Serving you dinner, Joby thought angrily.
“We didn’t move up here,” the dragon lady added, “to be bombarded with loud noise and rough language every time we step outside.”
She returned to her meal, dismissing him with scornful finality. But Joby was too offended to contain himself.
“Rest assured, Ms. . . .” He waited for a name.
“Agnes Hamilton,” answered the woman’s clueless companion. “And I’m Franny Tyndale.” She smiled, seemingly oblivious to any nuance of the real conversation here.
“Rest assured, Ms. Hamilton,” Joby continued, coldly, “that everyone who grew up here will be informed of your arrival, and told to remain silent in your presence.”
When Hamilton made no reply, he left them to their meals, wishing them every kind of indigestion and a bone-dry well that summer.
When she’d gotten Jake his tea, Clara Connolly sat down and stirred some honey into her own, wishing their discussion were so easily sweetened.
Tom spread his hands in dismay. “I’m completely flummoxed, Jake. First that Hamilton woman, and now this! What’s happening to the border?”
Jake shook his head. “World’s been changin’, Tom. More people out there every day, crowdin’ up against us on every side. You know Taubolt’s little charms are mostly sleight of hand. Such tricks don’t work so good when folks get up too close.”
Tom stared bleakly into his cup.
“Come on.” Jake smiled. “Didja really think this was never gonna happen? People were only bound to overlook a big empty hole in their crowded little box for just so long, no matter what we did.”
“So what do we do about Bruech?” Tom sighed. “A few questionable new residents is one thing, but it sounds like this mystery investor wants to buy the whole place, lock, stock, and barrel.”
“Just tell him the owners don’t want to sell.” Jake shrugged.
“Sure,” Tom said, “but what if Bruech goes looking for himself and finds a few willing ognibs, like Weston. They’re not gonna see the bigger picture.”
“Comin’ to Taubolt ain’t the same as stayin’, Tom. You know that well as I do.”
Tom shook his head, unsatisfied. “I’ve said it before, Jake. I think it’s unwise to leave so many of Taubolt’s own residents in the dark. Once it’s clear they belong here, ognibs ought to be told the whole truth, not just tossed red herrings and innuendos. If the border’s failing, it seems more crucial than ever that we all pull together. If I’d been able to talk openly with Stan Weston, Hamilton and Tyndale wouldn’t be here now.”
“I feel the same frustration all the time, Tom,” Clara said, “but you know it wouldn’t work.”
“Why not?” Tom insisted. “They live here, for heaven’s sake! They’re good people! Look at Crombie. He’s an ognib, but we made him a guardian! Gladys Lindsay’s not of the blood, but the Council meets at her inn! If they know, why not the others?”
“ ’Cause a lot of ’em just don’t want to,” Jake said gently. “I admire your attitude, Tom, but a lot of people here just couldn’t handle it. Look at our kids. They play their little games practically in plain sight, for all we warn ’em not to. You think the ognib kids don’t see what goes on? But mention it to ’em, and most just go blank or explain it away somehow. It’s not their world, Tom, and, frankly, it’s not their problem either.”
“Besides, dear,” Clara added, “you know that sooner or later someone would find it all too interesting to keep to themselves.”
Tom threw his hands up. “Maybe you’re right, but it would sure make a lot of things easier. Hiding from the world is one thing. Hiding from our neighbors is another. . . . So what about Bruech, Jake?”
“People throwin’ big money around usually think they’re doin’ you a huge favor,” Jake mused. “If you don’t act grateful enough, they’ll teach you a lesson by takin’ their business elsewhere.” He smiled. “Just keep rushin’ him off like that. Wait a couple days to return his calls. Have a lot of trouble locatin’ the owners. Act like you’re only givin’ it half your attention, and maybe he’ll just get mad and walk.”
“Okay,” Tom said. “But if this invasion’s going to continue, I think it’s time the Council met and came up with some more focused approach.”
Jake leaned back thoughtfully. “You’re prob’ly right. I’ll talk to the others and arrange it with Gladys.”
Tom looked relieved, and Clara was too. Better the whole Council deal with this than leave her husband holding the bag. Still, she was surprised at how unconcerned Jake seemed and couldn’t help wondering if the ancient knew something he wasn’t telling.
With subdued farewells all around, Joby left the Bobs outside the Heron’s Bowl, and went to walk off his lingering anger at that obnoxious woman on Taubolt’s now-deserted wooden sidewalks. Soon he had abandoned the darkened shop fronts of Main Street to wander out across the bright, moonlit fields and walk along the cliff tops, listening to the surf below, like the soft, regular breathing of some enormous sleeping child.
Before long, he’d grown calm enough to face the fact that his clever little plan to embarrass that woman had been anything but clever. He had only spread her stain even further over their evening by embarrassing himself. The Bobs’ bad influence no doubt, he thought with a wry smile. He’d have to be more careful in the future to act his age, not theirs, however infectious their age did seem at times. He was supposed to be their role model, after all.
Feeling relaxed enough to sleep now, Joby turned to head back to the inn, but just then some new sound joined the ocean’s rush and sigh beyond the cliffs. Someone down on the beach was singing—quite loudly.
Joby went back to peer over the cliff edge and soon spotted a somewhat portly man standing on an outcrop of rock jutting well into the water. His arms were spread theatrically as he sang at the top of his lungs—something by Gilbert and Sullivan, Joby thought, perhaps a bit off-key. Then Joby noticed small bobbing shapes in the moonlit water at the singer’s feet. As a wave came in, several of them submerged suddenly, only to resurface elsewhere seconds later. Who would be swimming this long after dark? Joby wondered. Then, one of the swimming audience began to bark almost as musically as the singer, and Joby realized that the man was singing to seals! And the seals were listening!
Joby turned to scan the headlands behind him, wanting a witness to confirm what he saw, but the fields were empty all the way to town. Joby looked back down at the vocalist and his astonishing audience. Suddenly shy of disturbing them, he shook his head and turned for home, wondering whether Mrs. Lindsay would think him crazy or merely dishonest when he told her what he’d seen.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
Joby lay in bed, reading the anthology Father Crombie had given him for Christmas, as he did most nights now. He’d come across something familiar by Frost, and was going over it for a second time, struggling against encroaching sleep and distracting thoughts of what he’d seen out on the headlands that night.
Mrs. Lindsay had been amused by his astonishment. “That’s just Dash Borden,” she’d laughed. “He’s out there at all hours singing to those seals.” Then, more soberly, “I think it helps him with the loneliness since his wife died.”
“But, they were listening!” Joby had insisted. “Right there at his feet!”
“Seals are a curious lot,” she’d assured him. “They’ll come ’round to check on almost anything that happens in or near the water.”
Joby shook the idea from his head again, and went back to reading.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down! I could say ‘elves’ to him
,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. . . .
Unable to hold sleep any longer at bay, Joby set the book aside, reached up to douse the light, and closed his eyes. But even as he drifted at the edge of sleep, the poem’s last few lines still danced behind his eyelids like moonlight on the surge that night:
He moves in darkness, as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
18
( Measure’s Tale )
Joby was waiting, bag lunch in hand, when Cal’s junker truck roared around the corner and rumbled to a halt in front of Mrs. Lindsay’s inn. Joby didn’t know too much about cars, but the truck’s bulbous lines suggested a fifties or sixties vintage, and its once-green, flaking paint, elaborately detailed in rust, backed that estimate.
“This thing street legal?” Joby quipped, climbing in beside Hawk.
“You trashin’ my truck?” Cal shot back.
“Seems a little late for that,” Joby drawled.
“Better’n yours, ain’t it?”
He had a point. “You coming on the hike with us?” Joby asked.
“Nope. It’s a Bobber day.”
“Which means?”
“Which means,” Hawk grinned, “the Bobs’ll be fryin’ up a couple scrawny minnows and a whole lotta crow for dinner again.”
“Last I heard,” Cal mused, “you two wanted a ride somewhere. But now I’m thinkin’ maybe I don’t have time this morning.”
“You’re the best fisherman in Taubolt history,” Hawk amended. “Okay?”
Mollified, Cal gunned the engine and lurched into the street with hardly a glance backward for traffic, not that there was ever much traffic to look for in Taubolt.
Hawk lived up Avalon Ridge, ten miles south of town. Beyond tumbling roadside fences half-buried in herbs and blackberry, wide fields of tall dry grass rippled in the wind, punctuated by isolated stands of redwood, old barns, and weathered homesteads. Ravens swooped and dove in the breeze. Grazing horses looked up as they drove by.
It took twenty-five minutes to reach Hawk’s house; a piecemeal, wood-shingled structure halfway up the ridge, decked out in wind chimes, abalone shells, and odd little stained-glass windows. Cal dumped them out, honked farewell, and rumbled away.
The long flight of wood-slat stairs up to Hawk’s front door swayed so badly under their combined weight that Joby feared it might collapse. But he kept his mouth shut, cautious of offending Hawk. Once inside, Hawk called for his mother, but got no answer.
The entrance hall was dimly illuminated by a red-and-blue stained-glass window beside the door. A spindly vine covered in tiny leaves cascaded from its macramé harness over an end table cluttered with mail. An oval rag rug of green and gray covered much of the hardwood floor. The walls were dark, unfinished wood, and the still air smelled like a dusty copse of trees.
“Guess she’s workin’,” Hawk said, leading Joby into a kitchen and breakfast bar connected by a short, wide flight of stairs to a large, sunken living room. The furnishings were worn, but things were immaculately neat, clean, and well lit by several skylights and a wall of glass on the living room’s far side. Joby’s attention was immediately drawn to a large painting hung over the couch, a spectacular landscape rendered in what looked like oil pastels; rich orange afternoon light and dark blue shadows draped a desert landscape beneath a vibrant blue sky dramatically washed in clouds. Its beautiful composition conveyed a sweeping sense of airy space. Not a print apparently, it was, without a doubt, the finest object in the room.
“What does your mom do?” Joby asked.
“Different things,” Hawk said, pulling sandwich makings from the refrigerator. “Helps people with their records and bills sometimes, or does cleaning and stuff.”
“Sounds like she works pretty hard,” Joby said.
“Yup,” Hawk said, crinkling his sandwich into a brown paper bag. He grabbed two small bottles of drinking water for himself and Joby from a shelf above the countertop, and said, “Okay. Let’s go.”
As they left, Hawk stopped to leave a note for his mom. Joby read over Hawk’s shoulder as he wrote that he was out hiking with his English teacher and would be home for dinner. He paused, then added a reminder that his teacher would need a ride home.
“You did tell her about that before now, didn’t you?” Joby asked.
“Sure.” Hawk shrugged without meeting his eyes.
Joby could only hope it was true.
Minutes later, they were headed farther up the steep ridge along a narrow, overgrown dirt road. It was almost one o’clock before they stopped to eat their lunches on a wide, grassy hilltop. The morning’s gentle breeze had died away. The smell of warming straw and wayside plants was pungent. Songbird and raven-call joined the clack, clack, clack of grasshoppers, and the lowing of distant cattle.
After lunch, as they continued up what had become only the ghost of a trail, they surprised a wild boar and stood very still as it trotted away, tail stuck up like a flagpole. When it had run some distance, it stopped to look back over its shoulder, then crashed into the underbrush and disappeared.
“They can be real mean,” Hawk warned. “Gotta be careful when you see one.”
“I’ve never seen a real boar,” Joby said reverently. “You’re so lucky to grow up in a place like this.”
“I didn’t,” Hawk replied, resuming his progress ahead of Joby. “We moved here two years ago from Phoenix.” He fell silent for a while, batting at the grass with his hands as they passed, then added sadly, “Wish I had grown up here, though.”
“What made your folks come here?” Joby asked.
“It was my mom’s idea. She wouldn’t stop buggin’ my dad.”
“How’d she hear about a place like Taubolt clear down there in Arizona?”
“Some friend of hers told her about it a long time ago. I think she thought my dad would get better if she got him out of Phoenix, but he’s a prick no matter where he lives.” He took a particularly vicious whack at some weeds leaning into their path. “Guess she knows that now.”
They hiked uphill in silence after that, through a dense thicket of stunted conifers in which their path nearly vanished. Then, all at once, the trees opened into an abandoned apple orchard full of gnarled old trees. It was surprisingly warm out in the light. Something buzzed, cicada-like, from the shrubs around them.
Hawk stopped abruptly and motioned for Joby to be quiet, pointing to the field’s far side. At first, Joby saw nothing but tall grass. Then several dun-colored shapes resolved into the backs of browsing deer, heads down, foraging in the tall straw.
Oddly, Hawk began to hum very quietly. Joby could barely make out the pretty if repetitive melody until Hawk began to hum a little louder, and first the doe, then her fawns, raised their heads to stare at him. As Hawk added soft, flowing nonsense sounds to his tune, the deer twitched their tails, but made no move to flee. Still singing, Hawk reached slowly into his pocket and pulled something out inside his fist, then began to take slow, casual steps forward, one or two at a time, until he was halfway to the deer. There he sat down very slowly, singing all the while, and stretched his hand out, revealing two sugar cubes.
Joby watched in fascination as minutes passed. Neither Hawk’s arm nor his tune wavered. Finally, the doe took a hesitant step forward, then several more while Hawk sang on. Within reach of his hand, the animal stretched its neck to sniff the sugar, then nibbled it quickly from Hawk’s palm. Only then did Hawk’s tune fall silent, and his hand drop slowly into his lap. When the doe had finished eating, she and Hawk gazed at each other while Joby held his breath in pure amazement. All at once, to Joby’s even greater wonder, the deer sang back to Hawk. It was just a few atonal trumpeting sounds, but Joby had never known deer made
any sounds at all. When her brief song was done, the doe turned to nuzzle her fawns toward the orchard’s far side and through the thicket.
Hawk watched them go without moving, while Joby watched Hawk in envious wonder. “How did you do that?” he asked at last.
Hawk turned to grin proudly at him. “They’re suckers for sugar.” He shrugged, as if that explained everything.
“What were you singing?”
“Just made it up,” Hawk said. “Doesn’t really matter what you sing, long as it’s quiet, and you don’t stop. No animal sounds like that when it’s attacking, and if you believe they’re not afraid of you, they can tell, and they’re not afraid either. That’s all.”
“But it talked to you!” Joby said, still unable to believe it was all so simple.
“Deer can talk.” Hawk smiled. “They just don’t want to most of the time.”
As they talked, one thought had drowned all others in Joby’s mind: How could any man have left a boy like this? “Where on earth did you learn all this?” Joby asked.
“All the kids around here know this stuff. But that’s not the best thing. Come on! I’ll show you something really neat! It’s why I brought you.”
“Something can top what I just saw?” Joby asked skeptically.
“Back there,” Hawk said, pointing toward the orchard’s far boundary of brush and trees, “there’s a haunted house! It’s been empty so long, no one remembers who lived there. The windows are all smashed out, and half the floors have fallen into the rooms below them.” His voice grew quieter as they crossed the orchard, as if he thought someone might hear him. “I even heard people say there’s a body stuffed in the chimney, but I don’t think it’s true. You can tell it’s haunted though. It feels like something’s watching you, or about to talk in the next room, even in the daytime. Nobody goes there at night.”
The Book of Joby Page 40
