The Skeleton Tree (4 page)

My hands were bleeding. My knee throbbed. But I kept moving up from the sea, and Frank crawled along behind me like some terrible creature slithering from the depths. At the top of the beach we found a cliff, and we sat with our backs against it.

I couldn't believe how I'd tumbled so quickly from an ordinary life into my very worst nightmare. I was stranded in the wilderness with a kid who seemed barely alive, and I had no idea who he was.

At dawn I looked out on a dreadful world. Waves thundered into the cove and hurled themselves at the stones below us.

A line of kelp and seaweed lay bundled like rope along the base of the cliff. But there was not a stick of driftwood, and that puzzled me for a moment. Then I realized what it meant. At high tide, the beach would disappear. The cove would fill like a huge bucket, and we would drown like mice inside it.

I shoved Frank's shoulder. “Get up,” I told him.

He groaned. He pushed my hand away. But he lifted his head and looked around, then dragged himself to the cliff. He pressed a hand against the rock where a trickle of water made it black and shiny.

In a very little while, his palm began to fill. He slurped up the water and filled it again, and beside him I did the same thing. Together, we drank water from the stone. When he'd had enough, Frank turned to the seaweed and pulled out a handful of leaves. They looked like lettuce gone bad in a crisper, but Frank shook off the pebbles and twigs, the tiny shells, and stuffed the seaweed into his mouth. The sound of his chewing made my stomach gurgle. I had eaten nothing since my night at the dock in
Puff.

“How do you know that's safe?” I asked.

He looked at me as though I was stupid. “It's all safe, moron.”

“Says who?”

He didn't answer. He kept chewing, stuffing more seaweed into his mouth.

“How do you
know
it's safe?” I asked him again. But he still didn't tell me. I was so hungry that I didn't
care
if the seaweed made me sick. I plucked out a wrinkled leaf and started eating, and once I'd started I couldn't stop. Some of the seaweed was crunchy. Some was soft and slimy, and it slithered down my throat like globs of snot. All of it tasted awful, but I gorged myself anyway.

Frank gazed out at the sea and across the little cove. Then he turned to me and asked, still chewing, “Where's Jack?”

The question sort of stunned me. I was afraid to tell him the truth in case he fell into his eerie sleep again, or in case he refused to move until I'd answered a hundred questions. So I told a shameful lie. “He's gone ahead to look for help.”

“Then let's find him.” Frank stood up. He looked around again, down at my feet. “Hey, where are your shoes?”

“I lost them,” I said.

“Moron.”

The cliffs were less than twenty feet high, but the rocks were sharp and jagged. With cuts on my hands, and nothing but socks on my feet, I climbed a lot slower than Frank. But he didn't try to help me. He just scrambled up and disappeared over the edge.

By the time I reached the top I was sure he would be miles ahead. But he was lying on his back on a bit of grass, with a dried stem stuck in his teeth.

I had never imagined we would find people just beyond the cove. But it was still a huge disappointment to look to the north and see empty wilderness stretching on forever. If we had come to an island it was enormous, too big to walk around, too mountainous to cross. If we'd landed on the mainland, we might have to trek a thousand miles to find another person. It seemed useless to go on, but just as useless to stay where we were.

“How far did we go before we sank?” I asked.

Frank didn't answer.

“How long were we sailing?”

He still ignored me. He spat out the grass stem and flicked his hair. “Jack's dead, isn't he?” he asked.

I couldn't admit it so bluntly. I just nodded.

“Why didn't you tell me the truth?”

“I don't know,” I said. “I was trying to help.”

Frank glared at me. “The day I need your help, that's the day I kill myself.”

Well, I had already saved his life. But I didn't point that out. Frank got up and started walking. A moment later, he whirled around and shouted at me, “Do you
know
he's dead?”

“Yes,” I told him. “I saw it.”

“You saw
what
?”

I felt tears coming into my eyes, so I turned away. “He was in the boat when it sank,” I said. “He was right in front of me, down in the cabin.”

“Then why didn't you save him?”

I looked up and stared right back, not caring now if my eyes were red. “Why didn't
you
save him?” I said.

“I would have,” said Frank. “If I'd been that close.”

“He told me to stay outside!” My hands were clenched so tightly that my fingernails pressed into the skin. “He went down to get the radio, and the water trapped him. What do you think I could do, you stupid idiot?”

“You could have tried,” said Frank.

I shrieked at him, “The boat was sinking!”

Just a few feet apart, we snarled like animals about to kill each other. My heart was pounding, and Frank was flushed with anger. But just as I thought he was going to hit me, he reached up and flicked his hair again. Then he turned toward the sea, and a little bit of a calm came over us.

“So what about the radio?” His back was toward me. “Did he get it? Did he call for help?”

“No,” I said.

“Why not?”

I didn't want to tell him about my fumbled catch. But into my mind came an image of Uncle Jack in the sinking boat, and it didn't seem fair to tell less than the truth. “He got the VHF,” I said. “He tried to toss it through the hatch. But I missed.”

A little sound came from Frank. Because I couldn't see his face, I didn't know if he was angry or amused. When he slowly turned around I saw only that annoying sort of pout that hid all expression.

“You're such a moron,” he said. “
I
would have caught it.”

“You couldn't even move. You were like a zombie.” I glared up at him. “Why were you on the boat anyway? How do you know my uncle Jack?”

Frank just shrugged.

“Who
are
you?”

I hated looking up at him. He stared back until I had to turn away. Then he laughed and said, “I'm your guardian angel, Chrissy. I've been sent to Earth to save you.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

I went on toward the north again, along the narrow strip between cliff and trees. But Frank barreled past and led the way. His jacket, still soaking wet, dripped water. His boots squelched with every step.

Oh, I envied his boots. My socks already had holes in the heels, and my toes poked out the front. Stones and roots jabbed into my feet. “We could take turns with those boots,” I said.

“Yeah, I guess we
could,
” said Frank. But he kept walking.

Where the cliffs jutted, we took shortcuts through the forest, down trails that deer had made. Frank liked to bend the branches and let them spring back at me, so I learned to stay a bit behind. He plucked berries from the bushes and shoved them in his mouth.

“You shouldn't eat those,” I told him.

“Why not?”

“They could be poisonous.”

He laughed his annoying laugh and kept eating.

“Didn't you ever hear of poisonous berries?” I asked.

A heavy branch snapped from his hand and swung toward me. “Didn't anyone ever show you the good ones? Didn't your dad do that?”

“No,” I said.

“Why not?”

“I don't know.” It was a stupid question. “He just didn't.”

Frank grunted.

“You don't go grazing for berries in the city,” I told him. “Where do
you
live?”

He wouldn't answer that either. But he was desperate to show he knew more than me. “The purple ones are salal,” he said. “The red ones are huckleberries. So are the blue ones, I think.”

He stopped and broke off a sprig of red berries. He peeled away a handful them and shoved them into his mouth. Juice dribbled down his chin as he held out the branch. “Try some,” he said.

“I'll wait a bit.”

“Moron.” He shrugged and started walking. I watched him carefully, in case he began to stagger. But the foul taste of seaweed was still in my mouth, and I ached with hunger. So after a while I tried the berries. The salal tasted bitter, but the huckleberries were sweet and juicy. They took away my thirst, but I felt as hungry as ever.

Our clothes dried as we walked. Frank took off his jacket and carried it over his shoulder, and in the miles that passed we never said another two words. I watched with dread as the sun sank lower, and I wished that
my
father had been more like Frank's. No one had ever taught
me
how to find water on a cliff, or food in a forest.

When Frank stopped to drink from a little stream, I kept trudging along, thinking about things. The forest grew dark, and when I looked back, Frank was not there.

I called his name. But he didn't answer. I had no idea how far I'd gone without him. I started back—at a walk, and then a run—and I found Frank kneeling by the same stream. In front of him lay a little pile of twigs and moss. He was busy scraping sticks together.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“What does it look like, moron?” He didn't even lift his head. “I'm making a fire.”

“You could have told me you stopped,” I said.

“Why?” he asked, still not looking up.

“Why not?” I said. “I got you to shore. I saved your life. We have to stay together.”

“Why?” he asked again.

“ 'Cause that's what you're supposed to do!” I shouted.

“Why?”

I felt like picking up one of the stones from the river and bashing his stupid head. I plopped down on the grass and watched him.

I had always thought that lighting a fire would be pretty easy, but I had never seen anyone actually try. Though Frank rubbed the sticks furiously, I saw no spark or plume of smoke. He had a serious, stubborn look that was somehow sad to see.

His hands began to shake, and his teeth showed in a hard line. He hunched forward over the little shreds of moss and worked in sudden bursts that left him exhausted. At last he fell back, muttering to himself as he glared at the sticks.

I tried to encourage him. “It'll be nice to have a fire,” I said.

What anger flashed over him! “Do you think you can do better?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “That's not—”

“Anyone who thinks it's easy to start a fire in a rain forest doesn't have a clue.” Frank picked up the sticks again.

The sky darkened. A swarm of blackflies came. Frank swatted at them as he worked, then suddenly swept the moss away and threw the sticks aside. “We don't need a fire tonight,” he said. “It's too hot.”

Well,
he
was hot. He was sweating from his efforts, but I was already cold.

Frank pulled his jacket around himself like a little tent and huddled inside it, safe from the blackflies. I kept slapping at them as they whined all around me, and I shivered in my T-shirt and sweater. From the distance came the howling of wolves. More eerie for its faintness, the sound tingled through my nerves.

I didn't sleep until the sky began to brighten. Then, as soon as I closed my eyes, it seemed, Frank was standing beside me, kicking my sore feet. “Let's go,” he said.

His fingers and lips were stained blue with huckleberry juice. But he didn't bring any berries for me, or give me a chance to find my own. He kicked me again, then started walking north. I had to scramble to follow him.

We stayed at the edge of the sea, sometimes high on sheer cliffs, sometimes down on little beaches of gravel or rock. Three or four times I looked at my watch and saw the hands frozen at 3:15. It was as though we were doomed to walk forever, with time never changing.

“Where are we going?” I asked Frank's back as we passed through a strip of trees. “What are we going to do?”

As always, he ignored me. We went another half a mile, across a ridge and out again to the cliffs. Frank stopped and turned around. He looked angry. “Why are we going north?” he asked.

I shrugged. “What's the diff?”

“ ‘What's the
diff,
' ” he said, mocking me with a laugh. “What are you, eight years old?” Stiffened with salt, his hair hung over his eyes like a pirate's patch. “How do you know there's not a whole city just south of here?”

It was another question that I had no answer to. I said, “I don't think there's a city anywhere.”

“You don't know that, moron.”

“I saw the land from the boat,” I said. “You didn't.”

Frank crossed his arms. “Maybe we should split up. You go north, and I'll go south.”

I didn't like that idea, and he knew it. He just wanted me to plead with him. But I had done that too often for schoolyard bullies to want to do it again. If I let him push me around once, it would never stop. He would just push harder the next time. I shrugged and said, “Whatever,” and started walking north.

Frank didn't follow me. It would have been too embarrassing to turn around and trail along behind him like his puppy, so I kept going. After half a mile, I knew I'd made a big mistake.

Below me was a little beach covered with garbage. I decided to explore it, hoping to find a pair of shoes for my sore feet. Then I could climb again to the next point, turn around, and catch up with Frank. “There's nobody there,” I'd tell him. “We have to go south.” It was a clever plan; he would get what he wanted, but I wouldn't be giving up. It was what my father would have called a “win-win.”

In Vancouver, I couldn't have walked a quarter mile on English Bay without finding a flip-flop, a sandal or a sneaker. Along with baseball caps and disposable lighters, they had seemed as common as clamshells. In Alaska, it was even better.