“I hate to make you do it,” he said over his shoulder, “but you’ll have to climb the tower to use the phone. I keep thinking I’ll get one of those cellular things, but I forget…watch your step. It’s better than a ladder, but only just.”
He was right. I grasped the stout railings and began to climb the steep, long staircase behind him, feeling dizzily that I was climbing into nothing. After a moment or so I lost sight of his legs and feet in the fog. Behind me I could hear the scratch of Curtis’s toenails on the weathered wood, and his panting. Even with a landing, the climb seemed endless. I wondered if Curtis often bothered.
Just as I was beginning to tire, my head and shoulders broke through the fog and I gasped. We were only a step or two from the top of the tower, and as far as I could see on every side, the fog rolled away in billows and waves, a silent silver-white sea, pricked with the ghostly tops of the redwoods. The sunlight here was fresh and strong and struck such light off the fog that I slitted my eyes involuntarily against it. It was spectacular. We were literally bathed in strange, radiant, sun-and-fog light, and the air was many degrees warmer than on the ground and smelled of pine with the sun on it.
I followed him into the single small, square room and Curtis heaved himself in behind me and flopped gratefully on the floor. The room was perhaps fifteen by fifteen feet, and all its walls were windows. A skylight opened the flat roof to the sky, and the whole thing seemed to sway slightly with the unseen, unceasing wind. It was strange to hear the voice of the wind coming from below us, but on this ridgetop there were few of the huge redwoods, and the other trees did not reach us. The tower sat in a clearing, and I remembered that its original use was that of a fire tower. I thought that from here, when the fog had lifted, you could see a fire a hundred miles away in any direction. Now we saw only the endless floor of fog and the tops of the redwoods, rising and falling on their ridges until they met the hidden sea.
I stood looking, turning around in a circle.
“I think I might never leave it,” I said.
“I don’t, much,” he said. “So you like it?”
“Yes. Well…I don’t know. I live in the woods at home, but they’re so much tamer. Lower, and more open. I live on a river bank, but it’s a gentle river. I don’t know.…I’m so used to having hidey holes and little nooks and crannies around me, places you can go and feel snug and hidden; safe places. Up here you couldn’t hide from anything, ever. It’s beautiful, but I don’t know if I’d ever get used to it.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “When I first came up here I was like a cat trying to make a home on a roof. I couldn’t settle down and get comfortable. I put up curtains to shut everything out, and built the deck down there just so I could get down on ground level once in a while. I spent a lot of time in bed with the covers pulled up over my head. It was winter then; I thought I’d made an awful mistake. But by the time spring came I couldn’t stand walls around me anymore, and got antsy when I was shut up in rooms, and so I took down the curtains and put in the skylight. It gets to you. You get so you can’t live with anything between you and the wildness.”
He walked over to a tile counter where a coffeemaker stood, next to a small microwave oven and a neat little convection oven. There was a miniature sink, too, and a tiny refrigerator sat underneath the counter. It all occupied only one of the walls, a model of compactness and planning. But it was wildly, baroquely messy. On the other walls were waist-high wooden counters with bookshelves under them or drawers. An open space with a chair in it made a desk. A double bed was placed at an angle to one corner, piled high with colored pillows and draped with what looked to be a beautiful old Chief Joseph blanket. A tall, skinny armoire stood opposite it in the other corner. A big, black cast iron stove occupied the middle of the room, vented out the skylight, and there were big floor pillows and a wooden box of firewood ranged around it. The bed looked directly at the glass door where the flames would dance, and I thought that even on the coldest winter night, with the Pacific gales howling and sleet and snow spitting against the windows and the skylight, that bed and indeed this whole room must be as warm as a small animal’s burrow. The room was, somehow, an enchantment. It had the charm of a child’s playhouse, but the particular and intimate air of someone’s real home, an adult one. There were books literally everywhere, and in front of one of the windows a big telescope was drawn up.
“What a perfect aerie,” I said, taking a cup of coffee from him. I sat down on the edge of his bed. There was nowhere else to sit. He had sunk cross-legged to one of the big pillows, and Curtis lay sprawled on the other, giving occasional little groans of contentment. He promptly went to sleep.
The coffee was hot and strong. I sipped it gratefully. The stove was not lit, and the room still held the chill of the thin air and the fog.
“I could light a fire,” T.C. said. “But I figured you’d want to call and then get on the road over to Palo Alto. By the time things warmed up we’d be gone again. Wrap that blanket around you. I’ll hand the phone over to you; one advantage of this place is that the phone reaches anywhere in it. I’ll go on back down if you need privacy.”
“No. I don’t,” I said, though I would have liked it. If Pom were in the same mood as yesterday, it would not be an easy call.
He brought me the phone and turned away to the counter where the sink was, clattering ostentatiously as he cleared away some of the mess. I dialed Pom’s office. Only when Amy answered in her DAR chirrup did I realize how much I had hoped the chatty temp would be the one to answer. I sighed, not caring if Amy heard it.
“Well, well, Merritt,” Amy said. “Where are we today? Hollywood? Disneyland?”
They were, I thought in annoyance, the only places Amy knew in California.
“We’re up in redwood country,” I said. “It’s very beautiful. We’re in a lodge owned by a friend of Laura’s. Ah…is Pom in?”
“I’m afraid not. Doctor has been out of the office for the past day or two. There’s a visiting team of UN doctors he’s been showing around; from Zaire or somewhere. The CDC asked him to do it. It’s quite an honor. They’re staying over the weekend so he’ll probably be tied up. I’ll be glad to take a message, though.”
I’ll just bet you will, I thought.
“Just tell him the lodge where we’re staying is in the Big Basin State Park below San Francisco. It’s about thirty minutes from Palo Alto, I think, in the Santa Cruz mountains. If he needs to reach us he can call this number. It’s the caretaker’s phone. There’s not a phone in the lodge, but we’ll get the message. We should be home in a few days. I’ll know for sure in a day or two, and I’ll call him.”
I read her out the number and heard the scratching of her pen as she wrote it down.
“You’d probably better call me,” she said creamily. “Doctor is entertaining the team in the evenings. One of them used to work here; do you remember that stunning Jamaican doctor we had for a year or two a while back? She’s the team chief. We were all glad to see her again. Everyone thought the world of her.”
“I remember,” I said. My heart began to pound. “How nice for you all. Well, if you’ll tell Pom—”
“Oh, I will. Don’t you worry about Doctor. We’ve got things well in hand now. He’s feeling much better.”
I hope you come down with jungle rot, I wanted to tell her, but instead I hung up smartly. I had not, I realized, asked about Mommee, and had a crazy mental image of her presiding over a Mad Hatter’s tea party for the beloved black doctor and her team. I sat staring at the phone for a moment, and then turned to T. C. Bridgewater with a tight smile. He had his back to me, splashing in the sink.
“All set,” I said brightly.
He turned, studying me for a moment.
“Everything okay?” he said.
“Just fine.”
“Then why don’t you go on back down and get whatever you need and I’ll come collect you and your daughter in about half an hour. We can pick up anything else y
ou need in Palo Alto and maybe have some lunch. The fog will be burned off by noon. It should be a good day; we’ve had a long string of them. You’re lucky. Usually there’s nonstop fog this time of year.”
“Fog’s pretty much all I’ve seen since we got here.”
“This is nothing. Morning stuff. I’ve never seen spring weather like we’ve been having, not this warm and dry. It’s been a strange spring all over.”
I remembered the maverick climatologist who had stirred up all the earthquake madness. I had not heard a radio or seen a TV or newspaper in days; I wondered if the media was still full of him. Uneasiness stirred in my stomach like a little snake.
“Have you been hearing all the earthquake talk?” I asked. “That guy who’s predicting the big one? Most people I talk to pooh-pooh it, but you have to wonder.…Wasn’t that bad one a few years ago that collapsed the freeway bridge in San Francisco around here somewhere?”
“Loma Prieta,” he said. “Yeah. Not too far. The epicenter was in a place called the Forest of Nicene Marks, about twelve miles from here. But the conventional wisdom says that the seismic gap up here was filled by that one and there won’t be another in these parts for a long, long time.”
Something in his voice made me look sharply at him.
“Is that what you think?”
“No. But then I’m a long way from being a real earthquake scientist. I’m more an obsessed dilettante. The big guys all say you’re probably safer up here than you would be anywhere else in California.”
“Somehow I don’t think you believe that, either.”
“Well, I do believe you’re safe for the length of time you’ll be here. Caleb said just a few days, didn’t he? There’s no indication anything’s that near blowing.”
“You study earthquakes, don’t you?”
“Well, I do, but I’m an amateur and my equipment’s not very sophisticated. Some of it I made myself. All I’ve got is a theory and some back-of-the-neck feelings. No seismologist worth his salt would give me the time of day. Really, don’t worry about earthquakes. If I thought you all were in immediate danger I’d get you out of here.”
“Then I won’t,” I said. “Thanks for the coffee and the phone. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
He walked me to the door, and when he opened it the fog swirled in. It was still as thick as whipped cream.
“I’m going to send Curtis back with you,” he said. “He knows the way as well as I do. He’s good company and a good guard dog. When you get there, just send him home. Say, ‘Curtis, go home. Carpe diem.’ He’ll come straight home. But you have to say ‘carpe diem.’”
“What is this ‘carpe diem’ business?” I said, smiling at Curtis, who thumped his feathery tail on the floor. He was mostly Lab, I thought, a big, chunky brown dog with a thick coat that curled a little in the dampness, and sweet yellow-brown eyes. He seemed to smile at me.
“I taught him that as a kind of code,” T.C. said. “He’s such a big old pussycat that I was afraid he’d go off with literally anybody who whistled for him, so I taught him never to obey anybody unless they said ‘carpe diem’ to him. He’ll obey me without it, but I’m the only one.”
“But why ‘carpe diem’? Is he a fan of Horace’s?”
“It’s kind of my slogan. A statement of philosophy, I guess. Forget the past; let tomorrow happen. Seize the day.”
“Not a bad philosophy.”
“It’s the only way to live. Okay, you try it. Say, ‘Curtis, come. Carpe diem.’”
“Curtis, come. Carpe diem,” I said obediently, feeling silly. But the big dog got up lazily and padded over to me and stood beside me, looking up expectantly. I gave the silky ears a tickle and he grinned, his red tongue lolling.
“You’re in business,” T.C. said, and I went out into the fog, the dog padding beside me. All the way down the white-shrouded path he stayed just at my knee, bumping me softly when I strayed close to the verge, panting slightly as if he were breathing with me, telling me, “I am here and it’s all right.” It was ridiculously comforting, like having a trusted person with you in an unknown place.
“Curtis, you are A-okay in my book,” I said, when he had delivered me to the back door of the lodge.
Glynn was waiting in the kitchen and saw him, and came running out with her arms outstretched.
“Is it Curtis?” she cried in rapture. “It must be Curtis! Oh, you wonderful, wonky old guy! Hello, Curtis! Oh, good boy!”
Curtis gave a soft woof of happiness and started toward her, but then sat down and looked anxiously up at me.
“Go ahead, Curtis,” I said. “Carpe diem.”
And he flew into Glynn’s arms as if they were magnetized for large dogs. It was as pure a case of mutual love at first sight as I have ever seen. When I said, presently, “Okay, Curtis, go home now. Home. Carpe diem,” he looked at me so miserably, and whined so softly and plaintively, that I relented.
“Okay, you can stay. Your daddy will think we kidnapped you, but you can stay till he comes to pick us up. Stay, Curtis. Carpe diem.”
He followed Glynn into her bedroom when she went to finish packing. When I looked in on them he was curled up on her bed and she lay beside him, one arm around the great neck. She grinned up at me.
“I even knew what he would feel like in bed,” she said. “He’s just the big old bed-dog I always wanted.”
“Don’t fall hopelessly in love with him; it’ll break your heart when we have to go home,” I said. “We’ll look at Lab puppies when we get back.”
“Really, really?”
“Really, really,” I said recklessly. Mommee could like it or lump it. So could Pom.
Oh, Pom…
The trip to Palo Alto was as carefree as a vacation drive. I suspected, from the delight T.C. Bridgewater took in showing us the giant trees and the strange fauna and flora along the way, that he didn’t leave the tower often, and almost never in the presence of people. He was as excited as we were at the strange, wonderful sights and sounds and smells of the Big Basin, almost like a small boy, and when he was not tour-guiding he was regaling us with legends and stories of the Santa Cruz mountains, and told scurrilous and improbable stories about the old mountain men who had once lived here, along with the very rich men from the cities who had built the great lodges and houses and about their present owners. Glynn, in the backseat with her arm around Curtis, laughed her froggy, infectious belly laugh so often that both T.C. and I were often helpless with laughter along with her. I still don’t remember if his stories were that funny, but I do remember that for the thirty or so minutes that it took us to wind down through the wet green mountains into Palo Alto, we were mostly laughing.
When we reached Marcie’s father’s house, a rambling old yellow Victorian on a tree-shaded street bordering the Stanford golf course, I felt that I had known this drawling, loose-jointed man all my life. Glynn was calling him T.C. and telling him about our stay in Los Angeles, and Arc, and the screen test, and how Marcie and Jessica were going to simply die when they saw her tape. She was just launching into her father’s objections to our odyssey when I turned around and gave her a level look. I did not like to discourage her obvious liking for Caleb Pringle’s hermit, but I did not want her to say anything to him that she would regret later, either. When Glynn’s shyness broke, it was such a rare and apparently comforting phenomenon that she talked nonstop. I had not seen it happen often. Sometimes, afterward, she sat cringing far into the night, embarrassed at her own loquacity. I did not want that to happen with T.C. I wanted her to remember him with the simple, unvarnished liking that I was feeling for him myself. And besides, I was oddly loathe to talk about Pom. He had no place yet in this journey. I wanted, suddenly, to keep it all for myself. Glynn caught my look and flushed and fell silent. But then she saw Marcie and Jess standing on the ornate old porch, already jumping up and down and squealing, and the flush faded, and she was out of the Jeep and running and squealing before T.C. brought it to a stop.
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In the seat behind us Curtis whined.
“Sorry, old boy,” T.C. said, “it’s the way they are. Genetic, probably. They just can’t help it. Love you and leave you. She’ll be back. Meanwhile, here’s another pretty lady up here waiting to comfort you. Take your pleasures where you find them, my man.”
I reached over and scratched Curtis’s ears and he broke into the contented panting again. I started to get out of the Jeep and go to meet Marcie’s stepmother, who had come out onto the porch, and then stopped.
“Aren’t you coming?” I said to T.C.
“What on earth for? So those somewhat overexcited young things can go back to Atlanta and tell all their parents that you were consorting with the caretaker just like he was your husband? It ain’t fittin’, ma’am.”
He grinned his sudden white grin at me and I blushed furiously. I realized that I had been treating him like…well, not like the hired caretaker of the estate where I was visiting, who was accommodating me at the bidding of his employer.
I got out of the Jeep and started up the flower-bordered stone walk and looked back at him. He was leaning his black head back on the seat, eyes closed, whistling to himself, but at that moment he opened his eyes and looked squarely at me and lifted an imaginary hat and leered evilly. I went the rest of the way up the path to meet my daughter’s hostess, laughing.
I exchanged polite pleasantries with Marcie’s stepmother, a tanned young woman who looked as if she spent a lot of time on sailboats or tennis courts. I smiled hello to Marcie and Jess, who were wedged into a porch swing with Glynn, listening eagerly as she talked, no doubt, of Arc and the screen test. And then it was time to go. I felt a sudden sharp wrench at the prospect of leaving my daughter. The fact that I would now be alone in the huge, silent old woods, in the strange, rambling house of a man I scarcely knew, without a link to any world I knew except a telephone in a fairy-tale tower occupied by a skinny Paul Bunyan of a man I did not know at all, suddenly dawned on me. I had looked forward to unlimited time and silence and solitude, but now they seemed endless, engulfing, unfriendly. I could not imagine what I would do in all that empty space for all those empty hours. I glanced back at T.C. Bridgewater, suddenly as shy and wary of his presence as if I had come upon him in a dark back street in the city. I looked at him, suddenly, with city eyes. Tall, black-bearded and browed, dark-eyed, dark-skinned—a dark man who walked more easily in the wild than on pavement, a slow-talking, Indian-faced man whose soft speech hid who knew what? A man said by others to be eccentric, who said of himself that he was obsessed. I did not know this man at all. Not at all.
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