Three Bird Summer

by Sara St. Antoine

  As it swam past and away, I could just make out a fat, flat tail. That’s when I knew for sure what it was. A beaver!

  I watched until the beaver head became a tiny dot and then faded away to nothing. I couldn’t imagine where it was going. In all the weeks we’d been at the cabin, I’d never even noticed a beaver lodge. Where was this guy — or gal — from? Was it going to the same place the mink had gone?

  Alice was right: there was so much we didn’t know.

  I looked up toward the darkened woods. How much life was packed into just one of those towering trees? Beetles, squirrels, woodpeckers, ants, bees, eagles: there they were, day in and day out, burrowing and perching, hatching and dying. A whole world on a stem. And what was creeping on the ground under the fallen leaves and pine needles? What was boring through the dirt? What was hiding within all those impenetrable shrubs?

  It was strange how little we thought about any of that stuff.

  Every summer, we came to the cabin and settled into our routines. We talked about our woods and our lake, creating our memories. But what about all these other animals? Wasn’t it their woods and their lake — even more than ours? It made me wonder how the world of Three Bird Lake looked through their eyes. Was it safe or precarious? Were we humans terrible intruders or uninteresting lumps? Did they think of the lake as quiet, like we did? Or did they think it was loud with all of us here? Did they hate our smells?

  I looked around me again at the water and the shore, wondering what sorts of invisible paths and posts the mink and beavers and deer and rabbits had here. We glimpsed only the temporary traces, like when the mink left their footsteps in the mud or the deer left their droppings in the woods. Did the animals here — like that beaver I’d seen tonight — have maps inside their heads, with routes to food and friends and safe havens?

  And then I knew. All of a sudden I understood the puzzle of Grandma’s treasure map. The mysterious G had left us a huge clue, and we’d been too focused on our own dumb selves to notice it.

  I was so excited, I felt like screaming across the water for Alice to come out. We could find the treasure now — I was sure of it! How could I wait an entire night to tell her?

  I settled for jumping up and down on the dock and waving my hands in the air as the stars came popping out — little pinpricks in a giant black balloon. I was glad there was no one to witness my little celebration except maybe a bat or two. But I felt more excited than I had in a long time, and nothing could keep me from showing it.

  IN THE MORNING, Mom went to pick up Grandma from the hospital. As soon as she was gone, I rode my bike over to Alice’s house. I was so excited to share my discovery about the treasure map with her that I almost forgot what a jerk I’d been the last time we spoke. But clearly Alice hadn’t forgotten.

  Mrs. Jensen answered the door and went to find Alice, only to return looking flustered.

  “I’m sorry, Adam,” she said. “Alice isn’t feeling well this morning.”

  “Oh,” I said. I felt myself blushing slightly, wondering if Mrs. Jensen knew what was going on.

  “If she feels better later, would you have her give me a call?” I asked.

  Mrs. Jensen nodded. “Will your grandmother be coming home soon?” she asked gently.

  “Today,” I told her. “My mom just went to get her.”

  “Well, that’s good,” Mrs. Jensen went on. ”I’m sure your grandmother will be very glad to see you when she gets home.”

  That felt like my cue to leave. I said good-bye and headed over to where I’d left my bike. As I passed a corner window, I caught sight of someone peering through the glass, but then she ducked out of sight behind a white lacy curtain. I sighed. It had to be Alice.

  I rode back home. As soon as I was back at the empty cabin, I regretted my hasty return. I couldn’t stay here alone. I couldn’t stand around not looking for the treasure. And I couldn’t look for the treasure without Alice. We were a team.

  I found paper and a pen in the house and scrawled her a note. It took some thought. In the end, I wrote,

  Hey, Alice,

  Three things:

  1. I’m sorry.

  2. I think I know how we can find the treasure! Please come over.

  3. I really am sorry.

  — Adam

  I folded the note into quarters. This time I didn’t bother with the bike; I cut into the woods and did my best to follow Poison Ivy Parkway all the way to Alice’s house. When I emerged into her clearing, I paused. Should I give the note to her mom? That was a little too embarrassing. But how else to get it to Alice? I had a pretty good sense of which window belonged to Alice’s room now, and I slowly made my way toward it, hoping I wouldn’t be spotted by Mr. or Mrs. Jensen. Once there, I wedged the note into a corner of the screen, knocked hard on the glass of the window above, and then sprinted back to the edge of the woods, waiting and watching.

  Moments later, I saw the screen slide open, and Alice’s hand grabbed hold of the note. I hung around for a few minutes, waiting to see if she’d come outside, but eventually I gave up. I turned and made my way toward home, wondering if I’d said enough to convince her to come out.

  Just as I reached our drive, I heard footsteps crashing behind me.

  “Hey!” Alice said when she reached my side. Her cheeks were flushed, and her shoelaces weren’t even tied.

  “Hi,” I said. “Are you feeling better?”

  She looked me in the eye and nodded. “Nothing like a good apology or two to heal that kind of malady.”

  “I was being kind of ridiculous,” I told her. “Can you just forget everything I said?”

  “That’s a funny request, coming from Memory Guy,” she said with a smile. “But OK.”

  We kept walking, climbing the steps onto the deck and sitting on the built-in seats facing each other.

  “I should have told you about the tennis,” Alice said. “And about meeting up with Drew. Here’s all of it, OK? I’m captain of my middle-school tennis team, and I was a three-time age-group champion in my old league. I like playing tennis. But I still don’t hang out with the popular girls and I did go to Camp Watson and you saw my mutant toes.” She made a goofy face. “So I wasn’t lying about all that.”

  “I know, Duck,” I said, smiling.

  “Good. Now, are you going to tell me about the map, or what?”

  “We were measuring wrong,” I told her.

  “What do you mean?” she asked. “We tried the whole thing with my steps and your steps and a tall Minnesotan’s steps!”

  “I know,” I said. “But we didn’t try animal steps.”

  “Animal steps?”

  “Think about it,” I said. “Every path has a different animal name. So if it’s Hare Highway, shouldn’t you measure the distance in rabbit steps? And measure Deer Drive in deer steps? And Beaver Boulevard in beaver steps?”

  “I guess you could,” Alice said. “But how do you know for sure?”

  “Well, I don’t,” I admitted. I’d been more sure of myself the night before, alone under the stars. “But it just fits somehow. I think it’s worth a try.”

  “Of course we’ll try. It has potential, actually,” Alice said. Her eyes fairly flashed as she took in my information. “There will be so much variation, won’t there? We’re going to end up in a totally different place!”

  I nodded.

  “How’d you think of this, anyway?” she asked.

  I told her about seeing the beaver the night before and about thinking of the animals and the different paths they took. The final piece was when I was remembering the mink we’d seen and picturing the tracks they’d left behind.

  Alice smiled. “Good thing I’m working with Memory Guy here. I never would have remembered mink footprints!” She jumped up. “So come on! What are we waiting for?”

  The sound of a car in the drive made us look up. It was my mom, with my grandmother in the passenger seat. I couldn’t help feeling disappointed, even though I knew it was s
elfish of me.

  “Oh,” I said to Alice. “I don’t think I can leave right now.”

  “Right,” she said.

  “But my grandmother usually naps after lunch. Can you come over then?”

  “Sure,” she said. “I just hope I can stand waiting that long!”

  I nodded sympathetically. “You still have the map?” I asked.

  “Of course,” she said.

  She skipped down the steps and, with a quick wave to my mom and grandma, bolted into the woods for home.

  Mom got out of the car and strode deliberately over to the passenger side, but Grandma had already opened the door and was getting out on her own. Mom made a gesture of helping, but Grandma was back on her land and was having none of it. She pushed Mom lightly out of her way, then looked up into the tops of the trees. It was then I saw the white bandage across her forehead and a dark line under one eye.

  “Welcome back, Grandma,” I said as I drew near.

  “I hear you had a nice night by yourself,” she said. Her voice was dry and a little slow, but I could tell she was determined to sound strong. “I hope you didn’t have a wild party.”

  “It was wild enough without a party,” I said. “How are you doing?”

  She rolled her eyes, pointing to the bandage and to a piece of tape folded over her glasses. “I need new spectacles. Possibly a new head. Otherwise, I’m aces.”

  “Adam, can you bring in the things from the back of the car? I’ll help Grandma inside,” Mom said.

  Grandma shook her head. “I can walk just fine,” she said. “It’s cars that give me trouble.”

  I stole a glance at Mom. For once, she let the comment go.

  “Well, let’s go in together anyway,” she said. “I think we could all do with some lunch.”

  Grandma followed her up the steps and into the house. She looked shrunken and less steady than before. But having her back in the cabin felt right, like when you snap a missing jigsaw puzzle piece into place. I’m sure she felt the same way.

  WE HAD LUNCH TOGETHER, Grandma and I sitting at the table while Mom buzzed around us with the fixings. When Mom finally sat down, we settled into awkward small talk. No one seemed ready or willing to talk about serious matters.

  “How was the hospital food, Grandma?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Cardboard and cotton balls. It was junk when I was a nurse. And it’s even worse now. Did you see the color of that Jell-O?”

  “We’re glad you didn’t have to stay in for long,” Mom said.

  Grandma grunted in agreement.

  “Yeah, you wouldn’t want to miss more than a day of pancakes,” I pointed out. I caught Mom’s eye, but she was too preoccupied to remember our joke from the day before.

  Mom grew restless as soon as her plate was empty. I knew that she was stewing over what to do with Grandma — whether we could squeeze an extra day or two into our visit, and how to get Grandma back to St. Paul before we drove home.

  “In case you were wondering,” Grandma said when she was done eating, “I’m not leaving till October.”

  Mom attempted a supportive nod.

  “And now I’m going to go take a nap,” Grandma announced, standing up. “Don’t let your mother make any plans while I’m asleep. It’s not respectful.”

  “OK, Grandma,” I said.

  I was outside swinging on the hammock when Alice appeared, carrying a small stack of papers.

  “You’re not sleeping, are you?” she asked.

  “Are you kidding?” I swung my feet off the hammock, ready to start our search.

  “I have the map,” Alice said when she was close enough to talk quietly. “And I also did a little research while I was home.”

  “Research?” I asked.

  “I figured we probably don’t know as much as G and your grandma did about animals and their tracks. So I got some good information.”

  “Smart,” I said.

  “It’s actually really interesting,” she said. “So you start with their step length — which some people call their stride. Apparently you measure it from the back of one foot to the back of the next.” She demonstrated with her own stride.

  “OK. That makes sense,” I said.

  “But there are all these crazy variables. Are they walking or bounding or galloping? There’s this huge range in step lengths to cover all the different ways the animal might move.”

  I frowned. “So what numbers do we use?”

  “I’m guessing we can just go with averages. I mean, G was probably estimating when he made the map . . . assuming he was even using animal paces in the first place.”

  “Well, it’s worth a try,” I said, trying to regain some of my earlier optimism.

  We started at the back corner of the cabin again and used measuring tape that Alice had brought to count off paces. Our first direction was to take fifty steps on Mouse Main Street. When we’d done this before, we’d ended up well into the woods, but now we barely got out of the shadow of the cabin. We followed Chipmunk Chute and Beaver Boulevard, and when we angled toward the lake on Mink Meander, we didn’t even come close to getting our feet wet in the lake.

  “It feels more right, doesn’t it?” Alice said, her voice scarcely containing her excitement.

  “It’s definitely drier!”

  Two hundred paces on Deer Drive took us up well past the cabin again — a deer’s walking stride turned out to be pretty close to our own. But by the time we finished all the other parts of our walk, we weren’t very deep in the woods at all. Instead, we were just beyond the grassy clearing where my mom had pitched her tent as a kid. There were lots of trees — birches and pines and spruces and oaks — surrounded by bushes that grew so thick they could have concealed a good-size piano. In summers past, my cousins and I had lost tons of baseballs in these woods, even after we thought we’d seen where they had fallen. If the treasure was in here somewhere, it was going to take an excellent system or good luck to find it. Probably both.

  “Let’s try to cover this whole area,” I said to Alice, gesturing in a wide circle around us. “Remember, we were estimating those animal paces. We haven’t pinpointed anything yet.”

  “Right-o,” Alice said. “I’ll start with these shrubby things and work my way over to there,” she said, pointing off in the direction of her property.

  “And I’ll start with that big pine tree,” I said, pointing to the tallest one in sight. I walked over slowly, keeping my eyes focused on the ground so I wouldn’t miss a single clue. I had to believe that G would have made it fairly obvious if he’d buried the treasure. Maybe he would have piled up rocks to make a cairn on top of it. Or drawn that target symbol. Once I reached the tree, I circled its trunk, then looked up into the canopy for something stowed up high. I even pulled myself up into the lower branches in case G was a climber, but all I got for my effort was a lot of sap on my hands.

  Alice peeked behind a section of peeled birch bark. “Maybe he wrote her a message on birch bark,” she called.

  “Or carved their initials,” I suggested.

  Several minutes later, Alice gave a little shout of discovery.

  “What?” I asked, jogging over. “Did you find something?”

  Alice was leaning into a dense patch of blueberries. “Ta-da!” she said, pulling out a white plastic Frisbee now covered with grass stains and dirt.

  “Ha!” I said. “I think that used to belong to my cousins.”

  “Let me guess,” Alice said. “They were playing lake Frisbee?”

  “Actually, I think they were trying to knock a beehive out of a tree,” I said.

  “Such smart boys,” Alice said, shaking her head. “Come on — let’s get back to work.”

  I continued searching my area, trying to be as thorough as possible. I peered into shrubs, fingered every tree trunk, and kicked away the leaves and sticks on the forest floor in case they covered a hole or a marker. When I’d finally finished, I looked over at Alice. She was on her han
ds and knees, crawling through the grasses and ferns like a crazed badger snuffling out its next meal. “You almost done?” I asked.

  “I’m not even halfway!” she said. She looked up, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “You went too fast.”

  “I’m just really efficient,” I insisted. “I can come over there and help, if you want.”

  Alice shook her head and went back to her ground search. “That’s OK,” she said. “I’ve got a system here.”

  I was never going to be able to match Alice’s attention to detail, and I couldn’t very well hurry her along. So I sat down and leaned against a tree to wait. It was nice here in the woods, with the leaves and the bark and the berries. Especially now that the mosquitoes had mostly scattered. I spun the old Frisbee in my hands and inhaled the sweet air. Maybe this was treasure enough.

  Meanwhile, Alice kept busy. She inspected, dug, climbed, peered, and scanned. All she needed was a magnifying glass and a clipboard, and she’d look like a professional scientist.

  I stopped spinning the Frisbee and gazed for a moment at its surface. “Wait,” I said to Alice. “What if this isn’t my cousins’ Frisbee?”

  “What?” Alice asked.

  “It would be the perfect thing to mark G’s treasure. Look at it — it looks just like a target. See the concentric rings? Maybe he buried the treasure under this.”

  “It doesn’t look that old,” Alice said, coming over for a closer look. “Besides, did they even have plastic Frisbees back then?”

  “Nah, I guess not,” I said, spinning the Frisbee some more. “Not like this one, anyway.”

  Alice scratched her head. “But actually, there is something out here with concentric rings. I mean, besides the Frisbee.”