“So help me,” Zachary said, “if I ever get out of here I'll go to the doctors and I'll do what they say. Maybe it takes an earthquake and you yelling your fool head off to make me know ⦠. Hey, Vicky ⦠. You still right there?”
“I'm still right here.”
“Reach in if you feel like holding my hand, hunh?”
In a moment I felt his fingers around mine. Strong. I didn't understand anything. I didn't understand why Zachary wanted to live. I knew I was glad. But I didn't understand.
I remembered Uncle Douglas saying that we're always yelling,
Do it MY way, God, not YOUR way, MY way.
Sometimes He picks most peculiar ways.
I looked up at the sky and at the stars and at the moon, and the moon was no longer smiting me. I didn't know why. I didn't know what the difference was. I didn't understand the psalm any better now, and I still didn't understand about Anne Frank and
the town of Frank, and I'd probably go right on yelling at God to do it my way when I got upset about things.
The point was that now I knew it didn't matter whether or not I understood. It didn't matter because even if I didn't understand, there was something there to
be understood.
That's all. That's all I can say. It didn't really have anything to do with Zachary. It didn't really have anything to do with the earthquake.
Still holding Zachary's hand I got off my knees in front of his hole and lay down. I closed my eyes and I went right to sleep.
I couldn't have been asleep more than a few minutes when I heard a noise. I opened my eyes quickly and looked at the mountain. I looked at the mountain and I saw a light, and I thought, âit's just the moon, rising.
Then I remembered that the moon had risen, that it was shining high and bright in the sky.
In one quick movement I was on my feet, shouting.
“What is it?” Zachary asked.
“Vicky! Vicky! Vicky!”
It wasn't one voice, it was several voices. I recognized Daddy's voice, I recognized John's voice.
“Here!” I shouted back. “HERE!” I stood up and leaped up and down and waved my arms.
“
Go
,” Zachary urged from his dark hole. “Go
to
them.”
Now there were more lights hovering at the edge of what was now the top of the mountain. I ran stumbling across the field. “HERE!” I shouted again. “Zachary and I are here!”
“Can you hear me?” a voice cried. “We'll lower someone down in a minute. Wait!”
“I can hear!” I called back. “I can hear! I'll wait!”
I ran back and told Zachary. Then I ran across the field again and started climbing over the rocks. I could see the shadows of two people slithering down the mountain side. I think they were on ropes. Then one of them dropped to the ground and I could see that it was Daddy and we scrabbled across rocks to get to each other and then I was in his arms, hugging him and clinging to him and crying like a baby.
“Is everybody all right?” I asked, pressing my face against the roughness of his sweater. “Did the mountain fall on you?”
“Everybody's fine,” Daddy said. “It all fell on your side. Oh, Vicky. Vicky.” The other shadow came over the rocks to us. It was a ranger. “Where's Zachary?” Daddy asked.
I pointed to the mound of rocks. “In there. He's trapped in a sort of cave.”
We went hurrying across the field, calling out to Zachary. He called back once, to tell Daddy and the ranger he was okay. Then he was silent.
When we got to the rock pile I got down on my hands and knees in front of the hole again. “Zach. Daddy and a ranger are here. They'll get you out.”
It took about half an hour, but they did it with ropes, through the hole in the top. What Zachary hadn't told me was that when his watch was broken his wrist was broken, too. He never said anything about it, all that time there in darkness and in pain.
When they got him out his face was very tight and strained, and Daddy had him lie down on the grass. I could see that Daddy was taking his pulse as Zachary asked, “Everybody really okay?”
“Everybody's fine,” Daddy answered. “The tent pegs weren't
even uprooted. There's a good fire going and enough hot chocolate and coffee as though we expected a returning army. We'll get you to the hospital and get that wrist fixed up. And we'll check on a few other things at the same time.”
“Yes,” Zachary said. “Anything you say, sir. I'm sorry to have caused so much trouble.”
The men managed to get Zachary up the mountain with ropes and blankets. Then they came back for me, and I did pretty well by myself with the rope, and Daddy and the ranger telling me just what to do.
At the camp the fire was blazing so brightly that it lit up the whole area, but it wasn't half as bright or as warm as my welcome. I was surrounded by everybody all talking and laughing at the same moment, Suzy and Rob tumbling over each other to hug me, John thumping me on the back, the professors pumping my hand, and Mother waiting a little on the outskirts until things had calmed down and then holding me in her arms, tight, tight, and just murmuring “Vicky. Vicky.” We were both crying and we didn't even know it. At least I didn't.
Zachary was lying on a cot in his tent, drinking coffee, while Mrs. Grey fluttered about, crying, and Mr. Grey tried to calm her down, and Zachary kept telling them both to get out, he didn't want anybody near him but Daddy. Mother and the professors' wives must have used up every piece of bread everybody had, because there was a whole enormous pile of sandwiches on our picnic table, and Rob insisted on leading me over there as though I were an infant and poking bites of sandwich into my mouth. Then he went into the tent and got Elephant's Child and wound him up and put him in my lap. I sat there, leaning against
Mother, still too excited to be tired, and so happy that it took me a while to realize that I was drinking out of two cups, one hot chocolate and the other coffee. Mother's arm was firmly around me and everybody else was hovering and I relaxed into comfort and love.
Then Daddy called, “Come here, Vicky. We're going to take Zach down to the hospital now.”
I went back to the Greys' elegant tent and stood looking down at Zachary.
He was very white, almost grey, and he spoke as though he were so tired he could hardly shape the words. “Just want to tell you I meant what I said, Vicky. Be seeing you.”
Then they lifted him into the ranger's truck, Daddy got in beside him, and they drove off, the Greys following in their station wagon.
The rest of us sat around the fire and ate, and, just the way it did on the beach the evening Uncle Douglas and Aunt Elena got married, food seemed to put everything back into perspective again. One of the professors recited “Jabberwocky” in Greek and got us all laughing, and then Mother insisted that we all get some sleep for what was left of the night.
Even though it was so late Mother read to us, I think mostly to get us calmed down enough to go to sleep. It worked with the little ones, but after we'd said prayers and Mother had turned out the lantern I felt very wide awake, happy, but not a bit sleepy. When I did start to get sleepy I'd drift into a dream of being down on the other side of the fallen mountain again and that would jerk me into being awake. I whispered, “Mother?”
“Yes, darling?”
I crawled out of my sleeping bag and climbed down off the tailgate of the car and sat on the double sleeping bag by her.
“Lie down,” she said. “Daddy won't be back for a while.”
So I lay down and held Mother's hand, the way I used to do after a nightmare when I was Rob's age, and then I was able to fall into a quiet, lovely sleep.
W
hen I opened my eyes I could tell that the sun was quite high, and I'd waked up only because I heard the sound of a car coming up the hill to the campgrounds. I thought it was Daddy coming back from the hospital, and I went sleepily to the door of the tent, my hair a mess, my face all twisted up in a yawn.
But it wasn't the ranger's truck with Daddy, it was a beat up old car with Don at the wheel, and Steve and Andy leaning anxiously out the windows.
Then there was excited hellos all around with everybody hugging as though we'd known each other forever, and Andy had his arm about my waist and we were waltzing around the picnic table and the fireplace.
Well. You probably read about the earthquake in the newspapers. It hit mostly Wyoming and Montana, and because the worst of it was in the wilderness not many people were hurt. Yellowstone had quite a bit of it, and from what Andy, Don, and
Steve told us I was just as glad we were where we were instead of Yellowstone. Quite a few geysers stopped spouting, and new ones sprang up where there hadn't been geysers before, but it wasn't so much the geysers that worried me as the idea of the bears. I'm sure those bears who lived right by our campsite must have been very much upset by the earthquake, and I wouldn't have wanted a bear trying to get into the sleeping bag with me for comfort.
Andy hadn't been worrying about bears or geysers, though. They'd heard that the Black Ram section of Wyoming had been hard hit by the earthquake, and Andy felt he was responsible for our being there, so, the first minute they could, they set off to see if we were all right.
I've never felt so protected. Or so happy. It was a peak of happiness I don't suppose I'll ever reach again.
We all got dressed and made a communal breakfast. The bread had been used up the night before, but we had pancakes, dozens and dozens of pancakes. You should see Andy eat pancakes!
“What about this weird-o who came looking for you yesterday?” Andy asked, his mouth full.
So then we told him about how Zachary and I were on the other side of the mountain when it fell, and Zachary getting trapped in the cave and all, and Andy said, just about the way Zachary had said it, “I don't want you to see him again.”
We were finishing up when Daddy and the ranger came back, so we made some more pancakes for them. Zachary's wrist had been operated on and was in a cast. His heart had stood the operation and he was getting along all right. They were going
to keep him in the hospital and give him a lot more tests he should have had long ago and had refused to have, and Daddy thought that if he really took care of himself the way he'd promised he'd be okay. He'd never be able to climb the Himalayas, but he could live a perfectly normal life.
We all, the Fords, the Greek professors and their wives, and us Austins, decided to spend at least another night right where we were. Everybody was exhausted and felt the need to recover from the events of the night before, and Daddy seemed to think that I particularly needed to recover, but, except for feeling a bit achey, and discovering scratches all over my arms and legs, I'd never felt so wonderful in my life. I took a long, deep nap in the afternoon, and in the evening Andy drove me to the hospital to see Zachary.
I sat beside Andy in the car and we didn't talk. It was the kind of silence I had with Andy, warm and complete in itself. As we got to the hospital Andy said, “I'll go in with you for just a minute, and then I'll leave you alone with that clunk. But don't stay long. Your father said only five minutes, anyhow.”
“He isn't a clunk, Andy,” I said.
We walked down a long, quiet corridor to Zachary's room. He was lying flat in the bed, his eyes closed, his face as white as the bedclothes. I knocked gently on the door and his eyes flew open and he smiled.
“Vicky!” And then, to Andy, “Oh. Hi.”
“Hi,” Andy said. “How you doing?”
“Fine,” Zachary said. “Wind that crank at the bottom of the bed, will you, please, so I can sit up?”
Andy cranked him up, and then the two of them sort of looked at each other, Zachary all white and black like a moonlight
night, with his pale skin and dark hair and fringed eyes, and Andy like a summer morning, with his brilliant red hair and blue eyes. Zachary and Andy looked at each other, and I looked at them, and I could just hear Mother saying, “As John Donne says, Comparisons are odious,” and suddenly my heart lifted because it was absolutely true. There wasn't any need of comparisons.
Zachary picked up the newspaper that was lying on the bed as though he'd been reading it before he got tired. “What's black and white and red all over?”
“A newspaper,” Andy answered disgustedly.
“Nah,” Zachary said. “An embarrassed zebra.” He closed his eyes, then opened them again. “That's me, Vicky-O. I'm very embarrassed about all this.”
“There's nothing to be embarrassed about,” I said uncomfortably.
Andy tapped me on the arm. “I'll wait downstairs, Vicky. Take it easy, Zach.”
Zachary waited until the sound of Andy's footsteps had diminished down the corridor. Then he said, “What, for cripes sakes, is
he
doing here?”
I'd forgotten that Zachary wouldn't know that the Ford boys had come to look for us, so I explained. “After all,” I ended up, “Andy blamed himself because we'd
gone
to the Black Ram campsite.”
“It was just an excuse,” Zachary said, “to go chasing after you all over the countryside, and that's
my
business. Where's he live in the winter?”
“New York.”
Zachary let out a yowl, a loud one, and I heard footsteps
hurrying down the corridor, and a nurse stuck her head in the door. “What's going on in here?”
“Somebody's trying to steal my girl,” Zachary said.
“Is waking up the entire place going to keep her?” Then she smiled at Zachary. “I admit she's probably worth howling about, but no more tonight, huh? You're supposed to be keeping quiet.” She cranked him down briskly. “I'll give you two kids three more minutes, then I've got to put baby to bed. Be good now.”
“Vicky,” Zachary said. “I'm going to do exactly that. Be good. I promised. And I'm going to keep my promise ⦠. Vicky. About last night. I'm sorry.” He reached out gropingly with his good hand and I took it in mine.
“It wasn't your fault. You didn't start the earthquake or anything.”
“Yes, but if I hadn't lured you over the mountain top you'd have been safely in the campgrounds with your family. And so would I.”
I looked at him carefully. His words had come out with an effort. As he'd said, apologies didn't come easy to Zachary. “The whole thing,” I said, “is if you really mean it about taking care of yourself and not trying to dig yourself an early grave any more. If you really mean it, then none of the rest of it mattered. I'm glad it happened.”
“For some reason I really mean it,” Zachary said. “So help me I can't tell you why, but I mean it. I think it's something of you rubbed off on me. Hey, you're all scratched up. Was that last night, climbing over rocks and stuff?”
I nodded. Then I said, “Zach, there's something I have to tell you.”
“What now?”
“I'mâI'm not quite sixteen.”
“You mean you're only fifteen?”
“Wellânot quite.”
“Only
four
teen, for crying out loud?”
I nodded.
He reached out with his good hand and for a moment I thought he was going to hit me, but he only took my hand in his and pressed it. “You're quite a kid,” he said softly. Then, “Vicky, in this bed table thing here. There's a piece of paper and a pencil. Now write me down where you're going to get mail next. Okay. Now we're going to keep in touch, see? Promise?”
“I promise.” I leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.
I
did it. I kissed a boy myself and I didn't even feel funny about it. It wasn't like Zachary kissing
me
, or anything. It wasn't exciting or disturbing. It just meant we were going to go on being friends.
That's really all.
That's really all that happened that summer.
Andy took me back to camp and the next day we headed for home. Andy was full of plans for seeing me in New York, and before we left he must have handed me at least ten slips of paper with his address and phone number. It looked as though it was going to be a busy winter.
As we drove away from Black Ram Suzy said, “I like Andy
lots
better than I like Zachary. I'm glad it's Andy who lives in New York.”
All I said was, “As John Fortescue said, compariâ”
“Oh, shut up, Vicky,” Suzy said.
I'm not going to tell about the trip home. It was beautifully
uneventful. We loved going to a real, working cowboy's rodeo in Sheridan, Wyoming; we loved the ships going through the locks at Sault San' Marie; and the Retreat at the big fort in Quebec. But nothing exciting happened. We'd had more than enough excitement for one trip.
After Quebec we went right to the Island where we kids were to stay with Grandfather while Mother and Daddy found a place for us in New York.
It was wonderful to see Grandfather again, with his white hair blowing in the ocean breeze, and his face all lit up from inside with pleasure at seeing us all. We hadn't been in the stable for five minutes before Mother had the
Fifth Brandenburg Concerto
going on the phonograph; Daddy was going over the mail, which Grandfather had been holding for us; yes, I had letters from both Zachary and Andy, and I put them in my pocket to take down to the beach where I could sit on my rock and read them in peace (“I suppose you realize, Vicky,” Daddy'd said as he handed me the letters, “that you now know boys from A to Z?” No, I hadn't realized it. It was quite a thought!). Suzy danced up and down and asked if she could make a milkshake, and if Mother would bake an apple pie for dinner (it was almost six o'clock); Rob and John went up to the loft and got into their trunks so they could have a dip before dinner; the phone rang, long distance for Daddy from New York; Mother was collecting all our dirty laundry to take to the laundromat in the morning, and then she got a steak out of Grandfather's freezer to celebrate; and we all went around turning on lights and trying all the electrical equipment just the way we used to do in Thornhill after an ice storm had broken lines and caused a power failure.
This was even more fun because we'd been so long in the wilderness. Suzy said, “Mother, why do you keep looking in the refrigerator and at the stove?”
Mother said, “Want to build a fire on the beach for dinner tonight, Suzy?”
“Sure,” Suzy said enthusiastically, and couldn't understand why everybody jumped on her.
Daddy called in for everybody to be quiet, he couldn't hear on the telephone.
We tried our best to calm down, and Mother said
all
of us go down to the beach for an hour so she could talk to Grandfather and get dinner in a real kitchen in peace and quiet.
I sat on my rock in Grandfather's cove and read Zachary's letter and Andy's letter. Z to A. John and Suzy and Rob waded into the ocean where the breakers were coming in with slow majesty, long, lacy, deliberate rows of them, delicately crested and proud, and very different from the wild surf at Laguna Beach. After a while John took the little ones and went around into the bigger cove next to Grandfather's cove, so that I seemed to be entirely alone, a small speck in the vastness of beach and ocean.
The last time I'd sat on the rock in Grandfather's cove was before Uncle Douglas and Aunt Elena were married and I'd been full of fear and confusion. I had thought that life was over, and now I knew that it was only beginning. It was amazing that covering the distance between the Atlantic and the Pacific and back again could make so much difference. Somehow all those miles had stretched me, too. Not just the distance, but the things that had happened. It was the big things like Zachary and Andy and
the earthquake. And the little things like filling a pot of water to boil from a rushing stream in the mountains of British Columbia. Or lying in my sleeping bag at night and listening to a coyote crying across the canyon.
The last time I'd sat on the rock all the pieces of the puzzle that made up my picture had been scattered, and now they had come together and I knew who I was. I was myself.
I was Vicky Austin.