Operation Redwood

by S. Terrell French

  His father hadn’t had time to leave much of a legacy, Julian thought. All he had of his father’s was the ivory pocketknife and a white conch shell from Hawaii. The inside was glistening pink and smoother than glass. People always said if you held it to your ear, you could hear the ocean, but when Julian listened, all he heard was the sound of emptiness.

  At lunch, Julian had his fork nearly to his mouth when he realized the rest of the family was sitting silently with their heads bowed down. Even Jo-Jo had his hands folded in his lap and his little eyes scrunched shut. Julian stopped, his fork clattering down on his plate. He waited nervously to see what they would do next, until, at some unseen signal, they all looked up and began passing around the food.

  All through lunch, Julian was quiet. Maybe, he thought, the Elders could adopt him. But why would they want him? They already had three sons, although there was a gap just where he would fit in. Of course, he realized, he already had a mother. Maybe he could just be a hired hand, like they had in the old Westerns, one of those tough, quiet guys who was like a member of the family and ended up killing the rattlesnake in the nick of time or saving the child from a runaway horse.

  “We do math after lunch,” Nancy explained, when everyone had finished eating. “We really should do it first thing in the morning, but like I said, Robin and I are procrastinators!” She raised her voice to be heard over Jo-Jo, who was holding a small plastic truck and making loud zooming noises. “I’m sorry to leave you on your own again, but Robin will be free soon.”

  Julian stared at the bookshelves lining the living room, filled with serious-looking volumes: The Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening, The Solar Home, Applied Silviculture and Forest Ecology, Small-Scale Aquaculture.

  The girls had settled down at the kitchen table with worksheets and pencils, but Jo-Jo kept holding the truck up to his mother and shouting, “Mommy, Mommy, I’m broken!” and when no one responded, he called out, “I’m crying ’cause no one will fix me.”

  “If you want, I can take him out so you guys can concentrate,” Julian said after a minute.

  “Oh, that would be great!” Nancy smiled with relief. “You know, he used to just play quietly while we did our work, but now he’s getting bored. Actually, he should be taking his nap, but he woke up later than usual this morning.”

  Julian knelt down in front of Jo-Jo. “Hey, Jo-Jo, want to go down by the creek?”

  “You can bring your truck and dig a hole in the dirt,” Robin coaxed. She brought him a pair of tiny bathing trunks covered with green frogs. “I’ll put on your swimsuit!”

  Julian followed Jo-Jo down to the pebbly bank. He sat on a log while Jo-Jo happily pushed his bulldozer around and made beeping noises. Jo-Jo made a few holes with his bulldozer and then stood up and put his toes in the water.

  “Can I go in?” he asked with a grave face.

  “Um. Sure,” Julian said. The afternoon sun was warm. “Don’t go in too far.”

  Jo-Jo walked along the side of the bank, laughing and splashing. He found a stick and banged it on the water. Then he cried “Charge!” and started running all about. “I’m charging the monsters!” he yelled. He rushed wildly into the creek and crashed facedown into the water.

  Julian sprang up and grabbed him by his slippery shoulders. Jo-Jo was crying loudly, and water streamed down from his hair into his contorted little face.

  “Don’t cry, Jo-Jo. It’s OK. Don’t cry,” Julian said.

  “I’m bweeding!” Jo-Jo sobbed.

  “Let me see. Show me. Come on, show me. I’ll fix it.”

  “There!” Jo-Jo pointed to his knee. Underneath the mud, Julian could see that the skin was broken and there was a small speck of blood. Julian looked back at the house, but nobody was coming. Maybe they hadn’t heard the cries.

  “I want my mama!” Jo-Jo wailed.

  “Mama’s inside.” Julian was determined to show Nancy that he could at least handle a three-year-old. “We’re going to wash off the blood. And then we’re going to make a dam with your truck and dam up the creek with mud.”

  The words “truck” and “dam” and “mud” worked like magic. Jo-Jo stopped crying. Julian took him to the creek and splashed water on his knee until the mud and the blood were gone.

  “OK,” Julian said. “Let’s get started.”

  Jo-Jo seemed to understand that Julian was committed to entertaining him. He demanded that Julian use the tiny truck to move all the mud and dirt and that he build the walls of the dam higher and higher. When the water began to spill over the dam, Jo-Jo would shriek “Julian, the water’s coming! Hurry!” and Julian would rush to reinforce the crumbling wall.

  After what felt like hours, he heard Nancy’s laugh behind him. “Well, you’re a sight!” she said. Julian looked at Jo-Jo. His blond curls were already dry and the scrape on his right knee was barely visible. Julian, on the other hand, was a mess. His shirt was soaked, his pants were filthy, and he was muddy up to his elbows.

  “I think you’ve found a friend, Julian,” Nancy said. “Now he’ll never leave you alone.”

  She rewarded his efforts with chocolate-chip cookies, then led him to the outdoor shower.

  “It’s solar heated,” she said. “There should be plenty of hot water. We usually shower outside, except in the coldest months.”

  Julian had never taken a shower outside, with the sky and the trees all around. At least there were wooden walls on all sides. The only part of him that would be visible from the outside would be his feet. When he finished, he wrapped a towel around his waist and, still dripping, hurried up to the loft where he discovered Robin lying on his futon reading.

  “Hey!” Julian said.

  “Aah! A naked intruder!” Robin cried.

  “Get out of here!”

  Robin scooted, laughing, down the spiral stairs and Julian quickly pulled on his clothes. A minute later, her face reappeared at the top of the stairs, eyes shut tight.

  “It’s OK,” Julian said. “You can come up now.”

  Robin threw herself back on the futon. “Thank goodness you’re decent!”

  “How was school?” Julian asked, to change the subject.

  “OK, except for having to listen to Jo-Jo scream like somebody was torturing him!”

  “I was not! He fell in the creek! If you guys heard him, why didn’t you come get him?”

  “Mom thought you could handle it. It wasn’t what she calls his bloody-murder scream.”

  So much for impressing Nancy. Julian looked over at the computer, sitting on a desk in the far corner of the loft. Lowering his voice he said, “Maybe I should check in with Danny. I told him I’d let him know I got here OK.”

  “This is the only computer,” Robin said quietly, turning it on. “Mom and Dad hardly ever use it. They let me get my own e-mail account so I could write to Ariel. She’s my best friend. She used to live down the road, but then she moved to Phoenix.” They waited for the computer to warm up, then Robin clicked into her e-mail. “Looks like there’s a new message from Lopez.”

  “Danny seems like kind of a crazy guy,” Robin said.

  Julian shrugged. “No, he’s OK. He just likes to be funny. Can I write him back?”

  Robin stood up and Julian took her seat. He wrote:

  “What are you talking about?” Robin asked, reading over his shoulder. “What’s the ‘Plan’ and what’s ‘Operation Redwood’?”

  “Well, the Plan was getting me here instead of math camp—getting away from Sibley, figuring out where you live, finding the right bus schedule, the whole exchange-student thing. Operation Redwood isn’t really a plan yet. We were just trying to figure out if there was some way to help you, to keep my uncle from cutting down Big Tree Grove.”

  Julian paused. “I don’t get it. In school we’re always studying the rain forests in Brazil and Africa. And people are always trying to get you to sign petitions to save the rain forest and buy special rain-forest nuts. And we never learned anything about people cutting dow
n redwoods in California. I mean, can my uncle really just cut down all those trees? Isn’t it illegal?”

  Robin looked at him in disbelief. “Obviously, it’s not illegal. Where do you think all the trees went that used to grow on Huckleberry Ranch?”

  “But that was a long time ago!”

  She shook her head. “I showed you those stumps by the road. All you need to log is a timber harvest plan—a THP—and your uncle’s already got that. There are some rules you have to follow. Like you have to replant and maybe there’ll be certain trees they won’t let you cut down. But it’s private property. You can pretty much do what you want.”

  That night, Julian read Jo-Jo his bedtime story. In return, he received a slightly spitty good-night kiss.

  As he lay in his futon in the loft, Julian felt that he had somehow traveled farther that day than he had on the long bus ride the day before. He’d milked a goat, explored Huckleberry Ranch on his own, walked along a river, and even fed a deer.

  It wasn’t even nine o’clock and he lay awake for a long time, looking up at the stars through the skylight. In San Francisco, the sky was usually hidden by thick fog or clouds. On clear nights, there might be a handful of indifferent stars scattered in the sky, some of which would turn into airplanes homing in on the San Francisco airport. But here, the brilliant stars shone out of the black night like the glittering eyes of some watchful spirit. Julian had never seen stars like this. He hadn’t known this was how stars were supposed to be.

  fter a few days, Julian had found a place in the routine of the Elder family. Before breakfast, he would help Robin feed and milk the goats and collect the eggs. Every time he milked Aphrodite, the level of milk in the bucket rose a little higher.

  While the girls had their lessons, he and Jo-Jo would feed the chickens. There was an incubator inside the barn, and one day they watched two ungainly chicks struggle out of their shells. By the next day, the slick, limp creatures had been transformed into buttery balls of fluff peeping about the yard. Julian cupped Jo-Jo’s hands around one chick. It was almost weightless, a ticking little heartbeat surrounded by yellow feathers. Only the frowning angle of its tiny beak gave a hint of its future as a sharp-eyed chicken.

  Nancy came by and admired the little chick extravagantly. Then she asked the boys to come into the garden shed to help start the new tomatoes while the girls finished their math sheets. Jo-Jo’s job was to fill the cardboard egg cartons with soil, but at least half the dirt ended up on the floor. Julian kept waiting for Nancy to correct Jo-Jo, but she didn’t seem to mind. She handed Julian a bag of tomato seeds that she had harvested the previous fall and told him to plant twelve tiny seeds in each egg carton.

  Nancy worked silently alongside the boys for a while, then said, “So, Julian, how is everything going for you? Are you happy here? Usually I can tell, but with you I’m not really sure.” Her usually cheerful face was clouded with worry.

  Julian looked at her in surprise. “It’s great,” he stammered. “You guys are great. Everything’s great.”

  “But you must miss your mom. With her so far away.”

  He had a sudden memory of his mother leaning against the sink, looking toward the window, her fragile fingers twisting the ends of her long, black hair. “I don’t even know who I am anymore,” she’d said, and she’d looked at him as if he might know the answer.

  “I guess.” He cleared his throat. “She wanted to take me with her, but it was really expensive. The tickets and everything. I’m kind of used to it anyway. She always traveled a lot. Working. Or going on retreats.”

  “Who took care of you, then?”

  “I stayed with my friend Danny a lot. Or the woman upstairs—Mrs. Petrova—she used to watch me when I was little.”

  “My mother died when I was fourteen,” Nancy said abruptly. “I cried for a month.” She turned away from him and started sweeping the floor beneath Jo-Jo’s chair.

  “The first time I came to Huckleberry Ranch, I fell in love with it,” she said, in her usual light tone. “I was a city girl. I came with my friend—Bob’s cousin. I never wanted to leave.”

  “Well, I guess you didn’t,” Julian said.

  She laughed. “You’re right. I told Bob we should get married. At first, he said no. He thought I loved the ranch more than him! But I kept asking, and finally he said yes.” She pushed back the strands of brown hair that had escaped her ponytail. “I guess that taught me a lesson: Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want.”

  By the end of the morning, they’d planted two hundred seeds. Nancy said it would be enough to keep them in tomato sandwiches through next fall.

  After lunch, Julian was lying on his futon reading Build Your Own Smart Home, when Robin flopped down beside him.

  “Let’s go to Big Tree,” she said urgently. “I’m finally finished with geometry! We need to get working on Operation Redwood!”

  Downstairs, they found Molly sitting on the sofa, immersed in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. As they walked past, she looked up and said, “Wait for me!”

  Robin slammed the screen door shut. “Race you!” she called to Julian, and she flew down the deck steps and across the creek. When Julian got to the bridge, he couldn’t help glancing back. Molly was standing in the doorway calling to him. He waved, as if he thought she was just saying good-bye, then sprinted off.

  Maybe today he could catch up to Robin. He hadn’t known the trail the first day, he told himself as his feet pounded against the dirt, and he’d been tired from the bus ride. He walked quickly across the tree-trunk bridge, then started up the long switchbacks, pushing until his lungs ached. He didn’t even stop to get water at the spigot.

  At the second river crossing, he still hadn’t caught up to Robin. Sweat dripped down his forehead. He began to wonder if maybe she’d taken a different trail. He crossed the river and jogged toward Big Tree, thinking he might have beaten her after all. But when he’d scrambled down the slope and into the circle of redwoods, there she was, sitting with her arms around her knees, wiggling her toes, and not even out of breath.

  “You had a head start,” he said.

  Robin looked at him with pity. “Next time, I’ll give you a head start. You can have a ten-second handicap.”

  “I don’t need a handicap.” Julian sat down next to Robin, still breathing hard. He picked up a thick stick and began sharpening the end with his pocketknife. “Oh, that’s a pretty little knife,” Robin said. “Can I see?”

  He handed her the knife and she opened and closed the two blades. “Who’s J.S.C.?”

  “It was my dad’s,” Julian said. “I think he got it from his father.”

  “It’s old, then. I bet it’s real ivory. From elephant tusks,” she said, handing it back.

  Julian opened the larger blade and whittled the stick into a point. “That wasn’t very nice, leaving Molly behind,” he said at last.

  “Molly! I thought we were going to start planning for Operation Redwood. We can’t have Molly here. She’ll tell Mom and Dad everything. Even Jo-Jo can keep secrets better than she can!”

  “Well, OK,” he conceded. “So, what are you thinking?”

  Robin heaped his wood shaving into little piles. “Even if you can’t convince your uncle not to cut down the trees,” she said after a moment, “maybe you could get him to come up here. If he saw Big Tree for himself, he might change his mind.”

  “No way.” He stopped whittling. “My cousin Preston was supposed to write a report on redwoods and—I meant to tell you this earlier—Sibley starts talking about how many board feet an acre, how many dollars per board foot. He says this place is worth ten million dollars!”

  “Ten million dollars!” Robin frowned. “I don’t think that’s right.”

  “Well, that’s what Sibley was saying. Or I think he was. Anyway, he’s always working. He would never come way up here.”

  “We could write a letter to somebody,” Robin suggested. “The president. Or maybe the governor.”
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br />   “You think they’re going to care about some little pocket of trees way out here? They wouldn’t even read it.”

  “OK, then. You think of something. We’ll take turns.”

  Julian began sharpening the other end of the stick.

  “It doesn’t have to be a good idea,” Robin said impatiently. “Just throw out any idea. It’s called brainstorming.”

  “How about a protest?”

  “Who’s going to be protesting. You and me? And Molly? And Jo-Jo?”

  “Your turn, then.”

  “We’ll chain ourselves to the trees,” Robin suggested. “So they can’t cut them down.”

  Julian grimaced. “How long can you stay chained to a tree anyway?” He clicked his blade closed and put the knife back in his pocket. Robin sighed and flopped down on her back. The trees soared up around them, letting in a jagged ring of blue sky. They could hear the hollow sound of a woodpecker drilling high above them.

  “I just thought of an idea,” Robin said, sitting up again. “But it’s a secret.”

  “What kind of secret?”

  She looked at him with her fierce blue eyes. “A big secret. If I tell you, you have to promise, cross your heart and hope to die, that you won’t tell.”

  “I promise.”

  “Cross your heart and hope to die.”

  “OK. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  “Right in the middle of Big Tree Grove, there’s a secret tree house.”

  “Where?” asked Julian, looking up at the canopy around him.

  “Not far. But I’ve never been inside. My brothers refuse to bring me up until I’m twelve. That’s July twenty-ninth. There’s some big initiation ceremony.” She was quiet, sucking on the end of her braid for a moment.

  “Well, so what? So what if there is a tree house?”

  “We could go up in it. Like Julia Butterfly Hill.”

  “Who’s that?”

  She sighed with exasperation. “You don’t know anything! She’s this woman. And she was trying to protect this big old tree near Humboldt, way up north of here. And she went on this platform way up high in the tree where nobody could reach her and she lived there for more than two years so nobody would cut it down.”