Backwater

by Joan Bauer

“The ground’s frozen!”

  “Dig harder. You’re a sports hero.”

  Egan rammed his boot down on the shovel. “What are we looking for?”

  “Anything.”

  He held up a little rock. “Can we go in now?”

  We dug for one hour.

  Found nothing.

  But it didn’t matter.

  I grabbed Egan and the car keys and we drove to town.

  “Explain to me, Ivy, what we’re doing.”

  I pulled into a parking lot in front of the post office. A little man with glasses was locking the door.

  I screamed, “No!” and started running to him.

  The postal worker sidestepped me like he was a matador and I was a rampaging bull. “We close at noon today,” he said sourly.

  “Sir, please help me.” I grabbed his arm. “Does the name Josephine Breedlove sound familiar to you?”

  The man thought. “There’s the old Breedlove place up the hill.”

  “This is another Breedlove—my aunt. We thought she might be dead. But now our crazy neighbor mentioned that she’s seen her in the family cemetery decorating the graves and—”

  Egan put his hand on my shoulder. “Think, Ivy, of how you’re sounding to others.”

  I stood there. “Please, are there any records you could check?”

  The postman sighed, took out his keys, unlocked the post office.

  After a few minutes, he came out holding a piece of paper. “The only Breedlove address we have is the place up the hill. I suppose you could try the Hall of Records. See if she owns any property, has paid any taxes, something like that. The clerk might open up, especially if you scream loud like you did at me. She lives upstairs.”

  * * *

  The Hall of Records was closed. I pounded and pounded on the door. Finally, it opened. A short, round woman stared at me.

  “I know you’re closed, ma’am, but this is an emergency. I need information. I’m trying to find my aunt.”

  The woman looked at me unsure.

  “It would mean so much if you could help.”

  The clerk considered that. She nodded and led us into the small office.

  “What’s the name?”

  “Josephine Breedlove.”

  The clerk eased herself into a creaky wooden chair, pulled out a big book, LAND RECORDS, started going through it, put her finger down the long page, stopped. “I’ve got the Breedloves up on the hill.”

  I shook my head.

  The clerk kept looking, checked another book. “Would it be under another name?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “I’ve got nothing here for a Josephine Breedlove.”

  Egan asked if he could see the book. The clerk handed it to him. Egan put his finger on the first B in the long list. “Baar, Babbitt, Bacer, Backwater, Beller—”

  I lunged for the book. “What did you say?”

  “Baar, Babbitt, Bacer, Backwater—”

  “Backwater!”

  Egan looked at me. “So?”

  “That’s what people said about her. She was stuck in the backwater.”

  “I never heard that.”

  I grabbed the book. “If you cared about your family history, if you listened when people talked about your ancestors, you would know these things.”

  There it was. Backwater.

  The clerk went to her file, looked it up. “There’s property,” she said, “way up in the mountains.” She looked at another book. “Way up. Looks like she’s got some decent acreage.”

  “What’s the address?”

  “There aren’t really addresses in the mountains. She doesn’t have neighbors. Did you try the post office? That’s the only way to get in touch with these folks.”

  I explained what the postmaster had said.

  The clerk checked another book. “She paid her taxes last April—J.P. Breedlove.”

  Josephine’s middle name was Pauline.

  I looked at the record book. The J.P. Breedlove seemed to jump off the page. I remembered the soaring dove in her high school yearbook.

  Remember me this way.

  “Is it possible to get up there?” I asked.

  The clerk got out a mountain map, looked up the lot number and said travelling in deep wilderness in winter wasn’t easy.

  “Your aunt’s made sure it’s hard for anyone to find her. You might want to take a hint from that.”

  I looked at the map. I felt a thousand things at once.

  “We can take a hint,” Egan said, dragging me to the door.

  I broke free. “What if I wanted to find her?”

  “Only thing I can suggest,” said the clerk, “is getting a wilderness guide to maybe get you up there. Somebody who knows the woods.”

  “How do I get one of those?”

  The clerk smiled. “You ask around. But I’ll warn you, those people are a little different.”

  * * *

  I headed down the street to find a wilderness guide, but they were like policemen. You could never find one when you needed one.

  Egan was following me saying I was nuts, I was going too far, I couldn’t be going on crack-pot trips in the mountains to find missing aunts, I had homework.

  I walked into a magazine store, asked the woman at the counter about wilderness guides; she handed me a brochure on the Adirondacks.

  I asked the people in the Fudge Factory and got stared at.

  I stopped two policemen. The cute, rugged young one suggested I ask the old man in the bookstore—he knew everyone in town. I smiled brilliantly.

  “You’ve been so helpful” I said, tripping over Egan as I was walking backward to view the cute policeman for as long as possible.

  “A bit obvious,” Egan sneered.

  “Oh please, a pretty girl walks by and your tongue drags on concrete.”

  The bookstore window was filled with books on life in the Adirondacks.

  “After this,” Egan shouted, “we’re going home!”

  “Learn from the master.” I headed inside.

  An old man was behind the counter puffing away on a pipe. It was good to be among the ancient. I didn’t want to waste my time with some young upstart who didn’t know the region.

  “Help you?”

  I smiled warmly. “I’m told, sir, that you know everyone in town.”

  The old man leaned against the counter and said there might have been a few who slipped by undetected, but not many.

  I glanced smugly at Egan.

  “Sir, do you know any … wilderness guides?”

  The old man looked down sadly. “The best one I knew was found dead just past the ridge last year trying to make the summit in winter with a bum leg.”

  “Found dead,” Egan said for emphasis.

  “Smokey Vanderlick. He was a great one. Made a mean squirrel soup, too.”

  “Squirrel soup,” Egan cautioned me.

  The old man lit his pipe. “His daughter guides some. She’s got a place outside of town—a little cabin tucked back in the hills. Turn right behind the strip mall going toward Irvington. You’ll see the sign first.” He chuckled. “It says Mountain Mama.”

  “Catchy,” said Egan.

  “Is she,” I began, “is she … well … strange?”

  He laughed, puffed deep; smoke swirled above him. “Wilderness guides aren’t exactly what you’d call mainstream.”

  * * *

  The mountains were the first thing you saw on the sign—painted a hazy purple with pinkish-gray smoke rising dramatically into a brilliant sun. The words were emblazoned in cobalt blue.

  Mountain Mama, Inc.—Let Us Guide Your Wilderness Experience.

  “We could turn back to civilization,” Egan suggested. “Get meatball subs with melted mozzarella in town.”

  I kept driving, turned up an incline. A small log cabin stood before us with a smaller Mountain Mama, Inc. sign. Gray smoke swirled out of the stone chimney. An old jeep was parked outside. Canoes were on a rack, a b
roken down hut leaned precariously in the back.

  “She’s probably got a pot of squirrel soup on the back burner,” Egan warned.

  I parked near a rusty sled. “I’ll do the talking.”

  We walked up to the door. The sign read:

  YOU ARE ABOUT TO EMBARK ON THE

  ADVENTURE OF A LIFETIME.

  DON’T JUST STAND THERE—COME ON IN.

  I pushed the door open.

  A large woman sat at a desk in front of a computer. She wore a green Mountain Mama, Inc. sweatshirt and was chewing gum. Brochures were stacked by the door. She was drinking orange juice from a half gallon carton. Six backpacks were hanging from hooks, photos of the large woman on various mountain peaks hung on the walls. She had long, crazy gray hair that seemed to go in a dozen directions.

  I cleared my throat. “Uh … Ms. Mountain, I presume?”

  The woman grinned broadly. “Guilty.”

  “I’m Ivy Breedlove. I’m looking for a wilderness guide.”

  She hit her thigh, headed toward us. “You got the best one in the state. I can change your life in seventy-two hours—give me a week, and you’ll be changing others.”

  She slapped down five brochures.

  “We offer several wilderness trips here. We’ve got your general wilderness experience for the first-time adventurer—hiking, rock climbing, basic survival skills, outdoor cooking …” She picked up a guitar and strummed a cord. “… bluegrass singing ’round the campfire. If you’re trying to bond with your family or co-workers, we’ve got three- to seven-day Trust Trips. I’ve personally seen people who could not stand each other work their way up a mountain and become best friends—makes you weep. For an extra fee we can drop you solo to survive by your wits in any wilderness area of your choosing from here to Manitoba. We’ve got snow-shoeing expeditions, all terrain cross-country skiing junkets, trout fishing, and my personal favorite, spelunking.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Cave exploration. Nothing like crawling around a tight, dark cave to give a person inner perspective.”

  “I’m not looking for a trip. I’m trying to find my Aunt Josephine. She lives in the mountains somewhere. No one in my family has seen her for years. I’m trying to write a family history. I’ve been working on it so hard and it would mean everything if I could talk to her!”

  Mountain Mama looked at me. “I’ve heard of her.”

  “You’ve heard of Josephine Breedlove?”

  “I wouldn’t be much of a guide if I hadn’t heard of a woman hermit living way up past the ridge, now would I?”

  “You know how to get there?”

  “Honey, I know how to get anywhere.” She flipped open an appointment book, looked at her schedule. “We can leave on Saturday. Get back right after New Year’s.”

  “We’re not rich,” Egan said guardedly.

  “How old are you?” she asked me.

  “Eighteen,” I lied.

  “Bull.”

  “Sixteen.”

  She ran her finger across a map of the mountains to a high peak. “It’d take us a day and a half to get up there because it’s winter and you look pretty green. We’d take the easy way around the ridge. Add on to that how much time you want to spend with her.”

  “I hadn’t thought that far … I mean, this is all very unusual.”

  Mountain Mama picked up a New York Times Book Review section, waved it in the air. “You know what book publishers are looking for these days?”

  “Ah … no.”

  “They’re looking for the next best seller. They’re looking for a bold new voice that can capture the struggles of humanity in three-hundred and fifty pages. I’m going to write that book. The haunting memoir of a woman who can climb up rock face with a nine-inch knife in her teeth.” She opened the Times Book Review to the list of current how-to best sellers. “Personal finance, personal nutrition, personal sacredness. That’s what’s selling today. My book’s going to have it all—how to lose weight, how to get sexy, how to find your authentic self, how to save money, how to connect with your higher power—all from a woman who has dedicated her life to bringing wilderness experiences to plain, common people like yourself.”

  She looked out the window to the mountains in the distance. “I like you, Ivy Breedlove. I sense you’ve got pain. I sense you’ve got pathos.”

  “I try.”

  She studied my face. “You’re on a quest for completion.”

  “I hadn’t thought about it that way.”

  “Some turn down the quest, some hesitate, some struggle at their ability to see it through. The mountains bring clarity, but you’ve got to take it one mountain at a time.” She grinned. “That’s the title of my book. I’d like to add your story to it—a teenager struggling in the frigid wilderness, willing to risk all to find her hermit aunt, guided on the journey of a lifetime by the rugged expertise of yours truly.”

  “We need to rethink the risking all part,” I said.

  “Tell you what I’ll do, if I can use your story in my book, I won’t charge your for the trip, except for supplies. I’ll change the names, of course, to protect the innocent.”

  “Ms. Mountain …?”

  “You need to call me Mama or we’re not going anywhere.”

  “I’m having a little trouble taking this all in.”

  “Just hold on to the title of my third chapter: Use Fear—Don’t Let It Use You.”

  I held on so tight I became terrified.

  Mountain Mama grabbed a beef jerky stick and ripped off a piece with her powerful teeth. “I’ll get you to her,” she said, chewing hard. “And I’ll get you home. I haven’t lost one yet.”

  I muttered that there was a first time for everything.

  5

  Egan and I were sitting in the public library looking through two books on hermits. The book Egan had showed emaciated men with knee-length beards who ate berries and chewed on leaves and drank from mountain streams and lived in caves. The book I had showed emaciated men with knee-length beards in loin cloths who lived in caves and prayed all day and ate dates and a crust of bread once in a while and were supposed to be very wise. It was something about solitude and partial fasting, the book reported, that brought these men closer to a deeper spirituality. I’d always felt that food, particularly good food, brought me closer to God. Egan said when he hasn’t eaten for a stretch, no one should come near him.

  “Maybe that’s their secret,” I said, turning the page to a picture of an emaciated man holding a bow and arrow by a forest lean-to, looking hungry enough to eat wood.

  I felt puny and unprepared to face the physical rigors of winter wilderness. I mumbled that I wasn’t sure I wanted to go.

  “Why not?”

  “Premature death, frost bite, mountain delirium, avalanches, appalling food, stark loneliness. I’m a historian. Historians don’t have adventures. We learn about people who do. We take our chances in libraries.”

  Egan rocked back in his chair and didn’t say anything.

  I mentioned that Josephine might not appreciate company.

  I mentioned that Dad would kill me if he knew I’d taken things this far.

  Egan, the silent man, considered this.

  “What are you really afraid of, Ivy?”

  “I’m afraid of everything and I thought you were against this!”

  “Shhhh!” It was the librarian.

  Egan studied me. “Are you afraid that you’re like her?”

  “No!”

  I turned the page in the wide, wide world of hermits book. Saw another emaciated man with a knee-length beard standing at a great expanse of mountain range, arms open, communing with nature.

  I was terrified I was like her.

  “I think you’ve got to find her, Ivy.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because Fiona won’t have anything about her in the video and everyone will read yours to find out what Josephine said.”

  Occasionally, Egan showed d
epth.

  “Library’s closing,” said the librarian, her hat on.

  We shut our books, put on our coats, lumbered out the door.

  A cold blast of night air hit us.

  I mentioned that I was freezing now. I’d never survive without central heat.

  We stood on the dark street. Egan pushed up his collar like some shadowy character in a mystery novel and uttered the words that have sent countless disenfranchised heroes off to find missing lovers, friends, and relatives.

  “If you don’t try to find her, it will haunt you for the rest of your life.”

  * * *

  I told Tib about Josephine and she threw her cane in the air, smashing a floor lamp, and shouted, “Glory be, we’ve been given another chance!”

  Then I told Tib about Mountain Mama, and she made a call to her friend, the Chief of Police, while I picked up shattered light bulb pieces on my hands and knees. The Chief of Police told her that he’d trust Mountain Mama to guide anybody anywhere in these mountains.

  “Well,” Tib said, laughing, “all we need now is for your father to agree.”

  That definitely bought me some time.

  * * *

  “Of course you have to go!” Octavia Harrison shouted this over the phone to me. “Do you realize that trying to find a hermit aunt is the ultimate experience to write about for your college entrance essay? You could get in anywhere with that story!”

  “I’m only a junior, Octavia. I can’t think about college entrance essays now.”

  Octavia, a junior, too, thought about college constantly. She was convinced that her life was achingly boring and that admissions officers would have a field day burning her essays and yawning.

  “I’m desperate, Ivy. My life is a blank page. I know kids who are going on white water rafting trips just so they can write about them.”

  “That’s absurd.”

  Octavia said if I didn’t care about getting into a good college, she could use the story. She shifted into sociologist gear.

  “Just do a few things I would do, Ivy, in case I need to borrow it. See if she has kept any links to society, even though she lives alone.”

  “You can’t have my experience, Octavia. It’s not honest.”

  “Promise me you’ll ask her what it was about traditional society that she found so repulsive.”