Fabulous Creature (24 page)

“James Fielding. Pass number one, eight, five, four, six.

Silence.

“You remember me, Sergeant Smithers. The Willowby cabin.”

“Willowby? Oh, yes. Fielding. You folks back for the hunting season?”

“That’s right,” James said truthfully.

“You been down to the office to renew your pass? I don’t have any record of it.”

“Well, actually, I’m on my way there now. You’re not going to make me go all the way around to the main gate are you?”

There was another pause and then, “Well, I guess not. You get down to the major’s office right away, though, and get that pass renewed. Okay?”

James said okay, the buzzer sounded, and they were inside the fence.

They took the long way around, hiding at the sound of approaching cars and detouring through the woods as they passed each cabin, and it was past noon when they arrived at seventeen Gettysburg Avenue. The Jarretts were obviously already in residence. The blinds were up, the garage was open and Hank Jarrett’s land cruiser was parked in front of the house. A surge of memories mingled with James’ already considerable misgivings and exploded into a complete funk-out. To burst in on the Jarretts with Griffin in tow, to face Diane again for the first time since he’d found out what she’d done, knowing that she knew that he knew what she’d done—it was all just too much. He simply wasn’t going to be able to make himself do it.

Grabbing Griffin’s arm, he pulled her back among the trees. “Look,” he said, “let’s rest a minute and have something to eat and think about how we’re going to do this.” His throat felt tight, and he wondered if his voice sounded strange. He led the way to a log, sat down and began to dig through the backpack. “Here aren’t you hungry? Have some survival mix.”

So they sat down on the same log where he had sat so many times with Diane, and James tried to get granola down his dry throat while Griffin watched him so intently that he couldn’t help wondering if she were reading his mind. Reading his mind and guessing how close he was to giving up on the whole thing.

“Look,” he said finally. “I wonder if there’s any point in our doing this. I just don’t think it’s going to do any good.”

She stared at him for only a moment and then got to her feet and started towards the drive. He caught up with her at the edge of the grove and grabbed her arm; and as she whirled to face him, he saw that her jaw was set and her eyes were full of tears. And then suddenly, he kissed her.

In a way it was as much of a surprise and shock to him as it must have been to her, because up until that moment he had still thought of her as a kid—or at least he thought he had. But it wasn’t the kind of kiss you’d give a kid. Not that it was anything much, technically speaking. Compared to all the kissing drills he’d been through with Diane, this one was very brief and uncomplicated. But the way it hit him was what surprised him. The thing was, it happened without any intellectual or sexual promptings whatsoever—with only a sudden overwhelming need to do something about the look on Griffin’s face. And it wasn’t until he was doing it that he realized that he’d never in his whole life wanted anything so much or in so many different ways. And when it was over, and Griffin’s face had gone from total misery to a kind of wondering welcome, he took her hand and started up the drive toward the Jarretts’ cabin.

They were all in the kitchen. Diane and Mike and their father were sitting around the kitchen table, Mrs. Jarrett was standing near the breakfast bar, and Jacky was sitting on the floor in the corner. The kitchen table was covered with newspapers, and on the newspapers was what seemed to be a whole arsenal—guns and parts of guns, boxes of bullets and all kinds of gun-cleaning equipment. When James walked into the kitchen, they all looked very surprised; but when they saw Griffin they were obviously astounded.

James found himself strangely calm. The emotional upheaval he’d expected on seeing Diane didn’t materialize. “We’re here to talk to you about the deer,” he said.

Jill Jarrett was the first one to get over her astonishment enough to say something. “Aren’t you the Westmoreland girl?” she asked Griffin.

Griffin looked at her. “No,” she said. “I’m Griffith Donahue.” Then, she turned to the others. “We’ve come to ask you not to shoot the deer,” she said.

“Do you know the police are looking for this girl all over the country?” Mrs. Jarrett asked James.

“Yes,” James said. “I know.” Jill Jarrett’s face was absolutely rigid with curiosity. Her husband was frowning. Mike seemed to be vaguely amused, and Diane—Diane was still sitting at the table, clutching a rifle in both hands and staring at James with an expression that definitely looked like outraged anger. As if he had been the one who had somehow betrayed her.

“Look, Mr. Jarrett,” he said. “Could we go someplace and talk for a few minutes. I’d like to talk to you alone.”

Hank Jarrett stood up, wiped his hands on an oily rag and said, “Well, that just might be a good idea, young man. It looks to me like you’ve got a lot of explaining to do to someone; and since this young lady’s parents aren’t around, you might as well start with me.” Then he led the way down the stairs to the trophy room.

Alone with Jarrett, it went better than James had expected. He told the whole thing briefly, starting with his own discovery of the valley and the deer and how he happened to share the secret with Griffin and her brother and Laurel. Laurel Jarrett, Mr. Jarrett’s own niece, who loved the deer almost more than anyone else did. James stressed that point carefully, and he also remembered to stress the certainty of full media coverage of the whole story. The entire country would want to know all about why Griffin ran away and what the deer had meant to her and how she had tamed it, and how she would feel if it were killed.

Jarrett really seemed to be listening. He only interrupted once or twice to ask questions, and one other time when Jacky came downstairs and stood in front of them staring at James and swinging the hand that held the golf ball back and forth. James was definitely losing his train of thought when Jarrett interrupted and sent Jacky back upstairs.

James finished his story, feeling that he’d made some headway; and after Jarrett started talking, he still thought so—for a while. Hank Jarrett began by saying that he understood how Griffin and Laurel felt about the deer, and that if it was up to him he might be willing to let the old buck live, even though he probably wouldn’t have too many more years anyway, and very likely no more years at all in this particular condition, since a buck past his prime tended to produce less and less perfect antlers.

“In another year or two, he’ll be of no use to anyone,” Jarrett said. “Too tough to make good venison and with a deformed and asymmetrical rack, whereas at the moment he represents a trophy that would break just about every existing record.”

James was trying to think of a polite way to point out that not everybody shared his enthusiasm for that kind of broken record, when Jarrett went on. “However, as I said, if it was just up to me, I’d say okay, let’s let the old buck die a natural death since that’s what the kiddies want; but the thing it, I have a kiddie of my own to think about. Diane wants this trophy very badly, and I’ve more or less promised it to her; and young as she is, I feel she’s really earned it. She’s worked hard at her marksmanship for years and especially all this last month. And, like I told you before, she’s a natural with firearms. Almost never makes a bad shot, so at least you wouldn’t have to worry about her messing up and making the buck suffer more than necessary. I kind of feel she deserves this one, so before I take this opportunity away from her, I’m going to have to get her okay on it.”

James’ heart sank. Leaving it up to Diane would have sunk it anyway, but remembering the expression on her face a few minutes before, it really hit bottom. He had a very strong feeling that if Mr. Jarrett was going to let Diane decide the deer’s fate, there was almost no hope at all.

Back in the kitchen Mike was filling a glass at the sink, but everyone else was pretty much where they had been before. Diane was still working on a rifle at the table, and Griffin was standing near the door with her back to the wall, looking pale but determined. Behind her, torrents of windblown rain were slanting across the window. The storm had obviously arrived.

“Di, baby,” Hank Jarrett said, “this young man has a very big favor to ask of you. I want you to listen to what he has to say, and then it will all be up to you. I’ve told him it has to be your decision.”

Diane turned her chair around, but she went on fooling with the gun as James talked. The tension in the room was so high you could almost hear it, like a crackle of electricity. James had trouble with his voice at first, but it settled down and he began to tell it all over again, just about the same way he’d told it to her father. When he got to the part about taking Griffin to see the deer, Diane’s eyes flickered up at him and her lip curled. “So it wasn’t such a big secret after all,” she said.

There was a silence broken only by the increasing whine of the wind and the drumming of rain on the window. “It was still a secret after Griffin and the kids knew,” James said. He wanted to say it wasn’t they who lied about keeping it a secret, but he knew there was no use antagonizing her anymore than necessary, so he just went on to tell why Griffin had run away—and how he had guessed, and followed her.

When he stopped, no one said anything for a long time. Everyone was looking at Diane; but she only went on looking down at the gun. She seemed to be breathing hard.

“Di,” her father said, “what do you think? There is your little cousin to consider, you know. And this thing about the newspapers. Some of those conservation crackpots who made such a fuss about The Camp are going to have a real field day over this one.”

“Daddy!” It was almost a scream. Diane jumped to her feet and started toward her father. The gun was still in her hand, and it crossed James’ mind that she shouldn’t be handling a gun when she was so emotionally upset. But at least she was remembering to carry it correctly, with the barrel pointed towards the floor. Running to her father, she grabbed the front of his jacket. “Daddy,” she said again, stamping her foot, “you promised me. You said I’d earned it. You promised.”

Hank Jarrett put his arms around Diane. “Now, now, baby. It’s all right. I know I did promise. You know I don’t go back on my promises.”

It seemed as if it was all over, and Diane had won. James turned to Griffin, to take her away and try to comfort her, but at that moment someone yelled, “No! Jacky. No!”

James put his hands over the back of his head and ducked; the golf ball whistled past him, and the whole kitchen seemed to explode in a deafening roar. For just a second he thought it was thunder, but of course it wasn’t.

I
T WAS AN
unusually fat letter, and James took it to his room to open it. Sitting on his bed, he tore off the flap and took out several newspaper clippings and a short letter written on notebook paper.

One of the clippings was from a Sacramento paper. It was about the recent return of Henry Jarrett, prominent local contractor, after a hospital stay in South Tahoe. Jarrett, the paper said, had been admitted to the hospital in late September following a hunting accident, which had occurred when his fifteen-year-old daughter, Diane Jarrett, had been struck by a golf ball, causing her to accidentally discharge the high-powered rifle she was carrying at the time. According to the article, the bullet, after having passed through her father’s left foot and a hardwood floor, struck a valuable hunting trophy in the room below. Apparently the trophy, the stuffed head of an Alaskan moose, had been permanently damaged, but Jarrett it seemed, would eventually be almost as good as new.

The article didn’t offer any explanation of the rather peculiar fact that Diane Jarrett had been struck by a golf ball while she was standing in the middle of her own kitchen. Jacky wasn’t implicated. For that matter, neither were James and Griffin. Griffin hadn’t been mentioned in any of the articles about the Jarrett accident, and James hadn’t been mentioned in any articles at all. In spite of the fact that he’d gone to considerable lengths to see that it turned out that way, there were times when he couldn’t help feeling a little left out.

The other articles were all about Griffin’s disappearance and subsequent reappearance at her parents’ summer home near the village of New Moon in the Sierra Mountains. As far as the public knew, she had gotten there entirely on her own and for reasons that were entirely her own. It hadn’t been too difficult to arrange.

Griffin’s letter, written in her now-familiar curly backhand on the back of what seemed to be an aborted English assignment, mostly concerned the future. In his last letter, James had said something about the stag’s temporary safety; and apparently Griffin thought he had implied that the Jarretts’ would go after him again next year.

“I don’t think they will,” her letter said. “I told Diane about the talismans while you were downstairs talking to her father. She didn’t believe me then, but I think she does now. And besides, I don’t think they’ll want something around to remind them of what happened—not even a record-breaking trophy.”

She just might be right about that. He certainly hoped so. Hoped the deer was safe. There had been no mention of it in the papers, so no one else would know. And Mr. Jarrett himself had said that probably the deer would be valueless as a trophy after this year. So there was reason to be optimistic.

The rest of the letter was about next summer. Griffin wanted to know if his parents had decided yet about renting the Willowby cabin again. In his next letter he would make it clear that he was definitely planning to be in the New Moon area whether his parents rented the cabin or not. He could always get a job in New Moon.

There was still a bulge in the middle of the envelope—a bulge that turned out to be a small flat oval of soapstone with a hole drilled in one end and an overall pattern of strange hieroglyphics. One of Griffin’s talismans.

Collapsed on the bed with the talisman in the palm of his hand, he lay for a long time with his mind freewheeling. Suddenly, for the first time in months he began to feel a poem coming on. The first few lines wrote themselves. “To give tomorrow to a king | Tie it with ribbons to his crown | A talisman’s a future thing…”