Chasing Redbird (17 page)

“Zinny!” she said, leaping up to hug me. “I knew you'd be fine. I knew you'd be back when you said. You'll have to tell us everything. Here, sit down. Will you stay with Nate while I get some breakfast ready?”

I stood there like an old dead tree trunk. She looked so different. Had her hair always curled like that at the temples? Had she always had those creases by her eyes?

She turned at the door to glance back at me. “I knew you'd be fine,” she repeated. “I knew it.”

I sat beside Uncle Nate. “Want to get up?” I asked.

“Cain't.”

“What do you mean?”

“Cain't do it.”

“You hurt your leg?”

“Dag-blasted leg. Dag-blasted heart. Dag-blasted body.”

“What's wrong with your heart?”

“It jumps.”

Mom poked her head through the doorway. “Don't get him too excited, Zinny. Don't upset him. Just stay there a minute. I'll be back in a jiffy.”

“Pumpkin,” Uncle Nate whispered, beckoning me closer.

“What is it?”

“I oughta be dead.”

“Don't say that! You'll be okay. You'll get better.”

“I cain't run.” He pressed his hands against his face.

Something inside me was splintering into a zillion little pieces.

After Mom came back, I went out to the front porch and sat in the swing, staring at the ash tree for a long, long time. Why did people get old? Why did people get sick? Why couldn't the hand of God fix whooping cough? Why couldn't it snatch a woman back from a drawer? Why couldn't it fix Uncle Nate? I couldn't stand it. I wanted answers to my questions, and I wanted them
immediately
.

It was a strange day. At first I felt as if I were an alien who had just landed in paradise. The most ordinary things startled me. Running water—what a miracle! Toilets! Milk! Eggs! Toast! Television! Electricity! Hearing voices was a delicious treat, and when someone laughed, I thought:
What a perfect sound that is
.

Sam rushed out of the room, returning a few minutes later with Ben. “See?” Sam said. “I told you she was crying.”

“Zinny?” Ben said. He put his face up close to mine. “You're crying.”

I loved that face. I loved every single thing about his perfect face.

Although my family didn't make a huge fuss over me as I had hoped, they did make a little fuss as, one by one, they noticed that I'd returned. Eventually they each got around to asking, “How is it up there, camping and all?”

I was full up to the top of my head with things to say, but then Will asked for the milk, and Gretchen said, “At least you don't have to do any chores,” and then Sam jumped in, and whatever I'd been thinking was lost in the clattering of dishes or wailing complaints (“Ben's taken my shirt—make him give it back!”).

My mother and Ben seemed most intrigued. “It's amazing what you're doing, Zinny,” my mother said. “Simply amazing. You should hear your dad talk about how far you've gotten. He loves tracking your progress from the air.”

“Gosh,” Bonnie said. “I could never stay outside all night.” She shuddered. “Too creepy.”

“And look at you,” Mom said. “You look so fit and healthy. Good for you, Zinny. Good for you.”

Good for you.
This had a strange effect on me. Had I actually done something good? Or had something good happened to me? That phrase kept rolling around in my brain:
Good for you.

“Have you seen any snakes yet?” Ben asked, and then seemed disappointed when I said I hadn't.

“Want to come up there with me, Ben?” Was this
me
talking? Was I actually inviting some-one to join me?

He thought a minute. “Maybe another time.”

“Afraid of the snakes?” Bonnie said.

“No, I am not,” Ben said. “I've got to watch my garden.”

I wanted to tell them everything—about light and darkness and time and the creatures and the fox with the staring eyes and the shadows and hearing the train whistle and thinking of home. I wanted to tell them about Maiden's Walk and Baby Toe Ridge and Crow Hollow, but I didn't know how to explain. Besides, they weren't used to hearing me jabber on, and after a few hours, I lapsed into my old silent Zinny self.

The second half of the day, I became fidgety and irritable. Inside the house, I felt like a caged animal, and I'd escape to the porch or the yard, where I'd inhale gulps of air. The sound of human voices became overwhelming—all that chattering, all those loud whoops and shouts. Noises assaulted me: chairs scraping on the floor, the computer bleeping, dishes clattering, footsteps thumping overhead, doors slamming, phones ringing, music blaring.

Once, when Ben, Sam, and Bonnie were all yapping at once, and May was screaming upstairs about a missing hairbrush, I fled to the squirt gardens. Ben's row was immaculate: completely weedless, with perfectly upright bean plants staked like a row of thin soldiers at attention, their pale beans hanging like limp fingers.

I'd been wary of seeing my squirt garden, feeling guilty that I'd neglected it all summer. I expected to see a tangled mass of weeds choking the tomatoes and zinnias.
Wrong!
The tomatoes were firm and green, well staked, free of weeds and bugs, and surrounded by healthy zinnias in full bloom.

Someone had been caring for my garden, and that should have touched me, but in my moody state, it annoyed me. Someone had
interfered
, someone had
taken over
my garden, just as someone had taken over my bed.

Grumpily, I stomped back to the house, and rammed things into my backpack: a change of clothes, toothpaste, and zinnia seeds. I made out a new food list, burrowed into my closet where my money was hidden, and headed for Mrs. Flint's store.

A
s I left the drive and turned onto the main road, a shiny red convertible pulled up beside me. “Hey, Zinny!”
Oh that voice!
It was Jake, tanned and scrubbed, in a white T-shirt and blue jeans, his hair mussed. I couldn't look at him. I didn't dare. I kept walking, as his car crept along beside me. “Zinny—wait. Where you going?”

“Mrs. Flint's.”

“The store? Come on, I'll give you a lift.” He stopped, jumped out, and opened the passenger door. “Come on, it's hotter than blazes. It'll save your feet.”

My feet didn't need saving, but I climbed in the car. This was going to be it, I thought. I was going to know—there would be another sign—whether Jake really liked me or not. My heart was saying,
Of course he does—the kiss, the kiss,
but, strangely, my head was saying this,
The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.
It was as if I thought that a hand was going to drop down from the heavens and snatch Jake from the driver's seat.

“It's a beaut—don't you think?” he asked, running his hand across the dashboard.

I was gripping the door handle, keeping my eyes on the road, forcing my voice to be steady. “Where'd you get it?”

“It's a beaut,” he repeated, ignoring my question. “I know you don't like trucks, but how about this? Isn't it a beaut?”

Try to sound normal, Zinny. Try to sound like your normal muley self.
“Yeah, it's a beaut. Where'd you get it?”

“You're really making progress on that trail.”

“You oughta know, I guess. Where'd you get this car?”

He pulled up about fifty yards from Mrs. Flint's store. “Look,” he said, “I don't want to see Mrs. Flint right now, so I'll wait for you here, okay?”

I waited a minute, expecting another kiss or some passionate announcement, but he kept scanning the road and wouldn't look at me. I got out and slammed the door. So much for passion.

He was right about one thing, though—that car was a
beaut
.

“Golly,” Mrs. Flint said, when I'd stacked my provisions on the counter. “You're the one clearing some trail or something, aren't you? You're—”

“Zinny.”

“That's right. Zinny.” The phone rang. Mrs. Flint sounded agitated. “I sure don't know,” she complained to the caller, “and I'm about to give up on that boy. Late again and refusing to work nights and straggling in like a zombie. I told his mother a thing or two when she came in here yesterday. She doesn't know what to do with him either. He doesn't come home most nights, and won't tell her where he's been, and she thinks he's up to no good—” Mrs. Flint stopped herself. “I'll call you back. I've got a customer.”

So. Jake really had been up on the trail watching over me most nights. He wouldn't go to all that trouble if it was May he cared about.

The sheriff walked in. “Hey there,” he said to Mrs. Flint. “Hey there—which one are—”

“Zinny.”

“Zinny? You the one doing that trail thing? Heard your dad talking about it. Better be careful up there.”

“I will.”

“I'll take one of those candy bars,” he said to Mrs. Flint. “And a red pop.”

“Where you headed?” Mrs Flint asked him.

“On up to the Fosters'. They're all in a flutter.”

“Not that cow again?”

“Naw—something about a stolen car. I couldn't make much sense of it. Betty was half hysterical. You know how she gets.”

I struggled out the door with my sacks of groceries, and wasn't real surprised to see that Jake and his beaut of a car were gone. Automatically, I scanned the sky, as if I were looking for traces of a big old hand, disappearing back into the clouds.

S
traggling home, loaded down with groceries and worries, a glimpse of my shadow frightened me. Was that me—that bent figure creeping along?
Zip!
Out of the no-access portion of my brain slipped another memory of Rose.

After Mom's great-aunt had visited us once, Rose started doing a peculiar thing. She would hunch over and hobble along, her face all scrunched up into a little prune.

“Rose is being an old lady,” Aunt Jessie said.

I started doing it with Rose. People would say, “Rose and Zinny—do the old lady,” and we'd instantly transform ourselves into miniature old women, creeping through the house grimacing. Aunt Jessie would clap her hands and toss her head back, tickled to pieces.

Not long after baby Rose died, I leaped off a chair one morning and started doing the old lady. I was hoping to cheer up Aunt Jessie, sitting so forlornly on her sofa. She didn't laugh, though. Instead, she said, “Rose will never be an old lady.”

I never did the old lady again.

As I walked on up the road with the sacks of groceries, I thought about what Aunt Jessie had said. Rose never would be an old lady. She would always be four years old and cute and completely innocent, and I envied her.