The Red Garden - Alice Hoffman [84]
I’m fine, Dad, Frank had written. Don’t worry about me.
FRANK TOOK EVERYTHING worthwhile that had been left behind at the Farm. A tent, some pots and pans, blankets, matches. He had a rifle that Rattler had bought, but he had no idea how to use it. He was sleeping in the tent, spending his days converting one of the smaller caves into a house for the coming winter. He insulated the walls with ferns and grass, then covered the insulation with planks of wood. He had the saw and toolbox from the Farm and was fashioning a hole in the top of the cave. He planned to rig up an exhaust system for smoke to escape, which would allow him to keep a fire going all winter. He’d build a door, a bed, a table, some chairs. He was growing marijuana in a pasture between the highest cliffs, a place of great beauty where he spent his afternoons. He thought he lived the way most people dreamed. In slow motion, in the dark, alone.
One day he heard a truck straining to get up an old logging road that cut through the mountain. The road was nearly impassable and not many people knew about it. Frank was in a section of the woods where there was a litter of fox pups he liked to watch. The foxes had gotten used to him and mostly ignored him, but they too heard the truck and they scampered away. Frank climbed down to an overlook, rifle over his shoulder, careful to ensure that no rocks would roll down into the road. If you could even call it a road. It was more of a trail, seeded with ferns, and moss, and young birch. Down below there was a Jeep, stuck in the mud.
The driver got out, pissed. He was a tall, handsome blond man, wearing jeans and a suede jacket. He had on expensive cowboy boots, handmade. He had a noticeable limp.
“Fuck this Jeep,” he said. “I thought it could go over anything. What a rip-off.”
A woman with long pale hair stepped out on the passenger side. She was the most beautiful woman ever seen on Hightop Mountain, the kind who could make men stupid with longing.
“I told you not to drive up here,” she said. She wrapped her arms around herself and looked warily at the shadows cast by the trees. “We’ll probably be eaten alive.”
The man went over and linked his arms around her. After a while, the beautiful woman backed away.
“Did your mother know she was naming you after outlaws?”
“I’m not such an outlaw,” the man said, sheepish.
“Not you.” The woman laughed. “Your brother.”
THAT NIGHT FRANK thought about the man who was clearly his brother and who hadn’t seemed familiar in the least. Frank had been doing his best to try to learn the constellations and he lay outside in the tall grass staring up. There was an awful lot they didn’t teach you in school, important things like how to survive. He thought he’d be ready to be sent overseas if he was drafted now, not that the army would ever have him at this point, not that he wanted to go. All the talk that people at the Farm had tossed around about getting back to the land was actually true for him. He felt wrapped up in Hightop Mountain, a part of it, as if the cells of his body had expanded to include fir trees, foxes, streams of green water. He had no plans to go anywhere.
He heard the Jeep again a few days later, honking its horn, driving up another logging road that wound even higher into the mountain. It was startling to hear so much noise in the deep quiet of the forest. The Jeep stopped and the driver got out. Frank could see his brother clamber on top of the roof. He started shouting Frank’s name like a madman.
“I know you’re out there,” Jesse called.
Frank said nothing. He knew how to wait. After a while, Jesse went away. Then it was quiet again.
The third time Jesse came searching for Frank, the beautiful woman was with him again. She was wearing shorts and hiking boots and a white shirt. They got out of the Jeep, slamming their doors. Birds took flight. The sky was filled with sparrows.
“You know where you’re going, right?” she said.
“I grew up here,” Jesse told