Chasing Redbird (20 page)

It was cool and quiet in the trees behind the cabin: no sounds of anyone moving about. I crept around the side, to a window, but it was boarded up. At the front of the cabin was a small porch. I knocked at the door, knowing that no one was inside. If the door hadn't been locked, I might have gone in.

Then I thought about the two boys I'd run into the day before. This might be their cabin, and if they came back and found me poking around, who knew what they might do? I hurried back to the trail.

Okay, Spook Hollow, it's daylight, and I'm coming on through!

For the next three days, I clambered through that hollow, clearing the trail and talking to the ghosts.
Pay no attention to me
, I'd say,
I'll be out of your way in no time at all.
At the slightest noise, I'd resume my speech.
It's just me, Zinny Taylor, trying to make my way along this trail.

The air was chock-full of birdcalls. The grosbeak's loud
cleep
s and
eek
s, the finch's
chirp-chirp
, and the sparrow's
sweet, sweet, sweet
rolled through the air. The robin's
cheer-up
,
cheer-up
and the thrush's
ee-oh-lay
punctuated my sweeping. More insistent calls, as if commanding me to stop and take notice, were delivered by chickadees and crows and woodpeckers.

Aunt Jessie and Uncle Nate had taught me to identify all these calls. They would love it up here. They used to come up here together, and I wondered now if Aunt Jessie had really stopped coming because her sugar was acting up. Maybe that's when Uncle Nate had met that woman, replacing Aunt Jessie before she was even gone.
That woman.
I wanted to know who she was and what she looked like and
there was no woman, Zinny, stop it.

It's just me, ghosts. I've already got enough things haunting me, thank you very much.

At the end of each day, I'd race back to my campsite and follow my usual evening routine, except that I didn't climb any trees here. I didn't want to run into any ghosts lolling around in the branches.

Each day I returned to the cabin, staying a safe distance away. There was no sign of anyone.

M
aybe I was starting to go loopy up there in the woods all by myself, but more and more I felt as if I were being guarded or protected, and I don't mean by Jake Boone. I'd scouted around each evening and early in the morning, but never saw hide nor hair of him. This was, I hate to say, disappointing. It either meant that Jake was in jail or that he'd started chasing May directly.

I was still seeing those flashes of movement here and there—behind a tree or a bush, or slipping over the edge of a ravine, or around a bend.
Probably a harmless animal
, I'd think. But more and more I thought my Aunt Jessie might be hovering nearby. Sometimes I used Uncle Nate's camera to snap pictures of retreating shadows, hoping I'd caught her on film.

At the bottom of Spook Hollow was Bear Alley Creek, tumbling over rocks and winding down toward the Ohio River. On the far side of the creek were more woods, stretching up a steep hillside. I took a break at the creek, sitting beside the river, casting stones and soaking my feet in the cool, clear water. A pair of beavers swam along the far bank, lugging branches to a dam downstream. Water spiders flicked along smooth water below the overhanging bank.

As I reached for a stone from the damp bank, I noticed a clear print in the earth. It was a footprint, about eight inches long, its toe marks topped with claw prints. I scanned the bank on both sides. On a nearby log was a tuft of black fur caught on the bark.

While I was trying to remember if a bear could climb trees, and while I was checking around for one I might climb if I had to, I saw that the bark on several trees was ripped lengthwise, long claw marks dug into the softer wood beneath. A bear might not be able to climb, but it might try, and it could reach six or seven feet off the ground, from the looks of those claw marks.

And then, on the far side of the stream, there he was, as if dropped from the sky: a big, glossy black bear, his slim head lifted and his brown snout sniffing the air. He looked up and down the bank, and if he saw me, he made no sign of recognition. He stepped forward, his huge feet flopping silently and his wide body lumbering from side to side. He made his way slowly over the rocks and into the stream, where he stood on a flat rock, scanning the water.

With a sudden lurch, he slapped a front paw at the water, dipped his head and came up with a fish, his teeth grasping its middle so that its tail and head flipped on either side of the bear's mouth. The bear carried his catch to the bank, slapped it on the ground and pulled at it with teeth and claws, devouring it in minutes.

I probably should have slipped away to the tree and scrambled high into it, but I was hypnotized by this bear, so oblivious of me sitting there. Again he crept into the stream and snared another fish, which he took to the bank and ate. Then he sat on the bank sniffing the air.

He glanced directly at me—or seemed to—several times, but he also swung his head toward two squirrels chasing each other up a nearby tree, and at a finch pecking at the ground. It was as if we were all just part of the scenery.

The bear snatched one more fish, which it took with him as he lumbered back the way he had come, into the woods on the far side. Although I hadn't had the least fear of him when he was fishing in the stream, I wasn't exactly thrilled that he had gone off in the same direction my trail headed. I wondered if he'd be so mild if I surprised him, if I accidentally came upon him in his territory.

I waited an hour or so to give him time enough to move beyond where I'd be likely to go that day, and then, uneasy, I crossed the stream and worked my way along the new stretch of trail. Frequently I stopped, listened, and scanned the woods around me.

Aunt Jessie, you can protect me if you want. You other ghosts don't need to bother with me.

For the next few days, I carried on. Beyond Spook Hollow was a narrow ridge, Shady Death. I had expected more dark trees, more eerie terrain, but Shady Death was a grassy, clear hillside with only three maple trees to break up its smooth surface.

This note was on the back of the map:

SHADY DEATH
TWO MEN, SEEKING SHADE ON A HOT SUMMER'S
DAY, WERE SLAIN BENEATH THESE TREES.

I hurried on past those trees, and even though it was hot, and it would have been nice to rest in the shade, I wasn't inclined to stop under
those
trees.

From Shady Death, the trail dipped into Donut Hole, an odd little place, where four small hills came together, forming a round donut-like basin at their feet. I liked Donut Hole, a quiet, green hideaway, though I had trouble at the bottom figuring out which way the trail continued, and had to climb back up to the top to get my bearings.

On the far side of Donut Hole rose Hogback Hill, and by the end of the week I had cleared across most of it—and what a sight awaited me: a long, green expanse peppered with bright red and yellow and blue wildflowers stretching down to Doolittle Creek and, best of all, to Chocton nestled in the valley below. Chocton!

What I most wanted to do was to barrel my way through to the end, but the next day was Saturday, the day I'd promised to return home to watch Uncle Nate. I tried to calculate the remaining distance. One mile? Two? I'd have to come back to finish.

My camp was still on the far side of Spook Hollow, and on my way back that day, when I was in the midst of whispering
Don't mind me
pleas to the spooks of Spook Hollow, I heard a low grumble. Off to one side, near a thicket, was the bear, his snout raised, sniffing the air. He gave a louder grumble, swinging his head in my direction. When he took two steps toward me, I was off like a shot and up the nearest tree so fast you'd have thought I had wings.

He growled, charging the tree, and butting it with his side. It was a hefty oak, but it shook with the bear's weight, and as I scrambled higher, I feared he could knock the tree right over, or shake me out as if I were a monkey.

I
was lost in Spook Hollow. The trees moaned in the dark and bats zipped through the air, swooping out of nowhere like tiny dark ghosts. I was cold and hungry, covered in brambles and scratches, scared out of my wits. My leg and wrist throbbed.

The bear had turned out to be a
she
, not a
he
, and what I discovered as I clung to a branch near the top of the tree was that I'd come between a mother and her cub, who'd been batting a mouse in the leaves nearby. That mother was angry, real angry.

With a sharp sting, I wondered if my mother had ever been angry at Aunt Jessie, for stepping in between me and her. I had always thought my mother didn't mind or didn't care. Maybe I'd been wrong.

The bear batted and rattled my tree for a good long while as I clung on, praying to anyone I had ever known, to the ghosts of Spook Hollow, and even to the trees themselves.
Don't let me die!
I thought of Aunt Jessie climbing in that drawer and of Uncle Nate wishing he were dead.
Not me! I'm not ready!

When the bear got fed up with bumping my tree, she stood there grumbling until the cub joined her. She patted the cub with one clumsy paw and rubbed her face against the cub's face.

Let me finish my trail.

I hated being so helpless up there in the tree, unable to move, to flee, to do anything whatsoever except chatter to ghosts. Maybe I'd be stuck up there for days. Maybe I'd die up there and my body would fall to the ground and the bear would chew it up and the only remains my family would find would be a pile of bones. They'd say,
Is that Zinny, do you think?

Where was Jake when I needed him? Where was my dad in that dag-blasted airplane—not that he'd see me in these thick woods, but it would be comforting to know he was looking.

And what in the heck was I doing this trail for anyway? What a stupid idea: tossing out zinnia seeds and scrounging along like some demented derelict, scooping up arrowheads and fossils, scavenging for medallions and lost rings. Why couldn't I give up the trail and go home?

Let me finish. Let me finish something good. Let me find—what? Who?

Finally, finally, the bear ambled off, nudging the cub in front of her. By now it was dark, and I waited, wondering if she'd return, if maybe she was faking me out. I wasn't going to be stupid enough to climb down yet. Oh, I was tired. I wanted to close my eyes and sleep a long sleep.

I shifted in the tree and slipped—
whish
—through branches—
thunk
—hitting a branch—
whish
—through more branches—
thunk. Whish
—
thunk
—
whish.
I landed hard and jumped up, looking for the bear.

Nothing
out there—and
everything
out there: dark shapes, crooked shapes, menacing shapes. I slipped off through the trees, away from the trail and from the direction the bear had gone, hoping to cut below the trail and back to it. But after an hour or two, I was so turned around that I had no idea where I was—for all I knew I was going in circles and would end up at the bear's den.