Noses Are Red (5 page)

A chipmunk runs across the rock near my feet. A brown streak, on his way to his burrow under a dead tree. I stare, not the way I do at home, but with the added interest that comes from hunger. If worst comes to worst, we might have to eat chipmunks. I try to picture the little guy turning on a spit over a low fire. It’s easy.

Of course, in order to eat the chipmunk, we’re going to have to catch it. That’ll be harder.

“What are we going to do about lunch?” I ask Victor.

“When I was at my summer camp, we learned how to live off the land. They taught us to make a soup out of birch-bark.”

“I thought you made canoes out of birch-bark,” I say.

–
On Jupiter, I had a pet birch tree
, says Norbert.

“What?”

–
When it was hungry, it used to bark.

Victor is hunting through his pockets. “First we have to start a fire.”

“With what?” I ask.

“With matches.”

Of course he doesn’t have any matches in his pockets. What he’s got – all he’s got – is –

“No way to start a fire with a safety pin, I guess?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “Maybe we won’t be able to make birch-bark soup. You need fire to make fried moss too.”

“You ate fried moss?”

“Uh-huh. It’s full of vitamins.”

“Good for it.” I resolve never –
never
– to go to summer camp.

“We’d better forget about feeding ourselves, and look for Mr. Leech.”

I don’t want to walk anymore. “Maybe one of us should stay here, and –”

“No.” Victor is firm on that point. “We stay together.”

“But I’m so tired.”

“He has the food pack with him.”

Good point.

For the next hour we walk up and down the portage trail, calling Christopher’s name until we’re hoarse. About
halfway along, the trail splits in two. “This must be the switchback Mr. Leech was talking about,” says Victor. “We missed it, coming the other way. We went down the wrong path when we were carrying the canoe.”

On the far side of the switchback, the underbrush is beaten down. There’s a blaze on a nearby tree. “This is where we came out,” I say. “Somewhere back there is the canoe.”

“Look here!” Victor goes down on his knees to examine a bright yellow scrap of paper, lying near the trail. “It’s a health bar wrapper on top of one of our muddy footprints.”

Health bar. The very mention of it brings water to my mouth. Oatmeal and nuts and raisins, maybe bits of chocolate or marshmallow.

“A wrapper,” I say. “Is there any health bar inside it?”

“On
top
of our footprints,” he repeats. “It fell after we were here.”

“Let me see,” I say. “Are you sure there isn’t any health bar inside?”

“Someone was here not too long ago.”

I check the wrapper. Check the ground. “Those aren’t our footprints,” I say. “They’re way too big.” I put my foot inside one of the prints.

“Must be Mr. Leech’s then,” says Victor. “There are health bars in our emergency pack.”

“I don’t know.” I mean, the footprints are huge. Bigfoot, maybe. Or someone in snowshoes.

“Whoever he is, he may have more health bars,” says Victor.

“Let’s look around,” I say.

“We have to be careful not to lose our way back to the portage trail,” says Victor.

I’m not worried about getting lost. We left quite a track, last time we came through. A highway of broken branches. We search carefully, but don’t find anything except trees.

What is going on? Where’s Bigfoot? Where’s Christopher? Where’s the canoe? Hard to hide a canoe.

Victor circles wider and wider. No canoe. No Christopher. I call. No answer.

And then, under a bush off to the left, I spot it. Not the canoe – another yellow wrapper. With a health bar inside it. I pounce on it with a cry of triumph. I hold it aloft. I rip it open.

“Hey!” says Victor.

I divide the bar in two. He complains that my half is bigger than his half. How can that be? Halves are equal. My bite – and that’s all it is – tastes more wonderful than anything I have ever eaten in my life. I lick the inside of the wrapper. That tastes pretty good too.

Victor moves further to the left. He’s on his knees, reaching for something. “What’s that?” I cry. “Hey, share it!”

He’s found another health bar. “I’ll divide this one,” he says. You won’t believe this. His half is
way
bigger than mine. I complain. “Fair’s fair,” he says.

My bite of health bar is gone. I look around for more. “Careful!” calls Victor, with a full mouth. I peer around.
Wait a bit. What is that yellow flash, away ahead in the bushes? I push forward. “Hey, Alan. Watch where you’re going. I can’t see you!”

Is it? Is it? Is it?

Yes, it is. Another health bar, peeking shyly from underneath a bush. The bars must have dropped out of the emergency pack as Christopher went this way. I grab it and pull the wrapper open with my teeth.

“Alan! Alan? Alan, where are you?”

I have the wrapper off the health food bar. I lick my lips.

–
Yoo-hoo! We’re over here!
calls Norbert.

“Hey!” I whisper.
“Shhh.”

–
We’ve found another health bar! Would you like some?
“Shut up, Norbert!”

–
I thought we were sharing them. On Jupiter, we always share.

Victor comes crashing through the bush. “Give me some!” he cries. He chews with wild eyes – well, he doesn’t of course; he chews with his teeth, but his eyes are wild. He stares all around, and then bounds away into the bush. “Ha-ha! Another health bar – no, no, two bars!”

“I get one!” I say, bounding after him.

A whole bar to myself. I savor the entire experience. I feel life flowing through my veins. What an invention the bar is. How can I properly express my feelings towards it? I decide that if I ever become a rock star, I will change my name from Alan to Health Bar. Health Bar Dingwall. It has a ring to it.

–
You know, this reminds me of a story I read once
, says Norbert.
Two children lost in a wood, following a trail of food. What was it called now? Heckle and Jeckle?

“Quiet, Norbert,” I say.

–
No, not Heckle and Jeckle. Davy and Goliath? No. Hatchet?

“Quiet, Alan,” says Victor.

We forge ahead through the bush, Victor and I, shoulder to shoulder, eyes searching the ground for any more telltale yellow wrappers.

He sniffs the air. “Smoke,” he says. I smell it too. I shout for Christopher. No answer.

The next two wrappers we find don’t have any health bars inside them.
So
disappointing. Anticipation turns to resentment. Sometimes hope is harder than no hope.

Whoever opened the health bars was even hungrier than we are. The wrappers are in shreds. The ground is getting hilly. Rock underneath a layer of dead leaves and dirt. The slope is up to the left, or down to the right. We go right. Easier to walk downhill.

Victor’s ahead of me. He throws up his hand dramatically. I stop. “Listen!” he whispers. I hear a rustling.

“Could be dangerous.”

“Could be Leech,” I say.

Victor puts his finger to his lips. Then he points ahead, and makes a walking gesture with his fingers. Then he gets down on his hands and knees. Who does he think he is, a commando?

I give him the thumbs-up gesture. “Roger that,” I whisper, as loud as I can. “Delta Winnebago Enchilada out!”

“Shhh.”

We creep forward. Victor stops behind a thick bush, and parts some of the lower branches to peer through it. This GI Joe side of him is unexpected. I peer around the bush.

In a small clearing sits a baby black bear. Cute little thing, with that earnest expression you see on young children who are concentrating really hard. Think of a kindergarten kid tying her shoes. In this case, the bear is opening a health bar.

Mystery solved. Well, one mystery. I know who – apart from us – is eating them. I still don’t know who’s leaving them behind, or why. I stand up, start across the clearing.

Victor pulls me back. “Stay away!” he whispers. “That bear’s dangerous!”

What’s he getting at? The thing is the size of a hamster. All right, not quite that small. What I’m getting at is that it is not a fearsome spectacle. It comes towards us, holding the health bar in its mouth. I go down on one knee and hold out my hand, the way you do to a kitten. “Hey, there, little guy,” I say.

“Alan! Stop!”

“What?”

“Do you have a death wish? Get away from that cub!”

“Why?” The bear is rubbing its head against my hand. I like it. I’ve never had a pet, except for a turtle when I was small. It crawled under the sofa and died.

“Don’t you know anything, Alan? Bear cubs are always near their moms,” he says. “Moms who hate people messing with their cubs. Moms who weigh as much as a car, who have claws as long and as sharp as steak knives.”

“Steak knives?” For some reason I see those commercials on TV, where the poor woman is trying to cut a tin can with her steak knife, and getting nowhere. Then the new steak knife from Japan comes along.

I can’t take him seriously. Bears are not a cause for fear and alarm. Bears talk, and eat honey and picnic baskets. Winnie the Pooh, Smokey, Yogi – these are not scary pictures.

“Hey, there,” I say. “What’s your name?”

It yawns. The health bar is a gooey mess, lying on the ground. I peel away the shredded wrapper, and give the end of the health bar to the bear cub. It eats eagerly.

“Careful, Alan!” calls Victor.

–
His name is Carlo
, says Norbert.

“How do you know?”

–
I just do.

“Well…hi, Carlo,” I say. The bear licks its mouth and peers around the clearing.

“He’s looking for his mother,” says Victor anxiously.

“No, he isn’t. He’s looking for another health bar. Where is it, Carlo? Where’s the bar? Can you find one? Come on, boy!”

The bear pads across the clearing and stops. I stop too. He moves forward, slowly, and scrabbles under a bush. I
hold the bottom branch out of the way, and – there’s a treasure trove. Two bars. I take them.

The bear looks up at me and whines. “Okay, Carlo,” I say. “You found them.” I open one bar and give half to the bear. He eats it in one gulp. I eat my half in one gulp too.

Victor rushes up. “Hey,” he says. His mouth is open.

“Oh, okay, Victor,” I say. I open the other bar and give him half. He eats it in one gulp. I eat the other half. Carlo whines. I give him the wrappers. He paws them.

“You got more than I did,” says Victor.

The bear cub scratches himself, then sniff’s the air.

“Come on, Carlo,” I say. “Keep looking. Find a health bar for Victor.”

He sets off through the forest, sniffing busily. Victor and I follow. A little procession through the northern woods. Three lost children.

We’re moving downhill, through bare rock and scrub forest. Mostly we’re in shade, but every now and then we come to an open area. Blue sky overhead. Through the trunks of the trees I can make out sunlight glinting on water. That’s the direction we’re headed.

Two health-bar-stops later, we come to a large clearing, and stop dead. In the middle of the clearing sits a trim and tidy log cabin. The door is shiny and red. The chimney is smoking cheerfully. The front step is swept clean. The window is polished. The window box underneath it is filled with flowers. The whole glade is sun-dappled and breezy. Behind the cabin is a lake. The water flashes silver through the trees.

“Where are we now?” cries Victor.

I know what he means. The picture is so perfect it seems fake. A scene from a fairy tale. I expect an elf or fawn to come trotting up and welcome me to the enchanted wood. But it’s all real. I blink. The log cabin is still there.

Carlo is pawing at the red door. A little old lady opens it with a broom in her hand. “You again!” she shrieks. “Get away, now. Scat!” She brandishes the broom, and Carlo scampers off.

Then she notices us. “Bears are a nuisance around here,” she says, frowning right at me. She’s about my height, shorter than Victor. “So are campers.” She closes the door.

“Wait!” We run forward. “Wait, please!” We pound on the door.

She takes a minute to open up. No broom in her hand now. She’s holding a health bar. “What is it? Talk fast. I don’t want to lose my light.” She peels the yellow wrapper and takes a healthy bite.

She’s a colorful old lady. Not colorful like my uncle Emil, who likes to put on false vampire teeth and scare people. (“I vant to suck your blood, young man!
Mwah
ha-ha!” What an idiot.) This lady is literally colorful, like a rainbow. There are colorful stains on her face and wire-rimmed glasses. Paint, I guess. Flecks of color in her gray hair, which hangs in a braid beside her head. Smears on her hands and overalls. Drips on her boots. And what boots!

“So what do you want, boys?” she says.

Victor introduces us both. He’s got good manners. I don’t. I’m staring at her boots. The lady is small and delicate – kind of birdlike – but her boots are bigger than
Ronald McDonald’s. No question, they were her footprints we were following.

“I’m Doris. Doris Appel,” she says, and then pauses. I think we’re supposed to recognize her name. We don’t say anything.

“How’d you get here?” she asks. “Where’s your boat?”

A natural question. Victor looks embarrassed. “We lost it.”

“We were with my…with Christopher. A grown-up,” I say. “We got lost on the portage. It wasn’t our fault. We found some of those health bars.”

“These bars!” She takes a bite of hers. “Good, aren’t they? I found a pack of them while I was walking in the woods a while ago. I carried the pack home, and then realized there was a hole in the bottom. But I didn’t see any grown-up.”

“They were lying on the ground,” I explain. “We followed them.”

–
Like Hansel and Gretel. That’s the story I meant. Not Davy and Goliath.

“Quiet, Norbert.”

–
Come on, Dingwall, the lady’s got a broom – do I have to spell it out? You want us to wait in the gingerbread house?

The old lady snorts. “You can’t wait in my cottage. Visitors disturb my concentration.”

“But you don’t understand…,” Victor begins.

“It’s not that I’m mean,” she says. “Well, I am, but not usually like this. It’s just that I’m in the middle of a
picture, and there’s paints and turps everywhere. You boys can hang around out here until your friend comes. I’ll even give you a snack. There’s a few health bars left.”

“But –” says Victor.

“No!” She holds up her hand.

Victor is flabbergasted. He’s not used to grown-ups who won’t listen to him. I am, but I don’t know how to get through. I don’t know how to talk to Doris Appel, whoever she is. Norbert clears his throat.

–
Oil paints, or acrylics?

She frowns. “Oils, of course. I tried acrylics for a while, but I found that I just couldn’t get the same –”

–
Depth
, suggests Norbert.

She’s staring at me now. “Yes,” she says. “Depth.”

–
Oh, I agree entirely. Layering the colors over time gives a much more satisfying effect. Acrylics are too facile.

She nods. “Facile is the exact word.”

–
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: acrylics are for ploshers. Nerissa has an acrylic in her whining room. She thinks it’s a misterpiece, but I can’t bear to look at it.

I wonder what a misterpiece is. Does Norbert mean masterpiece? I hear a sound like distant bowling. Thunder?

Doris is smiling at me. “How do you know so much about painting?”

I don’t know what to say. I shrug.

–
Well, I’m only a dabbler, you understand. Oils, and the occasional watercolor. But where I come from, painting is taken seriously. I’d really like to see your work.

She looks pleased. Hesitates. Then throws up her hands. “Well, okay,” she says. “I don’t usually do this, but…you boys can come in. Be careful. Please be careful.”

She holds open the door for us. She looks me up and down.

“You have two voices,” she says. “Which is the real you?”

“Me,” I say.

–
No, me!

“Thank you, ma’am,” says Victor, pushing past me. “Don’t pay too much attention to Alan. He likes to make jokes.”

She points across the room. “The pack with the health bars is over there under the big window,” she says. It’s our emergency pack all right.

“What’s a whining room?” I say to Norbert.

Messy. Sticky. Smelly. They sound like some of the dwarves who didn’t make it into the Snow White story. That’s what the cottage is like inside. Bright enough, with a view of the lake, but the walls – the far wall in particular, on your left as you go in – are a mess of drips and smears. The floor is a minefield of gooey rags and ripped pictures and jars of paintbrushes. I can’t imagine how she can find a place to put her size 37 feet. There’s a sharp smell of smoke and turpentine. My eyes water. Pretty yucky.

The garden outside was a fairy tale – and I suppose this is too. Fairy tales have their yucky side. Imagine living in a shoe with an old lady who starved you and beat you.

A plain wooden table and chair are the only pieces of furniture in the room. There isn’t even a bed. She sleeps in a sleeping bag on the floor.

–
Great steaming mugs of cocoa!
says Norbert.
What a wonderful picture!

What’s he see that I don’t? I’m standing next to the far wall.

She’s beside me, fiddling with something in her hands.

“Do you like it?” she says. “Do you really like it?”

–
You’ve captured the subject perfectly. What apparency! What transilience! Mars, isn’t it? Mars and Venus.

“Mars. Really? Why…I suppose it could be. Mars and Venus.”

–
And Saturn. And Pluto.

“Really?”

–
And the Cocoa Jug. It’s a real misterpiece!

She isn’t paying attention. “I thought of calling it
Man and Woman.
”

–
Why on Jupiter would you do that?

Victor’s eating a health bar and staring out the window. There’s a pair of high-powered binoculars on the table. He fiddles with them, puts them to his eyes.

“But you’re right, Alan,” says Doris thoughtfully. “Now that you mention it, I see that it could be Mars and Venus. You know, you’re very mature for a youngster. I’ve never put a classical theme into my work before. The Arts Council will be impressed. They might even renew my grant.”

I have no idea what she’s talking about. I’m staring at the paint-spattered wall. Thousands and thousands of dabs of color. You know, I can see Norbert’s point. All the little dots and streaks against a plain dark background. He’s right. Forget the pictures; the wall
itself
looks like the night sky. Is that what he means about Mars and Venus? Maybe.

“What’s that, Norbert?” I point at a big blob in the middle of the wall. “A comet?”

–
The Clam Nebula, of course. Nerissa looks for it every night.

“What do you think of the frame, then?” Doris holds a picture in her hands. That’s what she’s been staring at all this time. The size of a small poster, and almost as brightly colored. “Should the frame be more ornate, if the painting has a classical title?” She holds it up. I notice what the picture is actually about. Oh, my gosh!

–
Hey, they’ve got no clothes on!
says Norbert.

I start to giggle. I can’t help it. I’m pretty embarrassed. There’s another picture on the far wall, and a bunch more stacked on the floor. I check them out.

Whew!
Not a shirt or pair of pants in sight.

“What’s wrong?” asks Doris. “I’d call it a perfectly natural expression of feeling.”

–
I’d call it bathtime!

I giggle some more.

She hangs the picture on a nail and stands back. There’s her name at the bottom right. DORIS APPEL.

–
Now I can’t see the Milky Way
, says Norbert.

“HEY!” Victor’s on his feet, the binoculars at his eyes. “THERE’S MR. LEECH!”

I stop giggling. Naked people aren’t funny anymore. I run over. “Where?”

My heart is beating. Well, I know it is, but what I mean is, I can feel it beating. Like a pile driver. I peer out excitedly.

The window looks out over the end of a lake. Most of the right-hand side of the window shows open water. Looking to the left, I can see where the water narrows and the land drops away. There’s a small waterfall and the start of what looks like a river.

I don’t see Christopher anywhere. Victor’s got the binoculars pointed away from shore.

“Where?” I say. “Where’s Christopher?”

“There!” He points into the middle of the lake.

“Huh?” I grab the binoculars from him, and focus them. Christopher’s broad shoulders and thick head of hair jump into my view. He’s in a canoe and paddling hard. But…but…

“But he’s going away! He’s going
away
from us!”

I’m really upset. All this time we were hungry and alone in the woods, I figured Christopher couldn’t be too far away. The sight of him now…way out in the middle of the lake…getting farther and farther away….

A grown-up leaving me is hard to take. Especially a grown-up
guy.
I know it doesn’t make much sense, since I never liked Old Leech, but I can’t help it. I feel like I’ve
been kicked in the stomach. I keep staring at his broad stupid backside. I shout at him to come get us. I know he can’t hear me, but I shout anyway.

“What’s going on?” asks Doris. “What’s wrong?”

“Our grown-up,” I say. “Christopher. My … my mom’s…” I can’t say it.

“He’s paddling away without us!” says Victor.

“Where’d he get the canoe?” I ask. “Did he steal it?”

“It’s our canoe,” says Victor. “I recognize it. He must have found it back in the swamp.”

“But then he
knows
we’re still here,” I say. “That makes it worse!”

“He must be going to the summer camp for help,” says the lady. “Oh, dear.”

She explains about the camp. It’s on the other side of the lake. “A long paddle,” she says. “I go over myself, for groceries, every other week. I should have gone yesterday, in fact, because there’s nothing to eat now except those health bars.”

She starts rummaging around the room. I focus the binoculars over Christopher’s head. I see buildings on the far shore of the lake.

“What’ll he do at the camp?” I ask.

“He’ll use their phone,” she says. “There’s a ranger station near Kawartha. They’ll put out an alert.”

Victor gulps, embarrassed at the thought of all that attention.

“They’ll send helicopters and searchers after you.”

Victor shakes his head.

“They’ll phone your parents.”

“My parents? My mom?” I can’t tell how Victor feels about his parents finding out. His face is twisted up.

“They’ll disrupt my routine,” the lady says. “I have only another week up here, and then I have to go back to the city. I do not want my last days of peace ruined by noise and alarms and rude people asking questions.
Ahh!
There’s my purse.”

It’s a big hairy sack, a cross between a pillowcase and a Pekinese dog. She reaches inside and finds a cell phone. Victor relaxes. I relax. A symbol of civilization, of normalcy. Everything will be fine now.

Or will it? She punches the number, waits. “Hello?” she says. “Hello? Hello?” She peers at the front of the phone.“Drat,” she says. “Drat drat drat!”

“Low battery?” I say. I have a cell phone myself – a gift from my dad – and it’s always running low.

She nods. Puts away the phone. Goes over to a hook on the wall and puts on a life jacket.

“What’s going on?” I say.

She fastens the belt up, puts on a helmet, and turns around to face us. I try not to look at her boots.

“Because the stupid cell phone has run down,” she explains, “I can’t phone the camp to tell them about you. So I’ll have to go over myself. Two hours hard paddling.”

“Can we come too?” says Victor.

“It’s a kayak,” she says. “There’s only room for one.”

“Don’t you have a motor boat?”

She shakes her head. “This is a protected lake. No power boats allowed.”

“I still don’t understand,” I say. “Why not charge up your phone? That’ll be easier than paddling across the lake.”

“How, Alan?” She grabs a paddle from the floor. And drops it. It falls with a clatter. She swears, and bends down again. “I’m always doing that,” she says.

It’s not like a canoe paddle. It has two blades, one on each end. She grabs it in the middle, looking a bit – a very little bit – like the Death Maul character in the
Star Wars
movie. She smiles grimly at me. “How can I charge up my phone? There’s no electricity in this place.”

“What?” says Victor.

I look around. No outlets. No lightbulbs. There’s a few of those oil lamps with wicks. You’ve seen them around – usually for decoration. Here they’re for light.

“I don’t see anything else to do,” she says. “I’ll paddle across the lake and send help back for you boys. You stay near here. If you’re hungry, too bad. There are some blueberry bushes down by the rapids. Probably not too much fruit left, but you never know. Don’t fall in – it’s slippery.”

“No, wait,” I say. I stare at her. Doris Appel. A grown-up. A part of me – a little part of me – doesn’t want to see her go. Don’t leave! Don’t leave me! “Bye,” I say at length.

“Bring back some food,” says Victor. He shakes out the emergency pack – two bars left.