The Moon by Night

by Madeleine L'engle

  Montana was a state we really loved. We spent one night near a marvelous cave filled with stalactites and stalagmites. Rob really got a bang out of this. Then there were great, fertile, gently rolling plateaus, bounded in the distance by the snowy peaks of the Rockies. Everything was green and lush, with beautiful strip planting, and the farms all absolutely enormous in comparison to the little ones we were used to at home. There weren’t very many trees, which was surprising, but there were loads of cattle. Every once in a while we would see wild horses running along beside the road, their manes flying behind them, swift and beautiful. These were very exciting to all of us, and of course Suzy could hardly contain herself. The one thing in the world she wanted was to have a chance to tame one of them. I didn’t see this at all. The whole reason I loved them, the whole reason they made me shiver with their beauty, was that they were wild and free. Maybe feeling this way is what makes me more of a beachcomber type than somebody who’s planning to be a doctor, like Suzy.

  From Montana we went into Wyoming, to Yellowstone National Park. We knew Yellowstone would be crowded, and Daddy almost decided to skip it. If he had it would have changed the whole course of my life. Well. Maybe it’s a little early to say that. But Yellowstone made a lot of difference to me.

  I wasn’t feeling particularly glad about it, though, when Daddy said it would be too bad to miss Old Faithful, when we were so close. We drove in, a little before lunch, and wandered around and around looking for a campsite. At the big parks you had to get there before lunch at the latest if you wanted to get a campsite, and we began to think even that was too late at Yellowstone, when we finally saw some people driving away, down at the far end of the camping section, and slid into their place, with a couple of cars behind us still looking for sites. We were in a new section of campground that had just been opened that spring, and that, as recently as a couple of months before, had been bears’ territory. As far as the bears were concerned, it was still their territory. While we were setting up camp two large brown bears lumbered along the road right by us, looked inquisitively in the car windows, then methodically went through the supposedly bear proof garbage containers across the road. I was glad we weren’t camped right by one of the garbage containers. I’m not Suzy.

  We were very close to whoever was on our right; the campsites at Yellowstone weren’t made for privacy. We saw three pair of bathing trunks out on a line, and there was a very weatherworn tent and a beat-up old grey car with a New York license plate. We were just getting settled when three kids, boys, came sauntering up and took their trunks from the line. They looked over at us, saw that John was about their age, and came over to say hello.

  They were brothers, two straw-colored blonds, and one with red hair, not dark red like John and Uncle Douglas, but bright orange red. I figured he was probably the youngest, but you couldn’t really tell, except that from something they said I thought the other two, Don and Steve, were in college, and Andy still had another year to go. Their last name was Ford, and they were camping by themselves. No parents or anything with them. Just on their own. I was very impressed. But they seemed kind of impressed that John was going to M.I.T.

  Suddenly Steve said, “Cave, kids, watch it, here comes the suicide blonde.”

  “Hunh?” Suzy asked.

  “Dyed by her own hand,” Andy said, and the three of them dived into their tent and vanished into the shadows.

  I looked around and an enormous woman was bearing down on us. She must have weighed two hundred pounds, and she had on bright red slacks that were too tight, an orange shirt, and the brightest yellow hair I’ve ever seen. But she was as friendly as could be. As a matter of fact, she didn’t give anyone a chance to get a word in edgewise.

  “Hi, you nice big family,” she started out. “My, but campers are so friendly, don’t you think so? Those are the nicest boys right by you. You’ll just love them. My girls all have crushes on them.” She kind of batted her eyelashes and leered at me. “You will, too, so watch yourself, cutie-pie, watch yourself.” I thought of the boys right inside their tent hearing every word, and writhed, but she went right on. “Joe’s gone off fishing, my husband, Joe, that’s his boss Joe’s gone with, they were gone all day yesterday, Joe went with his boss, and today the girls wanted to go fishing, too, so they went with Joe and his boss, and I thought I’d write some letters, my mother-in-law gets so worried, and I didn’t have any writing paper, so I wondered if I could give you a quarter for a couple of pieces of paper … . Oh, thank you, but can’t I give you something for it? … I know what, I’ll bring the kiddies some ice cream … . Well … you’d better watch out for bears here. The rangers say they’re nastier this year than they’ve ever been before. This is our fourth year here and we always used to try to get close enough to a bear to take a picture. Well, like I said, Joe and his boss went fishing, Joe took the car, and I didn’t want to leave the food on the table, so I put it in the tent. The girls had picked up a lot of children and they were playing charades, and I was playing right along with them, like a dumbbell, except for my oldest girl, she was lying in the tent reading, Jo-Bette’s thirteen, all five of my girls are named after their Daddy, Jo-Bette, Jo-an, Jo-Belle, Jo-Blanche, Jo-Lee. And a bear went after the food right into the tent with Jo-Bette, and I was so scared I picked her right up and said, ‘Run, Jo-Bette, run!’ and all the time I was holding her tight and almost throwing her at the bear. Well, we couldn’t get that bear out of the tent. One man hit at it with a hatchet, but it wouldn’t budge. Another man threw a couple of big firecrackers at it, but it didn’t even act like it heard them. All the men came running because I was screaming so. ‘Mother,’ Jo-Bette said, real mad at me, ‘you kept telling me to run and how could I run with you throwing me right at the bear?’”

  We took everything she said with a whole keg of salt. I can’t imagine Daddy hitting at a bear with a hatchet, or throwing a firecracker at it. As soon as she’d gone the boys came out of their tent, wearing trunks.

  “There are more darned fools around here,” Don, the oldest, said. “One of her kids is going to get hurt by a bear, and she’s not even going to understand why.”

  “They have to drive in,” Steve said impatiently. “You’d think they could read the warnings. After all, if she can write a letter she ought to be able to read.”

  Don laughed. “Doesn’t always follow. About a hundred and fifty people have to be treated for bear wounds every summer, and it’s all their own fault. They think bears are just too cute for words and will eat right out of their hands like pets. You can’t tell ’em a million times that bears are wild animals, not domesticated, and they won’t believe you.”

  Steve started to lean against the hood of their car, then jerked away because the sun had made it so hot. “Last night this girl across the road went to bed with a chocolate bar and only ate half of it. So a bear smelled it and went right into the tent after the chocolate.”

  “Not that we want to scare you, or anything,” Don said. “Just a friendly warning. A man where you’re camped now had an unopened carton of milk in his tent. One of the bears ripped a neat little hole in the tent with his claws, reached in, got the carton of milk, very carefully sliced off the top, and drank it. They’re the biggest gluttons you’ll ever find. The main thing is never to leave a crumb in the tent, and to shut your car up tight at night. We’re off for a swim. See you later.”

  We shut the car up tight and went sightseeing.

  I seem to have felt about lots of the places we visited that they belonged on another planet, but Yellowstone really did. If you could take away the trees and the few green patches, the surface of the earth would look like a Bonestell painting of Mercury, rust and yellow crust, boiling waters, some blue, some an emerald green from the yellow algae. The weirdest was a pool of bubbling clay, pink and ivory and grey, oozily gurgling.

  When we got back to the tent the boys were cooking their dinner, hamburgers, which was exactly what we were having that night. A large b
ear was hovering over the boys, and Andy, who was the one who seemed to talk the least, kept banging two tin plates in the bear’s face, and then it would retreat a few inches.

  The minute our hamburgers began to send up their delightful aroma the bear moved away from the boys and came over to us, so Mother grabbed two tin plates and whacked them together, and Andy came over with his tin plates and managed to drive the bear across the road. But at Yellowstone you never just sat down and relaxed. You were always looking around for bears.

  The boys walked over to the campfire program with us. Steve and Don walked with John and talked college. Don went to Oberlin and Steve to Swarthmore, and one of the things they’d been doing on their trip was give Andy a chance to look over some colleges.

  Andy fell into step by me, but he wasn’t very talkative. He did point out a mule deer for Suzy. But mostly he didn’t say anything. John said afterwards to me, “Why didn’t you say something to Andy? I mean the whole time we were waiting for the program to begin you just sat there, like a bump on a log.”

  “He didn’t seem to want to talk.”

  “You yakked enough with that dumb Zachary. Couldn’t you have asked him a few questions or something?”

  “It didn’t seem necessary.” I tried to sound lofty. But it was true. I had this funny feeling with Andy that you didn’t have to talk all the time. It was perfectly all right just to sit and look around and appreciate things. Anyhow, the others talked enough for Andy and me, and I listened to them, and I think he did, too. It was all right when they talked about college and New York and jazz like that, but I didn’t like it when Don told about how some people just won’t heed the warnings to stay on the wooden paths. The crust of the earth at Yellowstone is so thin that if you step on it you’ll go right through into boiling water, but every once in a while somebody’ll forget to watch a child, and the child will step off the path, and get scalded. To death. I think they were warning us about Rob. But they needn’t have. Mother never let go his hand while we were wandering around. What with people being hurt by bears and scalded by boiling water I didn’t feel too happy about Yellowstone.

  The next morning we all took showers—pay ones again—and then went to look for geysers. We didn’t see the Ford boys, though their tent was still there, and their bathing trunks hanging out on the line. In the afternoon we saw Andy at Clepsydia Geyser, and just as we said “hello” the geyser began bursting forth, shooting up out of four holes simultaneously. Andy and the ranger who was standing with him there got very excited. The ranger told us that we were seeing the geyser in its wild stage; this was only the fifth time this year it had come shooting up that way, and very few tourists ever see it.

  When Clepsydia had stopped spurting Andy turned to me and said, “How about ditching your family and coming to Great Fountain with me? It’ll mean just sitting and waiting because it doesn’t spout on time like Old Faithful. Most people don’t have the patience to wait for it, but Don and Steve saw it last year, and it’s supposed to be the most spectacular of all the geysers, so I’m determined to see it.”

  “I’d love to,” I said.

  Andy turned to Daddy. “Okay if I kidnap Vicky for the afternoon? I don’t think Suzy and Rob’d be interested in sitting around waiting for Great Fountain.”

  He didn’t mention John, and Daddy said it was okay, he thought they’d all go for a swim.

  Andy and I set off. Again we didn’t say anything, and again it didn’t seem necessary. I had the funniest feeling of being comfortable with Andy. There wasn’t anything comfortable about Zachary. He was exciting and scary and I was always a little afraid he’d stop liking me. But Andy didn’t say anything about liking me or not liking me. I couldn’t even tell whether he did or not. It didn’t seem to matter. I just felt that while he was around everything was okay.

  Suddenly he grabbed my arm and said, “HEY!” in a loud, startled voice. I looked around and there was a little kid with a frizzy permanent holding out half a sandwich to a bear.

  Eighteen

  “It’s that dratted Jo-Lee,” Andy said, and started to run towards her. The bear reached for the sandwich and grabbed Jo-Lee at the same time, and the kid began to shriek. A fat man standing near with a cigar in his mouth began to shout and jump up and down. He looked like the American in the movie about the Two Kingstons, and he swotted ineffectually at the bear. People came running, and Jo-Lee shrieked louder and louder, and I could see that the bear had her by the arm.

  Andy sprinted to the fat man, grabbed the lighted cigar from his mouth, and held the glowing end to the bear’s nose. The bear dropped Jo-Lee and rubbed his nose in a surprised way. Then he turned and waddled off.

  Jo-Lee kept on howling and Andy looked at her arm. A ranger came hurrying over, and Andy said, “It’s just a scratch. Not too bad a one. She was feeding the bear, the dumb kid, after all we’ve told her.”

  “She your sister?” the ranger asked.

  Andy looked horrified at the thought, and explained that Jo-Lee belonged to a family camping nearby. The ranger wanted us to come along with him to the first aid station, and then wanted Andy to look up Jo-Lee’s mother.

  “What’re you doing wandering about alone, anyhow?” Andy asker her crossly.

  Jo-Lee just howled. She made an ugly face when she cried and even though she was a little kid, about Rob’s age, you didn’t want to pick her up and comfort her. You wanted to smack her bottom. At least I did.

  “This is their fourth year here, for crying out loud,” Andy said indignantly to the ranger. “Some people just never learn. Stop crying, Jo-Lee. You’re okay. And if you dare ever go off by yourself this way again I’m going to wallop you. Somebody has to.”

  “That was quick thinking about the cigar, son,” the ranger said, taking Jo-Lee by the hand and dragging her down the path.

  “It wasn’t my idea,” Andy explained. “I read about somebody doing it once in Central Park Zoo when a bear reached through the bars and grabbed a kid who was teasing it. I can tell you I was glad it really worked.”

  Jo-Lee made Andy go in with her to the first aid station, so the ranger and I went off to find the rest of the family. The kids were all scattered somewhere, and Joe was probably off fishing with his boss again, but the mother was sound asleep in her tent, with a carton of orange juice beside her. The ranger took the orange juice and chucked it into one of the garbage cans in a kind of fury. Then we wakened the mother and took her back to the first aid station. She gabbled so all the way we never had a chance really to explain what had happened. We left her with Jo-Lee, who started to howl again the minute she saw her mother, and Andy said, “Come on, Vicky,” and grabbed my hand and we set off for Great Fountain.

  “If that darned kid’s made us miss it I will wallop her. See if I don’t.” Then he didn’t say anything and we half ran, half walked down the path leading to Great Fountain. After a while he growled, “I didn’t mean to seem brutal with that kid, but I just don’t have any patience with deliberate stupidity. Anybody with the intelligence of a three year old ought to be able to understand that the warnings they give you when you come into the park mean just what they say.” Then he snapped his jaws closed again.

  When we got to Great Fountain there wasn’t any sign of activity. “She spouts once a day, about,” Andy said, “but there isn’t any regularity at all.” He asked around, and there were a couple of people who’d been waiting there since morning, so at least we hadn’t missed anything. Andy led me over to a patch of grass away from the others and we sat down.

  “We can see from here if anything starts,” Andy said. “I don’t feel like getting into conversations with anybody.”

  I just nodded and we sat there. The sun was warm, but not too hot, just vital and comforting. Andy started to whistle. The melody was familiar and at first it seemed to me that it was Zachary’s awful song. I thought,—Oh, no, not you, Andy! Then I realized that it wasn’t Zachary’s song at all, but Daddy’s “Tumbling along with the tumblin
g tumbleweed,” and for some reason the fact that this was what Andy was whistling made me intensely happy. He lay back on his elbows, his lips pursed out in his whistle, and I tried to look at him out of the corner of my eye so he wouldn’t realize I was doing it. His face was all freckled with the freckles mixing in with his tan. His eyes were a very bright blue. He had on chino shorts and a blue cotton shirt and he looked and acted about as different from Zachary as could possibly be. I certainly couldn’t imagine Andy in a black leather jacket.

  Zachary’s poem was back in the tent. I’d worn it out too much to keep it in the pocket of my Bermudas. I didn’t need to look at it.

  They’re rioting in Africa,

  They’re starving in Spain.

  When will I see

  My Vicky bird again?

  You couldn’t possibly, not possibly, imagine Andy writing anybody anything like that.

  “What I like about you, Vicky,” Andy said so suddenly that I jumped, “is that you don’t talk all the time the way most girls do. It’s not that I have anything against talking. In fact I propose to do a good deal of talking while we’re waiting for Great Fountain. We may have a long wait. Do you mind?”

  “No,” I said. I thought I probably should have said something more, but I was kind of waiting around to see what Andy was going to talk about.

  “I just don’t like to talk,” he said, “unless I have a reason. I mean there’s no point yakking just to see if your jaw’s still hinged. When I talk I want to find out about things. Or impart useful information.” He grinned. “Did you know Yellowstone’s the only other place besides Iceland and New Zealand that has geysers?”

  “Nope. Live and learn,” I said.

  “I have a summer project in science for my school, and I’m doing it on geysers. They load us down with all this summer homework. It’s a good school, though.”