by Ninie Hammon
“Mr. Carmichael,” the doctor said. “You have …” and then he said a word so long it used up almost a whole breath.
“You mind chopping what you just said into bite-sized pieces so I can gum it—left my dentures in my other suit.”
Blank look.
Before the doctor could point out that Theo had all his own teeth, he told the little man, “No mayonnaise talk, okay?” Theo didn’t waste his time with folks who used words that had more letters in them than mayonnaise.
Blanker look.
“Small words … like in a fortune cookie?”
Big smile.
“Ah, yes sir. A brain tumor. Cancer. You are fortunate man. It is operable. We remove it, you be good as new. You have surgery very soon, though. You wait, too late.”
“And if I don’t want you to cut my head open?”
“You die slowly, maybe. Or you drop over dead. Hard to say.”
That’d been a conversation stopper. Oh, you didn’t get to be seventyfour years old without wondering what was going to get you—because something was, and somewhere around sixty-five your odds of dodging whatever it was got worse with every breath you took. But when your wait your whole life to find out a thing, kind of takes your breath away when you finally do.
So there was a tumor growing up there in his brain that could kill him. He thought for a moment. He’d call it … Cornelius. Always did hate that name. A thing as important in your life as what could kill you had ought to have a name but no sense wasting a good one on it.
Then the Asian doctor wanted to schedule his surgery—in three days! But there was something Theo had to do first—just in case Cornelius didn’t fancy getting evicted and decided to blow up the building. He had to see Ty, spend some time with the boy. A few days, maybe a week, that was all. After that, he’d let them take an ax to his head. ’Course, he didn’t have no idea then he was gone get shanghaied! This wasn’t the first time ole Slappy’d played long odds, but these was getting longer every day.
He couldn’t tell Gabriella none of it. If she knew, that woman’d grab him by the ear, haul him off this mountain and drop him on the doorstep of the nearest brain surgeon. Besides, she had enough on her mind already. He looked up at the mountain behind the meadow and purposefully yanked the conversation away from his health.
“Them trees right up there,” Theo pointed to the mountainside that rose up above the valley. “The ones that look all shrunk, twisted up. Them the Jesus trees? You ever seem one up close?”
TY WISHED JOEY was here. Joey Thompson was his best friend, or at least he had been before they left Pittsburgh. Didn’t have a chance to tell him goodbye, though. Ty hoped Joey wasn’t mad at him about that because he couldn’t wait to tell Joey about the green snake when they got home.
Home. How could Ty ever go home again? How—?
He forced himself to focus on the snake, which he certainly couldn’t tell Mom about! She’d totally freak out. He’d brought a worm in the house once and she about went postal! Girls were like that, didn’t like dirty things and for sure didn’t like snakes.
Joey would love the snake, though. It was the color of lime sherbet. Ty had seen it two times by the big rock down from the waterfall. He’d tried to catch it, of course, but it slithered away before he had a chance. And he hadn’t really tried all that hard because he wasn’t completely sure it wasn’t dangerous, poisonous or something. He didn’t think there were any poisonous snakes in North America except rattlesnakes and water moccasins, but he wasn’t sure. He should have listened better when they were studying reptiles in science class. But that was when his father had—
He stopped right there. Had gotten pretty good at that in the past couple of years, of grabbing hold of thoughts before he had a chance to think them, thoughts that would take him there. He visualized that the ugly, scary, guilty thoughts were green slimy things like the stuff he coughed up that time he had bronchitis. And when they’d come sliding into his mind through a door cracked open in the dark place—all infected, ready to make him sick—he’d grab them with one of the hairclips mom used that had teeth like a dog biting down. And he’d open the door into the dark place where all the ugliness in his soul was stored and toss the green things in and slam the door back shut real quick. He’d lock it, too. But it never stayed locked.
He picked up the slimy green thought, but it hollered before he could get it to the door. You did it! Your father’s dead and it’s your—!
Bam! He banged the door shut, then took a deep, trembling breath. It was easier here to get past the shakes he always got when he had to handle one of the slimy things. This place was so different from everywhere he had ever been that it was almost like he was on a different planet, like all that had happened to him, what he’d done, was in another whole galaxy. And maybe … maybe it didn’t even count here!
He didn’t really believe that, but even lying to himself was easier here than it was back home.
The green snake wasn’t the only wildlife Ty had seen in the past three days. There were squirrels in those tall, straight trees—Mom said they were lodgepole pines, or ponderosa pines. He called them rusty trees because they sounded like a door opening on a rusty hinge, like they needed an oil can as bad as that tin man in The Wizard of Oz, which was Mom’s all-time favorite movie ever. Ty thought it was okay if you liked singing but the special effects sucked—you could totally see the wires on those flying monkey things. Some of the squirrels in the rusty trees looked like the ones back home but others were gray with real bushy tails and great big ears that stood up on the tops of their heads.
He’d heard owls hoot in the woods and woodpeckers pecking but hadn’t seen any. There were lots of other birds and Mom knew their names. He never dreamed his mother knew so much cool stuff. She’d pointed out bluebirds and birds as yellow as lemons he couldn’t remember the name of. The big ones with black stripes on their wings were called tanagers, the little fat ones were warblers. And you could see hawks circling in the sky and maybe eagles and falcons, too—they were too far away to tell. Mom said golden eagles could spot a rabbit from two miles away! And that an owl’s round face acted like a satellite dish to capture sound. Yesterday, she put sugar water in this glass thing on the back porch and this morning there were hummingbirds around it—tiny things green as pickles, with wings moving so fast you couldn’t even see them.
P.D. bounded up to him, wet on his underside where he’d been splashing around in the creek. The dog raced around him in circles a time or two until Ty held up his hand, palm out toward the dog and P.D. instantly sat. Ty made a fist and moved it in a downward motion and P.D. obeyed by lying down in front of him. Then Ty got down on one knee to pet the dog, who promptly rolled over onto his back so Ty could scratch his wet belly.
“Good dog, good boy, good Puppy Dog!” Ty said, scratching furiously. He loved to watch P.D.’s left rear leg paw the air in rhythm with his scratching.
P.D. hadn’t been with him either time he’d seen the snake; he had been running around in the meadow chasing butterflies. It was a good thing, too, because P.D. would have caught the snake for sure, would have killed it. But what if the snake was poisonous?
Pedro would know. He knew all about these mountains. Ty liked Pedro, liked that his eyes were kind, that he talked soft and didn’t say mean things and laughed easy. And when he smiled—the way it looked like he’d lifted a broom up off his teeth made Ty want to laugh out loud.
Something moved in the damp undergrowth about ten feet away and P.D. was on his feet and after it faster than Ty could follow. Maybe it was the green snake. Then Ty saw a flash of it, dark and splotchy looking. P.D. snapped at it and missed then pawed at the spot where it had slipped away into the rocks covered with lichen. Whatever it was popped out the top of the rocks, P.D. lunged, caught it in his mouth and Ty cried, “Drop it!”
The dog instantly dropped whatever it was at Ty’s feet. It wasn’t hurt, and before it could get away again, Ty scooped it off the
ground. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and looked at it in wonder. It wasn’t a snake—it had legs—so Ty knew it wasn’t poisonous. The only poisonous lizards in the United States were Gila monsters, and those lived in the desert. He did remember that from science class.
But this thing might not be a lizard. It was fatter than a lizard, with a round nose. He couldn’t see any teeth in its mouth. Its skin was skin—not scales like a lizard and it had yellow spots on it.
“Joey’s never gonna believe this,” Ty told the dog, who cocked his head to one side as if he understood every word. “I’m going to keep it, as a pet.”
P.D. barked once in agreement.
Ty turned toward the house. His grandfather was sitting in the rocker on the back porch and his mother had just stepped out the back door to join him. Ty headed down the creek instead of across the meadow, so he could go past the house and in the front door without being seen. P.D. padded along right beside him.
GABRIELLA THOUGHT SHE heard something on the deck above their heads, almost sounded like the door opened. But then Theo asked her about the Jesus trees and her mind went in an entirely different direction.
“You ever seen one up close?”
Gabriella looked up at the mountain stretching above them, the sight so achingly familiar she could almost believe she was a kid again, seeing it fresh and new every morning.
“There’s a chalet up there in the bristlecone forest—at 12,500 feet,” she said. “I don’t think my parents even knew it was there when they rented this cabin. I can see why it wouldn’t have been listed on the lease. It was more a glorified cave than a building, snuggled among the boulders with a wood frame and rock walls sealed with grout, one big room that had wooden platforms for sleeping bags, some cabinets and shelves and a big stone fireplace, bigger than the one here, covered the whole back wall. There was a picnic table, too, where Grant carved three interconnected G’s—Grant, Garrett and Gabriella.”
Gabriella’s mind created the scene in the air in front of her as real as the golden aster, the blue larkspurs and red Indian paintbrushes that splashed color on the meadow.
“That summer, we all went up to the chalet almost every day, the whole family, took supplies and spent the night sometimes. And if you think this place without electricity was rustic!”
She pointed to the bare rock near the mountain’s peak. “Up there, above the tree line past the bristlecones, that’s where my parents and older brother looked for aquamarine. They also found gem-quality smoky quartz, blue beryl, calcite and chalcedony, too, beautiful rocks, but their best specimens were aquamarine.”
“That where you got that crystal rock you wasn’t ’bout to leave behind in Pittsburgh?”
“I don’t remember where I got that one. But I wouldn’t leave it behind because it was the only one left. All the rocks we had around the house when I was a kid—they’re all gone except that one.”
Theo squinted up at the forest above the back wall of the hanging valley. “And your whole family stayed up there?”
“We were just kids, didn’t mind the hard beds and the cold. We’d get up every morning and Mom would fix a big breakfast over an open fire in the fireplace—eggs and bacon or sausage we hauled up there in backpacks. Made coffee in an old metal coffee pot where you put the grounds in the water. Then they’d take Grant and climb up above the tree line looking for rocks and leave us behind in the chalet. We had this arruga horn we could use to call if we needed them; they weren’t more than half a mile or so away.” She laughed. “Child Protective Services would snatch your kids and never give them back if you did something like that today—left twin seven-yearolds alone for three or four hours at a time on the top of a mountain! But it seemed perfectly normal to us.”
Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. She had been frightened, though it hadn’t bothered Garrett in the slightest. He liked being on his own.
“They’d always be back by noon. The storms came in the late afternoon and we’d be long gone before that.”
“What’d you and Garrett do in that chalet all by yourselves for hours?”
The same thing they did in the cabin—amused themselves. Twin sevenyear-olds on the side of a mountain and their parents didn’t bring a single toy or activity from home for the children to play with. Which had come back to bite them severely the first time it rained for three days in a row and they were stuck inside St. Elmo’s Fire all together. Her mother had been about to lose her mind when she stumbled upon the Bible in the back of a bookcase. It was huge, the big Family Bible variety, probably twelve inches wide by eighteen inches long and three inches thick. But it was clearly not somebody’s treasured heirloom. The white leather cover was stained and torn and no longer attached to the pages, which were tattered and dirty themselves. The top right corner of the thick slab of pages had been chewed on by some animal with exceedingly sharp teeth.
“Here,” her mother had told her. “Use this for paper and draw me a picture.” While Garrett played with a make-believe train he’d constructed out of broken pieces of fireplace stones, Gabriella wrote and drew pictures on the pages of the Bible—which was conveniently designed with wide white margins and small-print text set in a block in the middle of the page like a picture framed by a large mat. Over the course of the summer, the book became a picture diary, an image journal that told the tale of Gabriella’s mountain adventure recorded with three broken crayons—red, blue and green—and a ballpoint pen.
In Exodus, she drew pictures of the cabin. In the book called Numbers—she could read that word without Grant’s help—she drew stick figures of the family. She and Garrett wore identical overalls, her mother had red, curly hair and an apron, her father wore a tie and Grant … he was identified by his huge smile. In First and Second Samuel, she drew the creek and Notmuchava Waterfall. Through the Psalms and Proverbs were pictures of the Chalk Cliffs. When they went to the chalet, she’d tear out pages to take with her, then folded the pictures neatly and slid them back into the Bible when she returned. She also had folded napkins with pictures she’d drawn in restaurants—even a blank check her mother had ripped out of her checkbook in frustration once to give her something to doodle on.
Gabriella remembered the first thing she put in the book, too, on the blank page opposite Genesis 1. Below a huge drawing of Mount Antero she’d printed: “I love you, Mount Anero! Your friend, Gabriella Griffith.”
Her last picture, in the back of the book, the last page, was an angry scrawl of black lines, made with a ball point pen applied with such force it tore the thin paper. Back and forth, she had scratched until the page and the back cover beneath it were torn. In small, block letters on the tattered bottom, she’d written, “I hate you!”
That Bible was the book Jim Benninger had found. Gabriella shrugged off the image of the torn page and focused on Theo’s question.
“What did we do while our parents and Grant were up on the mountaintop? Well, we were supposed to figure out some way to entertain ourselves—and stay inside the chalet.”
She paused.
“But, of course, we never did.”
Images formed in the air in front of her. Images she hadn’t looked at in thirty years.
Gabriella and Garrett wave at their parents and Grant and watch them until they are out of sight. Then they wait five more minutes. That’s the rule, five minutes. In case somebody forgets something and has to come back—though nobody ever has. But they’re careful anyway. They time the minutes on the big clock on the wall, stare at the second hand as it goes around and around and around.
And when it comes up to the twelve for the fifth time, they are free!
Out the door they scoot to play in the boulder field and the bristlecone pine forest. Each tree is unique, bent over, warped and deformed, twisted by the constant wind in summer and blizzards in the wintertime, growing in the rocky soil that has no grass cover—only gray-green lichen and tiny white and purple wildflowers. But since the trees are short and d
ense like shrubs, with wide spaces between them, the forest is a huge fairyland maze the children have learned over time to negotiate, branching out farther and farther from the chalet as they explore. Sometimes they stop in a clearing to gaze out over the Arkansas River Valley spread out seven thousand feet below them.
They play hide and seek and treasure hunt, leave trails of broken sticks for each other to follow, or pretend Garrett is Indiana Jones and they’re looking for the Arc of the Covenant in the forest. But no matter what the game, they almost always wind up at the same place. It seems like a long way from the chalet, on the mountainside where the boulders are huge, big as cars, and the bristlecone pine forest is thinned out. Garrett is the one who spotted it. He’s always the most adventurous of the two, always wants to go farther and farther away from the chalet when Gabriella is ready to go back so they won’t get caught.
In fact, she’d been telling Garrett they should go back but he went forward instead, out where even their parents wouldn’t go—beneath the overhang! A big rock juts out from a crest high above. It looks like the thing the doctor sticks in your mouth and tells you to say “ahh.” It’s so big and tall you can see it from the chalet and their father had pointed it out one day. Said it looked to him like that rock was barely hanging on, like it was ready to let go in a landslide that would take out everything below. To which her mother had said that he was being silly. That the rock had been there for thousands of years and just because he thought it was barely hanging on didn’t mean it was going to come loose if he walked under it and topple down on top of him. It was always like that. Their father was always cautious and their mother poked fun at him for it. She liked to explore, take chances, live more … her father called it “on the edge.”
