We shut the car up tight and went sightseeing.
I seem to have felt about lots of the places we visited that they belonged on another planet, but Yellowstone really did. If you could take away the trees and the few green patches, the surface of the earth would look like a Bonestell painting of Mercury, rust and yellow crust, boiling waters, some blue, some an emerald green from the yellow algae. The weirdest was a pool of bubbling clay, pink and ivory and grey, oozily gurgling.
When we got back to the tent the boys were cooking their dinner, hamburgers, which was exactly what we were having that night. A large bear was hovering over the boys, and Andy, who was the one who seemed to talk the least, kept banging two tin plates in the bear's face, and then it would retreat a few inches.
The minute our hamburgers began to send up their delightful aroma the bear moved away from the boys and came over to us, so Mother grabbed two tin plates and whacked them together, and Andy came over with
his
tin plates and managed to drive the bear across the road. But at Yellowstone you never just sat down and relaxed. You were always looking around for bears.
The boys walked over to the campfire program with us. Steve and Don walked with John and talked college. Don went to Oberlin and Steve to Swarthmore, and one of the things they'd been doing on their trip was give Andy a chance to look over some colleges.
Andy fell into step by me, but he wasn't very talkative. He did point out a mule deer for Suzy. But mostly he didn't say anything. John said afterwards to me, “Why didn't you
say
something to Andy? I mean the whole time we were waiting for the program to begin you just
sat
there, like a bump on a log.”
“He didn't seem to want to talk.”
“You yakked enough with that dumb
Zach
ary. Couldn't you have asked him a few questions or something?”
“It didn't seem necessary.” I tried to sound lofty. But it was true. I had this funny feeling with Andy that you didn't have to talk all the time. It was perfectly all right just to sit and look around and appreciate things. Anyhow, the others talked enough
for Andy and me, and I listened to them, and I think he did, too. It was all right when they talked about college and New York and jazz like that, but I didn't like it when Don told about how some people just won't heed the warnings to stay on the wooden paths. The crust of the earth at Yellowstone is so thin that if you step on it you'll go right through into boiling water, but every once in a while somebody'll forget to watch a child, and the child will step off the path, and get scalded. To death. I think they were warning us about Rob. But they needn't have. Mother never let go his hand while we were wandering around. What with people being hurt by bears and scalded by boiling water I didn't feel too happy about Yellowstone.
The next morning we all took showersâpay ones againâand then went to look for geysers. We didn't see the Ford boys, though their tent was still there, and their bathing trunks hanging out on the line. In the afternoon we saw Andy at Clepsydia Geyser, and just as we said “hello” the geyser began bursting forth, shooting up out of four holes simultaneously. Andy and the ranger who was standing with him there got very excited. The ranger told us that we were seeing the geyser in its wild stage; this was only the fifth time this year it had come shooting up that way, and very few tourists ever see it.
When Clepsydia had stopped spurting Andy turned to me and said, “How about ditching your family and coming to Great Fountain with me? It'll mean just sitting and waiting because it doesn't spout on time like Old Faithful. Most people don't have the patience to wait for it, but Don and Steve saw it last year, and it's supposed to be the most spectacular of all the geysers, so I'm determined to see it.”
“I'd love to,” I said.
Andy turned to Daddy. “Okay if I kidnap Vicky for the afternoon? I don't think Suzy and Rob'd be interested in sitting around waiting for Great Fountain.”
He didn't mention John, and Daddy said it was okay, he thought they'd all go for a swim.
Andy and I set off. Again we didn't say anything, and again it didn't seem necessary. I had the funniest feeling of being comfortable with Andy. There wasn't anything comfortable about Zachary. He was exciting and scary and I was always a little afraid he'd stop liking me. But Andy didn't say anything about liking me or not liking me. I couldn't even tell whether he did or not. It didn't seem to matter. I just felt that while he was around everything was okay.
Suddenly he grabbed my arm and said, “HEY!” in a loud, startled voice. I looked around and there was a little kid with a frizzy permanent holding out half a sandwich to a bear.
“I
t's that dratted Jo-Lee,” Andy said, and started to run towards her. The bear reached for the sandwich and grabbed Jo-Lee at the same time, and the kid began to shriek. A fat man standing near with a cigar in his mouth began to shout and jump up and down. He looked like the American in the movie about the Two Kingstons, and he swotted ineffectually at the bear. People came running, and Jo-Lee shrieked louder and louder, and I could see that the bear had her by the arm.
Andy sprinted to the fat man, grabbed the lighted cigar from his mouth, and held the glowing end to the bear's nose. The bear dropped Jo-Lee and rubbed his nose in a surprised way. Then he turned and waddled off.
Jo-Lee kept on howling and Andy looked at her arm. A ranger came hurrying over, and Andy said, “It's just a scratch. Not too bad a one. She was feeding the bear, the dumb kid, after all we've told her.”
“She your sister?” the ranger asked.
Andy looked horrified at the thought, and explained that Jo-Lee belonged to a family camping nearby. The ranger wanted us to come along with him to the first aid station, and then wanted Andy to look up Jo-Lee's mother.
“What're you doing wandering about
alone
, anyhow?” Andy asker her crossly.
Jo-Lee just howled. She made an ugly face when she cried and even though she was a
little
kid, about Rob's age, you didn't want to pick her up and comfort her. You wanted to smack her bottom. At least I did.
“This is their fourth year here, for crying out loud,” Andy said indignantly to the ranger. “Some people just never learn. Stop crying, Jo-Lee. You're okay. And if you
dare
ever go off by yourself this way again I'm going to wallop you. Somebody has to.”
“That was quick thinking about the cigar, son,” the ranger said, taking Jo-Lee by the hand and dragging her down the path.
“It wasn't my idea,” Andy explained. “I read about somebody doing it once in Central Park Zoo when a bear reached through the bars and grabbed a kid who was teasing it. I can tell you I was glad it really worked.”
Jo-Lee made Andy go in with her to the first aid station, so the ranger and I went off to find the rest of the family. The kids were all scattered somewhere, and Joe was probably off fishing with his boss again, but the mother was sound asleep in her tent, with a carton of orange juice beside her. The ranger took the orange juice and chucked it into one of the garbage cans in a kind of fury. Then we wakened the mother and took her back to the first aid station. She gabbled so all the way we never had a chance
really to explain what had happened. We left her with Jo-Lee, who started to howl again the minute she saw her mother, and Andy said, “Come on, Vicky,” and grabbed my hand and we set off for Great Fountain.
“If that darned kid's made us miss it I
will
wallop her. See if I don't.” Then he didn't say anything and we half ran, half walked down the path leading to Great Fountain. After a while he growled, “I didn't mean to seem brutal with that kid, but I just don't have any patience with deliberate stupidity.
Any
body with the intelligence of a three year old ought to be able to understand that the warnings they give you when you come into the park mean just what they say.” Then he snapped his jaws closed again.
When we got to Great Fountain there wasn't any sign of activity. “She spouts once a day, about,” Andy said, “but there isn't
any
regularity at all.” He asked around, and there were a couple of people who'd been waiting there since morning, so at least we hadn't missed anything. Andy led me over to a patch of grass away from the others and we sat down.
“We can see from here if anything starts,” Andy said. “I don't feel like getting into conversations with anybody.”
I just nodded and we sat there. The sun was warm, but not too hot, just vital and comforting. Andy started to whistle. The melody was familiar and at first it seemed to me that it was Zachary's awful song. I thought,âOh, no, not
you
, Andy! Then I realized that it wasn't Zachary's song at all, but Daddy's “Tumbling along with the tumbling tumbleweed,” and for some reason the fact that
this
was what Andy was whistling made me intensely happy. He lay back on his elbows, his lips pursed out in his whistle, and I tried to look at him out of the corner of my eye
so he wouldn't realize I was doing it. His face was all freckled with the freckles mixing in with his tan. His eyes were a
very
bright blue. He had on chino shorts and a blue cotton shirt and he looked and acted about as different from Zachary as could possibly be. I certainly couldn't imagine Andy in a black leather jacket.
Zachary's poem was back in the tent. I'd worn it out too much to keep it in the pocket of my Bermudas. I didn't need to look at it.
They're rioting in Africa,
They're starving in Spain.
When will I see
My Vicky bird again?
You couldn't possibly, not possibly, imagine Andy writing anybody anything like that.
“What I like about you, Vicky,” Andy said so suddenly that I jumped, “is that you don't talk all the time the way most girls do. It's not that I have anything against talking. In fact I propose to do a good deal of talking while we're waiting for Great Fountain. We may have a long wait. Do you mind?”
“No,” I said. I thought I probably should have said something more, but I was kind of waiting around to see what Andy was going to talk about.
“I just don't like to talk,” he said, “unless I have a
reason
. I mean there's no point yakking just to see if your jaw's still hinged. When I talk I want to find out about things. Or impart useful information.” He grinned. “Did you know Yellowstone's
the only other place besides Iceland and New Zealand that has geysers?”
“Nope. Live and learn,” I said.
“I have a summer project in science for my school, and I'm doing it on geysers. They load us down with all this summer homework. It's a good school, though.”
“Where is it?”
“In New York, where we live. St. Andrew's. So of course it was the only logical place for me to go. Add to that, it's only a few blocks from our apartment. My father teaches Chaucer and all that gluck at Columbia. He and my mother are in England this summer. They'll probably come back
speaking
Chaucerian.
A nyghtengale, upon a cedir grene, Under the chambre wal there as she lay, Ful loude ayein the moone shene
⦠kookie stuff, but my father makes it sound as though it had
some
sense. Your father's a doctor?”
“Yes.”
“John says you're going to be living in New York next year. How d'you think you're going to like it?”
“It's going to be different from Thornhill, that's for sure,” I said.
“Know where you're going to be living?”
I shook my head. “When we get back Mother and Daddy are going to look for a place, and see about schools and stuff.”
“You sound kind of nervous about it,” Andy said.
“I think maybe I am.”
“I'll give you my phone number. You give me a ring or drop me a line or something when you know where you're going to be, and maybe I can show you around. I know New York inside out, and believe me, there isn't any place in the world like it.”
“Is this good or bad?”
“Both. Some people hate it and some people love it. As for me I wouldn't want to live any place else. If my father didn't
work
at Columbia, and if I didn't want to go away from home for college, I'd stay right there. But after I get out of school I'm coming right back. And if I have to do graduate work or something I'll do it right there.”
“Graduate work in what?”
Andy flung out his arms in a wide, kind of despairing gesture. “You got me there. I haven't the faintest idea. Don's all set to teach English and write and stuff on the side. He's really good. He's already sold a couple of stories. Steve wants to do something overseas in the diplomatic service or the U.S.I.A. or something. Maybe the Peace Corps for a while. As for me, I'm no dope, I've got a perfectly good mind, and I haven't the faintest idea what to do with it.”
I rolled over on the grass and felt so grateful to Andy I could have hugged him. “Oh, Andy!” I cried. “Me, too! John's always known he was going into physics or chemical engineering or something. And Suzy thinks she's practically
through
medical school. Zachary's going to be a lawyer. And I just don't know where I'm going.”
“Who's this Zachary?”
“Oh, he's this boy in California.”
“Old friend?”
“No, we just met him this summer. The thing is,
he
knows what he's going to do,
John
knows what he's going to do,
Suzy
knows, everybody knows except me.
“I bet you're no slouch in school, though,” Andy said.
“I get good enough
grades
and stuff. I just don't have any
talent
.”
Andy extended his hand. “Shake. You're in good company. I don't let it worry me. After all, we've got till the end of sophomore year in college before we have to make up our minds what we're going to major in. The main thing is to find a good general college, with high scholastic standing, take as wide a range of subjects as possible during the first two years. And then, by golly, inspiration had better descend. Listen, if your parents haven't done anything about schools they could do worse than look up St. Andrew's.”
“Isn't it a boy's school?”
“Co-ed. Nursery school right on through. It's run by these Episcopal nuns but they're really swell. Most of them have Ph.D.s and stuff. Then there're a lot of lay teachers, too. Some really good men. Take our Latin guy. He's this Mo
ham
medan from Indonesia and he's teriff. Another thing, it's not too expensive as schools go. I don't know if you're rolling, or not.”
“We're not.”
“And if John's going to college and there're three of you going to school that's going to take quite a hunk. If you want to get into a good college you've
got
to have a good education. Steve took
four
languages before he ever went to college. French, German, Latin, and Russian. Not many schools give you that. He wanted to take Spanish, too, but they wouldn't let him carry that heavy a load, because he had to do all the regular stuff, math and history and all, along with the languages. And you don't have to be an Episcopalian or anything. I mean, the kids are
every
thing. All races and colors and all that, too. Last year Head of School was from Sao Paolo, Brazil, though he's lived here for six
years. His father's in the embassy. This year it's just a plain old New Yorker.”
I looked at Andy and he looked kind of self-conscious. “Such as you?”
“Well. Yah.”
“Congratulations. I think that's swell.”
He grinned and began pulling up little pieces of grass. “I have to admit I'm pleased. Don was Head of School his year, and Steve was valedictorian, so the competition was pretty stiff all around. You see, I happen to think it's a great school. It's not just like being the head of any old school. Listen, where are you going next? I don't mean after school, I mean after Yellowstone.”
“I don't know,” I said. “Daddy wants to go to some place that isn't crowded.”
“He
does?
We know
the
place. Honest. It's a little campsite hardly anybody knows about in the Black Ram mountains. It isn't in any of the camping books or anything. It's this beautiful sort of plateau way up high in the hills and there're never more than a couple of tents there. Want me to tell your father about it?”
“Sure. It sounds like fun.”
Some people came strolling up, then, to ask about Great Fountain, so we sent them off to ask the people who'd been there ever since morning and seemed to know all about it.
Mother and Daddy and the others came by after swimming, and Daddy said I ought to go back and help Mother get dinner.
Andy said, “Sir, she's waited all this time, wouldn't you consider letting her off just this once? She's bound to start spouting soon. Not Vicky. Great Fountain. And I'll treat her to a hot dog or something afterwards. Not Great Fountain. Vicky. And we could meet you at the evening program.”
Mother said, “We're not going to have anything exciting for dinner and I can get along without you perfectly well, Vic. This kind of patience ought to be rewarded. Anybody else want to stay and watch?”
I sat very still in concentration. No. No. I want to talk to Andy alone. I love you all but I don't want you here now. No.