And with that, Robin was off again, her brown braids flying as the trail snaked up and up. Julian had lost sight of her when he turned a bend and found her lying on the ground, sticking her head under a faucet that came out of the side of the hill.
“Can you drink that? It’s not polluted?” Julian said.
“It’s spring water. If we bottled this stuff, we’d probably make a fortune. Try it.”
Julian hesitated.
She made an impatient little noise. “You see that black hose? That goes to our house. This water’s the same stuff we drink all the time.”
A faucet coming right out of the ground struck Julian as the strangest thing he’d seen on the ranch. Some of the water running into San Francisco Bay was so dirty you weren’t even supposed to touch it. Nobody would even think of drinking it. Julian bent down and put his head under the faucet. The water flowed out, cool and fresh. It sprang out of some deep, clean place inside the earth and into his mouth.
After the spring, the trail started going downhill but still Julian struggled to keep up. Finally, Robin headed down a small slope and crossed the river again. This time, Julian saw with relief, there was a regular bridge made of wooden planks. Robin waited for him on the far bank.
Despite his best efforts, Julian couldn’t breathe without panting.
Robin spoke almost in a whisper. “Here, across the river, it’s not our land. So, technically, we’re trespassing. This used to be Ed Greeley’s land. He was nice. He always let me and my brothers play in Big Tree Grove. He did some logging, but it was sustainable.” She gave Julian a questioning look. “You know, he didn’t cut down more than could grow each year. Anyway, Dad said Mr. Greeley never would have logged Big Tree. After he died, his kids started fighting and they ended up selling the land. And then it was bought and sold by different people, but none of them moved in. Finally your uncle bought it, or IPX did, and they pretty much want to clear-cut the whole place. And we’re all just sick about it.”
She looked at him appraisingly. “Come on. It’s not far now.”
The trail followed the river, then turned sharply away. Robin scrambled up a small slope and waited until Julian stopped, breathless, beside her.
“This is Big Tree,” she said.
It was a place leftover from another time, from the age of dinosaurs. Giant redwoods soared up to the sky, their tops towering impossibly high above them. On the forest floor, clusters of green ferns were lit up by slanted shafts of sunlight. Huge logs lay sunk into the ground and green plants and redwood saplings sprouted from their mossy tops.
Julian stared. He had not imagined a place so wild, so unhuman in scale, so profoundly silent.
He followed Robin inside a circle of trees surrounding a clearing of brown earth. Robin lay down on the ground, flung her arms to the side, and looked up at the sky.
“This is a fairy ring. Right here used to be a giant redwood. Then hundreds of years ago, it must have died, and these trees sprang up around it. They’re like its children.”
Julian sat down cross-legged inside the fairy ring. “So what happened with your dad?” He wasn’t quite ready to let Robin off the hook for his ordeal at the bus stop. “You said you were going to take care of the paperwork from FUN. And then you change the whole plan without even telling me. You made me look like a liar!”
She sat up and put her arms around her knees. “I know. I’m sorry. But at the last minute, I just couldn’t do it. FUN’s very organized. My dad would have called the central office if the forms came in at the last minute. I thought it would be better to stay a little closer to the truth.”
“Your dad almost sent me back on the bus!”
“It was dicey,” she agreed. “But I knew once you got to the house, it would be OK. So long as my parents don’t realize you’re Sibley Carter’s nephew, it’ll be fine.”
“I guess you didn’t tell them you sent my uncle that e-mail.”
“Oh, they would have been furious. You know, it’s kind of amazing it got there at all. I was just guessing his e-mail address. My brother’s taking a journalism course, and he was telling us how a lot of people, even big CEOs, read their own e-mail and their addresses are just their names and their company web addresses. That gave me the idea. I never really thought he would get it. Or you, obviously. But all’s well that ends well, as my mom says.”
She flopped back down. Julian watched her curiously. He had never known a girl who talked so much. In fact, he really didn’t know many girls at all. He had no sisters, and neither did Danny. His only cousin was a boy. Even his soccer team was all boys. Of course, there were girls at school, huddling together in the halls, giggling and whispering, but they mostly ignored him.
Julian leaned against the rough redwood bark and breathed in the mossy air. The trees in Muir Woods, he thought, were redwoods too. But somehow this place felt entirely different. This forest was not fenced and swept and filled with signs and paths for tourists. It was wild and remote. He and Robin might be the only people around for miles.
“So, what are you going to do about Big Tree now?” he asked.
Robin sighed. “Nothing, I guess. I mean, my parents filed an appeal. And so did a few environmental groups. They had letters from scientists and everything. But my dad says it’s probably a lost cause.”
“So you’re just going to let them come and destroy all of this?” He waved his hand around.
“Me? Them?” she said in astonishment. “It’s your uncle who’s in charge. He could stop the logging in a minute. Why don’t you go back to San Francisco and get him to stop?”
He hadn’t expected such an outburst. He was beginning to think that Robin’s whole family was a little unpredictable. “You always say he’s my uncle, like that makes any difference,” he said. “But he basically hates me. I mean, he was trying to get rid of me for the entire summer.”
Robin frowned. “Then why were you staying with him in the first place?”
“My mom always wanted to go to China,” he began slowly. “Finally, she got this grant to go there and study the Buddhist temples and photograph them. And she couldn’t really take me and it was too long to stay with Danny. Or anybody else. So my mom asked Sibley if I could stay with them. Of course, my uncle has a big house. Plenty of room. My mom even offered to pay for my food, which was a little crazy because she basically has no money and my uncle’s super rich.”
“But he is your uncle. He can’t really hate you.”
“No. He does. I—” Julian was silent for a few moments. “The night I found your message, I was in Sibley’s office. He was at a meeting. And right before your message came in, I found an e-mail from my uncle saying he was sending me to this math camp. And all this other bad stuff. What a terrible kid I was and how I reminded him of my dad.”
“Maybe he hates you because he and your dad were bitter enemies,” Robin said in a melodramatic voice. “But now he has to pretend they weren’t because you can’t speak ill of the dead.”
“Maybe.”
“Did they have a fight or something?”
“I don’t know.” In his memory, his father was always laughing. He remembered holding tight to his dad’s leather jacket as the wind squeezed his eyes shut, the motorcycle’s roar almost drowning out his father’s whooping laugh. And his father with his arm around his mother, their laughing faces lit by an enormous bonfire, the wind blowing cold from the ocean. “My mom says my dad never wanted to talk about his family.”
Far away, they heard a bell ringing faintly.
“That’s the dinner bell,” Robin said, jumping up. “Trust me, you don’t want to be late tonight!” And she was out of the fairy ring, up the slope, and almost out of sight before Julian even made it to his feet.
ulian woke up the next morning to the sounds of a rooster crowing and breakfast cooking. He lay still for a moment, watching the motes of dust float through the sunshine coming in from the skylight.
He was in Robin’s loft. This time yest
erday he’d been in San Francisco and now he was lying on a futon in a loft at Huckleberry Ranch. If he hadn’t gone to Sibley’s office that day, he would be at math camp right now and Huckleberry Ranch would still be here, with Bob and Robin and Nancy and Jo-Jo, but he would never have met them. His mom was in China, and she was meeting other people, people he would never know, with lives just as real as his own. It was impossible to keep in your mind. Six billion people, and each of them thinking his own life was the most real life.
He sat up and stretched, then jumped back in surprise.
Three faces were staring at him. There was Snowball, crouched on the nightstand, looking like he was about to pounce. At the top of the staircase sat Jo-Jo, looking solemn despite his jam-smeared face. And holding his hand was a girl with straight, pale orange hair and pale blue eyes and a pale, freckled face. Even her eyelashes were pale orange.
“Julian!” Jo-Jo cried, only he pronounced it “Juwian.” He turned to the girl. “He’s waking! He’s not sweeping anymore.”
Julian rubbed his eyes. “Are you Molly?” he asked.
She nodded and whispered something.
“What did you just say?”
“Chore time,” she whispered a little louder.
Outside, the air was cold and fresh. Robin was waiting for him on the steps. He followed her through the wet grass.
“It’s my job to milk the goats this month,” she said, lifting the latch on a small wooden barn. Immediately, two brown and black goats started pushing against her pockets. “Stop, you greedy creatures!” She pushed their heads away firmly. One bent its horns toward Julian, and he took a step back.
“Oh, Dolly won’t hurt you,” Robin said. “She just has extremely poor manners.”
At the back of the barn, a small white goat stared mildly up at them. Her eyes were like marbles made of amber.
“Hello, Aphrodite, my little darling.” Robin bent down the kissed the goat on the nose. “Aphrodite’s my very own. I raised her from a kid. Isn’t she pretty? That’s why I named her what I did.”
Julian didn’t say anything.
“You know, Aphrodite, the Greek goddess. Of beauty.” She gave Julian a smug look, then handed him a carrot from her pocket. The other two goats came rushing toward him.
“Dolly and Gracie!” Robin said sternly. “Stop that immediately, or I’m going to lock you up.”
The goats stopped. Julian held the carrot before Aphrodite’s nose. She considered it with her trusting yellow eyes, then took it gently from his hands.
“My mom says she has the disposition of an angel. Very un-goatlike,” Robin said, holding out another carrot. Aphrodite followed her to a small stall and Robin fed her the carrot, then motioned Julian in and shut the door against the other goats. She placed a bucket of grain in front of Aphrodite, then wiped her udder with a damp cloth. Finally, she sat on a wooden stool and began to milk the little goat, who munched her grain contentedly. The jets of milk made a hard hissing sound in the bucket.
“Here, now you try,” Robin said. “There are two teats. Take one teat and squeeze, from the top to the bottom.”
The word “teat,” which Robin said so casually, made Julian blush. He reached out for the closest one, squeezed, and nothing happened.
“Wait, stop!” Robin said. “Squeeze just at the top. Harder.”
Julian squeezed.
“Now, work the milk down with your fingers. Down toward your pinky.”
He tightened his grip and a few drops of milk dribbled into the bucket.
“Excellent. Very good for a beginner. Now, let go and do it again.”
This time a small spray of milk came out.
“Oh, you’re a natural. Now a hand on each teat. Back and forth. I’ve got to go milk Dolly and Gracie. They’re more cantankerous.”
Julian could smell Aphrodite’s warm animal smell. She seemed to be studying him with one striped golden eye. After a few clumsy dribbles, the milk began to squirt out in a steady rhythm. Steam rose from the bucket. Then, somehow, he lost his rhythm and the flow of milk stopped. He sat back on the stool and waited for Robin to return.
“How’d you do?” she said, stooping close beside Julian and reaching out to rub Aphrodite’s udder. She grabbed the two teats, pulled vigorously, and more milk foamed into the bucket.
“Open your mouth,” she ordered.
By the time Julian realized what she was about to do, it was too late. The milk squirted into his mouth and dripped down his chin. The warm, goaty taste almost made Julian gag.
“That’s disgusting.” He spit the milk into the straw and wiped his chin with the back of his hand. “Do we really have to drink this stuff, Goat Girl?”
“It’s good, City Boy,” Robin said. “You’ll get used to it. None of the city kids like it at first. Soon you’ll be eating goat cheese, goat yogurt, goat ice cream . . .”
Goat ice cream? What would Danny say to that? Julian had a moment of nostalgia for the mint-chocolate-chip ice cream at the Toy Boat Dessert Café.
When they came out into the yard, Molly was sitting with a tiny goat in her lap, feeding it with a glass bottle. It drank eagerly, paused for breath, then turned its little tan face toward the bottle again.
“That’s Molly’s baby,” Robin said. “She named her Bunny. Have you ever heard a stupider name for a goat?”
“Do you want to feed her?” Molly asked.
Julian sat down on a stump in the yard, and Molly placed Bunny in his lap. The little goat crossed her delicate legs and tugged at the rubber nipple. When she’d finished guzzling down the milk, she lay her head on Julian’s knee, and he traced the soft fur on top of her head. Beneath his fingers, he could feel the outline of her tiny skull.
By the time they had finished with the goats and gathered the warm and slightly dirty eggs from the chicken coop, Julian was starving. He wolfed down five of Nancy’s blueberry pancakes before he remembered about the goat milk. But the pancakes were free of that unpleasant, sour taste. She must have regular milk stashed away in her gigantic refrigerator, he figured.
After breakfast, Nancy announced it was lesson time.
“You don’t have summer vacation?” Julian asked.
“No. We work like slaves all year long!” Robin grumbled.
“We do take breaks,” Nancy said, wiping the table with a sponge. “But we don’t follow a regular school schedule. Exchange students don’t have to do lessons, though. You’re free to wander around.”
Julian spent the morning exploring. He found a cluster of apple trees and, beneath them, a deer with a spotted fawn, perhaps the same pair he’d seen from the road. The deer looked at him unafraid. Silently, he sent her a telepathic message saying, “I won’t hurt you” and she seemed to nod her head. Very slowly, he picked a small green apple off a low branch and held it out to her. The fawn took a few steps back, but the doe stretched her neck toward him. Her chin tickled his palm as she delicately lifted the apple and crunched it between her teeth. Julian wanted to touch her rough fur but was afraid of frightening her. Even though he was careful not to move a muscle, she suddenly startled, bounding off into the forest with the fawn close behind.
Julian continued down the trail and found Bob by the vegetable garden. He was crouched down on his long legs, his face shaded by a wide-brimmed hat.
“Do you need any help?” Julian asked.
“We seem to have more weeds than vegetables so far. Did you ever weed a garden?”
Julian shook his head.
Bob looked Julian up and down. “Well, there’s a first time for everything. This is lettuce.” He pointed to one row of the garden. “And that’s chard. Everything else is weeds. Weeds are bad. Crops are good.”
The lettuces had pale green, wrinkled leaves, with a purple trim around the edges. They were no bigger than Julian’s fist. The tall, grassy plants growing around the edges, Julian thought, must be the weeds. He knelt in the dirt and broke a few off.
“Don’t break them. Pull
them up by the roots,” Bob said. “Keeps them from coming back so fast.”
Julian tried again. He grabbed another tall weed, but it too broke off at the base. On the next try, he wiggled the plant slightly, and lifted the spidery clump of roots easily out of the damp soil.
“That’s better.” Bob crouched beside him and they worked together under the warm sun. After a while, Julian could look down the row and see each bright head of lettuce sitting in a clearing of brown soil. Ahead, the tiny lettuces were still choked in weeds. He finished the entire row and stood up to admire his work.
“Not bad,” Bob said.
Julian started on his second row. He worked a little faster now, but still couldn’t keep pace with Bob, who moved tirelessly down one row after another. The sun began to burn on Julian’s neck and he was relieved when he heard the happy sound of the bell, calling them to lunch.
“Let’s get these weeds into the compost,” Bob said. They carried the tangle of uprooted weeds over to a large black plastic canister. “That’ll be good dirt in a few months. In good farming, nothing’s wasted. A family can work the same land forever, if they do it right.” They began walking toward the house.
“You’re lucky to live here,” Julian said. “It’s so green. Not like the city.”
Bob looked toward the ridgeline on the other side of the river. “I’m a lucky man. Sometimes it’s like the rest of the world doesn’t even exist. My parents bought this land before I was born. A hundred dollars an acre. I helped my father build our house when I wasn’t much older than you.”
“Robin said you’re going to build her her own house.” Julian was nearly running to keep up with Bob’s giant strides. “Down by the river.”
For the first time, Bob laughed. “We’ve got the blueprints and everything. State-of-the-art solar panels, water wheel. Every piece of timber in Robin’s house will come from this land. Same for Molly and the boys, if that’s what they want. My parents passed this land on to me, and when I’m gone I’ll pass it on to my kids—maybe a little better than I found it. That’s all the legacy I want.”
Operation Redwood Page 7
