America America (10 page)

L
ATER THAT NIGHT,
there was rain. Sometime well before dawn the sound of it grew louder and woke me in the blackness. Then I realized it wasn’t rain. Someone was tapping on my screen. “Come out,” I heard Christian say.

“Shhh—” I climbed from bed. “How’d you get up here?”

“Flew.” She flapped her arms and jumped on the metal roof.

“Shhh,” I said again. “Come in—come inside.”

“No, you come outside.” She shone a flashlight in my face. “You were asleep,” she said. “I should have known.”

“What did you expect me to be doing?”

“Thinking. Like me.”

“About what?”

“The world. Everything.
You
, I guess.” Then she said, “All I can say is you better hurry—we’ll lose the moon.” She leaned in closer. “You’ll need your shoes.”

I lifted the screen into the house. She took my hand, pulled me through the open window, and led me straight to the edge of the roof, where the cedar reached over the eave. My parents’ room was around the corner, and Mr. McGowar’s was right behind us. She took hold of a branch and swung toward the trunk, then scrambled down through the boughs.

In a moment I was next to her on the ground. She took my arm and pulled me across to the alley. I was holding my shoes in one hand until I hopped for a few steps and slipped them on. She wasn’t going to let me kiss her again. That’s what it seemed like to me. Not here, at least.

In the distance a dog barked.

“Church,” she said. “Quiet.”

Then she was off. She moved quickly, down Dumfries onto the grounds of the estate, turning at the far side of the lower stand of birch, then heading up into the pines. I followed. The footing changed to soft needles, then to packed dirt along the grade near the highway. Then the mulch of the upper oaks, and at last tall grass. We were out onto the unmowed field at the top of the property. Across the dark expanse, the huge Lodge Chief pine stood out against the purplish sky; Christian stood below it, the flashlight high above her head.

When I reached her she was still standing like that, at the base of the great tree, her head tilted back. The flashlight was on the ground now, casting light through the grass.

“Westinghouse threw the first switch here,” she said.

“The first what?”

“George Westinghouse. Westinghouse Electric. Grandfather knew everyone. Westinghouse wanted to beat out Edison, so he wired it for Grandfather and threw the first switch for the lights. In eighteen-ninety-something. Christmas Eve. People thought it was going to explode.”

“I love the lights,” I said.

“There’s a story to them like everything else. Grandfather never paid him. He just threatened to hire Edison instead.”

I waited.

“You coming?” she finally asked. “It’ll take your breath away. Come on, Corey.” She moved in among the roots, grabbed hold of the lowest bough, and without saying anything more pulled herself up into the branches. The needles swayed, then stilled.

I must say, I could barely keep close. Above me, she rose like a creature of the jungle. The great pine’s limbs were evenly spaced most of the way up the trunk, but I was more cautious than Christian. I’d picked up her flashlight and wedged it into my pocket. Inside the tent of needles the night was black, but I could see her white shirt above me, a pale shape in the moonlight.

When I reached her at last, she was leaning back against the trunk. We might have been sixty feet in the air. Through the dense needles the lights of the entrance lane cast a faint channel above the trees.

“You know why we came?” she said.

I took a spot a couple of limbs down. “I can’t say I do.”

She pushed on a branch and a triangle of sky opened up. “For the view.”

“Okay.”

“Look at it.”

“I am.”

“No. Really—
look
at it.”

There it was. The purplish band at the horizon. The blue-black slit of the distant lake in the moonlight.

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

“It is. I could see why they thought it would explode.”

“What would explode?”

She didn’t answer. “That was nice,” she said instead. “In the barn.”

“It was.”

“But it doesn’t mean anything.”

I looked up at her.

She shook her leg and a patch of sky moved sideways, then closed. The needles rustled again and a moment later a smaller patch opened above. “It doesn’t mean it’ll happen again, you know?”

“I know.”

She moved around her new perch above me. After a moment, she said, “Then felt I like some watcher of the skies—”

This was from a poem we’d read at school.

A breeze rose and the trunk swayed.

“When a new planet swims into the ken,” she said. Then she stopped. After a time, she added, “I don’t know—it’s probably silly.”

“It’s not silly.”

“I feel like a balloon that’s ready to burst,” she said. She shook her head. “With happiness.” She shook it again. “No. Not happiness. That’s going to burst with ecstasy.”

I looked up again.

“I’m all blown up,” she said. She reached out her arms. “I’m ready to burst.”

“I’m glad we did this, Christian. I’m glad we did all of this. I’m glad you came to get me.”

“Poof.”

I reached up and touched her arm. “We can go down.”

“Don’t,” she said. “I’d rather go up.”

She started moving again.

“Christian, it getting thin up here.”

“See the moon?”

“Let’s sit.”

“Oh, come on, Corey! Not you! Come up with me. See the moon?”

I climbed a few feet. In the distance I heard Churchill again. “We’re pretty high up already,” I said. I could see the tops of the other trees below us now. The moon was setting over them, orange and big. The trunk here was no wider than my leg, and it was swaying as she moved. I climbed slowly until I was able to reach out and touch her ankle.

“Oh, stop,” she said. She moved out farther. “Corey Worrier!” She laughed. “You have to trust.”

A break appeared in the wall of needles.

“Trust who?”

“That’s funny. The gods.”

“Okay. Maybe we can just sit here and trust them?”

“Corey,” she whispered, “today we witnessed something we’ll never forget.” She looked down at me. “Something
historic
.”

“We did,” I answered.

Then she was quiet. How long we sat like that, I don’t know. But every few minutes she would find a bit of new energy and move up a limb or two. And I would follow. We must have been eighty feet up now. The early morning wind had picked up and the trunk was swaying steadily. The needles making their sifty murmur. I was looking through them to the west, toward the house. A light had come on downstairs.

After a time, she said softly, “I don’t know—sometimes I have it in my hand. But then I get scared.”

“Like now?”

“And I ruin it.”

“You haven’t ruined anything, Christian.”

I moved out toward her again, keeping my eyes on the house. She let me touch her arm. It was shivering.

“Christian,” I said. “It’s me.”

“Corey, it’s indescribably beautiful up here.”

“I know. You look scared.”

“
You
look scared.”

“I am.”

The needles shook and then dipped farther, and then I was aware that the branch was moving in a different way. She was shuddering. The gap widened and that’s when I saw another flicker of light, in the trees at the bottom of the hill.

“Let’s just stay here now,” I said.

Another one appeared next to it. Two lights: moving toward us.

“I know you’re different, Corey. I know you believe it, too.”

“I never know what you mean—”

“Go to hell.”

Behind her, I took the flashlight from my pocket and blinked it on and off. “That’s something your sister would say.”

“Damn you!”

“So’s that.”

I blinked it again. Then I peered into the darkness. One of the other lights was on the hill now.

“We stole this from the Seneca,” she said. “All this land.”

“Your grandfather built it, Christian. From nothing.”

“Damn you, Corey.”

“Come back this way. We can sit if you want. But come in closer.”

She was two branches above me, and we sat like that for a while, silently; then after a certain period she turned and climbed down to me. I reached for her arm and held it. And presently, after a few more minutes, I could feel her relax. “God,” she said at last. “You must think I’m crazy.”

At the time, I think, I didn’t. I was driven only by fear—not just that harm would come to her in that tree, but that harm was about to arrive for both of us, in the form of those two lights that were approaching; but by the time they arrived and we heard Churchill’s steady barking, we had both started the long climb down the trunk. And by the time Mr. Metarey’s flashlight was shining among the branches, we were almost at the bottom. I held Christian under her shoulders as she let herself drop into her father’s arms. He spread his coat over her, then took her hand.

“I can explain, sir,” I said when I was on the ground.

Gil McKinstrey stood off to the side with a hurricane lantern.

“You don’t have to,” Mr. Metarey answered. “I imagine I know.”

“It’s not what you think, Mr. Metarey.”

“Don’t worry, Corey. I know it’s not. I suspect I know what it was. I’m grateful, that’s all.” He looked down the hill. “Thank you.”

Then they started across the meadow, his arm over her shoulder. I stayed back a distance, near Gil. Churchill was barking happily as he ran in and out around us. Mr. Metarey was walking slowly and when we reached the stand of Scotch pines that made the deepest woods on the land, Gil moved in closer and lifted the lantern over his head so that it cast its light down the trail ahead of them. And that’s how he kept it until we reached the lower run of oaks and saw the dawn coming through the trees.

T
HAT WEEKEND,
as I was leaning down over the back-cart of the Ferguson, a voice close behind me said, “Work will set you free.”

I stood. “Yes, sir.”

“You’re taking good care of that, I see. Which knot is that you’re using?”

I’d just tightened a rope around a handful of pipe bends. “A jamming hitch, sir.”

“Looked like a taut line. But not quite.”

“Little sturdier, Mr. Metarey.”

He nodded at me and smiled. I didn’t know how long he’d been standing there. The field around us was painfully bright, already dry after its morning watering. I picked up the sheaf of pipe and dropped it back into the cart. The knot held. “Easy to lose one on a bump,” I said.

“But I know you won’t.” In the distance Aberdeen Red was curving through long figure eights, and he leaned back and shaded his eyes to watch. I had the impression he wanted me to look, too, so I did, but I stayed bent over the cart. I was wondering if Clara had said anything to him about finding us in the barn.

“Things are going to change around here soon,” he said. “I just wanted to let you know that.”

“You won’t need me anymore, sir? I understand.”

He laughed. “I won’t tell your mother you said
that
, either,” he said. “It’s the opposite, actually. It’s going to get a fair shake busier, as a matter of fact, and we’re going to be needing you
more
. There’s going to be some news about Senator Bonwiller.”

I took a chance. “In that case, sir, I should tell you—I already know. Christian mentioned it to me. People say it’s the right time for Senator Bonwiller to get into the race, too.”

He looked at me.

“I mean, with all the demonstrations in Washington. I read Mr. Burrant’s article, sir.”

“You did, did you? Well, very good. Then you know all about it.” He patted me on the shoulder. “And you’ll be reading plenty of others now, I suspect.”

Aberdeen Red whooshed in over the field, then angled into a climb.

“She’s good,” he said. “You have to give her that.”

I was quiet.

He pointed to the plane. “My wife, I mean.”

“Oh, yes, sir. It’s amazing. I see her do it every morning.”

“That’s because we only let her do it in the mornings.” He chuckled, a little stiffly. “I also wanted to tell you that I appreciate everything you’re doing for us. It can’t be easy, with your schoolwork, too.”

“School’s over this week.”

“And both my daughters like you, too. That’s a good sign.”

My hands were caked in mud, and I leaned over the cart to wipe them on the grass.

“I guess what I really want to tell you is that I appreciate what you did for Christian.”

I looked up.

“The other day,” he said. “Sometimes she gets like that. I’m glad she was with someone levelheaded when she did. That’s all I mean.”

“We were just—”

“You don’t have to say anything, Corey. I’m grateful you’re both all right. So’s Mrs. Metarey.”

He picked up a stone and threw it at the split-rail fence. Over the trees the plane was skimming low now.

“I’ve been thinking things over,” he said then, “and I’ve arranged a chance for you.” He climbed up onto the tractor and shut off the engine, then climbed back down next to me. “I spoke to a friend of mine named Tom MacDonald. A fellow’s going to be up here next week to speak to you about Dunleavy.”