Navigating Early (24 page)

I placed my hand in the giant imprint. “Holy moly,” I repeated. Early and I inched forward on our hands and knees to see the next print, which we knew would be just ahead of this one. There it was. We found six paw prints before the point where the bear must have veered off, onto a rocky patch of ground.

I was grateful for the diversion, as it got Early’s mind off being mad at me.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s see if we can follow him.”

Between the two of us, Early and me, we found some broken branches and a tree that had some of its bark scratched off. These telltale signs were leading us farther north and farther off the path, but it was good to feel like we were actually making progress, even if it
was
in search of a ferocious bear. Judging from the spring in Early’s step, I could tell that he felt the same way.

And somehow, I was getting caught up in Early’s Pi stories—starting to anticipate the ways in which the line between story and real life would blur. We’d been wandering for days, on and off the Appalachian Trail, and now here we were, looking for the Great Bear. And all of it was starting to seem less and less crazy. I was beginning to worry.

According to Professor Stanton, the numbers in pi would eventually run out. What would happen when we found the Great Bear and there was no Pi? And there was no Fisher? My steps grew heavier as I followed Early, knowing he was heading toward a huge disappointment. But then again, at least Early knew what he was looking for, regardless of whether he’d actually find it or not.
Which is more important?
I wondered.
The seeking or the finding?
My mom would say the seeking. My dad would say the finding.

“We’ve run out of tracks,” said Early.

“Tell me about it,” I grumbled.

“But we know we’re heading in the right direction.”

I didn’t answer.

We walked a ways in silence, listening only to the rustle of leaves and an occasional woodpecker getting his nose out of joint.

“Fisher always says, ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there.’ ”

“Yeah, well, my mom always said, ‘You’ll get there eventually, even if you have to go everyplace else first.’ ”
So there
, I thought.

“Fisher says, ‘You’ll always find what you’re looking for in the last place you look.’ ”

Typical. Early had to have the last word. Well, not this time. “Mom said, ‘No need to look twice under a donkey’s tail. You already know what you’ll find.’ ”

“Fisher says, ‘Always wear clean underwear, because you never know—’ ”

“All right, you win! Now can you shut up about Fisher?”

Early did shut up. For too long. He could stay mad, for all I cared. But eventually, the silence got to me.

“So what was Fisher like?” I asked, trying to break the ice between us. “I’ve seen his picture in the trophy case at school. He seemed like he had the world by the tail.”

“I guess.”

“I mean, he seemed like he could do anything.”

“I guess.”

“But,” I said, baiting Early into talking, “he probably wouldn’t do well on a quest like this. I mean, this isn’t a contest that you can win and take home a trophy for.”

“Fisher didn’t care about trophies. He never got a trophy for being the best underwater swimmer. They don’t give out trophies for that kind of thing. But he could hold his breath longer than anyone. That’s how come I know he’s not dead.”

“Because he could hold his breath a long time underwater?”

“Yes. There were nine men in his squad. They were trying to blow up that bridge. The Germans were coming from the north side of the bridge. The shed that was blown up was on the south side. One man had to swim the charges across the river and under the far side of the bridge. Fisher would have volunteered to do it. And he would have taken off his dog tags so they wouldn’t make a noise or reflect the moonlight. And he would have swum underwater to avoid being seen.”

“How do you even know there was a moon that night?” I knew Early had an answer before he spoke it.

He pulled the leather journal from his backpack, revealing all kinds of handwritten notes and articles on river currents, weather patterns, moon phases, explosives, detonators, waterproof army gear.

“Where’d you get all this?”

“The
Encyclopaedia Britannica
, the
Old Farmer’s Almanack
. I even wrote the War Department. I didn’t hear back from them, but I guess they’re busy.”

I looked at the hodgepodge of notes, sketches, letters, articles. It was a confusing jumble of information.

“See here, where it says—”

I had heard enough. “Early, think about it. If he’s still alive, where is he? Why does the army say he’s dead?”

“Because he’s lost,” Early said, taking back his journal as if I were an unbeliever and not fit to see the truths it held. “Just like Pi. And we have to find them.”

“That’s good, then, because Pi made it out of the maze, so I’m sure he’ll be okay,” I said, not sure why I was encouraging Early’s fantasy and at the same time wishing somebody could do the same for me.

“No,” Early said, his eyes on the ground, as if the trail would somehow lead us to Fisher and Pi and the Great Bear all at once. “I’ve figured more numbers, but the story is all jumbled up. And I can’t find any more ones. Pi is missing.”

“What happened? You said he made it out of the maze.”

“He found the catacombs.”

Catacombs
 

P
I DIDN
’
T REALIZE
he was searching for the catacombs until he stumbled across them. He still carried the shell necklace in his pack, and it weighed heavily on him. So much so that when he waded into a stream to cool off and wash the sweat from his face, the pack shifted, putting him off balance. Slipping off the rocks, he plunged into the swiftly moving current, the pack dragging him underwater. He tried to slip the strap over his head but could not get free of it.

Finally, the current swept him over a ledge, and he landed in a deep, watery basin. Kicking and pulling, he struggled to reach the surface, water crashing all around him. When he finally emerged, he grabbed for anything solid he could find and heaved himself out of the water. Dripping and half drowned, he found himself in a small cave. A bit of light came in from behind the falls, but a few steps in, the cave grew dark. Still, his eyes adjusted, and he was able to make out vague wisps of light even within the darkness. Or maybe
they were shadows that were just less dark than the cave around them. He knew where he was, and he knew the kindred spirits that roamed these caverns. The damp. The dark. The walls pressed in around him. All of it spoke of a place where people would come to bury their darkest secrets and accidental treasures.

He could hear the voices, the whispers, the sighs, of these souls who were unable to let go of their burdens. They clung to them like precious gems that gave them weight and substance.

Pi understood this need to hold on. To not let go of his pain. It had become such a part of him. Who would he be without it? The thought frightened him. So he wandered the halls of the catacombs like the other souls who were half-dead and half-alive.

But the balance between life and death is precarious. After a time, Pi felt the balance tipping in him. And it made him dizzy. He took another step, and where he expected to touch ground, there was only a dark abyss. Without a sound, without a whisper, he was gone.

27
 

I
stopped walking. “So what does that mean? What happened to Pi?”

“I can’t find any ones,” Early said, still walking. “There are a lot of zeros. And the numbers are changing color. But let’s go. We have to keep looking. The Great Bear is a mother bear, and a mother’s love is fierce. She’ll find him. So we have to find
her
, and she’ll show us the way.”

I stood my ground, ready to give up on his story, until something caught my eye. “Look,” I said. “More paw prints.” I pointed but stopped short.

“What is it?” asked Early. “What do you see?”

I touched my hand to the thick wetness on the ground and rubbed two fingers against my thumb.

“Blood.”

I could tell Early was shaken by the red splotches. He reached down and traced one with his own finger.

“It’s like the zeros. Liquid and red.”

“Come on, Early. We can end this right now. We can head back to school—”

I didn’t even get the whole thought out of my mouth.

“No. There are more numbers. There are. I just can’t figure them out.” Early clutched the sides of his head and rocked back and forth in his squatting position. “There are more numbers. Pi is not dead. Fisher is not dead. We have to keep looking.”

“But what if the bear is injured?” I asked. “She could be wounded. She could kill us.”

“We’ll follow her.”

He had already started off, following the tracks. Part of me knew this was foolishness. But something had stirred in me. It had started days before and had been growing in me all along this journey. Was it curiosity? A sense of adventure? It felt more like need. Whatever it was, it was powerful.

I let Early take the lead and followed him down a path that seemed both old and new at the same time. Old enough to have borne the steps of native hunters and warriors, Spanish conquistadors, and English pilgrims. New enough to cushion the footsteps of new explorers trying to find their way. At least, that’s what
National Geographic
would have said.

The tracks were clear for a time; then they disappeared again. But we continued in the same direction as best we could and tried to find other signs. The sky had grown cloudy, and what had been a mild blue had suddenly become a sharp shade of gray. The air had a bite in it that crept through our jackets and into our bones.

I followed Early, trying to match his stride and purpose. Just when I thought maybe we’d lost the bear’s trail, Early would point out a tree stripped of its bark. I might have suggested that any bear could be responsible for that tree, but then again, not just any bear could reach eight feet off the ground and leave such great scars in the trunk. And there were blood smears on the bark.

Visible puffs of air came out with our every breath, as if to remind us that we were living and breathing. Something that, I was beginning to see, should not be taken for granted.

As our own footsteps grew quieter, and more and more leaves had given up their place of fall glory in the trees, it seemed that all colors and sounds had been stripped away and left behind as well.

Everything in the woods had become muted and still, but we kept following the bear’s trail. Every sound, every shadow, tricked and taunted. A hooting owl, a snapping twig, a swaying branch, all seemed stranger and darker. But it was the shadows that played with my imagination the most. A darkness behind a tree. A movement seen from the corner of my eye. Was someone out there?

“Do you hear that?” I finally asked Early. “That crunching noise.” I thought of the walnut shells.

We both stopped and listened. Silence.

“Come on,” said Early.

I had the horrible realization that, just as we were
following
tracks, we were leaving our own at the same time. Footprints that someone else could see and touch—and follow.

Fear was rising in me and needed to be put down. I
narrowed the gap between Early and me and tried to distract myself. I whistled a few bars of “Old Man River,” but it sounded too spooky. Plus, that’s not really a song made for whistling.

So I let my mind wander. Big mistake. Early’s story of Pi took off in my head and wove its tale of the young navigator entering the Land of Lost Souls, where the people were half-dead and half-alive.

Before long, everything around me started to seem like it was coming straight out of that story. Trees looked half-dead and half-alive, with their bare, gnarled limbs and scratched-off bark.

But nothing spoke more to the lifelessness of these parts than what we saw when we emerged from the trees into an abandoned logging camp. There were a few buildings—shacks, really—that some loggers must have called home for a while. A large fire pit that hadn’t warmed a meal in a long time. An assortment of abandoned logs lay about as if they’d fallen off whatever wagon they’d been strapped to and no one had had the wherewithal to hoist them back up.