Zigzag

by Ellen Wittlinger

  Robin, please write to me. I couldn’t stand to go the whole summer without hearing from you. I miss you so much, even more than I thought I would. I wish you were in Rome, too, so you could be seeing these wonderful things with me. Someday we’ll come here together!

  All my love,

  Chris

  I started composing a letter to Chris in my head even before I’d finished reading his. He’d sent such a great letter, I felt awful that I hadn’t written to him immediately, the minute his plane left Cedar Rapids. It hadn’t occurred to me that he’d be lonely, too—I thought he’d be having such a great time in Italy he wouldn’t even think of me. At first I felt sort of smug reading the part about how he missed me more than he thought he would, but then I also felt guilty. The truth was, I’d actually missed Chris less than I thought I would.

  Since I’d come on this trip I’d been so busy dealing with my crazy relatives, and wondering if each new stage of our journey would be a triumph or a tragedy, that Chris hadn’t actually been on my mind all that much. If I thought about him, I missed him, but—and I was stunned to realize it—I just hadn’t thought about him all that much. At least, not since I left Iowa.

  By the time I got back to the bunkhouse, Marsh and Dory were ready to go down to the lake.

  “Would you mind if I came down a little later?” I asked. “I want to answer Chris’s letter right away.”

  Marsh looked disappointed. “You mean, I have to go tubing with just Mom?”

  Dory sighed. “You poor thing. There’ll probably be some other kids down there, too.”

  “I’ll come as soon as I’m finished,” I promised.

  “I’m taking my drawing tablet along, just in case I get bored,” he said.

  After they’d flip-flopped down the path, I sat at the desk in the living room and took a piece of thick ivory stationary out of the top drawer. It said Lazy River Ranch across the top in swirling red letters. I sat and stared at the paper for a while.

  A month ago I’d imagined this summer much like the one before it—Chris and I trying to get our work schedules to match up so we could spend afternoons at the lake or evenings at the Fish Shack, and this year, if we were lucky, up in my bedroom. It would have been a great couple of months. But back then, I would never have imagined a summer like this one: me sending letters from the Lazy River Ranch in Wyoming to Chris at the Via della Vittorio in Rome, Italy. For some reason, sitting there looking at those red letters, I began to understand that we were both having adventures.

  Dear Chris,

  Your second letter arrived today. I’m so sorry I didn’t write to you the minute you left—I was so upset I did nothing but eat junk food for about four days. But I did write to you from a motel in Minnesota, and now I’m writing you from a ranch in Wyoming.

  Before I tell you about my trip though, I want to make sure you know that I do miss you, and I’m not mad at you, and I love you as much as ever. I wish I was in Rome with you or you were here in Wyoming with me, but we can do all those things together later, like you said. I’m lonely for you, too, Chris, but it won’t be long before we’re together again, at least for a while.

  I can’t believe how much studying you have to do! I hope Italian comes more easily to you than French did—as I recall it wasn’t your favorite subject. I wish I could meet Charlie and Giacomo and Dante, and go out for a big pasta dinner with you all! I’d have some of that wine, too, but I don’t think I could get into espresso—isn’t it sort of like drinking coffee grounds?

  I think the last time I wrote to you it was mostly about how horrible my cousins were. I might have to take a little of that back. They are pretty annoying sometimes and crazy all the time, but now that I’ve gotten to know them a little better I don’t hate them anymore. Iris and Marshall have both got some problems to work out, partly from that fancy shmancy school they went to, but mostly from their father’s death. And my aunt Dory is sad a lot of the time, too. I feel bad for them, up to a point, and then suddenly I just want to scream at them, “You’re only making things worse!” (Which, now that I think about it, is probably what you were thinking about me before you left for Italy.)

  Anyway, I think this trip might be helping the kids a little bit. Iris seems to be rediscovering a love for horses, and Marshall has begun to draw a few things that aren’t covered in blood. He’s an amazing artist for a ten-year-old.

  So far we’ve driven through Minnesota and South Dakota and most of eastern Wyoming. The Badlands are fabulous—maybe we could go there together some time, too! And Wyoming is amazingly beautiful. We’re staying at a dude ranch for a few days—riding horses, fishing, swimming, even square dancing. It’s nice because we all like it here—nobody’s complaining for a change. Next we’re going to Denver, and then, I think, south to Texas. This is the s-l-o-w route to California. Sometimes home seems terribly far away. It must really seem that way to you. But it’s nice to know we can leave Thunder Lake and it doesn’t go anywhere—it’s still there waiting for us to return. You know what I mean?

  Mom is forwarding your mail on to me at addresses Dory gave her before we left, so please keep writing. There’s nothing better than getting a letter from you. When you go to dinner tonight, think of me with every forkful of pasta you put in your mouth, and don’t ever forget how much I love you.

  Love, love, love,

  Robin

  I sealed the letter in an envelope and slipped it inside my shirt for just a minute, next to my heart. As soon as I’d started writing the letter my longing for Chris had come back with a vengeance. Writing my feelings down was frustrating—sheets of paper and stamps and all the time zones between us made it so complicated. I was used to looking into his eyes when I said I loved him—but writing a letter I had to wonder where he’d be, who he’d be with, what kind of mood he’d be in when he read it a week from now. We’d been apart two weeks already. He’d made new friends I’d never meet. Would he be different when we met again? Would he still be my Chris?

  I ran right over to the ranch store to get stamps and mail the letter, my ambassador to Rome. I bought a few postcards, too, one for Mom (a trail ride at sunset) and one for Franny (a cowboy clown riding a horse backward). I told Mom about the square dance the night before, but not all the extraneous details, of course. Just about how much fun we’d had dancing with ranch hands. To Franny, I wrote:

  Dear Gwyneth,

  I am only slightly stupider looking on horseback than this guy, but you should see me do-si-do a cowboy! The trip is sort of fun, even though my aunt and cousins are bizarro. Don’t listen to a word your mother says, and tell Des Sanders he owes me big. Ben says take a number.

  Love,

  Winona

  Writing to Franny made me miss her too. I had the feeling if I could just talk to her about Iris and Marshall, she’d be able to help me understand them better. She’d make me want to understand them.

  By the time I got down to the river, Dory was drifting sleepily in her tube, but Marsh had gotten out, dried off, and was sitting under a tree, drawing.

  “Finally,” he said when he saw me coming.

  “Sorry.” I dropped down beside him. “You got tired of floating?”

  He shrugged. “It was fine—I just feel like drawing a lot these days. There’s lots to draw here.”

  “Can I see?”

  He handed the pad over to me without me having to beg. The picture he’d been working on was a close-up of the grasses and wildflowers that surrounded his shady nook—and then off in the distance, in the background, was Dory in an inner tube on the river, her legs dangling loosely over the side. I expected the drawing itself to be good after seeing the earlier stuff he’d done, but the great thing about this one was the perspective he’d gotten on the scene. It was so original.

  “I love this one, Marsh. It’s great!”

  “I’ve drawn other stuff at the ranch, too, while you guys were eating or dancing or something,” he said.

  I flipped back thro
ugh the book. There was a picture of two kids who looked alike—must be Howie and Bobby—playing with cats. “Those cats are nice,” Marshall said. “They don’t scratch. We call them Pinkie and Marmalade.”

  “They look like good cats.” I flipped back again, and there was a drawing of a horse in its stable, nostrils open and sniffing. “Is this Okie?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t want to forget him.”

  “Marsh, you’ll never need a camera—your pictures are better than photographs because they have the feeling of the place in them.” I wasn’t just giving him some bull either—I meant it.

  “This is the first one I did here.” He turned back one more page to a drawing of Iris sitting at a table in the barn with a heaping plate of food in front of her, staring off into the distance. He must have drawn it the night we arrived. He’d captured the look on her face perfectly—deliberate disdain almost covering up any vulnerability, except for the eyes. When you looked at the eyes, you could see Iris in there, hiding.

  “This is wonderful, Marsh. I mean it.”

  “Yeah? I’m not showing it to Iris. She’d hate it.”

  “Hmm. You might be right. It gets down inside her—she might not appreciate it. Did you show these to your mom, though?”

  Marshall sighed. “Maybe I will one of these days. She’ll get all happy about it, you know? Because I’m not drawing bloody stuff. She’ll think it’s a big thing.”

  I nodded. “She might.”

  “It’s not like I’m never gonna draw anything bloody again. I like drawing cartoons. But after I drew that fish fossil at the Badlands I started to think it might be fun to try drawing some other stuff, too. I’m just experimenting.”

  “No harm in that. I won’t tell anybody,” I said, realizing I now knew secrets from each of my cousins that I couldn’t report to their mother. This probably wasn’t what Dory expected when she asked me along to help her with her children. But, hey, helping didn’t mean I had to be her spy.

  Marsh mumbled something I couldn’t hear.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry about that time at the fair.” He looked at me guiltily, but I wasn’t catching on. “You know, about the Ferris wheel. I said it was your fault I didn’t go on it.”

  “Oh, right. No big deal.”

  He stared at his tablet. “I get scared sometimes. I don’t know why. I never used to.”

  I knew it was important not to say the wrong thing, but I didn’t know what the right thing was. So I said what I thought. “Everybody gets scared, Marsh. I think the older you are, the more scared you get.”

  He looked at me, surprised. “I thought grown-ups didn’t get scared.”

  I shook my head. “I think grown-ups are scared of lots of things because they know bad stuff can happen to people. You know that now, too.”

  “Yeah. But grown-ups can get on a stupid Ferris wheel.”

  I thought about that one. “Well, I guess they know that bad things can happen, but they usually don’t. You’re taking a chance when you ride a Ferris wheel, but it’s not a very big chance. You can’t give up doing everything that’s a little bit risky, or life wouldn’t be much fun.”

  He kicked his heel into the dirt. “My dad got killed just crossing the street.”

  “I know. It was a terrible accident, but you haven’t stopped crossing streets, have you?”

  He shook his head. “I’m really careful now, though.”

  “Well, that’s okay. You should be.” I wanted to put my arm around him, but I was afraid that might be stepping over the line. He was staring at his drawing pad again, trying, I thought, not to cry.

  “I’m going to swim a little, okay?” I said.

  He nodded without looking at me. But when I stood up and patted him on the shoulder, he didn’t flinch. For just a second I had an urge to ruffle his hair, but I stopped myself. God, I must be turning into a grown-up.

  I swam a little while and then sat in Marsh’s tube. What a luxury to have nothing to do on such a beautiful afternoon—not only did I not have to scoop ice cream for sweaty kids, but somebody else was probably getting the coals ready to roast my dinner. I could get into this vacation thing. Marsh went back to the bunkhouse before Dory and I got out of the water; I hoped I hadn’t said anything to upset him. By the time we returned the tubes to the shed and climbed back up from the river, we saw Iris heading into bunkhouse number 12, too.

  “How was the ride?” Dory asked Iris as soon as we came inside. “Are you exhausted?”

  I was a little nervous to hear Iris’s answer—I wasn’t sure how much of the glory of yesterday’s ride had to do with Jackson paying so much attention to her. But I needn’t have worried. She was dusty but radiant—it was horses she loved.

  “I adore this place!” she said. “And I adore Silverfoot! When we get back to Chicago, do you think we could find someplace for me to take riding lessons? Maybe there’s a place where they do western saddle, and I could learn barrel racing and stuff. Could we try to find one?”

  “We can try,” Dory said. “Who were the leaders on your ride?”

  Iris’s smile dimmed a bit. “Two older guys—I forget their names. They were nice, though.”

  “Too bad you missed the early ride with Jackson and Glen.” Dory thought she was teasing her daughter, but Iris grimaced.

  “The older guys know better what they’re doing,” she said. “They aren’t such hotshots.” She glanced at me when she said this and I had to lower my eyes so as not to give anything away.

  After another huge dinner, Mel announced that tonight was the weekly rodeo at the corral. Not a real rodeo, with bulls and everything, but one where the kids could try their hands at roping calves, and whoever wanted to could do some barrel racing, and then a few of the cowboys, the hotshots, I figured, would do some rope tricks and ride a bronc or two. Marsh wasn’t going to do anything, but when Bobby and Howie ran forward to sign up for calf roping, Marsh followed along. “I was better at it than them,” he told Dory.

  Iris asked Joe if he thought she could do some barrel racing and he said, “Sure!” like he always did, so she signed up for that. Dory about had a heart attack.

  “Iris, you’ve never even done it before! Don’t be ridiculous . . .”

  “I’m not trying to win or anything. I just want to do it.”

  “There are some risks that are just foolhardy, Iris . . .”

  “Joe said it was okay, and I can ride Silverfoot. Don’t worry, I won’t fall off him.”

  Iris was stubborn, and Dory finally gave up, although I could tell she was really scared about letting Iris ride. It reminded me of the talk I’d had with Marsh this afternoon. I think once somebody in your family dies, you must get very worried about the rest of them.

  We sat on the top rail of the fence to watch. Just as the kids’ roping contest got started somebody swung up onto the fence next to me: Glen.

  “Hey,” he said.

  I said hi back, figuring that would be all he’d expect from me. I was surprised to find he was in a talkative mood tonight.

  “So, I hear you guys are leaving tomorrow.”

  This was big news in the cowboy bunkhouse? I wondered if the story of Iris and Jackson had made the rounds there.

  “Yeah. On to Denver next.”

  He nodded. “Where you headed after that?”

  “Los Angeles is the final destination, but we’re not in a hurry. It’s the trip that’s important.” Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I noticed Dory smiling.

  “I’ve never been out to the coast,” he said. “Never seen an ocean.”

  “I haven’t either. This’ll be my first time.”

  “I guess it’s real nice to look out over all that water.”

  I had to stop talking to him then to cheer for Marshall who’d managed to get the rope over the head of a hay bale with a plastic cow head on one end. Three other boys had achieved the same goal, including Howie. Bobby was standing next to his father, hands shoved in his poc
kets, looking sullen. I felt bad for him; one of the hardest things about growing up is figuring out there are some things you just aren’t going to be very good at.

  With the four winners still in the corral, Mel shooed half a dozen calves out of the barn. They were still pretty young and kind of spooked by all the noise and people, but Mel chased them out into the middle. “Okay, wranglers, see if you can catch ya a real live calf!”

  “Oh, my Lord,” Dory said. “I didn’t know they’d let them do that! They’ll get trampled!”

  Glen leaned over. “Nah, the most that happens is they get a few scrapes or a rope burn or something. No big deal.”

  I patted Dory’s arm. “It’s okay. Look, Marsh isn’t scared.”

  She looked up at her son. “You’re right. He’s not.” She managed a small smile, then clenched her jaw. “Okay, I can be calm, too.”

  Sure enough Marsh managed to swing the rope high enough and wide enough to get it over the head of a calf. I thought Dory would fall off the fence. “Pull it tight!” she screamed, as if she was at the Little League championship. Pulling it tight proved harder for Marsh to accomplish. The calf stepped through the large loop of the rope with one foot and tripped itself. Marsh ran up to it, I guess to take the rope off—he was probably afraid the cow would get hurt—but the calf jumped up suddenly as he approached and knocked him over. The rope tightened then and Marsh got dragged a few feet behind the scared animal until he let go of the rope.

  “Yay, Marshall!” I screamed, hoping he would not stand up with a bloody, tear-streaked face.

  Mel hauled him to his feet almost immediately and announced, “The winner of the calf-roping contest! Let’s give this cowboy a hand!”

  Everybody whooped and hollered so loudly that Marsh’s stunned look soon turned into a huge smile. There was no facial blood evident, but when he came running back to us, a blue ribbon pinned to his shirt, he held out his palms, scratched up, rope burned, and filthy. “I won!”