Читать книгу Message in a Bottle - Kathryn Reiss - Страница 7

JULIE FROWNED. “WHAT kind of curse?”

Aunt Nadine rubbed her temples for a long moment, then opened her eyes. She laughed lightly. “I’m just being silly. Things will look up now that your mom’s here to help.” She turned to her sister. “Let’s think up names for our new shop!”

Julie stood up uncertainly. “Should I find Raymond?”

“When he sinks into a mood, he usually wants me to leave him alone. But maybe you’ll cheer him up!” Aunt Nadine pointed down the path. “Check the barns. That’s where he’ll be.”

Julie left the sisters and headed for the meadow. The grass was dappled with late-afternoon light that slanted through trees. The dirt path was as wide as a city sidewalk, smoothed by many feet over the years. Silence rang in Julie’s ears. She was so used to the noise of city life that the quiet was unsettling.

“Raymond?” she called, stopping at a pen outside the first barn. Inside was a large brown and white cow.

“Say hi to Mamie.” Raymond appeared suddenly at her side. His eyes were red-rimmed, but he was smiling now. “And to Buttercup, her calf. Everybody’s favorite baby!”

Julie reached over the fence and rubbed the cow’s broad, soft head. Mamie nuzzled Julie’s hand, and the calf tottered over, tail swishing. Julie rubbed Buttercup, too.

“The other cows are coming in for the night now.” Raymond pointed to the meadow, where a dozen cows were being urged toward the barn by two men who clapped their hands. “Let’s hurry, before they get here!” Grabbing Julie’s arm, Raymond tugged her through the wide barn door.

In the shadowy light, Julie could see a rope swing hanging from the rafters. A leather belt was looped around its seat to serve as a handle. Raymond grabbed the belt, pulling the swing behind him as he climbed up a ladder to a loft at one end of the barn, and then—“Bombs away!” he yelled. He leaped off the platform and soared through the air. “This is what we do for fun in the country,” he called down to her.

“Wow!” Julie laughed.

When the swing came to rest and Raymond had jumped off, Julie grabbed the belt and scrambled up the ladder. She straddled the seat and pushed off. “Bombs away!” Her stomach swooped as the long rope sent her plunging down, down, into the barn and then up, up into the air again. Down and up, and down and up, until the swing gradually slowed and Raymond took the rope for another turn.

Raymond seemed to have tossed away his cares while he rode the swing, but as the men reached the barn, he jumped off and ushered Julie out the side door. “We’ll have to help with milking if they see us!”

Julie thought it would be fun to learn to milk a cow, but after stopping briefly to pat the sheep thronging against their pen, Raymond dashed into the second, smaller, barn. He showed her a spacious room with small tables, beanbag chairs, and low shelves of homemade wooden toys and rag dolls. “This is the playroom,” he said. “And here’s our schoolroom.” He opened another door into a room with one big window, a round battered wooden table, and a chalkboard. “There used to be about a dozen kids, but now there’s just me and Dolores—and babies too young for school. With Dolores working, she might not be back…” He sighed. “Then it’ll just be me.”

“The only kid in the whole school?” Julie marveled. “Are you in sixth grade, like me?”

Raymond shrugged. “We don’t really have grades. Or teachers even. I mean, all the grown-ups take turns being our teachers for a few hours each day.”

Julie had a hard time imagining such a thing.

“Come on,” Raymond said. “Next stop, our beehives. Empty of bees, though.”

Julie frowned. “No bees?”

“Nope. A couple of weeks ago the whole colony swarmed—that means they flew off. So now we won’t have honey to sell in our new shop until we get some new bees.”

Julie followed Raymond out of the barn to the edge of the woods where wooden boxes were stacked. “What made the bees leave?” she asked.

“No one knows. Loud noises…some kind of disturbance. Vicky thinks someone upset them on purpose, but I don’t know.” Raymond shrugged. “Pa can catch a swarm and lure them to the hives. I’ve seen him do it before! If he were here now, he’d be able to get us some new bees.”

“Your dad sounds really talented with animals,” said Julie. “He trains chicks and catches bees! Pretty cool.”

“Pa is one cool dude,” said Raymond, ducking his head so his shaggy hair hid his face. “I wish he’d move back. He practically built this place himself. He made everything work.” He sighed. “My mom used to call him a jack-of-all-trades because he could build anything and fix anything. But now he says he has nothing to offer us at the ranch—just because he can’t do the work he used to. He wants Ma to move into town, but she doesn’t want to. She blames him for going off to war—says it ruined everything. But I don’t blame him,” Raymond said. “He went to Vietnam because his twin brother was a soldier who went missing in action. Pa wanted to find him.”

“Did he…find him?” Julie ventured to ask.

“Yes—but his brother was dead.” Raymond kicked the dirt around the beehive boxes for a moment before going on. “And then my dad got wounded and came home, and nothing has been the same.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Julie didn’t know what else to say. Her cousin’s sadness made her own heart ache.

“We had so much fun together,” Raymond said softly. “Ma, Pa, and me. Pa always made up games. Treasure hunts. Secret codes to solve. He used to give out silly prizes. Like once he made a headband for my mom, woven out of vines and flowers. He whittled me a whole zoo of wooden animals. And he used to call me funny nicknames—anything but regular Raymond.” He smiled, remembering. “Any name that started with R!”

Julie laughed. Uncle David sounded fun. “You mean like Ronald or Roger?”

“Yep. And Reginald, Reinhard, Raphael. At Christmas he called me Rudolph!” He kicked the dirt again, exposing something white in the dust.

“Hey,” Julie said, bending down. “What’s this?” She picked up a white scrap of paper. Just visible through the dust that darkened it were a sliver of a yellow sun and the last part of a word: afe. “Oh, it’s another napkin from the Galaxy Cafe!” It was just like the one she’d found near the chicken coop.

“That’s weird,” Raymond said. “Maybe Vicky’s right. Maybe Mr. Coker was here.”

The shadows around the barn were deepening, and Julie couldn’t help shivering and looking around worriedly, as if expecting to see the cafe owner sneaking up on them. Mr. Coker hadn’t seemed like a very nice person when she’d met him at the restaurant, but she didn’t like thinking he’d be mean enough to scare off the bees or let the chickens out to be killed by foxes.

“Your mom said maybe a curse is making things go wrong,” Julie said.

Raymond shrugged. “Oh, it’s just the old gold mine story.”

“There’s a gold mine here?”

Raymond was silent for a minute, as if deciding how to answer. “Yep,” he said finally. “It’s on our property, down by the river. Some gold miners staked claims there over a hundred years ago, but then things went wrong. The walls collapsed, and miners died. So when things go wrong at the ranch now, we say it’s the miners’ curse. But nobody really believes it!”

All the same, Julie thought a gold mine sounded very exciting. “I’d love to see it,” she told him.

Raymond shook his head. “It’s boarded up. You can go in only a few yards.”

“But still—” Across the meadow, a clanging bell cut her off.

“That’s the dinner bell,” Raymond said. “Let’s go!”

On the way back to the Big House, Julie tried to find a way to keep the conversation about the mine going. “I saw a TV show about kids exploring an underground cave,” she began.

“Lucky duck. You have TV?”

Julie stopped for a moment and stared at Raymond, forgetting about the mine for the moment. But of course he couldn’t have TV without electricity, she realized.

“Once a year we go to Sonora for a movie on my birthday.” Raymond’s voice was cheerful.

No television, and a movie once a year? Julie regarded her cousin doubtfully. “We’re like the city mouse and the country mouse in that old story. Our lives are so different.” Julie paused. “You know that story, don’t you?”

“Sure. Ma told it to me when I was little. We’re not that backward out here, though.”

Julie reddened. “I never said you were.”

Three black-and-white dogs raced from the porch, barking, and Julie bent down to stroke them, hiding her flushed cheeks. “I think you’re a lucky duck. I adore dogs, but we can’t have them at our apartment.”

“We have six—a whole pack,” Raymond told her, cheerful again. “And three cats. Come on, I’ll introduce you.” He opened the screen door to the Big House.

The great room held the kitchen and dining area. Beyond that was a large living room with several battered couches and armchairs, and a stone fireplace at one end. A chess game was in progress on a coffee table and a jigsaw puzzle under construction on another table. Along one wall was an assortment of banjos, guitars, flutes—even a cello. Three cats lazed on the shabby couches. The dogs surged forward to greet Raymond and Julie.

“You get to have all these dogs,” Julie marveled, accepting their licks and kisses. “And you only go to school for a few hours a day, and there’s a swing in your barn, and…it’s sort of a perfect life.”

“It was when Pa lived here.” Raymond’s voice turned sad again.

Julie felt a little shy at meeting the ranchers, but everyone greeted her enthusiastically. There were adults and babies and toddlers all gathering around the tables in the dining area, all various ages and races. The men had long hair and bushy beards and wore overalls that looked as if they were held together with patches. Some of the women wore jeans and T-shirts; others wore flowing prairie skirts, and Rose was still in her long red caftan. Vicky, the woman with blond braids, shook Julie’s hand vigorously. “You can call me Viking Vicky,” she said, with a booming laugh. “Everybody does!”

“She’s our self-appointed manager,” Aunt Nadine told Julie with a smile. “The one I told you about with ideas for saving the ranch.”

Vicky bowed low. “Fingers crossed.”

Dolores was carrying a stack of plates to the table. Instead of her black and silver outfit from the cafe, she now wore jeans and a peasant blouse. “We meet again,” she said. “Sorry about that order mixup today! My boss makes me nervous the way he’s always hovering, like he’s just waiting for me to make a mistake.” Dolores seemed bubbly and at ease now that she was home, Julie noticed.

“Being a waitress looks hard,” said Julie.

Rose winked at Dolores. “When we open our shop, you’ll quit the cafe and work with me,” she told her daughter.

The ranchers invited Julie and her mother to sit down to their simple feast of homemade cheese, whole wheat bread, potato salad, and fresh green beans. Julie sat between Dolores and Raymond.

Dolores’s father, Allen, passed Julie a plate of pale yellow butter. “Churned it myself this morning,” he said.

Julie spread a thick layer of butter on her bread. “Everything looks so good. I didn’t think I’d ever be hungry again after that burger at the cafe!”

“So you met my daughter’s boss,” Rose said. “That guy would like nothing better than to fill the whole mountain with restaurants and shopping malls!”

“He did mention wanting to build a housing development here,” said Mrs. Albright.

“I’ll bet he did! A luxury housing development.” Aunt Nadine sniffed. Grimly, she bit into her bread.

The ranchers asked Julie and her mom about their life in San Francisco. They wanted to hear about Mrs. Albright’s shop, about Julie’s sister Tracy, and about Julie’s school. Raymond listened intently. I wonder if he’s lonely, Julie thought.

Later Julie helped Aunt Nadine and Viking Vicky clear the tables, while Rose put a large pot of water onto the stove to heat. Raymond and the men went out to settle the animals for the night. After the dishes were done, Julie and her mother joined the ranchers outside.

Dusk had fallen over the mountain, and the absence of electric lights made the stars seem brighter than they were at home. Julie plopped down next to Dolores at the edge of the porch, dangled her legs over the side, and gazed up at the stars for a long time. Some ranchers sat nearby in rocking chairs; others lay on blankets at the edge of the meadow. After a while, a bear of a man named Jet, with a thick red beard and long curls, began strumming a guitar. His young wife introduced herself as Bonnie, and she held out their baby, a chubby six-month-old named Rainbow, for Julie to cuddle while she and Jet sang a folk ballad:

Oh do you remember sweet Betsy from Pike,

Who crossed the wide prairie with her husband Ike?

With two yoke of cattle, a big yellow dog,

An old Shanghai rooster and one spotted hog…

Julie stroked Rainbow’s silky curls. “Think of it,” she said to Dolores. “Pioneer babies must have crossed the prairie just like in that song!”

“They were coming west as part of the Gold Rush,” Dolores said. “And they settled in places just like this.”

“Yeah,” murmured Julie, thinking how special it would be to grow up here like baby Rainbow would—running barefoot in the meadow with the dogs, climbing trees, attending a one-room school. If Julie’s friends and their families all moved to the ranch along with Julie’s family, then there’d be a ton of kids again. Maybe Raymond would be happier. But, she realized, he’d still miss his father. And there were troubles here, Julie reminded herself, even if they seemed very far away at the moment.

“It’s heavenly here,” Mrs. Albright said dreamily.

Aunt Nadine grinned. “Well, we’ve got plenty of room for new members.”

Everybody laughed. The stars winked down at them as if sharing the joke.

The night grew darker, and people began bidding each other good night. Warm yellow lamplight glowed in the cottage windows as Julie, her mother, and Aunt Nadine strolled along the path. Back at their cottage, Julie climbed up into the loft, unrolled her sleeping bag, and curled up on the narrow cot. She could see Raymond already on the other side of the loft stretched out on his back in the dim moonlight filtering through the window.

Julie lay listening to the unfamiliar hush over the mountains, so different from the foghorns on the bay and the noisy traffic that passed outside her window in San Francisco. After what seemed like a very long time, she drifted off to sleep.

Some time later, a soft noise awoke her. In the moonlight, she saw Raymond moving to the ladder. Julie heard it creak as he climbed down, and his bare feet pad across the floor.

Then she heard the click of the front door closing.