The Book of Joby (64 page)

Joby turned to scan the headlands behind him, wanting a witness to confirm what he saw, but the fields were empty all the way to town. Joby looked back down at the vocalist and his astonishing audience. Suddenly shy of disturbing them, he shook his head and turned for home, wondering whether Mrs. Lindsay would think him crazy or merely dishonest when he told her what he’d seen.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

Joby lay in bed, reading the anthology Father Crombie had given him for Christmas, as he did most nights now. He’d come across something familiar
by Frost, and was going over it for a second time, struggling against encroaching sleep and distracting thoughts of what he’d seen out on the headlands that night.

Mrs. Lindsay had been amused by his astonishment. “That’s just Dash Borden,” she’d laughed. “He’s out there at all hours singing to those seals.” Then, more soberly, “I think it helps him with the loneliness since his wife died.”

“But, they were listening!” Joby had insisted. “Right there at his feet!”

“Seals are a curious lot,” she’d assured him. “They’ll come ’round to check on almost anything that happens in or near the water.”

Joby shook the idea from his head again, and went back to reading.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down! I could say ‘elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. . . .

Unable to hold sleep any longer at bay, Joby set the book aside, reached up to douse the light, and closed his eyes. But even as he drifted at the edge of sleep, the poem’s last few lines still danced behind his eyelids like moonlight on the surge that night:

He moves in darkness, as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’

Joby was waiting, bag lunch in hand, when Cal’s junker truck roared around the corner and rumbled to a halt in front of Mrs. Lindsay’s inn. Joby didn’t know too much about cars, but the truck’s bulbous lines suggested a fifties or sixties vintage, and its once-green, flaking paint, elaborately detailed in rust, backed that estimate.

“This thing street legal?” Joby quipped, climbing in beside Hawk.

“You trashin’ my truck?” Cal shot back.

“Seems a little late for that,” Joby drawled.

“Better’n yours, ain’t it?”

He had a point. “You coming on the hike with us?” Joby asked.

“Nope. It’s a Bobber day.”

“Which means?”

“Which means,” Hawk grinned, “the Bobs’ll be fryin’ up a couple scrawny minnows and a whole lotta crow for dinner again.”

“Last I heard,” Cal mused, “you two wanted a ride somewhere. But now I’m thinkin’ maybe I don’t have time this morning.”

“You’re the best fisherman in Taubolt history,” Hawk amended. “Okay?”

Mollified, Cal gunned the engine and lurched into the street with hardly a glance backward for traffic, not that there was ever much traffic to look for in Taubolt.

Hawk lived up Avalon Ridge, ten miles south of town. Beyond tumbling roadside fences half-buried in herbs and blackberry, wide fields of tall dry grass rippled in the wind, punctuated by isolated stands of redwood, old barns, and weathered homesteads. Ravens swooped and dove in the breeze. Grazing horses looked up as they drove by.

It took twenty-five minutes to reach Hawk’s house; a piecemeal, wood-shingled structure halfway up the ridge, decked out in wind chimes, abalone shells, and odd little stained-glass windows. Cal dumped them out, honked farewell, and rumbled away.

The long flight of wood-slat stairs up to Hawk’s front door swayed so badly under their combined weight that Joby feared it might collapse. But he kept his mouth shut, cautious of offending Hawk. Once inside, Hawk called for his mother, but got no answer.

The entrance hall was dimly illuminated by a red-and-blue stained-glass window beside the door. A spindly vine covered in tiny leaves cascaded from its macramé harness over an end table cluttered with mail. An oval rag rug of green and gray covered much of the hardwood floor. The walls were dark, unfinished wood, and the still air smelled like a dusty copse of trees.

“Guess she’s workin’,” Hawk said, leading Joby into a kitchen and breakfast bar connected by a short, wide flight of stairs to a large, sunken living room. The furnishings were worn, but things were immaculately neat, clean, and well lit by several skylights and a wall of glass on the living room’s far side. Joby’s attention was immediately drawn to a large painting hung over the couch, a spectacular landscape rendered in what looked like oil pastels; rich orange afternoon light and dark blue shadows draped a desert landscape beneath a vibrant blue sky dramatically washed in clouds. Its beautiful composition conveyed a sweeping sense of airy space. Not a print apparently, it was, without a doubt, the finest object in the room.

“What does your mom do?” Joby asked.

“Different things,” Hawk said, pulling sandwich makings from the refrigerator. “Helps people with their records and bills sometimes, or does cleaning and stuff.”

“Sounds like she works pretty hard,” Joby said.

“Yup,” Hawk said, crinkling his sandwich into a brown paper bag. He grabbed two small bottles of drinking water for himself and Joby from a shelf above the countertop, and said, “Okay. Let’s go.”

As they left, Hawk stopped to leave a note for his mom. Joby read over Hawk’s shoulder as he wrote that he was out hiking with his English teacher and would be home for dinner. He paused, then added a reminder that his teacher would need a ride home.

“You did tell her about that before now, didn’t you?” Joby asked.

“Sure.” Hawk shrugged without meeting his eyes.

Joby could only hope it was true.

Minutes later, they were headed farther up the steep ridge along a narrow, overgrown dirt road. It was almost one o’clock before they stopped to eat their lunches on a wide, grassy hilltop. The morning’s gentle breeze had died
away. The smell of warming straw and wayside plants was pungent. Songbird and raven-call joined the
clack, clack, clack
of grasshoppers, and the lowing of distant cattle.

After lunch, as they continued up what had become only the ghost of a trail, they surprised a wild boar and stood very still as it trotted away, tail stuck up like a flagpole. When it had run some distance, it stopped to look back over its shoulder, then crashed into the underbrush and disappeared.

“They can be real mean,” Hawk warned. “Gotta be careful when you see one.”

“I’ve never seen a real boar,” Joby said reverently. “You’re so lucky to grow up in a place like this.”

“I didn’t,” Hawk replied, resuming his progress ahead of Joby. “We moved here two years ago from Phoenix.” He fell silent for a while, batting at the grass with his hands as they passed, then added sadly, “Wish I
had
grown up here, though.”

“What made your folks come here?” Joby asked.

“It was my mom’s idea. She wouldn’t stop buggin’ my dad.”

“How’d she hear about a place like Taubolt clear down there in Arizona?”

“Some friend of hers told her about it a long time ago. I think she thought my dad would get better if she got him out of Phoenix, but he’s a prick no matter where he lives.” He took a particularly vicious whack at some weeds leaning into their path. “Guess she knows that now.”

They hiked uphill in silence after that, through a dense thicket of stunted conifers in which their path nearly vanished. Then, all at once, the trees opened into an abandoned apple orchard full of gnarled old trees. It was surprisingly warm out in the light. Something buzzed, cicada-like, from the shrubs around them.

Hawk stopped abruptly and motioned for Joby to be quiet, pointing to the field’s far side. At first, Joby saw nothing but tall grass. Then several dun-colored shapes resolved into the backs of browsing deer, heads down, foraging in the tall straw.

Oddly, Hawk began to hum very quietly. Joby could barely make out the pretty if repetitive melody until Hawk began to hum a little louder, and first the doe, then her fawns, raised their heads to stare at him. As Hawk added soft, flowing nonsense sounds to his tune, the deer twitched their tails, but made no move to flee. Still singing, Hawk reached slowly into his pocket and pulled something out inside his fist, then began to take slow, casual
steps forward, one or two at a time, until he was halfway to the deer. There he sat down very slowly, singing all the while, and stretched his hand out, revealing two sugar cubes.

Joby watched in fascination as minutes passed. Neither Hawk’s arm nor his tune wavered. Finally, the doe took a hesitant step forward, then several more while Hawk sang on. Within reach of his hand, the animal stretched its neck to sniff the sugar, then nibbled it quickly from Hawk’s palm. Only then did Hawk’s tune fall silent, and his hand drop slowly into his lap. When the doe had finished eating, she and Hawk gazed at each other while Joby held his breath in pure amazement. All at once, to Joby’s even greater wonder, the deer sang back to Hawk. It was just a few atonal trumpeting sounds, but Joby had never known deer made any sounds at all. When her brief song was done, the doe turned to nuzzle her fawns toward the orchard’s far side and through the thicket.

Hawk watched them go without moving, while Joby watched Hawk in envious wonder. “How did you do that?” he asked at last.

Hawk turned to grin proudly at him. “They’re suckers for sugar.” He shrugged, as if that explained everything.

“What were you singing?”

“Just made it up,” Hawk said. “Doesn’t really matter what you sing, long as it’s quiet, and you don’t stop. No animal sounds like that when it’s attacking, and if
you
believe they’re not afraid of you, they can tell, and they’re not afraid either. That’s all.”

“But it talked to you!” Joby said, still unable to believe it was all so simple.

“Deer can talk.” Hawk smiled. “They just don’t want to most of the time.”

As they talked, one thought had drowned all others in Joby’s mind:
How could any man have left a boy like this?
“Where on earth did you learn all this?” Joby asked.

“All the kids around here know this stuff. But that’s not the best thing. Come on! I’ll show you something really neat! It’s why I brought you.”

“Something can top what I just saw?” Joby asked skeptically.

“Back there,” Hawk said, pointing toward the orchard’s far boundary of brush and trees, “there’s a haunted house! It’s been empty so long, no one remembers who lived there. The windows are all smashed out, and half the floors have fallen into the rooms below them.” His voice grew quieter as they crossed the orchard, as if he thought someone might hear him. “I even heard people say there’s a body stuffed in the chimney, but I don’t think it’s true. You can tell it’s haunted though. It feels like something’s watching you, or
about to talk in the next room, even in the daytime. Nobody goes there at night.”

Hawk’s excitement was palpable as they pushed stealthily through the thicket toward his house of horrors. But as they broke from cover, he stopped abruptly, crouching down to hide, and frantically motioning Joby to do the same.

“What’s wrong?” Joby whispered.

“Someone’s there!” Hawk moaned quietly. “They’ve ruined it!”

Joby crawled forward, coming shoulder to shoulder with Hawk, and looked out between the branches at an attractive, freshly painted, two-story, wooden house. The lush green lawn around it was neatly mown, and wind chimes tinkled on a porch that wrapped around two sides of the structure.

“Looks like they even pulled that body out of the chimney,” Joby said, glancing up at the smoke drifting cheerfully from the chimney. “Too bad. But don’t worry, this hike’s been plenty—” He fell silent as a man walked into view from behind the house, carrying a garden spade. A man he recognized. With a smile, Joby got up and began to press through the remaining bushes.