The Moose

The Moose

"We drove up the snowy, winding road towards the cozy A-frame cabin."

Toni never heard that before. “A-frame cabin.” Her mother was reading out loud from something she was beginning to find boring.

She said it was a pamphlet but no one had ever read her a pamphlet. Books. Stories. Dr. Suess. The Gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in church every Sunday and every first Friday with her kindergarten class and all the parents of all the kids in her class. She could not see it either, whatever it was from the back seat, facing backwards, so close and so far away. So she wasn’t sure what that was. A pamphlet. Some kind of book or something.

She liked new words, new things.

Pamphlet.

A-frame cabin.

She didn’t have to think for long to guess what an A-frame cabin probably was. She knew what an A was. She knew what a cabin was. She pictured a giant-A as a tiny house. She couldn’t wait to get there.

At six she knew the way to her grandparents house, a five-hour ride from their home. She did not know it was north, or the names of the highways or roads past their own dead-end street, Saville Row, and the busy street it intersected with, South Martine. To go to school they turned right on South Martine. To go to church, or the Y, they turned left.

She knew the way there by the smell of the cities they drove through and the texture of the rock walls alongside the highway. She saw the perfectly vertical lines cut into those rock walls. She figured out pretty quickly that those lines were the remains of blast holes workers must have drilled into the hills so that the roads could be built flat and not up and down and up down. She wondered why. She thought it would be fun to drive up and down and up and down those hills.

They turned right. They did not turn where they usually would to go to school. They kept going forward all the way through Scotch Plains, and then merged right into fast traffic on a two lane highway. This was the beginning of the ride to her grandparents’ house.

She said-asked just loud enough for her mother in the front seat to hear from all the way in the back, “We’re going to Nana-n-grampa’s—,”

Two of her annoying brothers started their foolishness at the same time. “No-dummy-hahahaha-she-forgot-or-something-we-been-takin’-bout-this-for-”

Her father cut through that with, “Quit it.” He didn’t have to say “right now” or anything else. Those dummies shut up right away.

Then Lee chimed in, the oldest, just by one- and two-years respectively and just as fed up with his younger brothers as she was. “Yeah, you two. Really. Sheesh.”

Toni didn’t say anything, just glared behind them, wishing they could see her face and be scared just by looking at how angry and annoyed and just OH she was. They wouldn’t even care though if they even took a second to look at her. Big whoop. Don’t be such a baby.

The highway was quiet. Toni could see only a tree or two into the darkness outside the car window. She leaned her head up against the suitcases piled in the seat next to her. A thick green rough wool army blanket was folded in geometric perfection and stored in the built-in hollow compartment in the armest. She pulled it out, unfolded it, wiggled it over herself and herself into the most comfortable position she could find against the suitcases.

She was tired and was unable to sleep. A vacation. They always went to her grandparents house when they all went somewhere together, she, her four brothers and their parents. Or camping. Sometimes they went camping in the summer. If they went anywhere in the winter, it was to her grandparents’ house.

This time they were going to an A-frame cabin in the woods. Her mother had put the pamphlet down hours ago. Brian and Rich had not shut up almost the whole ride so far. Until recently. They were finally getting tired, too.

Then that dummy Brian thought he’d try to be funny. “Hey is Toni even here? Did we leave her back home.” As if he hoped they had. Ha ha so funny. And then Rich had to repeat it just like everything Brian said. Like he had been for this whole-ride-long.

Toni didn’t say anything. Maybe they’d think she was asleep. Lee mumbled. “Shut up you two. Sheesh.” Their father turned his head back over his shoulder and back to the road in a fraction of a second. No one saw but everyone knew he raised one eyebrow. He said nothing. Neither Brian nor Rich said another word. Soon they were both asleep.

Toni was not. She was mad and sad and excited. Then her parents started talking to each other. She knew they thought she and her brothers were all asleep by the way they spoke. The sound of their voices, not the words so much, was different from the way they spoke when the children were alert.

Or she wasn’t sure about the words. She listened to them speaking without hearing the words very well. They were talking about the house and the vacation and what they wanted to do with everyone in the mountains. They talked about the boys. Adoring. Worried. Frustrated. Mostly proud.

They only mentioned her by name once.

She was still secretly awake many miles later when her father exited a dark highway onto a darker road. It was so quiet except for the tires humming smoothly on the road. Then the station wagon slowed down again and turned right again onto the crunch of a gravel road. Toni couldn’t help it. “Yay!” She loved that sound.

Her father and mother both jumped a little. “Hey you!” “Did that wake you up, sweetie?”

Her “No,” broke through her brothers’ slumber. How? She spoke so softly to her parents. Brian woke up first and of course somehow Rich knew he did and so woke up too.

“We’re here?”

Followed immediately not even a beat in between them. “We’re here?”

Their father said as he always did, “We’re here.”

She unbuckled and spun around kneeling up against the back seat, looking forward, trying to see if the A-frame house was a giant letter A. It was and it wasn’t. It certainly didn’t look like any house she had ever seen before.

Her father rarely picked her up anymore. She was too big, but this night he lifted her gently out of the car. She was asleep the moment her head rested on his shoulder.

She half-woke to her father’s footsteps coming downstairs from the loft. Her blurry morning vision could make out the still bodies of her three older brothers in their sleeping bags on the floor.

He woke them up, his voice pitched just loud enough to break their slumber. “Let’s get going, guys. We’ll miss the best part of the day.”

The boys grumbled, protested, and curled up inside their cocoons, all except Lee, of course, who always took his role as the oldest very seriously. He sat up right away, yawned and spoke at the same time, “Ummmmornin’, Dad. Get up you guys. Come on.”

Toni didn’t move or make a sound. It was a game she played with her father when they went on trips together. She kept her eyes just barely closed, breathed silently. His only, his sweet and peaceful, perhaps beautiful daughter. Would he know she was already awake?

“Morning, Toni-the-tiger! You get the bathroom first, OK?” He did. He always knew. She opened her eyes to his smile until she smiled back.

She answered among her brothers’ whydoesshealwaysgetto… “OK, Dad.”

She was the first one out of the bathroom which meant she was also the one who had to start getting things ready. So she thought at six. She couldn’t really do much but she was going to try anyway.

The five of them were up and out of the cabin in the last deep dark of the night. Baby Jimmy and their mother would sleep in everyone hoped while the rest of them went hiking. Toni loved the word “dusk.” She thought everyone probably loved that word. It meant a smell and a cold against her skin and tree frogs or the wind through the last few brown leaves still clinging to bare branches. It mean all of that and it also meant a color that filled the sky at only that moment of the day. A color with no name except “dusk.”

Her father led the way. An early-morning hike up a gentle slope at the foot of a mountain. Someone had said the name but Toni wasn’t paying attention. She didn’t care about the name of the mountain, just that they were going to walk up the side of a mountain.

They walked in single file a lot of the time. Toni was the smallest so someone always had to be behind her. She wanted to be last though. She didn’t need anyone making sure she didn’t fall behind or something. So when Rich took a turn walking last in line, he had to be annoying of course. Grumbling and complaining, being mean to her, all real quietly of course so no one but Toni could hear him. Real tough.

So she tricked him. “OK, you want to go in front of me, fine. Go ahead.”

Rich wasn’t having it. At least not at first. “No way. Then I’ll have to keep waiting for you and looking back to make sure you don’t wander off or something.”

She had enough of him. “Go ahead. I don’t care. I won’t tell anyone. Want to go ahead of me? Go ahead. I’ll keep up with you easy.”

So he did. He went ahead, and she slowed down. The trees were so tall, and what was that sound? Oh my god she hoped she could see a deer. Rich did eventually look back. He wasn’t a bad brother. He was just a dumb annoying boy. He looked back to see she was not behind him.

It only took a couple minutes for Rich to go far enough ahead that she could no longer see him. She wasn’t scared. The path was clear and went only two ways: one ahead and one behind. She knew which way her brothers and father had gone. She was kind of fast when she wanted to be. She could catch up to them for sure.

The path turned gentle and long to the right. She would catch right up to them any minute. The rising sun brightened the path. They would be right there in front of her in just…

The path straightened. Blocking it not very far in front of her was a monster. Kind of. Kind of a cartoon monster. Still scary and strange and… giant. A dinosaur horse with giant everything. Legs taller than her father stood up straight. A neck and head bigger than any animal she had ever seen live in a zoo or on television. No moose antlers but a moose it must be. She tried to gasp or scream but made some other sound, a blend of slightly more terror than delight. Rich’s echoing-wispering call overlapped her outburst, “Toni, are you there? Toni! GET OVER HERE.” The great beast startled at both these screaming noisome two-leggers and crashed away from them like a planet smashing into the orange and red sunrise.

Not much later, their father called them to halt in a clearing on the trail that looked like a scene in a movie. Cold icy ground? That wouldn't stop them. They would rest here, drink, have a snack. They pulled off their respective backpacks and opened them up. Toni knew she’d find the army blanket from the car. It was so scratchy she loved it.

She spread it out in the little frosty meadow. Rich spread his blanket out right next to hers. They had their water and snacks in complete silence, not looking at each other. Brian and Lee and their father had no idea what was going on. Neither of them had ever been silent that long in their entire lives. They let them be. Their father spoke to the two older boys but Toni heard him loud and clear. “We’ll sit and rest here for a good while. When everyone’s rested, we’ll head up from here to the old camp ground. It’s not far but still a good bit of a walk for the little ones. She looked at Rich. He’d heard it too. They would show them. They survived a monster of the mountain trail.

~~~

She climbed over the back seat and settled in up against suitcases and travel bags piled in a magic configuration that broke the laws of physics. So many should not be able to fit in that space and still leave her enough room to snuggle up in perfect symmetry with the bony angles of her awkward little body.

The four doors of the station wagon whumped closed, never-ever slammed hard, according to their father’s instruction. Thoom-thoomp, thoom-thoomp, a heart-beat of their lives.

She knew without looking who closed which doors by the rhythm and timing of metal clicking against metal, sealing them in safely for the ride home. Each in their time-honored assigned spaces. Rich and baby Jimmy crammed in between Brian, always seated behind their father on the driver’s side, and Lee, the oldest, behind their mother.

Toni, the only daughter, spoiled according to her brothers, alone according to the voice inside her, lonely among the smelly, raucous rough-and-tumble gang of boys, had her own seat in the Pontiac Parisienne, facing backwards. She could, if she wanted to, watch the view of where they had just been, cars following them in a landscape moving away, past them, yet still and constant and shrinking.

She pulled the wool blanket into both hands, balled it, held it close to her chest, clutched it under her neck, bent her head down as if devout, and breathed in its scent. Still partly the cleanliness of carefully piled laundry back home, and more now the piney earth of mountain paths.

The engine turned over, and the omnipresent noise of her brothers filled the car cabin as it always had and always would.

Now though it sounded more like a hum, like the mountain winds and the pouring rain at night against the roof of the cabin. Maybe she was not in the car with them, after all. Maybe she was still on the side of the mountain, looking out at the snow-filled valley far away below her. Maybe she would always be there, forever.