Chasing Redbird (19 page)

All of that I wanted to tell my mother, but instead, a faint voice came out of my mouth, and I agreed to come back and watch Uncle Nate the next Saturday.

“Bless you, Zinny.” She helped me strap on my backpack and added, “Have you said good-bye to him?”

No!
I nearly screamed.
I can't! I won't!
But my legs moved toward his room and my hand opened his door and when I leaned down to say good-bye, he whispered, “Take me up on the trail, Zinny. Take me.”

“I can't—you can't—”

“Please, pumpkin,” he begged.

“I can't. Look at you—”

He pressed my fingers to his lips.
“Tootle-ee-ah-dah—”

I couldn't answer. I fled.

It was drizzling as I climbed the trail, and a silvery sheen covered the stones. The mist felt cool against my face, and as I walked along, I scattered zinnia seeds recklessly, bent over like that little old lady, and obsessed with finishing my trail.

Without realizing it, I'd veered off the trail to the spot where the medallion had been buried, and was filled with unaccountable dread. There was a flicker, like a dream re-forming, of me hurrying, running through the woods, running away, kneeling at this spot.

I turned back to the trail and stomped along. As I entered dark Maiden's Walk, I thought,
Here I go, being dragged toward a dark pit, helpless and chained.
But I wasn't going to scream or resist.
Take me
, I begged.
Do away with me
.

The clear light of the meadow was my temporary reprieve. When I came to the barbed-wire fence with its new
NO TRESPASSING
sign, the meadow was occupied. A sleek chestnut mare paced at the far edge of the fenced enclosure. Willow! Sal's horse, Willow! I passed my food sack and backpack through the fence and climbed through. Willow pawed the ground and flicked her mane. She recognized me. I approached her slowly, fishing an apple out of my sack and holding it toward her. She backed off a few steps, tossed her head, and whisked her dark tail. She stepped toward me and rubbed the side of her head against my arm.

“You miss Sal, don't you?” I said, stroking her. “You miss her to pieces, don't you?” Willow was beautiful. I could run up to camp, fetch my wire cutters, return, and take her with me. Then I'd have my horse and I could ride my trail.

Selfish Zinny
.
Thief!

When I climbed through the other side of the fence, Willow paced back and forth in the enclosure, agitated, restless. She stared after me as I ran up the trail.

On through the remaining portion of Maiden's Walk I went, surprised to exit it alive. Loaded with guilt, full to bursting with it.
If you loved someone and he was sick, how could you help him?
Down through Crow Hollow where the crows were eerily silent.
If you loved someone and he wanted to die, what could you do?

Across Baby Toe Ridge, staring at the sky so I wouldn't see any dead baby toes.
If you've done something wrong, how do you fix it?

Over the railroad, past the stumps, onto Sleepy Bear Ridge.

By the time I made my way to my camp, now about fourteen miles up the trail, it was pouring, a real frog-strangler. I crawled under the tarp and lay there listening to the rain smattering against the leaves overhead and dripping onto the tarp. Wind whooshed across the hillside, threatening to rip the tarp from its moorings.

T
he low wail of the train whistle awoke me eight hours later. It was still raining and too late to work on the trail. Instead, I decided to move my camp forward, to the grove of larch trees where I'd last worked, near the edge of Spook Hollow, which I'd soon be entering to clear the next section of trail.

The larch grove proved a comforting spot. Overhead, the branches formed a dense canopy, shielding me from the rain, and below was a soft, mossy carpet on a gentle slope. Once everything was set up, I rummaged under leaves and bushes for dry wood and built a small fire, thinking all the while about Uncle Nate, lying there in his bed, trapped.

If Uncle Nate had been meeting some woman up in the hills, maybe the place where the medallion and ring were buried was their secret spot.

No! There was no woman!

I sought a climbing tree, settling on an oak with sturdy branches. Hunched up on a high limb, I had a panoramic view of the hills which fell away below me, down across a wide stretch of grassy knolls and more larch groves, to a farm far, far below.

A
whoop
of the wind reminded me of baby Rose. I could hear her
whoop-whoop-whoop
ing, gasping for air, or was it me I heard? Was it my own gasping? How silent it had been when it stopped.

A bird landed on a nearby tree and snatched up a caterpillar. And what had the caterpillar snatched up that morning?

Who had
I
caught the whooping cough from? You would think that in all these years, I would have wondered that, but I never had. Someone else had given it to me. I didn't just manufacture it out of the air and hand it to Rose.

Then the scene in the barn, when I'd showed Aunt Jessie the snake, played through my mind. But I had
first
offered her the medallion. Maybe
that
—and not the snake—was what made her wail. Maybe she recognized the medallion. Maybe she knew something about it.

I stared down the hill. Off to my right wound the trail leading back toward home, and to my left hovered the black forest. A movement at the edge of the trees caught my eye, and as I watched, a sleek, spotted bobcat stepped into the clearing. He crept forward, targeting something in the grass ahead. Slowly, purposefully, he moved across the hill, and then he pounced, batting his paws at a dark object. In an instant he grasped his prey in his teeth and pranced back the way he'd come. The animal in his mouth—a mole, it looked like—squirmed, its back legs dancing in the air.

From below came the sound of voices and a deep laugh. Scanning the hillside from my high branch, I spotted two young men coming up the hill. One carried a rifle and a sack. The other was swigging from a bottle and gesturing toward the trees just below me.

The young man with the rifle spotted something, took aim and fired, and there was a sharp crack as the bullet hit a tree. He swore and snatched the bottle from his companion, taking a long drink. The two men moved on up the hill, paused on the trail, and apparently spotted my campsite, for they headed directly for it. By the time I reached them, they were rummaging in my food sack.

“Leave it alone,” I said.

Startled, they turned. Eyeing me, the one with the rifle, and the taller of the two, laughed. “Who's this?” he said to the one with the bottle. “A girl scout?”

At close glance they seemed younger, maybe sixteen or seventeen. The shorter boy took a drink and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, staring me up and down. “Kinda young to be up here all by herself,” he said.

“I'm not by myself.”

“Oh yeah?” said the shorter one, looking around. “Don't see no company.”

“My father's here. So are my uncles. They're hunting.”
Jake
, I prayed.
Be near
. But then I remembered the sheriff. Jake might be in jail, for all I knew.

The boy with the rifle listened. “Don't hear no shots.”

Dad
, I prayed,
fly over in that airplane
. But it was Sunday. He'd be at home. “They're hauling in their catch,” I said.

“Oh yeah, what'd they get?”

“Lots. A bobcat, two deer—”
Aunt Jessie
, I prayed.
Protect me
.

“Ain't deer season. Ain't supposed to be hunting deer,” said the one with the rifle, but he looked impressed.

A warm breeze ruffled my hair. Maybe Aunt Jessie
was
near. I said, “They're trigger-happy. They'll shoot just about anything. Look—over there—there's one of my uncles.”

They whirled around. “Where?”

“There—passing through those woods—”

They stared. “Don't see 'em,” the taller one said.

“What's this?” said the other, waving the bottle in the direction of the already completed portion of the trail. “A path or something? Where's it go?”

The leaves on the trees fluttered.
Aunt Jessie?
“Nowhere,” I lied. “It ends down there a-ways.” Maybe the trail was a bad, bad idea. Now anyone could find their way to our farm. Any sort of vandal or derelict. Any drunken fool with a gun or a knife or—

The short one stepped close to me. I could smell the whiskey as he spoke. “Guess this is your lucky day. Guess we won't be staying around to meet your old man.”

“What's the hurry?” said the other. “I wanna bag me a bobcat.”

“I saw one,” I said. “Down there, sneaking off through the trees toward that farm.” It was not the way the bobcat had gone, but I was determined they shouldn't find it.

“Yeah? When?”

“Just before you came.”

“Come on,” he said to the short boy, and he headed in the direction I'd indicated.

The short boy reached forward and ran his hand down my arm. “Too bad,” he said, with a sickly grin. “Too bad.” With a low laugh, he took another drink and ambled off after his friend, who was hurrying down the hillside.

Thank you, Aunt Jessie.

I bundled up my belongings, stamped out my fire, and slipped into the woods. It was a dark and forbidding and eerie place, but I wanted to be hidden.

DO NOT CROSS AT NIGHT!

DO NOT TRAVEL ALONE!

WATCH OUT FOR GHOSTS IN TREES!

T
hese were the warnings written on the trail map. That night at my campsite on the edge of Spook Hollow, every sound and sight mushroomed into ghostly images. Gnarled tree limbs, crooked as a dog's hind leg, became the contorted arms of witches. Vines burst into long, sinuous snakes, and the knobs and knots on tree trunks bulged with the blistered faces of goblins. The wind was the call of ghosts, and the trees were tall, cloaked wizards in high peaked hats.

The next morning's light was only slightly reassuring. Every noise made me flinch, and the faintest movement in the treetops had me ready to fight off ghosts that might drop on my head.

The map showed the trail dipping into Spook Hollow, crossing Bear Alley Creek, and continuing up the other side of the hollow, this part of the trail spanning about three miles. Beyond was a mile-long stretch across Shady Death Ridge, and the final two or three miles of the trail swooped down into Donut Hole, up and over Hogback Hill, across Doolittle Creek and Surrender Bridge into Chocton.

Jumpy as a grasshopper, I could not seem to get started on the trail that day. My head was preoccupied with puzzles.

Where would Uncle Nate meet up with a woman, anyway? At the farm connected to the meadow where I'd cut the fence wires? Maybe they hadn't met in a house at all.
There was no woman!

They could have met at a special place: in Crow Hollow or on Baby Toe Ridge. Then I remembered the cabin in the larch grove below Sleepy Bear Ridge, and since this was not far from where I'd camped, I decided to investigate it.