Summerland (19 page)
Authors: Michael Chabon
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.
"Good-bye, children," Uncle Mo said.
Then Jennifer T. switched on the radio and took them up.
"OKAY," THOR WIGNUTT SAID,
as they left behind the lights of Butler Beach, at the eastern tip of Clam Island, and headed out over the shining black waters of the Sound. "I'm ready."
"Great," Ethan said.
"I just have one question."
"What's that?"
"Where are we going?"
Ethan turned from Thor to Cinquefoil, still standing in the front passenger seat with his ruddy hands on the dash.
"That's hard ta say," said the little chief. "Ya can't never predict what old Coyote will do. Just about everything that could turn out two ways or more was invented by him, back when he Changed the world the first time. Before that, as ya may or may not know, everything could only turn out one way. There weren't no crossroads, fer instance. Only straight paths that didn't bend. Toss a coin, it always came up heads. And nobody died. That's one o' the things Coyote changed. He brought the
wobble
inta the world. Everything that turns out one way but could just as easy turn out the other. Good or bad. Dead or alive. Hungry or with yer belly nice and full."
"So you're saying…what are you saying?" Ethan was having a hard time getting a handle on this Changer person, this Coyote who had taken his father. Was he only evil? Did he
really
want to destroy the Worlds? Why, in spite of the dreadful creatures and terrible machines, the Padfoots and skrikers and graylings in his army, the horror that his human agents had wrought at Hotel Beach, why was there always the tiniest glint of
appreciation
in Cinquefoil's eyes whenever he talked about Coyote?
"I'm saying, I don't like ta try ta outguess Coyote, fer it can't be done but badly, and what's more it gives me a pain in the head. But I'm thinking we ought ta head inta the Summerlands after all. If Coyote changes his mind, which he loves ta do, or if he ain't really headed ta Murmury Well at all, then we sure as moose scat don't want ta be hanging around the Winterlands fer no good reason. And if he
is
headed ta Murmury Well, then we don't need ta go by the Winterlands at all. There are other ways o' getting ta the Greenmelt that surrounds Murmury. With luck and a talented shadowtail, we might be able ta make it by way o' the Summerlands. In the meantime we might find answers there. Help. Weapons. A grammer book or two. A map. P'raps some tricks ta trick the trickster. Even a few stout arms."
"Sounds like a plan," said Jennifer T. "I'm not sure I'm ready for the Winterlands yet. The Summerlands were weird enough for me."
Cinquefoil looked back at Ethan. "Well, hero?"
Ethan nodded.
"Okay," Thor said. "The Summerlands it is."
"Take us forward, then," Cinquefoil said to Jennifer T. "If I remember my Tree lore there's a spot up ahead where a branch o' the Summerlands hangs close enough ta leap it. It's a old Thunderbird Trail."
Jennifer T. sent them careening ahead for about half a mile, and then Cinquefoil said, simply, "Here."
