Fabulous Creature (21 page)

Near the end of the column James read something that clinched it, although he had been very nearly certain from the first moment.

According to Lt. Bryce, early fears of a kidnapping have been somewhat reduced by the discovery of a missing sleeping bag and by testimony given by Griffith’s seven-year-old half-brother. The boy, Woodrow Everett Westmoreland III, has insisted that his sister told him she was going away, but that he does not know why, or what her destination might be.

Woody did know, though. James was sure of that. And he knew, too, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

That night James slept very little. Right at first, before he’d had time to think it all out, he very nearly told his parents. But thank God, he didn’t. As sympathetic and understanding as they might be—and he felt fairly certain they would be, particularly his mother—they
were
parents. And as parents, their first thought would be about Griffin’s parents, and how frightened and worried they would be. The first thing they’d do, James was certain, would be to insist that Griffin’s parents be told—and that was exactly what he didn’t want done—not under any circumstances.

He knew he might be sorry for his decision. If something terrible happened to Griffin—something that might have been prevented if her parents had been told—it would be all his fault. One more thing that would be all his fault.

And something might very easily happen to her. She had gone, of course, back to New Moon to try to save the deer; and there was no telling how she planned to go about it. There were only two or three ways James could think of, and all of them would be highly dangerous. She might try to lead the deer out of the box canyon to some other hiding place—or she could throw herself between the hunters and their prey like the Greenpeace protestors at the baby seal hunts. And those dangers weren’t the only ones she might be facing. A thirteen-year-old girl alone in the Sierras could face any number of difficulties, including the possibility of being recognized and actually kidnapped.

Yes, it was certainly possible that any number of terrible things might happen to Griffin if he didn’t tell; but to his way of thinking, none of them were worse than what had to happen if he did tell. If he told, Griffin’s parents would be alerted that she was at New Moon or on her way there, the police would be notified, she’d be picked up, the deer would die on September twenty-second, and Griffin would know who had betrayed her. She would know because the only others who might guess where she had gone were Woody and Laurel, and they would never give her away. So she would know that James had betrayed her a second time—except that he wasn’t going to do it. It wasn’t so much that he wouldn’t do it, as that he couldn’t. He didn’t know why exactly, but it was simply something he absolutely could not do. And there was no one he could talk to about it—except possibly, Max.

It was after lying awake half of Wednesday night going over and over all the reasons why he ought to tell and the one simple unreasonable but completely unshakable reason why he couldn’t and wasn’t going to, James decided to discuss the matter with Max. Talking to Max was a possibility, because James knew that Max would never tell anyone else. Max had a very strict code of behavior, and one of the most important rules in it was that you never betrayed a confidence; or as Max was more apt to put it, you never ratted on a friend. Max often said he never ratted, and as far as James knew, he never did—except, of course, about sex. Max said that didn’t count because nobody really expected you to keep quiet about sex any more. He had once, he said, because the girl had asked him to, and then he found out that she’d told half a dozen people in the next twenty-four hours, and half the school before the week was over. But on other matters, Max could be counted on to listen and keep his mouth shut.

The thing was, that while telling Max probably wouldn’t do anything to help Griffin, it might possibly keep James Fielding from going off his rocker completely. Not that it would matter a great deal if he did. In fact, there were times when he felt he really ought to be shut up someplace. Someplace where he couldn’t wipe out anymore innocent animals and little kids. But on the other hand, if he did crack up, it might be hard on other innocent people—like his mother, for instance. So Thursday, on the way home from school, he told Max the whole story.

Max was a good audience. His face, a loosely related collection of features that often seemed to be engaged in several independent activities at once, seemed to consolidate as he listened. James knew he had Max’s complete attention when a bunch of girls went by and he didn’t even notice. But when James got to the part about what Diane had done, he interrupted to say that he knew the type.

“A Zelda,” he said.

“A what?”

“A Zelda. Zelda Fitzgerald. F. Scott’s wife. A girl whose motto is “Anybody who has so much deserves to have everything.” I’ve been meat-axed by several of them. Not all beautiful girls are Zeldas, but enough of them are to make it an occupational hazard of fox hunting. It’s something you have to learn to watch out for. Half the time when you get hold of a really gorgeous one, you suddenly notice that some vital part of your anatomy is missing.”

“Yeah. Like your heart,” James agreed ruefully.

“Or whatever,” Max said. “Go on. What did you do then?”

So he went on—to the very end. He didn’t leave anything out; and he thought he did a pretty good job of it, even the part about Griffin. It wasn’t easy to put something as complicated and original as Griffin into words, but he felt he’d at least come close. When he finished, Max just looked at him for several seconds and then asked, “So what are you going to do about it?”

“I’m going to New Moon,” James said.

“Yeah,” Max said. “I thought that was what you were going to do.”

A
LMOST IMMEDIATELY MAX
came up with a plan that would make it possible for James to leave the next morning—Friday—with no one having to know for almost four days. The first step was for Max to go home with James and tell Charlotte that his family was spending the weekend at a cottage on Bodega Bay and James was invited to go along. Charlotte was sure to say yes—she’d been telling James he was working too hard lately and needed to take a break. Their story would be that James would be going directly from school on Friday and would not be returning until Monday morning, so he should not be expected at home again until Monday after school.

Then on Monday afternoon, about the time his parents would be beginning to worry, Max would deliver a note from James. The note would explain that he was away on very important business, the nature of which he couldn’t disclose at the moment, and that they were not to worry because he was safe, in good spirits, not kidnapped, not running away, and would undoubtedly be home within a day or two.

“But what will you do if they insist on calling the police, in spite of the note?” James asked. “They’ll probably grill you.”

“I know,” Max agreed. “Actually, I’m rather looking forward to it.”

After the conversation with Charlotte, which went very smoothly, they went downtown to the after-hours window of James’ bank and withdrew his life savings of twenty-seven dollars and thirty-three cents, and then to Max’s house where James wrote the note for Monday, and where Max insisted on contributing what was left of his week’s allowance, which he had been holding in reserve for a heavy date with Trudi Hepplewhite. It was a real sacrifice, and James appreciated it.

So the very next morning, after another almost sleepless night, James went down to breakfast, where he struggled with guilt and apprehension while his parents chatted about the nice, sunny weather and wondered if it would be warm enough to swim at Bodega Bay. By forcing himself, he managed to eat the proverbial hearty breakfast; and then, after saying good-by as casually as possible, he walked out the back door feeling as if he really were starting on that long last walk to a richly deserved doom.

He went first to Max’s, where Max met him in the garage with a backpack. Max’s whole family was into wilderness backpacking, and the set-up Max had prepared looked like enough for a whole family, and a large one at that. Max obviously expected James to be overwhelmed, and he was, especially when Max lifted it onto his shoulders.

“Wow,” James said, struggling to keep from tipping over backward. “Are you sure you can spare all this stuff, Max?”

“Sure,” Max said. “And don’t worry about the weight. That pack is scientifically designed. After a while you won’t even know it’s there.”

James said he was glad to hear that; and after thanking Max for everything, he said good-by and started out for the BART station. The plan was for him to go as far as he could by local transit since, according to Max, who had gone through a runaway phase at the age of nine, a long-distance ticket purchased near home is too easy to trace.

Traveling east during the westward commuter rush, he felt quite safe in the crowded station, but very conspicuous on the almost-empty eastbound car. He slumped in a corner seat, expecting at any moment to be accosted by any or all of five suspiciously innocent-looking fellow travelers—who would identify themselves as members of a special SWAT squad assigned to runaways and lead him off to jail. He left BART at the Concord station, and by catching local buses and hitchhiking, he made it as far as Sacramento by noon, and to the Greyhound bus station barely in time to catch the one-ten bus to South Tahoe. The bus ride was uneventful, and by five-thirty he had started the long hike from New Moon, around the perimeter of The Camp, to the Willowby property.

He kept to the woods at first, out of sight of Camp traffic, and when he was opposite the main gate he stopped to rest. Max’s backpack, which obviously was scientifically designed for someone quite unlike James Archer Fielding, was already crushing his shoulders and turning his legs into strands of spaghetti. The gate was a temptation. If the guard on duty happened to remember him, he might let him in and out again at the west gate, which would cut miles off his journey. But he didn’t dare risk being reported in a few days, when his name, as well as Griffin’s might be in all the papers. So he gritted his teeth and trudged on around the outer fortifications of old T.J.’s stockade.

Beyond the gate, the road was deserted, and James walked in the middle of it—walked and slogged and staggered as the road climbed and dipped, curved and then curved back again. He began to stop and rest more and more often. The sun was setting, and he wanted very much to get at least as far as the Willowby property before setting up his camp for the night, but there were times when his feet simply refused to cooperate. Leaning against the trunks of trees, or sitting on fallen logs, he rubbed his aching shoulders, nibbled on the contents of a plastic envelope labeled Backpackers High Energy Mix, and watched the shadows darkening among the trees. And while he nibbled, he wondered what he thought he was doing out there all alone in the middle of nowhere. He also wondered if there was any chance at all that he would find Griffin, and if he did if he’d be able to help her. He even contemplated going home, once or twice. But each time he got up and went on again; and by the time it was really dark, he was so close to the Willowby cabin he decided to push on and spend the night there.

Actually there was very little reason to go on, since the cabin would be shuttered, locked and bolted, just as they had left it three weeks before. But each time he contemplated setting up his tent in the midst of endless open darkness, the urge to get to the cabin got stronger. So he dug a flashlight out of the backpack—of course there was a flashlight, he was lucky there wasn’t a complete electric generator—and stumbled on down the narrow path of light. The cabin began to seem more and more like a refuge, a place of sanctuary that waited at the end of the ordeal, offering rest and comfort and safety. It must have been well after ten o’clock when he dragged himself up the stairs to the veranda, unrolled his sleeping bag against the wall, crawled into it and almost immediately fell asleep.

He woke in the morning to the familiar rusty creak of the old lounge swing. It was daylight, but just barely, and the sun was still only a halo of light behind the mountainous rim of the lake’s deep bowl. He recognized the tangy essence of evergreen forest, but the crisp cool prophesy of approaching winter was new and different. Sniffing appreciatively, he began to feel, for the first time since leaving home, vaguely optimistic. There was a peacefulness in the calm, motionless air—but the swing was still creaking—in the breeze. He sat up quickly and looked behind him—and, of course, it wasn’t there. He’d helped move it into the cabin himself, just before they left. As the faint rusty creak went on and on, he began to feel a crawling sensation on the back of his neck.

The sound seemed to be coming from the end of the veranda where the swing always sat, and as he crawled out of his sleeping bag and moved toward it, it got distinctly louder, but there was still nothing there. It wasn’t until he was standing on the very spot that he realized the sound was coming from inside the house—from just inside the shuttered window. Putting his ear to the crack in the heavy shutters he verified the fact. Just inside the window in the closed and shuttered room where he and William had put the swing, something was making it sway rhythmically back and forth. Listening to the slow, rusty squeak, James discovered that his heartbeat seemed not only to have magnified, but also to have proliferated so that it was thumping away not only in his chest, but also in his stomach, his throat and the roof of his mouth. Swallowing hard, he began to tiptoe backwards. When he reached the stairs, he reluctantly turned his back on the cabin and hurried down them.

Leaning against a tree several yards from the house, he began to think more rationally. Obviously, someone was in the house. Somewhere a door or a shuttered window had been forced and someone had gotten in. Moving cautiously, James began to reconnoiter.

When he had circled the entire cabin, he was more mystified than ever. All the doors were still locked and padlocked, and the windows were all shuttered, except for the small round one in the hall, which didn’t open and was too small, anyway, to admit an intruder.