Dorothy Garlock - [Tucker Family]

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C
HRISTINA TUCKER GASPED
in fright as the jagged fork of lightning splintered across the darkening sky. Strong gusts of wind lashed the trees of the thick wood, bending boughs and violently rustling leaves. The fresh, strong scent of the storm enveloped her as if it were a blanket, overpowering. Heavy drops of rain suddenly began to fall, hammering against collapsed tree limbs and rocks, muddying the earth, and soaking her blouse to her skin. Thunder rolled toward her from close by, menacing. There was no chance to outrun the storm.

“Charlotte!” she shouted. “Charlotte! Where are you?”

Shivering from both cold and fear, Christina looked frantically for a sign of her older sister. Only moments earlier, Charlotte and their dog, Jasper, had been beside her as they hurried from one clearing to the next, racing between the massive evergreens and elms that surrounded Lake Washington, desperately trying to get home before the storm struck. She had only stopped for an instant to fix her shoe…

Now, she was completely alone.

“Charlotte!” she cried again in growing worry, her voice swallowed by the squall; there was still no answer.

Christina struggled to hold back her fears. She had no real sense of
where
she was. No matter what direction she turned, she saw only darkness, lit for a flickering instant by each flash of lightning. Though it was only late afternoon, the storm had brought heavy, dark clouds that shrouded the sky as black as night. Panicked, she could not remember what direction she had come from, or even where she had been headed. The lake might be in front of her or behind; if she
knew
where it was, she could have skirted its shore until she found town. But blindly stumbling into the brush would only make her more lost.
Who knew what could happen?
She could catch cold in the downpouring rain, stumble into a deep hole, twist her ankle, wander so far out into the tall trees that she would never be found, or, even worse, encounter a wild animal.

If only I were older than eight
, Christina thought.
Then I might know what to do…

The rain began to fall harder; it pounded the forest so relentlessly that Christina couldn’t hear any other sound. Every inch of her was drenched; raising her hand to shield her face couldn’t keep the water from getting into her eyes or from soaking her dark hair.

She was scared, alone, and quickly growing cold; though the summer day had been hot and humid, a typical August afternoon in Minnesota, the rain had brought with it a chill that set her shivering.

She needed to get home, quickly.

Suddenly, the sound of rustling leaves behind her broke through the overwhelming din of the storm. Spinning on her heel, Christina searched for some sign of what had made the noise, but she could see nothing. She strained to listen, hoping with all her heart that it was Charlotte finally coming back for her, or that maybe Jasper was rooting around, his worn old nose somehow managing to find her scent and reunite them. But with every passing second, nothing, or no one, revealed itself. When she heard the sharp sound of a stick snapping somewhere off to her left, she let out an involuntary gasp, her nerves pulled tighter than piano wire.

“Charlotte?” she asked. “Is that you?”

There was no answer.

BOOM! Thunder raced across the woods.

In that instant, in her mind, Christina heard the voice of her father as surely as if he were standing beside her. Over and over he had warned her about the dangers lurking in the woods around their home. Fox, wildcats, and even bears and wolves had been spotted, animals with sharp teeth and long claws, beasts capable of tearing her flesh from the bone. While there were beasts that walked on four legs, there were others who walked on two: men who were sick, who were desperate and depraved enough to hurt a little girl.

“Charlotte…,” her voice trailed, her eyes wide with fright.

When the leaves again began to rustle, Christina didn’t wait to see if anything emerged from the brush. At the first sound, she was off running, blindly careening through chokeberry shrubs, plunging past ninebark bushes, and trampling baneberry flowers beneath her feet. Branches struck her face and arms as clinging nettles pulled at the fabric of her blouse and skirt, but still she kept going, her legs pumping furiously, desperate to get away from what was surely right behind her, breathing down her neck.

Ducking beneath a low-hanging branch, Christina bumped it, sending a cascade of water plunging down onto her head; she was so panicked that she ignored it, desperate to keep running. Her breath was ragged, her vision blurry with rainwater, and her arm ached from a long, thin cut sliced by a thorn, but nothing mattered except getting away as fast as she could.

BOOM! The storm continued relentlessly to pound the forest.

“Charlotte! Where are you? Charlotte?”

On and on Christina ran, never slowing, never looking back, just running, running. She had never been as resourceful or levelheaded as Charlotte, never calm in a crisis; there was no way to keep Christina’s emotions from running out of control. Thoughts rushed through her as fast as the trees she dashed past: horror at what was the source of the sounds that were closing quickly behind her; worry that she wasn’t going in the right direction but running away from the safety she so desperately sought; the image of her mother, pacing before the window, wondering why her daughters weren’t home…

Just as Christina was about to jump over a rotting tree stump, her feet suddenly flew out from under her and she crashed down onto the muddy ground. She fell hard, sliding on her front, the muck coating her clothes and face.

“Ooofff!” she gasped as the air was driven from her chest.

Desperately, she struggled to get back to her feet. Under the relentless driving rain, her hands grabbed fistfuls of the wet earth. Over and over she tried to gain purchase as her feet pushed, then slid, then pushed again before falling. No matter what, she refused to look back, to have to watch as what she had been running from finally caught up to her.

I won’t let him catch me! I won’t! I won’t!

It was then, just as Christina was about to scream, that she heard a dog bark. The sound was close, cutting through the raging storm, and getting closer.

Jasper!
And wherever he was, her sister was surely nearby.

Before Christina could call out either of their names, the bush beside her rustled and parted, revealing her sister. Soaking wet from the storm, Charlotte Tucker’s blond curls cascaded down the front of her once-white blouse, now caked with streaks of dark mud. Her hands and arms were scratched and dirty, but from the broad smile on her face it was obvious that she didn’t care in the slightest. Right behind her came Jasper, his tan coat wet and matted, his tongue lolling sideways out of his mouth. Panting without pause, he scurried over to where Christina lay and nuzzled his nose into the crook of her shoulder.

Even with the comfort of having been found, the fear did not leave Christina easily; she looked back over her shoulder to where she believed her pursuer to be, but there was no one there.

“Where in the world have you been?” Charlotte frowned, kneeling down beside her younger sister, the hem of her skirt flopping into the mud. “Jasper and I have been looking everywhere for you. It wasn’t until Jasper heard you running around, crashing through the brush, that we knew where you were.”

Jasper barked as if in agreement.

“I sto-stopped to tie…tie my shoe and you-you were gone!” Christina cried, struggling to contain the tremor in her voice. “You know how I ha-hate bein’ in the woods by myself!”

“I didn’t leave you—”

“Yes, you did!” Christina insisted.

BOOM! More lightning and thunder.

“What are you getting so worked up about? We found you, didn’t we? Nothing bad has happened to you, so stop your bellyaching.”

Deep down in her heart, Christina knew that Charlotte was right; she
should
have been relieved, happy to be back with her sister. From the moment Christina found herself alone, all she had wanted was to find Charlotte. Listening to how childish Charlotte made her fear sound, Christina almost felt worse than when she believed she was being chased through the woods. It was humiliating. Charlotte was only six years older, but she always seemed so confident, so fearless, that no matter what Christina did, she always felt like a baby. She could no longer contain her tears. She had been as brave as she could be, but no more.

“If this is the way you’re going to be,” Charlotte huffed, “Jasper and I’ll go on home without you,” and she turned to leave.

“No, Charlotte!” Christina cried. “Don’t leave me!”

Desperately, Christina tried to get to her feet but slipped back down to the muddy ground. The rain pelted her unmercifully. The thought of Charlotte leaving her behind was even more unbearable than the thought of being chased.

But just as her panic peaked, her sister stopped, turned, and came back to her. Gone was the impatience and disgust for her young sibling. In its place was a spark of compassion.

“Get up out of the mud,” Charlotte said as she helped Christina to her still-unsteady feet. “Our folks are used to me coming home looking like something the cat dragged in, but you being that way is going to turn their heads but good. More than likely, it’ll just get me into more trouble.”

“I’m sorry, Charlotte,” Christina sobbed. “I was…I was so scared!”

“Just stop right there,” Charlotte ordered, her voice sharp enough to bring a halt to her sister’s emotional outburst. “There’s something that you have to accept in life, Christina. No matter how much you want to believe otherwise, you will get lost again, you will be scared, you will be in danger, real or not, and I’ll not always be there to help you.”

“I know that…it’s just—”

“No, you don’t know. Everybody, no matter who they are, no matter how old they are, gets scared sometime.”

“But you never do!”

“Yes, I do,” Charlotte answered with a shake of her curls and a knowing smile. “But when it happens to me, I don’t panic. I don’t invent things that go bump in the night. I keep my head and use it. When I do that, things have a way of working out.”

“But I didn’t invent anything!”

“You were running because you thought something was chasing you, right?”

Christina hesitated. “But…but there was!”

“Then where is it now?”

Confused, Christina looked around them; there was still no sign of whatever it was she believed had been chasing her. Even if it had been hiding, Jasper surely would have sensed it and growled. Maybe it
had
been her overactive imagination getting the better of her. Maybe she had been so frightened that she had created something out of thin air and she had run without
really
knowing the truth. When she looked back at Charlotte, she couldn’t think of anything to say.

“You’re going to have to learn not to turn tail and run away from what scares you,” Charlotte explained.

“I…I know,” Christina agreed. “But…but I’m still glad you found me.”

“Me too.” Her sister smiled as Jasper barked.