Riding the Flume (4 page)

“The message?” Charlie shrugged. “Let me have a look at it.”

Francie drew a line in the dust with the toe of her shoe. “It's still in the tree, and I'm not allowed to go into the basin.”

“You're not allowed?” Charlie shoved his hands into his pockets. “Why not?”

“Father thinks it's dangerous.” She sighed. She might as well tell him everything. “And it's a punishment for talking back.”

Charlie chuckled. “Well, that's something you and Carrie share. Her mouth was always getting her in trouble.” He frowned. “But I don't remember your father keeping her from the woods. He couldn't . . . she would have gone anyway.”

Francie sucked in her breath. “Well, I'm not Carrie,” she said. Carrie hadn't had to look at her parents' sad faces or feel the guilt whenever she disobeyed them. It happened often enough, anyway. She saw a flicker of something flash in Charlie's eyes and as quickly disappear. He was disappointed in her, she thought, fighting against that lump that always formed in her throat when people compared her to her sister.

But Charlie only nodded. “It's different now,” he said. The logging whistle screamed, shattering the peace of the
quiet street and calling the men to work. He touched her shoulder with one finger. “I'll get the message. And I'll come see you on Sunday. After all, if she's haunting you, there must be a reason.” He grinned at her. “Carrie always had a reason.” He settled his hat down low on his forehead and ran off toward the lumberyard.

Francie stared after him. He'd been joking, she knew that. But somehow the words hung in the air. “Carrie always had a reason,” she whispered.

“C
harlie's back.” Francie let the back door shut as she came into the warm kitchen. “He's going to be chute rider again. And he's still joking about how he'll ride the flume this year.”

Her mother looked up from the oatmeal she was stirring at the big black cookstove. “That boy always was crazy,” she answered, shaking her head. “I'll have to give him a talking to.” Charlie's father and Francie's mother were brother and sister, and when he was younger, Charlie spent every summer up in the mountains. He used to stay with the Cavanaughs, but after Carrie died he stopped coming. Then, two years ago he hired on with the lumber company as a logger.

“What were you doing out so early?” Francie's mother frowned at her.

Francie hesitated, wanting to tell the truth. But somehow
it just wouldn't come. “I . . . I woke up early and it smelled so clean and new outside . . .” That was part of the truth, anyway. “I just had to get out in it.”

Her mother smiled. “Summer in the mountains. There's nothing like it, is there?” She glanced out the window framed with yellow checked curtains. “If we only had the time to enjoy it more.”

Francie took a breath and plunged in. “Don't you think Father would let me go to the basin, just until I finish counting the tree rings for Mr. Court?” And figure out about Carrie's message, she added silently.

Her mother's hand paused in its stirring. Francie knew she believed promises were important.

“Don't you see, child?” Her mother turned to look at her. “If Mr. Court has his way, he'd stop the logging altogether. The loggers would leave. The town would die. We'd have to close the hotel, and this hotel is your father's life.” She turned back to the oatmeal. “Please set the table now. Breakfast will soon be ready.”

Francie began laying the silver and china on the dining room table as her father came into the dining room with the
St. Joseph Herald
under his arm. Mr. Court's paper. “Good morning, Frances,” he said as he pulled out his chair and sat down.

“Good morning, Father,” she answered, wishing he would at least smile at her. But it would do no good to be sulky. It would only anger him more. She watched as he
unfolded the paper, shook it out, and began to read. Francie had always been proud of her tall, handsome father. She loved the way he brushed his thick dark hair back from his forehead. His mustache was neatly combed and waxed, and the creases in his suit pants were so sharp it seemed you could cut your finger on them. His one vanity, as he always put it, was his bright-colored waistcoats. The one he wore today had a red-and-black-plaid pattern. Francie knew his friends teased him about his waistcoats—he only laughed and wore them anyway. She sighed silently. He could laugh with his friends, but not with his family. Not anymore.

Francie sat down in her place and folded her hands in her lap. What could she say to make him change his mind and give her permission to go to the basin? The headlines on the front page of the paper caught her eye. DEPRESSION WORSENS, they screamed. She wondered if that bad news would make it harder or easier to talk to him.

Now's the time, her mind was humming. Ask him now. A lump was forming in her throat, blocking her speech. “Father, I . . .” She swallowed again. “I'm sorry for what I said last night.”

He looked at her over the top of his paper and gave a short nod. “I should hope so.”

“But, Father.” She stretched her hand out, almost touching his arm. “I promised Mr. Court I'd count the tree rings for him. I don't want to break my promise.”

“It's a promise you should never have made,” her father said. There was no anger there; his voice had the same flat tone as always. “You'll just have to tell Mr. Court you're unable to fulfill your obligations. I'm sure he can get someone else to help.”

“But that's just the point, Father,” Francie countered. “You can't stop him from finding out how old the tree was, so I might as well get to keep my promise.” Her father smoothed down his mustache with one finger, and Francie took it as a sign that he was listening. “Could I just go to the basin until I finish counting the tree rings? Then I promise I'll never go back.”

“You know I don't hold with what Court is doing,” her father said at last. “He's standing in the way of human progress.”

Francie took a breath. Was he wavering? She crossed her fingers under the table.

Her father sighed. “Well, I'm glad to see you're taking your promises seriously,” he said. He frowned at her. “I don't say it's safe . . .”

“I'll be very careful,” Francie said. “I won't go anywhere near the logging.”

Francie's mother came into the dining room with oatmeal in a pottery dish. She placed it in front of Francie's father, who plopped a steaming spoonful of the cereal in Francie's bowl. “Only until you've finished counting the rings.” He served Francie's mother and then himself. “At
least Court can't accuse me of choosing sides,” he muttered.

• • •

Francie sang as she helped Josie change the sheets in the hotel rooms. But by the time she'd finished that and helped her mother make raspberry tarts for the hotel guests' dinners, washed up all the dirty breakfast dishes and then the dinner dishes, it was late afternoon. “It's not fair,” she mumbled, hanging the wet dishrag on its rack by the sink. “They tell me I can go to the basin and then keep me so busy there's no time.”

“Did you say something, Francie?” Her mother pumped a last stream of water from the small hand pump on the counter to rinse the dishpan clean of suds. The hotel boasted the latest in modern conveniences—there was even a drain connecting the dry sink to a pipe that ran under the hotel and emptied the sink water out away from the buildings.

“No, ma'am.” Francie turned away so her mother couldn't see her face. “When do we need to begin supper?”

Her mother dried her hands on her apron. “Oh, not for a while, and I can get it started.” She pulled a pin out of her hair and repositioned it. “I've got some paperwork to finish now.” She was on her way out of the hotel kitchen, and then turned around. “Do you need something to do?”

Francie glanced up to see her eyes twinkling. “No, ma'am,” she answered, grinning. “I can find something to
occupy myself.” She followed her mother out of the kitchen, down the hall, and into the lobby of the hotel. Father always said their lobby was as elegant as any in New York City. A large Oriental carpet covered the floor, and chairs and tables, mostly in the French Victorian style, were arranged conveniently for guests to converse with one another. A glittering crystal chandelier hung from the high ceiling. The windows looking out onto the street had carved panes of leaded glass. Her father and Mr. Morgan, one of the regular guests, were sitting in wing-back chairs in the corner of the room. Their teacups were forgotten on the small round table between them while they talked intensely about something. “Probably the depression,” Francie muttered. It was the only thing anyone talked about these days. She walked around the perimeter of the room rather than straight across to the front door, making sure her father's back was toward her.

She opened the heavy doors with their leaded glass inserts, slipped outside, and closed them again without a sound, breathing a sigh of relief. She glanced down—her mother might not want her traipsing through the woods in her new shoes, but there wasn't time to change now. She turned, and skirting around the buildings, she climbed the hill behind the hotel and headed off to Connor's Basin.

I
t was a half-hour walk to the stump where Carrie's message was hidden. The road ran along the edge of the basin, and Francie's shoes were covered with dust by the time she'd reached the footpath that led down into the shallow valley where the biggest sequoias once stood. Birds flew out of the grass as she passed, and squirrels scampered up the huge gray stumps that towered over her head.

Small seedlings of sugar and yellow pine and even tiny sequoias were springing up in the turf. Francie bent down to smooth away the grass threatening to overwhelm one small sprout that reached stubbornly for the sun, and as she did, an image of her sister flashed into her mind. Carrie, pushing back the grass in just this way. “This one's a sugar pine, Francie,” she was saying, “and here's a baby sequoia. Can you believe they grow so big?” Francie stood
up, shaking her head to rid herself of the memory. Was there any place not stamped with Carrie's presence?

She marched quickly along the path. Surely not here, she thought, not where Carrie had wandered every day of her life. She looked around at the huge stumps and shattered trunks and wondered what Carrie would have thought of this graveyard of giants. It looked like a battlefield, she thought sadly. A battlefield with half the soldiers lying still unburied.

She reached her stump, the beginning of all the carnage, and set the rickety ladder upright. She climbed up to the hole, carefully avoiding the broken rung, and extracted the oilskin bag. Then she pulled herself to the top of the stump and sat down with her feet dangling over the edge. A squirrel chattered at her from a nearby stump and she threw a pebble at him. “Oh, be quiet,” she said. “You sound just like Father!” The squirrel ignored the pebble, which had come nowhere near him, and kept up his unintelligible commentary.

Francie pulled the note out of the bag. The paper was yellow, and the creases were black where it had lain folded so long.

Meet me at Turkey Fork

half past four on Sunday.

Don't tell anyone—the only safety is in secrecy.

• • •

What could it mean? Francie turned the paper over, but the other side was blank. She felt like screaming. How could she ever find out? It was impossible.

She sighed, put the paper back in the bag, and slipped it into her pocket. Then she pulled out her hair comb. She pulled her hair back to keep it out of her eyes and fastened it with the comb and a few pins. Here, where there was no one to see, it didn't matter how much she looked like her sister.

She crawled over to the mark she'd made on the 2,500th ring. She put her finger on the next ring and began to count, touching each ring carefully with the tip of her fingernail. “Five hundred and one. Five hundred and two. Five hundred and three . . .” Soon the squirrel lost interest and disappeared over the edge of the stump. The birds went back to their songs, and the basin settled into a familiar late afternoon quiet.

• • •

“What are you doing up there, girl?”

The voice startled Francie so much her hand jerked off the 2,727th ring. She sat up, heart pounding, and looked around. Coming down the path was Lewis Granger, the manager of the lumber company.

Francie glanced quickly back at the tree rings, realizing that she'd lost her place. Thank goodness she made a mark every hundred rings—she'd only have to count twenty-seven rings over again. “Hello, Mr. Granger,” she called, sitting up.

The man paused. His balding head gleamed in the sun, and his eyes, glinting behind his wire-rimmed glasses, looked speculative.

Francie stood up quickly and came to the edge of the stump. There was something in his manner that made her nervous.

Mr. Granger stared at her without speaking. Finally he grunted. “What are you doing on that stump? How did you get up there?”

This was the man who was in charge of all the lumbering in this part of the mountains. He wouldn't be very happy to hear that Frank Court was launching a campaign to stop the logging. “I climbed that,” she said, indicating the old ladder. “I'm just enjoying the view.” She crossed her fingers behind her back. She was enjoying the view—that was the truth.

Mr. Granger came to the bottom of the ladder. Most of the other loggers wore rough pants and flannel shirts, but Lewis Granger always wore a suit, though it was wrinkled and baggy—as if he'd slept in his clothes. His muscled arms were long in proportion to his body, reminding Francie of an ape—a short, balding ape with a fat belly. He smiled at her, squinting, blocking the sun with one hand. “This property belongs to the lumber company.”