The Skeleton Tree (11 page)

But the metal wouldn't bend as I wanted. The flints were ground away, or frozen by rust, and I threw everything away in frustration. I heard one lighter ricochet off the wall, another rattle on the floor, and I shouted, “Stupid useless lighters!” I heard my voice—shrill as the one on the mountain—and felt ashamed. I was acting just like Frank. Maybe we were not so different after all.

Lonely and frightened, I hugged myself in the darkness.

I rocked like a baby. And finally I broke the promise I'd made on the mountain and cried for my father to help me.

When the window began to brighten, I thought morning had arrived. But it was only the moon rising over the distant mountains, filling the cabin with a cold and silvery light. All the things blinded by the dark began to move outside. Something scurried past the door. Something chattered; something screamed. Then something big came tramping along the trail, pushing through the bushes. And through the wall came the faint sound of someone whistling.

An old, forgotten memory slowly woke inside my head. The whistled notes faltered and started again. I didn't know the words, and I couldn't name the song, but I remembered where I'd heard it. I was suddenly a tiny boy again, squatting on the kitchen floor. I saw my father all scrunched up under the kitchen sink, trying to work on plumbing pipes that were, to him, as mysterious as ancient writing. He frowned and squinted, jiggled the pipes, and hummed that song.

He had come to save me! With the memory so strong in my mind, my first thought was to rush out to meet him, my big, towering father, who would sweep me up in his arms. But he was dead. For a year he'd been lying in his grave, and he couldn't possibly be out there in the forest.

The little snatch of song came whistled again. A cold prickle tingled down my neck at the thought of my dead father out there. Had I wished him alive, back from the grave?

I had seen his ghost before.

On the night before his funeral, as I had lain in bed remembering things good and bad, he had appeared in my doorway and waved to me sadly. Just for a moment he'd been there. But a year before that, on a drizzly Sunday in Vancouver, I had seen something even more puzzling.

Dad was in Chicago on a business trip, two thousand miles away. He had been gone three days and wouldn't be home for three days more. I wasn't even thinking about him as I rode the SkyTrain with Mom. I looked down as the train squealed around the bend to the Dunsmuir Tunnel, and there he was at a traffic light, stepping out into the street. I saw him for less than a second, in a
clack-click-clack
of the train wheels, striding over the white lines on the crosswalk. His legs, and the shadows of his legs, worked like scissors, everything shiny in the rain. “There's Dad!” I shouted. “Don't be silly,” said Mom, turning in her seat. Then the tunnel closed around us.

I wanted to get off at the next station, to go back and find him. But Mom said no. “Your father's in Chicago; you know that. It was just someone who looked like your dad.” But I knew what I'd seen, and I made her call him on the cell phone. “Oh, for heaven's sake,” she said. But she fished it out of her purse and called, and I heard his voice telling her the exact same thing. “I'm in Chicago; you know that.” But she looked so worried and pale that I thought she believed I had seen his doppelgänger, or a changeling or something.

The feeling that had come over me then returned as I crouched in the corner of the moonlit cabin. I heard the door rattle. Then it opened. A figure stood in the moonlight, and a creaky voice spoke to me.

“Greetings, earthlings.”

I gasped. But it was only Frank who stood there, only Frank who laughed at my fear. For once he was happy. “I got a fish,” he said, holding it out.

It was a small one, and he had eaten more than half of it. He tossed me the rest, then put the gaff on the table. “I got caught by the tide on the way back,” he said. “I had to wait at that old wreck. But look what I found.”

From his jacket pocket he produced something dark and shiny. But it was his hand that I stared at: his right hand, as white and puffy as a marshmallow.

“What's wrong with your hand?” I said.

He only glanced at it. “That's salmon slime,” he said. “It's nothing.”

“But you're swollen up,” I said.

He was shouting now. “That's just the slime! It gets in your cuts. I told you, it's nothing.” He slammed onto the table the thing that he'd brought from the beach.

It was a purse. A little pink purse made of shiny plastic, it was a thing a child must have carried.

“What's inside it?” I asked.

“I don't know,” he said. “It's rusted shut.”

Frank was pouting. He was angry that I'd been more interested in his swollen hand than in the purse that he'd found. It sat between us now, its little brass catch turned brown with rust.

He could have opened that lock in a moment. I realized that he had wanted to wait until he was with me, to share the excitement of looking inside it. Now he just sighed, sniffed and whistled once more those few little notes.

“What's that song?” I asked.

He growled at me. “I don't know. It came into my head and I can't get it out. My mom used to sing it.”

In a moment he was asleep. His legs were still bent over the edge of the bed, and he was lying in the exact same position in the morning, when Thursday woke him with a raven call.

The bird's head appeared in the window. His little eye swiveled toward me, but he wouldn't come in.

“What's wrong with it now?” asked Frank.

“I think he's scared of you,” I said.

“Good.”

I had to get up and stand guard by the window while Thursday slipped into the cabin. He hopped up to my shoulder and down to the table, where the child's pink purse lay still unopened. Thursday nudged it with his beak. He was always attracted to things that sparkled.

“Give me that,” said Frank. “I'll open it.”

He struggled to sit up. His legs had gone stiff, and he lurched across the cabin like a robot. From his pocket he took out my knife, then pried at the latch. With a little crackling sound, it broke loose and flicked away across the cabin.

Frank emptied the purse onto the bed, just as he had shaken out the orange box on our first day in the cabin. On the table, Thursday leaned forward to watch, his black eyes shining. I stood beside Frank as he sorted quickly through the things.

He sounded disappointed. “Look at that,” he said. “What a stupid bunch of junk.”

But it wasn't stupid, and it wasn't junk. The whole life of a little girl lay scattered across the bed. There was a small stuffed cat and a yellow paper clip, a little toy horse with blue eyes, a silver tiara made of plastic. A blue sucker had turned to a sticky mess, and four tiny worry dolls made of thread and cloth were tangled together, their arms entwined as though they were hugging each other.

There were other things too. None was any use to us, but to one little girl in Japan they must have been the most important things in the world. It seemed awful that they were disconnected now—and forever—from the memories that had made them valuable. Without those connections, maybe they were only junk. It made me remember when my father died and I kept finding his things where he'd left them: his cuff links and tie clasps, the crumpled wrapper from a candy bar. When I went into the garage a month later, I found a coffee mug balanced on the seat of my old bicycle, and it still had coffee in it.

But Frank couldn't see past the junk. “I can't believe I wasted my time with
that
!” he shouted. He scattered the little girl's treasures across the mattress. He hurled the purse against the wall. “It's junk.”

“What did you expect?” I asked.

“Something good. I don't know: maybe a magnifying glass or a lighter that actually works. Maybe a cell phone. Who knows?”

A cell phone. So that was what Frank had
really
been hoping for. That was why he had waited to open the purse—so I could be there as he pulled out the cell phone and dialed 911.
Oh, hi, this is Frank….The thought made me feel sorry for him.

“A cell phone wouldn't be any good anyway,” I said. “It would be all wet and—”

“It would still have a battery, moron,” said Frank.

“So what?”

He glared at me. “You think you're so smart? Figure it out.”

I could think of only one thing. “You mean the cabin guy's radio?”

It still sat on the shelf above the bed. Frank even glanced toward it. “Those batteries can last forever if they're charged.” He sounded angry, as though he thought I wouldn't believe him. But he was frustrated that his plan had not worked out.

“I never knew girls carried so much stupid stuff,” he said. Then he grabbed the corner of the mattress and dumped everything onto the floor.

Without a word, I dropped to my knees and picked it all up. Thursday, thinking it was just a game, rounded up the little horse and the worry dolls. I packed the things carefully into the purse again, knowing I was doing exactly what some little girl must have done in Japan on the morning of the tsunami. Of course Frank laughed at me. “Playing dollies?” he asked.

He flicked his hair. It was a filthy clump that hung over his eyes now, matted with salt and tree sap. “Give me that,” he said, holding out his hand. “I'll throw it away.”

“No,” I said.

“Why not?”

I didn't want to tell him what I had in mind. He wouldn't understand; he would say it was stupid. He stood with his hand reaching out, but I wouldn't give him the purse.

That made him angry again. He grabbed my wrist; he grabbed the purse. He tried to twist it out of my hands, but I turned away and tightened my arms around it. “Leave me alone,” I said.

“No!” he shouted. “Give me that.”

Frank hauled me to my feet. As we reeled across the cabin, Thursday spread his wings. His beak opened wide and his eyes shone darkly.

I wrestled with Frank for the purse. He kept pulling and pushing until he drove me up against the wall. My shoulders slammed into the wood. I grunted.

With a shriek, the raven rose from the floor. His wings seemed to fill the whole cabin, and the sound they made was like wind in the forest. He swooped at Frank's head, beating it with his wings.

Frank stumbled away, his arms flailing, but Thursday swooped again.

“Stop it!” I shouted at both of them, worried at first for Thursday, and then for Frank.

My raven was trying to tear out his eyes.

Frank covered his head with his arms. The raven clutched on to him, still screaming, wings flapping. “Get him off!” shouted Frank. “Get him off!” He spun around the cabin as though he was on fire. He crashed into the table, toppling the rickety chair.

I heard the
tap! tap!
of the raven pecking at his hands. Frank kept shouting. He tried to push the bird away as he staggered across the room. Then he tripped over the firestones and dropped to his knees.

I grabbed Thursday. I put my hands around his body, closing his wings. Through the tips of my fingers I could feel his heart beating like crazy. I tried to pull him away, but his talons were locked onto Frank's skin. He was so frantic that he turned his head and tried to peck me. But I held him more tightly, and the pressure of my hands seemed to calm him. He stopped struggling and let go of Frank. As soon as I loosened my hold he burst free. He hurled himself up against the window and burst out through the flap.

Frank staggered back against the bed. He fell onto the foam pad and crashed against the wall. His hands were cut across the knuckles, scratched all the way from fingers to wrists. The right hand was worse, the one swollen by little cuts and salmon slime. With a grimace, Frank jammed it under his arm.

“Get rid of that bird or I'll kill it,” he said.

“He was trying to help me,” I said. “You shouldn't have pushed me like that.”

In a moment, we were shouting at each other. “I told you,” said Frank. “He's too wild. He's dangerous.”

“He's just a raven!” I said.

I felt Frank might hit me. But he only sat on the bed, hunched up like a child. “Get out of here,” he said. “Leave me alone.”

I thought he was crying. “Frank—” I said.

“Leave me alone!”
he screamed.

I might have yelled right back, except I realized that Frank wasn't angry at
me.
He was angry at the child for not carrying a cell phone in her purse, at the flies and the maggots for spoiling the fish, at my uncle Jack for taking us sailing. I remembered what he'd said about people going crazy, and I thought he was coming close to that himself. I quietly took the child's purse and went out to the forest.

I knew just where to go: to that quiet old forest where the moss was thick and woolly, as soft as whipped cream. I scooped out a hole. But before I laid the purse in it, I took out the four worry dolls and held them in my fist. They were too small to have hands or faces, but somehow they looked wise and somber. My mother had given me three worry dolls after my father's funeral. “Whisper to them,” she'd told me. “Tell them what scares you, then put them away. They'll take on your fears and your worries so you won't have to think about them anymore.” I had stayed awake all night, telling them everything, whispering my fears of my mother dying next, of being left poor and homeless. And now, in the forest of Alaska, it surprised me to see that my fears hadn't changed. I was afraid of being alone, of being hungry and cold. I held the worry dolls close to my lips and whispered these things.

As though bringing an answer, Thursday arrived. I saw him falling, wings spread, through the bolts of sunlight to land on the moss nearby. He sang with a quavering call as I put the dolls in the purse, and the purse in the ground.