The Skeleton Tree (13 page)

“Chase it out,” said Frank.

“No.” The raven shook himself, splattering beads of cold water. “He's freezing.”

“I don't care. I don't want that thing inside.”

“Why?”

“It gives me the willies. Okay?”

The willies.
That sounded funny coming from Frank. “Oh, the bad-omen thing,” I said.

To my surprise, Frank agreed. “That's right,” he said. “It thinks I'm dying.”

“Why would he think
that
?” I asked.

“Just get rid of it,” said Frank. “If you don't do it, I will.”

I couldn't see a thing in the cabin: not the raven beside me, not Frank across the room. From Thursday's throat came little gargles and mutters.
He
could see Frank; I was sure of that. I heard his feathers rustling, and I was afraid he was going to fly up at Frank and attack again.

“Okay,” I said. “I'll put him out.”

I groped across the floor, trying to find Thursday. “I'm sorry,” I told him. “You just can't stay.”

“Now!” shouted Frank.

“Wait a minute!” The raven was twitching. I wished he would suddenly start speaking real words.
Oh, please let me stay.
But he only made his sad sounds, which to me meant exactly the same thing. When I closed my hands around him, he took my fingers gently in his talons and pried them apart. It made me sad that he didn't want to be held. But then he twisted his neck, opened his beak, and dropped something hard into my palm. It was made of metal, cold and wet.

I stood by the window, trying to find even a tiny gleam of light.

“What are you doing?” asked Frank.

I couldn't quite see the thing the raven had given me. It felt like a hollow tube, a little smaller than a lighter, with a wire ring to hold it by. Something rattled inside it when I turned my hand. I suddenly knew just what it was.

“I think he brought matches,” I said.

“What?”
said Frank.

I fumbled the cylinder open. Wooden matches came sliding out. They fell through my fingers and onto the floor. I knelt down to find them, groping through the old, wet ashes.

Clever bird,
said Thursday.

But there was no reward for the raven. Frank leapt up to drive him away. He staggered over the stones in the fire circle, shouting that he would kill that bird. Poor Thursday battered at the window, then vanished through the plastic pane. Frank stood, panting, in the ashes. I pushed at his leg, yelling at him to move. “Your foot's on the matches,” I cried. “You're breaking them, Frank.”

There were nine matches trampled on the floor, all broken and useless. But minutes later we sat in blazing light. Smoke rose to the roof and streamed through the little hole, and wood crackled and split, flinging embers. We sat very close the fire, Frank holding the cylinder in that ridiculous big glove.

“Six matches,” he said. “That's not very many.”

“Don't blame me,” I told him.

“It's your fault,” said Frank. “You fumbled the radio when Jack threw it to you. Now you fumbled the matches.”

He added wood to the fire, until I had to back away to escape the heat. But he stayed where he was, so close to the flames that steam rose from the fingers of his black glove.

As I lounged in the corner, Thursday appeared again in the window. His little eyes looked down at us, reflecting orange and yellow.

“He's not afraid of the fire,” I said, hoping Frank would invite him down. “He must have sat right here with the cabin guy. He must have learned that matches start fires, and he just wanted to be warm. He wanted
us
to be warm.”

Frank stared into the flames. The firelight made his eyes look black and hollow. “So where do you think it got them from?” he asked.

“I guess they used to be the cabin guy's,” I said. “Thursday likes shiny stuff. He probably took them and stashed them in his nest.”

“Or another raven did,” said Frank, nodding. He had it all figured out already. “That's why the guy killed one. So he could hang it up as a warning.” He put a stick onto the fire. “But there's another possibility.”

“What?”

“Figure it out, Einstein.”

I thought for a moment, then looked toward the door. “You think the guy's still out there?”

Frank only shrugged.

“No, that's too weird,” I said. “He'd have to be a crazy old hermit to be hanging around like that.”

I wasn't sure if Frank really believed the man was out there. He just stared into the fire.

That day we ate our first hot food in Alaska: seaweed boiled in water in the cabin guy's old pot, and fish that tasted smoky and warm. Thursday came so slowly down to the floor that even Frank didn't notice until the raven was right there beside me. Then he laughed. “Oh, let him stay,” he said. “Who cares?” I fed Thursday scraps of fish, and he joined in the conversation with his strange little mutters and head tilts and shuffles.

I wanted to try out the cabin guy's stove, but Frank said I'd be wasting fuel. “We'll need the gas later,” he said. “We can build a beacon. And when an airplane comes we can pour the gas all over it and make a huge fire.”

He may have invented that idea right on the spot, just as a reason to stop me from lighting the stove. But it became his new scheme, and he talked about it as we basked by the fire, like lizards on sun-heated stones. His last great idea—to climb the mountain—had been forgotten, and that was fine with me. We drank tea made of hot water and fir needles, and I thought it was the best tea I'd ever had.

Before the sun went down I learned that having a fire meant a lot of work. We had already burned up the wood the cabin guy had left, and it would be a steady job to gather more. It would become
my
job, and I would forage a little farther every day, learning what would burn well and what would not, that old bark from the beach would smolder like charcoal, keeping us warm all night.

I got up early in the morning, eager to see what had washed ashore. Thursday came with me.

The surf was high and roaring, the waves flinging spindrift as they stormed across the sand. I saw the dashboard from a car, a Lego brick, a doorknob on a chunk of wood. The plastic head of a garden gnome rolled in the surf, its beard a tangle of barnacles.

The only thing I picked up was a tiny shoe that a baby had worn.

It was sitting upright on the sand, a little brown shoe with a white lace still threaded through the eyelets, still tied in a careful bow. Of all the things I'd seen, this was the saddest, and I couldn't leave it behind. The sole was not even scratched, because the shoe had been worn by a boy too young to walk. I pictured him smiling at those shoes as his mother tied the laces. I could see him trying to touch them, bending up his little legs and stretching out his arms. His mother laughing. But it was my own mother I saw, her hair and eyes all shiny, her smile making wrinkles around her eyes.

Thursday pecked at tiny crabs and sand fleas trapped in rolls of kelp. But he stayed nearby, and he came right to me when I called.

It was a comforting sight to see smoke wafting from the forest when I turned to go back. I could see Frank out on the point below the skeleton tree, where the waves were bursting into high, white plumes. He was standing at the edge of the rocks, wrapped up in the plastic capes. He looked like an ancient sailor longing for the sea.

I took the brown shoe to the church-like meadow, up the path and past the cabin. The spot where I'd buried the purse was already healed over, and I couldn't find it exactly. The moss had stitched itself together, hiding my secrets so well that I wondered if anyone would ever find them. I liked the idea that they would vanish. As I buried the shoe nearby, I felt as though I was starting a cemetery for children who would always be lost.

The quiet forest reminded me again of my father's funeral. I remembered how men in dark suits had lowered his coffin a little way into the ground, and then let it hang from straps as everyone wandered off. My mother put her hands on my shoulders. She was wearing long black gloves with blue buttons. “We have to go, Christopher,” she said, starting to pull me back. I shook away from her, determined to stay with my father. I wanted to wait until he was properly buried, and then to wait some more because it didn't seem right for everyone to go and leave him alone. Uncle Jack tried to lead us away. “The car's waiting,” he said. The men in dark suits looked at their watches. Over by the cemetery wall, two men in overalls were leaning against a yellow excavator, waiting to fill in the grave. One of them was smoking a cigarette. Uncle Jack said, “It's time to go. We have to leave.” My mother sighed sadly. “Oh, Christopher, please don't do this.” I looked up and saw she was crying. So I took her hand, and Uncle Jack rushed us away. He bundled us into the car, then told the driver, “Okay, let's go.” At the gate we stopped to let a taxi pass, and the only sound was Uncle Jack tapping his fingers nervously. In the taxi sat a woman with a veil, with a boy beside her, and they looked terribly sad. I couldn't stop thinking about my father. For days and nights I kept seeing him lying on his back in that dark box under the ground, his hands crossed over his chest, that strange smile stuck on his face.

These memories flashed in my mind as I crouched in the forest. It was Frank shouting my name that snapped me out of them. I hurried to meet him before he could see my little cemetery. He had brought the gaff, and we went together toward the river.

We heard the waterfall from half a mile away. It rumbled like an enormous engine, and plumes of spray drifted high above the trees. Swollen by rain, dirtied by silt, the river blasted over the lip in a curl of foam, like a wave on the ocean.

Though right beside me, Frank had to shout. “We can't get up the river!”

I nodded, and pointed to the side of the falls. “You climb the rocks. There's an old road at the top.”

“A
road
?” he yelled.

I nodded again and showed him the way. The river spread right over the rocks and the roots where I'd climbed before, but we found our way up at the edge of the forest. When we reached the old road Frank's eyes became huge. He dropped to one knee and pressed his gloved hand into a pothole. He said something I couldn't hear, then stood up and grabbed my shoulder in that big glove, pulling me close. “Footprints!” he shouted.

I didn't understand. Frank looked at the trees that stood beside the road. He walked to one, reached up as far as he could and plucked from the bark a little clump of animal hair.

I didn't hear what he said as he jabbered away. But I could see for myself what he was trying to tell me. My road was not a road at all. It was a bear trail—a bear
highway—
where generations of grizzlies had worn hollows into the ground. They had stood up to scratch their backs on the trees more than seven feet above the ground.

The river had climbed from its banks to surge among the trees. Dead salmon tumbled past in endless numbers. They went headfirst and tailfirst, somersaulting by. But others still fought their way up the edge of the river, resting in little pools behind tree roots and stones.

We pulled out eleven fish. We threaded them into bundles and hoisted them onto our backs, and for the first time I carried more than Frank. That made me proud, but a little frightened too. Though I was getting stronger, Frank was getting weaker. At the
Reepicheep
he had to stop and rest, and he actually fell asleep on the cold stones with his injured hand shoved into his jacket.

I watched the waves roll onto the beach, their tops streaming foam as they curled and broke. There was line after line of breakers, and out in the middle I saw a man swimming. I couldn't believe it at first. He rose on a wave, then disappeared, and I stared out for a long time before I saw him again. Now a little closer, he tumbled in the foam.

It
was
a man—but a man made of wood. His arm reached through the air, then sank into the sea again. He tilted on a wave and fell back down. He floated on his back; he floated on his stomach.

I could almost imagine that he was alive, struggling to reach the shore. I stood up to watch, and I saw his face, calm and peaceful, his head ringed by an oily sheen that looked like a halo. Then the breakers tossed him high in the air. They rolled him toward me and pulled him away. I wanted to wade out and grab him, but the surf was too high, and I was scared of the undertow, of being sucked out to sea.

The wooden man surfed feetfirst down a wave, on his back. His heels grounded in the shallows, and the wave lifted him up till he stood in the sea. For a moment he balanced there, standing in front of me with the surf at his feet, holding out his hand as though to lead me away. Then he fell slowly back and swam out to sea again. And I was left standing on the beach, looking sadly after him.

I went back and woke Frank. I sat right beside him, still watching for the wooden man. Frank yawned and rubbed his eyes. He scratched himself like a chimpanzee, yawned again and gazed around. “Hey, look who's coming,” he said.

On the beach to the north, the grizzly bear was plodding toward us.

“He's crossed the line,” said Frank. “He's in our territory now.”

Its head swaying slowly, its great hump rippling above its shoulders, the bear came along at its same steady pace, not caring what lay in front of it. Sandpipers fled from its path.

“This changes everything.” Frank stood up. That terrible smile came slowly to his face. “There's no choice now. We'll have to kill him.”

“What?” I said. “You're crazy.”

“No. That's the way it has to be.” Frank didn't look away from the grizzly bear. “That's the law of the jungle.”

I laughed like a lunatic.

“It's true,” said Frank. “He invades our territory, we have to kill him. There's no choice. It's him or us.”