The Red Garden

by Alice Hoffman

  Occasionally he and the bear saw each other, but they had a truce and ignored each other. The bear was old, and although this was his territory, he didn’t seem to mind the company. Perhaps the boy was himself a bear, a foundling left on a step in Albany, raised among humans but reviled for his innermost traits. In the woods, he did feel himself becoming more of whatever he was. He ate blueberries and looked at leaves. He didn’t think about winter, but he was well aware of its approach. He worked more quickly on his shelter. He knew everything ended.

  ONE AFTERNOON HE heard voices ringing. A group of children were climbing down from a hike in the woods. It was a field trip from the local summer camp, fifteen or so boys and girls from the Blackwell Community Center along with a counselor, a teenaged girl named Kate Partridge. Kate had long hair that was so red it didn’t even look real. She had a take-charge manner and a luminous complexion, even though her face was now smudged from hiking with a bunch of eight- and nine-year-olds. Her job earned her extra credit at school and twenty-five dollars a week. She had her charges paired up and holding hands. The children were kept busy by singing “A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” Kate knew the camp director probably wouldn’t approve of the song selection but she didn’t care. Kate was fifteen and felt the world belonged to her, or at the very least, this section of Berkshire County did. She lived with her mother and her aunt Hannah in the oldest house in town. The women doted on her. When they told her she was a brilliant, beautiful, one-of-a kind girl, she had no reason to doubt them.

  Kate could be selfish or selfless depending on her mood. She had definite ideas about everything, including politics (she was a Democrat) and education (she intended to go to Wellesley).

  People said she’d be a heartbreaker soon, if that wasn’t already the case. Neighborhood boys already had begun to follow her home, and although they tried their best to get her attention, she had no interest in them. She wanted to study art history and live in Paris, as her mother had. That was where her parents had met, but her father had been killed during the war and her mother came home to Blackwell to live with her unmarried sister. Kate had grown up knowing that she wanted to travel the world. She wanted to get as far away from Blackwell as possible, to fall in love fifty times over, to swim in the Nile, walk along the Seine, see war and life and death.

  Kate was one of those girls who thought she knew exactly what fate would bring her, but that was all about to change. Halfway down the road, as they were heading down Hightop Mountain, Cal Jacob disappeared. Cal was nine years old and trouble. One minute he was holding his partner’s hand and the next he was gone. Another boy said he thought Cal had gone looking for fish. Kate didn’t like the sound of that. Fish meant water and water meant drowning and drowning meant Cal would ruin both their lives. There had been a well-known drowning in their town over a hundred years earlier, in the Eel River, and it was said that the little girl’s ghost could be seen on certain nights. They called her the Apparition and there was a play about her that was always staged by schoolchildren during the summer festival that celebrated the town founder’s birthday. Kate had played the part of the Apparition when she was six years old. She’d been such a good actress that when she’d looked into the audience, she saw that both her mother and aunt were crying, as if she were indeed that little girl lost in the Eel River rather than their own darling, confident, one-of-a-kind Kate.

  She went to the edge of the road and called Cal’s name, but there was no answer. Kate went into panic mode. She had the other children hold hands and stay put, leaving Cal’s sister, Lucy, in charge before dashing into the woods. Her heart was pounding; it was all she could hear, the thud of her own blood in her ears. She was the girl who won every contest, who always came out on top, the most beautiful girl in her class, the one who would travel the world and succeed at everything she tried, not the girl in whose care a local boy had gotten lost and drowned, the one gazing mournfully out her window while the entire town held candlelight vigils and blamed her for the tragedy.

  THE WOODS WERE cool and deep and green. Kate called for Cal over and over. Her voice sounded thin and helpless even to her. The forest smelled of moss and earth. Bands of light streamed through the trees and left a delicate lattice of brightness. Kate could hear the children up on the road singing in their sweet high voices about bottles of beer. She reproached herself for losing Cal, for that was the unalterable truth. She had been in charge, and whatever happened next could mark the rest of her life. Maybe she wasn’t who she thought she was. Maybe she wouldn’t win everything.

  It was then that she saw something in the underbrush. “Cal?” she said. She took a few steps forward. Something suddenly stopped her. It grabbed hold of her. Kate felt herself grow cold inside. She thought it was a bear that was upon her, and that her life was over even though she was only fifteen and hadn’t even begun to live. He had his arm around her waist. She turned. Even when she looked at him, she still thought he was a bear until he spoke in a voice that surprised her by how human it was. “Stay back,” he told her.

  Cal was below them in a clearing. There was a stream filtering down from the mountain, and Cal had found little fish floating in it. He was crouched there, trying to stab at them with a stick. But he wasn’t the only one in the clearing. There was a huge black bear beside some low-growing blueberry bushes. The bear was very still, and Kate remembered her mother once telling her that just because something was quiet didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous. A wasp, a snake, a deep pool in the Eel River, a bear.

  The creature Kate had at first thought to be a bear left her to creep down the hillock. He was quiet and quick. He grabbed Cal before the boy knew what had hit him and carried him toward the steep embankment, his hand placed firmly over Cal’s mouth. Kate blinked back tears. She thought Cal might be torn apart, fought over by animals, but when the bear eating blueberries stood up and made a sound deep in his throat, the one carrying Cal leapt onto a log and made himself taller. The big black bear backed away, and the one with Cal came up the hill. When he handed the boy over to Kate, she understood he wasn’t a bear at all. Just a young man. Kate stared at him, rudely, mouth open.

  “Run,” she thought he said, and so she did, dragging Cal with her, ripping her clothes on stickers and briars, breathing so hard her chest was nearly bursting. She gathered the children together and got them running, then flagged down a passing truck. She safely deposited all of her charges into the flatbed. She quieted the crying ones and told the rowdy, overexcited ones to sit still. The truck was from the local orchard and it smelled like apples. Kate’s heart was racing. She thought about his hand on her waist, the look in his eyes. She wondered if it had all been a dream, a vision brought on by the strange circumstances of the day. She gazed back into the woods and thought about bears and men and how life was already not what she had thought it would be.

  SHE NEVER TOLD anyone about what had happened. She wasn’t sure they would believe her, but there was something more. She was flooded with shame, but the truth was she didn’t want to share that boy in the woods. All the same, rumors began. The gardener at the church said he’d spied someone rummaging through the old clothes bin. The stranger proceeded to run away when the outside light was flicked on, but his shadow was seven feet tall. Several boys in town said they’d seen a creature at the Eel River that looked like a cross between a bear and an ape. It had slunk off when they threw rocks at it, tail between its legs.

  Doug Winn, who owned the AtoZ Market, began to notice that on days when items were mysteriously missing from the shelves, there was cash left on the countertop. He rigged a Polaroid camera with a string and left it by the register, set to flash if anyone broke in after closing. When it happened, he showed the photo to nearly everyone in town, insisting the image he’d caught was that of a monster. People laughed and said Doug had merely recorded the presence of an individual who’d thrown his hand in front of his face, startled when the camera’s flash went off. After a while things quieted down.
The rumors faded and people got more interested in starting a petition requesting that a stoplight be put in at the corner of Highland and Main, where there had been three accidents in a single year. Folks stopped talking nonsense about monsters. Still, they locked their doors at night.

  KATE WENT INTO the garden in the evenings in order to be alone. She wasn’t the same since the incident on the mountain. She had a secret, one she could hardly admit to herself. She had the urge to be away from other people, to banish herself from the future she’d always planned. The garden was old, and Kate’s aunt Hannah grew tomatoes and red peppers and watermelon and radishes. One day Kate filled a basket and told her mother she was taking it to the town hall as a donation to the food pantry. But when she got to the town hall, she kept on. She carried the basket along Route 17 and set it on the side of the road in the spot where Cal Jacob had disappeared. She waited there for quite some time. When the stranger didn’t appear, she walked home, disappointed.

  Kate grew even more moody and dissatisfied. People in town seemed provincial and small-minded. Her third cousin, Henry Partridge, came from California to stay before he went on to Harvard. He was predictable and safe. He asked her to the movies, but even though he was a distant cousin, once removed, Kate wasn’t interested. At the end of August there was the Founder’s Day celebration. This year Lucy Jacob was playing the part of the Apparition. She forgot her lines and had to be coached from the wings by her mother and wound up in tears.

  “You did fine,” Kate reassured Lucy when she went backstage after the play. “You were a better Apparition than I ever was.”

  The stage was part of an open-air theater that was set up on the town green once a year. Cal Jacob was there, standing in the grass. He’d grown quieter since his runaway episode in the woods. When anyone addressed him, he shifted in his shoes and looked the other way. Now he waited to speak to Kate until the other children went off for cookies and punch. “There really is a monster,” he said quietly. He’d been wanting to talk to Kate for some time. He knew no one else would believe him.

  There were rides set up beyond the green—a little Ferris wheel and a Whip and bumper cars. White fairy lights had been strung through the branches of the trees.

  “There’s no such thing as a monster,” Kate told him.

  Cal shook his head, stubborn. “He was.”

  “No. That’s not what he was.”

  “Okay,” Cal said. He had the jitters and was tapping his foot. Anyone could tell he wasn’t convinced. Kate put her hands on his shoulders.

  “Listen to me,” she said. “He was just a man.”

  THE NEXT TIME she brought a basket of food she also left a note. She ran home afterward, embarrassed, her face flushed with heat. She wasn’t herself anymore. She didn’t know what she was thinking or why she’d become so absorbed in searching out a stranger. Summer was fading and the dark came earlier now. Kate felt as though her fate had split in two on the day Cal ran into the woods. She could have gone in one direction, a life in which she might have been home reading, or at a sleepover with the other girls in town, or visiting her cousin in Cambridge. Instead, she came back to Route 17 again and again.

  High school would soon be in session, and Kate had begun to feel an odd sort of desperation. The note she’d left had exact instructions. On the appointed date and time she went to Band’s Meadow. The meeting place was on the far side of the orchards. It was off-season so there was no one around. Kate walked through the tall grass. He was waiting there for her, hidden. He watched her as though she were another dream, like the town at night when everyone was asleep in their beds, a dream so distant all he could do was watch in the dark. As she drew near he called for her to stop and she did. She sat down in the tall grass, legs crossed.

  “Now what?” she called.

  “Close your eyes,” he told her.

  When she did, he came to sit across from her.

  Kate lifted her face and squinted, but all she could see was a shadow. “Can I open my eyes?”

  “No.” He laughed.

  “This is silly,” Kate complained, grumpy. Then she added, “All right. Fine. I won’t look.” But only to ensure that he wouldn’t run away. She introduced herself, her eyes shut tight, then asked for his name in return.

  He studied her beautiful face. He hesitated. He had never thought of himself by name. He was simply himself.

  “Matthew James,” he said. Matthew was the name his aunt called him. James he plucked out of the air. He had passed a town called Jamestown; maybe that’s why it came to mind. He’d never known his surname. He’d never even wondered until now.

  “Matthew James,” Kate said approvingly.

  He told her about the house he was building, and the collection of books he had. He had run out of novels and was now reading science fiction magazines he had picked up from the AtoZ Market. She promised to bring books from the library, along with pens and paper, and anything else he needed. She didn’t have to be told why he wasn’t living in a city or a town. He didn’t belong there. She felt older when they said good-bye, as if time had shifted while they sat in the meadow and knowing him for this one evening had made her grow up fast. She opened her eyes and watched him walk away. From this distance, he looked like a tall young man. He turned to wave when he thought he was far enough away so that she couldn’t see him. But she could.

  THE FIRST WINTER was the hardest. Some days he didn’t leave his house. The snow fell and kept falling, and he stayed in and read the library books she’d brought him. He liked rebels. Lawrence, Dostoyevsky, Miller, Kafka. He had a rain barrel of melted snow, and he boiled the water for coffee and tea. After a while he began to feel deeply at home on those winter evenings. He made a set of weights out of a tree limb and rocks to keep himself fit. On days when it was clear enough he went out to trap game. He broke through the ice of a nearby stream to fish. He didn’t mind crouching down in the snow, waiting to see a flash of silver in the water.

  He waited for her visits, fewer in the winter, more frequent the following spring. In time he forgot to tell her to close her eyes, or she forgot to listen to him. Once, when they were together in the woods, she took his hand. He burned and had to look away. He warned her not to do that again. How could her hair be so red? She’d unplaited it while they were in the woods, and he’d been made mute with desire. How was it possible for her to be there with him? Why would she search him out? He thought perhaps he had invented her the way some cruel soul must have surely dreamed him up. She was quiet when he told her not to touch him, her mouth set. She became upset when he then suggested that perhaps she should go home. She walked through the orchard on her way back to town, confused because he’d told her to go. She broke off budding branches and set them in her bedroom in vases. She told herself she was done. Nothing would come of tramping through the woods, playing at love. She told herself she needed to get back on course. It was her senior year of high school and her future was at stake. She dreamed of apples all night. When she opened her eyes the next day, she was still thinking of him.

  SHE APPLIED TO Wellesley but didn’t want to go. Her mother and aunt sat her down and convinced her it was best. They knew something was wrong with Kate. Her moodiness, her solitary ways, her refusal to see friends. She got a summer job at the library and she took home armfuls of books and locked herself in her room at night. Once their cousin Henry came all the way from Cambridge to take her out to the movies in Lenox, but when he brought her home he confided to her mother and aunt that Kate didn’t seem to be there with him.

  When Hannah found a bone in the garden that same summer, she thought perhaps their food had been contaminated. She had worked in that same garden all her life and had never found anything odd before. She wasn’t the sort to believe in curses, but there it was, a smooth, white bone. Kate’s aunt and mother dug up an entire section of the garden and found more bones. There were rumors that this area had once been a burying ground. Perhaps it was bad luck. They reburied the bo
nes they’d found, filled in the holes, then tore out the seedlings and the old vines. They locked the gate and decided to forsake their garden that year. Kate no longer had homegrown vegetables to take to the woods. Instead, she saved the money she earned from her job at the library and bought food at the AtoZ Market to carry up to the mountain. Once she made a cake. Her mother spied her walking down the road with the cake tin. Then she knew there was a man.

  When Kate told Matthew she was going to Wellesley, he said he understood, and he did. He took her to his house soon after. She’d always asked to see it, and he’d always been standoffish, but now he changed his mind. He took her there when it was dark. He hoped she couldn’t see him when they went inside the one room where he lived. She kissed him first, and all the rest followed. He led her back to the road in the dark so that she would be home before morning. It was not only to keep her mother and aunt from knowing she had vanished. He was afraid that the things they did and said would melt in the light.

  They were together from midsummer on, and then there were no more nights and the summer was through. He’d known it was a stolen time, but he felt crushed when it was over. Before Kate left for college, he gave her a poem. He told her not to read it until she had gone to Wellesley, but she read it in her room that night.

  You told me to wait in a field.

  It was dusk and I could smell summer. The world was green.

  I had been a bear for so long I couldn’t imagine anything human.

  There was nothing I missed living in another world

  Except this:

  A woman cutting through the field to meet you

  Grass in her hair, pollen on her fingers, your name in her mouth.