I don’t really understand why Sharon’s talking about us. Aren’t we all here because of other people?
In the truck on the way home, I pull Andy’s letter out of my pocket and keep reading.
I’M LEARNING A LOT HERE, WHICH IS COOL. A TRACTOR WE USE FOR A LOT OF STUFF AROUND THE FARM BROKE, AND BEN, ONE OF THE STAFF, SHOWED ME HOW TO FIX IT. YOU KNOW I’VE ALWAYS LIKED CARS, BUT WOW—THAT FEELING OF WORKING ON SUCH A HUGE VEHICLE WAS AWESOME. THIS WILL SOUND WEIRD, BUT IT MADE SENSE RIGHT AWAY, WHAT I WAS SUPPOSED TO DO. I GUESS IT JUST CAME NATURAL. AFTER I FINISHED, I KIND OF WISHED THERE WAS ANOTHER PROBLEM WITH IT, BECAUSE I WANTED TO WORK ON IT ALL DAY! BEN SAYS IF I LIKE FIXING TRACTORS SO MUCH I COULD THINK ABOUT BECOMING AN AGRICULTURAL MECHANIC, AND REPAIRING FARM EQUIPMENT COULD BE MY JOB. WOULDN’T THAT BE COOL?
BOTTOM LINE, LITTLE C., I FEEL LIKE I’M FINALLY FIGURING OUT WHO I AM.
I HOPE YOU’RE DOING SOME COOL STUFF TOO. I BET YOU’RE STAYING BUSY, NOW THAT I’M OUT OF YOUR WAY!
Out of my way? He knows that’s not how I feel. I reread the letter. Andy sounds happy, but I’m also confused. How can he not know who he is? I know who he is. I’ve known forever. There’s nothing wrong with fixing tractors, but what else about him might change while he’s gone?
I’m staring out the window, trying to imagine Andy under a tractor, spinning wrenches and screwdrivers, when I remember I didn’t look for the punch line about walls. I turn the letter upside down and see one line at the bottom:
The words swim together and I blink hard. Andy can’t meet me anywhere. Not now. Even his words make it feel like he’s stepping away. And Sharon says I have to find something that’s mine. But the things I love most have always been Andy’s too.
Suddenly, trees surge in my mind, framed by leaves the colors of fire, hoofprints I can’t quite trace, and a jet-black mane that can’t be real. Or can it?
CHAPTER 6
“So how much have you figured out about Edna Beard?” I ask. Maya came over to work on our projects, but we decided to start with barn chores. “I mean, that you didn’t know before.”
“I was googling her again last night. Good old Edna.” Maya pushes the door open and flicks on the light. I can already hear Sunny’s and Sam’s hooves shuffling sawdust. But before we head into the stable, I need to throw down two bales of hay from our loft. Mom and Dad usually move the heavy bales for me, but they must have forgotten. Maya and I will be able to manage enough to feed Sunny and Sam for now.
I’m not surprised Maya’s on a first-name basis with her research subject. They probably would have been great friends in real life; I could see them both burying their noses in crackly newspapers, looking for injustice to fight. “It took some digging, but I found this radio interview with one of her nieces! Primary source!” Maya pumps a fist in the air and I smile. She gets really into school projects, and it helps me get a little more into them too. “Anyway, the niece said Edna was a horsewoman. Isn’t that cool?”
“Definitely,” I say.
Maya and I start climbing the ladder to the hayloft. I shimmy up fast, skipping rungs. Maya’s not as quick, but she makes it up.
“I knew you’d appreciate it,” she says, stepping off the last rung and following me to the stack of hay bales. We each grasp one of the two strings that bind the hay together and lug it across the loft, then push it to the ground below. From there, we’ll carry flakes into the stable. “Just another reason Edna rules.”
“Have you talked about her with your dad?” I ask. Mr. Gonzalez would definitely be proud of Maya for researching Vermont’s first female lawmaker. His grandfather, who lived in Mexico, was a judge too, and Maya says that’s what inspired him to become one. She’s told me stories about meeting her great-grandfather before he died, when her family took a trip back to visit. He only spoke Spanish, but Maya’s bilingual, so she could talk to him. I wish I knew a different language. If I had more words to help my ideas make sense, maybe I’d feel brave enough to share them.
Now, Maya looks at the floor and kicks a few stray stalks of hay. “Papi’s been kind of out of it lately,” she says. Then she turns away and sits on a bale, lying back against a second one and draping an arm across her forehead. I don’t know exactly what she means by “out of it,” but the dip in her voice makes me not want to ask. “I’m going to wait a little before I tell him about Edna Beard.”
I’ve heard Mr. Gonzalez say that even though we live in a rural area, without all the traffic and people of a city, being a judge is a hard job. “Small town, big problems,” he used to tell us, a smile twisting on his face like it was a joke but his eyes sharp and sad. I’ve known Mr. Gonzalez forever and I like him. He takes Maya and me for ice cream in the summer if we’re hanging out near his office in Belding, but he usually walks around with his eyebrows wrinkling together and his phone near his ear or edging out of his pocket.
“I could never, ever be a judge.” I shudder. Making decisions for so many people who might have done something wrong, or might not have, would bring the sparrows swooping down for sure.
“Papi says it’s really important work.” Maya sighs and sits down on a hay bale. “Lately he’s been saying that more. He’s had some really tough cases and he doesn’t have much time to talk.” She frowns, and I see her eyebrows wrinkle together for a second, just like Mr. Gonzalez’s.
I think then that maybe Maya knows a little bit what it’s like for me with Andy. He and I can communicate, but never at the same time. We have to wait between letters just like she has to wait for the right time to talk.
“Hey,” Maya says softly, like she can read my mind, “have you heard from Andy lately?”
Maya’s brother, Nicolás, is so little, only in second grade, so sometimes I think she must wonder how Andy could end up at the Starshine Center. She picks good times to ask about him, though. Times when she knows the calm inside me wells up thicker than worry.
“I just got a letter today.” I reach toward my back pocket, where another envelope waits.
The letter’s dated Wednesday, so he must have written it in response to what I mailed on Saturday. I haven’t decided how to respond to the one I got earlier this week, about the tractor, but maybe this will give me some hints. I pull it out carefully so I can read parts for Maya. She’s the only one besides me who gets to hear Andy’s letters.
“DEAR CLAIRE,
HOW DOES THE OCEAN SAY HELLO?”
Maya laughs. “I’ve only seen it once, when we went to Maine last year,” she says. “But okay, I’ll think about it.” She usually figures out Andy’s punch lines before I do.
I read the first part, about how he went on a group hike the day before and made it all the way up Mount Chicory.
“I KEPT FALLING BEHIND EVERYONE ELSE BECAUSE I COULDN’T STOP LOOKING AROUND. SERIOUSLY, IF YOU’D BEEN THERE, YOU’D UNDERSTAND! I KEPT STARING OUT AT THESE TREES—THE COLORS ARE AWESOME RIGHT NOW, JUST LIKE THEY MUST BE AT HOME—AND I’D START THINKING ABOUT HOW ALL THE LEAVES WERE WAVING AROUND LIKE HANDS BECAUSE IT WAS WINDY. DAMIAN AND MARIE KEPT YELLING MY NAME TO GET ME BACK ON TRACK.”
Maya rolls her eyes. “Classic,” she says.
“Yeah.” I laugh. “Spacing out and thinking leaves are hands? Sounds about right.”
But I love whenever Andy sees the woods that way and tells me about it. He’s the reason I grew up looking at everything a little longer, a little closer.
“So, Damian and Marie,” Maya says. “Does he talk about them a lot?”
“He’s started to.” I chew my lip, trying to picture what Damian and Marie look like. To me they seem murky, just barely real. But Andy sees them every day. I shiver, look back down at the letter, and keep reading.
“IT REMINDED ME OF PEBBLE MOUNTAIN, BECAUSE YOU COULD SEE FOREVER UP THERE. REMEMBER HOW I USED TO TELL YOU IF PEBBLE MOUNTAIN WERE A LITTLE TALLER, WE COULD REACH UP AND GRAB STARS TO PUT IN OUR POCKETS? YOU BELIEVED IT. YOU WERE PRETTY LITTLE THEN. BUT HONESTLY, I KINDA BELIEVED IT TOO. ANYWAY, I GUES
S MOUNT CHICORY’S EVEN BIGGER! ELIZABETH—THAT’S ONE OF OUR THERAPISTS—SAID IT WAS A GOOD WAY TO GET PERSPECTIVE, AND I WAS THINKING ABOUT THAT. LIKE WHAT KIND OF PERSPECTIVE I MIGHT NEED. BEFORE STARSHINE, EVERYTHING I DID FELT REALLY BIG. IT MATTERED SO MUCH. ON MOUNT CHICORY, I FELT SMALL. BUT KIND OF IN A GOOD WAY. DOES THAT MAKE SENSE?”
Maya nods slowly. “He’s deep. I think I get it, though?”
I know exactly what he means. “It’s like that in the woods too. When I’m riding Sam, and all I see around me are trees, I kind of blend in. I’m still a part of things, just not a major part.”
It feels good to be tucked in with something bigger, something strong and growing and real that won’t flutter away.
“SO YOU ASKED IF I WAS HOMESICK. TOUGH QUESTION, LITTLE C.”
“Seriously?” Maya asks, grimacing. “I’d definitely be homesick.”
A sparrow pokes its beak at my heart, and I feel it like a pinprick, tiny but sharp.
“EVERYTHING’S ALL PLANNED OUT HERE. TO THE POINT WHERE IT’S KIND OF LIKE, ALL I HAVE TO DO IS THINK. FIGURE THINGS OUT, LIKE I TOLD YOU ABOUT WITH THE TRACTOR. IT’S BEEN KINDA COOL.”
I don’t know why Andy couldn’t think at home, though. We always said we did our best thinking up on Pebble Mountain, under the big quiet of stars and pine cones and skies first washed with sunset oranges and pinks, then purpling to black.
Maya looks at me, tips her head to one side. “He didn’t say he never wants to come home.”
“I know.” But my voice feels thick and heavy. “And further down he says he misses me. He always says that.”
I don’t read that part aloud. But I have it memorized: DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME, LITTLE C. YOU SOUNDED WORRIED IN YOUR LAST LETTER. BUT I’M OKAY. AND I’LL BE EVEN BETTER. I’VE ALREADY GOTTEN STARTED.
I didn’t think I wanted him to be better. I just wanted him to be him.
“Oh, I got it!” Maya says suddenly. “It’s like the trees. It waves.”
“What?” I swipe a palm across my eyes, start folding the letter.
“You forgot to read the end of the joke. But I already know it.” Maya points to the letter, and I open it back up. She’s right: It waves. “That’s the thing I remember most about the ocean. Papi wanted to go fishing, but the waves were so big we had to turn around.”
Maya looks down at her knees, picks wisps of hay out of her shoelaces. Her voice dropped low again.
“Hey,” I say, “let’s throw down another bale and get going with chores. That way we can get back to my house and talk more about your project.” If Maya’s dad can’t give her the time right now, at least I can.
I walk back over to the stack of bales, but my mind is full of everything else: Maya’s quietness, Andy’s strange words, the horses—
Suddenly, my boot catches and I come down hard, my palms slamming the floor.
“Ow!” I yell. I rub my knees, which I can tell are scraped underneath my jeans, then look back to figure out why I fell.
“Are you okay?” Maya leans over, pulls me up.
I never noticed that crooked old sticking-up floorboard before, but now I have to wrestle it up a little bit before banging it back into place. When I do, something gleams underneath, and I feel my fingers clamping onto the edge of a box.
It’s an old box, banged up and bent, the color of bridle buckles. It isn’t heavy, but it feels important, like the thunder that comes rippling over the mountains just before a storm.
The box is quieter than that, but it surprises me just the same. The air around it shimmers.
My mind races. A long time ago, when my grandparents had dairy cows, they kept the hayloft in good repair. The chances the same floorboard was loose back then are pretty slim. I could be the first person to find this box in a while, maybe ever.
I slip the box out and shake it, hear a rattling. It has a little lock, the kind that hooks around a latch. A tiny keyhole. I swish loose hay around on the floor a little bit, run my hands over the rough grain of the wood, and look for a key. Nothing.
“I’m going to need a bolt cutter,” I say. And then I realize how much I want Andy here, how much I need him to go right to the spot on the barn wall where we hang tools and grab the bolt cutter without even needing to look because he knows exactly where it hangs and how it feels, the rubber handles curving away from a biting metal mouth.
“Tell me what it looks like,” Maya says, already stepping carefully onto the ladder and lowering herself down, rung by rung.
“Red handles!” I call.
When she comes back up, I take the bolt cutter quickly and touch the box again.
But then I wait another moment. I have this feeling that’s hard to describe. When I was ten and showed Sam at the fair for the first time, in the Western Pleasure class, I remember looking up at the people sitting all around. Some of them were taking swigs of soda or checking their phones or leaning in to say something about the horses or the weather, but a lot of them were looking right at me and my skinny birch-bark arms holding the reins strong because I know just how to do it, and I realized: These are the last thirty seconds of me being the person I’ve been. I knew that when I signaled, Sam would bring me into the ring with every muscle pulling hard under his soft coat and I would be different. For a moment, everything and everyone in the ring, even me, froze. Then I squeezed my legs against his sides and told my old self goodbye.
Now I feel like it’s time to do that again.
I put both my hands on the sides of the box’s top and push in a little, then lift. The metal catches at the corner and I have to jimmy it around and use one hand to hold the bottom down hard and the other to push the lid up, and it opens.
I guess in the couple of minutes that passed between finding the box and opening it, I must have been expecting to find a pile of gold coins or a winning lottery ticket or something like that. I know I wasn’t expecting what I do find, which seems pretty ordinary. There are two bits that I know must have been shiny once but have gone dull and gray after resting in horses’ mouths for however long, years probably. There’s a scrap of leather curled into itself, kind of ripped on two ends and cracked, maybe a foot long. There’s a stone, big enough to feel heavy in my palm and beautiful too, black but with little bits of silver laced all through. I’ve never seen one quite like it, not in our woods on Pebble Mountain where I climb on big boulders, and not on either of our beaches where I dig into the sand and fill my pockets with freshwater mussel shells.
Maya leans over my shoulder and shrugs. “Some box,” she says. “What is all that anyway?” She presses her hands to her knees and stands up.
“Looks like horse stuff,” I say. “This piece of leather probably came from some kind of harness. See the holes in it?”
At first I think that’s it. Two bits, a scrap of leather, and a stone.
But at the bottom there’s one more thing. I probably didn’t see it at first because it was flat and about the same size as the box, but I realize it’s an envelope, and I work my fingers around it to get it out.
I have to be careful because it’s a little stuck to the bottom of the box, like it’s been there a long time, and the envelope is so old and yellowy white that it feels like it might disintegrate. I work it out and turn it over in my hands. It must have been so long since someone put it there that it isn’t even sealed anymore: The top flap kind of pops open.
From inside the envelope I pull out a piece of newsprint. “Cool,” I say. “Maya, look, this is from the Tribune and it’s super-old—it says March 9, 1925.”
Maya squats back down on her heels and leans forward a little bit. Then she sucks her breath in when I read the headline aloud: “Pebble County Boy, 12, Survives Fall.”
In the picture under the headline, a boy stares at me with hollow eyes.
Maya leans in closer. “What does it say?”
I scramble to my feet. “I’ll read it to you.”
“Twelve-year-old Jack Hamilton is now recovering at home after an overn
ight hospital stay during which he received treatment for hypothermia.
In the late afternoon of March 7, 1925, Hamilton had driven his family’s team of horses onto frozen Cedar Lake, apparently as a shortcut home from bringing a load of empty sap buckets to his cousin. Warm daytime temperatures over the past week made for productive sugaring but weakened the ice, and the horses fell through.
Hamilton managed to exit the sinking wagon and, half-submerged, leveraged himself onto the surface when his wet sleeve made contact with the ice and froze there. He was soon noticed by Lester Annis, a neighbor driving by, and rescued when Annis ventured onto the ice with a rope and pulled him in.
The horses and wagon were lost.”
Maya and I don’t say anything at first. We don’t even look at each other. I hold the paper in my hands and watch the boy’s sad eyes as if I expect them to blink.
“Have you ever heard that story before?” I ask. Maya shakes her head.
Neither have I, but I can’t shake the feeling that burns through my fingers when I touch the cool metal. I just know there’s something about that box. How did it end up in our barn? For the first time, I wonder who might have lived here before my great-grandparents. Was it this boy?
And then my mind fills with snow-dusted trees, a flowing black tail. Jack’s story seemed to end differently than anyone would have expected. A miracle—exactly like what I think I saw in the woods. I wonder—but then I shake my head. Then wonder again.
One thing about horses is they rely on instinct. They can’t explain to you why sometimes they stop right where they are and point their ears forward so hard that the veins under the skin bulge and their nostrils widen and flare and their feet dig into the ground like posts. Andy always says people can’t know the half of what horses smell on the wind or hear in the brush. There’s a whole world they experience that we can only guess at.
The Wild Path Page 4