AFTER HE’D DECIDED to show Diane the picture of the deer, he felt better than he had in a long time. His plan was to show her the picture and simply tell her that he’d taken it somewhere in the general area of New Moon Lake. And of course, he wouldn’t even do that until she’d promised not to tell anyone else.
He knew how fascinated she’d be. There wasn’t the slightest doubt about that. There was sure to be a long debate on whether he was going to tell her exactly where he took the picture—and why he really couldn’t. That part, as he saw it, would be especially important. Perhaps he would even be able to make her understand the deer’s unique importance. His importance not just as an extraordinarily beautiful specimen, but also as a symbol of the past when, under the rule of natural selection, other magnificent specimens such as he lived into their prime and passed on their superior size and strength and intelligence to many descendants.
And perhaps, if things were going well enough and she seemed to be understanding, he could try to make her see what the deer had meant to him personally—a creature triumphantly wild and free that had accepted and trusted him and by doing so had made him a part of something mysterious and indescribable, but somehow totally important. And if he could make her understand that, it would prove that Charlotte was wrong, and that her story really didn’t relate to his situation at all.
The phone conversation was very difficult, as he had feared it would be. Although he was careful to keep his voice very calm and unemotional, Diane immediately went on the offensive.
“Well, I thought you must have gone back to Berkeley or something, without even saying good-by.”
“No,” he said evenly. “We’re not going until Friday. I’ve just been very busy. And I heard you were, too.”
There was a pause. “Oh yeah?” she said at last. “Like, what did you hear, exactly?”
“What I heard isn’t important, at least not now. That’s not what I called about. What I called about is just that I’d like to come over to say good-by and—”
“Well,” she interrupted, “in just a few minutes I’ve got to—”
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Just let me finish. There’s another reason why I want to see you. There’s something I have to show you.”
“Show me?”
“Yes. Something you’ve never seen anything like in your whole life, and probably never will again. Something you have a particular interest in—”
“Well, what is it? Why can’t you just tell me what it is?”
“No. I can’t do that. For one thing, before I show you, you have to promise not to tell anyone. Not anyone, not ever.”
There was another pause, a longer one. At last Diane said, “Well, I don’t have very much time, but maybe you could come up for just a few minutes. Would that be all right?”
“Yes, that would be all right. But it would be better if you could meet me somewhere.”
“No. I can’t do that. No one’s home right now except me and Jacky. I’m baby-sitting him until Mom gets back from her hair appointment. So I can’t go away.”
“Okay,” James said. “I’ll be there in just a few minutes.”
As he went up the driveway, she was leaning over the deck railing. She was wearing a tight black tee shirt and shorts made out of artificial tiger skin with yellow and black stripes. Her hair was different, more sophisticated looking, with two smooth wings sweeping back to an upturned fringe on each side of her head, and she’d done something new with makeup that made her eyelids look faintly blue. She looked older and sleeker and more sexy than ever. When he was halfway up the drive, she greeted him with a double fisted, “Ka-pow!” and when he got to the top of the stairs she took both his hands and kissed him. A brief kiss, but enough to make him think that so far everything was going better than he had dared to hope.
In the trophy room Jacky was curled up on one of the leather couches fast asleep; but when James started whispering, Diane told him not to bother.
“He just climbed up on the counter in the kitchen and ate half a cookie jar full of rum balls,” she said. “He won’t hear you.”
Not only Jacky’s eyes, but his whole face looked squeezed shut and he was breathing very deeply. One pudgy pink fist was clamped around the golf ball so hard that the knuckles looked white.
“Is he all right?” James asked uneasily.
“Oh sure. He does it all the time. Stuffs himself and conks out. Like a boa constrictor.”
She led the way to one of the other leather couches and sat down. “Okay. So what is it that you want to show me?” she said.
Of course, he made her promise first. Promise on her word of honor that she would never tell anyone. And then he took the picture out of his pocket and put it in her hands. She stared at it for a long time before she said anything. She turned it over, looked at the back, turned it back, stared at James for a moment and finally said, “Where did you get this?”
“I took it,” he said.
“Where?”
“Not too far from here.”
“Did you get close enough to count the prongs? It looks as if there must be ten or eleven.”
“Twelve,” James said.
She stared at him. “Are the points in more or less the same places on each side, or are they all uneven?”
“They’re very symmetrical.”
She shook her head muttering something under her breath. “When did you say you took this?”
“Early in July.”
“I thought so. They look as if they were still in velvet. They probably grew a little more after this was taken.”
“A little,” he said without thinking.
She looked up sharply. “You mean, you’ve seen it recently?”
“Well, I’ve seen him since then—since July.”
“You’ve seen this buck more than once? In more or less the same place?”
He reached out suddenly and tried to take the picture out of her hands, but she held on to it. Still staring at it she said, “Do you realize what a—I mean, how unusual this buck is. They just don’t ever live long enough to get to be like this anymore. Especially not in California. And this one would be amazing in Colorado or anywhere. My dad would go out of his mind.”
He took the picture away and put it back in his pocket. “Listen, Diane,” he said. “I have to tell you about this deer.”
“Yes,” she said, “tell me.” She took both his hands and held them all the time he was talking.
He thought he did it pretty well—explained about the deer’s importance as a beautiful part of nature, as a symbol of the wilderness as it once existed—and as a personal symbol, mysteriously significant. And as he talked she listened intently, even more intently than he had imagined she would, her eyes shining and her lips slightly parted.
When he finished she said, “That is so beautiful, Jamesy. The way you told that. And it’s all so amazing. The way you really sort of tamed it. Tamed a wild buck. That’s really an incredibly beautiful thing.” Taking his face between her hands she kissed him hard, and, of course, he kissed her back. Then they went on kissing and each kiss was a separate swinging spiraling high, and if there was anything at all going on in his mind it was just a groggily exultant refrain that kept repeating itself over and over. “It worked. She does understand. It really worked and she really understands.”
They might have gone on more or less indefinitely, but there was the sound of a car in the drive and then the slam of the back door, and Mrs. Jarrett’s voice calling, “Di. Jacky.”
When Diane called, “Here we are, Mom. Down here.” Jacky started waking up, yawning and rubbing his eyes. James eyed him warily.
“I told you,” Diane said, “he won’t throw it at you anymore. You don’t have to worry.” But just as before James felt that Jacky’s brown marble eyes were saying something not quite so reassuring.
Upstairs in the kitchen he chatted for a while with Jill Jarrett, who couldn’t quite conceal her surprise at seeing him back in the running, and then Diane walked with him to the end of the drive. In their favorite grove they kissed again, but briefly because Diane said she really did have to get back to get ready for her diving lesson, and then they said, not good-by, but until tomorrow.
“Until tomorrow. Will I see you tomorrow?” Diane said.
“All right, tomorrow,” he said. “What time should I come over?”
“Well, how about very early? Early enough so we could go on a long hike. Could you, James? It would be so wonderful if you could take me to where you saw the deer.”
There was a kind of shock, like a small jab of lightning. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think…”
“Please. If I promise and promise not to tell anyone?”
He didn’t say yes, even though she begged him to with her hands folded, and then with her lips against his in a moist, “please, please, please.” And finally, while tickling him all over and saying, “Say yes. Say yes. Or I’ll never stop.”
But he didn’t tell her that he would take her to see the deer. All he actually said was that he’d think about it and tell her when he saw her tomorrow. And that evening he did think about it a lot more and decided that as much as he would like to tell her—and there was a part of him that definitely would—he couldn’t and wouldn’t do it.
It wasn’t exactly that he didn’t trust her. Or, if he didn’t, he at least was able to explain and excuse her possible untrustworthiness in this particular area. He could understand how she might promise now, and really intend to keep her promise, not realizing how hard it would be and how much pressure she might be under at some time in the future. He could picture a situation when the Jarretts had returned to The Camp for the hunting season and when he, himself, wouldn’t be there to remind her of her promise, and of a different set of values where the deer was concerned. There would be all the pressure of the competition to get the best trophy and the knowledge of what a bombshell she could drop by revealing the deer’s existence. It would be just too much of a temptation. He finally went to sleep still trying to figure out the best way to break the news to her that they wouldn’t be going on a hike, or at least not on that particular one, tomorrow morning.
He woke up early the next day, but he was still only half-dressed when he heard Charlotte calling him. A second later she knocked on his door and then stuck her head in.
“James. Oh, good. You’re up.” Her voice was matter of fact, but her face was making a surprised, quizzical comment of its own. “You seem to have company.”
In the kitchen Diane was sitting at the table next to William, eating a piece of toast. After the few seconds it took him to get over his surprise, James made a stab at introductions, but Diane interrupted.
“Oh, never mind, James. We’ve already introduced ourselves. In fact, we’ve had enough time to get to be old friends, haven’t we, Dr. Fielding.”
Diane was wearing pants that fitted like Levi-colored skin and one of her famous tee shirts, and when she said, “Haven’t we, Dr. Fielding,” she leaned toward James’ father and smiled one of her most dazzling smiles. And judging by his expression, William was dazzled, or at least a little astonished.
“Yes. Yes, indeed,” he said, but then as Diane went on smiling at him he said, “Charlotte,” and it sounded a little like a call for help.
Charlotte sat down by Diane and got her attention by passing her the toast plate. “Another piece of toast, Diane?” she asked.
“Oh no, thank you, Mrs. Fielding,” Diane said. “I’ve had plenty. And James and I really have to be going. We were planning to get a very early start, weren’t we, James?”
“Well,” James said. “I don’t know—”
“That’s all right. There’s still time, and we forgive you for oversleeping. Just hurry and eat something so we can get started. Here. Sit down here and have some of this good toast.”
He should have gotten things straightened out right then, at the beginning, instead of giving the impression he was going along with her plans: but it wasn’t easy. Not with his mouth full of toast and with Diane chattering away about the wonderful farewell hike they’d planned to a great picnic spot way up near the top of the first ridge in the Six Prong range. She went on and on about it, describing their destination in such detail that it occurred to him that he hadn’t really given her enough credit where imagination was concerned. In a very dramatic and vivacious way, she told about a waterfall and a beaver dam they hoped to see and how she had staggered out of bed at five-thirty that morning to make a picnic lunch for them. There wasn’t really an opportunity for James to say anything at all; and by the time he’d finished eating, Charlotte and William were saying good-by and telling them to be careful, and they were out the door and on their way down the path.
He did try then, as soon as they were alone, to tell Diane about the decision he’d arrived at the night before, but she went on arguing and promising and coaxing in all kinds of persuasive ways, and somehow they kept on walking in the direction of the valley.
At one point he did stop dead in his tracks, when it suddenly occurred to him that they might run into Griffin and the kids. He hadn’t told Diane about them, and he didn’t intend to, because if she knew he’d already shared the secret, there would be absolutely no way he could refuse to tell her. But what almost stopped him was realizing how Griffin would feel if she knew he’d told Diane. They were almost to the river crossing when it hit him, and he sat down on a rock and began telling Diane that he’d just come to a firm decision. But then she sat down on his lap and started messing around and running her hands up and down his back and the back of his neck and kissing him, and in the midst of all that he remembered what Griffin had said about meeting Laurel at nine-thirty every morning. Glancing around Diane’s head at his watch, he realized that if they hurried they could get into the valley, see the deer, and be back out again before Griffin and the kids reached the river crossing. Somehow, he just quit struggling, then, except for trying to get it over with in a hurry.
Things moved very quickly after that. Diane proved to be a surefooted and confident mountain climber, and she was very enthusiastic about the valley, particularly about the strange way the avalanche had cut it off so completely, except for the cliff trail. She kept talking about how amazing it was that James had managed to find it, and how impressed she was by his ability as a woodsman and explorer. And then they reached the flat boulder and almost immediately the deer came out into the meadow.
He stopped very briefly at the edge of the grove, tested the air and then came on again. Leaving the shelter of the trees he moved confidently out into the morning sunshine, his fantastic head held proud and high. When he reached the center of the meadow, he stopped and waited—for the gift James had taught him to expect.