The Skeleton Tree (5 page)

The beach was made of pebbles; I sank right into them, as though trudging through a bowl of marbles. Among the stranded logs I found the same sort of stuff I'd seen floating in the ocean and remembered Uncle Jack.
“It's all going to wash up on the shore one day.”
I found bottles and buckets and the bones of a giant whale. I found
two
cigarette lighters that wouldn't work, and then a sandal for my right foot. It was so oversized that it might have belonged to Bozo the Clown. But I slipped it on, and soon I found a pink flip-flop with a little heart on the sole.

Proud to have solved at least one of my problems, I tackled the rocks at the end of the beach. I climbed up and up, until I came out on top of a cliff so high it made me dizzy. White gulls flew below me tipping in the wind, and I must have seen for a hundred miles, over forests and mountains with no sign of people.

At that moment I was absolutely certain we would never find anyone to the north. I would have
wanted
to find Frank and head south. But a bigger, better beach lay before me now. Made of sand like golden sugar, it stretched for a mile along the shore, and the breakers tossed and gleamed. Standing high above it, I felt as though I owned all I could see.

I had stepped into my mother's favorite movie:
Robinson Crusoe.
I could picture the castaway in his ragged goatskins, looking over the ocean from a ridge on his lonely island. That movie always made my mother cry. “We're all of us castaways,” she told me once. “We get thrown ashore on the rocks of life, but somehow we survive.”

I looked back, down the hill that I'd climbed. Something was moving through the bushes, crawling up toward me.

Wolves, I thought. Too frightened to move, I just watched the bushes sway and toss; I heard the branches crackle. Then, in a break between two trees, Frank appeared.

He was hurtling up the slope—almost frantically, it seemed—as though something was chasing him. He pulled with his hands as he pushed with his feet, blundering through the bushes. Then he glanced up and saw me standing above him, and for a moment I thought he was going to turn back. He sank down into the bushes, then appeared again, and he started
walking
up the hill. When he reached me, he was breathing heavily.

“I looked for miles to the south,” he said. “There's nobody there.” He wiped sweat from his forehead. “We'll go north instead, so you can stop crying now, you little crybaby.”

Well, I wasn't crying. It was Frank who had lost something, and we both knew it. He shouldered past me to lead the way, and I followed in my familiar place. But I didn't mind anymore. I had learned an interesting lesson: even Frank didn't want to be left alone in all that wilderness.

Three chairs are set out on the point, around the wooden saint. Of course we only need two, but I like to have the extra one. I imagine this is where we'll be sitting when someone comes to save us. He will be so surprised to see us alive that he will just stand and stare with his mouth open. I'll gesture toward the empty chair and say politely, “Hello. Won't you please sit down?”

I can picture it clearly, even what our rescuer will look like. He will have sandy-colored hair, and a brown cap and dark sunglasses.

That's the way I see him. If he ends up looking different, it doesn't matter. I sometimes imagine things so clearly that I convince myself they will happen.

Pinned to our fridge back home is my second-grade report card, signed by Mrs. Lowe. She wrote,
Christopher has a vivid imagination. I think he will be a great artist one day. Perhaps a writer.
Underneath, she added a different thought.
Christopher has trouble making friends.

I laugh now when I remember this. In our first days in Alaska, I thought I would
never
be friends with Frank.

It was late in the afternoon when we came down to the sandy beach.

I kicked off my pink flip-flop, only to find that the sand scraped my blisters like a cheese grater. I limped like an old man. But I was glad to be out of the woods and down from the cliffs. Along the mile-long beach, waves collapsed in creamy foam. A flock of sandpipers raced back and forth at the edge of the water, as though afraid to get their feet wet.

Frank walked where the sand was firm and damp, and his shadow stretched across the beach like a stick man. I stayed higher up, where thousands of logs, whitened by the sun, made a giant's boneyard.

It was such a wild place. In Vancouver, city workers raked the sand every day and rearranged the logs into perfect rows. My father would wear his suit to go beachcombing, his tie flapping in the wind. Sometimes he'd talk like a pirate: “Come along, matey, there's treasure for the finding.” He would make a game of turning junk into pieces of eight, but I expected to find wooden chests brimming with gold, and always went home disappointed.

All the stuff that Uncle Jack had talked about lay scattered across the sand. We found fishing floats and tangles of rope, bottles and buckets and all sorts of plastic things. But everything was covered with barnacles and weeds, and most of it was smashed into pieces. We hurried from one thing to another, shrieking and pouncing like seagulls. For a little while we were just two kids having fun on a sandy beach. But then the things became depressing—the endless number of them, the stories they whispered. It was strange to think that all the junk had been important once to people who were probably dead.

I had seen the tsunami on TV, whole cities swept away, people running for their lives, people trapped in cars or perched on rooftops. I had seen the enormous masses of debris washed down flooded streets and out to sea. Now those same things lay scattered all around me.

I collected bottles to fill with water, and more shoes than I could ever wear. There was not one that matched another, but I found two that I liked, and I kept another four for spares, carrying them around my neck on bits of rope.

“Watch for lighters,” said Frank, as though I wasn't already doing that. But there were fewer than I'd expected, and they were rusted and brittle, ruined by salt or sunlight. Though I could see butane still sloshing inside when I held them up, they were useless.

At the end of the beach, a rocky finger stuck out into the sea. Along its back—like hackles on a dog—stood a few tall trees that swayed in the wind. A bald eagle came soaring above them, and behind the eagle came a raven, shouting crow-like cries. It swooped at the eagle's head, turned and swooped again, herding that huge bird through the sky.

Frank stopped to watch them pass. Then he sat on a log near the end of the beach.

If he was settling down for the night, he wouldn't say so. Not Silent Frank. So I kept walking, thinking I would cross the narrow point and see what lay ahead. I stayed among the logs until I saw an animal trail leading up through the bushes. Then I ducked under the drooping branches of a half-fallen tree, and stood again to step over the last log.

And I stopped with my foot in midair.

Pressed into the sand right in front of me was a human footprint.

It wasn't freshly made. The edges had crumbled, and a few brown tree needles had collected inside it. Shielded from wind and rain, it might have lasted for a long time, like footprints on the moon. But for sure it must have been made after the winter storms had passed. Sometime in the spring or the summer, someone had walked along the beach just as I had. He had crawled under the branches and stepped over the log, heading for the trail through the forest.

I shouted at Frank, “Somebody's here!” Then I followed the man's forgotten shadow, stumbling in the sand because I hurried. I sprawled facedown in his old footprint, got up and ran to the head of the trail. There, in the black dirt of the forest, I found another footprint preserved in hardened mud.

My mysterious man had hacked his way through the forest with an ax or a knife. His trail was overgrown with salal bushes, and I had to force my way through. I passed huge trees that must have been centuries old, and came to a small cabin in a clearing—a tiny house in the woods.

Held down with ragged bits of fishing net, a sheet of clear plastic covered the driftwood-shingle roof. Another square of plastic made a pane for a small window, but it was boarded over with scraps of wood. The cabin felt empty and forgotten. It felt haunted.

“Hello?” I called. “Hello?”

There was no sound from the surf, no sound from the wind, but breathy puffs of air made the plastic ripple on the roof like the skin of a breathing creature.

As I rounded the cabin's corner I saw the door was partly open. It had hung on hinges made of rope, but two were ripped apart, and the door sagged like a broken arm, swinging in the wind as though trying to close itself.

I held my shoes and water bottles in one hand, I put my head around the door and staggered back in surprise.

A huge black raven hung upside down in the doorway, bound in loops of red wire. It swung in front of me, turning slowly.

I had never been so close to a raven. Nearly as big as a Thanksgiving turkey, it must have stood almost two feet high. But its feathers were tattered, and the poor bird looked as ancient as a mummy. As it turned I saw the back of its head, where the feathers were ruffled and matted. I saw its beak. I saw its face.

It had no eyes. I gazed right into empty holes. But in a ring around each gaping socket, where the feathers were tiny and sparse, the skull showed in a white line that made it seem as though the raven was staring at me.

I heard Frank coming up the trail, thrashing his way through the bushes. He came in a huge rush, eager to see what I'd found. With his jacket fluttering behind him, he sprinted across the clearing. He ran right up to the cabin, pushed me aside, and wrenched the door wide open.

The dead raven whirled on its wire.

To Frank, it must have seemed that something had leapt from the cabin to get him. He nearly screamed as he raised an arm to shield himself. Black and ragged, the raven hurtled toward him, then turned away and swooped again.

Behind us, another raven appeared. With a whistle of wings, it came flying through the trees, like a small shadow broken loose from the larger ones. It settled onto a branch that bent with its weight, then carefully folded its wings and tilted its head to look down.

Clearly embarrassed by his fright, Frank swore at the dead raven. He snatched a stick from the ground and hit it. The bird reeled across the doorway, spinning on the end of the wire. It swung into the cabin and out again, and above us the watching raven began to clamor and shout.

Frank grunted as he raised the stick and brought it down. Little feathers fluttered all around, and the dead bird spun faster while the living one screamed in the treetops. Then the wire broke, and that black corpse tumbled to the ground. Instantly, the screaming stopped.

It was brutal and quick, and in silence Frank poked the dead bird off to the side. He rolled it through the dirt and booted it into the bushes. Then he wiped his hands and went inside. I followed him.

The cabin was small and dark, with a rickety table and a rickety chair that had both fallen on their sides. A bed was built along one wall, its foam mattress pulled down to the floor at one corner. In the middle of the room was a fire circle made of stones. There were still ashes inside it, and the blackened ends of burnt sticks. Some of the stones had been rolled out of place, and someone had raked his fingers through the ashes, leaving long gouges that stretched toward the door.

Whoever had the built the cabin had meant to stay a long time. It was roofed for winter and shaded for summer. But in the end he had left in a hurry. I felt like a grave robber as we rummaged through the things left behind. We claimed them for ourselves: a camp stove and a bottle of gas to fuel it; a fork and spoon; a tin plate; a pot but no lid; a tiny lantern with a candle stub inside it.

“Look for food,” said Frank. “There's got to be food somewhere.”

I pulled the mattress off the bed and found only a nest that mice had built. Frank kicked apart a pile of driftwood sticks, then dropped to his knees and looked under the bed. He reached in and pulled out big sheets of plastic that were ragged and torn, an empty bucket, a bit of wood. Then he looked again and shouted, “Yes!” and reaching even farther, brought out a dozen ziplock bags. They'd been labeled with a red Sharpie: rice, coffee, raisins. But each one had been nibbled open by mice or rats, and all of them were empty.

Frank turned instantly from happy to furious. He hurled the bags onto the bed and looked around the little cabin. “See what's up there,” he told me, pointing to a shelf high on the wall.

I climbed onto the bed, reached up and ran my hand along the shelf. Down fell a toothbrush and toothpaste, a roll of toilet paper in another ziplock bag, and then a small black box that bounced off the mattress and landed in the ashes.

We stared at that thing, for a moment too surprised to speak.

Frank snatched it up. He held it tightly, as though he had captured an animal that might try to struggle away.

“It's a radio,” I cried.

“No kidding, Marconi.”

It was almost exactly the same as the one that Uncle Jack had tossed to me in his last moment. “Here, let me try it,” I said.

I jumped down from the bed, but Frank turned aside to shield the radio. He pressed a button on top, and a red light came on. Numbers lit up on a small gray screen.

We looked at each other, and for one instant we were a team, bound together by that radio and all that it offered.

Frank licked his lips. He lifted the radio up to his mouth. He pressed the transmitter. “Mayday,” he said. “Mayday. Mayday.”

He let go of the button. We both kept staring at the radio. A faint crackling came from the speaker.

“Squelch,” I said, mimicking what Uncle Jack had taught us. “Turn the—”

“Shut up,” snapped Frank. “I know what I'm doing.” He turned the knobs for squelch and volume, and the sound became a roaring hum. Then he called again, “Mayday. Mayday.”

A woman answered. Her voice was faint and crackly, but oh so wonderful. “Station calling Mayday: this is U.S. Coast Guard radio.”

I grinned at Frank; he grinned at me. Both of us grinned at the radio. We were like a pair of chimpanzees, all teeth and foolishness. The woman's voice shattered with static. “What is the nature of your emergency?”

“Tell them our names!” I shouted at Frank. “Tell them we're lost.”

“Shut up.” Frank pressed the button again and spoke into the radio. “We need help. We're—”

The radio beeped. The numbers went out; the screen turned black. The little red light faded away, and the radio switched itself off.