Nick lay with his head on the pack and his sister lay by him with her head on his shoulder.
“I’m not going back, Nickie, unless you tell me to,” she said. “I just don’t want fights. Promise me we won’t have fights?”
“Promise.”
“I won’t talk about Trudy.”
“The hell with Trudy.”
“I want to be useful and a good partner.”
“You are. You won’t mind if I get restless and mix it up with being lonesome?”
“No. We’ll take good care of each other and have fun. We can have a lovely time.”
“All right. We’ll start to have it now.”
“I’ve been having it all the time.”
“We just have one pretty hard stretch and then a really hard stretch and then we’ll be there. We might as well wait until it gets light to start. You go to sleep, Littless. Are you warm enough?”
“Oh yes, Nickie. I’ve got my sweater.”
She curled up beside him and was asleep. In a little while Nick was sleeping, too. He slept for two hours until the morning light woke him.
Nick had circled around through the second growth timber until they had come onto the old logging road.
“We couldn’t leave tracks going into it from the main road,” he told his sister.
The old road was so overgrown that he had to stoop many times to avoid hitting branches.
“It’s like a tunnel,” his sister said.
“It opens up after a while.”
“Have I ever been here before?”
“No. This goes up way beyond where I ever took you hunting.”
“Does it come out on the secret place?”
“No, Littless. We have to go through some long bad slashings. Nobody gets in where we’re going.”
They kept on along the road and then took another road that was even more overgrown. Then they came out into a clearing. There was fireweed and brush in the clearing and the old cabins of the logging camp. They were very old and some of the roofs had fallen in. But there was a spring by the road and they both drank at it. The sun wasn’t up yet and they both felt hollow and empty in the early morning after the night of walking.
“All this beyond was hemlock forest,” Nick said. “They only cut it for the bark and they never used the logs.”
“But what happens to the road?”
“They must have cut up at the far end first and hauled and piled the bark by the road to snake it out. Then finally they cut everything right to the road and piled the bark here and then pulled out.”
“Is the secret place beyond all this slashing?”
“Yes. We go through the slashing and then some more road and then another slashing and then we come to virgin timber.”
“How did they leave it when they cut all this?”
“I don’t know. It belonged to somebody that wouldn’t sell, I guess. They stole a lot from the edges and paid stumpage on it. But the good part’s still there and there isn’t any passable road into it.”
“But why can’t people go down the creek? The creek has to come from somewhere?”
They were resting before they started the bad traveling through the slashing and Nick wanted to explain.
“Look, Littless. The creek crosses the main road we were on and it goes through a farmer’s land. The farmer has it fenced for a pasture and he runs people off that want to fish. So they stop at the bridge on his land. On the section of the creek where they would hit if they cut across his pasture on the other side from his house he runs a bull. The bull is mean and he really runs everybody off. He’s the meanest bull I ever saw and he just stays there, mean all the time, and hunts for people. Then after him the farmer’s land ends and there’s a section of cedar swamp with sink holes and you’d have to know it to get through. And then, even if you know it, it’s bad. Below that is the secret place. We’re going in over the hills and sort of in the back way. Then below the secret place there’s real swamp. Bad swamp that you can’t get through. Now we better start the bad part.”
The bad part and the part that was worse were behind them now. Nick had climbed over many logs that were higher than his head and others that were up to his waist. He would take the rifle and lay it down on the top of the log and pull his sister up and then she would slide down on the far side or he would lower himself down and take the rifle and help the girl down. They went over and around piles of brush and it was hot in the slashing, and the pollen from the ragweed and the fireweed dusted the girl’s hair and made her sneeze.
“Damn slashings,” she said to Nick. They were resting on top of a big log ringed where they sat by the cutting of the barkpeelers. The ring was gray in the rotting gray log and all around were other long gray trunks and gray brush and branches with the brilliant and worthless weeds growing.
“This is the last one,” Nick said.
“I hate them,” his sister said. “And the damn weeds are like flowers in a tree cemetery if nobody took care of it.”
“You see why I didn’t want to try to make it in the dark.”
“We couldn’t.”
“No. And nobody’s going to chase us through here. Now we come into the good part.”
They came from the hot sun of the slashings into the shade of the great trees. The slashings had run up to the top of a ridge and over and then the forest began. They were walking on the brown forest floor now and it was springy and cool under their feet. There was no underbrush and the trunks of the trees rose sixty feet high before there were any branches. It was cool in the shade of the trees and high up in them Nick could hear the breeze that was rising. No sun came through as they walked and Nick knew there would be no sun through the high top branches until nearly noon. His sister put her hand in his and walked close to him.
“I’m not scared, Nickie. But it makes me feel very strange.”
“Me, too,” Nick said. “Always.”
“I never was in woods like these.”
“This is all the virgin timber left around here.”
“Do we go through it very long?”
“Quite a way.”
“I’d be afraid if I were alone.”
“It makes me feel strange. But I’m not afraid.”
“I said that first.”
“I know. Maybe we say it because we are afraid.”
“No. I’m not afraid because I’m with you. But I know I’d be afraid alone. Did you ever come here with anyone else?”
“No. Only by myself.”
“And you weren’t afraid?”
“No. But I always feel strange. Like the way I ought to feel in church.”
“Nickie, where we’re going to live isn’t as solemn as this, is it?”
“No. Don’t you worry. There it’s cheerful. You just enjoy this, Littless. This is good for you. This is the way forests were in the olden days. This is about the last good country there is left. Nobody gets in here ever.”
“I love the olden days. But I wouldn’t want it all this solemn.”
“It wasn’t all solemn. But the hemlock forests were.”
“It’s wonderful walking. I thought behind our house was wonderful. But this is better. Nickie, do you believe in God? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
“I don’t know.”
“All right. You don’t have to say it. But you don’t mind if I say my prayers at night?”
“No. I’ll remind you if you forget.”
“Thank you. Because this kind of woods makes me feel awfully religious.”
“That’s why they build cathedrals to be like this.”
“You’ve never seen a cathedral, have you?”
“No. But I’ve read about them and I can imagine them. This is th
e best one we have around here.”
“Do you think we can go to Europe some time and see cathedrals?”
“Sure we will. But first I have to get out of this trouble and learn how to make some money.”
“Do you think you’ll ever make money writing?”
“If I get good enough.”
“Couldn’t you maybe make it if you wrote cheerfuller things? That isn’t my opinion. Our mother said everything you write is morbid.”
“It’s too morbid for the St. Nicholas,” Nick said. “They didn’t say it. But they didn’t like it.”
“But the St. Nicholas is our favorite magazine.”
“I know,” said Nick. “But I’m too morbid for it already. And I’m not even grown-up.”
“When is a man grown-up? When he’s married?”
“No. Until you’re grown-up they send you to reform school. After you’re grown-up they send you to the penitentiary.”
“I’m glad you’re not grown-up then.”
“They’re not going to send me anywhere,” Nick said. “And let’s not talk morbid even if I write morbid.”
“I didn’t say it was morbid.”
“I know. Everybody else does, though.”
“Let’s be cheerful, Nickie,” his sister said. “These woods make us too solemn.”
“We’ll be out of them pretty soon,” Nick told her. “Then you’ll see where we’re going to live. Are you hungry, Littless?”
“A little.”
“I’ll bet,” Nick said. “We’ll eat a couple of apples.”
They were coming down a long hill when they saw sunlight ahead through the tree trunks. Now, at the edge of the timber there was wintergreen growing and some partridge berries and the forest floor began to be alive with growing things. Through the tree trunks they saw an open meadow that sloped to where white birches grew along the stream. Below the meadow and the line of the birches there was the dark green of a cedar swamp and far beyond the swamp there were dark blue hills. There was an arm of the lake between the swamp and the hills. But from here they could not see it. They only felt from the distances that it was there.
“Here’s the spring,” Nicl: said to his sister. “And here’s the stones where I camped before.”
“It’s a beautiful, beautiful place, Nickie,” his sister said. “Can we see the lake, too?”
“There’s a place where we can see it. But it’s better to camp here. I’ll get some wood and we’ll make breakfast.”
“The firestones are very ald.”
“It’s a very old place,” Nick said. “The firestones are Indian.”
“How did you come to it straight through the woods with no trail and no blazes?”
“Didn’t you see the direction sticks on the three ridges?”
“No.”
“I’ll show them to you sometime.”
“Are they yours?”
“No. They’re from the old days.”
“Why didn’t you show them to me?”
“I don’t know,” Nick said. “I was showing off I guess.”
“Nickle, they’ll never find us here.”
“I hope not,” Nick said.
At about the time that Nick and his sister were entering the first of the slashings the warden who was sleeping on the screen porch of the house that stood in the shade of the trees above the lake was wakened by the sun that, rising above the slope of open land behind the house, shone full on his face.
During the night the warden had gotten up for a drink of water and when he had come back from the kitchen he had lain down on the floor with a cushion from one of the chairs for a pillow. Now he waked, realized where he was, and got to his feet. He had slept on his right side because he had a .38 Smith and Wesson revolver in a shoulder holster under his left armpit. Now, awake, he felt for the gun, looked away from the sun, which hurt his eyes, and went into the kitchen where he dipped up a drink of water from the pail beside the kitchen table. The hired girl was building a fire in the stove and the warden said to her, “What about some breakfast?”
“No breakfast,” she said. She slept in a cabin out behind the house and had come into the kitchen a half an hour before. The sight of the warden lying on the floor of the screen porch and the nearly empty bottle of whiskey on the table had frightened and disgusted her. Then it had made her angry.
“What do you mean, no breakfast?” the warden said, still holding the dipper.
“Just that.”
“Why?”
“Nothing to eat.”
“What about coffee?”
“No coffee.”
“Tea?”
“No tea. No bacon. No corn meal. No salt. No pepper. No coffee. No Borden’s canned cream. No Aunt Jemima buckwheat flour. No nothing.”
“What are you talking about? There was plenty to eat last night.”
“There isn’t now. Chipmunks must have carried it away.”
The warden from down-state had gotten up when he heard them talking and had come into the kitchen.
“How do you feel this morning?” the hired girl asked him.
The warden ignored the hired girl and said, “What is it, Evans?”
“That son of a bitch came in here last night and got himself a pack load of grub.”
“Don’t you swear in my kitchen,” the hired girl said.
“Come out here,” the down-state warden said. They both went out on the screen porch and shut the kitchen door.
“What does that mean, Evans?” the down-state man pointed at the quart of Old Green River which had less than a quarter left in it. “How skunk-drunk were you?”
“I drank the same as you. I sat up by the table—”
“Doing what?”
“Waiting for the goddamn Adams boy if he showed.”
“And drinking.”
“Not drinking. Then I got up and went in the kitchen and got a drink of water about half past four and I lay down here in front of the door to take it easier.”
“Why didn’t you lie down in front of the kitchen door?”
“I could see him better from here if he came.”
“So what happened?”
“He must have come in the kitchen, through a window maybe, and loaded that stuff.”
“Bullshit.”
“What were you doing?” the local warden asked.
“I was sleeping the same as you.”
“Okay. Let’s quit fighting about it. That doesn’t do any good.”
“Tell that hired girl to come out here.”
The hired girl came out and the down-state man said to her, “You tell Mrs. Adams we want to speak to her.”
The hired girl did not say anything but went into the main part of the house, shutting the door after her.
“You better pick up the full and the empty bottles,” the down-state man said. “There isn’t enough of this to do any good. You want a drink of it?”
“No thanks. I’ve got to work today.”
“I’ll take one,” the down-state man said. “It hasn’t been shared right.”
“I didn’t drink any of it after you left,” the local warden said doggedly.
“Why do you keep on with that bullshit?”
“It isn’t bullshit.”
The down-state man put the bottle down. “All right,” he said to the hired girl, who had opened and shut the door behind her. “What did she say?”
“She has a sick headache and she can’t see you. She says you have a warrant. She says for you to search the place if you want to and then go.”
“What did she say about the boy?”
“She hasn’t seen the boy and she doesn’t know anything about him.”
“Where are the other kids?”
“They’re visiting at Charlevoix.”
“Who are they visiting?”
Short Stories Page 60
