The scouts were making so much noise I couldn’t stand it, so I started off, up the side of the canyon near our campsite. It wasn’t just that I wanted to read Zachary’s note. It was about time for me to be alone for a while. On a camping trip you’re falling over each other twenty-four hours a day. Most of the time it’s fine, but every so often you need to get out. You have to go off by yourself or you just stop being you, and after all I was just beginning to be me. Sometimes, like that evening at Palo Duro with the scouts yelling back and forth as if they owned the place and nobody else had a right to be there, I felt that doing nothing but be with the family was making me muffiny, though we’re not a muffiny family. So that’s not really what I mean. I guess what I mean is, I felt they were sort of holding me back, keeping me from growing up and being myself.
I only went a little way up the side of the canyon. I wasn’t even all the way out of sight and if anybody’d wanted to yell for me and remind me that I hadn’t finished my jobs they could have. But nobody bothered to.
I pulled Zachary’s letter out of my pocket and read it: “Dear Victoria,” (it sounded formal and kind of unlike Zachary) “I’m playing a game of hares and hounds with you and leaving notes at campgrounds all the way across the United States. Only I’m the one who’s hounding you, and it’s the hares who’re supposed to leave the trail. I’ll catch up with you in Laguna Beach if not before, or you’ll catch up with me, whichever way you want to look at it. We’ll sit on the beach and chew the fat and you can even talk your corny religion stuff if you want to. I forgive you. SWAK. ZACH.”
It wasn’t exactly what you might call a love letter, but it was nice and I liked it.
I was happy about Zachary’s leaving notes for me at campgrounds all across the country, and at the same time I felt so lonely I could have put my head down on my knees and bawled. It wasn’t the kind of loneliness that would have got any better if I’d gone back to the family; it would have just been worse. It was that kind. I wonder if John ever feels that way? John always seem so secure. If I had everything to be secure about that John has maybe I’d feel secure, too. On the other hand, maybe he doesn’t. He’s too darned bright really to feel secure all the time. And Suzy. Well, she’s just a kid, still. I never used to feel lonely this way when I was a kid in Thornhill. Thornhill was the whole world, and our big house on the hill was the top of the world, and that was all that mattered. Now I knew about rioting in Africa and strikes in Iran and Thornhill wasn’t even going to be home any more.
Suddenly I froze. There was something coming towards me along the little shelf on the canyon’s side where I was sitting. It wasn’t a hood and it wasn’t a bear. It was a skunk. He minced along, his tail straight up and swishing, his pretty little striped body moving closer and closer to me. I hardly breathed. If I was lonely sitting there on the side of the canyon you can imagine the kind of lonely I’d have been if I’d gone home sprayed with skunk juice. Mr. Rochester got squirted by a skunk once, and we had to buy gallons, literally gallons of tomato juice to bathe him in, and in rainy weather he still smelled for months. I could image just how popular I’d be with Zachary in Laguna if I smelled of skunk when my hair got wet.
The skunk swished right by me, practically stepping on my toes, as casual as though I were just something growing in the canyon. I waited till he was safely gone by me and had disappeared into the scrub. Then I high-tailed it back to camp.
Nobody seemed very pleased to see me. I might just as well have been sprayed. Why hadn’t I finished my job before wandering off like that? And why didn’t I tell anybody I was going, and where? That sort of stuff. From everybody, separately and all together.
Daddy said, “This camping trip’s a family affair, Vicky.”
John said, “If anybody goofs off it messes everything all up.”
I drew circles with my toe in the dusty sand of the camp ground. “I didn’t mean to goof off, but I’m not so hot on all this togetherness stuff any more.” I went over to the picnic table, took a tomato out of the food box, washed it, and started slicing it into the middle-sized pot where Mother’d been making the salad.
“I already have a tomato in the salad, Vicky,” Mother said. That was all she said, but she said it as though I’d stabbed her or something.
Daddy looked at me as though I were a patient and not one of his own children. “If this is the way Zachary affects you it’s just as well you’re not likely to see him again.”
“What’s Zachary got to do with it?” I shouted. I had to shout in order not to burst into tears. “I’ve been deteriorating all year, according to you.”
Mother came around the table then and put her arms around me, and then I just started to howl. Noisily. I couldn’t help it. Everybody came around and started patting me on the back and telling me it was all right, I was all right, I was a good kid, and I wished they’d just go away and leave me with Mother.
“Let’s eat,” Daddy said in a very casual voice. “Come on, Vicky, blow your nose and put some dinner inside you and you’ll feel better. Everybody loves you.”
Suzy stuck a hankie into my hand. I blew my nose and we were just about to sit down to dinner when I heard a squeak from Rob and a “shh” from Suzy and turned to see a young deer coming up to us. Suzy held out her hand and the deer nuzzled it; Suzy really has a way with animals. Then it started wandering around our picnic table looking for food. It was so delicate and so tame that it seemed like an animal out of a picture book instead of a real live animal in a canyon in Texas. As soon as I saw the deer I stopped feeling lonely and sad. You can’t feel that way when a beautiful young deer is trying to share your dinner. Suzy fed it lettuce and bread, and it nuzzled Rob’s shoulder and my ear and then kind of nibbled at Suzy to tell her it wanted something more to eat.
“Daddy!” Suzy cried. “Look! The deer loves me!” She held out her hand again and the deer delicately nibbled at a leaf of lettuce.
“She’s certainly tame,” Daddy said. “She must be used to being fed by campers and picnickers.”
Suzy’s face fell. “Do you think she’s this way with everybody?”
“Probably,” Daddy said. “I think animals feel pretty safe around campers.”
Suzy got a stubborn look. We all know that look. “Daddy, she’s just a young deer. She hasn’t had time to get to know lots of campers. And she loves us. Couldn’t we keep her?”
We all know Suzy well enough to know that the worst thing to do when she makes a request like this is to laugh. Daddy answered perfectly seriously, “How would you suggest doing that, Sue?”
“She could sit with me in the car. She wouldn’t be any trouble. Really she wouldn’t.”
“You know, Suzy,” Daddy explained, “a wild deer isn’t housebroken.”
“I could housebreak her. I know I could.”
“Look at it from her point of view,” Daddy suggested. “I think she’d be terribly unhappy being shut up in a car day after day after day.”
“But Daddy—”
“Think, honey. We’re just at the beginning of our trip. Think about it from the deer’s point of view.”
“Let’s eat dinner while it’s still hot,” Mother said. “Wash your hands, Suzy.”
Suzy went draggingly to the bowl of hot soapy water Mother keeps ready for handwashing.
“And no feeding the deer while we’re eating,” Daddy added.
Suzy washed her hands and sat down, looking longingly at the deer. The deer butted her gently to ask for food, but Daddy said firmly, “Not at the table, Suzy,” and after a few moments the deer wandered off in the direction of the girl scouts. I could see Suzy’s eyes fill with tears of disappointment, and her chest got all heave-ey, and she ate ferociously to control herself.
Just at that moment, the right moment, Rob called out, “A skunk! A skunk!” And there my skunk was, I’m sure it was my skunk, strolling nonchalantly right by us, its lovely bushy tail erect, its stripe white against its dark body, paying no more attention to u
s than it had to me. We might not have been sitting there eating stew. I didn’t freeze quite as solid as I had on the side of the canyon, but we all sat very still (even Suzy had no inclination to rush out to cuddle it) until it had disappeared in the bushes on the hill above the water spigot.
Shortly after we’d gone to bed a thunderstorm came up. We were pretty used to them by this time, and we’d been very lucky in having them come either before time to set up camp, or after we’d gone to bed, and got quite accustomed to having high winds batting at the tent. But this was the worst storm we’d had, with thunder reverberating from cliff wall to cliff wall, back and forth against the sides of the canyon, echoing and re-echoing, with a much noisier crashing than it would have made anywhere else. Under cover of all the sound and fury Suzy whispered to me, “Whatever did you go making that crack for, and hurting Mother and Daddy and all?”
“What crack?” I whispered back. I didn’t know what in thunder she was talking about.
“About Togetherness. Jeepers, Vicky! We’ve never gone on about Togetherness. Because we are together. We don’t have to make a Thing about it. We just are, and we always will be, just the way Mother and Grandfather are, even if they don’t see each other for months and months and months, and the way we are about Uncle Douglas and all.”
“You’re too young to understand,” I said.
Suzy’s three years younger than I am, and if there’s anything she hates, it’s being reminded of it. But all she said was, “All I know is that you hurt Mother and Daddy, and I think it was cheap.”
I began to get riled up. “If you don’t know what I mean, what about the way you and Maggy always used to yell get out of our room if I even stuck my toe across the doorsill?”
“That’s not the same thing at all. It didn’t hurt your feelings or anything, and you did the same thing if we tried to come in to Rob’s and your room. If Rob wasn’t around. He didn’t mind. Anyhow I think what you said was cheap, that’s all. Good night.” She rolled over, thunderstorm or no thunderstorm, and went to sleep. She could always do that. It made me furious.
Everybody else seemed to have gone to sleep, too, but the storm kept on keeping me awake and I was too hot. Not just around the collar. One thing about sleeping bags, it’s difficult to adjust their temperature. You have to have them either open or closed, on you or off, and that night it was too hot with them up and too cool with them down, though I knew we’d need them by morning.
I got to sleep at last, though, and was dreaming that I was out in a tiny boat in the very middle of the ocean, and that a blindingly bright sun was rising, when I realized that the lantern was on and shining against my eyes. I pulled myself out of sleep to see Mother sitting up in the sleeping bag, and Daddy standing in the tent door talking to someone. I had no idea how long we had been asleep, whether it was in the middle of the night or almost morning.
I heard a voice with a Texan accent drawl, “How long does it take you to break camp? In a hurry?”
Nine
“A little over half an hour,” Daddy said.
“Kin you manage by yourselves? I got to help evacuate the scouts.”
“We can manage,” Daddy said.
I leaned over the tailboard of the car. “What’s the matter?”
“Get dressed, Vicky,” Mother told me. “Quickly. It’s the storm and the ranger’s afraid of flooding. There’ve been hailstones and roofs ripped off houses a couple of miles from here.” She started shaking Suzy to wake her up. “As soon as you’re dressed, Vicky, help me get things back in the car.”
Daddy pulled on his jeans and sweatshirt right over his pajamas, and John must have done the same because Suzy and I weren’t quite dressed, moving in a daze of sleep, before Daddy and John started clearing out the tent. Rob was already in the car, and Daddy told Suzy to get in with him and finish dressing there.
I shoved my feet into my sandals and Mother and I grabbed everything up off the tent floor, rammed pajamas, towels, flashlights into the suitcase, and then I shoved it over the tailgate into the car. Then I ran splashing across the wet ground to the picnic table for the ice box, which was heavy because we had fresh ice in it.
“Can you carry it alone, Vicky?” Mother was taking down the laundry and the line.
I grunted in assent, and when I got back to the car Suzy and Rob helped me lift the ice box in. My clothes were soaking wet; my hair was dripping (of course I’d washed and set it the night before); and when I ran back to Mother I realized that I was no longer just splashing along on wet ground. The water was up to my ankles.
I forgot about just having set my hair.
Daddy and John had the tent rolled up. Mother had let the air out of the mattresses and bundled up the sleeping bags. We’d done everything so hurriedly that it all took up twice as much room as usual, but nobody was bothering about that.
“Everybody in,” Daddy said. “I’ll get you up out of the canyon and then John and I’ll come back and help with the scouts.”
John and I, dripping, climbed in. Suzy and Rob were sitting wide-eyed and quiet, which is of course very abnormal for both of them. They’re chattery kids. At any rate they were dry. Suzy rooted around and found a towel and handed it to me silently. It’s things like this that make me feel that Suzy will really end up being a doctor. I mopped at my hair so that water stopped trickling down my neck and gave the towel to John. Suzy found another one for Mother.
Daddy got in. The car wouldn’t start. We all sat there, tense and not saying anything, until the motor caught. The headlights poured across the rain, and great silver drops seemed to rush and quiver along the shafts of golden light. The bushes on the canyon side were bent down under the onslaught of wind and rain. The floor of the canyon had disappeared, covered with a wrinkled carpet of water. I wondered how fast it was rising, and sat a little closer to Suzy than usual. I didn’t like the idea that John and Daddy would be going back down into the canyon again. But we could hear shrieks from the scouts, and they would be climbing up the canyon on foot; they were little kids, only Suzy’s age, so I knew, I understood, that Daddy and John would have to go back down.
The station wagon splashed forwards; we could hear water swirling behind the wheels. Then we began to climb, and we pulled up out of the water. There was still a swishing sound as we hairpinned up the side of the canyon, but it was only the sound of wheels on wet ground, of rain and wind belting against the car; we had left the flooding campgrounds behind us. Daddy drove quickly, not speaking. His jaw was tight, and he held the steering wheel so that his knuckles showed white in the light from the dashboard. Mother sat beside him, absolutely still, looking ahead through the streaming windshield. The windshield wipers groaned as they tried to keep up with the rain.
The station to the little railway came before the ranger’s quarters. The station building where they sold postcards and soft drinks was shut and dark, but there was a shed-like roof over the platform, and in the center of the platform were benches which were still fairly dry.
Daddy stopped. “Everybody out. We’ll empty the car. Pile everything in the center of the platform.”
It didn’t take us long to get the junk out. Since Suzy and Rob were dry, Daddy had them stay under the shed, and we shoved things at them to pull in out of the wet.
“Okay,” Daddy said, “Mother and Vicky, put on coats so you won’t get cold in your wet things. John and I’ll be back as soon as we can.” He swung the car around. The light streamed over us, picking out Suzy and Rob sitting on the bulky pile of tent and sleeping bags, glinted silver against the railroad tracks, against the windows of the darkened station building, then pointed down the canyon. The platform seemed dark and wet and cold. I shivered and looked after the red tail lights as they moved down, down, further away from us. Then I felt my raincoat being draped around my shoulders.
“Let’s sing while we wait,” Mother said. “It won’t be long now till it gets light.”
I looked at my watch. It was almost five
o’clock. Mother started to sing, and I joined in with her rather feebly.
Mother laughed. “What a pathetic noise! Where’s my guitar? I want to check that it’s not under the tent or getting soaked, anyhow.” We found the guitar between the ice box and the wooden food box, fortunately not crushed, and Mother took it out of the case. “Okay, what’ll it be? You choose, Suzy.”
“I don’t feel like singing,” Suzy said in a tense voice. “I want to go back down to help Daddy and John.”
“So do we all, Suzy,” Mother said, “but we’d be more of a hindrance than a help. I imagine they want all the room in the car they can get.”
“But they may need medical help!” Suzy said desperately.
Mother laughed, but kind of with Suzy, not at her. “I think Daddy can take care of that, don’t you?”
I remembered something Daddy had said once when we were criticizing Maggy: most of us don’t believe that anybody close to us, anybody we love, can really die. We know that it can happen, but it happens to other people, not to us. But it had happened to Maggy, both her mother and father were dead, and this had come close enough to us so that all parents were forevermore in danger, and I knew that Suzy was thinking about this while Daddy and John were going back down into the flooding canyon. If they were going to be in danger she wanted to be there, too. Somehow you think that if you can just be there, you’ll make the danger go away. I know that’s how I felt.
Mother spoke quietly, reassuringly. “There isn’t anything to be worried about, children. The ranger’s evacuating the camp just as a precaution, before it has a chance to get dangerous. And it’ll be a lot easier to get those girl scouts out in the car than on foot. Now. It’ll make waiting a lot pleasanter if we play games or sing, and I choose to start with singing. Rob? Something gay.”
The Moon by Night Page 8