Summerland

by Michael Chabon

  Taking off the glasses, Ethan turned them over in his hands, feeling a faint pulse in the thin wire that veined them. He went over to his father's dresser and rummaged around in the top drawer until he found a thin black case. In it lay a pair of gold-wire granny glasses that had belonged to the late Dr. Feld. He took them tenderly out and laid them on the dresser, and replaced them with Rob Padfoot's dark glasses, which just fit. He snapped the case shut and started out of the bedroom, with something nagging at his conscience. He turned around and looked back at the deserted bedroom. The wallet. Mr. Feld, Ethan knew, hated going anywhere without his wallet in his back pocket. It was not the cash or the credit cards or the photos it contained, nor the wallet itself, a battered hunk of sweat-darkened cowhide. Actually, Ethan was not really sure what the big deal about the wallet was. But many times his father had delayed their departure from the house, for the most urgent appointments or a simple walk in the woods, until he tracked it down. "I just feel kind of naked without it," he would explain. Ethan went back and stuffed the wallet into his duffel. Then he went back down to his homemade zeppelin. It floated above the driveway, tethered by the inflation hose (something Mr. Feld hated to see—it damaged the hose) just about where he had left it. Cinquefoil was nowhere to be seen.

  There was a low bubbling sound, followed by a soft, sweet twittering. It was almost like the sound of one of those novelty whistles, shaped like a bird on a branch, that you fill with water. And then the makeshift airship eased forward a few feet and came to a stop. A moment later Cinquefoil's head appeared in the driver's window.

  "Ya'll have ta test it," he said. "I can't reach the pedal and the wheel at the same time. What's more I'm a might—uneasy—in the midsta all this steel. Steel ain't a stuff we ferishers are all that partial ta."

  Ethan found an empty wooden cable spool and used it to climb up into the car. He tossed in his duffel bag. Just before he climbed in along with it, he remembered his stick. He didn't think it was such a hot idea, somehow, to travel without it. It was not much of a weapon, really. But it had served him well once. He got down from the spool.

  "Where ya going?" Cinquefoil said.

  Ethan went over to the old Schwinn and grabbed the stick, and once again found that there was a strange comfort in holding it. He showed it to Cinquefoil, who looked at it carefully, with his little head tilted to one side.

  "Ah," he said. "Yer bit o' woundwood."

  "Woundwood?"

  "Woundwood is the stuff that forms around a gall," Cinquefoil said. "That's a splinter o' the Lodgepole itself, rube. That's a rare thing ta have, a real piece o' the Lodgepole. Ya'll wanta hold onta that. They don't come loose too easy. You might almost say wound–wood is choosy about who it lets get a piece o' itself." He looked at Ethan, and scratched his head. "Mebbe there's something in ya after all"

  "I don't know why," Ethan said, "but when I hold it—it feels—just really holdable."

  "It might make ya a fine bat someday."

  "A bat," Ethan said, turning the stick over in his hand. Though scarred and knotted, it was perfectly straight. It had never before occurred to Ethan that a baseball bat started out as a piece of some tree.

  "The Lodgepole is a ash tree," Cinquefoil explained. "It's the Ash o' Ashes."

  "And baseball bats are—is that right?—made of ashwood?"

  "Always. From the start o' the game until now. And why would that be, da ya imagine?"

  "Why," Ethan repeated, uncertain.

  "Yes, why. Don't ya ever wonder why, little reuben?" Cinquefoil sank back into the interior of the car, then reappeared. "Don't forget yer mitt, neither."

  "My mitt?"

  "It's a long journey we're contemplating. There'll be ample time along the way ta work on yer catching game."

  Ethan retrieved the mitt, and then, carrying it and the unborn bat, he climbed up once more onto the wooden spool and pulled himself into the station wagon. He put his hands on the wheel. Cinquefoil stood on the passenger's seat and held onto the dashboard, looking eager as a dog.

  "Touch the pedal," Cinquefoil said.

  Ethan reached out with his right foot. There was nothing there.

  "I can't reach the pedals," he said.

  "Move the seat forward."

  Ethan shifted his seat until his chest nearly touched the steering wheel. Now he could hit the gas with his right toes.

  With the same watery chirping they glided forward twenty feet or so, maybe a little too quickly.

  "Can ya see through the foreglass, there?"

  "Yeah."

  "Then ya must know we're about ta hit the glass barn."

  Ethan moved his foot to the brake, hoping that it too was under a grammer. The car came shuddering to a stop when the front bumper was three inches from smashing into a corner of the packing shed.

  "Oops," Ethan said. "Sorry."

  "Just…what are the words? 'Back her up.'"

  "Back her up."

  "Put the machine inta ree-verse."

  Ethan found the red R on the shift knob and tried to drag the gearshift over, right, and toward the back of the car. It wouldn't go.

  "The clutch," Cinquefoil said. "Ferisher machines don't even have such things. But fer some reason I thought ya'd find it simpler."

  "I'm only eleven," Ethan said.

  "Don't remind me," said Cinquefoil.

  Ethan got it into reverse, and gave the wheel a spin. Skid backed around to the right, and then with another twist, and a shift into first gear, lurched forward and down the driveway to the road. They were still only a few feet above the ground.

  "I need loft," Ethan said.

  "The radio."

  Ethan switched on the radio. He touched the volume knob and looked at Cinquefoil, who nodded. Slowly he twisted the knob, clockwise, and Skid ascended, creaking and shuddering, into the sky.

  "Okay," Ethan said. "We're up."

  "We seem ta be," Cinquefoil remarked.

  Ethan took her up until he was twice as high as the highest trees. Then he turned toward the Rideout place. The ferisher drive burbled and rang like rain in the gutters. A breeze filled Ethan's ears.

  "We call her Skidbladnir," he said. "My dad and me. It's a Scandinavian name."

  "What does it mean?" Cinquefoil said." 'Ugly as a grayling's hind parts?'"

  "It was a flying ship that belonged to the god Frey," Ethan said. "In Norse mythology. A huge, beautiful ship, so cleverly made that you could fold it up and stick it in your pocket."

  "A jesting name, then," Cinquefoil said. "Like calling a bald man Curly."

  "I guess so. Actually mostly we just call her Skid."

  Cinquefoil nodded. "If I were ta give this craft a name, it would definitely be—" and then he uttered a series of weird syllables, full of k's and g's and x's. Something like Karggruxragakkurgorok.

  "What language is that?"

  "Old Fatidic."

  "What's it mean?"

  "It means, 'Ugly as a grayling's hind parts.'"

  Ten minutes after leaving the house on the hill, they were hovering over the Rideout compound. Jennifer T. and Thor Wignutt were waiting for him in the dusk, next to a small mountain of gear.

  "What the heck is that thing?" she called up to Ethan.

  "I made it," said Ethan. "Shut up."

  He dialed down the radio volume, and eased the car onto a large bald patch in the center of the Rideouts' ragged yard. As they were landing, the twins, Darrin and Dirk, came running out one of the side houses, along with some of their young cousins. They stood gaping at the airship, except for Dirk, who tried to hit it with a brick. His shot went wide, and then his older sister gave him a smack on the back of the head. After that Dirk just stood there gaping, too. Uncle Mo and Aunt Shambleau came out onto their porch to see. But their eyes were not on the aged Swedish automobile that was descending from the heavens onto their weeds. They were looking at the ferisher.

  "Can they see you?" Ethan asked Cinquefoil in a whisper.

  "I di
dn't see no point in wasting a grammer on them," Cinquefoil said. "No one ever believes a Rideout. Rideouts don't even believe their own selves."

  "Can everybody see you? I mean, if you don't work a grammer on them?"

  Cinquefoil smacked him on the thigh. "Don't ya read? Don't children read anymore?"

  "I read!"

  "And ya mean, ya don't know who we let see us and who we never, ever do?"

  "You only let people see you who believe in you already," Ethan said.

  "That's the very one!" cried Aunt Shambleau. "Naked as a fish!"

  "Naked as a fish!" said little Dirk Rideout, and his brother said, "Naked! Naked!"

  "You kids get back in the house and look at television," Aunt Shambleau said. The twins and their cousins just stood there. Aunt Shambleau reached for her cataract glasses and made as if to take them off. The little cousins took a step backward. She started to slide the big wraparounds slowly down the bridge of her nose. The Rideout cousins all ran, screaming and yelling, back into the cabin they'd come out of. Nobody actually knew what would happen next if Aunt Shambleau ever took off her glasses. But clearly it would not be something good.

  Ethan got out of the car and Jennifer T. brought Thor over.

  "They got my dad," Ethan said. "Coyote did. This guy Rob Padfoot came and took him. Here." He crouched down and unzipped the duffel, taking out the glasses case. He took out Padfoot's glasses and passed them to Jennifer T. "Put these on."

  Jennifer T. slipped on Padfoot's glasses. She started, and ducked her head. Her mouth opened.

  "Huh," she said.

  "What is it? What do you see?" Thor said.

  "I see Mr. Feld," Jennifer T. said. "He's wearing a blindfold. He's sitting up."

  "He's sitting up?" Ethan said. He wanted to see that.

  "He's talking. He's doing that pointing thing he does when he's explaining stuff."

  Ethan wondered what his father could possibly be explaining to his captors. He took the glasses back from Jennifer T. and put them on. She was right; Padfoot was clearly on the receiving end of a lecture from Mr. Feld, who was pointing at electrons or air molecules or whatever invisibly fine thing was the subject of his talk. It made Ethan's heart ache to see his dad patiently trying to enlighten Rob Padfoot on some score.

  "Why did he—why would Coyote take your dad?" Jennifer T. said.

  "Maybe he's going to make an airship?"

  "Oh, Coyote loves contrivances," Cinquefoil said. "He made the very first one."

  "The net," Thor said. It was his turn with the dark glasses; he had taken off his own horn-rims to try them out.

  "That's right." Cinquefoil studied him, frowning.

  "How did you know that, Thor?" Ethan said. "Did Jennifer T. explain this to you?"

  "I tried," she said. "It turned out that I don't actually understand what's going on."

  "But do you get it about all this 'scampering' and 'leaping' stuff, Thor?"

  "Of course," Thor said, in his most reasonable TW03 voice, still peering into the lenses of Padfoot's glasses. "There is an underlying structure to the universe. This structure takes the form of a quantum indeterminacy tree. Apparently there are certain individuals who know how to locate the underlying structural elements and follow them for short distances. When it's done within a single dimension of reality, it's called scampering. When the travel is interdimensional, it's a leap.''

  It was hard to know what to say to this. Nobody spoke for a moment. Thor took off the dark glasses and passed them back to Ethan, who returned them to their case.

  "He's talking about you," Thor said.

  "Huh? How can you tell?"

  "I read his lips. He said, 'Ethan.' He said, 'my son.'"

  Tears burned Ethan's eyes. He brushed them away.

  "Thor," Ethan said. "Do you think you can do it? Get us over from here to the Winterlands, or wherever this Coyote guy has taken my dad?"

  Thor didn't answer right away. He looked at Ethan, his tiny brown eyes blinking furiously between the lenses of his glasses. He scratched his right calf with the toe of his left foot. For the first time Ethan noticed that Thor was wearing only his pajamas and a pair of track shoes. They were the kind of pajamas that Ethan's father wore, with a top that buttoned like a shirt, patterned with old-fashioned ballplayers in knickers. The silence went on for an uncomfortably long time. It was one of those moments when Thor seemed to realize that at the bottom of it all he was just a little kid and not a synthetic human. Such moments didn't happen very often, and usually just as he was about to carry something a little too far.

  "It sounds like something I ought to be able to do," he said at last. "Doesn't it?"

  They got to work loading what they could into the back of the station wagon. The rest had to go under their feet and on the backseat. They took three sleeping bags and a small tent, a cooler filled with sandwiches (mostly liverwurst, alas), two jugs of water, a camp stove, several flashlights, some rope, Jennifer T.'s baseball glove, and a small duffel stuffed with Jennifer T.'s clothes. She took along three Roosters jerseys and three caps, since Ethan had forgotten his, and Thor had only the pajamas and running shoes.

  "Were you asleep?" Ethan asked him as they jammed the sleeping bags in around the gas regulator in the trunk. "Why are you wearing pajamas?"

  "My mother makes me go to bed at six-thirty," he said. "Five-thirty in the wintertime."

  "I'm sorry," Jennifer T. said. "I forgot to tell him to pack a bag. I was kind of freaking out about his mother hearing us."

  "She would have come after us with the Big Strap," Thor said. "I would rather live in my pajamas."

  Mo Rideout pitched in with the loading, but Aunt Shambleau seemed unable to move. She just sat on the top step of the porch, watching Cinquefoil as he stood, on Skid's front bumper, trying to work a grammer that would make the engine disappear, so they could use the space up front for cargo. He mumbled and muttered, waving his arms around, then cursed loudly and stomped his foot. Each time he stomped it the car creaked loudly. It was hard to believe a little foot like that could stomp so hard.

  "It ain't no use," he said, giving up. "I was trying ta work a housekeeping grammer. It's a kind o' vanishing spell, so I hoped…but you aren't supposed ta twist a grammer so hard. Not to mention with that old gray she-reuben staring a pair o' holes in my head…"

  "It's all right," Ethan said. "We might want to actually drive it at some point."

  When everything was loaded, Uncle Mo came over and stood by the children.

  "I'd like to come with you," he said. "There ought to be an adult present. I have valuable skills to offer."

  Cinquefoil shook his head.

  "Ya wunnit survive the crossing."

  "Too old?"

  "The Maker gave ya a fine physique, Morris 'Chief Rideout. If ya had treated it more kindly, maybe it still, even at yer age, could carry ya through. I know the dearest wish o' your heart since ya was a young reuben has been ta see the Summerlands again. And at one time, we had high hopes o' seeing ya there, not ta mention that poor, fine Okawa reuben. Now, that boy had the hero stuff."

  Uncle Mo nodded. Tears stood in his eyes. He rummaged in the hip pocket of his shiny blue blazer. Then he handed his grandniece a small, fat book, about the size of a pocket dictionary, maybe a little bigger. It was covered in thick cardboard with a matte-silk finish, cracked and torn at the corners. The page edges had been rubbed by use and reuse until they were soft and mossy to the touch. The spine was badly buckled. On the front a group of red-cheeked boys sat at the feet of a tall, ghostly man in a feathered headdress.

  "The Wa-He-Ta Brave's Official Tribe Handbook" Ethan read. "What's a Wa-He-Ta Brave?"

  "It was an outfit they used to have, sorta like the Boy Scouts," Uncle Mo said. "Mostly on the West Coast. It folded years ago."

  Ethan came to look at it over Jennifer T.'s shoulder as he flipped through the pages. Across the tops of the pages ran chapter titles such as "Wa-He-Ta Fieldcraft," "Wa-He-Ta Tribal Spirit,
" and "The Law of Wa-He-Ta."

  "What's Wa-He-Ta mean?" Jennifer T. said.

  Uncle Mo looked embarrassed. "Oh," he said. "They made up a bogus Indian language. There's a glossary at the back. The whole thing was bogus. They just made up all that Wa-He-Ta stuff in there, there never was such a tribe. Anyway, in the little alphabet they cooked up, it works out to W-H-T or Wonder, Hopefulness, and Trust. The Threefold Lore, they called it. All that's nonsense, like I say. But there's a lot of actual woods lore in that book, things I learned about fishing and firebuilding and tracking an animal that I still use from time to time today. Also engine repair, radio craft, even shooting firearms. I just thought you might need it."

  "Thanks, Uncle Mo," said Jennifer T. When she got into the car, she put the book into Skid's glove compartment, then took hold of the wheel. She was the best choice for pilot, since she had not only flown Victoria Jean but had also secretly driven her father's car. Ethan started to climb in alongside her.

  "I'm the Home Run King o' Three Worlds," Cinquefoil said. "I don't take the rear seat ta nobody." So Ethan got into the back with Thor. As Thor squeezed in behind the passenger seat, which Cinquefoil was holding aside, Ethan thought he saw the ferisher chief flinch slightly. Ethan wondered if Thor gave off some smell that the ferisher found objectionable. Human beings had certainly made the same complaint about Thor from time to time.

  At the last instant Aunt Shambleau seemed to shake off her funk. She came lumbering over to the car and peered in at Cinquefoil.

  "I love you," she told him. "I've loved you all my life from the moment I saw you, on the third day of August, 1944."

  Cinquefoil gazed levelly at her, listening, his ageless face expressionless, his gaze hooded.

  "I used to dream about you," she went on. "Every night for a long, long time."

  Now Cinquefoil's expression softened, and he reached up to touch her wrinkled cheek with one of his small, rough hands. He lifted her black glasses. The eyes behind were large, brown, and surprisingly tender.

  "They wasn't all dreams, my dear," Cinquefoil said.

  Aunt Shambleau stared a moment, then blushed. The glasses fell back into place on her nose and she pulled away from the car.