Navigating Early (25 page)

Early and I stared at this ghost of a camp, looking for any signs of life, half-dead or otherwise.

“This has to be it,” said Early. “This is just the way it’s described in the numbers. They have to be here. The lost souls.”

“There’s nobody here, Early. Just look at this place. This must have been abandoned years ago. Maybe they moved the camp farther north, where there are more trees.”

But just as I was saying this, there was a noise inside one of the shacks. A soft
plink, plink, plink
ing sound, as if some ghostly person were stirring a metal spoon in a pot. Early and I walked together to the shack, and Early reached out his thin, pale hand and pushed on the door. It gave a creak as it opened, and we walked inside a very cold, nearly empty log cabin. In the center of the room, however, there was a small wooden table with a chair pushed up to it, and a small dish and cup placed just so.

A curtain ruffled in the open window, giving the room a feeling of liveliness, but it was just the breeze. There was the sound again. Early looked around the room, then moved toward the table and lifted the cup a few inches off of it.
Plink, plink, plink
. It was the sound of a tiny drip of rain coming in through the battered roof, of single drops landing in the cup.

The plate, the cup, the curtain. All signs of occupation, maybe even hospitality, extended to a fellow logger or traveler, but the fireplace offered no warmth. The plate served no food. Maybe there were inhabitants, the ghostly kind, that were no longer at the mercy of the elements and no longer needed food or drink.

I wondered,
If a person is half-alive and half-dead, which half of that person needs food and warmth? And does the other half no longer care?

The rain plinked more rapidly into the cup in Early’s hand. The way he stood there, holding it in place to catch the drops, made my heart hurt. He looked like a poor beggar boy pleading for alms and receiving only a few drops of
water for his trouble. Was that just the way things were? People held out their hands without ever getting them filled?

I wanted to tell Early,
Put the cup down. You’re just going to come up empty
.

And then Early did put the cup down, leaving it to catch the drops. “Let’s go,” he said.

Maybe he was finally finished with this quest of his. Maybe he’d given up the ghost of Pi and the ghost of his brother.

“You’re right,” he said.

Unbelievable. I was never right about anything when it came to Early.

“We should probably go farther north. That’s what Pi would do. He’d follow the Great Bear.”

I didn’t even argue. We headed north.

We had been going wherever the bear tracks led us and now were way off the path. There was no way to know if we were anywhere close to the actual Appalachian Trail. As we walked, the terrain got more rugged. Rockier and steeper, and just wet enough from the drizzle to become dangerously slippery.

“We haven’t seen any tracks for a while, Early. How do we know we’re going the right way?”

“The numbers,” he answered matter-of-factly. “They get very hard and bumpy.”

“Hard and bumpy, huh? The cot I used to sleep on in the summer was hard and bumpy. Maybe Pi is lying all
stretched out on a lumpy mattress somewhere, listening to
Flash Gordon
or
Superman
on the radio.”

Early didn’t find that likely or funny.

“Pi doesn’t have a radio. And if he did, he’d be listening to Billie Holiday, because—”

“It’s raining, I know, I know.”

It
was
raining, and it was getting dark. The sky rumbled, threatening still more rain.

“We’d better find a rock to crawl under for the night. You pick one and make sure it doesn’t look like it’s going to roll over on us.”

There were lots of nooks and crannies to choose from. Rock formations that had niches and indentations formed by glaciers long ago. But so far there hadn’t been any spaces big enough to hold both of us.

“You go left and I’ll go right. That way we’ll have a better chance of finding something before it starts to pour.”

“Okay. I’ll go left. I’ll yell if I find something,” said Early.

“Right. You do that.”

“Then you come and find me.”

“Okay, Early. I got it.”

“Ready, set, go.”

We parted ways.

Glaciers are funny things. Great masses of ice that, when they receded, left all kinds of interesting things behind. Waterfalls, gorges, rivers, caves, and deep glacial pools. Early and I must have wandered right into a museum of glacial art. In my search for a place to camp, I had stumbled upon a scene that could have come straight out of a
National Geographic
. The wooded path I was on led down to a swiftly flowing stream. The sound of rushing water filled the air around me. It felt good not to be listening for thunder or bears or pirates, or even Early. Stepping from rocks to logs, I maneuvered out into the water and hopped, skipped, and jumped upstream, finding my way to some great slabs of stone surrounded by pools of water that looked deep and dark. A fine mist sprayed my face, but it wasn’t raining, and the sound of rushing water grew louder.

The stone slabs were big enough that I could walk around the pools and around a bend. I found myself in some kind of prehistoric gorge, formed by millions of years of water crashing through its cracks and over its sides. And now, after all that time, the water kept coming. A great waterfall lunged over the top of the gorge, pouring an endless supply of icy-cold water into a seemingly bottomless pit.

I closed my eyes, letting the sound and the spray take hold of me. Wanting to be swallowed by it. Wanting to let it wash over me—wash me clean. In church they would call it
being absolved
. But absolved of what? Did I feel guilty about my mom? I hadn’t done anything. That was exactly it: I hadn’t
done
anything. I wasn’t even there—to fluff her pillow, put a cool washcloth on her face, pull the blanket up close. Hold her hand. I wasn’t there. I was in the barn. The water crashed around me. How do you get absolved for being absent? In Early’s mathematical mind, that would be like taking nothing from nothing. You’re still left with—

Suddenly, in the cascade of water, I saw a flash of color, and my stomach clenched in a knot. Had something gone
over the edge of the gorge? The color stayed suspended in the waterfall for a brief instant, then disappeared. I waited for it to make its way out of the rush of water and into the current of the stream. But it never did. Had the colored object been pounded to the bottom of the pool? It took me a second to realize why my stomach was in a knot that wouldn’t come undone, why I was looking so desperately for the flash of color to emerge from the torrent of water: it was tartan red.

I set my sights on the waterfall. Going over that cliff would probably kill a person, with its water rushing over the top of the gorge and falling in a great sheet. Early couldn’t have gotten up there that fast, could he?

Where should I look? In which direction should I go?
And now the rain came down, a million new drops of water joining the torrent that churned past me. Anything that had gone over the falls would be carried in one direction. I knew it made sense to follow the water. But that flash of red and the way it had lingered in the falls held me. The color hadn’t come from above the waterfall. It had come from
behind
it. My course was set. I had chosen to follow that red tartan jacket on this quest when I had no other beacon or landmark to follow. I would follow it again now. I turned upstream and headed in the direction of the waterfall.

The roar and surge of the water were powerful. Every step was a struggle as I tried both to keep my footing on the rocky bank and to see into the spray pummeling my face. I was heading for the incline leading to the top of the gorge. Just as I was mapping out the climb, looking for footholds and tree roots to grab on to, I noticed a narrow path veering
away from the bank and seemingly into the stream. There were footprints.

He wouldn’t have walked right into the waterfall. What could he have been looking for?
Again, I followed him, three, four, five steps. Then the path ended. All that was left were slippery rocks that jutted out into the water. There were no footprints coming out. Early had not turned back. He had to have walked out onto those rocks. I followed. One rock, two rocks, three rocks.

Just when it seemed the next step would have me swept away by the waterfall, I saw it. A narrow path of rocks, barely visible beneath the dark water, that led behind the crashing waterfall. Frightened yet exhilarated, I placed my feet carefully, one in front of the other, on the slippery path. Then I ran out of rocks. I couldn’t see one more step. How do you take another step when you can’t see the path in front of you? But wasn’t that what I’d been doing all along on my journey with Early? I put my foot out where I could picture Early putting his, took a deep breath, and leaped. I landed on solid ground. The water still crashed around me, filling my ears as it echoed throughout the stone cavern in which I’d found myself.

“Early?” I called, but could barely hear myself. I stepped forward into the cavern. Where was I? What was this place? And where was Early?

“Early? Where are you?” My voice echoed back to me. It must have been bigger in there than I’d thought. And it was dark.

I pulled the flashlight out of my pack, grateful to Gunnar for having packed it in my bag. The light switched on,
revealing jagged walls of ancient rock. I found myself looking for cave drawings made by people who had lived here long ago. What would they have drawn? I didn’t know much about the native people of the American Northeast. In Kansas, the earliest inhabitants would have drawn bison, and maize, and spears. I supposed that wasn’t too far off from what any early artist might have drawn. Animals, food, and weapons. The basics.

I had to think like Early. To him, this was not just a cave that he’d happened upon. He’d looked for it. He’d found it. I moved the light left, then right, and saw that the space or room that I was in led to another, just beyond it. I shut my eyes, then opened them again, trying to view my surroundings as Early would.

I saw the same stone walls, the same dark caverns. And suddenly, I saw what Early saw.
Catacombs
.

Pi had gotten lost in the catacombs.

I ran my hand along the rounded stone of the entrance to the next cavern, still trying to put myself in Early’s head. It seemed familiar. Or maybe it just reminded me of something. Maybe it was just like being in Early’s head. Lots of interesting nooks and crannies and tunnels from here to there, and there to here. A place where someone could get lost for a long time. But Early never seemed lost. He always knew right where he was and where he was going.

I could still hear the water outside, the river rushing all around this place. But this time I also heard the Allier River in central France. And as I touched the stone archway, I felt the arches of the Gaston Bridge.

The second room led to another. Then another. There
was a light up ahead. I shut off my flashlight and walked toward the opening, lit up by a single lantern, which must have been there already, because Early didn’t have a lantern. But he did have matches. I entered the room and picked up the lantern—and there was the red tartan jacket. Early lay motionless on the dirt floor.

“Early.” My voice sounded raw. He didn’t move. I reached down, but just before my hand touched him, I could tell something wasn’t right. The jacket was his, but he wasn’t wearing it. It just lay on top of him. I raised the lantern and held it a little closer. The shape of the body was wrong. Kind of flat. I lifted the jacket sleeve just a bit.

“Early?” I said again, in a whisper. This time hoping with everything in me that it wasn’t him.

The jacket was caught on something, so I gave it a tug, then jumped back as if I’d seen a ghost. Only it wasn’t a ghost. It was a skeleton—bony white fingers and all.

“What the—” I jerked back, knocking out the lantern and hitting my head against the low rock ceiling. My heart pounded and my head ached. In total darkness, I touched the back of my head and felt something warm and thick. Blood.

Then I heard a breath in the cave that wasn’t mine.

I fumbled around for my flashlight. I must have set it down when I’d come in. Reaching this way and that in the dark, I hoped I wouldn’t grab hold of a skeleton foot.
Found it!
I switched it on. The light was getting dimmer, but it was still bright enough to allow me to see the room. And there was Early. He sat scrunched up against the wall, his head resting on his knees. He was crying.

28
 

B
lood and bones. What a combination. I was getting ready to pass out. I bent over at the waist to get my blood flowing back to my brain and found myself counting to ten, out loud. I used to do that when I was a little kid to distract myself from my many cuts and scrapes.

“One … two … three …”

But Early corrected me. “The ones have disappeared.”