“But Daddyâ”
“Think, honey. We're just at the beginning of our trip. Think about it from the deer's point of view.”
“Let's eat dinner while it's still hot,” Mother said. “Wash your hands, Suzy.”
Suzy went draggingly to the bowl of hot soapy water Mother keeps ready for handwashing.
“And no feeding the deer while we're eating,” Daddy added.
Suzy washed her hands and sat down, looking longingly at the deer. The deer butted her gently to ask for food, but Daddy said firmly, “Not at the table, Suzy,” and after a few moments the
deer wandered off in the direction of the girl scouts. I could see Suzy's eyes fill with tears of disappointment, and her chest got all heave-ey, and she ate ferociously to control herself.
Just at that moment, the right moment, Rob called out, “A skunk! A skunk!” And there my skunk was, I'm sure it was my skunk, strolling nonchalantly right by us, its lovely bushy tail erect, its stripe white against its dark body, paying no more attention to us than it had to me. We might not have been sitting there eating stew. I didn't freeze quite as solid as I had on the side of the canyon, but we all sat very still (even Suzy had no inclination to rush out to cuddle it) until it had disappeared in the bushes on the hill above the water spigot.
Shortly after we'd gone to bed a thunderstorm came up. We were pretty used to them by this time, and we'd been very lucky in having them come either before time to set up camp, or after we'd gone to bed, and got quite accustomed to having high winds batting at the tent. But this was the worst storm we'd had, with thunder reverberating from cliff wall to cliff wall, back and forth against the sides of the canyon, echoing and re-echoing, with a much noisier crashing than it would have made anywhere else. Under cover of all the sound and fury Suzy whispered to me, “Whatever did you go making that crack for, and hurting Mother and Daddy and all?”
“What crack?” I whispered back. I didn't know what in thunder she was talking about.
“About Togetherness. Jeepers, Vicky! We've never gone on about Togetherness. Because we
are
together. We don't have to make a
Thing
about it. We just
are,
and we always
will
be, just the way Mother and Grandfather are, even if they don't see each
other for months and months and months, and the way we are about Uncle Douglas and all.”
“You're too young to understand,” I said.
Suzy's three years younger than I am, and if there's anything she hates, it's being reminded of it. But all she said was, “All I know is that you hurt Mother and Daddy, and I think it was cheap.”
I began to get riled up. “If you don't know what I mean, what about the way you and Maggy always used to yell
get out of our room
if I even stuck my toe across the doorsill?”
“That's not the same thing at all. It didn't hurt your feelings or anything, and you did the same thing if we tried to come in to Rob's and your room. If Rob wasn't around.
He
didn't mind. Anyhow I think what you said was
cheap,
that's all. Good night.” She rolled over, thunderstorm or no thunderstorm, and went to sleep. She could always do that. It made me furious.
Everybody else seemed to have gone to sleep, too, but the storm kept on keeping me awake and I was too hot. Not just around the collar. One thing about sleeping bags, it's difficult to adjust their temperature. You have to have them either open or closed, on you or off, and that night it was too hot with them up and too cool with them down, though I knew we'd need them by morning.
I got to sleep at last, though, and was dreaming that I was out in a tiny boat in the very middle of the ocean, and that a blindingly bright sun was rising, when I realized that the lantern was on and shining against my eyes. I pulled myself out of sleep to see Mother sitting up in the sleeping bag, and Daddy standing in the tent door talking to someone. I had no idea how long we had
been asleep, whether it was in the middle of the night or almost morning.
I heard a voice with a Texan accent drawl, “How long does it take you to break camp? In a hurry?”
“A
little over half an hour,” Daddy said.
“Kin you manage by yourselves? I got to help evacuate the scouts.”
“We can manage,” Daddy said.
I leaned over the tailboard of the car. “What's the matter?”
“Get dressed, Vicky,” Mother told me. “Quickly. It's the storm and the ranger's afraid of flooding. There've been hailstones and roofs ripped off houses a couple of miles from here.” She started shaking Suzy to wake her up. “As soon as you're dressed, Vicky, help me get things back in the car.”
Daddy pulled on his jeans and sweatshirt right over his pajamas, and John must have done the same because Suzy and I weren't quite dressed, moving in a daze of sleep, before Daddy and John started clearing out the tent. Rob was already in the car, and Daddy told Suzy to get in with him and finish dressing there.
I shoved my feet into my sandals and Mother and I grabbed
everything up off the tent floor, rammed pajamas, towels, flashlights into the suitcase, and then I shoved it over the tailgate into the car. Then I ran splashing across the wet ground to the picnic table for the ice box, which was heavy because we had fresh ice in it.
“Can you carry it alone, Vicky?” Mother was taking down the laundry and the line.
I grunted in assent, and when I got back to the car Suzy and Rob helped me lift the ice box in. My clothes were soaking wet; my hair was dripping (of course I'd washed and set it the night before); and when I ran back to Mother I realized that I was no longer just splashing along on wet ground. The water was up to my ankles.
I forgot about just having set my hair.
Daddy and John had the tent rolled up. Mother had let the air out of the mattresses and bundled up the sleeping bags. We'd done everything so hurriedly that it all took up twice as much room as usual, but nobody was bothering about that.
“Everybody in,” Daddy said. “I'll get you up out of the canyon and then John and I'll come back and help with the scouts.”
John and I, dripping, climbed in. Suzy and Rob were sitting wide-eyed and quiet, which is of course very abnormal for both of them. They're chattery kids. At any rate they were dry. Suzy rooted around and found a towel and handed it to me silently. It's things like this that make me feel that Suzy will really end up being a doctor. I mopped at my hair so that water stopped trickling down my neck and gave the towel to John. Suzy found another one for Mother.
Daddy got in. The car wouldn't start. We all sat there, tense and not saying anything, until the motor caught. The headlights
poured across the rain, and great silver drops seemed to rush and quiver along the shafts of golden light. The bushes on the canyon side were bent down under the onslaught of wind and rain. The floor of the canyon had disappeared, covered with a wrinkled carpet of water. I wondered how fast it was rising, and sat a little closer to Suzy than usual. I didn't like the idea that John and Daddy would be going back down into the canyon again. But we could hear shrieks from the scouts, and they would be climbing up the canyon on foot; they were little kids, only Suzy's age, so I knew, I understood, that Daddy and John would have to go back down.
The station wagon splashed forwards; we could hear water swirling behind the wheels. Then we began to climb, and we pulled up out of the water. There was still a swishing sound as we hairpinned up the side of the canyon, but it was only the sound of wheels on wet ground, of rain and wind belting against the car; we had left the flooding campgrounds behind us. Daddy drove quickly, not speaking. His jaw was tight, and he held the steering wheel so that his knuckles showed white in the light from the dashboard. Mother sat beside him, absolutely still, looking ahead through the streaming windshield. The windshield wipers groaned as they tried to keep up with the rain.
The station to the little railway came before the ranger's quarters. The station building where they sold postcards and soft drinks was shut and dark, but there was a shed-like roof over the platform, and in the center of the platform were benches which were still fairly dry.
Daddy stopped. “Everybody out. We'll empty the car. Pile everything in the center of the platform.”
It didn't take us long to get the junk out. Since Suzy and Rob
were dry, Daddy had them stay under the shed, and we shoved things at them to pull in out of the wet.
“Okay,” Daddy said, “Mother and Vicky, put on coats so you won't get cold in your wet things. John and I'll be back as soon as we can.” He swung the car around. The light streamed over us, picking out Suzy and Rob sitting on the bulky pile of tent and sleeping bags, glinted silver against the railroad tracks, against the windows of the darkened station building, then pointed down the canyon. The platform seemed dark and wet and cold. I shivered and looked after the red tail lights as they moved down, down, further away from us. Then I felt my raincoat being draped around my shoulders.
“Let's sing while we wait,” Mother said. “It won't be long now till it gets light.”
I looked at my watch. It was almost five o'clock. Mother started to sing, and I joined in with her rather feebly.
Mother laughed. “What a pathetic noise! Where's my guitar? I want to check that it's not under the tent or getting soaked, anyhow.” We found the guitar between the ice box and the wooden food box, fortunately not crushed, and Mother took it out of the case. “Okay, what'll it be? You choose, Suzy.”
“I don't feel like singing,” Suzy said in a tense voice. “I want to go back down to help Daddy and John.”
“So do we all, Suzy,” Mother said, “but we'd be more of a hindrance than a help. I imagine they want all the room in the car they can get.”
“But they may need medical help!” Suzy said desperately.
Mother laughed, but kind of
with
Suzy, not
at
her. “I think Daddy can take care of that, don't you?”
I remembered something Daddy had said once when we were criticizing Maggy: most of us don't believe that anybody close to us, anybody we love, can really die. We know that it
can
happen, but it happens to other people, not to us. But it
had
happened to Maggy, both her mother and father were dead, and this had come close enough to us so that all parents were forevermore in danger, and I knew that Suzy was thinking about this while Daddy and John were going back down into the flooding canyon. If they were going to be in danger she wanted to be there, too. Somehow you think that if you can just be there, you'll make the danger go away. I know that's how I felt.
Mother spoke quietly, reassuringly. “There isn't anything to be worried about, children. The ranger's evacuating the camp just as a precaution, be
fore
it has a chance to get dangerous. And it'll be a lot easier to get those girl scouts out in the car than on foot. Now. It'll make waiting a lot pleasanter if we play games or sing, and I choose to start with singing. Rob? Something gay.”
“âEddystone Light,'” Rob said promptly.
So Mother started, and we all joined in,
“My father was the keeper of the Eddystone light.
He married a mermaid one fine night.
Of this union there came three,
A porpoise and a porgy and the other was me.
Yo ho HO! the wind blows free.
Oh, for a life on the rolling sea!”
Mother kept us going from one song to another. But we missed Daddy's and John's nice, deep, masculine voices. We
were used to having the bass stronger than the melody, and while we were singing I kept straining to look down the road for the first glimpse of light pushing through the rain ahead of the car, to listen through our voices and Mother's guitar for the sound of the motor. I forgot all about not thinking so much of togetherness. All I wanted in the world was for the family to be together again.
Finally it came, the headlights steaming through the rain, the chugging of the station wagon almost drowned by the shrill voices of the scouts. Daddy stopped by the platform, and he and John had really packed that car! The scouts started pouring out, and they kept on and on coming until it looked like one of those little cars in the circus that look as though they wouldn't hold more than two people at the most and seem to go on disgorging clowns forever. Daddy told us that John and the ranger and the scout leaders and the rest of the scouts were already up on high ground; there wasn't anything more to worry about; and the rain was beginning to let up, anyhow. We'd have got our feet good and wet if we'd stayed down in the canyon, but we wouldn't have drowned.
Daddy turned the car around and headed down the canyon again. The sky began to get white around the edges, and the rain stopped as suddenly as if had begun. While we were waiting for the rest of the scouts we played games to try to get everybody dry, and soon the kids were over their scare and all laughing and having a wonderful time. When the second batch arrived and were reasonably dry and warm we all sat down on the platform and sang. I guess scouts sing the same songs everywhere, though we each taught the other group a couple of new ones. The scouts
all said it was the most exciting Overnight they'd ever had, and, when summoned by the ranger, the school bus which had brought them to the canyon came to pick them up, they didn't want to leave. Their leaders and the ranger and Daddy herded them all in, and they drove off, their heads and arms out the windows, calling and waving good-bye.
We repacked everything in the car, a little more tidily this time, though it still took up more room than usual, and drove to the ranger's headquarters. He had an old-fashioned black combination coal and kerosene stove, and he made an enormous pot of coffee, and even Rob drank some, with lots of milk in it. The ranger got flour and eggs down from a cupboard and Mother made pancakes for everybody, and while we gobbled them the ranger told us stories. The sun was quite high and bright and hot when we left. We certainly felt as though we'd been there more than one night, and it seemed that the ranger was an old, old friend. We promised him that we'd come visit him if ever we were back in Texas, and he was full of plans to come stay with us if ever he came east. We all shook hands solemnly with him, and he gave John a snakeskin belt as a token of thanks for helping with the scouts. The belt is one of John's greatest treasures, and he never wears anything else. I mean that he never wears any other
belt
.
Daddy said we'd have to stop early that afternoon in order to get the tent thoroughly dried out. We left Texas and drove into New Mexico, which was very different country. It was much wilder, and we saw our first buttes, which are cones and peaks of stone sticking up out of the desert. It was also lots more touristy than any place we'd been, with strings of motels and
gift shops and snake farms. Suzy wanted to go into one of these, but Daddy said they were just expensive tourist traps, and she'd have to find her snakes in their natural habitat.
In Santa Fe we did our marketing and drove around a little, but couldn't really get out and sightsee because it was starting to storm again. We felt we'd really had our quota of wind and weather, but the skies didn't seem to agree with us. Santa Fe, with its Indian and Spanish atmosphere, was fascinating, but I won't describe it because anybody can look it up in the
National Geographic
or the encyclopaedia or someplace.
New Mexico was gorgeous, though, and at the same time a little depressing because, except for Santa Fe, it seemed so
poor
. At home in Thornhill nobody is really poor, and it was awful to see the shacks and shanties and the poor, foreign-looking people along the roadside. No wonder D. H. Lawrence wasn't really happy in New Mexico. The non-people part of it was wonderful, though. Mostly the mountains. I do love mountains. There were mountains of all shapes and sizes. In color everything was mostly tan, spotted with the darkness of juniper. I had never seen tan mountains before, or even realized that there
could
be tan mountains. At home at this time of year everything would be a soft, young green, with occasional touches of red or yellow from the early leafing of the maples. There would be a sense of birth, of gentle and fragile newness, so that, looking at the faintly wrinkled leaf of a spring maple as it slowly unfurled, I would touch it almost as timidly as I did Rob's cheek and soft, fuzzy head when Mother first brought him home from the hospital. But in New Mexico there was no sense of spring. Everything seemed ancient, pre-historic. Or maybe I mean post-historic.
This was the kind of landscape, austere and terrible, that I could imagine on a dying planet.
Once Daddy pointed to a river bed coursing with turbulent brown water, with waves seeming to go in every direction. The water wasn't more than three feet deep, I don't think, but it was rushing so wildly that no one could possibly have stood up in it; they'd have been thrown down and sucked under and drowned. This, Daddy explained, was a flash flood, and was what the ranger had been afraid of the night before down in the canyon. Looking at that wild water, I didn't wonder he'd been scared. In this untamed country a river bed can be caked, dry mud one minute and a thunderstorm later it can be a raging torrent. As we looked at the mad waters we understood why campers were warned never, never to set up their tents in dry river beds.