We ate early, because we were all hungry, and when we were through one of the Greek professors came over, eager as a kid, to suggest we all play Hide-and-Seek. They even got Zachary’s mother and father to play and it was really a blast.
Once Rob was it and he’d found everybody except one of the Greek professors and Zachary, and the rest of us were lounging around, eating cookies and drinking ginger ale as a sort of extra dessert. It was still sunny, though the sky was beginning to get that golden look it does when it’s just about to be evening. Rob finally found the Greek professor way up a tree. As a matter of fact he was stuck up there. We had to help him down and he could hardly get down at all, he was laughing so hard.
After we got the professor down Rob kept on looking for Zachary but he couldn’t find him, and after a while he began to get unhappy about it, so we all called, “Okay, Zach, you win, you can come home free,” but he didn’t come, so we all started looking for him. I could see that John was annoyed, and I wished Zachary would turn up.
After we’d all been looking for about half an hour I noticed that Mrs. Grey was getting a strained, anxious look, and I was beginning to feel worried, too. One trouble was that you didn’t know just where to look. This was not a campgrounds with definite boundaries like the regular campgrounds, and nobody’d thought to set any limits to where you could hide. The logical places were all in the little plateau where we were camped. Up above there were pines, and the shadows were already deep in there. After the trees the mountain ended up with coarse, sharp grass, and finally just rocks on the very top. Below the camping plateau was the stream, and below that a big, green field, and then a long, thorny barbed wire fence.
Mrs. Grey came up to Mother. She was clasping her pudgy hands (how could Zachary be so thin with his parents so well fed?) and her eyes looked as though they were about to fill with tears.
“Mrs. Austin, I’m frightened,” she said. “Zachary’s so wild, you never know what he’ll do next, and he hasn’t been well lately, and he wouldn’t go to a doctor. He has a heart condition, you know.”
“I know,” Mother said. She looked at me. “I wouldn’t worry about him yet, Mrs. Grey. The whole point of hide-and-seek is to stay hidden as long as you possibly can.”
“But the game’s over,” Mrs. Grey said. “He ought to realize it’s over by now.”
Mother sounded very calm. “Sometimes young people don’t know when too much is enough.” She put a hand on my shoulder. “Vicky’s a prime example of that.”
When Zachary hadn’t turned up after another few minutes of looking and shouting for him, the Greek professors organized where everybody should look. John and I were to stay in camp while Suzy and Rob got ready for bed and in case Zachary should come sauntering in. Everybody except the Greys was very annoyed; the Greys were worried; I was annoyed and worried.
After Suzy and Rob had washed up, were in their night clothes, and in the tent, reading (we knew it was no good telling them to go to sleep) John and I sat by the remains of the camp fire.
“It’s just a kid’s trick,” John said disgustedly, “pulling a disappearing act like this.”
I didn’t answer. I sat there, looking from the embers to the rambler roses that would have been over long ago at home but here were just bursting into fullness and drifting their fragrance all around us. “The Greys are very worried,” I said after a while.
“He worries them on purpose. He likes worrying them.” John poked at the fire. “I hope this shows you, Vicky.”
“Shows me what?”
“He isn’t worth your getting all stewed up about.”
I thought of Zachary. Then I thought of Andy. Then I thought of Zachary again. “Take his parents,” I started.
“You take them.”
“That’s just the point. You wouldn’t want them for parents.”
“As far as I’m concerned he’s a chip off the old block.”
“He’s a lot more than that. I mean, there’s something there, John, something terrific, there really is.”
“You’re the only one who’s seen any sign of it.”
“You haven’t given him any chance to show it. I’ve talked to him. You know how we feel about Mother and Daddy. How would it be if we couldn’t? It would have an effect on us, wouldn’t it?” I didn’t tell John that Zachary knew his father made all that money in kind of shady ways. I didn’t tell John Zachary’s reasons for wanting to be a lawyer. I didn’t believe Zachary’s reasons. Because Zachary himself had told me not to. But John would believe them. “Suppose he’s hurt himself?” I asked.
“He’s not Rob’s age. What could he do?”
“He could have fallen and broken his leg or something. Or he could have had a heart attack. I think that’s what his mother’s afraid of.”
“Serve him right if he has.”
“John, please!”
“I’m sorry, Vicky. I just don’t like him. I don’t like what he’s done to you.”
“It isn’t Zachary. It’s everything. It’s life.”
“Most people manage to face life without getting into a swivet.”
“I’m not in a swivet.” Then I said, “John, do you mind if I kind of go around and look for Zach?”
“What for? That’s just what he wants.”
“I don’t think Zach gets what he wants very often.”
“He gets it all the time. That’s what’s wrong with him.”
“I don’t mean that kind of thing,” I said. “I mean the—the real things. I mean the kind of things we take for granted. And Andy and Don and Steve, too.”
“All right,” John said. “If you want to. Just don’t you get lost. Stay within shouting distance, will you?”
“Okay.”
I got up, but he stopped me. “Listen, Vicky.”
“What?”
“One thing I hope you realize, speaking of Andy—”
“What?”
“I hope you realize that all during this trip you’ve had the male population at your feet. Everybody was too used to you in Thornhill.”
“Yah. The whole male population. Big deal. Zachary. And I watched a geyser with Andy.”
John gave me his very nicest grin, so that I forgave him for everything he’d said before. “I mean what I say. The whole male population. That’s what I allege,” he said, going into a family joke.
“So? That’s what you allege?”
“Yeah, that’s what I allege.”
“You make these allegations?”
“I’m the alligator.”
“See you later, alligator.”
“In a while, crocodile.”
“Olive oil.”
“Abysinnia. Get lost!”
I waved at John and set off.
Suzy loves the dark and it doesn’t bother me. I don’t have a dark phobia like my acrophobia or anything. But by now it was awfully dark in the pines, and I had to go through the pines to get to the mountain top. For some reason I had a feeling that Zachary would have climbed up to the top of the mountain to hide, if only because it was the worst possible thing for him to do. I knew that Daddy had gone up and yelled from the mountain top, but I also knew that Zachary mightn’t have answered if the yeller was Daddy.
I didn’t much care for it in the woods. It wasn’t the trees or the deepening shadows I was afraid of, but bears, after all the bears in Yellowstone. I remembered that Don had told us that this wasn’t supposed to be bear territory, and I tried to stop my heart from thumping each time I saw a shadow and thought it was a bear. Luckily I was so worried about bears that I didn’t even think about snakes. I’m not sure I wouldn’t rather see a bear than a snake, even though Suzy has told me over and over again that snakes won’t bother you unless you bother them first.
I got out of the trees without being attacked by bears and started up to the crest of the mountain. It was so high that the sun was still golden on the coarse grass, and the rocks were warm to touch, though it would be completely night by now d
own in the valleys. Whenever I saw a big rock I looked behind it, but I didn’t see Zachary.
As I neared the top of the mountain I began to yell, “Zachary! Zach! Come on, the game’s over, everybody’s worried, it isn’t funny any more. Come on, Zach, don’t be a dope!”
By now I was panting and tired and my stomach was churning with worry. I was sure Zachary’d capsized somewhere. If he’d climbed up here it would be enough to give him a heart attack.
Suddenly I thought I heard something, as though a voice far away were calling, “Vicky!”
I scrambled up to the crest of the mountain and stood there, calling and looking. My stomach gave an awful jerk as I looked down, because it was much steeper on the far side, and I felt acrophobia-ey. I closed my eyes for a minute, and then opened them carefully. The sun was sinking, way below me. I turned around so I wouldn’t have to look down the steep side of the mountain, and the tents were still bathed in light. I seemed to be standing on a mountain peak way above the sun, and yet with the sun’s light still streaking across the rocks and grass, at the same time that shadows were deepening and stretching out everywhere. I suppose light must be something like this in Alaska, or Norway, at the times when the sun doesn’t set at all. Only this sun was setting swiftly, and I wanted to hurry back down to camp, with or without Zachary. Our tent roof was golden with sun, and then suddenly it was in shadow. I knew that John would be furious with me if I didn’t get back before dark.
But just as I was ready to start down for the camp I heard it again, behind me, down the other side of the mountain. “Vicky!”
I shouted. “Zachary! Where are you?”
Silence.
I was sure that I hadn’t been mistaken, that I’d heard him calling me, and that it wasn’t John or anybody from camp calling me to say that Zach had been found, because their voices would have come from the opposite direction.
I turned around. The shadows were deepening again, and as I looked down the rocky mountain I felt a surge of acrophobia.
“Vicky!” The voice sounded lost, and far away, and hurt, and I knew that I would have to control my acrophobia and climb down. Of course what I should have done was to go back to camp and get Daddy. What earthly use would I be if Zachary’d had a heart attack or broken a leg? But I was so busy trying not to feel sick at my stomach, and so terrified of climbing down the mountain side, that I never thought of the logical thing. I gritted my teeth and started down, mostly backwards. Actually, backwards it wasn’t too bad, because I didn’t have to look down, even though I seemed to slip and slide a lot. It was getting darker every minute, but it wasn’t that quick darkness that seems to come with a bang, and I was grateful; now, instead of being golden, everything was a soft grey.
“Vicky!”
“Hold on, Zach!” I shouted. “I’m coming!”
Not too far below me was a field, much bigger than the one where the camp was, and across the field a huge mound of rocks, and it was from these rocks that the voice seemed to be coming. I reached the field and started to run across it to the rocks. “I’m coming, Zach!” I called.
And then he came strolling out from behind the rocks, cool as a cucumber. “About time,” he said.
I was furious. I didn’t know I could be so furious at Zachary. “What do you mean!” I shouted. “Everybody’s been looking for you! Your poor mother is frantic! What do you mean, just sitting down here!”
“Well, hey, hold it!” Zachary said. “How’d I know everybody was looking for me?”
“Didn’t you hear us yelling? Daddy went up to the top of the mountain and yelled. You must have heard him.”
“Sure I heard him,” Zachary said, “but you were the one I was waiting for.”
“You were so sure I’d come?”
“I figured if I waited long enough you’d appear.”
“So you just sat and let your mother get scared out of her wits?”
“What’s all this worry about my mother? She ought to know by now not to have fits. She never knows when I’m coming back at home and it never seems to bother her. Why all this parental agony all of a sudden?”
“Because she loves you,” I said. “Because she thought you had a heart attack or something. Well, I’m going back to camp. You can come along if you feel like it.”
“No, you don’t,” Zachary said. “Why do you think I waited down here all this time? I want to talk to you about this Andy.”
He made a grab for me, but I jumped out of his way. “Good-bye,” I said, and started across the field to the mountain. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Zachary shrug and go back to the rock pile.
Then the ground wiggled under my feet.
It was a most peculiar feeling. The solid ground under my feet gave a shudder. I stood still. It kept on feeling as though the ground were shivering. Then suddenly there was a jerk under me. It was something like when you go water skiing and someone cuts the motor and then suddenly speeds up again, trying to throw you.
The next jerk did throw me. It was a much bigger jerk, and I fell flat on my face in the soft grass of the field. Underneath me the ground seemed to heave the way your stomach does when you’re terribly, terribly sick. I clung to the grass because there wasn’t anything else to cling to. It was as though the whole earth, the whole planet, were jerking out in space, veering wildly out of course, and I was on its back, clinging to its mane.
Behind me there was a terrible noise. It was louder than thunder and it seemed to keep on and on until I thought my head would burst. Then the noise began to break into separate parts, a sound like thunder, a roar like the ocean in a storm, great crackings, crunchings, and finally all the noises got smaller and with spaces of quiet in between, and then they stopped. The silence was so complete that it was as frightening as the noise had been.
I managed to turn my head, and the top of the mountain wasn’t there any more. It didn’t seem to be anywhere.
Then I remembered the town of Frank in Alberta, the mountain that had fallen on the town. I pressed my face into the grass of the field, and, as the earth heaved beneath me, I thought I was going to throw up, too, from terror. But I didn’t.
I looked around again. The top of the mountain was still gone. Everything looked different. I realized that most of the mountain had fallen into the field, because the mountain was much closer to me, the field was much narrower, than it had been before.
I lay there, clutching the grass, not daring or even able to move, even if the rest of the mountain should fall on me. But after a while I realized that the tremors were less violent, that the earth was becoming quiet again. I staggered to my feet. The ground seemed quite solid beneath them. I looked for Zachary. The pile of rock was still there, but it was a different shaped pile. I didn’t see Zachary.
I simply accepted the fact that he was dead, that he was buried under the rocks. I didn’t want to scream or anything. All I felt was a terrible, resigned calm, as though something in me were dead, too.
“Vicky!”
It was Zachary’s voice. It was quite strong, and it was coming from the rocks. I ran across the rest of the field. Now the dark was on top of me. I couldn’t see anything except rocks and shadows of rocks. “Zach, where are you?” I wasn’t sure whether the heaving came from me, my chest racked with gasps, my heart pounding, or whether the earth was still shaking. I thought it was mostly me.
Zachary’s voice came from inside the pile of rocks. “Vicky! Here!”
I couldn’t see him, but I could hear his voice, coming from somewhere inside the rocks. “Are you hurt?” I called.
“I don’t think so. How about you?”
“I’m okay.” I kept looking for the voice, and finally, in the darkness, I saw two great rocks leaning together, with a space about a foot wide at the bottom. I got down on my hands and knees and tried to peer in.
Zachary’s voice came from the darkness. “Here, Vic.”
“Are you all right? Are you sure you aren’t hurt?”
“I’m all right. But I don’t think I can get out.”
I tried to keep my voice from shaking. “What happened?”
“Must have been an earthquake. I got whammed down to my knees, and then two rocks shifted and fell against each other, and I’m in a sort of small cave, trapped, but good.”
I pushed and shoved at the rocks, but they were huge ones and they wouldn’t budge.
“It’s no use, Vicky,” Zachary said. “Don’t exhaust yourself. You might as well try to move the mountain.”
I shivered. The mountain. “Are you sure this is the only hole?”
“No, there’s some sky above me. I can see a star. But it’s too high. There isn’t any place I can get a toe hold to try to climb up. I tried until I got a pain.”
I stood very still there by the pile of rocks with Zachary nothing but a voice in the darkness. He sounded a great deal braver than I felt.
“I never thought I’d die this way,” Zachary said. “I always planned to have a certain amount of control over it. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes. Zach, what’ll we do?”
“You’d better go back and get the others. Maybe they can get me out.”
“Zach,” I said. “The mountain. It fell.”
Zach’s voice sounded too reasonable for comfort. “Yeah, I figured something like that must have happened from the noise. How about the campgrounds?”
“I don’t know.”
“Vicky,” Zachary said quietly. “Did the mountain fall on this side?”
“A lot of it did.”
“Then they’re probably okay.”
I didn’t answer.
“Listen, Vicky,” he said after a while. “I’m stuck in here. There’s not a thing I can do to get out. I tried. I’ve still got a pain. I don’t dare try anymore and I don’t think it would do any good anyhow. You’ve got to go back. I’m sorry, darling, but you’ve got to try.” His voice was gentle.
“I don’t want to leave you.”
“I’m all right. There’s nothing you can do by staying here, and your parents must be having fits about you.”
My voice almost went out of control. “If they’re okay.”
“If the mountain fell on this side they’re okay.”
The Moon by Night Page 20
