The Book of Joby (58 page)

“They were found archived in the other building,” Bruech informed him.

They were aerial shots: mile after mile of densely forested hills—virgin timber, or Ferristaff was a two-bit shoeshine boy.
Those were the days,
he thought, shaking his head. Didn’t see wood like that anymore, except in a few damned national parks. “Gut-wrenching mementoes,” he quipped sardonically. “What’s your point?”

“Look at the ledgers in back.” Bruech reached down to flip one of the photos over. “See? They’re all referenced to a place called ‘Taubolt.’ There was no documentation, so I had Linea look the place up in our archives here. She found nothing, so I had her check a whole slew of outside sources, including the NGS, and still nothing. Then, yesterday—you’ll never believe this—Linea’s sister calls to tell her she’s losing her position with that lottery winner in Oakland, because the old woman’s moving to someplace called Taubolt.”

“Well, you’re right, Bruech. That’s a humdinger,” Ferristaff conceded dryly. “I assume there’s a punch line somewhere?”

“Turns out Taubolt’s just a few hours north of San Francisco. We’ve turned every stone looking for records of ownership or harvest, but there’s
nothing; no deed or claim; no harvest plan, or reference of any kind with state or federal land management; not even the interior department’s ever heard of it.” Bruech smiled and shrugged like Houdini out of chains a minute early. “
We
never harvested anything up there. I had Linea look into that weeks ago. I’ve checked on all the other major players as well—discreetly, of course. If any of them ever cut near anyplace called Taubolt, I’m a—”

“Don’t, Bruech. You’ll hate yourself in the morning.” Ferristaff couldn’t help smirking. “You trying to tell me there’s some giant stand of virgin timber just sitting up there on the California coast—unnoticed for all these years?”

“I know how it sounds, Robert, but it’s starting to look that way.”

“That’s the best one I’ve heard in—well, maybe
ever,
Bruech. If you found this stuff in our archives, then I’ll bet you lunch for a month, and I don’t mean Burger Barn, that we’re the ones who cut it, probably back when my grandpa was too young to drive a truck. We just lost the paperwork, that’s all.”

“And every state and federal agency we file with lost it too?” Bruech protested. “I’m not kidding, Robert. I’ve checked, or I wouldn’t be bothering you, would I?”

“Well, I’d go back and look a little harder before you bet the farm, Bruech.” Ferristaff’s smirk soured. “It’s probably a goddamn national park.”

“You think I didn’t check that first?” Bruech insisted.

“All right,” Ferristaff sighed. “Have them send someone up to check it out. But when they come back with photos of some suburban housing development, or Mr. Ranger checking in a bunch of happy campers, his travel expenses come out of your paycheck.” Ferristaff’s smirk returned. “I’d believe in fairies before I’d believe the timber in those photos is still standing unclaimed anywhere in this state—or this country, for that matter.”

A playful breeze followed Joby up the forest path, sighing through the massive redwood trees, ruffling through the lush undergrowth. Tumbling water and birdsong echoed softly through the warm arboreal twilight. The weather was clear and unusually mild for February. Where sunlight reached the ground, a delicious green smell arose, evoking memories of childhood summers, despite the season. Joby could imagine no more pleasant way to spend a Saturday than wandering alone through such a paradise.

After just a few weeks of teaching, he felt he’d truly found his place in Taubolt. Bridget, Pete, and Ariel had shown him the ropes without ever making him feel like the utter neophyte he was, and his students seemed the very incarnation of Longfellow’s poem about the thoughts of youth, their luminescent natures brimming with laughter and imaginative mischief, creativity, and surprising flashes of wisdom.

He stopped to watch a pair of tiny flies hover and dart, like airborne diamonds, in a shaft of light among the fir boughs. All around him, misty rays pierced the forest’s shadowed depths. Beyond the streambed, every dark needle and leaf was limned in silver, a lacework of brilliance and shadow, from which a boy, silent and still, suddenly appeared as if from thin air. Joby started and stared before realizing that he must have been there all along, backlit and invisible until Joby had looked right at him.

“Jupiter!” he said. “What are you doing over there?”

The butter-haired boy only turned and walked into the dark woods behind him.

Joby gazed after him for a moment, then shrugged and continued his hike. The kids at school had warmed to him considerably by now, but a vague skittishness remained at the edges of their friendliness, as if he were a new dog in the neighborhood, one of whom they were fond but not yet entirely trusting.

“Like to hike?” laughed a brazen voice directly above him.

Joby stumbled back in surprise, then looked up to find Jupiter perched
high in the fir tree above him. “You scared the crap out of me!” Joby gasped.

Laughing even louder, Jupiter half-climbed, half-plunged toward the ground. Scorning the lowest branches, he leapt down and unbent his knees to stand grinning before Joby, who vaguely remembered climbing like that himself once, and wondered, now, how he’d ever lived to be fifteen. Looking back across the streambed to where the boy had just disappeared, he asked, “How’d you get all that way so quickly?”

“Climbed,” Jupiter said, glancing at the canopy over their heads. “Trees’re thick up here. You can go a long ways without comin’ down.”

“Aren’t you afraid of falling?” Joby asked.

“Aren’t
you
afraid of falling?” Jupiter parried.

“I’m on the ground,” Joby said.

“So am I!” Jupiter grinned.

Joby narrowed his eyes reproachfully.

“My limbs work just as good up there.” Jupiter shrugged. “Wanna go hiking?”

“If it’s on the ground,” Joby replied dryly.

“Come on.” Jupiter grinned, striding briskly away up the trail while Joby hustled to catch up. The boy seemed well named. A patch of gold in the dusky shade, he exuded a jovial confidence that made him seem effortlessly capable of anything. Demonstrating precisely this quality, Jupiter stopped abruptly to point up a steep incline covered in densely tangled foliage and debris. “Let’s go that way!”

The ascent, if not altogether impossible, looked like far too much work. “Don’t forget to write,” said Joby. “I’ll stay on the path, I think.”

Jupiter looked at him scornfully.

“Hiking off the path causes erosion, doesn’t it?” Joby said lamely. “Have you ever even been up there?”

“No,” Jupiter said, clearly wondering what that had to do with anything.

“Okay,” Joby said wearily. “Just don’t get us lost. We’ve got to be back in time for the potluck at school tonight, you know.”

With a radiant grin, Jupiter began bounding up the hill like a startled deer, while Joby sighed and started picking his way slowly through a sea of obstacles.

“Not like that!” the boy laughed, turning to look back at him. “If you wanna be a Taubolt stud, you have to barge up here, not pizzel like a narning pleebole!”

“What’s a Taubolt stud?” Joby asked, feeling heat in his face. “And what makes you think I want to be one?”

“A Taubolt stud is me!” Jupiter crowed. “
Of course
you want to be one!”

The boy’s sheer conceit made Joby laugh and filled him with an urge to match such ridiculous audacity. As he leapt clumsily up and over the fallen tree in front of him, a wave of antic energy surged through him like a shout.

“YES!” Jupiter shouted as Joby came abreast of him and kept going. “Another Taubolt stud is born!”

“I was a stud years before you were an idea!” Joby shouted back in delight as the two of them continued charging up the hill together. When they finally reached the hilltop, Joby braced his hands against his knees, and gasped, “Okay. . . . I’ve got to stop.”

“Good,” Jupiter panted back. Joby looked up to find him red-faced, and breathing as hard as he. “You’re not as wobbity as you act,” the boy conceded.

Once recovered, they followed a streambed downhill through more dense underbrush before heading up again through drier woods of oak, fir, and laurel. Joby wasn’t sure anymore where they were in relation to town.

“You’re not gonna get us lost, right?” he asked Jupiter.

“Fold your feathers!” Jupiter scoffed. “All these streams lead back into the canyon. Do I look like a pleebole?”

Still struggling with the local lingo, Joby asked, “What’s a ‘pleebole’ again?”

Jupiter hesitated, then said, “I’m just sayin’ only tourists could get lost here.”

“Okay,” Joby said. “Just making sure.”

After following a new path for some time, Jupiter suddenly shouted, “Yes!” and ran up the hillside ahead of them.
“Oh YES!”
he crowed again, thrusting his hand into a low bush covered with small, bright green leaves. When Joby caught up, Jupiter offered him a handful of tiny, round berries, almost black in color.

“What are these?” Joby asked.

Jupiter’s eyes went round. “Don’t you know
huckleberries
?”

“I’ve heard of them,” Joby said nervously. “But . . . are you sure these are okay?”

“Only since I was three!” Jupiter scoffed, shoving a fistful into his mouth, and groaning in delight. “I’ve never seen so many! It’s the lost huckleberry homeland!” he enthused, reaching out to rake another handful from the bottom of a clotted branch. “What are you waitin’ for,” he mumbled to Joby around the mouthful, “a fork?”

Joby tried a single berry, then threw the rest in, smiling as their surprisingly potent sweetness exploded on his tongue. After that, they ate, and laughed, and ate, and ate. Later, as Joby tried to lick the purple stains off his hands, Jupiter assured him they would be the envy of everyone who heard about it at school that night.

“What I can’t understand,” Joby said, “is what all these berries are doing here. It’s February. These bushes must have bloomed in, what, December? That can’t be right.”

“Happens sometimes.” Jupiter shrugged uncertainly. “Taubolt’s got some kind of special climate, I think. Pete told us about it in science class. ‘A microclimate,’ he said. So things just sort of grow when they want to here.”

“How weird,” Joby mused. “Thanks for getting my butt up here, Jupiter. It’s been a lot of fun. A lot more than I was expecting, really.”

“Gotta leave the path sometimes,” Jupiter said, smiling pointedly at Joby.

“Yes, yes. Point taken, professor,” Joby drawled. “It’s getting late, though, and I need to get cleaned up before the potluck. Maybe we should start heading back?”

“No problem,” Jupiter said, giving his stomach one last pat. “Just follow me.”

The hike back seemed much longer than the hike there, and none of it looked familiar. Finally, Jupiter stopped and turned to stare up the hill they had just come down. Then he grinned without meeting Joby’s eyes, and said, “You know, we might be lost.”

“Oh great!” Joby exclaimed, looking at his watch. “The potluck is in one hour,
stud,
and it’s gonna look pretty flaky if I’m not there. Got a plan B?”

“Keep heading down this streambed, and hope it crosses the path somewhere, I guess,” Jupiter offered sheepishly.

“Oh no,” Joby said. “I don’t know where the path we started on is, but I think I can get us back to Blueberry Hill, so I say we go there and start again more carefully.”

“That sounds good too.” Jupiter shrugged.

Fortunately, they found the site of their berry spree, and, after looking around, cut off the crest trail earlier as Joby began to recognize obstacles he’d worked harder to get past than Jupiter had. After a tense half hour of trailblazing, they stumbled, with deep relief, back onto the original canyon path about a mile east of Taubolt.

“We have fifteen minutes,” Joby said, checking his watch again and beginning to trot toward town. “We might just make it if we run all the way.”

“See?” Jupiter grinned. “No problem! Just like I said.”

Joby gave him what he hoped was a dangerous smile, sure that more than a few parents would wonder why the new English teacher looked like he’d just crawled out of the forest on his knees.