A Stitch in Time
Page 7
The waves pushed her into shore, and the Nehi scraped up on the rocks. Donut centered herself on the middle bench seat, jammed her paddle into the mud, and got herself free. On the far shore, Chanticleer peeked out of the trees at her, waiting. She was doing it. She was on her way. Off into the unknown like Nellie Bly starting out on her race around the world. Donut laughed out loud at the thought. Dog Pond was just a little thing compared to the oceans of the world. But it was plenty big for now.
It was rough going. The bow of the tin boat reared up over every wave and slapped back down into the trough that followed, kicking up an icy spray. Donut paddled hard and found some kind of wild rhythm. In the center of Dog Pond, the Nehi tipped and bucked in the dark water over the deep spot.
“It’s not like I couldn’t swim to shore if I sunk,” she said to her gear in the bow of the boat.
Donut glanced down at her boots, tied up in double knots. She should have untied them before setting off, just in case. If the Nehi sank they’d fill with water, drag her right down to the bottom.
She set the paddle across her lap and untied her bootlaces, fumbling around as the boat rocked. A gust of wind caught the Nehi broadside. It spun around, bouncing and tipping. Donut gripped her paddle and aimed for Chanticleer, straight into the wind. She was scared now, and soaked with icy water.
“Don’t think about it,” she said. “You’re almost there.”
Past the deep spot, the wind let up some, blocked by the hills along the shore. The little boat was easier to handle. Donut paddled slower; her shoulders ached.
If the Nehi sank out from under her now she’d make it to shore, but all her supplies would vanish into the murky darkness. Schools of perch would nibble at her apples, gobble up the waterlogged crackers. The tins would take a while to rust through—maybe next winter the bottom-feeders would have a fish dinner when the headless sardines escaped their prison cells.
“Easy there, Nehi,” Donut whispered. She could see Marcel’s camp clearly now. A one-room shack with a shingled roof. The hillside was thick with cedars, shadowy and cold.
She pushed forward and entered the inlet below a rocky trail leading up to Chanticleer. The Nehi scraped against the bottom until the bow was stuck on solid ground. She’d made it. All she had to do now was ease one leg over and get the rest of herself out.
Donut sat in her boat in the shadow of the forest and didn’t move. She hadn’t expected the darkness of it, or the falling-down look of Chanticleer up close. She hadn’t expected the all-aloneness of it, with time slowed down to a trickle. But she wasn’t going to sit in the boat like a scared little rabbit until the sun went down.
Donut stowed her paddle and swung her leg over the side. Cold pond water filled her boot and she sucked in a sharp breath at the shock of it. She was half in and half out and the Nehi tipped. She held the sides, edged her weight onto her wet foot, swung her dry leg up, and set her other foot in the water. Her feet slid on the slippery rocks, slid right out from under her, and she fell on both knees in the cold water. The Nehi got free of the rocks with her pushing on the side and started drifting away from shore.
“No, no. Come back,” she called to her tin boat.
Donut pushed on the bottom with her hands and managed to stand. Weighed down now by all the water in her boots, she slogged out to sea after the Nehi. Her movements kicked up some waves, driving the tin boat farther out, but Donut caught hold of the bow and dug inside for the painter. Holding tight to the rope, she navigated through the rocky shallows and stepped up onshore.
14
The sun hadn’t yet made it over the hill, leaving Marcel’s cabin perched in shadow. Donut shivered, soggy with pond water. The breeze got her teeth jammering.
“Stop. Just stop all this quaking and trembling,” she said to herself.
Fugitives had to be tough—live off grubs and rats roasted over a fire, beat off mountain lions with a tree branch, build a log house with just an ax and a coil of rope. She wasn’t going to be some whimpering castaway.
Donut sat on a rock and dumped the water out of her boots. She hauled the Nehi up onshore and carted her duffel up the rocky trail to the cabin. The rough pine door to Chanticleer was stuck fast. She gave it a good kick and it swung open. A rain of dead leaves and sticks dropped down on her head from the eaves.
Donut stepped inside. Chanticleer had been taken over by dust and cobwebs. The small table and two wooden chairs by the window were woven together with spiderwebs. Even in the dim light she could see that the blue ticking on the mattresses barely held the horsehair stuffing together. Marcel hadn’t been here in years.
Donut stood just inside the doorway, her book bag slung over her shoulder. Water dripped from her coat and boots onto the rough wood floor. It was going to be just her, all alone in this gloomy place for days and days. With the thought of it, her courage trickled away. She pulled in a big gulp of air, straightened up, and stamped her foot to knock the jitters out of herself. Dust and grit sprinkled down from the ceiling.
“First things first. Get the fire going.”
She dragged her duffel into the cabin, dug out the matches, and built up paper and kindling and a few logs in the woodstove. It caught easily. The fire snapped and roared, breaking the silence.
She got out of her wet dress, pulled on dry clothes, and sat up close to the woodstove. The cabin was giving up its chill and a scritch-scratch started up behind the kitchen shelves. Chanticleer’s mice were probably thrilled with the warmth, wiggling their tails in the hopes of a few odd crumbs dropped on the floor by their new roommate.
Left empty so long, Marcel’s cabin had gotten all hollowed out. Her house on Slapp Hill would hollow out, too, if she was gone. Spiders and mice would move right in.
Donut grabbed hold of her wet boots and pulled them on. “You’re not gonna get your way, Aunt Agnes. Not ever.”
She stomped down the trail to fill a bucket with pond water. Back in the cabin Donut set a pot of water to boil on the woodstove. The blue blankets in the old wooden trunk smelled musty and forgotten. She carried them outside and hung them over a low branch to air out.
By the time the sun had made it over the hill she had scrubbed and swept Chanticleer clean—as clean as a rickety old cabin could get.
She sat at the table and ate her lunch while she watched a pair of wood ducks in the little cove where she’d landed the Nehi. The cheese and apple and crackers tasted especially good here in her hideout now that she’d settled in.
Behind her the door swung open and banged into the wall. She jumped.
Tiny filled the doorway, trying to catch his breath.
Donut got up from her chair. “You scared me,” she said. “Barging in like that.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” Tiny glared at her.
She glared back. “I’ve run away.”
“Without telling me?” He was yelling now. “You came over here in that stupid boat, too. It was gone. I thought you’d drowned.”
“It’s not a stupid boat.”
“No, you’re right. That boat’s a real ace. You’re the stupid one.”
“Shut up, Tiny.”
“No, I’m not shutting up. You’re a real stinker, you know. Some friend.”
“I couldn’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“You’re not a good liar. Can’t bluff at poker. They’d be after you to turn me over. If Aunt Agnes got you alone you’d tell her everything. You know you would. And I’m not a stinker.”
“Swell. You’re not dead, either. So I’m leaving.”
“Go ahead. See if I care.” Donut plunked down in her chair.
Tiny turned and left the cabin. Donut got up and ran to the door. “You couldn’t tell a lie to save your life!” she yelled.
He was halfway down the slope to the trail and didn’t turn around. The not turning around put her in a panic. “Tiny,” she called.
But he kept going and disappeared at the bend in the trail.
She sat back down in her chair by the stove. She’d run away and lost her best friend. She should load all her gear back in the Nehi, go home, and find Tiny, keep saying she was sorry until he forgave her. But she couldn’t or she’d end up in Boston. She’d made a mess of things.
“Can’t fix it,” she said to herself.
Donut kicked off her slippers and pulled her wet boots on. Bundled up in her not-quite-dry coat, she got herself outside.
The trail around the pond wove through cedars and the boggy wet. Brilliant green skunk cabbage shoots dotted the forest floor alongside moss-covered boulders that the cedars had wrapped up tight with dark roots. She jumped a creek and sank a little in the muck, found deer tracks and Tiny’s boot prints.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to his tracks in the mud.
When she got to the old maple she stopped. A woodpecker had dug out another hollow in the trunk and a large branch had fallen and opened up a window to the sky. This was where they’d turned to get to their fishing rock, her pops and her, in the summer, the woods full of birds.
The granite outcropping was like a giant’s foot poking its toes into the pond. “How about a trip to the big toe?” he’d say, and her pops would drag out his straw hat with the red band around it. They’d sit on the big toe, hang their legs down off the edge, their fishing lines in the water below.
She reached up and laid her hand flat on the crusty bark of the old maple. It just kept going—woodpeckers chipping out holes, the wind blowing off branches. With trees it was all about luck. Wherever they took root, that was it—in the shadows or a wet spot, wherever an animal or the wind carried the seed, the start of them.
This old maple had landed in a lucky spot and brought the whole forest to itself. How many birds had it raised up in nests tucked in the high branches? For years and years, insects had chewed at its leaves and squirrels had scrabbled up the trunk to find a safe hiding spot.
Donut sat in a hollow in the roots of the tree, leaned against it, willing it to talk to her, whisper stories of summer nights, tell of the time a fox might have curled up right here and slept, its belly full of chokecherries, baby birds, and wild raspberries.
This old tree remembered her pops, his beat-up straw hat with the red band. This old tree had seen him smile down at her and put his hand on her shoulder as they walked under its branches, out to their fishing spot on Dog Pond.
Donut kicked at one of the great roots. She was such a sad little bunny, all crunched up in a huddle by this broken-down tree on the very first day of her being a runaway. Talking trees. It was a wonder she’d made it to Chanticleer in the first place.
She hiked back to the cabin, sloshing through the mud, annoyed at the crows and their warnings as she approached.
“What do you think I’m gonna do, you old cranks?”
They kept at it, cawing and cackling, and Donut wished she had a throwing arm like Tiny’s.
And she wished she hadn’t been such a lousy friend.
At the cabin, she carried in the bedding and made up the bottom bunk bed. She lugged in a few loads of half-rotted firewood from the stack outside.
She heated some canned milk on the woodstove and made herself a mug of Ovaltine. Drinking it slowly, she looked out at the pond. The wood ducks were gone. But the mice in the walls were doing their scritch-scratch over by the counter and she was glad for the company. A log in the stove dropped with a loud clunk.
What with getting soaked through and running away and having a full-out fight with her best friend, Donut was so tired she couldn’t keep her eyes open. It was still light outside, but she didn’t care. Still in her clothes she climbed into her bunk, pulled the covers up, and fell asleep.
Donut woke in the cold dark, sat up straight, bumping her head on the top bunk. The mice raced for cover.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Just me.”
Her voice sounded small and tinny in the pitch-dark. Donut stumbled around, found the matches, and lit the lantern. She sat down in her chair and ate an apple for dinner. Since she was in charge of herself now, she could stay up as late as she wanted. She could light up a pipe, drink a bottle of hooch, do any darn thing she pleased. But all she wanted to do was crawl back into bed.
She set an apple crate on its side by her bunk and on top of that she put a candle in a tin cup, a box of matches, and the picture of her pops and her in the silver frame. After she made a trip to the outhouse she changed into her nightclothes, blew out the candle, and climbed in under the scratchy blankets.
Lying there, it seemed especially dark in the cabin. And there were noises—a bump on the roof, a high-pitched screech in the woods, the creaking of branches in the wind. The stillness inside the cabin made the noises outside louder. And she was alone.
Another bump on the roof. A string of bumps, like footsteps. What was up there? She’d heard stories of fisher cats. They were real mean when they got cornered. Mr. Hollis had said when he was a boy a fisher cat got into the family chicken coop and killed every last hen. He’d found six of them stashed on a high branch of a beech tree, their necks broken.
It started up again. Right over her head. Donut fumbled with the matches and lit the candle. The footsteps stopped. She got up, ran over to the woodstove, and grabbed hold of the iron poker. Laying her weapon on the floor by the bed, she got back under the covers.
Donut shivered, eyes wide in the dark. Sam had said that no one had seen a fisher cat in Vermont for years and years. All trapped out for their fur. But that didn’t mean for certain that one hadn’t wandered down from Canada, climbed up on the roof of Chanticleer, and was trying to figure out a way to get inside. She’d been plenty scared before—chased by dogs, stuck up a pine tree with no idea how to climb back down—but she’d never been this all-alone scared.
Whatever was stomping around on the roof was done stomping. She tried closing her eyes, but closing them seemed to pull the scariness outside the cabin right inside. At least the clouds had moved off and moonlight poured in through the window. Donut leaned over and blew out the candle. Just a minute later she heard a hooting sort of bark. Very loud and close, down by the water. She lay there under the covers, listening.
She’d never heard a bear hoot, but she figured this was it. Tiny’d described it, and so had Pudge. Like an owl, but not an owl. Like a dog, but not a dog. It had a heft to it, but didn’t really sound bearlike.
She lay still and listened. There were two of them. Calling back and forth across Dog Pond. One was far away and sounded kind of sad. She’d seen a bear last year, up a tree, feeding on beechnuts in the woods out by the Patoines’ lower field.
Donut got out of bed, pulled her slippers on, and crept over to the window. She gazed out at the pond, washed in moonlight. The bear was down by the water’s edge, his head lifted up, snout pointing toward the opposite shore. He hooted right then, while she stood in her slippers in the moonlit cabin. His friend across the way hooted back, a longer call with a short break, then a quick bark at the end of it.
The bear down by the shore stood. He stood up on his hind legs and stared out over the water. He waited. Donut looked out over the pond and waited, too. The call came, a single hoot from far away. The bear dropped back down on all four legs and walked off into the woods in the direction of the old maple tree. She wondered what a bear meeting would be like. A rough-and-tumble if they were both male? Maybe a shy lumbering through the woods if they were a mated pair.
The stove rumbled and kicked out heat. Donut climbed back into bed, yanked her mother’s sleeping cap down over her ears. She wasn’t scared of the bears. She wouldn’t want to meet up on the trail or in a berry patch in August, but her bears were watching the woods. Keeping an eye on things. Donut pulled the covers up tigh
t. Not quite so alone in the dark now, she fell asleep, half listening to a mouse chewing on what she figured was one of her crackers on the shelf.
15
That first morning Donut discovered the evidence of more than one mouse on the shelves where she’d stored her food. Crackers had been dragged out of the paper sack and nibbled at in a dark corner. The skin of one apple was ragged and the white fruit underneath gnawed with small teeth. She cleaned up the mouse droppings and moved all her food into the trunk by her bed.
“There’s not enough to share with you. But you can have the crumbs,” she said to the mice in the walls and under the floorboards.
After breakfast Donut got dressed, stuffed the mouse-chewed apple into her coat pocket, and walked down to the pond to fetch a bucket of water. There were tracks in the mud among the rocks on the shore—big bear tracks, wide and solid, with the toe prints all in a row. Donut laid her hand flat, fingers spread inside a track, and pressed down, touching her moonlight bear. She set the apple on a flat rock—a gift.
When she turned to pick up the bucket she noticed the spot under the cedar on the edge of the cove was empty. The Nehi was gone. Donut ran as best she could over the rocks and mud until she got around the spit of land that blocked her view. Two boys were in her boat on the far northern shore, zigzagging around, splashing each other with the paddles.
She could hear their hollering now, and there was no mistaking who the thieves were, what with the cuss words getting thrown around and the red-and-black-checked caps they both wore.
“Wally Ducharme, you weasel, bring my boat back,” she yelled.
Wally and his little brother, Pete, both turned and started laughing.
“I mean it,” said Donut. “You’ll be the sorriest brothers in Caledonia County if you don’t get back here.”
They headed toward her, rocking the boat with uneven paddling.
“That you, Donut?” said Wally. He stood up in the stern and the Nehi tipped way over to the right.