Chasing Redbird (12 page)

“Trail
thing
? It's not a trail
thing
. It's
my
trail. Aunt Jessie would have let me have a horse.”

That
was the wrong thing to say. My mother burst into tears, and my father gave me a scathing look.
“No horse,”
he said.

I was desperate, and so I did a desperate thing. I put up a notice in Mrs. Flint's store:

WANTED: CHEAP HORSE. NEED DESPERATELY.

PLEASE PHONE Z. TAYLOR.

I didn't have any money for a horse, not even a cheap horse. The reason I put that sign up was because I hoped Jake would see it. I hoped he would bring me a horse, and I didn't care if he had to
steal
it.

N
othing was going right. It was as if the world were in cahoots with my father, who thought I wouldn't finish the trail.

The very day I'd put the sign up at Mrs. Flint's, I was clearing the trail and, after a few hours' work, noticed a brighter patch ahead. The tunnel of woods known as Maiden's Walk was coming to an end. Weary of being closed in among the dark trees, I stopped clearing and walked ahead through the dead branches and rotting leaves to see what I could look forward to in the days ahead.

As I came through the last bank of trees, I sucked in my breath. Stretching before me was a clearing, about two hundred feet across: a meadow of tall grass and wildflowers, and beyond, the forest continued. This meadow might have been a sweet sight, but it wasn't, for surrounding it was a sturdy barbed-wire fence.

A
fence?
On
my
trail? I surveyed the meadow. No sign of any animals: no cows or horses or goats. It didn't even occur to me to continue the trail
around
the meadow. I was sure the trail had originally continued straight on, and for some reason, it was important to stay on that track. I headed back, planning my strategy.

At home, Dad handed me a piece of paper. “Zinny, what's the meaning of this?” It was the sign I'd put up at Mrs. Flint's, advertising for a horse. “Where do you expect to get the money to pay for this ‘cheap' horse?”

“I could earn it,” I said.

“How?”

“Doing jobs for people.”

“When?”

“Whenever—”

“So you'll give up working on the trail in order to do these jobs?”

I stuffed the paper in my pocket. “No,” I said. “No, I will not. Forget the stupid horse, then. I'll just wear out my stupid legs.”

All I could think of was that I hoped Jake had seen the sign before Dad removed it.

The next day, I rummaged through the toolshed, looking for a pair of wire cutters. It was a mess in there, with scythes, hoes, hatchets, and pitchforks tilting helter-skelter among cobwebbed planks. Strewn across the wooden bench were plastic tubs of nails, screws, nuts, and bolts; screwdrivers and pliers and hammers; empty oil cans and coffee cans; and tangled loops of twine. I rummaged through this hodgepodge, burrowing under piles of metal, sending several spiders and a stunned mouse scurrying.

Seeing the coffee cans reminded me of the one I'd put the snake in. I shook a few of the cans, to see if any tools were stuffed inside. One can rattled and clanked. Inside were dozens of coins, or at least I thought they were coins, but when I dumped them out, I saw that they weren't real coins, but tokens. Large ones, small ones, silvery, brassy. Some were plain, and some had designs or lettering. There was a cow on one, a bird on another. One said
Lucky
and another said
Free.

They reminded me of the medallion I'd found, but there were none exactly like the medallion. In the midst of sifting through them, I got that wretched chilling feeling again, a dark, foreboding sense of something terrible happening all around me. I stuffed the tokens back into the can, and shoved it back where I'd found it.

As I headed back up the trail, Uncle Nate's voice scared the living daylights out of me. I felt as if I'd been caught—but at what? I'd only taken the wire cutters. I'd bring them back.

“Hey!” he called. “Don't like you being on that trail!”

“Why not?”

“Don't think you should be up there alone. Don't know what you'll run into. No place for a girl.”

That
was the wrong thing for him to say. “You mean it would be okay for a boy to be up there, but not me?”

He chewed on his lip. “Snakes up there—”

“Haven't seen any—lately. Anything else up there I might run into?” And then, I don't know what made me say this, but I added, “Anybody's sweetheart?”

“Shoot!” he said, but he blushed and pushed the toe of his boot into the dirt. “Your Aunt Jessie wouldn't like you going up there, that's all.”

I had a strange reaction to this. I almost said,
So what
? which would have been a horrible thing to say, and which surely I didn't mean, did I? And then I almost said,
Yes, she would like it
, because it was beautiful up there, and she loved trees and flowers. I suddenly felt very small and alone, as if no one understood what I was doing or why it was important to me, and I was not able to explain it to them because
I
didn't know why it was so important to me.

Unable to answer him, I turned away and started up the hill. Behind me, Uncle Nate called,
“Tootle-ee-ah-dah!”
and instantly—without thinking—I answered,
“Make the company jump!”

Then I stopped dead in my tracks, realizing what he'd said. Uncle Nate had never said
Tootle-ee-ah-dah!
to anyone but Aunt Jessie. And as I continued up the trail, I kept thinking about my automatic answer,
Make the company jump!
I'd said it with the same hopeful, happy burst Aunt Jessie had always said it. What did that mean,
Make the company jump!
? I wasn't sure. The way Aunt Jessie said it made it sound as if the words meant
Go to it!
or
Live! Live it up!

And I wondered why—when Aunt Jessie had climbed into her drawer—why I hadn't leaned down and said,
Make the company jump! Make the company jump!
Maybe if I'd said that, she would've climbed out of that drawer and started dancing.

I
t's not easy to cut through barbed wire, even if you have a pair of heavy-duty wire cutters. Eventually, though, after twisting, pulling, kicking, and scolding, I managed to cut through four lengths of double-stranded wire and pull each length back to the posts. This was a terrible thing to do, to ruin a fence. I am a farm girl, and I know how long it takes to repair a fence. But that day, I was like a bull with his tail on fire. That fence was in my way and it had to go.

When I started scraping away at the ground, however, I couldn't find any stones—stones that should have continued the trail—beneath the grass. The stones stopped abruptly this side of the fence, and continued on the other side of the meadow, beyond that fence. Maybe someone had cleared this area of trees in order to make the meadow, and in doing so, they must have cleared the stones as well.

I wasn't sure what to do. I could just clear the grass, and this part of the trail would be simply dirt, but then the grass and weeds would quickly return and cover the trail. I could find some stones and lay them myself, but I needed large slate slabs, and the only place I knew I could find these was back at the creek. I'd be lucky if I could find enough. Then I tried to picture myself trekking over four miles back to the creek, and lugging stones, a few at a time, four miles back. It didn't seem very practical, and it would take me ages.

I walked the length of the fence as it ran down the hill to the right, to see if there was a farmhouse near, but another meadow stretched far below. No sign of a house or barn.

When I turned back, a dark pile off to one side caught my eye. Dozens of cast-off slate slabs were heaped haphazardly. I'd still have to lug them back to where I'd cut the barbed wire, but I could probably do it in a day or two.

Clearing the tall grass, though, proved to be harder than I'd imagined. I was going to have to go back and fetch a scythe.

Ben was kneeling in the midst of his squirt garden, scolding newly sprouted weeds. My own garden was looking sad and neglected. The tomato plants, which I'd not staked well, leaned mournfully toward the ground, heavy with green tomatoes. Weeds tangled wilder than witches' hair. The zinnias around the border looked pitiful, cluttered with dead blooms and wilting from the bright sun.

Ben said, “Your garden's a mess, Zinny. You oughta do something about it.”

“I will,” I said.

“Jake's been here. It wasn't me who got things wrong, Zinny. It was Sam.”

“Got
what
things wrong?”

“You'll see.”

In the kitchen, Bonnie took one look at me and blurted, “Guess who's been here and guess what happened?”

Sam, who was standing at the counter slopping leftovers into a huge pot for his daily soup concoction, said, “Don't blame
me
, Zinny.”

“For
what
?”

Sam furiously stirred his mixture. “I don't remember so good. I wasn't paying attention.”

Gretchen sauntered in, and seeing me, stopped short. “Jake's been here. He brought something for May.”

“Maybe not,” Bonnie said. “It might not have been for May—”

“It was—”

“Might not have been—”

Sam was stirring his soup like a madman. “Don't blame
me
.”

Bonnie said, “Jake was here, and he brought something, and Sam was the only one around, so he gave it to Sam, but Sam can't remember who Jake said to give it to.”

“I wasn't paying attention,” Sam whimpered.

“May says it's for her,” Gretchen said.

“Might not have been—”

I headed for the toolshed, with Bonnie close on my heels. “Don't you want to know what it was?” she asked. “Aren't you curious? Don't you think it was probably for you?”

I stopped. “Okay. What was it?”

Bonnie clutched my arm. “A horse.”