Fabulous Creature (20 page)

The next morning he spent several hours helping his parents pack for the trip home. As usual when the Fieldings went anywhere, most of the luggage consisted of books and records and several dozen file boxes full of notes for William’s latest book. By the time they’d finished, the poor old Volvo was sagging on its springs.

James pushed hard all morning, determined to get his part of the packing done early in order to have most of the day for his own personal good-bys. Diane had said her family had all sorts of last-minute things scheduled and she probably wouldn’t be able to see him, but that he should at least call if he got to The Camp. He was planning to do that first. Then there was Fiona and, if possible, Griffin and company. And, of course, there was the stag. It would have to be a quick visit late in the day, but he really wanted to see him one more time to say good-by.

As seemed right and proper, Sergeant Smithers himself was manning the main gate to answer James’ buzz and demand to hear his pass number: the whole ridiculous number, after an entire summer of opening the west gate on the average of twice a day for a James Fielding whose rather distinctive voice—youthful and yet masculine—had surely become familiar to him by now. James recited the number with gusto. It was an appropriate farewell gesture from The Camp—a memento to take back with him to the drab rationalism of the academic world.

He was still smiling—musing over Campish fads and fancies—when, in the middle of the Nymph’s Grove, he came upon two of the people he was on his way to see—Griffin and Woody. He’d been walking quietly on soft soil, and for a moment they weren’t aware of his presence. They were sitting on the ground facing away from him, down the path that led to Anzio and The Camp center. Woody was bent forward, his head resting on his knees, but Griffin sat erect with the thick pigtail looping her shoulder like a pet python.

Wondering what far-out fantasy they were involved in at the moment, James suddenly found himself ambushed by an unexpected combination of emotions. With some surprise he realized that Griffin and her two little disciples were among the things he was going to miss the most. He was really going to be sorry to say good-by; but he was glad that, at least, he was going to have a chance to say it. He was starting toward them when Griffin turned, saw him, and winced as if an invisible hand had struck her face; and although he didn’t know, didn’t even begin to guess what it was, he felt immediately that something very serious had gone wrong.

Her lips parted then, and she must have made some kind of sound because Woody raised his head. His freckled cheeks glistened wetly, and his long Griffith eyes were swollen and red. When he saw James, he jumped to his feet; and as James started towards him saying, “What is it? What’s the matter?” Woody charged.

Head down and fists flailing, he crashed into James with the reckless ferocity of a banty rooster. Most of the blows went wild, but a few connected with surprising force before Griffith caught him from behind and pulled him away.

“What is it!” James gasped. “What got into him?”

With Griffin holding him tightly from behind, Woody was still swinging wildly in James’ direction, gasping and choking and strangling on his own sobs. “You dirty traitor,” he kept gasping. “You dirty traitor. You dirty son of a bitch traitor.”

And suddenly, without knowing anything for certain and without any proof, James somehow knew what had happened. His own voice was out of control as he said, “What is it, Griffin? Tell me. What happened.”

Her eyes shut him out, not with anger, but with a dazed hurt withdrawal that was a lot worse. Shaking her head she turned and, pushing Woody ahead of her, started down the path, but he ran after them, and grabbing her arms, forced her to stop. “You have to tell me,” he said. “I have to know.”

What followed was a crazy impasse that seemed to go on forever—with James holding Griffin, and Griffin holding Woody, and Woody sobbing and choking and trying to get at James with his fists and feet. At last Griffin looked at James and nodded stiffly. “All right. I’ll tell you,” she said. “Let me go.”

He released her arm and stepped back, and she pulled Woody several yards down the trail before she stopped and bent over him, whispering. His sobs slowed to shuddering gasps; he turned to glower at James, and then nodded sullenly. “Okay,” he said. “I won’t. I won’t anymore.” Jerking away from Griffin, he threw himself face down on the ground and buried his face in his arms. Griffin knelt beside him and whispered for several minutes before she came back to where James was waiting.

She was there and yet not there. Standing robot-stiff, with her eyes still on Woody, she spoke in a dull monotone. “Laurel found out, last night when her uncle and aunt were having dinner at her house. She said her Uncle Hank talked about it all through dinner. About how Diane had found out about a fantastic buck. About how she’d sweet-talked a kid she knew into telling her where this smart old buck had been holing up. And how, unless Diane was exaggerating, he was going to make a trophy that would be nothing short of miraculous. He laughed about how smart Diane was. About how she held out on him, made him promise that she’d be the one who got to bag the buck, before she’d tell him where it was. And how they were going to be back at The Camp on the very first day of hunting season, and in the meantime he was going to see to it that Diane got in some good target practice, and how he was going to advise her to…” Griffin’s voice faltered and then trembled as she went on, “…he was going to advise her to go for the lung shot because it was the surest in the long run and less apt to damage the trophy even though it did take a little longer to kill. And when Laurel started to cry, he told her not to feel bad because it was only a deer, and after the first shot it would be too stunned to feel much, even though it took him a while to die.”

She stopped and breathed deeply several times until her voice was under control again. “Laurel came to our house late last night. She’d been crying for a long time. I let her stay overnight, but this morning I made her go back before anyone found out. I told her we’d wait for her here in the grove today, but I don’t know if she’ll be able to come. Her folks are leaving for Sacramento this afternoon.”

He heard every word Griffin said clearly and distinctly, but it was as if they somehow failed to register, or at least to have any immediate effect. At least not any that was appropriate and understandable. Instead there was only a cold, stiff paralysis that made him stand there without saying or doing anything while Griffin started away, turned back as if she were going to ask something, then changed her mind and went on. She went to where Woody was still lying, gathered him up and led him away down the trail. When they were out of sight, James went back to the Willowby cabin. By the time he was halfway there, the pain and anger had begun, and for a long time it got steadily and progressively worse. He sneaked back into his room, lay down on the bed and stayed there for the rest of the day. The stripped and empty room suited his mood. He didn’t even consider going to the hidden valley. He tried very hard not to think about the deer at all.

F
ORTUNATELY SCHOOL STARTED
two days after the Fieldings returned to Berkeley, and James was terribly busy. Busier than he had ever been in his life. Besides carrying an extra-heavy academic load in order to complete two years of high school in one, he also signed himself up for every extra curricular activity he could cram into his schedule. He wasn’t entirely sure why.

On the most obvious level it might just have been an attempt to keep himself so busy he would have less time to think, but there were times when he thought he detected motives that were even more ulterior. For instance, he couldn’t imagine why he would have signed himself up for two afternoons a week of touch football, unless it was some obscure desire to suffer for his sins.

He was limping home from the second afternoon of practice when it occurred to him that the football thing was probably a kind of penance, and his first reaction was a certain amount of relief. Because before that he’d been wondering if he were actually developing a death wish, or at the very least a split personality. It was, he decided, related to guilt, all right. He wondered if breaking his leg would make him feel any less guilty. He doubted it. Probably the only thing that would help much would be breaking his neck.

As time passed, it became more and more obvious that guilt was what the whole thing boiled down to. There had been other emotions at first—shock and then pain and anger, but that passed over rather quickly. That was one thing Diane’s betrayal had done for him. It had been painful but quick—like a kick in the mouth to cure a toothache. When he had found out what she had done, something had died; and in that dying he had been set free from the whole unrequited love syndrome. He didn’t daydream about her anymore, or yearn for her or wonder if there was any way things could have turned out differently. Strangely enough, he didn’t even hate her. The only person he hated was himself.

No, his guilt was because of the deer. It was knowing that on the first day of hunting season, the twenty-second of September, his stag would hear voices and come out confidently expecting apples and admiration and wait for the bullet that would leave him struggling on the green grass trying to breathe through his shattered lungs. And it would all be James Archer Fielding’s fault. His fault even more than Diane’s and her father’s, because he had known the deer and understood what he signified, and they didn’t and never could. He had known the deer and had traded away its life for something that, when you came right down to it, was not a whole lot different from what Diane and her father were after—a kind of trophy. Diane was to have been his twelve-pointer—his all-time-winning entry in the make-out record book for teenaged males.

So he really couldn’t fault Diane for wanting the kind of trophy that counted in the world she’d been born into. But he could fault himself and he did, not only for the fate of the deer, but also for what he had done to Griffin and the two kids. He couldn’t seem to stop seeing them in his mind’s eye—Woody’s rumpled, toothless face contorted in a howl of grief and rage, Griffin’s dazed, wounded stare and, although he hadn’t actually seen it, Laurel’s funny, delicate face bloated and blemished by hours of crying.

When he wasn’t thinking about all of that, about the misery he had caused and was causing and would cause in the future, he thought about his own stupidity. It was ironic, really. Here he was—a person who had always thought of himself as being somewhat more intelligent than the average, who finds that he has committed a terrible deed, not because of any evil intention but only through his own asinine, imbecilic, gullible, ridiculous, fat-headed stupidity. On top of everything else, it was terribly humiliating.

The humiliation of it all was probably the main reason he didn’t tell anyone about it—not his parents, and certainly not Max. But when Charlotte asked about Diane, he admitted that she had been right.

“Oh, that’s all over,” he said. “You were right when you said we didn’t have anything in common.”

“Did I say that?” Charlotte asked. “I only remember asking you what you had in common.”

“Okay, then. You would have been right if you
had
said we didn’t have anything in common.”

“Well.” Charlotte looked puzzled. “I can’t help being a little bit surprised. She seemed so—well—enthusiastic, that day when she came to the cabin, just before we left.”

He couldn’t help wincing. She’d been enthusiastic, all right, but not about what he’d thought she was enthusiastic about. “I know,” he said. “She acted that way sometimes. It didn’t mean a whole lot.”

“I see. Well, I must say, you don’t seem to be terribly upset about the whole thing.”

“About its being over? I’m not. That was another thing you were right about. About me getting over it. I did.”

Charlotte smiled. “I’m quite overwhelmed. To have been right about you twice in rapid succession. I don’t think I’ve done that well since you were six years old.”

He returned her smile, but it wasn’t easy because behind it he was thinking that she had been wrong about one thing—terribly wrong. She had been wrong to advise him to do something to get Diane back. Because he had done it, all right. He had really done it.

His mother looked at him closely. “Perhaps I should quit while I’m ahead, but I can’t help making one more observation—about Diane. I have to admit she was quite—well—spectacular, and I can certainly understand your—ah—interest; but at the same time my general impression, and your father’s, too, I might add, was not entirely favorable. I don’t know if I can say exactly what it was. Something just didn’t ring true.”

He didn’t say anything, and after a moment she went on. “Now, the other girl, on the other hand…And don’t take offense, because I’m not implying anything, I realize she is still quite a child. My feeling about her, that one time we met, was quite positive. There was a sensitivity…”

“Yeah,” James said. “Look. I’ve got to get started, or I’ll be late to class.” There was plenty of time, actually. He just didn’t want to hear about Griffin’s sensitivity.

It was only a day or two after that conversation, on Wednesday of the last week before hunting season—the Wednesday of the last week of the deer’s life—when the thing about Griffith Donahue was on the front pages of all the papers. Charlotte read it in the morning paper, and she told James about it as soon as he got home from school.

“They think she probably just ran away,” she said, “but there is some concern that it might be a kidnapping. However, according to the papers there’s been no demand for ransom. At least not yet.”

James grabbed the paper.

Griffith Alexandra Donahue, thirteen-year-old daughter of the late Kevin Donahue and Alexandra Griffith Westmoreland, was reported missing last night by Mrs. Ardith Brownwell, headmistress of Honeywell School in Marin County.

Word of her daughter’s mysterious disappearance again focuses public attention on Alexandra Westmoreland, heir to the vast Griffith fortune, whose childhood was marred by the prolonged and bitterly contested custody battles instigated by her estranged parents and her paternal grandmother. The object of constant media attention as a child, Mrs. Westmoreland remained in the public eye as a startlingly beautiful debutante, as a result of a succession of flamboyant and well publicized escapades, climaxed by her early elopement marriage to Kevin Donahue, daredevil mountain climber and race car driver. After her first marriage ended tragically in the fatal crash of Donahue’s experimental racing car, Mrs. Westmoreland remarried and—