I SAID, ‘HOW IS Leonardo?’ As a matter of fact, it’s the third time I’ve said, ‘How is Leonardo?’ Where are you this morning, James?”
“What? Oh, I’m sorry.” James brought himself back to bacon and eggs and his mother’s anxious frown from across the breakfast table. “Leonardo is fine. I just have the Jenkins book to finish reading, and I’ll be ready to start the actual writing.”
“Well,” Charlotte said, “I should think you’d have to start soon if you’re going to be able to get it in the mail to Mr. Johnson by August.”
Charlotte meant well, but she was just too accustomed to coping with a husband who made your average run-of-the-mill absentminded professor look like an efficiency expert. James’ father did several things extremely well. He was an excellent lecturer, writer, and historical researcher and a real genius at infecting other people with his own passionate interest in history. But he was a total failure at certain aspects of daily life. At the university Professor Fielding was famous for his tendency to misplace such things as his glasses, his lunch, his wallet, his lecture notes, and, on an average of once a week, his 1969 Volvo. Even after Charlotte had it painted bright red. Half the people on campus had a funny story about helping him rummage through all six of the campus parking lots looking for it. There were a lot of other stories, too. One of the most famous dated back to the pre-Volvo days when Professor Fielding used to walk to school in good weather. One morning Charlotte had handed him the garbage pail to deposit on the curb as he left, and some time later he had arrived in the classroom with his briefcase in one hand and the garbage in the other. In fact, James sometimes privately compared his father to a very powerful airplane that had somehow been manufactured without a starter, navigational device, or a steering mechanism. Over the years there would have been a lot of crashes if it hadn’t been for Charlotte.
James, himself, on the other hand, was an entirely different matter. Very early on—perhaps as a reaction to hearing his father chuckled about—he had decided to be famous someday, not only for his creative genius—exact area yet to be decided upon—but also for his brisk efficiency in everyday matters.
“Don’t worry,” he told his mother. “The essay will be done in plenty of time.” The essay on Leonardo da Vinci was the extra credit project that James had contracted to do as a part of his petition to finish high school in three years instead of four. The research was really no problem, since he had been a da Vinci fan for years—ever since William’s sabbatical, which the Fieldings had spent in Italy, near the village where Leonardo was born. There was, however, some reading he’d meant to do. He’d come to the wilderness equipped with a couple of new biographies, which he’d intended to read before he began to write. And, although there was no reason at all for Charlotte to worry, he had to admit that he hadn’t accomplished nearly as much as he’d intended to by now. What had made the difference was the fact that the wilderness hadn’t turned out to be as much of a bore as he’d expected.
At first it had been the forest itself. Before that summer James hadn’t particularly related to trees, having been well acquainted with only the few rather uninspired specimens to be found in backyards and in the scientifically groomed and landscaped groves of the university campus. Not that he had anything against them. It was just that trees, as such, had failed to make any significant impact on his philosophy of life in general. But that state of affairs had begun to change almost the moment the Fieldings moved into a cabin entirely surrounded for miles and miles by almost nothing else. The trees were everywhere, ancient stately trees; ragged shaggy undomesticated giants, possessed of towering dignity and a strange, almost intimidating mystery. From the first day he had been strangely and entirely unexpectedly fascinated. Passing up the more obvious pleasures of the lake, the swimming and boating and fishing, he had taken to the woods, spending most of every day exploring deeper and deeper into the surrounding area, much to his parents’ mystification. Now and then Charlotte took time out from collaborating with William on his third textbook to worry about it.
“What do you do out there in the woods alone all day?” she would ask, or “Your father and I are planning to take the afternoon off and row out to the island. Wouldn’t you like to come along?” James wouldn’t, but he found it difficult to explain why, even to himself.
He had, for a while, considered the possibility that it was a form of regression, that he had suddenly slipped black to his Daniel Boone period. Sifting back through his long history of what Charlotte called hero-worship and William referred to as historical transference, James was able to determine that, if it were true, he must have just lost about seven years. He was sure of the time sequence because he remembered specifically that the Daniel Boone syndrome had followed the Robin Hood phase, both of which had preceded Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, all of which had happened before his tenth birthday—because he definitely recalled that by the time he was ten, he had given up world conquest and decided, instead, to be a universal man. But after further analysis he’d decided that the whole thing had nothing to do with Daniel Boone, or with regression, for that matter. Whatever it was, he was sure it had nothing to do with pretending to be anybody, not even James Archer Fielding.
In fact, when he was alone in the woods, he seemed at times to be scarcely aware of James Archer Fielding at all. What he was aware of was a kind of overwhelming majesty, dignity, and beauty that owed nothing to him or to any other member of the human species. Walking through cathedral groves, dipping his fingers in the pure clarity of natural fonts, climbing high rocky altars, he experienced what seemed to be a kind of spiritual aerobics—as if undeveloped capacities of some mysterious nature were being stretched and challenged. Part of it was a constant feeling of anticipation, of wonders about to be revealed and promises soon to be kept. And then he had stumbled upon the hidden canyon and its magnificent occupant, and it all seemed to come together. The deer became the center of it all, a symbol too secret and significant to be shared or discussed—at least not for the present. To Max he only wrote that nature sometimes does something so perfect that it’s almost enough to shake your faith—in agnosticism. And to William and Charlotte he said nothing at all.
At first it had been simple stubbornness. They had said he would love the wilderness, he had said he wouldn’t, and he resisted admitting that they’d been right. But before long it was much more than that. Before long it had become the kind of private treasure you don’t risk by exposing it to the appraisal of others. Particularly not if the others in question happen to have made a career of investigating other people’s value systems in the cold light of logic. There was nothing logical about the way James felt about the deer in the valley—and he didn’t want there to be.
“James! You’re getting to be as bad as your father.” Apparently he’d been daydreaming again and missed something his mother had been saying to him. But now the frustrated shrillness of her voice had gotten through not only to him, but to his father as well.
Looking up from the notebook he’d been scribbling in all through breakfast, William smiled at James. “What’s this? What have you been up to to merit such a harsh accusation?”
“Not listening.” James grinned. “I stand accused of the heinous sin of not listening.”
“Shocking,” William said sternly. “Capital offense. Off with his head.”
Charlotte smiled, and then sighed with exasperation, at both of them or at herself for smiling at them. “What I’ve been saying was—we’re out of bread and milk again, and I wondered if you’d mind going over to the Commissary for me before you take off for the hills.”
For just a moment he felt disappointed—he’d been thinking of taking a lunch and spending the whole day in the valley of the stag; but then suddenly the disappointment faded. Another image had appeared in his mind, taking the place of the noble beast. A hot pink and golden tan image. “Sure,” he said. “I’d be glad to.”
The west gate of The Camp was a small pedestrian-sized opening, on the opposite side of the enclosure from the main entrance. It was used mostly by Campers on their way into the mountains to hike or ski—and by Willowbyites on their way to and from the Commissary. There was no gatehouse or guard, but there was a very heavy duty gate. Admission was by remote control. You opened the call box, held down a button, and talked to the guard at the main gate.
“Main gate, Sergeant Smithers speaking. Who goes there?”
James suppressed a laugh. Smithers was the chubby bald guard with the pot belly and slightly embarrassed manner. Embarrassed, no doubt, by having to call himself sergeant when the only army he’d ever been in was probably old T.J.’s, and by having to say corny things like, “Who goes there?”
As far as James had been able to determine, Major T. J. Mitchell’s private army consisted of himself; Lieutenant Carnaby, his fat-legged secretary; old Sergeant Smithers; and the two other gate guards who only got to play they were privates. And then of course, the troops—the Camp residents, more than one hundred members of the affluent society ranging in age from doddering to toddling, who seemed, in T.J.’s fantasy, to play the role of a kind of reserve army, but who would be about as effective militarily as a pack of pomeranians, with the possible exception, on second thought, of the little golf ball hit-man.
“James Fielding,” he said into the speaker, trying to keep the giggle out of his voice. “Pass number one, eight, five, four, six.” The badge number was a case in point—as if The Camp had issued more than eighteen thousand passes. Eight would probably be more like it.
“Okay Fielding. Enter!” Smithers said, and a buzzer sounded, indicating that the gate was unlatched.
Recalling the two-year-old torpedo brought back images—most of which concerned his sister—and the fact that, as far as James was concerned, the main purpose of this expedition was more than the purchase of bread and milk. Man does not live by bread and milk alone. The main purpose was, of course—A. Diane Jarrett. And—B. The Don Juan Project.
The Don Juan Project had begun, or at least the idea had first arisen, in May not too long after James and Max had gotten acquainted. They’d been lying around the swimming pool at the university on one of the afternoons it was reserved for faculty families and their guests, and James had been telling Max, in an amusing and satirical way, about his history of identifying with famous characters from the past. While they were talking, Trudi Hepplewhite, whose father was in chemistry and who was one of the sexiest girls in James’ class, came in with three of her friends. It wasn’t very long before Max, who didn’t know any of the girls, was being suave and cool and just crass enough to be funny and the girls were all cracking up—while James, who had known them for years, was as usual, either saying nothing at all for so long everybody forgot he existed, or else coming up with a boring monologue or some joke that nobody got.
It had been that way with James ever since he’d started taking an interest in girls as such. And that had been a long time ago. Although he seemed to be retarded socially where females were concerned, there was every indication he was normal physically, or even precocious. He’d started thinking seriously about girls fairly early, and the more he thought about them, the more he tied up when they were around. Earlier, much earlier, before sex entered the picture, girls he’d known had been simply people and no particular problem. But the more interested he got, the more he worried about what they were thinking of him and the result was usually—fiasco. Like Heather Rubenstein, for instance. Heather was a neighbor with whom he built tree houses, published a neighborhood paper, started a dog walking business, discussed politics and co-authored several indignant letters to the editor of the Oakland Tribune. But then one day he’d noticed some interesting developments where Heather was concerned, and shortly afterwards he’d blown the whole relationship by trying to kiss her. It wasn’t that she refused him, either. She’d simply asked him why he wanted to, and he hadn’t been able to think of anything to say. And he hadn’t been able to think of anything to say to her ever since.
He’d discussed the problem with Max before that day at the pool, but he’d never really leveled with him. It just wasn’t easy to admit to someone with Max’s experience that you hadn’t even kissed a girl—at least not very successfully.
But Max must have guessed. That day at the pool, after the girls had gone, he did something typically Maxian. In the same circumstances anyone else would either have kidded James, or if they were abnormally kindhearted, pretended not to have noticed that he’d made an ass of himself. But Max didn’t do either one. What he did do was bring up the subject in a very unemotional way, analyze it, discuss it, and proceed to figure out what could be done about it.
According to Max there wasn’t really any reason why James was such a dud where girls were concerned. He was certainly smart, he could be very amusing in the right circumstances, and he wasn’t even bad looking.
“Oh sure,” James said, flexing his almost nonexistent biceps. “I’m a regular Mr. America.”
Max, who not only had a charismatic personality and an attractively homely face, but also a very adequate build, shrugged. “You’ll fill out,” he said. “I’ve filled out a lot since I was your age.” Max was eleven months older than James. “Besides, there are a lot of women who really go for that unhealthy, soulful look. Look at Peter Frampton and Rod Stewart.”
“And Byron and Chopin,” James agreed eagerly.
Max regarded him thoughtfully for a minute before he said, “You do have a few problems—but it’s nothing that can’t be remedied. It’s mostly a matter of changing your style and building your confidence.” After he’d thought for a while longer he said, “Building your confidence is probably the crucial thing, and I know just the place to do it.”
It seemed that the year before, Max had worked for the summer recreation director at St. Mary’s, which was a private school for girls. Max had been in charge of keeping the swimming pool area clean and checking out towels and lounge chairs. This year he had moved up to the position of lifeguard and his old job would be open. It was an easy job, and there was plenty of time for socializing. And Max would be there in case James needed advice or moral support. It would be the perfect place for him to get the practice he needed to build his confidence. In fact, Max said he wouldn’t be surprised if, by the end of summer, James was into a whole new identification thing. Only this time it would be with a historically famous lady killer like—
“Don Juan?” James had suggested.
Max shook his head, grinning. “Sure,” he said. “Sure enough. Don Juan it is. This will be the summer of the Don Juan Project.”
Only it had turned out to be the summer of the New Moon Lake instead; and until Diane Jarrett had shown up there’d been no reason to think that any part of the Don Juan Project was transferrable to the high Sierras.
Inside the west gate a path led down through a grove of old trees and leveled out to merge with the jogging trail that bordered Anzio Avenue. After curving past two cabins, Anzio ran into Bunker Hill Road and directly down to the center of The Camp. On the jogging trail James shifted from the swift silent tread of the woodsman to a jog—when in Rome—and in a very few minutes was in sight of the complex of buildings grouped around a central quadrangle known as the “Parade Grounds.”
There was no sign of Diane Jarrett in the Commissary, where James purchased bread, milk and half a dozen other items that Charlotte had added to the list at the last minute. There was no one of interest on the tennis courts either, or in the pavilion snack bar, or at the post office. In fact, at this hour of the day, nine thirty A.M., very few troopers of any description were in evidence anywhere. It would appear that in this particular military establishment reveille tended to be a bit late. But James persevered. Sometime earlier he had noticed a map on the post office wall—a map on which names had been inscribed at the location of each private cabin. Previously he’d had no particular interest in finding out who lived on which of T.J.’s favorite battlefields. But now, scanning the map eagerly, he located not one, but two cabins labeled with the surname, Jarrett. Above Cabin sixteen The Duncan Jarrett Family had been inked in, and on the neighboring premises, Hank and Jill Jarrett and Family. Both sixteen and seventeen were on Gettysburg Road, not far from the end of Anzio.
Considering the possibility of a different route home—one that included a tour of Gettysburg—James was studying the map when the sound of running feet made him turn towards the window. A group of joggers was passing the post office; and judging by a split-second glimpse of a provocative profile, one of them might be the object of his quest. Collecting his sack of groceries, he shot out the door and into the Parade Grounds in time to see the joggers come to a stop at the sidewalk service window of the snack bar. Quite suddenly, it occurred to him that he was very thirsty.
There were four of them—four blond, sturdily trim and damply glistening joggers. Thick, snowy white socks hugged their ankles and terrycloth sweat bands in colors that matched their jogging suits encircled their wrists and brows. And one of them was, indeed, Diane Jarrett. One was a tall, thick-chested man, another was a sturdy-looking middle-aged woman, and the fourth was a young man who was probably in his late teens. While the older man ordered at the service window, the others walked in circles, panting and gasping; but when the drinks arrived, they all subsided around one of the sidewalk tables. To James, now crouching behind a Dr. Pepper at an indoor table, they seemed to be surrounded by a kind of aura.
Diane and the man and woman, probably her father and mother, were talking animatedly between diminishing attacks of panting and studying their wristwatches and the pedometers strapped to their ankles. The young man, however, only sat quietly, leaning back in his chair, his eyes staring blankly in the general direction of the lake. He was definitely, James decided, Diane’s brother—or else gay. There couldn’t be any other explanation of the fact that he was staring at the lake while sitting next to a glowing, panting Diane, whose chest, under her tight sweat shirt was still heaving in a really remarkable way.
Something suddenly interfered with James’ line of vision, and he refocused to find himself eye to eye with Fiona, the young Englishwoman who worked in the snack bar. Fiona, probably in her mid-twenties, was lean and bitter. She was bitter about England, America, the older generation, the younger generation, The Camp, T. J. Mitchell and the fact that her visa was going to expire at just about the time the weather got really bad in London. James found her even-handed disillusionment vaguely inspirational—an indication that prejudice was not inevitable, except perhaps against life itself. In the past he’d enjoyed chatting with Fiona, but at the moment she was refilling the sugar bowl on his table and in the process blocking his view of the outside world.
Leaning around her and pointing he asked, “Do you know who those people are?”
Fiona glanced wearily over her shoulder. “That lot at the table? Do I know that lot? Better than I’d like to, I can tell you.”
“Why? What’s the matter with them?”
“Oh well, it’s not just the four of them out there, is it? It’s the other one I could do without. The little one. Baby-sitting they call it. Well, let me tell you, there’s not much sitting to be done. Dodging would be more like it.”
Suddenly he knew what she was talking about. “Oh, you mean Jacky?” he asked.
“That’s the one. Good name for him, too. Another Jack the Ripper, someday, I wouldn’t be surprised.” Fiona was wiping up spilled sugar so fiercely that the table jittered.
Deftly rescuing his Dr. Pepper, James asked, “You mean you baby-sit at the Jarretts’?”
She sighed. “Regularly,” she said. “Every Saturday night.”
“You’d think one of them could do it sometimes,” James said sympathetically. “One of the other kids, I mean. They look old enough.”
“You would think so, wouldn’t you. But, oh no, not a bit of it. All four of them have to go out every Saturday night. The cook won’t do it, either. Got it written right into her contract when she went to work for them, good job for her. No baby-sitting.” Fiona was sounding bitterer by the moment.
“Well, why do you do it if you hate it so much?” James asked. “They couldn’t make you do it.”
She sighed. “It’s the money,” she said. “I’m helping my mum buy a new flat in Camden Town, and the Jarretts do pay bloody well, I’ll say that for them.” She glanced over her shoulder. “I make more money dodging Jacky for three hours than that old skinflint Mitchell pays me for a whole day.” Still sighing, Fiona retired behind the counter.
When James noticed that the Jarretts were preparing to leave, he stood up abruptly, put his glasses in his pocket, reconsidered, sat down again and put his glasses back on in order to watch them jog away. When they were out of sight, he asked Fiona where they lived. “I know it’s on Gettysburg,” he said. “Is it number sixteen?”
“Sixteen? No, that’s the other Jarretts. The Duncan Jarretts. The Dunkin’ Jarretts, I call them. Always in the water. This lot’s the hunting Jarretts.”
“Hunting? What do they hunt for?”
“What don’t they? You should see the poor things hanging around the walls in that cabin of theirs. Cabin!” She rolled her eyes upward. “More like a bloody castle. They have this room they call the trophy room that’s bigger than most people’s houses. That’s where they keep most of the dead animals.” Suddenly Fiona’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “You have some particular interest in…” She paused, grinning. “Oh, so that’s it, is it? Diane strikes your fancy?”
James started to say something about a casual meeting on the beach, but Fiona interrupted. “You’d better watch your step with that one, laddie. Wind up hanging over the mantle with the zebras, you will.”
He left the snack bar soon afterward, discovered he’d left his groceries under the table, went back for them and left even more quickly with Fiona’s bitter chuckle following him out the door. At the crossroads he bravely took Gettysburg Avenue, but although he walked very slowly past number seventeen, a palatial cabin completely surrounded by multilevel decks, no one was in sight. Defeated, at least temporarily, he took the footpath to Anzio and headed toward the west gate.
He was almost through the grove of old trees when he heard the sound of a high-pitched voice. He stopped and stood still, listening. The voice came again. “Grif. Griffin. Where are you?” A moment later a little girl, perhaps six or seven years old, bounded into view, saw James and stopped with a startled gasp.
She was small and dark, and her hair hung in jagged wisps around her narrow face. There was something about the aristocratic sweep of her long delicate nose that reminded James of a beautiful Afghan hound he had once been acquainted with. Like the Afghan, the little girl seemed to be suspicious of strangers. Backing away among the trees, she was staring at James with large, startled eyes.
“Hello,” he said, smiling in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. “Did you lose—something?” “Grif” sounded like a pet, probably a dog.
Still backing, the girl continued to regard him warily. A moment more and she would probably have disappeared, but just at that moment the paper bag tore. A milk carton bounced off his foot, and as he grabbed for it, a loaf of bread shot out the top of the bag. While he was busy juggling groceries, he thought he heard a giggle, and when he was finished, with everything arranged more or less at random on the ground in front of him, except for one long strip of bag paper, which he still clutched in his left hand, he found that she had returned. Apparently the impromptu clown act had convinced her that he wasn’t dangerous after all. Squatting in front of him, she gathered up fallen groceries and asked questions.
“Who are you? Do you live here, in The Camp? Have you seen a girl—a big girl in a shiny dress?”
James grinned. “My name is James. No, I don’t live here, I just come here to shop at the Commissary. No, I haven’t seen anyone around here. Except you, that is. What’s your name?”
“Laurel. I’m Laurel Jarrett.”
“Jarrett?” James’ interest multiplied geometrically. “Is the girl you’re looking for Diane?”
In the midst of helping James stack his arms with loose groceries, Laurel Jarrett paused. Looking up she puckered her small mobile mouth as if she’d tasted something sour. “No. Not Diane. Diane is my cousin. Grif is—Griffin Donahue.”
On the little girl’s thin dark face vivid dramatic expressions came and went like colors in a kaleidoscope, and there was something about the way she said Griffin Donahue that was almost reverent. “Don’t you know Griffin?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“Shhh!” she said suddenly, her finger to her lips. For a few seconds she parodied listening and then disappointment. Concern, anxiety and deep, dark foreboding followed each other across her face in a way that would have done justice to a heroine in a silent movie. “I’ve got to find her,” she said, making it sound as if it were at least a matter of life or death. “She said she’d be here.”
Running on tiptoe she disappeared among the trees, and James, still clutching precariously stacked loaves and cartons, headed for home. A few seconds later he heard, faint but clear, a faraway echo. “Griffin! Griffin! Where are you?” There was something about it that was almost eerie.