Summerland (60 page)

216

"Two-sixteen?" Ethan said. "What's that?"

"The number of stitches in a baseball," Jennifer T. said.

"The number of barleycorns in a fathom," said Cinquefoil. "Which is the distance from home plate to the gates of the Gleaming."

"It's also the number of possible outcomes when you roll three dice," said Mr. Feld. It was exactly the kind of deeply irrelevant remark that Mr. Feld could always be counted on to proffer at a dramatic moment. Ethan could not resist hugging him again.

"I once heard it said," Pettipaw intoned, "that there are two hundred and sixteen letters in Old Mr. Wood's true Name."

"Hey," Thor said. "The four sides of my map are divided into fifty-four sections. Nine by six. And
four
times
fifty-four
is two hundred and sixteen."

"Two hundred and sixteen?" said Rodrigo Buendía. "That the area code for Cleveland, Ohio. I got a sister in Cleveland. Great baseball town."

Then he rolled up the legs of his trousers, and delighted in showing everyone how all of the terrible bright scars were gone.

EVERY FLOOD HAS ITS EDDIES, ITS POCKETS OF RESISTANCE, ITS
islands left inexplicably high and dry. They found Taffy lying on a barren patch of ice at the edge of the Winterlands. She was unconscious, motionless, and half-dead. Her fur was singed with frost, her lips were caked with blood. And her feet, those glorious, ridiculous appendages, were gone, dissolved by a fatal splash of fermented Nothing.

"That's not
fair
," said Jennifer T.

She rose from Taffy's side, and took off running.

"Jennifer T.!" called Mr. Feld. "Come back!"

She flew, as swiftly as her strong legs could carry her, out of the Winterlands, across the third base line of Diamond Green, and straight up to the great oak gate that marked the distance to straightaway center. She threw herself against the gate. She pounded on it with her fists. When that had no visible result, she kicked it, fiercely but without producing a sound louder than the tapping of a fly at a windowpane. She turned around and kicked it again, like a mule this time, with the bottom of her foot. By the time Ethan reached her, she had given up her assault on the gate of heaven, and lay crumpled on the grass at its foot.

"I guess they're kind of busy in there right now," Ethan said. "Dealing with Coyote and all."

"It's not
fair
," she said. "What about Taffy? What about
me
?"

For her scars were intact; her finger, where she had once broken it, was still a little bit crooked. And inside of her she was still just Jennifer T. Rideout, of the ne'er-do-well Rideouts of Clam Island, a shadowtail, a mongrel, a mutt.

Ethan sank down into the grass beside her.

"I like you how you are," he told her, squeezing her rough hand. "I'm glad you aren't any different."

"Yeah, yeah, Feld," she said, tugging her hand away and scrambling to her feet. She jerked her ponytail more firmly through the opening at the back of her cap. But she smiled, and he saw there was a flush of color in her cheeks. "Blah blah blah."

THEY MADE A RUDE STRETCHER OUT OF THE DEBRIS OF THE SLEDGE-
wagon, and dragged Taffy across Diamond Green into the warmth of Applelawn, the resting place of so many wounded heroes. Here, as all over the Far Territories of the Summerlands, a cool blue rain of light had fallen, extinguishing the raging fires, and repairing the tens of thousand of acres that had already burned. The apple trees were bursting with new blossoms, and the Beaver Women were hard at work rebuilding the Lodges of the Blessed. They spent two days enjoying the legendary hospitality of those Lodges, and caring for Taffy's wounds. And they prepared for their long trip back. Following the detailed instructions set forth in the chapter of
The Wa-He-Ta Brave's Official Tribe Handbook
devoted to earning the Watercraft Feather, they fashioned a sturdy and capacious raft, and Grim the Giant cut and peeled some long sturdy poles. Then they set off across the Big River. This time they passed unmolested, without so much the ripple of a whisker-tip to disturb the smooth flow of the waters.

When they arrived at Old Cat Landing, they received a warm reception from a crew of Big Liars who were now, in the wake of the flood, considerably bigger than before, though still not anywhere near their former grandeur. Nevertheless the Liars had outgrown their former haunts and homes. They had been obliged to level the entire settlement, and to rebuild it ten times as big. The Tall Man with the Axe had grown so tall—taller even than Mooseknuckle John—that it was no trouble at all for him to wade out into the river and dredge up poor old Skidbladnir, slimed over and drizzling brown sludge, from the bottom of the river. In spite of her sorry condition, the Felds were delighted to see her again. Mr. Feld and Grim the Giant took her apart, piece by piece, carefully cleaning and drying each valve, coupling and hose, and then put her back together again (albeit with the functions of clutch and brake pedals reversed). A store of prunejack was fetched down from certain persons in a particular range of mountains, and after a week of Miss Annie Christmas's enormous hospitality they set out once again for Big Kobold, aiming to take it this time from the other side.

Grim had built a kind of open trailer out of an old piano crate and a couple of wagon wheels, and it was in this homemade ambulance that they stashed the twelve Boar Tooth ferishers, and laid Taffy the Sasquatch. She had not regained consciousness since the day they found her lying maimed in the icefields of the Winterlands, and as they journeyed up into the Raucous Mountains and down the other side she emitted only the occasional moan and, from time to time, a dour sorrowing snatch of some ancient Sasquatch lament. Spider-Rose, who with the help of the ferisher women brewed a nourishing formula for her little brother out of leaves and bee-nectars they found in the woods, took to nursing the Sasquatch with the same rich decoction, forcing the clear green liquid into Taffy's mouth through a bit of hose left over from Grim's reconstruction of the car.

The welcome they received at Dandelion Hill was much warmer than the first; and they spent a few days here, resting and watching the tiny cheeks and serious gaze of Nubakaduba, whom everyone called Newboy, melt the frozen heart of Queen Filaree—the healing effects of the flood being, in some cases, a little delayed.

When it was time to leave Dandelion Hill they lost Dick Pettipaw, as well. He was happy to return to the warrens and tunnels and secret ways of the great hill, but sad, too, for no longer would he contest the ratting ingenuity of Grimalkin John. The little giant had decided to carry on with the remnants of Big Chief Cinquefoil's Traveling Shadowtails All-Star Baseball Club as far as his homelands. Though the flood had burned away the thirst for revenge against the brothers who had bound him into slavery, there was still a score to settle.

"I'll be wantin' them to look me in the eye and beg me to forgive them," he said. "Even if they has to scramble down on their bellies to do it." He grinned. "
Especially
then."

"I'll miss your great ham-heeled lumbering footsteps," the wererat said, blowing his nose in a lace handkerchief. "Warning me from a mile off that you were coming."

"And I'll miss your blowhard prattle," Grim the Giant said. "And your mule-headedness, to boot."

So, in the shadow of Dandelion Hill, they parted, the best of enemies.

Skid drove on, taking it slow to conserve juice, headed for a point on a branch several days to the east of Dandelion Hill that Thor had decided, after making a complicated study of his map, lay within leap of a spot in the Winterlands called Gnashville, which in turn lay a leap away from Bellingham, Washington, where they could catch a ferry home. When they were two days out from Dandelion Hill, Grimalkin John began to smell something familiar in the air—"the good old rotten stink of giant." After another half a day, he asked Mr. Feld to stop the car and let him out. This was a calculated risk on his part, as they all knew. Cinquefoil felt that it was likely the Unsealing had washed away the binding grammer on the little giant's hide, but there was no way to know for sure until Grim had put a day's march between himself and Ethan Feld. So, having stuffed his pockets with what remained of the shavings he'd taken from Ethan's bat, he shook hands with his friends and with each of the ferishers in turn. Then Grim the Giant climbed out of the car, slung his knapsack over his shoulder, and, with a backward look and a wave of his hand, walked off into the Summerlands and out of this story.

Three days and two crossings later, they found themselves at the Bellingham ferry dock.

"Well," said Rodrigo Buendía. "This it, little dudes."

"Yeah," Ethan said.

Rodrigo sighed. He was at sixes and sevens. He had decided to rent a car in downtown Bellingham, but that was the extent of his plans. The Angels had been set to leave for a twelve-day road trip the day Ethan and Jennifer had snatched him away, and he was certain that his unexplained, unexcused absence meant that his contract with the team had been terminated. He walked over to the newspaper vending machines and bought a Seattle
Times
, to see if it said anything about the mysterious absence of the Angels' faded slugger. But there was nothing, aside from the information that the Angels were off today, traveling to Seattle. Then his mouth opened, and his eyes got almost comically wide.

"Whoa!" he said. He pointed to the date on the newspaper, and then all their eyes widened. Though they had spent nearly two months in the Summerlands, in the Middling it was, according to the
Times
, only
two days
after they had left Clam Island; and, at the same time, a week
before
they had spirited Rodrigo Buendía out of Rancho Encantado. Don't try to figure it all out; just take my word for it.

"Do you know what that mean?" he asked them. "I remember this day. It was an off day. Yes! We had a game in Seattle…yes…and I—I—forgot my wife's
birthday
. And she was so…that was the start of the…Oh! Oh my gosh, dudes."

"Go," said Jennifer T.

"I have to go! Good-bye, now! Come to see me in Anaheim, I will put you in the best seats."

Another delayed effect of Ethan's home run, then, was the healing of the marriage of Rodrigo Buendía, who called his wife from a Dairy Queen and asked her to meet him at the Four Seasons Hotel in Seattle, in the honeymoon suite. As you know, he subsequently went on to a .299 season, with 32 home runs and 98 RBIs, and was voted Comeback Player of the Year by the Sportswriters Union.

They waited for the last ferry of the night, which was likely to be the least crowded. Mr. Feld had bought a tarp at a hardware store, and they threw this over the trailer to cover their hairy, moaning cargo. The ferishers, of course, would be invisible to anyone who did not believe in ferishers. Now, Bellingham, Washington, is a freethinking town, and it was not a completely safe bet that there was
nobody
who held such beliefs. This was why they waited for the 1:14 A.M. to Clam Island.

As it turned out, old Albert Rideout was returning to Clam Island that night, as well, from one of his aimless Coyote rambles along the borders of Canada and the United States. He spent the passage from the mainland in the ferry's snack bar, drinking whisky from a can of 7-Up. He was in a uniquely sour mood. He was never exactly satisfied or happy when he came crawling home, trailing arrests and accidents. But this time it was worse than usual. About ten days earlier, ten days into his latest bender, he had happened to cross paths with a full-length mirror. This was, unbeknownst to him of course, at the very moment when the ebbing tide of the Unsealing came foaming over the particular town in the Idaho panhandle where he found himself. It was a clear, cold, truthful look at himself that he got at that moment—at the ruin he had made of his life and, in particular, of his failure as a father. Though the moment had passed, the memory of it had been bothering him ever since.

When he felt the series of iron shudders, deep in the belly of the boat, that meant they were slowing for the approach to Southend Dock, he belched, tossed the can into the trash, and then stumbled downstairs to the car deck. The wind was from the west, carrying with it all the familiar smells of the island of his birth and early promise: Douglas fir, tidal flats, and a faint ghost of the old strawberry patches. He saw the lights of the rapidly approaching ferry dock. He had better get into his old junkheap, then.

He turned, looking for the 1976 AMC Matador that had recently come into his possession. It was not where he had left it. He did not, in fact, remember where he had left it. Suddenly he was not sure if he had even boarded in his car, or if a lady named Shermanette had not dropped him off at the Bellingham dock. He set out among the few late cars, imagining that the island people in them were staring at him with the usual disapproval, imagining that he did not care. It was then that he heard what sounded to him like someone hawking up a really big loogey. He turned around. There, chained to an old orange Saab that he vaguely recognized, was a funky-looking wooden trailer, covered in a brand-new tarp. As he stared, wondering if the sound could possibly have come from the trailer, he saw the tarp twitch. Something
was
there, thrashing and moaning. Albert's heart began to beat faster—he had a feeling that something very
wrong
was about to appear from beneath the tarp. And then a moment later he found himself staring into the bleary, baffled face of what he took at first for a man in a gorilla suit, until he saw the long pink tongue emerge from the thing's mouth, hawking and smacking its lips as if to rid itself of a nasty taste in its mouth. Then the tarp shifted abruptly, and Albert saw how huge the thing was, and just as his clouded mind began to assemble all the necessary components of the idea
Bigfoot
—that was when he saw that the huge, hideous thing
had no feet at all!