoke English like he hated the bastards who'd invented it. He often spent months at sea, if not years. His visits home were brief and usually perfunctory, and when home he was more interested in the bottle than his son. Jughead’s mother had left for parts unknown years ago, taking his little sister along.
Jughead had survived on the scanty stipends his father sent home each month, and on the charity of Fred Andrews, father of his good friend Archie, and even reluctantly of the Coopers.
But when Jughead was fourteen, about five years ago, his father worsened markedly. He’d disappeared on a voyage to the South Pacific, the subject of which FP kept a closely guarded secret, with uncharacteristic reticence. He had not even told his son he was going, and that at least he always did. Jughead had simply awoken in the swaying little shack they shared on the south side of town to find a note from his father. It said that he was gone and would not be back for some time.
Jughead rushed to the docks, hoping the ship on which his father was set to sail, the Selkie, had not yet embarked. He was too late. So he stood at the edge of the pier, staring out onto the roiling green Atlantic, beneath its thick waves of white fog. It looked like the clouds had fallen from heaven. The dock creaked beneath him. The water lapped at its barnacled underbelly.
He went home.
FP did not return for a year. Jughead did not know his father was home until he staggered through the door, so drunk he could not stand. He’d collapsed against the wall and slept nearly two days.
From that day forward, FP set about thoroughly destroying whatever standing meager he’d ever held in the community. He drank harder than he ever had, so that only rarely was his breath untinged with the reek of cheap whiskey. He had never been affectionate with his boy, but now they fought. Often. FP called his son a feckless, soft-handed dreamer, and Jughead called his father a pathetic drunk.
The night they both came out of their latest altercation with bruises was the night Jughead decided he was done.
That was four years ago, now. He’d hardly spoken to FP since. The man did not sail anymore. He ran with a gang of layabouts on the south side of town near the wharfs, and survived mostly by odd jobs or running now-illegal liquor down to Boston or up to New Haven.
Jughead took odd jobs where he could find him. He wrote part-time for the Register, and sweet, kind Betty pressured her mother into overpaying him. He worked at the docks sometimes, unloading cargo ships or lending a hand on fishing boats. Riverdale had been a lively port town in the days of sail, but as the ships became iron and commerce concentrated in the great metropoles, its relevance had declined markedly. But the stupendous liners still surged in now and again from the ports of China, Britain, South Africa. The sorts of ships his father had sailed on. And Jughead swore by every god there might be he’d never set foot on one of those decks.
He slept sometimes at Archie’s house. Sometimes Pop Tate let him sleep in the back. Or at least he had. Now he enjoyed better lodgings, time to time, courtesy of his fiancée.
Enter the Blossom clan.
The towns first meager buildings were raised up by their forebear Alfred Blossom, a dour English heretic sailed over towards the tail end of the 17th century. In the years since they had remained Riverdale's uncrowned royalty. From their old colonial mansion of Thornhill perched up on its declining slope of sand dunes, rolling down to the turbid sea, the Blossoms ruled as petty tyrants to rival any asiatic despot. Cliff Blossom, the line's current patriarch, made his fortune from the maple trees that grew inland, and also from the fleet of vessels he rented out to the destitute fishermen on the south side of town. So had the family piled up its wealth for generations, making themselves as indispensable to the town's economic life as they were dreaded.
There were other Blossoms, scattered from Virginia up to Canada (indeed, Cliff's wife Penelope was his second cousin of the Hudson Valley Blossoms), but those were cadet branches and the Riverdale Blossoms maintained headship of this greater diffusion.
Principal figures as they were in the village's history, a heap of terrible legends circulated round the family. Alfred Blossom it was said, had left England and spurned the greater settlements further south because he had murdered his brother and both his parents in a failed bid to seize the family's then earldom for himself. Thornhill was a dark and decaying monolith, its deep corridors infested by howling phantoms, seeping from the shadows, and it was said that Alfred's granddaughter Prudence Blossom had double-crossed and then slaughtered a band of unsuspecting Wampanoag Indians for the stretch of coast. James Blossom had marched down the Mississippi Valley with Grant, though it was said less in the interest of liberty or the federal union than of his own glory and material aggrandizement, so that the further heaps of southern treasure he'd carried north with him brought along the spirits of slighted rebel soldiers.
But despite or perhaps due to these tales of terror, they were the town's first citizens, and the rest of Riverdale's people could not but wonder in awe. And who among them inspired more awe than Cheryl Blossom, the family's youngest asset?
She was Riverdale’s crown jewel, and the hopeless dream of most every young man in town. It was enough that she was daughter of Clifford Blossom, the wealthiest gentleman for miles around, and that she was latest in that clear and unbroken line. This was a town where the greater part of the population lived the lives of humble shopkeepers and petty bourgeois at best, or at worst tore their meager livelihood from the sea with net and line. The Blossom hoards of silver and gold, and the millions more in the banks of New York and Europe were thus no small things.
This would have more than enough, but it certainly did not harm matters that she was a truly rare beauty. The copper hair, the fair skin and the sensuous lips, the great, dark and luminous eyes a man did not soon forget.
The girl had a serious penchant for unprompted cruelty, it was true. Jughead would never forget the day a drowned fisherman had been plucked out of the sea just off of Sweetwater Beach, in full view of the whole town. As the poor soul was dredged up, skin a light blue, tangled in kelp, and dribbling water from eyes and mouth, Cheryl had commented that “the catch of the day doesn’t look especially appetizing.”
She was also fond of referring to the impecunious crabbers and day laborers crowded into the waterfront shacks on the south side of town as ‘the degraded, ill-bred dregs of Anglo-Saxondom,’ amid less friendly appellations.
Still, her wealth and beauty far outweighed deficient character in the eyes of the town at large.
There was hardly a fellow in Riverdale who did not at least dream of her, and a lesser number that attempted to realize such desires. All met with failure. Besides the fact that she seemed to have little use for romance save so far as she could use it to torment and destroy, there was the stark reality of her twin brother Jason.
Jason Blossom was a tall, strong, and handsome youth who was to the young ladies in town as his sister was to the boys. On that 4th of July he was six months back from the war in Europe. He was an active boy, who liked to run and fight, and sometimes to take a shotgun out to sea and shoot sharks. When he did so, he would take not Cliff Blossom’s grand fishing boat, but rather a friend or two in a pitiful little skiff in order to give the great fish a sporting chance, as he said.
He was not as hard to get on with as his sister, and agreeable enough, except when it came to the subject of his sister, in which case he posed a mortal threat to any would-be suitor. Jason was willing and glad to menace love-struck boys with his fists or guns should he deem them unworthy of Cheryl. And Jughead was quite sure he would deem every man on earth so, save possibly himself.
But that was okay because Jughead was that unique sort of Riverdale boy who had never nursed any infatuation for Cheryl Blossom.
Their interactions, to the extent they had any, usually consisted of Cheryl sneeringly greet him with "hallo, Huck!" and ask if he was looking for Tom Sawyer or Pap Finn, to which Jughead might offer a friendly warning that she ought to lay low, for Dr. Van Helsing had been spotted nearby.
Jughead had anyhow long harbored a desperate crush on his old schoolyard comrade, pretty, blonde Betty Cooper, with the gentle green ocean eyes, who did not suffer from the massive disparity between outward and inward beauty that Cheryl did, and whose family had rescued him from starvation more than once.
Of course, dear friends as they were, and no matter the hours they spent together strolling along the beach or reading poetry to each other, he did not imagine she could ever return those feelings.
And anyhow all had changed upon his father’s return from the fantastic voyage and his subsequent collapse.
He was homeless after that, and it had been one night that he did not want to bother the Andrewses, Coopers, or Pop Tate with his misery. So he decided he would sleep in the culvert beneath the railroad tracks bisecting Riverdale. With some luck, it would shield him from the wind and the wild rain.
That had been an odd month. The United States had entered the European war, and Jason Blossom and Archie Andrews had gone off to fight it. Riverdale suddenly felt smaller and larger at once.
Jughead was making his way to the culvert when he rounded a corner near Pop’s and crashed right into Cheryl Blossom. She shrieked like a banshee, and he swore loudly. He dropped the pitiful cotton sack carrying his meager belongings, two changes of clothes and a journal. She snatched it up before he could.
“What is the matter with you?” Cheryl shrieked, copper hair already damp with the drizzle, fair skin flushed. She sniffed and peered over his shoulder, towards the Southside. “Aren’t you on the wrong side of the poverty line?”
“Actually,” he snarled, recalling their last exchange. “This ‘miserable Welsh atavist’ is right where he belongs.”
“Where’s that?” she demanded, lips pursed and eyes heavy.
“Under the railroad tracks.” He jerked his thumb in their general direction. “Since I don't have any better lodgings.” He tried to shove past her, and she wouldn't let him go.
Cheryl wrinkled her fine nose and scoffed.
“I would ask how a human being could sink so low, but whether you're human at all is an open que—"
“Well,” Jughead cut her off. snatched his bag back from her. “A human being can withstand just about anything.” He looked her right in the eye. “I understand we aren't so resilient as reptiles, though.”
Then he stalked past her. There was a moment of silence, and the rain began to fall harder.
Then her unlooked for voice: “wait.”
He turned around. She rushed up to him, moving like dainty steps would keep away the rain. And she crammed a handful of soggy dollar bills into his hand.
“I truly can’t believe my own soft heart,” she said. Even as she lavished her charity upon him, she kept her face scrunched in revulsion. “Here. Get yourself a room at the inn.” They both looked up into the black, rolling sky. “I assume that will worsen.”
He stared down at the money in wonder.
“Thank you?”
“Fine.”
And he went and got himself a room at the inn.
It was the first time he’d ever seen a display of kindness from Cheryl unattended by any bleaker motive. It raised his estimation of her, just a little bit. The next time he saw her at Pop Tate’s eatery, a sort of neutral ground between the bourgeois and proletarian halves of the little town, he thanked her. She offered him to sit with her.
“Take a seat, darling pauper. I’m running poor relief.”
She bought him a meal.
“Noblesse oblige strikes again,” he said.
Give it a few weeks they were something approaching friends.
The first time she invited him to the dreadful old Blossom family mansion of Thornhill, he’d fallen in love with the grand library. He’d spent hours trailing between the moldering shelves, the ancient genealogies and catalogues of natural history, poems and novels. Penelope Blossom, the family’s sour matriarch, watched him closely, as if she feared he might steal something.
He was tempted.
Give it a few more weeks, he was her date to the little Nickelodeon theater in Greendale, fifteen miles inland, and she kissed him.
Give it six more months, and they were engaged.
That was a year ago now, that they’d been engaged. It was still absolutely insane. That Cheryl Blossom, the lovely daughter of dyed in the wool American aristocrats should want anything to do with the struggling son of a beery sailor was insane. But here they were.
It shocked the town as much as it did him. People talked about it for months.
Jason got home from Europe and was less than enthused to find his beloved sister had become engaged to a homeless writer while he was away. Jughead had not expected Jason to like him. But they got on, if uneasily. And Jason never shot at him at least, like he had dealt with Marmaduke Mason once (partly because he had missed, and mostly because he was Jason Blossom, he’d suffered no consequences for that particular antic).
He did not think Cliff or Penelope were thrilled with their daughter’s choice of husband, but neither did they loudly protest.
“What are you going to offer my girl?” Cliff once asked him, with the clear intimation that the answer was ‘nothing’.
Jughead had shrugged, surprised at his own nonchalance.
“Reality, maybe,” said Jughead.
Cliff grumbled. “Do you have any congenital defects?”
“I sincerely hope not.”
“Mmmph. Vital germ-plasm is essential to the generation of good children."
Jughead stared at him, jaw and lips twitching in bewilderment.
Archie, returned from the same war as Jason, was excited for his friend’s marrying the richest, loveliest girl in town. Jughead mostly just nodded along and stared into space while he was embraced by the weary soldier.
Betty, ever accommodating, congratulated him as well. With reservations.
“Are you sure you’re going to marry her, Jug?”
Jughead stared at her, still a bit in awe. Her pink lips were crushed together, concerned. Her blonde hair was loose, falling in wonderful ringlets around her shoulders.
“I think I am, actually.”
“Do you love her?”
That was an excellent question. Did he love her? What was love? Did his father love him? If the dynamic between himself and his father was love, if that were the barest measures of love, than whatever fondness he felt for Cheryl was mad, epic love. If love meant something higher, than he didn’t know. They got along, in an abrasive way. They had similarly sharp tongues. They both enjoyed bleak books and tales of terror or mystery. Poe or Walpole or Maturin or Doyle.
But did he love her?
What did it matter?
The presence or lack of love was rarely the deciding factor in a good match.
“Yeah,” he said.
Betty smiled. She reached across the rough wooden table and covered his hands with hers. For a moment, he felt that familiar, unsteady rocking in his stomach that Betty’s great green eyes had always triggered in him. He smiled back at her.
“If you both love each other,” said Betty. “I suppose that’s what’s important, right? Well, in the end, at least.”
“In the end,” Jughead echoed.
There was much bad blood between the Coopers and the Blossoms, dating to some obscure feud long before the Great Rebellion that few could quite recall. And many it seemed, did not want to. But Betty was not the sort to abide the strictures of petty ancestral rivalry.
So Forsythe ‘Jughead’ Jones were engaged to be married.
And now it was the 4th of July, his fiancée was out sailing with her brother, and he was here in Pop Tate’s eatery, trying like hell to compose a patriotic poem that was rote enough to please everyone and inspired enough to deflect accusations of cliche. Not that anyone would pay it that much mind.
Jughead looked out the far window, onto the rolling ocean. The waves were green, capped by foaming froth. He could smell the salt, and twinges of slime and seaweed. The breeze was hard, but temperate for the summer. A light fog hung over the town as it always did. But it was at its weakest towards the middle of the year. In the autumn it would become truly impenetrable.
This was not the worst place to live.
The door to Pop Tate’s eatery opened. Betty Cooper, wearing a simple white dress with loose skirts, stepped inside. Jughead lifted his eyes, put down his pen, and smiled.
“Hey, Juggie.”
“Look what the winds of time have blown in,” he said.
“That doesn’t even make any sense,” Betty said, teasing.
She slipped into the chair across from him.
“Going to the parade, later?” she asked.
“Presumably,” he said.
“And the poem? Not to be too demanding.”
“Just about…” He scribbled out a last line, less than satisfactory. It would have to do. “Done.”
Betty inclined her head. They sat in silence for a moment. Jughead had not seen her so much, lately. He did miss her. But it seemed ever since the engagement, they’d been together less than ever. There was a great, flat rock on Sweetwater Beach. Where they used to read poetry to each other, or simply share the mundanities of their daily existence.
He wondered if it was Mr. or Mrs. Cooper who, even as they purchased his vaunted literary skills for the paper, discouraged their daughter from spending much time around Cheryl Blosson’s betrothed.
It was almost certainly Mrs. Cooper. Though he hated the Blossoms as much as his wife, Hal Cooper had been seen very little in town in the past year or two. He was often away on long trips, and he was in town spent nearly all his time sequestered in his home. When he went out, it was brief and short and wrapped up in a long coat or even a cloak.
“Where’s Cheryl?” Betty asked, as if she had read him.
“Out sailing,” said Jughead. “With Jason.”
Betty was not surprised. Her face soured a bit. The Blossom twins’ intimacy was known to every denizen of Riverdale. Before Jughead came along, folks had joked often (when their backs were turned, of course), that the reason the twins had so little use for the opposite sex was because it would not be legal for them to marry each other.
But that was not entirely true, hence the sour expression on Betty’s face. Jason had enjoyed a short fling with Betty’s sister Polly soon after his return from Europe. It had ended quickly, leaving Polly broken and miserable and himself no worse for the wear. The affair had not endeared the Blossoms any further to the Coopers, or vice versa.
“Of course,” Betty said, finally. Pop shuffled up to take her order.
Then the door opened again.
Archie Andrews, tall and broad and red-haired, stumbled in, breathing hard.
“Fellas!”
“Slow down, Arch,” said Jughead.
“It’s Cheryl and Jason,” said Archie.
Jughead stood automatically. She was his fiancée, after all.
“What about them?” Betty asked, standing after her friend.
By the time they got to the beach, the rest of the town was already there.
The wind blew in gales from the sea, and the gentle waves of the morning became roaring troughs smashing into the shore like mad bulls. The ocean hissed and boiled. The breeze stung the observers on the beach.
Jughead looked out to sea. He saw something bobbing in the waves a few hundred yards off from the beach. He squinted, shielding his eyes with his hand. It was beige, angular and hard. Man-made. Finally he recognized it. An up-turned vessel.
They reached the first ranks of the crowd.
“What happened?” was the first question Betty asked of Kevin Keller, for Archie had been too breathless to fill them in on the way. Kevin shook his head and pointed down the strand. Jughead turned his head.
Cheryl sat a few dozen feet away from the waves, wrapped in a towel, already soaked through. Both her parents stood by her side, hands on her shoulders. Constable Keller, in his black half-cape, knelt before her. Jason was conspicuously absent.
For a moment, she was a stranger again. Or close to a stranger as Riverdale got. She was not his fiancée, who he had come to like if not love. She was just the wealthy girl with the tyrant father from the house up on the hill.
But then it was gone. He rushed over, boots puffing up sand.
“What happened?” came the words from his mouth.
Cliff and Penelope stared at him, wordless.
Cheryl, in an off-red sundress, soaked to the bone. She dug her pale toes into the sand, still shivering. She looked up at him with her big eyes and shuddered: “Jason.”
Jughead looked out to the swamped boat and understood.
He lowered his head.
And then he looked up to the sand dunes. One man stood apart from the crowd. He had on a dark jacket, dark slacks stuffed into antiquated soldier’s boots. He had not shaved in a while, but did not yet have a beard. His mouth was in a deep frown, and he could not take his eyes from the sea.
Jughead watched his father for another moment, and turned to tend to Cheryl.
When she first clapped eyes on Riverdale, Massachusetts, Veronica Lodge’s initial thought was that she would not like to spend a week here, much less years to come.
To say Riverdale was not Manhattan was more a cruel joke than an understatement.
The town was built long, stretching along the coast in a crude ellipse. On its western edge, it was bounded by a river that ran up, turned sharply to the east, and emptied into the sea about twenty miles north of Riverdale. On the east was the deep Atlantic, roaring and foaming beneath a cool autumn wind when the Lodge’s sleek new Ford topped the hill and they caught their first sight of the ocean.
Riverdale itself was not much to look at. The houses were modest, white walls bleached by howling ocean winds and marine salt. Little windows with the shutters drawn tight. The main street was unpaved, the the automobile navigated only with difficulty.
The buildings were built at strange angles, hard and slanting. There had been no common plan to organize the construction, this was a settlement that had sprung up organically.
The people at least, seemed alright. They stared, sullen but not necessarily unwelcoming. They dressed simply, the women in straight dresses, the men in trousers and rolled up shirtsleeves.
As they moved into the south side of town, nearer the sea shore, the conditions of the houses deteriorated markedly. These were small, rickety shacks cobbled together from driftwood and whatever pine or maple could be hewn down in the hills inland. Veronica instinctively wrinkled her nose. There were less people on the streets here, and those that were looked miserably shabby, despondent. Tattered workmen’s clothes, mostly. The streets narrowed in this part of town, and garbage piled up along the house walls.
“This is where I grew up,” said Hermione Lodge, with hints of pride and shame.
“Indeed,” said Veronica.
Her first night there, Veronica stopped at a little eatery, a place she said was built decades ago, and if it was still run by old Tate, then it was the best food for miles around.
It was built of solid, wind-beaten pine, right up against the ocean, only a few dozen yards from the breakers. Inside was charming enough. Rough wooden tables, fickle candles on the walls. Not too many people inside, besides the proprietor, an elderly man in a forage cap who radiated fatherly charm, and a pair of youngsters.
A young man, handsome enough, redheaded. A very beautiful young blonde.
“Is the food here decent?” Veronica asked. She looked around. Through the windows. The sea was black beneath a rising moon. Tendrils of impenetrable fog reached out over the swirling water towards the shore. She could feel the deep mist in her flesh. The two stared at her staring “I’m sorry—“ Veronica half-laughed. “I don’t mean to be rude but…this town...I feel like I’m a misstep from stumbling into the Grimpen Mire.” She stared at them. The young gentleman did not seem to grasp the reference. The blonde smiled, so maybe she did.
Betty Cooper and Archie Andrews, as she would learn. And on meeting them, would learn also that perhaps Riverdale was not so bad as she had first dreaded.
It was a town built in layers, with undercurrents of charm beneath the outward face of dreary gloom, and beneath that charm further shadows lurking. Like any place on earth, Veronica supposed.
And she learned, she had arrived at perhaps the worst possible time: in the midst of a local tragedy.
Jason Blossom, son of the town’s first citizen Clifford, and lately a war hero, had drowned when his boat capsized, while pleasure boating with his sister. Just off-shore.
This had left all of Riverdale reeling, for her people were not used to such melancholy. But especially Cheryl Blossom, Jason’s devoted sister, who was by all accounts hardly tolerable in the best of times. She was barely sane now that she had lost the man she loved best.
Odd enough that her brother was that man, because she was engaged. And as fortune would have it, Betty and Archie were friends of her fiancé, a poor and brooding if amicable fellow by the name of Forsythe, who for some inscrutable reason, preferred ‘Jughead’. Which meant Veronica got to know both the three pleasant youths, but also Cheryl, and Cheryl probably more than she would have liked.
“Oh,” Cheryl said, the first time they met, at the docks. She was wearing an elegant black mourning dress, almost modest in its simplicity. But her face showed no stamp of that mourning. “More parvenus? And a Lodge at that! Heretofore most of Riverdale’s thieves have been the sort to steal pennies rather than industries.”
Veronica ground her teeth. Yes, her father’s fortune may have been built largely on terrorizing competitors out of the steel market, engineering small-scale market crises, and defrauding Standard Oil that one time. But that didn’t make her a thief.
“I’m sure it’s lovely to trace your line back to King Arthur or whomever, but I like having a family tree with branches.”
"Branch as it may. Thieves beget thieves, murderers beget murderers. And kings beget kings," Cheryl sniffed. "It's a matter of heredity.”
And then they parted ways, though the exchange set the pattern of their many consequent duels.
But she found enough to like in Archie, Betty, and Jughead.
Betty in particular endeared herself immensely to Veronica. She was just the opposite of her urbane, wily, amoral high society entourage back home. Eminently sweet and caring, full of small town charm, though never to the point of foolishness or absolute naivete. Veronica felt like Betty was a salve for her own character flaws, those she wished to rectify. Perhaps here she could learn to be a bit more human.
She took to visiting Betty often at her parents' newspaper. As idle rich, Veronica didn’t have much to do besides in a little town like this.
So it was that chilly September evening.
Veronica stepped in through the Register’s thin front door. It was hardly enough to keep out the mighty blasts of ocean wind. She wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to it. It had gotten cold in New York, but never so forcefully cold. She drew a thin white shawl tighter around her head and shoulders. Shut the door tight behind her and enjoyed the slight rise in temperature.
Betty appeared out of the back room carrying an armful of the next morning’s papers. She flashed an adorable smile at the sight of her friend. Veronica waved coyly.
Alice Cooper came out behind her daughter and rolled her eyes. Veronica smiled uncomfortably. It was clear Alice, even if she was tolerant, did not care for much her. The prevailing concern seemed to be that this surely wild, unprincipled socialite would corrupt innocent, pastoral Betty Cooper.
Veronica had once overheard Alice giving her daughter a ranting warning about the dangers of the rushing, sparkling world beyond the hills and dales. She did not want, Alice said, her good daughter’s head contaminated with ‘drink, or nihilism, or socialism’.
There was also Polly, Betty’s sister of who very little was seen. When she emerged from her rooms in the rear of the house (which doubled as the Register’s printing station), she regarded everyone with a miserable, drawn look, before disappearing back into the private shadows. Some nasty business with now-dead Jason, according to Betty. A fling gone badly.
Finally, there was the enigmatic Harold ‘Hal' Cooper. Veronica had not seen him once in her months here. According to Alice, who got especially snippy when the subject of her husband was broached, he was a very busy man, and often away to Greendale or Boston on business. When he was home, the usual excuse for his absence was chronic illness.
It seemed odd to Veronica that a man so often sick should be rushing up and down the eastern seaboard with such regularity, but what did she know?
Tonight, Veronica sat with Betty as the latter searched the paper’s final editions for errors in the typeface or spelling. It was a small town, and so there was not much of magnitude to report. The Register was still carrying stories on Jason’s death all these months later (less than flattering ones, considering the hoary Cooper-Blossom rivalry).
Veronica grew bored naturally.
“Are we going to do this all night?” Veronica asked, inspecting a small cut on the palm of her hand that had suddenly become very interesting.
“Until the work is done, V,” Betty chided. “All in a day’s work,” she teased.
“Well,” Veronica stretched herself out over the table. “I don’t work much.”
A moment’s silence. Then Veronica spoke again: “So what exactly happened between your sister and uh…Jason?”
Betty sighed. She cleared another printing.
“It was just—Jason was kind of a rake, you know? He was always stringing girls along. Polly was one of the only ones he ever wanted anything more with” Betty’s pen grew a bit more brutal as she spoke, digging deep into the paper and leaving heavy tracks of ink behind. “But he still didn’t want much. Polly really thought they were in love, I guess. Cheryl was jealous, obviously. Maybe that’s why things ended. But anyways, it broke her heart.”
Veronica looked down at the table.
“Oh. Yeah. That’s a familiar story."
Betty shrugged and smiled sadly.
“I wouldn’t know.”
“And how about you?” Veronica teased. “Pretty as you are. Any young gentleman callers of your own?”
Betty spared her a glance, and a light shade of red colored and left her cheeks.
“Not that I know of.”
“Really?” Veronica bent forward over the table. “Not Archie?” A short silence. “Or Jughead?”
At the last name, Betty seized and dropped her pen. She quickly recovered her bearing, picked the pen back up, and went about her work again. Veronica beamed. “You do fancy him!”
“Veronica, for God’s sakes!” She flushed harder this time, and frowned. “Maybe two or three years ago we had some interest in one another. But he’s married!”
“He’s not married yet,” Veronica said. When Betty’s face took on a horrified tint, she laughed. “I’m only joking!”
“You’re always treading lines,” Betty said.
“Fair enough. Look, when you’re done here, let’s get out. I know there’s nothing to do in this town, but let’s head down to the beach, at least!”
Betty agreed. And within twenty minutes, she’d finished sorting through the papers. So they stood and headed down to the beach, only a ten minute walk from the Cooper house. The rain had stopped, but the sand was still wet and soggy. Veronica stripped off her shoes at the edge of the dunes, and sighed as her toes sank amid the cool granules.
The moon sat pretty in the skies, half full and guiding a stream of silver light over the waves. She breathed in the salt.
There was a long, low sandbar a few hundred yards beyond the beach, just barely visible now, at high tide.
“What’s the name of the reef again?” Veronica asked.
“Hangman’s Reef,” she said. “I know it's not very pretty, but sometimes people like to race each other out there, and back, swimming. They say ships used to crash on it a lot, back in the day. That was when Riverdale was a big port town. Not so much anymore.”
She turned to Betty, to say “do you folks go bathing a lot in the summer?” but she couldn’t get the words out, because suddenly Betty dropped to her knees in the sand, yowling in pain. She clutched her neck and whimpered. Veronica crouched down next to her. Betty whimpered and rubbed her throat.
“Oh my God! Are you okay?”
Betty scrambled to her feet, still massaging her neck.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’ve just had these…pains in my neck lately. I don’t know what it is. Just cramps, I suppose. It’s nothing serious.”
“Looked serious,” said Veronica.
“My father was always getting cramps, too,” Betty said. "I guess it's congenital." And Veronica decided to drop it.
They walked along the moonlit beach for a while, and conversation tended towards lighter topics.
“You’ve never been out of Riverdale?” asked Veronica, incredulous.
“Well, I guess technically I’ve been to Greendale and Centerville. But I’ve definitely never been out of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.” Betty smiled sheepishly, almost like she was embarrassed.
“Well,” said Veronica, hooking her arm into her friend’s. “We have to rectify that immediately. As soon as it’s within my means, I promise I’ll take you to New York at the very least. And if possible, abroad. How’d you like to see Paris?”
“Is it as nice as all the books say?” Betty asked.
“Better, if you know the right people. And I definitely do. My father knows Poincaré, you know. Now, granted, it isn’t an entirely cordial relationship, but it exists.”
Betty starred out to the hazy sea, beneath its curtains of fog.
“Juggie wants to go to Moscow.”
Veronica’s eyes popped.
“Moscow?” She rushed a little ahead of her friend, sidling towards the water and dipping her toes in the lapping surf. “Does he have a death wish?”
“No. He just manages to maintain a worldview that's at the same time very pessimistic and wildly romantic." She picked up a flat stone and hurled it into the sea. "And a few months ago some German sailor taught him an impromptu course on Marxian economics down at the docks."
Veronica scoffed.
“Well, I—“ She stopped dead. There was something in the water before her, washed up on the shore. For a moment, she took it for a piece of battered driftwood, bleached by the sun and softened by the sea. But that was only because her mind would not accept the reality of it.
Because it was a corpse.
Veronica screamed. She scrambled away from the body, tripped over an incoming wave, and splashed back into the surf. Her fine dress was thoroughly soaked. She hardly noticed, concerned only with removing herself from the situation.
Betty rushed up to her.
“Veronica, wh—oh my God!” Betty did not scream. She gasped, deep and heavy, and helped her friend to her feet.
The body was a young man’s, probably a little over six feet in height. He might have been handsome in life, but the rolling sea had taken its toll. Both his eyes were gone, plucked out by fish or scuttling crabs. In their place, a pair of dark pits glared viciously. His lips were split and swollen, beginning to rot, so that one could see the teeth clearly and a hint of the jawbone. His skin was a sickly greenish-white, flayed away in places by attrition or the attention of scavengers.
Worst of all was the mark in his brow. A neat, dark little perforation ringed by a patch of bruised flesh.
Veronica could only whimper incoherently. Betty touched her shoulders. “It’s Jason,” she said. “He was shot.”
Veronica heard her, but hardly. Because now she was staring out to sea. Because out there, just beyond the breakers, something was moving. Multiple things, actually. Veronica took them for a group of seals, at first. Their were about ten. Maybe fifteen. Their sleek, rounded heads shone wet under the moon. Their fins, or perhaps their feet, produced thin, sharp sheets of foam as they drove onwards. Their backs bowed and bent, undulating like serpents.
But they were not seals. She saw their hides reflect in the dim light as they drifted in and out of the fog. It was rough. Almost scaly. They moved with a strange, purposeful torpidity. Betty followed her gaze. She too saw the things.
The creatures, whatever they were, paused. And for a moment, Veronica swore they were being watched. But then the head of the pack turned out towards sea, and dipped below the crashing waves. The others followed suit, until the last in the train disappeared back into the depths.
A trail of ripples flashed over the surface, and then it was subsumed beneath a swirling crest of foam.