Pictures of Hollis Woods

by Patricia Reilly Giff

  I didn't begin to call Steven until much later, until the sun had crossed toward the west and I knew it was late afternoon, and I didn't want Izzy and the Old Man to know I had done such a stupid thing. And even as I called, I knew Steven couldn't hear me.

  But he came, of course he came. Just before sunset I heard him, or rather I heard the pickup truck, gears grinding and then stopping, the door slamming, and then he was standing over me.

  “I knew it,” he said.

  “How?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Break any bones?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “I wasted my whole afternoon,” he said. “Felt sorry that you were all alone, came back, and—”

  “Wasted—”

  “Right. I figured it out, though. You weren't anywhere.”

  “So why'd you bring the truck?” I asked.

  “Think I had three hours before dark to walk all the way up here to get you?” He shook his head. “I thought you'd been killed.”

  “Just wounded,” I said, laughing.

  We sat on the edge of the rock, watching the sun go down.

  Steven pointed. “Our winter place is somewhere over there. You'll see it soon.” To the east far below was the summer house, the holly bushes a blur of green, the golden field, the thread of river. It took my breath away.

  “I want to show you something,” I told Steven. I reached into my pocket for the crumpled-up W picture I had taken out of my backpack before I'd left. “I've had it since I was six.”

  We sat on a ledge, our feet dangling, and he smoothed the picture on his knee, stared at it, then looked over at me.

  “We had to find pictures with W words,” I said.

  “It's a wishing picture,” he said slowly, “for a family.”

  I could feel my lips trembling. Oh, Mrs. Evans, I thought, why didn't you see that?

  “It's too bad you didn't come when you were six.” He smiled. “I knew you had to stay with us when you let me win that checkers game.”

  His hair was falling over his forehead and his glasses were crooked, almost hiding his eyes. I thought of the X-picture day and walking out of school. I thought of sitting in the park on a swing, my foot digging into the dirt underneath.

  “I run away sometimes,” I said. “I don't go to school.”

  He kicked his foot gently against the ledge, his socks down over his sneakers.

  “Someone called me incorrigible.”

  Now that I'd begun, I didn't know how to stop. “Kids never wanted to play with me. I was mean….”

  Steven pulled his glasses off and set them down on the ledge next to him. He rubbed the deep red mark in the bridge of his nose.

  I stopped, looking out as far as I could, miles of looking out. For a moment I was sorry I'd told him. But he turned and I could see his eyes clearly, and I wondered if he might be blinking back tears. I wasn't sure, though. He reached out and took my hand. “You ran in the right direction this time, didn't you?”

  And that was it. He knew all about me, and he didn't mind.

  “We have to go down now,” he said, “before they come back and find out.”

  I nodded. I stood up, and I could feel the pain shoot through my ankle. I limped to the pickup truck. “I'm glad you came,” I said. “I could never have walked all the way down.”

  “It was a dumb thing to do,” he said, “coming up here. Pop would have a fit.”

  And so we went down. Steven was a sure and careful driver, but it was so steep, and the truck kept going, kept sliding, even with the brake pressed down as hard as he could manage. He pressed and pressed, but the truck gained speed, and just before the end when we would have been all right, when we would have been fine, the truck tipped, and I could see we were going to go over.

  And Steven yelled at me. “Jump, Holly!”

  Late that afternoon the snow tapered off and stopped. I took a last look at the picture, pleased with it: Beatrice, listening to something Josie is saying, both of them with bags of popcorn in their hands. I sneaked it into my room so that Josie wouldn't see it.

  I put on all the clothes I could find, and Izzy's boots, and went outside to sink into the soft snow almost to my knees. The cold was shocking. It stung the inside of my nose and numbed my cheeks.

  Everything was still. The birds must have found nesting places for the night, and the deer were hiding somewhere deep in the woods. The last slim line of river had frozen; if I hadn't known it was there, I'd have walked right across to the other side. I wondered if the ice would carry my weight yet.

  I realized I wouldn't be able to pick evergreen or holly branches from the ground. Anything the wind had brought down was under the snow. I'd have to saw off what I could.

  Josie and Henry were framed in the window, waving to me. I reached down to scoop up a handful of white and tossed it at them. Then I trudged over to the shed for the Old Man's saw and found Steven's sweater hanging on the knob, encrusted with snow. I didn't even remember leaving it there. I folded it, put it on one of the shelves, reached for the saw, and spent the last bit of daylight hacking away at branches, making sure not to spoil the shapes of the trees.

  The wind wasn't as strong under the shelter of those trees, and it reminded me of something the Old Man had told me. Hunters who were lost would pull the tree branches together with rope, bending them to form a shelter. I loved the thought of that, the trees forming a cozy nest. And then I shivered, thinking of being alone.

  You have Josie, Steven might have said.

  I love Josie, I said back.

  From inside, music spilled from the radio. “All I want for Christmas …”

  What I want. What I want.

  Josie was turning on the lamps now; the house was like a Christmas card with the light shining on the snow. I stood there watching, wondering how far the light might be seen.

  I reached up for the last branch, snow spraying my face. No one could see the light anyway, I told myself; it faced the river, away from the road, and no one would be on the Old Man's mountain toward evening after a storm like this.

  “You're a snowman,” Josie said as I trudged onto the porch, staggering under the bulky branches.

  I pulled off Izzy's waders and rubbed my feet until the feeling came back. Josie danced around me. “I have something for your dinner,” she said, delighted with herself. “I was saving it for a surprise.”

  She led me into the kitchen and opened the cabinet over the refrigerator. I thought I knew where everything was, but in back of Izzy's old bowls and mixers was a row of treasures: a box of dried milk … milk! … pancake mix, and a jar of applesauce.

  “Yes,” Josie said with satisfaction. “We'll have apple pancakes for dinner with cold milk.”

  My mouth watered. A Christmas Eve dinner.

  I'll pay you back, Izzy, every cent, if it takes me the rest of my life.

  So Josie cooked for the first time, talking to me over her shoulder about Beatrice. “Ornaments sparkle on the tree, and Beatrice lights the candles.”

  Every time Josie talked about Beatrice she seemed to come alive, I thought; Beatrice and her house. I knew she was homesick. “We'll have Christmas here too,” I told her. “I'll set everything up after we eat.”

  But after I'd finished the pancakes covered with dollops of sweet applesauce, my eyes drooped; I was warm and sleepy. “Let's do it all in the morning,” I said.

  “Presents,” Josie said, a secret smile lighting her face. I curled up in bed, looking out the window at a pale moon and trees thick with snow, thinking I'd never seen anything so beautiful. I could see movement at the edge of the trees and sat up to see what it was. And then suddenly, a fox, silvery gray with his tail streaming out in back of him, darted across that open space, crossed the ice, and was gone.

  I saw a fox, Steven. I've never seen a fox before.

  I lay back, trying to figure out what Josie might have for me. Maybe she'd found another package of food. I fell asleep wondering what it was, wha
t I'd like it to be: something sweet, something chocolate, or salty. Potato chips.

  Next morning, the sun was blinding. And the shed glittered like the witch's house in Hansel and Gretel. I lay there, something on the edge of my mind. What was it? Something about the shed? Or was I wondering what the Old Man would think if he knew I was spending Christmas in his house?

  I didn't want to think about that. But there was something else. Was it Josie's present for me? An egg was what I really wanted this morning. What I could do with an egg! I'd bake a cake or cookies. I'd whip it up for an eggnog. I'd fry it like a little sun in a pan.

  I threw on my clothes. The house still smelled of the pancakes from last night. I went into the kitchen.

  At that moment the back door opened and Josie came in, her scarf pulled over her forehead, her nose red.

  I wanted to tell her she shouldn't be out there, that it was too cold, the snow too deep. But I'd sound like the stucco woman. I turned back to the stove. “Cocoa with milk,” I said.

  We hurried through breakfast, and afterward I went out on the porch to shake the snow off the branches before I brought them inside. I covered the mantelpiece, the sharp pine smelling like Christmas, as Josie unwrapped the box of ornaments. “Here's my old Santa Claus.” I could hear the tears in her voice as she hung him in the center. “And this one.” She held up a thick pink plastic globe. “Ugly, isn't it? It's the only kind we could get during the Second World War.”

  She went on, telling me the history of each one, until the mantel was finished and the center of the table held a bowl of holly. “We'll even hang a few of those glittery ornaments over the window to catch the light,” I said aloud, and to myself, Please be happy, Josie.

  “Presents now?” Josie asked.

  “Maybe,” I said absently. I had caught movement outside as I hung the last clear prism.

  We watched as seven or eight deer wandered in front of the house, making their way toward the evergreens. Suddenly something disturbed them. Heads back, noses up, they stood stock-still for an instant, then scattered, two to bound across the river ice as the fox had last night, the others in the opposite direction, toward the bridge.

  I tried to see what had bothered them. I looked toward the evergreens myself, looked back as far as I could. There was no light anywhere, nothing to make me think about a fisherman being out there somewhere.

  I had a quick thought of the night on the mountain with the flashlights like glowworms above me.

  It was then I remembered: Steven's sweater, a flash of green in the snow as I backed away from the fisherman that day. I hadn't left it on the doorknob in the shed. I opened my mouth to ask Josie if she had picked it up when she'd been outside. But Josie would never remember. Maybe I didn't want to know the answer anyway, thinking of the fisherman finding us and what might happen then.

  I couldn't get warm, even though I wore a robe and Izzy's sweater on top of that. Every time I drifted off to sleep that August night, I'd start, thinking someone was there. I'd look around the dark room, but it was empty. I'd close my eyes again, and then I'd think I was falling, my head jerking, arms up, legs braced, a scream in my throat, and that feeling in my chest as we went over the side.

  But I really didn't sleep. I kept going over it: the sound first, a screeching metal, tearing, as if the truck were dying, the wheel swerving, a tree slowing us down, its branches cracking, breaking, leaves covering the windshield, a rock ripping at the underside, the truck bouncing now, not so muddy, gravel and roots and Steven's hands off the wheel, the sound of glass shattering, a tire spinning …

  And then everything was still.

  We were almost all the way down the Old Man's mountain, and next to me Steven with his head on the wheel. I reached for him, my heart pounding, shook his shoulder. “Don't do this, Steven,” I said. “Don't be dead.”

  I pushed him back, his head against the seat now, his face white in the dusky inside of the truck. Not a mark on him that I could see, but he was hurt, I was sure, really hurt. He wasn't dead, though. There was a thin pulsing on the side of his neck, his eyes moving under the broken glasses. I took them off gently and heard him say something. Loon Sister, maybe. I could hear the sound of the S. Maybe it was Sorry.

  “Steven, I have to get help.” I watched him for another moment, then scrambled out of the truck, feeling the pull of my ankle, telling myself I had to do it, had to go as quickly as I could. I began the climb back up, wondering how long it would take to get down the mountain road, cross the bridge, and reach the house. And then I thought, No telephone.

  What then?

  I was almost there when I saw the sweep of headlights going across the bridge. Izzy and the Old Man coming home?

  When they saw me, Izzy leaned out the window, calling, “I bought dishes, Hollis. You're going to love them.” And then she stopped. “Child, you're bleeding.”

  “The truck!” I said.

  “What has he done?” the Old Man said. “What has he done now? You can hardly walk!”

  It seemed to take forever before lights flickered on the mountain and cars began to park diagonally down below. Turret lights turned and glowed, and an ambulance came all the way from Walton, its siren screaming. They brought Steven down at last, but all I could see was one foot, the sneaker, the socks falling over his ankles.

  A policeman shook his head, talking to Izzy and the Old Man as I stood to one side, out of everyone's way. “If it wasn't your mountain, if it wasn't private property, your boy would be in trouble. As it is—”

  “As it is,” Izzy's voice cut in, “we have to hope he'll be all right.”

  And I had looked over my shoulder at the Old Man's face, his clenched jaw.

  In the emergency room a doctor took five stitches to close my forehead and wrapped an Ace bandage around my ankle. Steven was somewhere inside too, and I didn't even know what was happening to him.

  We went home later that night, much later, Izzy and I, Izzy to stay just long enough to put me to bed, to cover me and tell me it would be all right, to touch my cheek and my chin. “Just sleep, Hollis,” she said. “Everything will seem better in the morning.” And then she went back to the hospital to wait.

  I thought about the stucco woman. She wouldn't have been surprised at the trouble I had caused. She would have seen it coming. Would Steven have driven the truck to the top of the mountain if I hadn't been there? And the arguing between Steven and the Old Man—what had Izzy said? “Worse this summer.”

  I'd messed up the whole family.

  Before it was light I packed my things in the backpack. They didn't all fit, so I left a small pile of odds and ends, and the bathing suit that was drying on the line. I tore off a sheet of paper from my drawing pad and wrote the note: It was my fault, all of it. I wanted to see the mountain. I'm going back to Long Island. Please don't come after me. I don't want to be a family after all.

  I looked back as I left, to take a picture of it all in my mind, thinking how strange it was to use my running money to run back to the stucco lady. It was even stranger that she let me walk in there so easily, clucking over my bandage, taking me to the doctor a week later to have the stitches out.

  Emmy, agency hotshot, came to see me to tell me Steven was going to be all right. “His ribs are broken,” she said, “and the bones in his arms are fractured.” While her mouth was still open, ready to say something else, I told her “I never want to go back, I never want to see any of them again.”

  She tried to find out why, but when I just kept looking out the window, banging my feet on the chair rung, she sighed and let me stay with the stucco woman.

  I didn't do that, either. I lasted there through most of September, and then I ran.

  “My cousin Beatrice would love this,” Josie said, looking around the room. “Ifonly …”

  I'd never seen anything so beautiful, so Christmasy either. Pine branches were everywhere. We 'd found candles, maybe a dozen, and lighted all of them. The ornaments sparkled in the ligh
t. And then I thought of what Josie had begun to say. “If only what?” I asked.

  She shrugged a little. “Beatrice and I spent every Christmas together. She remembers things for me when I forget, things about when we were young.” Her forehead wrinkled. “Fishing off the jetties.”

  I felt a lump in my throat. “She'll be home someday,” I said, but I wondered when that would be.

  “Next year?” Josie said.

  I looked out the window. I didn't like to think about next year. Where would we be then?

  “Just a minute,” I told her. “Close your eyes.”

  I went down the hall for the picture I'd drawn and laid it on the table to flicker in the candlelight. “Josie herself,” I said, “with Beatrice.”

  She drew in her breath, leaning over it, running one finger along the edge. “We're young.” She smiled up at me. “And look at that popcorn machine.” Head tilted, she spotted Henry batting a piece of popcorn across the floor. “You have to keep looking to see everything,” she said.

  She stood up then and pattered away from me into the kitchen. She came back with a round tin in her hand. “This is from Santa Claus.”

  I touched the tin. “Where did you find this?”

  Izzy's hard candies: Izzy standing on the porch one sunny afternoon, holding a tin out to me. “Lemon drops, and orange. They'll make you sweet, make you loving.” She had leaned forward to touch my shoulder.

  “You always have a lump in one cheek,” Steven told me days later as I worked my way through the candy. “It's going to freeze like that.”

  Oh, Izzy. Oh, Steven.

  I opened the tin and held it out to Josie. “You get first pick.” Another thing I had to pay back. I couldn't just take Izzy's candies.

  “Take them,” I suddenly remembered Izzy saying with a sweep of her arm. “Take anything, Hollis. I've always wanted a daughter.”

  “I have a real present for you,” Josie said around the candy in her mouth.

  I looked after her, wondering, as she went into Izzy and the Old Man's bedroom and came back with something in her arms. “She's finished at last.”