Crooked River: A Novel Read Free Page B

All I needed was a little more time.
    The marshmallow on the end of my stick catches fire. I let it burn a few seconds before blowing it out. I like them this way, the bitterness of burnt. How the shell is crisp and smoky. How the center is gooey and sweet. Opposites and the same. I lick sugar from my fingers and take another marshmallow from the bag, hold it out to Bear. He doesn’t usually eat this kind of thing, he says. He eats only what he can grow. But he bought them special for me and Sam because he doesn’t want us to be sad anymore.
    I wait one second, two seconds, three seconds . . . five and then ten. Finally his hand crosses the distance and his fingers brush mine.
    The one at the edge of firelight smiles and tells me not to be afraid.
    The one shimmering beside my sister turns her hollow gaze on me and I think, Leave her alone . She curls her lips, hissing, and gnashes her broken teeth.

 
    3
sam

    T he next day I skipped breakfast and hiked into the woods alone. I followed the well-worn path toward Crooked River for a while, then veered right, following no path, making my own, weaving through bitterbrush and elderberries and sugar pines and red rock boulders twice as big as me. I didn’t have to think about where I was going; my feet knew the way. I walked about ten minutes due east, far enough from the meadow that I couldn’t hear Bear plucking at his banjo anymore, but close enough that if they needed me, or if I needed them, all we had to do was holler.
    The poplars were waiting in their usual spot, old friends unchanged from last August, or the August before that even. Zeb planted the tallest ones years ago as a windbreak, but never much bothered with them afterward. Now they stretched roots and branches, intruding on a nearby field that had been overrun with dandelions and ryegrass. Three of the largest trees formed a lopsided triangle and, even though you couldn’t see it from the ground, up in the leaves was a platform made of plywood and old fence boards. Bear helped me build it five years ago. He said every kid needed a place to go and be alone, a place all my own where I could just sit quiet and watch the birds, the clouds, the world go by. We were a lot alike in that sense. Bear and I both thought trees made better friends than people did. Mom was always worrying I was too much alone, that I didn’t try hard enough to make friends with the kids at school. I had friends. Heather, who was on the swim team and sometimes sat with me at lunch, and Laura, my best friend since first grade. They were both at Mom’s funeral with their parents, and it was awful and embarrassing and I hadn’t talked to either one of them since. I was glad to be starting over at a new school in September where no one knew anything about me and no one had seen me cry.
    I grabbed the rope ladder hanging from the bottom of the platform and climbed up. This high off the ground I could see for miles in every direction. Crooked River to the northwest. Zeb and Franny’s house a quarter mile to the east. The dirt road connecting our meadow to their gravel driveway and the paved highway beyond. If I’d brought Bear’s binoculars, I would have been able to see a small chunk of Smith Rock scraping the sky four miles west and the steeple of the First Baptist Church of Terrebonne glittering white three miles north. Year after year my view from the poplars stayed the same. The fields ever rolling green, the river curving around the usual bends, the water flowing on and on, the sky and earth reaching to infinity. Up this high the small changes, the slow erosions and fallen trees and gone-away people, were impossible to see. I sat with my back against one of the poplar trunks. A light breeze swayed the branches around me. I was embarrassed to admit it, but a small part of me had been hoping that this summer would feel just like every other summer. Ollie and I would pick wildflowers and float in the river until our fingers and toes