Landscape: Memory Page 24

  I wondered if Duncan might still be near and turned to take a quick look, but there was no one. No one at all. I looked quickly again and saw nothing and stopped. All around me the trees stood, bending slightly with the wind at their tops. It was empty. The wind sound rustled, as even as silence, and I gulped breaths of air, trying to catch my wind. Duncan must've gone far and fast, I thought, and maybe drawn my pursuers away.

  Birds called, high up in the branches, near where the last sun was turning the woods golden. I shuffled my feet on the dry ground, rustling the peels of bark. I stood still and listened, but heard only silence. I wondered where, exactly, I was. I'd come downhill, mostly, and from the west. But where I stood now the uphill went north, not back west, and it didn't look like the woods I'd just run through. The woods west looked unfamiliar too. Above me the sunlight slipped up toward the tops of the trees, narrowing the small bright band until finally it was gone.

  "Oooo-hooo," I called to the west. My little flag dangled from my belt where I'd tucked it. Nothing called back. A creek was rippling in a gully nearby, near enough to add its sound to the evening stillness. "Oooo-hooo.''

  I started walking north, up the steep hill, hoping to see something familiar from that vantage point. The woods were mostly eucalyptus and oak, the ground clear of cover and littered with old leaves and dried bark. In the gullies stands of fir grew, and the ground grew thick with brush and rhododendron. Fog had started drifting in from the west, slipping over the lip of the Berkeley hills and settling down into the trees. A quail burst out from a bush to my right, its round little body flung, but hardly flying. It came down like a bomb and landed squat, bobbing its tiny little tufted head.

  "Oooo-hooo," I called again. The quail looked at me and waddled away into the woods, cooing and warbling as it went. The fog hung in the canopy, muffling the rustle of the trees. I didn't recognize any landmarks, so I decided to keep going west, knowing I'd hit the road eventually. I watched above me. The trees wobbled among the gray mists. Little animals and birds crashed in the branches, knocking dead leaves down to the ground. I was nervous in my legs, stepping forward tentatively, hoping the woods would open up ahead, or the sound of an auto or horse might be heard. It must've been near to half past six. Dusk had come with the fog. I dipped down through the rill, looking for footholds up the other side, when I saw a small pile of stones. It was only a few inches high, but it was clearly made, and made recently. A little stick extended out from it, pointing ahead.

  It was a marker. I had recognized it when I saw it. Ahead of me the rill dumped down into a wider gully. No water ran there, but the stones were all washed clean as though it ran wet quite often. Someone had laid sticks down there to form another arrow, and so I followed. The cold air of evening was dropping down through the trees, trailing wisps of the thick fog with it. I felt a chill up my spine where my back was wet with sweat, and it turned into a shiver at my neck. The stones of the gully were easy to travel on. I leapt along at a slow run, easily seeing each marker now, though the light had grown dim.

  At the head of the creek bed, where the gully had begun, a final arrow pointed in under a tangle of roots. I knelt down by it and reached my arm into the hiding place. The rich smell of dark, cool dirt wrapped around me as my searching knocked some of it loose. The stones settled some under my feet. There was a wooden box inside. I pulled it out to inspect it.

  The heavy wooden box had a simple lid on two hinges with a small metal clasp to hold it shut. It was as big as a cigar box and sounded empty when I shook it. Inside there was only a card, another invitation to come to an initiation thing. This one was a bit fancier than the first and, I guess, more exclusive. It was hardly a treasure worth having. But I had found it, and it did mean we'd get to feast.

  The woods were quite dark now. The brightest light came from the gray mists. It was all around me by now. The trees rose up into it, disappearing into the drifting fog about twenty feet above my head. I held my small treasure to my chest and climbed out of the gully, walking, I hoped, west again. I pulled my arms up into my shirt to keep warmer and held the treasure inside.

  The forest floor was busy with scooting and scampering sounds. I saw squirrels, and heard much more. Something very big must have passed through the woods to my right because I felt its footfall through the dry tamped earth and heard it crashing through a fallen oak branch. Thankfully I never saw it. A chill drifted down from the fog like rain. I kept on with my even stride, making small sounds to myself to keep up courage. The crackling of bark and leaves kept on all around me and only finally frightened me most when it stopped. I heard it all go still. I stopped and held my breath, listening to the silence. There was nothing. I couldn't see well through the trees, but everywhere I tried I was certain I saw shadows. The leaves crackled again, under some heavy foot. I kept still but strained to see.

  "Max?" a voice called. "Max? Is that you?" It was Duncan. I sprinted toward his voice and called his name back and there he was, looking dirty and disheveled but very glad, as I'm certain I looked to him. I knocked him over onto the ground and squeezed him so hard I thought I'd burst.

  "I think we're lost," he said, not letting go of me even enough to get up off the ground.

  "Yeah, We're lost," I agreed. "Did you get away?"

  "No." He was all sweaty and smudged. "Did you?"

  "Yeah," I said proudly, showing him my flag. "And we won, because I found the treasure." I put the little box into his hand and showed him the card. "It's a dumb treasure," I allowed as he looked inside the box, "but at least we'll get our feast." He put the card back and sat up, brushing dirt from off his clothes. He didn't seem very happy about my prize.

  "There's not any food. Max, you know that." He stood up and offered me a hand.

  "Yes there is. I've got the treasure." I stood up next to him and let him brush my back off.

  "They've all gone. Max. They never brought any food. They left as soon as they'd caught us all."

  "But they never caught me. I won." None of what he was saying made sense.

  "They drove away."

  "You let them just drive away?"

  "They tied me to a tree. They tied a bunch of us to trees. They were laughing like it was a big joke."

  I tried to imagine that they might have done that. I knew that they'd done that, feeling now like I'd been so stupid all along to ever think they wouldn't just do that. It made the pleasure I'd felt about the little box so awful and embarrassing, knowing how pleased I'd been. Duncan tugged at my arm and we started walking, not saying any more, because there really wasn't any more to say.

  The woods were dark by now and as full of frightening sounds as ever before that evening, but somehow I didn't hear them. My mind was too full of bewildered anger, and relief at finding Duncan, to focus on rustling leaves. We both walked on with an ease that belied our earlier worry. The cold air kept coming in over the hills and blew the fog away, opening up a clear black sky above us and letting moonlight down into the woods. The animal paths made for easy walking and our various preoccupations kept us from worrying over choices and direction. Within an hour or maybe more we'd found the road again and sat down to set a fire, breaking the stupid box into kindling to start the flames.

  19 OCTOBER 1915

  I got on Mr. Brown about stories again today.

  "I always forget things if they don't fit somewhere, like when it's in a story," I offered boldly. "Don't you think every memory's part of some made-up story? How else could you remember it?"

  Mr. Brown wasn't so fond of me as Mr. Spengler had been. The problem, I realized, was my failure to learn anything he was trying to teach, except for Guillio Cammilo, the sixteenth-century Mnemonist. I got an "A" for what I wrote about Guillio Cammilo. Everything else has been a bust.

  "I believe, Mr. Kosegarten, we've covered at least a half dozen 'other ways' one might remember, other than creating fictions."

  "I didn't mean strictly fictions, Mr. Brown, and I'm sorry if I missed someth
ing. I just meant any stories, any kind, true ones or whatever." I remembered something from last week. "Like Aristotle's all for making up stories, even if they're true or whatever they are. That's what I mean by stories." The Aristotle part seemed to perk him up a bit.

  "Make a note of it, Mr. Kosegarten, work out your position on paper and bring it in," and he squinched his nose all quick like a wink, the way he did whenever he meant "Let's move on," and so we did.

  Duncan and I went to the movies, sitting down in the lovely enveloping dark, racking up against the hardwood flip-front chairs in time for three of the four serials and a feature. Duncan kept his leg pushed in against mine and I mine against his and we watched the slow decay of innocent Blanche Sweet (performing as twins) under the evil spell of opium in The Secret Sin. Blanche played the good twin and the bad twin by some magic trick of the cinema, often appearing on screen in both roles at once. We stayed in to catch the serial we'd missed on the next time around, emerging into the gloam of evening all silent and sore from sitting so long.

  Dear Robert,

  Thank you for the news clippings. For so long I'd thought the war was beyond our powers of understanding because of its insurmountable complexity. I realize now it is the utter simplicity of the war that makes it incomprehensible.

  Tomorrow is Sunday and that is heaven for me.

  26 OCTOBER 1915

  I tried it out on him in the evening, while we did our work, during our hour or so together before bed. He was sitting in the bay where the beds had been, doing calculus and humming a bouncy Sousa tune. I'd thought very carefully about the best way of putting things, not wanting him to feel I was forcing it all upon him.

  "Where do you imagine traveling to, in the U.S.A.?" I asked, to get him thinking on the right track.

  "Just fantasy, you mean?" He poked his forehead with his lumpy eraser.

  "No, actually, if you really were going to." I leaned up on my elbows, stretched out sideways across the bed on my stomach.

  Duncan pushed the eraser all bent against his head and thought for a while.

  "I'd go to the desert."

  This wasn't the answer I wanted.

  "I don't mean outdoors stuff or adventures. I meant like on a train trip or going to see the sights." I hoped this would clarify matters.

  "But you said actually, what I'd actually do. That's what I'd actually do, go to the desert," he explained reasonably.

  "Right, I know that. But I'm rephrasing it. What if it was a train trip somewhere and not for outdoors stuff, where would you go?" That seemed to narrow things enough.

  "I don't know if I'd actually do that."

  "Just imagining, then."

  He brought his feet up on to the chair and squinched down into it, thinking still.

  "I guess I'd go back East, go see the big cities."

  "Like what? New York, or Boston?" I prompted.

  "Yeah, and Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. My dad says we have relations in Washington, D.C." He looked back into his calculus book.

  "I'd love to see Boston," I pushed on. "I'd love to see all the snow in the winter."

  He looked up from his book again and stared out the window, imagining, I hoped, the lovely white drifts of snow, it falling thick from the sky and ivying up and down the rough-brick-walled buildings.

  "What's the quadratic equation?" he asked.

  It was the one thing I'd memorized in math: " *X' equals 'negative b' plus or minus the square root of 'b squared,' minus 'four ac' all over 'two a,' " I told him as fast as I possibly could. "Now come on. What about the snow in Boston?"

  He looked over at me and thought, pushing his eraser in under his upper lip now.

  "Oh, yeah, the snow. That'd be something else. I'd love that."

  "Yeah, me too," I agreed. "Can you imagine living there?"

  He penciled some things onto his paper, then brought his eraser down, wiping it dry on his shirtsleeve first. I paused, hoping I wouldn't have to prompt him further.

  "Well, living there? I don't know. I bet it gets so cold for so long. We'd probably die from freezing." And he looked up at me and shivered. "You thinking of moving?"

  "What?" I said, wishing he hadn't asked.

  "Are you thinking of moving there, to Boston?" He kept his gaze steady and even, looking at my eyes.

  I turned over on my back and stared out the window at the stars in the dark sky.

  "I wouldn't move there if you didn't," I said honestly. "I couldn't possibly." I felt his weight smushing onto the bed next to me.

  "I know that," he said. "I asked if you were thinking of moving there, whether it was something you'd been thinking about." He poked at my back with his eraser.

  "Well, Mother's been talking about eastern schools," I began. "She's sent for some catalogs."

  "So she's thinking of going back East?" he asked, being a bit too persistent about all this.

  "No, she's not thinking of going back East. She knows we're not perfectly happy with things here so she's just trying to help by finding out about other places." I turned over to look at him.

  "And are you thinking about going?"

  "I already said I wouldn't go if you didn't." We lay there for some moments in a confrontational silence, the small space between our bodies fairly alive with minute drawings toward and away.

  "Well, good," he finally put in. "Because I'm not going anywhere back East."

  I looked at him, me chewing at my lip and glancing all around his face, keeping clear of his eyes.

  "And I'd appreciate your keeping me up to date on what you're thinking about doing," he finished, poking me a bit in the belly.

  "That's what I was doing," I explained. "I was trying to tell you about the catalogs and the different possible things but you got all huffy about it."

  He shook his head and rolled away from me onto his back.

  "You did not try to tell me," he said up into the ceiling. "You started asking me if I wanted to travel anywhere and then you kept wheedling around to Boston is what you did."

  I wished he wouldn't say that. I wished he'd just roll back and bury me in his arms and mouth and kiss me into oblivion. I felt sort of shaky lying there near him and knowing what he said was true. I couldn't think what to say in my defense. He got up off the bed and went back to his chair and his homework.

  After our conversation we both worked a bit longer, me on my memory book and him on calculus, and we went to bed without so much as a word regarding anything but toothbrushes, lights and morning alarms.

  Then we were at each other so fast it was scary. I guess we simply had a lot to say and knew somewhere inside us that talking more would only lead to trouble. I can feel it welling up like laughter inside me when I've got to get to him. And if I open my mouth the only sound that comes up is that buzzing growl of a song my throat makes when I let it loose. I push my mouth against his sweet skin and sing that song into his body.

  When I do speak, my mouth reduces down around the smallest words to say. I need you. Love me. More words string out like fences, clamoring around in a dizzying jumble of dangerous meanings and slips and slides.

  3 NOVEMBER 1915

  As I speak less and less, and I do, losing my words to the fear I have of forever ruining the difficult, exquisite landscape Duncan and I roll around in together. As I speak less and less, my walking, waking time loses weight and floats free in air, never quite dropping down into me, never quite feeling solidly part of me until I see it written. Here, written. And I turn the page and it's shut down in and felt.

  My painting gets thicker with each layer. They all stay present, lurking in the surface. These pages turn, flipping past. They layer in only on the surface I make by memory. Those dim shadows of hundreds of thousands of written words are left lurking in my mind, worked on by time and mysterious tides. I'll be sending notes to Father soon, if I keep on like this.

  10 NOVEMBER 1915

  Duncan baked two pies, one for us and one for the Dunphys, this morning w
hile the rain beat in buckets against that high wide window and everywhere else too. They were plum pies with plums Mrs. Dunphy canned this summer and flaky crust like Mother showed Duncan how to make because of his loving pie so much. They had a light sprinkle of sharp Cheddar cheese melted on the top. I watched them coming out of the oven piping hot. Duncan and I had two hot slices and saved the rest for later. The Dunphys let theirs be, Mrs. Dunphy insisting she wanted to serve it to guests at the dinner they've planned for the evening.

  17 NOVEMBER 1915

  I'd just come from the musty Latin wing, out into the drizzly day, when I was tackled and knocked to the ground by Duncan. He goosed me all over and generally made a scene, right there in public view. No one did anything to rescue me, though he might have been a maniac for all they knew, molesting innocent freshmen as they emerged from the stupor of declensions.

  It was almost eleven and so time for that dreaded marching in the open field. I was on my way to have coffee with Flora, as was my custom during the war exercises, so Duncan's friendly attack was a mixed blessing. I wasn't sure if it was a disguised form of conscription.

  "Where's the pacifistics meeting today?" he asked cheerfully, beating leaves off my back with sweeps of his dirty hands.

  "Oh, somewhere," I said vaguely.

  "Yeah? Fomenting revolution?" he inquired.

  "We'll be discussing the death of Rupert Brooke over coffee, in a secret anarchist's den somewhere underground." I thought it might sound attractive, more mysterious and romantic than banging about on the soggy turf. "Care to join us?"

  "Yes," he answered straightaway and to my surprise. "I could use some coffee."

  "And the army?" I asked. "Won't they fall into chaos and confusion?"