She walks around the house and down the gravel path toward the dock. Coyote follows, his tail only half-wagging, keeping his distance. This is not the pattern he’s used to. “It’s still a walk,” she tells him. “Except that I’m going in the boat, and you’re going on land.” She isn’t sure this will work, but it’s worth a try.
Her mother’s green canoe, the name Dragonfly painted on its bow, is upside-down on the bank, where it has lain untouched for two years. Remembering Mrs. Sutcliff’s story about finding a snake under her canoe, Charley flips the boat gingerly, leaping back as it goes over. There is no snake under it, and nothing in it but spiders. From the dock box she gets a paddle and two swim noodles to take along as emergency flotation devices. Coyote is sitting at the top of the path to the dock, watching her warily.
Holding the bowline, Charley pushes the canoe down the slope of the hill into the lake, pulls it close, and steps in. Her leg gives a twinge as she pushes off, but the pain is so brief, it is easy to ignore. “Come on!” she calls to Coyote when she is settled. She paddles out into the water. “Follow me. Boat walk!” She angles to the right and heads around the bend to the shallow end of the lake. Coyote watches a while and then trots down to the edge of the lake and begins to follow, weaving through the trees and bushes along the shore.
When he reaches Mr. Garrison’s yard, Coyote goes up for a visit with Jasmine and Bernie in their pen, all three of them running back and forth along the fence and barking. Then he runs back to see where Charley is, and follows her on past the last lot that has only a storage shed and a ramshackle dock.
Tree is directly across from this dock, but instead of paddling straight across the lake, Charley follows the shore so that Coyote can stay with her. He comes to the lake edge every so often to see where she is, but most of the time he is off on his own in the woods, just like on any other walk. At this end of the lake, it’s easy to see where the original creek wound down into the gully that has become Eagle Lake. The water here is so shallow that Charley can see schools of minnows rushing back and forth over the bottom. Whirligig beetles circle and whirl on the surface of the water. The smell of rotted leaves and bottom muck rises with every sweep of the paddle. Low bushes grow out into the marshy shallows on either side of the original creek bed.
Here Coyote cuts across from one side to the other, splashing through the water, weaving in and out among the bushes and then swimming the narrow stretch of deep water. It’s the first time Charley has seen him swim willingly, and she suspects he didn’t expect to step suddenly off into water too deep to touch bottom. On the other side, he shakes himself and runs up the hill under the trees, his legs caked with black bottom mud.
When Charley reaches Tree, Coyote is nowhere to be seen. She stops the canoe where her mother must have stopped to take the picture for the book jacket and lets the canoe drift. There is a light breeze stirring up the water so that the reflection of Tree’s leaves, green now instead of red, is not like in the photograph. The breeze keeps the canoe moving and Charley wonders how, even on a day with no wind, her mother managed to hold the canoe still enough to take the picture.
She paddles toward Tree, and the canoe hangs up on a limb that has fallen into the water. It takes her a while to figure out how to maneuver around it. There is a tall, arch-shaped hole in the trunk where Tree stands in the water and she leans to take hold of the edge of the hole to pull the canoe in close. Poison ivy grows up one side of the trunk, and spiders have spun thick webs inside the hole. She can see layers of rotting wood and dark, still water inside, but all around the hole is the solid, living trunk, far too big for Charley to get her arms around.
When Charley was about eight years old, she remembers, her mother had her hold a dead stick in one hand and a long twig of a living tree in the other. “Feel the difference?” she asked. “Feel the life?”
Charley wasn’t sure she felt it then, but she can feel it now, her hand on Tree’s rough bark. Hi! Her mother talked to Tree, but she only thinks the greeting. She sits for a moment, aware of the sensation of life under her hand, the slight movement of the canoe, the breeze on her skin. And then it is as if Tree has answered. There are no words. It is more as if something old and completely friendly has welcomed her. Ants are running up and down the ridges in the bark. Charley wonders how many living things make their home in Tree. She wonders whether Tree likes having them there.
Almost immediately she realizes it is not about liking or not liking. It’s how it is. That is her own thought, of course. But still, it feels like an answer.
From up the hill and farther around the lake, Coyote begins to bark—the high, light bark that means he’s treed a squirrel and is hoping he can bark it back down. She wishes she could take some bit of this tree’s spirit, whatever it is that keeps it alive in spite of the water, in spite of the hole and the spiders and the ants. Tree has what Coyote needs.
So does Coyote.
“I’ll be back sometime,” she says, aloud this time.
I’ll be here.
20
Two Steps Forward
It is nine-thirty in the evening, the first of August, and a light rain is falling. Brief, blustery storms have alternated with this steady rain most of the long, boring day. Thunder rumbles occasionally in the distance. Sarita has gone to her room, Charley’s father is watching a car chase movie on television, and Charley is stretched out in the recliner chair, her eyes closed, ignoring the movie and letting her mind drift. Coyote spent most of the day behind the boxwood hedge at the front of the house, lying against the bricks under the roof overhang out of the rain. It is the closest he has ever come to the house, and Charley considers it a huge step forward. He isn’t there now, hasn’t been since it got dark, but still, he purposely took shelter against the house.
She quiets her mind and lets images come to her of Coyote in the woods across the road. She can hear rain on the leaves overhead, smell the damp ground. She senses more than sees Coyote in the darkness, feeling the nest he has dug himself in the leaves beneath a shrub that leans over a tree stump. His back is against the stump, his nose under his tail. His fur is damp, but the dampness doesn’t reach all the way down to his skin. He has not eaten, she knows, since breakfast this morning.
Charley opens her eyes and sits up. Coyote ought to have a bedtime snack, something more than a few pieces of liver in the afternoon to carry him through the night. Sarita has bought a box of big biscuits—for large dogs. One of those would be good. “I’m going out,” she tells her father as she pushes herself out of the chair. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Where are you going? It’s nearly ten o’clock!”
Charley points to the clock on the DVD player. “Nine forty-two. I’m going to take Coyote a bedtime snack.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“Somewhere close,” she says.
Outside the rain has dwindled to a heavy mist. The lights of the city, reflected by the clouds, give the gravel road a tone of pale gray against the deep shadows of the woods. She whistles and calls for Coyote. “I’ve got a biscuit. A big one!” Then she stands very still and listens. Distant thunder growls. Water drips from the trees.
She calls Coyote again, mentions the biscuit again. Nothing. She whistles two more times and is about to whistle again when she hears movement among the trees. She calls again. In a few moments a shape, pale in the darkness, materializes out of the trees. Coyote moves across the road and stands a few feet away, his tail waving. He has come when she called. Out of the woods. At night! “Good dog! I brought you a bedtime snack.” She holds out the biscuit and says, “Sit,” as she always does with Sadie.
He stands for a moment, looking up at her, and then, to her complete astonishment, he sits. She gives him the biscuit. He crunches down on it and pieces fall to the ground. He swallows the first bit, then stands up to get the others, picking them up from the road one at a time. When he has gotten the last crumbs, he doesn’t immediately bolt back to th
e woods. Slowly and gently, Charley reaches to pat him on the head. He allows her to do this, his tail moving slightly.
Charley has an idea, suddenly. So radical is this idea that she stands for a moment, trying to decide whether it’s even possible. Yes. It is. “Stick around,” she says to Coyote. “I’m going to get you some liver.”
She turns and hurries back to the house, leaving Coyote at the edge of the road. Inside, she piles a handful of liver pieces onto a saucer. Then she changes into her sleep T-shirt and gathers sheets, a light blanket, and a pillow from the linen closet. “I’m trying an experiment,” she tells her father as she heads for the stairs, the saucer of liver balanced on the pile of linens in her arms. “Sarita,” she calls as she starts down, holding the railing and moving carefully to keep from dropping anything. “Is it okay if I come through your room?”
“Sure. What’s up?” Sarita is in bed, reading.
“I’m going to spend the night in Mom’s studio.”
Sarita puts down her book. “You’re going to what?”
“I’ll explain tomorrow. Is it okay if I use your bathroom in the night?”
“Of course.”
At the closed door of her mother’s studio, Charley stops for a moment. Can she do this? Yes, she decides. Yes. It’s the only way.
She turns on the light at the wall switch, closes the door behind her, and goes to the daybed under the farthest window. Setting down the liver, she dumps the linens on the floor and begins moving the boxes from the bed to the worktable, putting them on the floor underneath it. When she has spread the sheets and blankets on the bed and settled the pillow in place, she surveys the room, trying to see it through Coyote’s eyes. Too bright. Charley turns on the desk lamp and switches off the overhead lights. Better.
Then she opens the outside door and the screen, slides the metal disk in place to keep the screen door propped open, and steps, barefoot, outside under the roof overhang. It is raining again, and lightning brightens the sky intermittently as thunder rumbles closer. The woods of the empty lot next door are dark against the sky.
“Coyote!” she calls up toward the road. “Coyote, liver!” She puts her fingers in her mouth and whistles, once, twice. Then she gets the liver and stands, watching and listening. “Liver! Come get some liver.”
After a moment Charley hears, over the sound of the rain, the light jingle of the tag on Coyote’s collar. He appears in the spill of soft light from the door, his ears down, rain dripping from his nose. “Liver,” she says, holding a piece out to him. He looks at the house, his shoulders hunched, and then slowly, cautiously, moves forward and takes it from her fingers.
Charley backs through the open door and holds out another piece. “More,” she says to him. “Come in and get it.”
He stands in the rain and begins to whine. “It’s okay. You can come in. It’s dry in here.”
Coyote whines again, but doesn’t come. Charley is trying to decide whether to go back and give him another piece of liver outside, when lightning flashes blue-white, and thunder cracks. Coyote scuttles in through the door, snatches the liver from her hand, swallows, and then stands, shivering and looking around the dim, shadowy room. Charley discovers she is holding her breath. Coyote is inside the house. She is afraid to move, afraid he’ll realize what he’s done and scuttle back into the rain.
Lightning flashes again, and thunder follows almost immediately. The rain is pouring now. Coyote looks from Charley to the open door. She offers him another piece of liver, and he takes it. Still, she barely dares to breathe. She wants to go close the doors and keep him inside, dry and safe. But she knows what a closed door means to him, knows he would feel trapped, the way he was in that shed. She stands, watching, as he checks out the room, his eyes darting back to the open door again and again. “I won’t close it,” she tells him. “You can stay in or go out, whatever you want. If you want some more liver, you should sit.”
He looks up at her and then sits. Piece by piece Charley gives him the rest of the liver. When he has finished it, she holds her empty hands up to him. “All gone,” she says.
After a moment Coyote lies down, facing the open door, his chin on his outstretched paws. “Good boy,” Charley says. Moving slowly and carefully, she goes to the desk lamp and switches it off. Darkness closes in, so that now what little light there is comes from the sky outside. The rain continues steadily. Coyote stays where he is. Lightning flashes again, and she can see his form outlined against the open doorway. The thunder comes a moment later. The storm, Charley thinks, is moving away.
Slowly, so that she doesn’t startle him, Charley gets into bed, pulling the covers up to her chin. The studio may get a little wet and a little buggy with the door open all night, she thinks. But Coyote is in the house.
Thank you, she thinks to the storm. If it hadn’t been for the thunder and lightning, she doesn’t know if this idea would have worked. But it did. It did. Two steps forward today, she thinks. This second step is such a big one she wants to shout in triumph. Coyote is in the house.
21
Amy
Charley wakes up twice during the night. Both times it is still raining. Both times she can make out Coyote’s form lying on the floor, head toward the open door. The second time he is stretched out on his side, his tail out behind him, a picture of relaxation. It is too warm and muggy in the room to keep the blanket on. Charley drops it onto the floor and Coyote raises his head at the sound, looks at her for a moment, and then lies down again, with a deep sigh that seems to Charley to be a sigh of pure contentment. It is the most wonderful sound Charley has ever heard.
When she wakes again, the rain has stopped and weak sunlight is filtering through the trees of the lot next door, the wet leaves glittering like diamonds as they move in the morning breeze. Coyote is gone.
It’s okay, Charley thought. He spent the night. And he knows now that he can do that and leave whenever he needs to. Someday, she is sure, she’ll be able to invite him in and then close the door behind him. She’ll be able to bring him in upstairs and he’ll sleep in her room, at the foot of her bed. But for now this will do. For now she will sleep in the studio and let him come and go as he wants. She lies for a moment, looking at her mother’s photographs on the walls. This is the Eagle Lake her mother saw, the Eagle Lake Charley is coming to know so well.
After breakfast, after the walk with Coyote, clouds move in again and it begins to rain. Coyote settles into his spot behind the boxwoods and Charley, with nothing else to do, takes her laptop to the breakfast table and turns it on. She checks her e-mail and watches the list of messages scroll onto the screen. There is the usual collection of spam and a few forwarded jokes from her friends.
The last message is from someone she doesn’t know: “Skiguy5.” And there’s an attachment. She is about to delete it when she notices that the subject line says, “Hey, Charley!” Whoever it is, he knows her name. She clicks the symbol at the bottom of her screen to be sure her virus scan is on and opens the message.
Charley-O—
Don’t freak, it’s me, Amy. Skiguy5 is Adam, the club’s waterskiing instructor who’s letting me use his computer. He’s cute, but really old—like 19.
Are you okay? Did you get my letters? How’s your leg?
I am so sick of tennis I want to die. My arm hurts all the time. I’m probably getting tennis elbow and I’m not even any good! It’s almost over, though. I’m coming home in just two more weeks!!!! School starts three days later—can you believe it?
Like I said in my letters, I am sorry for going away. *Really really* sorry! Becky Sue is okay, but she snores. And picks her nose when she thinks nobody’s looking.
She has a totally awesome digital camera, though. I’ve been taking pictures like crazy, and Adam’s burning them onto a CD for me so if you’re speaking to me again by the time I get back, I’ll show them to you. I’m thinking of joining the PhotoShop Club at school. I’m attaching my favorite picture.
Gotta g
o. Adam wants his computer. Just two more weeks. Don’t be mad anymore, please!!!!
Your friend—no matter what you think—Amy
Charley sits for a long moment, staring at the computer screen. “No matter what you think.” She would have deleted this message if she had known who it was from. “How’s your leg?” Charley realizes she hardly ever thinks about her leg these days. And she isn’t mad at Amy anymore. But friends? So much has changed that she isn’t sure what she feels now. Two more weeks. How can summer be over so soon?
She clicks on the JPEG attachment, and the photo appears on her screen. It’s a picture of a tennis court with a silvery lake showing beyond it and pine-tree-covered mountains rising in the distance, but it’s weirdly off center. So far to the left that she’s almost out of the picture entirely, a girl she doesn’t recognize is swinging a blurry racket. If this is supposed to be a picture of that girl, it’s a waste. Charley is about to close it down when she notices that the figure sitting on a bench on the right, also almost out of the picture, is Becky Sue Lindner. She is dressed in a tennis outfit, holding a racket in one hand and picking her nose with the other. In spite of herself, Charley laughs out loud.
22
Time Together
Time is suddenly getting away from her. With only two weeks until she will have to go to school, Charley decides she needs to spend more of every day with Coyote. Partly it’s because the more they’re together, the faster The Taming will go, and partly because she is already feeling how hard it will be to leave him for most of every day when school starts.
Charley has moved some of her things into the studio and sleeps there every night. Coyote spends the night with her most of the time. It gets humid and buggy with the screen door propped open, but whenever she tries to close it, he scurries out and won’t come back. Charley’s father says she can’t just leave the door open indefinitely or the dampness could ruin everything in the studio, but she reminds him that she leaves it closed all day. “After a while he’ll get used to being inside,” she assures him, “and then I’ll be able to close it.”
Listen! (9780062213358) Page 10