“We have to hide it,” she said again, and I had a brainstorm.
“There are garbage bins all over the park. There must be a box or a bag in one of them.”
She flashed a smile at me, her face easing again. “He’ll like it. Joslyn, isn’t it beautiful? I love it. Only it’s so damn stubborn.”
I said, “It’s gorgeous. Do you know what? I just realized why they call this Meteor Trail.”
“Why?”
“Look.”
The stream, cutting between the trees, slit a jagged strip of their thick branches open to the darkening sky, and stars by the hundreds were shooting down at us. Barbara’s mouth opened.
“Oh, Joslyn,” she whispered. “I didn’t know it was so late.” Across the stream Claudia sat hugging her knees and staring upward. A frog grunted somewhere in the dark stream, and her face turned towards it. She said, “Barbara—”
“I know. We’ll hurry.”
The tree finally came out. Barbara carried it in her arms like a baby across the stream, while I scooped dirt back into the hole and scattered leaves across it so the rangers wouldn’t be upset. Crossing the stream, my foot crashed through a net of branches, nearly hitting the water, and the frogs gave me a whole chorus of nervous noises. We went as fast as we could down the trail, but the whole world turned pitch black before we ever reached the bottom. The only thing that kept us on the trail was the stream, glimmering every once in awhile in faint, knife-thin strokes of light.
No one spoke. As safe as I knew that park was, I was frightened of its silence, and of the darkness that had welled over it so deeply we couldn’t even see each other’s eyes. I followed Barbara’s panting, and thought of the Irish woman, so far from people, so far from the sounds of people in that night. She lived in a world of rules different from people’s rules, and I had a sudden feeling that neither she nor I belonged there in that black silence. Maybe the Indians had been right.
The stars above us spilled out suddenly, like a stream spills into a river. Something thumped under our feet, and Claudia’s breath left her in a gasp.
“The bridge, I remember, I know where we are. There’s the road—”
It looked like a faint, grey river, so faint we could barely see it. I stepped off the bridge in relief, and fell into space. It ended so soon I barely had time to cry out. My arms were raw from scraping against dirt, and I had somehow knocked the breath out of myself. I heard Barbara’s voice.
“Joslyn? Where are you?”
“I don’t know.” My voice was whimpering because I couldn’t get any air for a minute. Then I realized what happened. “I fell in the ditch by the road.”
“Can you get out?” I felt a hand brush over my face. “Joslyn, say something.”
“Of course I can get out. I’m just tired.” Barbara’s hand found my wrist. I pulled myself out, and she helped me to my feet.
“Are you all right? Are you hurt?” I could feel her close to me, but I couldn’t see her. I could smell the tree, though, as I brushed the dirt off my arms and the front of my shirt. The fall had disoriented me.
“Where do we go from here? I don’t remember. How are we going to find our bikes?”
“They’re just down the road a little,” Claudia said, “Remember? We went up the road coming to the trail; now we go down.”
Facing the right direction on the road, I saw a familiar yellow light. I said tiredly, “And there, thank God, is a bathroom.”
Seeing each other, at last, in the bathroom light made us laugh, because we looked exactly like people would look after they had just stolen a tree with their bare hands. We washed and picked all the dead things out of our hair, then went rummaging through the trash bin for a box. The campers were quiet; their lanterns hung like stars among the trees. In the restless wash of their fires, the huge trees loomed quiet, changeless, blurring into the night. With the noise we made, we must have sounded like raccoons grubbing for food, and we brought one noisy dog out of bed to get yelled at by his owner. We emptied a couple of grocery bags, and put the bottom of the tree in one, and the other over the top, so it was completely hidden. It looked suspicious, but gave no evidence of what it might be. The ranger truck, passing us on the road as we went to get our bikes, flared its lights over us and went on without stopping.
We retrieved our bikes, and Barbara put the tree in her basket. Then we stood on the road and looked at each other in the dark. Someone drew a breath; it was Barbara.
“I’ll call my mother.”
I drew a breath and held it for a moment. Then my tongue said reluctantly, “Call her and tell her where you are. But we’ve got three bikes. I’ll ask my dad to bring the station wagon.”
“I’m sorry,” Barbara said helplessly. “I got you all into this. I wish we had sleeping bags to spend the night.”
“So do I.” I would have preferred facing my parents in the daylight after giving them a night to cool off.
Claudia said surprisingly, “I don’t care. They make us do enough difficult things, like going to school every day. We deserve this. Sometimes I like to talk during the day.”
I tried to see her face, but all I could see was a black blob. I said, “You’re absolutely right. That’s exactly what I’ll tell my dad.”
But, calling from the phone booth at the ranger station, all I got was Brian. He whooped into my ear, “Where have you been!”
“Don’t shout, I want to talk to Mom.”
“Where are you? Mom’s not here. They’re over at Barbara’s house—where are you? Did you get picked up for something?”
“Yes,” I said wearily. “I’m at Juvenile Hall being booked for prostitution.”
For once I caught him wordless. His voice changed. “Come on. They thought—we thought you might have gotten wrapped around a truck or something. Dad called the police, and Mom’s been calling hospitals.”
A lump rose like a fish in my throat. “Brian,” I said, pleading for mercy, “we hiked up to Big Basin; we’re fine—”
“Well, why the hell didn’t you call?”
“I didn’t think—Shut up and listen. Please. Call Mrs. Takaota’s and Mrs. Gill’s—the numbers are on the list by the phone—and tell them we’re all right. And will you—will you tell Dad we need a ride home? We’ve got our bikes and it’s dark.”
He was silent again; I heard his breathing. “You’re incredible. You want me to tell Dad that?”
“Please.”
“It’s your skin. If I were you, I’d take a long hike or something.”
“Brian!”
“All right, all right—” He said something to someone with him, and I heard a laugh. “I’ll tell everyone. Wait at the ranger station and don’t move. See you later. Don’t worry,” he added unexpectedly, before he hung up, and it helped a little. I sat down with Barbara and Claudia on the steps in front of the office, where the porch light was shining, and told them. Barbara whispered, “Hospitals.”
“I don’t care,” Claudia said stubbornly, and oddly enough, I didn’t care too much either. We had accomplished what we came for, and we still had a lot to do. I just hoped that my dad would refrain from grounding me for six months. I said, “What should we do next?” and a ranger said behind us, “Are those your bikes over there, girls?”
Something came then and breathed the breath back out of my mouth. We turned slowly. He stood above us on the steps, eight feet tall, with enormous bulbous eyes that held ours steadily. Barbara said, her voice small and soft, “Yes.”
“Well, could you move them, please? They’re blocking my truck, and I want to go home to bed.”
He changed suddenly, turned into a shortish, lean man with his hat pushed wearily back on his head. We scrambled to our feet eagerly.
He said, “You can put them here by the porch.”
“That’s okay,” Barbara said. “We’ll put them over there in the parking lot.” We jumped off the porch before he could speak again, and he stood and watched us while we moved the bike
s across the road into the shadows. When we came back, he said, a little puzzled, “Are you girls camping here? You’re a little young to be up here by yourselves.”
“No,” Barbara said. “We rode up here this morning, and we’re waiting for our parents to give us a ride home.”
He chuckled. “Good thinking. That’s quite a ride. It’s too bad you didn’t plan to stay.”
She sighed. “We didn’t plan anything right.”
“Well. If you run into any problems, just tell the ranger in the office. I’m going to bed. Good night.”
We watched him drive off. Somebody had to say it eventually, so I said it. “The only problem is: I’m starving to death.”
“Try not to think about it,” Claudia said listlessly.
It was a long wait. The place was dead silent but for insects tinking against the porch light, and the occasional rustle of a deer or raccoon or something nameless off to its private business. Rangers in their trucks passed every once in a while, patrolling; and every time we saw their lights coming toward us we sat up a little, and when they passed, we settled back into ourselves. I got tired of sitting on the steps, so I went across the road and sat on the fence that enclosed a little clearing for the deer. A couple of them lifted their heads out of the long grass; I saw their soft, dark eyes and tiered antlers. Beyond the porchlight I could see the stars, tiny, ice white specks following their own rules far above the trees. Staring up at them, I had a funny feeling inside me, maybe because I was so hungry. But I thought suddenly that all the familiar things around me: the deer, the trees, the raccoons, Barbara, and Claudia, were as strange and unexpected as the stars. Nothing was familiar anymore; the things I had taken for granted, even laughed at, like the raccoons with their masks and child’s hands, were really amazing, incredible shapes to appear on the planet whirling underneath me in the middle of nowhere. I looked at Barbara sitting under the light, with her thick, dark hair falling to her waist, and suddenly I knew her and didn’t know her. I even felt strange inside my own skin, as if I had never realized before that I existed. It was a weird feeling. I came out of it slowly, seeing lights again, and catching, as I moved my hand on the rail, a sliver of wood in my palm. I squinted down at it, picking at it by the vague light. The truck paused, idling in the road. A voice said, “Joslyn?”
It was Neil.
He said, getting out, “I was with Brian when you called. I had the truck with me, so I thought I’d save your parents a trip.” He smiled as Claudia and Barbara came to join us. “Ready to go home?”
Coming unexpectedly like that out of the darkness, he looked nameless for a second, and I gawked at him before I slid off the fence. Then I realized who he was, and that he’d come all the way up a mountain to rescue us, looking as calm and self-sufficient as if we’d been just down the street. Something in my throat wanted to laugh suddenly, happily, for no reason, but I squashed it.
“Do you—I can’t remember if you’ve met Barbara.”
“Once,” Barbara said a little shyly, “At your house, Joslyn.” Claudia, hovering uneasily behind her, shocked us both by saying to Neil out loud, her voice wobbling a little, “Did Brian call my parents?”
He nodded. “Your dad was going to come and get you, but Brian told your mother I would. Where are your bikes?”
“Right here,” Barbara said. She lifted hers up, to heave it over the side of the truck, I suppose, but he took it from her.
“I’ll get it.” He opened the tailgate and lifted it up. He stubbed the front wheel of the bike on the tailgate, and the bag bounced out at his feet. He reached down for it. Then his head lifted, and his eyes went to Barbara’s face.
She put a finger over her mouth. He looked away from her, shifted the tree to the side of the truck, and laid the bike flat. We wheeled the others over and he settled them to his liking. Then he jumped down and closed the gate.
He eyed us briefly, and said, “You’re all thin, we can fit in front.”
Barbara, who I thought was too preoccupied to think of such things, stepped aside and let me go in first to sit beside him. We were quiet while he backed the truck up and turned it around. I watched his hands on the wheel, lean, the fingers square-tipped; he lifted one hand to brush at the hair falling forward into his eyes, and the fish in my stomach jumped up suddenly, dove deep. Then my stomach made a noise, and he grinned at me.
“Hungry?”
I drew a breath. “Starving!” I settled back in the seat. “We ate lunch, then fell asleep for hours, then hiked up Meteor Trail without any supper—”
“Is that where you got the tree?”
“Yeah. We carried it down the mountain in the dark. It was weird; it’s not like city darkness; it’s a different kind. It’s black.”
He glanced at me. “Is that why you rode up? For a tree?”
I nodded. I wanted to tell him, to trust him, because I knew he would understand. But it was Barbara’s idea and Barbara’s tree. And she was quiet beside me. Claudia, too shy to talk now, tilted her head against the window and closed her eyes. Neil switched on the radio, fiddled with the knob, trying to find some music.
“We could stop for hamburgers at Boulder Creek.”
Barbara said suddenly, “Neil—” Her voice stuck. He turned the radio off, finding nothing but static, and for some reason it seemed darker. Then his head turned.
“I’m sorry—”
She wiggled a little against me. “Nothing. It’s just that—the tree is for Joe.”
We both looked at her, me the longest since he had to jerk the truck out of the way of a tree. He said softly, “Is Joe coming home?”
“Yes. That’s why we came up here to get a tree. Because he loved—he loved it here.”
“Oh.” His voice was soft in the darkness. He glanced toward her again. “How is he?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t—I haven’t seen him for so long. But that’s why we stole the tree. I thought he might like it.”
“You rode all the way up here just to do that?”
“Yes,” she said tiredly. “It had to be a certain tree.”
“I guess so. When is he coming?”
“Next month some time.”
“That’s good. I’d like to see him again.”
She nodded. “The twins really miss him.”
“It must have been hard to try to explain what happened to them.”
“It was. My mother said he was sick, and he had to go away for a while to get well. They were always wanting to visit him, asking when he was going to come home when she—when even she didn’t know.” Her face was bent, hidden behind her hair. I was surprised to hear her talk about those things to someone who was almost a stranger, but then Neil was easy to talk to. She lifted her face suddenly, shook her hair back. “It was really nice of you to come and get us.”
“Well. Mr. and Mrs. Carter spent half the day worrying, and they were tired, and anyway, I didn’t have much else to do.”
“Was—were they very angry?” I asked cautiously. He shook his head.
“They were relieved.”
“Wait’ll they have a chance to think about it,” I muttered, and he smiled.
“Just explain.”
“I’m not about to tell them I rode up here to steal a tree.”
“Then how are you going to explain the tree?” he asked practically. We were silent, then. Barbara shifted again. She drew a breath, then another, and I knew what was just about to come out. I knew Neil was nice, but she didn’t know him well, and I was surprised.
“There’s a little—There’s a little deserted house on Briar Avenue. Could you stop there for a moment while we put the tree in it?”
He almost stopped the truck. “Barbara,” he said, and for some reason, when he said her name, it sounded unfamiliar, as though it belonged to someone I didn’t know. “Haven’t you broken enough laws for one day? Besides, you should replant it.”
“Well, I can’t take it home. It’s for Joe.”
�
��But Joe—” he said, bewildered; and she broke in.
“We’re making a place for him in that house. A place for him to go when he—instead of having to try to kill himself. A private, beautiful place.”
This time he did stop. Claudia lifted her head, blinking. The engine idled softly in the darkness; his face was dark, as he half-turned himself to look at her. He said after a moment, “Oh.” It was almost a whisper. Then he cleared his throat and started the truck again. “Oh. Well. Do you want me to keep it for you?”
Barbara leaned her head back against the seat and said, as if she had expected Neil to say that, “I’ll come and get it tomorrow. If you could—if you could just put it in some water…I hope it’s all right.”
“Trees are tough.”
“But this one is only a baby. It had to be a special tree,” she added again, her voice scratching, and he said, “I know how to take care of a tree. What—how are you going to do this?”
“We’ll do it,” she just said. He nodded.
“I believe it.”
We stopped for hamburgers at the nearest town, and pulled into Mrs. Takaota’s driveway an hour later. She came out with both the twins to watch Neil take Barbara’s bike out. Sara said cheerfully to us, “You’re in trouble.”
“I know,” Barbara said, climbing out. “Thanks, Neil.” She looked at her mother. “I’m sorry.”
Mrs. Takaota, shaking her head, smiled suddenly, I envied Barbara, as we backed out to go to Claudia’s, for having such a reasonable mother.
Mr. Gill kept saying, as Neil handed down Claudia’s bike, “You rode thirty miles up the mountain? All that way? Thirty miles?”
“We walked some of it,” Claudia said modestly, but I heard the sudden pride in her voice. She waved good-bye to us, and I was alone in the silence with Neil.
I was almost too tired and too content to talk. In the flick of street lights, Neil’s hair was melded smooth; his face beneath it was shadowed. He turned to me suddenly, as if he had felt me looking at him, and I said, “Did you have a good party Friday night?”
The Night Gift Page 4