“I’ve got a pinecone in my pocket and I’m not afraid to use it,” Danny shouted.
Sibley ignored Danny. He made a motion as if turning to go, then stopped, and pulled something from his jacket. He weighed it in his hand a moment, then held it up. “Julian, I believe you left this at my house.”
The smile faded from Julian’s face. There, in Sibley’s hand, was the ivory pocketknife.
Sibley turned it over in his hands. “It’s a nice little knife. Two blades. Dad’s initials—J.S.C. John Sibley Carter. I remember the day Billy got it. There was a race on Buzzards Bay. We sailed all day and your father came in first by a boat length. He won the cup. Youngest winner ever.” Sibley opened one blade and closed it with a click. “Dad was so proud, he gave him this too.”
Robin glanced worriedly at Julian. “Hey, that’s not fair. He got that from his father and you won’t give it back?”
“All I’m asking him to do is respect the law and come down from the tree house.” Sibley’s voice was calm now, in charge. “Let’s go, Julian. The show’s over.”
“That’s from his father and you’re holding it hostage?” Danny said. “That’s pretty mean, you big Grinch!”
“You’re holding our property hostage,” Sibley said. “That’s not so nice either.”
Julian stood almost hypnotized by the glare of the sun on the ivory handle. It was just a thing, he reminded himself. It had just belonged to his father, it wasn’t part of him.
“You can’t stay up there forever.” Sibley checked his watch impatiently.
“My father gave me that knife,” Julian finally said.
“That’s why I brought it. I respect your rights, and I’m asking you to respect mine. And IPX’s.”
A breeze stirred and the branches high above the tree house began to whisper. Julian took a deep breath. “I’m not coming down. Not even for the knife.” He could feel Robin’s eyes on him. “I never thought you’d come here. But now that you have, you see what it’s like. You could tell IPX not to cut down these trees. You could save Big Tree Grove.”
His uncle’s expression didn’t change. “What exactly do you kids want?”
“We want Big Tree Grove to be protected,” Julian said. “Forever.”
“And outside Big Tree,” Robin added, “we want sustainable timber harvesting. Like Ed Greeley did before.”
“Give Julian his pocketknife!” Danny shouted. “And for the rest of us, a million dollars in unmarked bills!” Robin glared and Danny held up his hands. “Just kidding!”
Sibley wiped his brow again. He put the knife back in his jacket and walked away toward the three men. Molly tugged at her sister’s shirt and started whispering in her ear. Robin nodded, then bent down and murmured a few low words.
After a few minutes of somber conversation, Sibley returned.
“We’re willing to compromise,” he said loudly up to them. “I think you’re going to be pleased. It’s a little late to make changes, with the THP approved already, but Pete says we can spare the tree house and still break even. If you all come down right now.”
“The tree house!” Ariel said. “What’s the point of having a tree house in the middle of a clear-cut?”
“We didn’t come up in the trees to save the tree house, we went in the tree house to save the trees,” Danny said. “Capisce?”
“That’s my final offer,” Sibley said. “If you don’t come down now, saving the tree house is off the table.”
“You know,” Robin said, “I think Julian deserves his dad’s pocketknife. What if only he came down?”
“What?” Julian spun around and stared at Robin. He couldn’t believe she was offering him up on the negotiating table.
“If he came down, you’d give him the knife, right?” She grabbed an apple from the basket and started polishing it on her shirt.
“That’s right,” Sibley said. “He comes down, he gets the knife.”
“Here, are you hungry?” she said, throwing the apple down toward him. It slipped through his fingers and rolled a few feet along the forest floor. Sibley bent down awkwardly to pick it up.
“Um, thanks.” He dusted off the apple and looked as if he might take a bite, but didn’t.
“What are you doing?” Julian said to Robin in a low voice. “I don’t need the knife. It’s not that important. I’m staying with you guys.”
“Julian’s with us! Forget the knife,” Danny whispered loudly. “And why are you feeding him?”
Robin ignored them. “How do we know it’s really Julian’s knife?” she shouted down.
“Julian knows.”
It was true. Julian had recognized the knife immediately. He’d never seen another one like it.
Robin paced along the deck with her hands in her pockets, then turned quickly to Sibley. “Show me again.”
Sibley took the knife out of his jacket and held it up.
Robin lay down on the floor of the tree house and stuck her head between the railings. “I don’t see the initials,” she said. “Hold it up higher.”
Sibley glanced back at the men, then held the knife high into the air. Nearly as high as the pulley seat. That was funny, Julian thought. He knew he’d seen Robin cleat the chair at the top, and now it was halfway to the ground.
Suddenly, a pale hand reached over the top of the chair and snatched the pocketknife from Sibley’s grasp. Robin leaped to her feet and started pulling furiously on the rope. As the seat lurched into the air, Molly sat upright, her thin cheeks flushed and her eyes shining brightly.
“Special delivery!” she cried in a trembling voice, unable to stop grinning. She handed the knife off to Danny, who presented it with a flourish to Julian.
“Thanks, Molly,” Julian stammered, too stunned to say more. He ran his thumb along the smooth ivory handle and the silver initials, his grandfather’s initials, then put the knife in his pocket. When he turned back to Sibley, he thought he saw a flash of desperation on his uncle’s face.
“Is this just a game to you all?” Sibley said. “Because, let me tell you, IPX doesn’t think it’s funny. I don’t think it’s funny.”
“I, personally, thought that was pretty funny,” Danny said. “Come on, weren’t you surprised? I know I was.”
“For the last time, I’m asking you to come down. Please. As the head of IPX, and as your uncle.”
Julian could sense the others holding back, watching him. His uncle stood below, sweating and squinting, but Julian was beyond his reach. The ivory knife was in his pocket. He was surrounded by his best friend, two fast—running local girls, and an intrepid eight-year-old. And he was thirty feet in the air.
“We’re not coming down. Please, don’t cut down Big Tree Grove. Please. You could save it. You could bring Preston here.”
Sibley’s face hardened. “This conversation is going nowhere. I have to tell you, you’re making the wrong decision. You’re going to regret this.” And, giving Julian a spiteful look, he turned and stumbled on a tree root, barely catching himself.
“Have a nice trip?” Danny called out. “See you next fall!”
Sibley approached the three men and motioned to the tree house. After a minute, Sibley and Pete turned and walked off in the direction they’d come. The two security officers hitched up their belts, crossed their arms, and settled into position.
obin threw up her arms. “We did it! We actually came face—to—face with Sibley Carter! And he couldn’t make us come down! Not even close! And he’s angry about the publicity, so that must mean it’s working! It’s all working even better than we thought it would!”
“He must think we’re stupid,” Ariel said. “Saying he would save the tree house. Like that was such a big deal. One poor little tree house surrounded by a bunch of stumps.”
“Mr. CEO!” Danny said with contempt. “Mr. Negotiator! It’s so dangerous up here, huh? Like he would care if we broke our necks!”
Julian took the knife out of his pocket and held it up with a sm
ile. “You guys were amazing. How did you figure it all out? How did you know it would work?”
“It was my idea. I thought of it,” Molly said. “I knew it would work and it did!”
“You were the hero!” Robin bent down and placed her hands on Molly’s shoulders. “You were fearless!” She looked around at the others. “As soon as she told me her idea, I started thinking and thinking. Trying to figure out how to distract Sibley so he wouldn’t notice the pulley seat coming down and how to get him to hold up the knife.”
Danny started to hum the theme song to Mission Impossible.
“I saw her climb in the pulley seat,” Ariel said. “When your uncle went back to talk to those other men. But I thought she was just scared.”
“Hah!” Molly crowed. “I wasn’t scared. It was all part of the plan.” She was still so excited, she was hugging herself and jumping around the tree house.
“I don’t like the looks of those two brutes, though,” Danny said, eyeing the security guards.
“Do they have guns?” Molly said, suddenly serious.
“Don’t be silly.” Robin put her arm around Molly. “They’re not going to shoot us.”
Molly made a terrified face. “Now I am scared.”
“I think Molly should go home,” Ariel said with a frown. “She’s done enough.”
“If I go down, those men will get me,” Molly said.
“I’ll go down with you,” Robin said. “Then you run home. Those two guys could never catch you. They’re like Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”
When Molly was a safe distance away, Robin pulled herself quickly back up to the tree house. The guards didn’t move. The children ate their lunch in a state of high alert, keeping an eye open for any sign that the guards might turn violent. But the two men just stood in the shade, occasionally bending their heads toward each other and crossing and uncrossing their arms.
Danny watched them through the binoculars. “No guns,” he said. “Definitely not armed. So, can we go down or are we stuck up here?”
“What do you want to go down for?” Robin said.
“A human being cannot stay in a tree indefinitely. Nature calls.”
“Julia Butterfly Hill used a bucket.”
Danny looked at her in disbelief. “Absolutely not. No buckets. That’s where I draw the line. That old outhouse is bad enough.”
They glanced over at the motionless guards.
“Well,” Robin said, “I guess you might as well give it a try. Even if they caught you, there’d still be three of us left.”
“I’ll be back in a flash. Come on, Julian, I need you for backup.” Julian waited until Danny had jumped out of the pulley seat, then quickly raised it to the top.
The guards didn’t even turn their heads.
A few minutes later, a pebble hit Julian in the arm. Danny was waving from behind a giant stump. Julian cautiously lowered the pulley seat and Danny dashed forward, hurled himself into the chair, and pulled himself up at top speed.
Julian whistled and glanced over at the two guards, still rooted in place. “Boy, you made it just in time!”
“Better safe than sorry!”
“I guess we should be grateful they’re not doing anything,” Robin said. “I wonder why they’re even here.”
“They’re spies,” said Danny, looking at them through the binoculars again.
“They’re just here to intimidate us,” Julian said. “And to keep track of when we come down,” he added glumly. After the exchange with his uncle, he’d almost convinced himself that they were never coming down. At least, not until Sibley agreed to protect Big Tree Grove forever. They’d been invincible. It was a shock to remember that Popo would be coming to pick them up in two days.
“Even if we have to go down eventually, we still did pretty well,” Robin said. “We got the newspaper article and Sibley Carter actually came up here to negotiate with us. Maybe a way will open. It feels a lot closer to opening than it did before.”
The security guards made the children feel like prisoners. The air was hot and heavy and the long afternoon stretched before them like an endless chore. They spoke in hushed voices and played cards until nobody cared who won or lost. Finally, Danny was left playing solitaire. Ariel started writing in her diary, and Robin just lay on her back, looking into the sky.
Julian took out his pocketknife and opened the smaller blade. He found Danny’s initials on the railing and, next to them, scratched the outline to his own: J.C.L. When he’d carved out a passable version of his initials, he took out his wooden box and placed the knife inside. Now it had a safe home. He’d never lose it again.
As Julian returned the box to the storage bin, he heard a loud “hello” and looked down to see Nancy and Jo-Jo lugging a huge picnic basket through the forest. When they reached the base of the tree, Robin lowered the pulley seat and Nancy placed the heavy basket into it. Then she took out two foil-wrapped packages, two paper cups, two napkins, and a canteen and put them in a paper bag.
“I thought I’d better check on you all. I heard there was a lot of excitement this afternoon,” she said as Robin hauled the basket up.
“You’re feeding the enemy?” Danny said, eyeing the paper bag. “You should be setting up a blockade! What kind of ally are you?”
“A ‘love your enemies’ sort of ally,” Nancy said with a smile.
Jo-Jo, who had been waving frantically up at them, cried, “I wanna go in the tree house!” Julian brought him up in the pulley seat, and the little boy walked around importantly, inspecting the storage bins and peering out through the rails.
Nancy began chatting with the guards. She handed them the paper bag and, for the first time, they sat down on the ground, digging into their sandwiches and taking swigs from their paper cups.
After a few minutes, Nancy returned and shouted up, “Do you all need anything? Molly told me Mr. Carter came by. Is everything OK, Julian?”
Julian nodded.
“We’re great!” Robin said loudly, glancing at the guards. “Never better. We could stay here forever!”
“Thanks for the chow!” Danny shouted down.
“Well, I should probably head back,” Nancy said, obviously reluctant to leave. “You all be careful.” She swept her hair behind her ears and looked up at them with a worried smile. “Robin, can you get Jo-Jo back down here?”
Jo-Jo dove into Robin’s sleeping bag like a ground squirrel. Robin had to dig him out, squirming and crying, and wrestle him into the chair. “I’ll bring you up another day,” she said soothingly, and an image came to Julian of Jo-Jo at their age, running through a sun-baked clearing where Big Tree Grove had once stood.
Nancy headed off with Jo-Jo on her shoulders. By the time the children had unpacked the picnic basket, his distant wails had subsided.
Ariel spread a red-checked tablecloth and laid out spaghetti in a metal tin, a green salad, peaches, a small chocolate cake, and four bottles of lemon soda.
“We should make it really nice,” she said softly, “to celebrate the successful capture of Julian’s pocketknife!” She took a small purple candle out of her backpack and Julian pulled the lighter from his emergency kit and lit it. They ate their candlelight feast in near silence, then lay back against the storage bins, full and happy.
They had just started to clean up when Robin peered through the railing and whispered, “Hey, guys! They’re coming over here.” The guards lumbered over and set down the paper bag at the base of the trees.
“Tell your mom thanks again for the dinner,” one announced. “The canteen’s in the bag.”
“We’re going home!” said the other. “Sleep well!” They waved and trudged away into the forest.
“They’re leaving?” Robin stood with her mouth half open.
“This could be a trick,” Danny said. “They might come back armed.”
“I don’t know. They seem pretty harmless,” Julian said. “They probably don’t want to be here either. It must be pretty bori
ng to sit there watching us all day.”
Ariel climbed up and straddled her legs over the edge of one of the railings. “Maybe it was your mom’s peace offering.” She took a deep breath and looked out into the forest. “Anyway, it’s ours again. We should make a mental snapshot so we never forget this night.”
“What’s that?” Julian said.
“You know how grown-ups can never remember what it was like being a kid?”
He nodded.
“I’m not going to be that way. I remember everything. I remember standing in my crib. I remember our old house, when I lived here with my mom and dad. And if I think I might forget something, I write it in my diary or I take a mental snapshot. I concentrate really hard and tell myself that I’m going to remember every single thing about that moment.”
She sat down on a storage bin. “Come on. I’ll show you how. You have to be very, very quiet.” She took a deep breath. “First, shut your eyes.” They sat down and Julian closed his eyes. “You start with smelling,” she said, sniffing hard. “Right now, I can smell spaghetti and lavender from the candle. And trees. The smell of the forest,” she said in a low, breathless voice. “Now, listen.”
Julian listened to the river, murmuring in the language of water on stone. The birds sang their evening songs. A mosquito whined in his ear and he swatted it away. He could hear his own breathing and Danny, sniffing loudly.
“Now,” said Ariel, “concentrate on what you feel.”
“I feel something coiling around my leg!” Danny cried. “A rattlesnake! Help!”
“Be quiet, Danny!” Robin ordered.
A light breeze stirred against Julian’s face. The wood under his hands was rough and hard.
“OK, now open your eyes. Look all around and remember what you see.”
Their faces, in the twilight, looked new to Julian for a moment: Ariel’s smile, crooked and mysterious; Danny’s look of skeptical good-humor; Robin’s steady gaze. The redwoods rose up all around them and they floated among the trunks as if they were riding on a magic carpet. The white sky showed between the treetops.
“Finally,” Ariel’s voice was hushed, “you have to look in your heart and remember what you’re feeling. Like if you’re angry or sad . . .”
Operation Redwood Page 20