A white truck pulled to a stop in front of him. Julian glanced wearily up and saw a barefoot girl wearing cut-off blue jeans and a tie-dyed shirt climbing out of the passenger side.
“Are you Julian?” she asked. She was an inch or two taller than him, with brown braids, straight brown eyebrows, and a scattering of freckles.
The image of the blond Viking girl dissolved. Julian stood up, flooded with relief. “Are you Robin?”
Her blue eyes lit up. She bent toward him and said in a husky voice, “Sorry we’re late. My dad’s still a little upset. I kind of forgot to tell him you were coming until today.”
The driver’s side door opened and a man stepped out, tall with graying brown hair cut roughly around his ears. Although he was dressed in jeans and his face was tan and weathered, there was something professorial about him—a keen, inquisitive gaze that left Julian doubting that the plan he and Robin had concocted would ever succeed. The man gave Julian a hawklike glance, then reached out and shook Julian’s hand as though he were an adult. His palms felt rough and calloused.
“Julian?” he said. “I’m Bob Elder. I understand you and my daughter have been carrying on a little correspondence.”
What was Robin’s father talking about? He wasn’t supposed to know about the e-mails—that wasn’t part of the Plan. Robin gave Julian a nervous smile. He swallowed and said, “I guess so.”
“You took the bus here by yourself? All the way from San Francisco?”
Julian nodded and attempted to steer back to the script. “I’m here for the exchange program. The Farm/Urban Network?”
“We do have exchange students,” Bob said, frowning, “but there’s a long process. A lot of paperwork. It has to go through the main office. Robin knows that perfectly well. I don’t know what she was thinking telling you to come up here on your own.”
He took several sheets of folded paper out of his front shirt pocket, which Julian recognized as the forms he and Danny had filled out.
“Your mom signed these?” His gray eyes seemed to stare through Julian.
“Um, right now, she’s actually out of the country. But she loves nature and stuff.”
Bob gave Robin a quick look then turned back to Julian. “Who do you live with, then?”
Julian thrust his hands into his pockets. If he didn’t pass inspection, he might be stuck in the parking lot for a long time. “Well, I live with my mom, but she’s in China right now. She’s a photographer. That’s why I’m doing the exchange program. Because she’s not here.” He waited for Robin to come to his rescue.
“Dad! Be nice! I told you, we were pen pals through FUN and I was telling him about Huckleberry Ranch and he was saying how much he’d like to see it. It was my idea for him to come up! The forms are all filled out perfectly and the other stuff is just paperwork and stupid bureaucracy.”
“Robin, I have no doubt you’re responsible for this mess, but I’m afraid there’s more to it than that.”
“All I’m saying is he just spent hours on a bus. Can’t we at least take him home and give him something to eat before you cross-examine him?”
“You’re not running away, are you?” Bob asked, still weighing Julian with his eyes.
Julian was taken aback. “I’m not running away.” He’d pass the lie detector on that one, he figured. It wasn’t running away when nobody wanted you in the first place. “Robin wrote to me about your house and the redwoods. She said it would be OK if I came up,” he added, glancing at Robin with a hint of accusation. He dug in his pocket for his return ticket to San Francisco and handed it to Robin’s father, who studied it closely and handed it back.
“Well, get in the truck. I’d feel more comfortable if I could talk to whoever’s in charge of you. But I guess we’ll have to straighten that out when we get home.”
Bob swung Julian’s duffel bag into the back of the truck. Robin gave Julian a quick grin, then climbed into the passenger side, motioning for Julian to follow.
For a while, they rode in silence. Robin and her father seemed to have reached some kind of truce, but Julian felt numb. Here he was, coming to help Robin’s family save Big Tree Grove, and her father looked at him with coldness and distrust. He had not realized how many expectations he’d had until Bob Elder crushed them. What had he expected? Certainly not this unsmiling interrogation. He had expected to be greeted with open arms, to be welcomed into Robin’s family, to be taken in.
Julian gazed resentfully at Robin, who sat sucking on the tip of her braid, her hand resting on her father’s neck. He’d done everything right—filling out all those tricky forms and getting away from Sibley’s and finding his way up here. All Robin had to do was account for a few missing pieces of paperwork, but clearly she’d caved under her father’s scrutiny. Not that he could entirely blame her, Julian thought, turning away from Bob’s stern profile.
After a few miles, the truck took a sharp turn onto a dirt road. All of a sudden, they were inside the forest. But it wasn’t at all like he’d imagined from the highway. From a distance, the mountains were covered with an unending line of dark trees, cool and even. Here, the forest was a mess. Clusters of branches and dead tree trunks lay scattered on the ground. The weeds alongside the road were covered with dust.
“They just finished a logging operation here,” Robin said.
Julian glanced back at a field of sunbaked stumps, littered with broken branches.
The road continued down, curving along steep hillsides, then abruptly flattened out. They passed a creek and Julian saw a cluster of houses, with tricycles and trucks and old metal parts lying about. Occasionally, when they passed a house or a driveway, Robin would tell him the name of the family who lived there. The farther they went, the more she talked. Her father remained silent but at least he kept driving on and on through the dim, dusty forest, every turn taking them farther away from the bus stop.
At last, they came to an open gate and a sign that said, HUCKLEBERRY RANCH. The dusty tunnel through the forest opened into a green valley. Steep hills rose up on either side of a narrow river. As they made a turn, Julian saw a deer and a little fawn grazing. At the sound of the truck, they lifted their heads from the grass and watched them pass.
“Did you see the deer?” he asked. A deer! He had never in his life seen a deer in the wild. And there they had stood—a little deer family.
Robin just smiled. At last, the truck pulled up to a gravel driveway and Bob turned off the engine. In the sudden quiet, Julian could hear the leaves blowing in the breeze and the high, falling song of a bird. In front of them stood a wooden house with yellow flowers in the window boxes and a deck stretching along the side. Several chickens strutted in the yard and a tire swing hung from a gnarled old tree.
On the front steps, the sun shone on the bare shoulders of a little child, who sat tapping a stick against the railing.
“Is that your sister?” Julian asked, climbing out of the truck.
Robin giggled. “Well, he’s naked. I’d think you could tell. Don’t they teach you anything in the city?”
Julian blushed. Bob grabbed the red duffel bag from the back of the truck. The little boy jumped to his feet and yelled “Charge!”—brandishing the stick like a miniature naked samurai.
“Jo-Jo. Be nice,” Robin said. “This is my friend Julian. And put your clothes on, you little savage.” She picked a pair of tan shorts off the deck and forced one of his legs, and then the other, through the openings. Even as he lifted his feet, Jo-Jo continued to glare at Julian and block his way with the stick.
“You’ll have to excuse him,” Robin explained. “He watched King Arthur at my cousin’s house last month and he still hasn’t recovered!”
The door opened, and a woman came out of the house. She wiped her hands on her apron, then pushed wisps of brown hair behind her ears. She had Robin’s straight brown eyebrows and her eyes were the same deep blue, but soft and gentle where Robin’s were quick and hard.
“You must be Julian!
” She smiled as if he’d just given her a bouquet of flowers, then picked up Jo-Jo, who immediately put his thumb in his mouth and lay his blond curls against her shoulder. “We’re so glad to see you. Come in. I just made lemonade.”
With an enormous sense of relief, Julian followed the woman into a sun-filled room with a high ceiling. Sliding glass doors looked out on a shady back deck. A long wooden table was set with a pitcher of lemonade and a plate of chocolate-chip cookies.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said. “I didn’t even introduce myself. I’m Nancy, Robin’s mother. You must be hungry. Can I fix you a sandwich?”
“Um, sure. I mean, yes, please. Well, I can fix it myself,” Julian mumbled.
“Oh, please, sit down.” Nancy said. “Now, what would you like? I have chicken or cheese.”
Julian remembered the chickens running around the yard. “Cheese would be great,” he said.
Nancy sat Jo-Jo down on a stool and gave him a bowl of strawberries and a cup of milk. “We’ve already eaten. Robin didn’t tell us that you were coming until lunchtime. She’s a procrastinator, like me!” She layered slices of tomato and cheese on a piece of bread. “Now, you sit here and eat and tell us all about yourself.”
“Like I told you,” Robin jumped in, “we both signed up for that pen-pal program. Through FUN. And we wrote back and forth a little. And I was telling him all about where we live. And I was saying how it’s so beautiful and telling him about the redwoods and about the exchange program. And obviously he wanted to come, but there wasn’t time to do all the paperwork and anyway his mom was out of town, so I told him he could just send me the forms and it would be OK if he just came on up. I knew nobody was signed up for June.” She looked up as her father came in the door. “I know I should have told you earlier, but I sort of forgot because we’ve been so busy lately. And he took the bus by himself all the way from San Francisco.”
Nancy handed him the sandwich. “My goodness! Your mother couldn’t drive you?”
“My mom doesn’t have a car,” Julian said, swallowing. “And also, she’s in China.”
“China! Are you Chinese?” A lot of times, people couldn’t figure out what he was.
“Well, my mom is. But she was born in San Francisco. My grandmother too. My mom just likes to travel.”
“Who’s been taking care of you, then?”
Julian had just taken a huge bite of the sandwich. He chewed slowly while trying to calculate the best response. “Well, I was . . . uh . . . staying with my cousin, but then school got out and Robin said I could come up, so I did.”
Bob had been watching them with his arms crossed. “I don’t like it that they cooked up this scheme on their own. At the very least, we should talk to someone in his family. We don’t want the police at our door.”
To Julian’s surprise, Nancy just laughed. She had a lovely laugh, like running water. “Oh, goodness!” she cried. “I don’t think he’s a fugitive, Bob!” She adopted a serious expression and turned to Julian. “Are you a fugitive?”
“Mom! Of course he’s not a fugitive! He’s just a kid!”
“Are you running away? Are the police after you?” Nancy asked.
“You’re a bad guy!” Jo-Jo yelled, pointing the spoon at Julian like a spear. “Charge!”
Julian shook his head.
“There must be someone we can call. Your cousin? Or somebody in your family?” Nancy asked.
“Um . . . I know it sounds a little weird, but my cousin’s, um, in Africa. On a safari. I guess my whole family likes to travel.”
Nobody spoke.
“You could leave my mom a message,” Julian said dubiously.
“OK, let’s start there.” Bob reached into his pocket and pulled out the photocopied forms again. “There’s no home phone listed,” he said.
Julian hesitated. His mother never checked her voice mail, he reassured himself. She wouldn’t get Bob’s message until she came back from China, and then it would all be over. Besides, if he didn’t come up with the number, Bob would probably send him and his duffel bag back to San Francisco on the next Greyhound bus.
Julian recited his home number and Bob dialed and listened intently. Julian heard the tinny echo of his mother’s message coming through the phone: “Cari Li! Leave a message if you wish, but I probably won’t get back to you for a loooong time! Peace!”
“Hello, Ms. Li. This is Bob Elder in Willits,” Bob said. “Your son Julian is staying with us for a few weeks on our exchange program. I understand you’re out of the country, but if you have any questions, give me a call.” He left his phone number and hung up.
“Any other relatives?” Bob asked.
Julian shook his head
“Father deceased?” Bob was still studying the forms.
“Five years ago.”
Bob gave a small nod in acknowledgment, and then his face relaxed, so that Julian could see that it wasn’t really a mean face. “Well,” he said to Nancy. “I guess we can’t just send him away now that you’ve got him under your wing.” Julian couldn’t tell if Bob was pleased or not. He thought not. “I’ll take your bag up to the loft,” Bob said. “You’ll be sleeping up there.” Jo-Jo followed his father across the room to a spiral staircase, chanting, “I want to sweep in the woft!”
The kitchen seemed suddenly brighter. The phone message wasn’t in the Plan, but at least Bob had said he would be staying. Julian was starting to feel better. He finished his sandwich and his lemonade, and Robin’s mother passed around the plate of cookies.
“So you have five children?” he asked. So far, he’d only seen Jo-Jo and he’d been wondering where the rest of the family was.
“Yes, I do,” Nancy beamed. “John and Dave are in college, but they’re both doing a service project in Guatemala this summer. Then there’s Robin. And next is Molly. She’s spending the night with our neighbors. Then Jonah’s our baby.”
A white ball of fluff streaked under the table. “This,” Nancy said, “is Snowball, the newest addition to our family.” She picked up the kitten and stroked his fluffy fur. “He showed up a few weeks ago, and now we can’t seem to get rid of him.” The kitten squirmed and Nancy placed him gently on the floor and started to clear the table. “Robin, why don’t you show Julian around?” she said. “I’m sure he’s tired of sitting after being on the bus all morning.”
Julian followed Robin out the sliding glass doors and onto the back deck. He studied the scene, adjusting the image he’d been carrying around of Robin’s home. He always had a feeling of dissonance when he came to a new place. It was never like he’d imagined. Sometimes, the picture he’d created was more real than the place itself, and the real and imaginary places would coexist in his mind like two separate places.
Robin’s family was different from how he’d envisioned them, and her house was too. It was not in a sunny field next to a forest but in a little clearing, with the forest all around. The house wasn’t a barn-red rectangle, but unpainted wood, with different levels and a sloping roof. Of course, the chickens were there, and a lot of other things he’d never thought of. The tire swing. A large picnic table and a fire ring out back. And behind them, a winding creek with a little footbridge. He followed Robin around as she chattered on about the barn where they kept the goats, the greenhouse, the large vegetable garden, still covered with plastic, the berry patches. Altogether, Julian decided, Huckleberry Ranch was decidedly superior to the house of his imagination. It was probably the most beautiful place he had ever seen.
“Where are the redwoods?” he asked after they had toured all the land surrounding the house.
“Well, we have lots of redwood on our property. But it’s all second growth. This land was all logged back in the 1920s. They cut down every single redwood tree, if you can believe that! When my grandparents bought this place, some of the trees were growing back. They planted thousands and thousands of redwood seedlings. And the orchards.”
“How big is this place?”
“Two hundred and fifty acres. Big Tree isn’t on our land, of course. It’s next door. Over this way.” Robin ran toward the creek and crossed the footbridge.
Julian didn’t really know how big 250 acres was. But one of his mom’s friends had a house in Marin with an enormous backyard, many times bigger than the tiny space behind his own house. “I’m living the American dream,” the friend would boast. “Quarteracre lot. House in the ’burbs.” If that was a quarter of an acre, 250 acres must be like a giant park. Or the zoo.
“Here’s one of the apple orchards.” Robin pointed to a dozen or so trees standing in a grassy meadow. “Sometimes there’s deer here. One of the does is tame. You can feed her out of your hand. She loves green apples.”
Robin was moving quickly through a grassy clearing covered with dandelions. “This is where my house is going to be! Near the river, so I can generate all my electricity with a water wheel.”
“Is your dad really going to build you a house?” Julian asked.
Robin looked at him in surprise. “Of course he is. Didn’t I already tell you that?” She turned and disappeared down a slope.
“Here’s the river,” she called back. “The flow’s pretty high now, so don’t fall in!”
Robin ran across a narrow tree trunk, split lengthwise, which formed a bridge across the water. There were no handrails. Julian stepped cautiously along the trunk, his arms extended like a tightrope walker. He tried not to think about the gray boulders and the dark water rushing below him. When he reached the opposite bank, he realized with embarrassment that Robin was watching him. She took off without saying a word.
The path was covered with dead leaves. It followed the river for a bit, then began to wind up through the forest, back and forth along steep switchbacks. This was certainly not the shady little trail he’d imagined!
“Hey!” he shouted to slow Robin down. “We have trees like this in San Francisco!” He pointed to a shrubby tree with large pink flowers. He didn’t want her to see him out of breath, and he was relieved when she stopped and started pointing.
“That’s a rhododendron. My mom’s favorite. And there’s some Douglas fir and some oak,” she said, waving vaguely. “Big Tree’s only about a half mile farther.”
Operation Redwood Page 6
