Chasing Redbird (4 page)

“You didn't discover it. It was already here. You just found it again. Big deal. I might have found it, if I'd been out here,” Will said.

“I did all the work.”

Will glared at me. “You didn't uncover the whole thing yet. I can uncover some.”

“Me too,” Bonnie said.

I'd had plans for my trail, and now they were all taking it over.

Uncle Nate repeated, “Goes nowhere.” Aunt Jessie seemed uneasy—because she didn't want us all wandering off into the hills, I figured, but I was wrong. Uncle Nate and Aunt Jessie knew what was on that trail, and they didn't want anyone else to find it.

Not long after this, I discovered the maps. Our class took a field trip to a local historical museum, and I hate to say it, but it was the most boring place on this earth. It was dark and musty inside, and you walked around and looked in glass cases which held tiny bits of broken pottery and yellowed books and portraits of old people. Just as I thought I was going to perish from being held captive in that dark room, I wandered over to one exhibit and stared inside at a map. I saw a dotted line, and my eyes followed it across the map, and across these words:
Bybanks–Chocton Trail.

The Bybanks–Chocton Trail! I studied the map. The portion in the case showed the start of it, at Bybanks, just down the road from our farm, but it didn't show our farm or the rest of the trail. When I asked the guide if there were any more of these maps, she led me downstairs to a cobwebby, dark room, with only a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Here were books of maps, loose maps, big maps, little maps—all yellow, all dusty. It didn't take us long to find other maps of the Bybanks– Chocton Trail, and at last we had three separate ones that showed it from start to finish: a twenty-mile trail. We photocopied the maps, and I brought them home and hid them in the back of my closet, underneath my bottle-cap collection. No one ever looked there.

For the next week, I studied these maps every day, memorizing every inch of them. I found the place where our farm was now, the creek, and the stretch of trail I'd already uncovered. They were primitive maps, rough sketches of the trail's course with handwritten legends and names of places that sounded both fabulous and strange. I envisioned myself gliding through Maiden's Walk and Crow Hollow. I'd forge my way along Baby Toe Ridge and recline on Sleepy Bear Ridge. I wasn't so sure about Spook Hollow and Shady Death Ridge, however.

Twice, I returned to the museum, where I learned that the route had originally been an Indian trail, later used by trappers, and later still by loggers. A now busted railroad, set up by a logging company to haul timber down from the hills, ran across the trail near the midpoint.

It was a narrow trail, wide enough for men on horseback, but too narrow for wagons. The lower portions of my trail were laid with stone slabs. The museum guide said this was to make travel easier during the spring, when the ground was muddy and swampy. She also said that settlers had blazed a wider wagon route down near the river, following its meandering course, and that that had evolved into the main road between Bybanks and Chocton.

In the museum, I also found faded photos of people riding on my trail, and each time I set out to clear a new section of the trail, I wondered about these people. Who were they? What were they thinking? Why were they going to Bybanks or to Chocton?

On that day that I planted tomatoes in my squirt garden, I made my way along the mile of the trail that I'd already cleared. Down below me was the farm, our house, the long gravel drive leading to the main road, and beyond were pale rolling hills swooping to the Ohio River, soupy brown from the recent April rains which had swept the bare soil into it.

When I reached the place where I'd last stopped clearing, I found my trowel wedged beneath a bush. The trowel and a hoe were the only tools I had, besides my own two hands, but that's all I needed. I'd pull and scrape, clearing one stone at a time. This was easiest right after a rain, when the earth was loose around the roots of the weeds, or when, for some mysterious reason, the weeds had skipped over a stone and left it nearly bare. But usually it was not so easy, and I'd have to wrench and tug to pull the weeds loose.

Sometimes I'd lie back in the grass and watch the clouds and listen to the deep, dark woods that stretched behind me. The trail was curving in the direction of those woods, and part of me was eager to enter them to see where the trail would lead, and part of me was pigeon-hearted, uneasy about what might await me there.

Clearing the trail was slow work that day. On my way home, when I rounded the bend where I could see the farm below, I noticed Mr. Boone's truck parked beside the barn. During the time his wife and Jake had been away, lonely Mr. Boone had often come to our house. But we'd not seen him since his wife and Jake had come back, and I was surprised that his truck was there.

I made my way down the hill, stopping to check the newly planted tomatoes in the squirt garden, and headed for the house. It may have been Mr. Boone's truck there, but it wasn't Mr. Boone who was visiting.

“
G
uess who's on the porch,” Bonnie said.

“Mr. Boone,” I said.

“Wrong.”

“Mrs. Boone, then.”

“Wrong.”

“So who is it?”

“Guess.”

You can never get a straight answer out of Bonnie.

The whole family was on the porch, even Uncle Nate, and with them was Jake Boone. Everybody was yapping at him a mile a minute, asking him so many questions you'd have thought he was Elvis Presley himself dropping in for a visit. May was sitting next to him on the porch swing, gazing at him dreamily and twirling her hair ribbon. They didn't see me right away.

“So you're working at Flint's store?” Dad was asking.

“Yep, I am,” Jake said.

“How much they paying you?” Uncle Nate demanded. Since Aunt Jessie had died, he'd some-times act irritable and grumpy like this, as if people were annoying him by simply being alive.

Jake told him his hourly wage.

“Highway robbery!” Uncle Nate said.

“It's the minimum wage,” Jake said.

“Highway robbery. I never made that much in a whole dag-blasted week. Dag-blasted inflation. We oughta run them poll-u-ticians out of the country. We oughta—”

“Hey, Zinny!” Jake said. As he stood up, the swing bumped against the back of his legs. May gave me a sour look.

“You're welcome to stay on for dinner,” Mom said.

Jake thanked her, but he had to get to work.

“This time of day?” Uncle Nate said. “Stores oughta be closing at this time of day. Shouldn't be open on a Saturday night. People oughta be at home doing their chores, being with their family. You tell that to Mrs. Flint, you hear?”

Jake stepped off the porch and poked me in the side. “I can't get over you, Zinny. You sure have changed.”

May followed him as if she were attached to him with a string. “Do you think
I've
changed, Jake?” she asked.

“Not a bit,” he said, and May blushed. “Want to see my truck, Zinny?”

“Your Dad's truck?” I said. “Seen it before.”

“I want to show you something.”

“I'll come too,” May said.

On the floor of the truck was a small cardboard box, which Jake handed to me.

May reached for the box. “Here, I'll open it.”

Jake said, “It's for Zinny.”

“For
Zinny
?” May shrank back as if he had slapped her, and when I opened the box, she said,
“Bottle caps?”

“You still collect those?” Jake asked me.

“Sure.” I didn't know what else to say. I didn't know what to think about Jake and his present.

“Bottle caps?”
May said, stuck on those words.

As Jake drove off, May waved delicately at the back end of the truck. “Honestly, Zinny, you're too old to be collecting bottle caps. It's so embarrassing. A person could die of embarrassment with you around.”

Into my mind flew Tommy Salami. His real name was Tom Salome, but even he called himself Tommy Salami. Three years ago he was in May's class at school, but whenever he saw me, he'd give me a present. They were bitty things: a plastic ring from a cereal box; an old bottle from his barn; and a rusty key he'd found along the road. To me, they were treasures, and I got the dizzies just thinking about him.

He would say the most unusual things. He asked me if I'd ever seen trees walk, and if I'd ever wanted to be an aquarium.

“An
aquarium
?” I said. “You mean something in it—a fish?”

“No, I mean the
whole
aquarium. Everything: the water, the plants, the fish, the snails—an aquarium.”

I worshipped Tommy Salami. I thought of him day and night, I dreamed about him, and I wrote his name in all my school books. As far as I was concerned, Tommy Salami had hung the moon and stars; that's how great I thought he was.

Then one day, I saw him walking up our drive. I could barely breathe: Tommy Salami was coming to my house. Tommy Salami was coming to see
me
. Quick as a dog can lick a dish, I whipped a brush through my hair, changed my shirt and ran downstairs. I pushed through the screen door, and there on the porch swing was Tommy Salami. Beside him was May.

I crept back inside, stumbled through the house and out the other side. I made my way down the drive and waited. One hour. Two. At last, I saw Tommy Salami leaving, and I stepped out.

“Zinny?” he said. “Where did
you
come from?”

I didn't answer. There weren't any words.

“I owe you some thanks,” he said. “You must've put in a good word about me with May. She's going to the dance with me. How 'bout that?” He had a grin so wide you'd have thought he had a couple extra sets of teeth. “You're a real peach, Zinny.”

All I could think was that I was
Zinnia Taylor: idiot
. I was mortally embarrassed and certain-sure I'd die in my sleep of complete and total humiliation. I didn't amount to a bucket of spit.

There were more boys like Tommy Salami. There was Jerry Abbott and Mickey Torke, Slim Giblin and Roger Pole. They all plied me with sugar-mouthed flattery and gifts, and they all eventually ended up with May. I might as well have been a pig in a dog race.

I don't know why these boys didn't try to go through Gretchen or Bonnie to win May, or why they didn't just pursue her directly. I guess Gretchen gave off this air that she wouldn't put up with any nonsense, and Bonnie was probably too young. And maybe these boys were afraid of May, afraid she'd turn them down. Nobody was afraid of me. I must have seemed as quiet and as harmless as a mothball.

But after Tommy Salami, I was not as trusting, and by the time poor old Roger Pole came along, I was downright nasty. When he offered me a bag of popcorn, I threw a double duck fit and said, “Take your stupid popcorn and choke on it.”

After Jake gave me the bottle caps, I just felt sad. I sorted through them that evening. There were nearly a hundred. He'd found some rare soda tops, no longer made, and many I'd never seen before. They were all clean, and he must have known how to pop the insides, because none of them were bent. I added them to the others already in my closet.

I had lots of collections: lucky stones (small and smooth and white); zinnia seeds; key chains; buttons; colored pencils; keys; shoelaces (all tied together in one long piece); bottles; bookmarks; postcards; and the bottle caps.

May said it was a sign of my stinginess, that I hoarded things like this. For me, it didn't feel like stinginess. It felt as if I were protecting these things. I wouldn't let anything happen to them. I wouldn't let anyone take them away.

These collections were sheltered in individual boxes crammed into the closet I shared with Bonnie. May called our closet “the pig closet” because it was a mad jumble of things, while the closet May and Gretchen shared at the other end of the room was so neat and tidy it was hard to believe people really used it.