“I don’t know Morse code,” she said miserably.
“If you don’t want to do this, don’t. It’s all right. Nobody will blame you.”
“I want to.” The streetlight went on suddenly over our heads, and she jumped. I pulled her into the shadows of the yard. Standing behind the pine trees, it was dark and secret; the house at our backs, with its broken window staring at us like a black eyeball, made even me nervous. It was soundless and ugly. The street itself, usually friendly with flowers and children and ancient, colorful cars, was suddenly alien seen from the other side of the pine. I felt Claudia’s fingers close, cold, on my arm.
“Maybe there’s a mad woman living in it,” she whispered. “Like in Jane Eyre. Or a ghost—that’s why it’s deserted: there’s a ghost bewailing its sins on earth—”
“I don’t hear any bewailing,” I said crossly.
“In this movie I saw, the mad woman was chained in a deserted windmill, and when she crept up behind you, you could hear her chain rustling along the wood floor, and that’s the last sound you ever heard, because she strangled you with her chain.”
“Claudia!” But it was too late; I could feel the blood prickling all over me. Then, staring back at the broken window with the darkness inside outlined by silvery shards of glass, I saw Joe Takaota, with his quiet face and dark hair, come to stand looking out at the dirt and dark pines. He pushed his hands suddenly through the broken glass, cutting his wrists. I blinked. He faded back into the darkness, and I took a step forward as if to follow him, because I didn’t want him to be alone in the darkness. Claudia said, “There’s Barbara.”
We hissed at her from the yard. I saw her quick glance up and down the street, and then she slid between the pine boughs and joined us. I could see her eyes gleam in the darkness.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said. “My mother thinks I’m at the library.”
“So does mine,” Claudia said surprisedly. That made me giggle.
“They’re going to wonder why it’s suddenly such a popular place. Should we go through the front door or try a window?”
The windows were nailed shut, so we went through the front door. It took a little work, and what we did would come definitely under the heading of breaking and entering. Once inside, we took deep breaths of relief. Claudia switched on her light, which I had stupidly given back to her, and we pounced on it, squealing, “No! Someone will see it through the windows!”
“What are we going to do, then?” she demanded. “We have to see.”
“You can see a little,” Barbara said. “Let your eyes get used to it. We’ll use the lights only if we have to.”
Light from the street made a pale circle through one of the windows, enough for us to see a small, bare living room with a ruined fireplace. Some of the bricks from it lay on the floor; a beer can gleamed in a corner. I said, surprised, “People have been in here. Look at all the papers.” There were sandwich bags and old newspapers scattered on the floor. As I looked at them, something ran squealing through the mess. I felt a chill glide through me from head to foot. I clutched Claudia, whispering faintly.
“Rats.”
“A rat,” Barbara said firmly, and Claudia, in a voice shaken but staunch, backed her up.
“Rat. Singular,”
Two against one. I let go of Claudia, swallowing my singular horror. We went into the kitchen. The window was boarded up there, so we flashed one light carefully. There were sagging cupboards, a rusty sink, and a pipe coming down where the stove had been, drifted with cobwebs like grey white smoke. None of us wanted to go into the bathroom; Barbara finally gave it one quick sweep of light to see that there were no dead bodies or colonies of rats in it. She said surprisedly, “There’s nothing in it. The toilet’s gone. There’s nothing left but a few water pipes.”
“Maybe that’s to keep people from coming in and using it,” Claudia suggested.
“Maybe.” Barbara opened the last door. There was only one bedroom, the house was that small. The windows in that room were boarded up, so she closed the door behind us and we switched on the flashlights. The room was square, with a single closet whose door had long since disappeared. The floor was clean but dusty. Big fuzzballs drifted where we walked; pieces of torn wallpaper hung off the walls, showing older wallpaper and plaster beneath. It was motionless. Standing in the silence of it, I felt a sadness gnaw at the back of my mind, like an itch I couldn’t scratch. Being in the musty, empty room made me feel that no one would ever love me, and nothing worth even moving my mouth to talk about would ever happen to me again. Barbara moved to the center of the room, let her light glide over the walls. It slid across the ceiling, and she made a little sound.
“Look at that.”
There was a wide skylight above our heads, locked, dusty, and streaked, but not boarded. In the light we could make out, very faintly, patterns of pine branches pressing against it from a tree. I think it was the skylight and the tree beyond it that decided Barbara. She drew one breath, and another. Then she said, “We could paint the walls. Landscapes and big streaks of color. Orange, blue, purple—”
“Plants,” Claudia said. Her voice honked a little. “And flowers.”
“Masses of flowers, yes. And a tree. A tree that grew out of a mountain. Shells from the sea. And fish. Starfish. Sea horses.”
“Light—lots of light. Candles, and old-fashioned lamps—”
“A rocking chair—”
“A sheepskin rug—”
“Flutes—he loved flutes, and recorders, wood, ceramic—”
“Mobiles. And glass prisms, to catch the light.”
“Wind chimes. Tapestries—”
“And bells, and—”
“Big, bright velvet pillows—”
“And books.”
That stopped Barbara a moment. Then she said, “Yes. He loved science fiction. We’ll paint a space ship on the walls—a galaxy—” She looked at me suddenly, the light running like a hand between us, and I could see her smiling, more excited than I could remember her for a long time. “What do you think?”
They had caught me up in their excitement. The room was half-beautiful already with their words. I laughed.
“We’ve only got a few weeks. We’d better get started.”
“Tomorrow,” Barbara said. “I want to get a tree from Big Basin. Can you come?”
I drew a breath, thinking rapidly. “Yes.”
“How will we get up there?” Claudia said. “Our parents won’t let us go alone. We can’t camp alone without permission.”
“We can bike up. People are always—”
“Thirty miles,” I breathed. “Uphill.”
“It’s not uphill all the way. After the summit, you go down. You can coast. Is it all right?” she pleaded. “We could make it back the same day.”
“Maybe,” I said doubtfully.
“I’ll go alone. Joe loved that place. He hiked all the trails in it, even the long one to the sea. He loved the giant redwoods. I can go alone.”
“No,” said Claudia.
“No,” I said grimly. Biking thirty miles uphill was little compared to what I knew I had to do before morning. “I’m coming, too. I hope.”
I finished The Scarlet Letter at four o’clock in the morning. Erica, who had wakened three times to beg me to shut off the light, didn’t even move as I dropped the book and the notes for my report on the floor, and my face on the pillow. My impressions of the book were that I knew more than I ever cared to know about Hester and her love affair, but I did have the makings of the best book report I had ever given in my life, with all kinds of references to symbolism, which Mr. Frank loved. I barely had the strength to lift one arm to turn off the light.
I reported to breakfast at eight with dark circles under my eyes and my book report notes in hand. My parents, who were barely awake themselves over their coffee, were startled to see me.
“Hello,” I said, dragging myself to a chair. “Did you have a good time last n
ight?”
“We had a very nice time,” my father said. “What in the world did you do all night?”
“I studied.” I pushed the notes in front of him and put my head down on my arms. “Does coffee really help?”
My mother handed me her cup. “How come you stayed up so late? What are you—” She stopped. She knew me pretty well. I took a sip of her coffee. As usual, it tasted terrible, but it woke my mouth up. My father, who read engineering magazines and an occasional Playboy, was staring at my notes a little blankly. I took a breath.
“You see, that’s all the homework I have this weekend. It’s all done. And I wanted to take a bike ride with Barbara this morning. If that’s okay.” I felt my father looking at me. My mother said, “Where to?”
“Out Saratoga Avenue. It’s just pretty out there, and she wanted to go.” Saratoga Avenue ran straight into the hills to Big Basin. I picked up the coffee cup again to hide the fact that I was holding my breath. My father smoothed down his hair.
“Well.” I could tell he was nonplussed. He didn’t like to countermand a direct order. I raised my eyes to his face.
“Please,” I begged. “I stayed up till four in the morning just to do this. I studied all night, and everything is done, and it’s going to be the best book report I’ve ever given.”
He looked at my mother. She shrugged a little, so he said, “All right. But if you get anything lower than a B on that report, you’re grounded until the end of the year.”
I sighed in relief. “I won’t. This report will be great. Thanks, Dad.” I gave my mother back her coffee. “Thanks, Mom.” I stood up blearily, and she said, “Where are you going?”
“To get dressed.”
“Well, for heaven’s sake, have some breakfast.” She got up and began rattling pans. “You’ll wear yourself out.”
So I rode over to Barbara’s with a load of bacon and eggs in my stomach, which, after four hours’ sleep, was barely awake to cope with it. I had thought the night before that The Scarlet Letter was bad, but that bicycle ride was a nightmare. We did fine riding through town with the road wide and flat to the edge of the hills, but the moment we got to Saratoga, we started winding uphill. I was sick twice before we reached the summit in the early afternoon.
Going downhill, on the skinny little road leading into the park, it was beautiful. We were exhausted from the ride up, which we took partly on foot, after dodging cars, breathing car fumes, sweating and burning in the hot morning and barely managing to pedal. Coasting down under the flick of shadows, we began to feel better. Redwoods, curly oak, and the strange green and orange trees that split out of their bark like molting lizards surrounded us, peaceful and still. The air smelled of warm earth, old leaves, and moss. The road was old and patched; it wandered around corners, dodging huge redwoods, wiggling like a brook, the kind of road that when you see it out of a car window, makes you wonder where it goes. This one led us an hour later to the park headquarters and food.
We bought hamburgers at the snack bar and sat on the big redwood steps in front of the gift shop, our bikes lying at our feet. There were people everywhere, camping, picnicking, and just wandering around looking at the deer and the trees. The redwoods, I knew vaguely, had been rescued from loggers around the turn of the century, and, after much legal wrangling, had been preserved for posterity by the government. Some of the trees were over two thousand years old, their insides scarred by fires, their trunks overgrown with boles like huge, knobby warts. Indians living in the area had never touched them, feeling that the deep, quiet basin of massive trees was sacred. The trees were sacred also to the forest rangers abounding in the park, who would take a dim view if they caught us stealing a tree under their noses.
I finished my hamburger and leaned back on the steps with a sigh. Barbara licked ketchup off her fingers.
“Do you feel better?” she said to me, and I nodded. The sun was toasting my feet beyond the edge of shadow I sat in, and everything was making me sleepy. I stretched.
“I want to find a nice tree and take a nap under it. It’s so warm and peaceful.”
“Me, too,” Claudia said. She dropped her head on her arms. “I’m so sore from riding I don’t know how I’m going to make it back.”
“I could call my mother to get us,” Barbara said, but Claudia shook her head.
“You’d have to tell her what we’re doing up here, and why you stole a tree. I don’t think,” she added heavily after a moment, “we should get caught doing that. There’s a whopping fine.”
The legal mind. I said, “For one little tree? I can imagine explaining that to my dad.”
But Barbara only said decisively, “We won’t get caught.” She stood up, and Claudia groaned. She sat down again, smiling. “All right. I’m tired, too. Let’s go take a nap. But just a short one.”
We rode down one of the roads in the picnic area and found an empty table beside a creek. Claudia and Barbara collapsed under the shadow of a redwood; I climbed on top of the picnic table and lay down. High above me, three trees converged, balancing the sun on their heads. A warm breeze rustled across my stomach; an acorn thumped to the ground in its wake. The creek made funny little noises, like a baby talking to itself while it played with its toes. Blue jays squabbled in the distance, and I heard something with tiny claws skitter up a trunk behind me. I closed my eyes.
I woke up to someone saying my name. Barbara stood over me, leaves and pine needles in her hair. I sat up. The air was a different color, a sort of smoky blue, with long, blinding shafts of sunlight pouring between the trees. My voice croaked.
“What time is it?”
“I don’t know,” Barbara said, “But it’s late. We have to hurry.”
I got down from the table stiffly. I could smell campfires, whiffs of other people’s suppers, Claudia, brushing things out of her hair, looking wider awake than either of us, said, “I’m supposed to go to my aunt’s house for supper tonight.”
Barbara covered her eyes with her hands. “I’m supposed to—oh, well. We’ll just tell them what happened—except for the tree. The tree.” She looked around vaguely. I said hastily, “You can’t just dig one up and ride with it in your bike basket through the park headquarters.”
“I know. I was going to take one of his favorite trails and get one, but it’s so late…Meteor Trail.”
“Meteor,” Claudia whispered, staring in front of her as if she could see a golden shower of them falling through the trees. Barbara nodded sleepily.
“It follows Opal Creek; the water is pink and gold in places there, and the banks are soft and green with moss. One of the pioneers settled there; Joe used to try and figure out where his house was.”
Claudia looked at me suddenly. She didn’t have to say anything. I grinned. “I don’t care. The sooner I go home, the sooner I catch hell. I might as well stay here all night.”
“We’ll hurry,” Barbara said absently.
But we didn’t. We left our bikes half-sheltered in a huge hollow tree and found the beginning of the trail not far away. The sun had gone behind a mountain; the trees were absolutely soundless. Moving through the grey green twilight, the trees rising round and still as pillars in a church, I felt as though we were in a different world, where little things like being home late couldn’t matter. The sounds from the campers faded behind us as we followed the creek. I realized slowly that the forest probably hadn’t changed much since Indians had looked at the same trees I looked at. The trees might have grown a few feet; a few more leaves had decayed, and a few more had fallen, but that was about it. And we were walking, for some reason, as quietly as they must have walked, our footsteps soft and careful on the thick needles.
“How,” I asked after a while, “could anyone have built a house here? It’s too steep.” There weren’t many level spots on the trail, and we were all puffing a little.
“I don’t know,” Barbara said. “But they say he lived here nearly a hundred years ago. He ate fish from the stream and b
erries. And he built his house and brought his wife here from Ireland after a while. They lived alone for years, and they were very poor. I read once he had some horses pastured for the winter in a meadow higher up, and when spring came, he went to get them and found that grizzly bears had eaten them,”
Something caught in my throat. “Grizzly bears?”
She turned to look back at me, grinning. “There haven’t been grizzly bears in California for almost a hundred years. I made sure of that the first time I came up here.”
“I’m glad.” I thought of the woman coming from, perhaps, a little village in Ireland to live in this odd place tucked away in the mountains, when the cities I knew were just growing up all around them, not far away. I wondered what she was like: if she dreamed of Ireland and hated the mosquitoes and bears, or if she shot wild cats with a fearless hand and opened the doors of her house at evening to watch the stars come out.
Barbara put her hand out suddenly to stop me, startling me. She whispered, “There.”
In the center of a rare bit of level ground on the other side of the creek, just the right size to hold a one-room cabin, stood a tiny tree. It was about two feet high, beautifully symmetrical, like a young green flame against the dark forest. It drew Barbara like a moth off the trail to clamber over the flotsam and jetsam that had built up around the creek: old branches, brambles, tree trunks. We followed more slowly. Claudia, never at her best when balancing on tree trunks, gave up completely and sat down to wait for us. I thrashed across some old dry branches and joined Barbara. She was already on her knees, digging with her hands in the soft earth.
“Smell it,” she said, and I sniffed. It was soft and perfect, with delicate green webs instead of needles. I sank my hands in the bracken around it and immediately disturbed a family of roly-poly bugs. They all curled up into little grey balls, their heads in their stomachs. I poked them out of the way. Barbara, her face flushed, stopped working to watch. She brushed hair out of her face, leaving a streak behind.
“We have to hide it.”
“We have to get it out first,” I said. It was a stubborn little tree. I had a sudden image of its roots spreading out underneath us through the whole of the park. A daddy longlegs climbed huffily out of the hole I had made, and I waited respectfully for it to get out of my way. All that insect life was making me nervous, but Barbara was ploughing away, ignoring nonessentials.
The Night Gift Page 3