Chasing Redbird (14 page)

1. They wanted to see my gear before I set off, and they insisted I include certain safety items: flashlight, flare, matches, knife, and first-aid kit with snake-bite remedy.

2. I had to plan reasonable meals and, although they would pay for the food, I had to go buy it and organize it.

3. I had to promise not to do anything stupid.

4. I had to agree to return home once every ten days (originally they insisted on once a week, but I bargained) so that they could see that I was alive.

5. If a bear ate me, I had to leave a note explaining what had happened. (This last condition was their idea of a joke.)

It took me two days to organize everything. First I made lists of food and equipment, feeling proud of myself for being able to manage with so few items, but my family kept suggesting additions.

“What about water?” Bonnie said. “Don't you need water?”

“I guess I do,” I admitted, adding water to the list.

“What about fruit and vegetables?” Mom asked. “You can't just eat canned beans.”

I added fruit and vegetables.

“What about a sleeping bag?” Dad said. “You can't just sleep on the bare ground. What if it gets cold?”

“And a tent,” Mom said, “or at least a tarp, for when it rains.”

One sleeping bag and one tarp joined the list.

I rejected the lantern because I already had a flashlight. I also rejected the portable stove because I couldn't lug it up there with everything else I'd already be carrying. Reluctantly, I included a change of clothes because Gretchen made a scene over how disgusting it would be if I wore the same clothes for ten days.

“What do you think the pioneers did?” I had argued. “Do you think they carted around a suitcase full of clean clothes?”

“I'm sure they did,” Gretchen said.

Mom insisted that I take my toothbrush, and when I reminded her that someone had swiped it, she said, “You can have mine.”

“No thanks,” I said. “I'll buy one.”

I felt as if I had that trip planned down to a gnat's eyebrow.

With my food list in hand, I went to Mrs. Flint's store. When I saw Jake's truck parked outside, I stewed over whether I should leave and return the next morning, but that would mean another day's wait before I could get up to the trail. I made a firm resolve to be quick, and to keep my mouth shut as much as possible.

“Zinny! Dang it, Zinny! I—you—what—I—” He stumbled all over himself, knocking over a pyramid of soup cans he'd been building, and backing into the magazine display. “Cripes—dang it—”

I busied myself gathering the items on my list, crossing them off as I found them. I'd decided not to speak at all.

Jake floundered among the soup cans, attempting to rebuild the display. “Zinny—cripes—Zinny—” He was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

I made a neat pile of the items I'd already selected and returned to the shelves.

“Dang it, Zinny—aren't you even going to say hello?”

“Hello.” That was big of me, I thought.

“Aren't you even going to thank me for the horse?”

“I believe May's the one who should thank you.”

“May? Why May?”

“Because she said you gave it to her.”

“What? I
never
—to May? It was for you, Zinny.”

“That's not what May says.”

The newly rebuilt pyramid of cans toppled to the floor. “Cripes—”

I crossed off the last item on my list. “Could you ring these up for me, please?”

He kicked a can across the aisle and stepped to the counter, looking as mad as a trapped hornet. Quickly, he rang up each item, mashing the register keys and roughly shoving each thing aside after he'd entered its price.

In three paper sacks, he dumped the groceries. The bread went on the bottom, cans on top. I wasn't going to argue. It wasn't until I'd paid him that I realized I wasn't going to be able to carry everything. If I couldn't carry it home, how was I going to get it up the trail, along with all my gear?

If it had been Mrs. Flint waiting on me, I would have asked her to let me put some things back, but I couldn't ask Jake that, not the way he was scowling at me. Before I could think of what else to do, Jake grabbed two of the bags and headed for the door. He tossed them in the back of his truck, returned for the third bag, and flipped the sign on the door from OPEN to CLOSED. “Get a move on, Zinny. I don't have all day, you know.”

I climbed in the truck and stared straight ahead. He drove like a madman down the highway, careening around the curves, and spinning into our gravel drive.

“I hate trucks,” I said.

He sped up the hill toward the house, sending gravel flying on all sides. At the first bend, Jake swerved to avoid hitting Uncle Nate as he ran across the drive in front of us. Jake stopped and sat there, white as the moon, while Uncle Nate stared at the truck like a scared deer caught on the highway.

“You've got to stop running around like that,” Jake said. “You're going to get hurt—”

Uncle Nate blinked and waved his stick. “The day I can't run, I'd better be dead!”

I loved that. I wanted to say,
You tell him, Uncle Nate. You just tell him.

Jake continued up the drive, more slowly now, shaken by his near miss with Uncle Nate. I felt I had to say something before we got to the house, but I didn't know what to say—words were whirling around in my head like moths fluttering around a light bulb. What I finally said was not what I had intended—it was just what happened to fall out of my mouth: “What I was looking for was a real horse, not a stupid old wooden horse, and I can get my own horse, thank you very much.”

“Zinny—wait—I have two things to say and you're going to listen. First: I hear you're going to camp up on the trail by yourself. Why don't you let me help you?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“You are the most stubborn person I ever did meet.”

“What was the other thing you wanted to say?” I didn't want him to be another Tommy Salami. I wanted him to say,
Zinny, I don't care beans about May. It's you I adore
. Or something to that effect.

He gripped the wheel. “Zinny, I hate to say this, but I need that ring back.”

I froze. “The ring? Well, Jake, I hate to say
this
, but that ring is gone. Somebody
stole
it.”

I leaped out of the truck, grabbed the bags, and didn't look back. All I heard was squealing tires and May calling, “Jake? Jake, wait—”

I
left early the next morning, and as sure as I live and breathe, that first day on my own lingered on so long I could have sworn there were five hundred hours in it.

Mom and Dad had stumbled out of bed to see me off, poking at my backpack, which was stuffed near to bursting and lashed with rope from which various doodads hung. My sleeping bag and tarp were rolled into a tight sausage and suspended from the bottom of the backpack, and I'd fashioned another pack out of an old flour sack, to carry the food in.

I set up camp where I'd left off the previous day, figuring that each day after working on the trail, I'd walk back to camp, and every two or three days, I would pack it all up and move farther ahead. After everything was set up, I sat there, taking in my territory. I'd looked forward to this moment for so long—all by myself up in the hills with the birds and trees and sky, with no one to bother me for ten whole days.

My “room” wasn't a cramped box shared with three sisters, or invaded by brothers or parents—it was the whole wide-open countryside. I had my food, my water, my tarp, my flashlight, my toothbrush—all my own, and nobody was going to eat them, stomp on them, or make off with them. In the days before leaving, when I had spun this scene in my mind, I had imagined that I would sit there for hours like that, maybe the whole day, absorbing it all into my skin. But oddly, after about five minutes, I was antsy, and so I grabbed my trowel and started clearing the trail.

I was used to clearing for four or five hours at a stretch, and so this part of the day was normal for me. Whenever I was clearing, it was like when I was scything that time—I wasn't thinking, just moving my arms and hands, which seemed joined to the trowel, the grass, the trail. But sometimes, in the middle of all that non-thinking, or as I was finishing my work, scenes would fly out, suddenly and unexpectedly, from some hidden place in my brain, like little birds rising suddenly from the branches of a tree.

One of these scenes that flew out that day was an image of my parents, sitting there at the table, with my mother saying that I'd always talked to Jessie. In the quiet of the woods I could see my mother's face again, and I saw that hurt look.
She had minded that I'd talked to Jessie.
This came as such a shock. And just before this scene disappeared, I wondered if my mother were replaying that same scene, if she could see me again, and if she heard me saying that she and my father hadn't talked to me. I was hoping she wasn't hearing that, because I was sorry I had said it. And then I started thinking that maybe I had wanted them to talk to me more, to notice me more. But I could hear May again:
Oh, Zinny, how immature!

I stopped working at four o'clock, the time I'd usually start for home, and it took me a few minutes to realize that I didn't need to go home, that I
was
home. I didn't even need to stop working, if I didn't want to. I could go on for hours—why, I could work all through the night if I wanted.

On my way back to my makeshift campsite, I collected wood for my fire, and decided what I would eat. I'd heat up a can of beans and have a slice of bread and a piece of fruit, topped off with water, and, for dessert, half a chocolate bar. It sounded magnificent. I ran it all through my mind again, how I would build the fire, and open the can of beans.
Open
the can? With a sinking feeling, I knew I'd forgotten to include a can opener.

Why hadn't I thought of such an obvious thing? Why hadn't anyone
reminded
me? Then I remembered all the things they
did
remind me to include, and how they all seemed concerned that I not be cold or hungry, that I be safe. I turned the scene around and saw how muley I'd been, how eager to get away from them. I was feeling like a low-down worm.

I had trouble with the fire. I fumbled and coaxed and pleaded, begging that wood to catch. I tried everything, even yelling at it, but the wood was too damp and too big. Jake probably knew how to build a fire. Maybe I should have let him help me. That thought made me really prickly. I didn't want to think about Jake. I scaled everything down and started with a few dry leaves and two skinny twigs, and once that was going, I added bigger and bigger pieces until it was a roaring bonfire. I overdid it, I admit. Ravenous for those beans, I stabbed and punched one can until it splattered open.

It doesn't take long to eat when you're by yourself. You don't have to wait for anyone to pass things, and you don't have to answer questions. I wished I'd brought a cup, but at least I could swig water out of the bottle. When I finished eating, I wiped off my fork and buried the empty can. There! I didn't have to clear the table or wash the dishes! I was a free and independent person and I could do whatever I liked.

I looked around. What exactly did people do when they had all the time in the world and could do whatever they liked?

From far below came the mournful train whistle, and I instinctively turned in the direction of the farm, thinking of the ash tree and the cardinals and Aunt Jessie and Uncle Nate. My family would be clattering around the dinner table, and I wondered if anyone would notice that I was gone.

Out flew another scene: my parents getting up early that morning to see me off. And another: Sam slurping his soup. And more: Ben in his garden, Gretchen hunched over her computer.
Stop!
I pleaded with my brain.
Stop it!

It was way too early to sleep. I walked around my campsite, straightening my sleeping bag, stoking the fire, and deciding what I would have for breakfast. When I realized I would need more wood for the fire, I was thrilled. Something to do! Gather wood!