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Authors: Madeleine L'engle

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BOOK: The Moon by Night
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I was concentrating so hard I didn't realize they'd all decided not to stay until they'd gone. Old Faithful was due again in a few minutes and they were going to watch that.
Then Don and Steve came wandering by and announced that they were going to get dinner, and Andy said to go ahead without him, we'd just pick up a hot dog and a coke.
After they'd gone he said, “Bored or anything, Vicky?”
“Nope.” I felt happy and peaceful. Andy was so relaxed about everything you couldn't help being relaxed, too, when you were with him. And I was excited, too. But it was a very different kind of excitement from being with Zachary. There wasn't any fear in it.
After a while I realized that it was growing dark, and Andy said, “Oh, come
on
, isn't she
ev
er going to spout?” And then there was a sort of bubble and gasp from the geyser and great lacy curtains of spray began to rise, to fall, to rise, until finally there was a tremendous high fountain of silver, shivering and pulsing and flinging itself up into the sky and then falling down in a delicate shower and then shooting up again.
We sat and watched it in silence, and it seemed to go on and on, and finally it just drifted down and disappeared.
“Now
that's
what I call worth waiting for,” Andy said in a satisfied way. “Come on, Vicky, I'm starved. We'll miss most of the evening program, but I don't think anybody'll mind.”
After we'd eaten we went back to the tent to get sweaters and the others had all skipped the program, too, and were sitting around the fire, gabbing. Just as we came up we heard a commotion down the road. Suzy ran off to see what it was, and came back, full of excitement, to report that there was a cub up a tree and the rangers were trying to get it down.
“Grab a sweater, Vicky,” Andy said. “Let's go.”
We didn't even wait for the others but ran down the road and joined the group watching. Luckily almost everybody in the tents around was at the evening program, so we had a really good view, because what had happened was that during the day a mother bear had ripped up several tents. If a bear goes into a tent with food in it, that's just rough luck. They give you enough warnings so you
deserve
what you get, like that brat Jo-Lee feeding the bear her sandwich. But this bear had gone after a couple of tents with no food, and when that happens the rangers go after the bear. They had managed to get the mother bear into an enormous trap, but they hadn't been able to get the cub, who had run up a tree.
There were four rangers out after the cub. One was up a tree with a lasso. Two others, also with lassoes, were standing on the ground just below. The fourth ranger was back with the campers, probably to keep some dumb jerk from trying to get in the hunt and getting hurt. Everybody watching had flashlights trained on the bear. The ranger with the campers was the one who'd come along that afternoon when Andy stuck the lighted cigar against the bear's nose. He yelled “Hi!” at us as though we were old friends, so Andy and I stood by him, and soon Suzy had slipped through the crowd to stand close to the ranger so she could ask questions.
The cub hunt was like something out of Disney. Half way up a tall, slender pine, looking cute and adorable like something in a cartoon, was a fat little cub. At first you couldn't imagine why the ranger had to climb gingerly up a nearby tree, why he couldn't just climb after the cub, pick it up, and bring it down to its mother. But in a minute you saw why. As soon as the ranger in the tree got his lasso anywhere near the cub, the little thing stopped looking like a stuffed toy and turned into a wild animal, and a fat little bear cub is plenty big enough to rip a grown man to shreds. I realized for the first time how lucky that darned Jo-Lee was to have somebody with presence of mind like Andy around when the bear grabbed her.
Suzy wanted to know why they were trying to catch the poor little cub anyhow, and our ranger explained that in the first place they wanted to give the cub back to its mother, and in the second place if a mother is captured and the cub isn't then the other bears kill the cub.
Maybe, I thought, man isn't the only species who isn't good to his own kind. I still had Zachary and his darned song lurking in the corners of my mind ready to spring at me.
What nature doesn't do to us will be done by our fellow man.
Andy obviously wasn't thinking scary thoughts the way I was, but he must have been thinking along the same lines, at least about
life
and all, because he turned to me with a big, happy grin, and said, “This guy Santayana, I was reading him in school this year, he says, ‘There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.' I'm sure enjoying it. I hope it's going to be a good long one.”
Suzy turned pleadingly to the ranger. “Then when you catch the cub what are you going to
do
with it?”
I could just imagine Suzy begging Daddy to let us take a bear cub home with us.
The ranger explained, “We band both the mother and the cub, and then we take them a hundred miles out into the wilderness. Most of them stay there and everything is fine. But if a banded bear—and these are the bears that are apt to be vicious around human beings—is seen in a campgrounds, then we have to destroy it.”
“You mean you
shoot
it!” Suzy wailed.
“We have to, honey,” the ranger said. “We've given it its chance, and we can't risk people being hurt. Look! They've got a couple of lassoes around the cub.”
That diverted Suzy and we turned back to the cub hunt. It was really thrilling: the small group of us standing around in the moonlight with flashlights aimed at the cub as it ran up and down the tree; the rangers with their lassoes; the cub switching trees in desperation, and the ranger very quickly switching, too! And Andy holding my hand in a calm, protecting sort of way.
The cub would slide slowly almost all the way down the tree, nearly within reach of the lassoes, and then give a jerk of his head and shinny back up the tree, while everybody let out a sort of groany sigh. Poor little thing, you couldn't help feeling sorry for him because how could he know that the rangers were trying to put him back with his mother so the other bears wouldn't kill him?
People were beginning to drift back from the campfire program when the rangers finally got three lassoes around the cub. He fought, he snarled, he thrashed about ferociously, and I realized that I was clutching Andy's hand hard. The rangers held the cub off from them with poles, and finally managed to get a barrel
over him, so they could then get him into their truck. There was a lot of wild growling, scuffling, shouting and then it was over.
Everybody relaxed, and I thought I ought to let go Andy's hand, now that the excitement was over. But he took my hand again very firmly and walked me back to the tent.
T
he next day we went to Andy's campsite in the Black Ram mountains. Don got out their map, and Steve took a red pencil and marked in the rather wind-ey, back-tracking course for us. Just as we were leaving Andy gave me a slip of paper with their address and telephone number on it.
“Now promise you'll call when you get to New York,” he said. He turned to John, “Make your dumb-cluck of a sister call me, hunh?”
Suzy stuck her head out the car window, “
I'll
call you if she doesn't, Andy. I like you lots better than Zachary.”
I almost belted her one.
We drove off, and, except for feeling mad at Suzy, I was all warm and sort of glowy over Yellowstone, in spite of the fact that nothing really had
hap
pened. But I had Andy's address and phone number in my pocket. And there was Zachary's poem. I had
two
unforgettable souvenirs of the trip if nothing else.
It was real western country all day, quite different,
again
, from anything we'd seen. There were great stretches of range, with barren, lava-like mountains rearing up on the horizon. Up, up, up, along the most curvy roads yet, if that's possible. More of the beautiful wild horses, and enormous herds of sheep, and well-fed cows and bulls. Up on the plateaus were lush, green fields, clear streams, evergreen trees, early
spring
wildflowers, and quite a lot of snow in the shady, protected corners. There were quite a few ranchers' chuck wagons, and the only people we passed were cowboys, real ones, and some of them Indians. I felt that Thornhill was a very small world to have spent so much of a life in. I wonder if we'll feel that way about our earth when we get into interplanetary travel?
We stopped about four thirty at Andy's campgrounds, and it was just as nice as he'd said it was. It was just a little green shelf below the mountain's crest, bordered on one side by the peak of the mountain, on the other by a stream that ran icy cold from melting snow. There was a riot of wild roses all in bloom and the grass was speckled with buttercups and daisies. When you were right out in the sun it was wonderful and hot, but the stream, swollen with melted snow, was much too cold for swimming. There was only one other tent there, and who did it turn out to be but the nice Greek professors and their wives from Glacier!
Then.
We hadn't even finished setting up camp when there came the familiar sound of a station wagon being driven too fast for the roads. And there was Zachary, this time with his parents. We hadn't actually
seen
his parents since that first night in Tennessee.
He parked the station wagon in the campsite next to ours,
got out, and demanded, “Who is this Andy?” I must have looked very startled, because he went on with elaborate patience, “This guy at
Yell
owstone. Andrew
Ford
.”
Suzy bustled up to him and said, “Andy's
nice
. How'd you find out about him anyhow?”
I usually wished Suzy'd keep her nose out of my affairs, but she'd just asked a question I wanted to know the answer to and pride would have kept me from asking.
“How do you suppose I
found
you?” Zachary asked impatiently. “I was at Yellowstone last night and I didn't even
see
you. Why weren't you at the campfire program?”
“But how did you know we were
here
?” Suzy asked.
“I cooked up a very convincing story about having to get hold of my cousins because of family illness and this morning they let me look at the register so I knew you were there. So I went around
ask
ing people, for crying out loud, and these three boys said you'd been camped right by them, and they told me you were coming here, and that red-headed one seemed kind of annoyed that the others had told me.”
“
Relax
, Zach,” I said, much more calmly than I'd have been able to before I met Andy. “Suzy and I have to get the air-mattresses in the sleeping bags. Either help us or get out of the way.”
“I'm going to help Pop.” Zachary looked stormy. “I'll see you later, Vicky.”
“He talks as though he
owned
you or something,” Suzy said indignantly. “I like Andy much better.”
“As Christopher Marlowe said, comparisons are odious. Hold the sleeping bag
straighter
so I can shove the air mattress
in
.”
“Don't spray it, say it,” Suzy said.
My heart was kind of thumping. I was glad to see Zachary
and I wished he hadn't come. I wanted to go on enjoying the relaxed feeling Andy had given me, but I was excited that Zachary was still following me, that he'd gone to all that trouble, inventing cousins, and all, and that he and Andy didn't seem too happy about each other. I
mean
! Nobody in Thornhill had ever gone on that way about me!
I pretended to be very calm, and as though nothing important had been happening, and helped Mother get dinner while Zachary and his father went through the long rigamarole of laying the linoleum carpet and tying the plastic cover over their tent. The Greek professors were bug-eyed.
We ate early, because we were all hungry, and when we were through one of the Greek professors came over, eager as a kid, to suggest we all play Hide-and-Seek. They even got Zachary's mother and father to play and it was really a blast.
Once Rob was it and he'd found everybody except one of the Greek professors and Zachary, and the rest of us were lounging around, eating cookies and drinking ginger ale as a sort of extra dessert. It was still sunny, though the sky was beginning to get that golden look it does when it's just about to be evening. Rob finally found the Greek professor way up a tree. As a matter of fact he was stuck up there. We had to help him down and he could hardly get down at all, he was laughing so hard.
After we got the professor down Rob kept on looking for Zachary but he couldn't find him, and after a while he began to get unhappy about it, so we all called, “Okay, Zach, you win, you can come home free,” but he didn't come, so we all started looking for him. I could see that John was annoyed, and I wished Zachary would turn up.
After we'd all been looking for about half an hour I noticed
that Mrs. Grey was getting a strained, anxious look, and I was beginning to feel worried, too. One trouble was that you didn't know just where to look. This was not a campgrounds with definite boundaries like the regular campgrounds, and nobody'd thought to set any limits to where you could hide. The logical places were all in the little plateau where we were camped. Up above there were pines, and the shadows were already deep in there. After the trees the mountain ended up with coarse, sharp grass, and finally just rocks on the very top. Below the camping plateau was the stream, and below that a big, green field, and then a long, thorny barbed wire fence.
Mrs. Grey came up to Mother. She was clasping her pudgy hands (how could Zachary be so
thin
with his parents so well fed?) and her eyes looked as though they were about to fill with tears.
“Mrs. Austin, I'm frightened,” she said. “Zachary's so wild, you never know what he'll do next, and he hasn't been well lately, and he wouldn't go to a doctor. He has a heart condition, you know.”
“I know,” Mother said. She looked at me. “I wouldn't worry about him yet, Mrs. Grey. The whole point of hide-and-seek is to stay hidden as long as you possibly can.”
“But the game's over,” Mrs. Grey said. “He ought to realize it's over by now.”
Mother sounded very calm. “Sometimes young people don't know when too much is enough.” She put a hand on my shoulder. “Vicky's a prime example of that.”
When Zachary hadn't turned up after another few minutes of looking and shouting for him, the Greek professors organized where everybody should look. John and I were to stay in camp
while Suzy and Rob got ready for bed and in case Zachary should come sauntering in. Everybody except the Greys was very annoyed; the Greys were worried; I was annoyed
and
worried.
After Suzy and Rob had washed up, were in their night clothes, and in the tent, reading (we knew it was no good telling them to go to sleep) John and I sat by the remains of the camp fire.
“It's just a kid's trick,” John said disgustedly, “pulling a disappearing act like this.”
I didn't answer. I sat there, looking from the embers to the rambler roses that would have been over long ago at home but here were just bursting into fullness and drifting their fragrance all around us. “The Greys are very worried,” I said after a while.
“He worries them on purpose. He
likes
worrying them.” John poked at the fire. “I hope this shows you, Vicky.”
“Shows me what?”
“He isn't worth your getting all stewed up about.”
I thought of Zachary. Then I thought of Andy. Then I thought of Zachary again. “Take his parents,” I started.
“You take them.”
“That's just the point. You wouldn't want them for parents.”
“As far as I'm concerned he's a chip off the old block.”
“He's a lot more than that. I mean, there's something there, John, something terrific, there really is.”
“You're the only one who's seen any sign of it.”
“You haven't given him any
chance
to show it. I've
talked
to him. You know how we feel about Mother and Daddy. How would it be if we
could
n't? It would have an ef
fect
on us, wouldn't it?” I didn't tell John that Zachary knew his father made all that money in kind of shady ways. I didn't tell John Zachary's
reasons for wanting to be a lawyer. I didn't believe Zachary's reasons. Because Zachary himself had told me not to. But John would believe them. “Suppose he's hurt himself?” I asked.
“He's not Rob's age. What could he do?”
“He could have fallen and broken his leg or something. Or he could have had a heart attack. I think that's what his mother's afraid of.”
“Serve him right if he has.”
“John,
please
!”
“I'm sorry, Vicky. I just don't like him. I don't like what he's done to you.”
“It isn't Zachary. It's everything. It's
life
.”
“Most people manage to face life without getting into a swivet.”
“I'm
not
in a swivet.” Then I said, “John, do you mind if I kind of go around and look for Zach?”
“What for? That's just what he wants.”
“I don't think Zach gets what he wants very often.”
“He gets it
all
the time. That's what's wrong with him.”
“I don't mean that kind of thing,” I said. “I mean the—the
real
things. I mean the kind of things we take for granted. And Andy and Don and Steve, too.”
“All right,” John said. “If you want to. Just don't
you
get lost. Stay within shouting distance, will you?”
“Okay.”
I got up, but he stopped me. “Listen, Vicky.”
“What?”
“One thing I hope you realize, speaking of Andy—”
“What?”
“I hope you realize that all during this trip you've had the male population at your feet. Everybody was too
used
to you in Thornhill.”
“Yah. The whole male population. Big deal. Zachary. And I watched a geyser with Andy.”
John gave me his very nicest grin, so that I forgave him for everything he'd said before. “I mean what I say. The whole male population. That's what I allege,” he said, going into a family joke.
“So? That's what you allege?”
“Yeah, that's what I allege.”
“You make these allegations?”
“I'm the alligator.”
“See you later, alligator.”
“In a while, crocodile.”
“Olive oil.”
“Abysinnia. Get lost!”
I waved at John and set off.
Suzy loves the dark and it doesn't bother me. I don't have a dark phobia like my acrophobia or anything. But by now it was awfully dark in the pines, and I had to go through the pines to get to the mountain top. For some reason I had a feeling that Zachary would have climbed up to the top of the mountain to hide, if only because it was the worst possible thing for him to do. I knew that Daddy had gone up and yelled from the mountain top, but I also knew that Zachary mightn't have answered if the yeller was Daddy.
I didn't much care for it in the woods. It wasn't the trees or the deepening shadows I was afraid of, but bears, after all the bears in Yellowstone. I remembered that Don had told us that
this wasn't supposed to be bear territory, and I tried to stop my heart from thumping each time I saw a shadow and thought it was a bear. Luckily I was so worried about bears that I didn't even think about snakes. I'm not sure I wouldn't rather see a bear than a snake, even though Suzy has told me over and over again that snakes won't bother you unless you bother them first.
BOOK: The Moon by Night
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