The Crying Rocks Read online

He shrugs.

  “I know, it’s the Crying Rocks. You don’t want to go there. What’s the matter, are you afraid of ghosts?”

  “No.”

  “Yes, you are. You can’t even ask your father where the rocks are.”

  “Well, so what? I can do what I want!” Carlos explodes. Joelle steps back in surprise. It’s the first time she’s ever seen him angry.

  “You know, you’re always pushing people,” he goes on. “You think you’re smart, but you aren’t. Maybe there’s something you don’t know, something that’s none of your business. So forget it, okay? Just forget this whole thing.” He turns and marches off down the street.

  “Okay, I will!” Joelle bellows after him. She marches twice as fast in the opposite direction. What a nutcase, she’s thinking. What a wimp. This is always what happens when I start to be friends with someone. Why do I even bother?

  9

  LATE THAT NIGHT JOELLE WAKES up in the dark to the sound of rain splashing against her window. Nearby a conversation is taking place.

  “Get yourself to a doctor, why don’t you?” she hears Vernon say through the bedroom wall.

  Aunt Mary Louise replies that she doesn’t want to. They get into an argument about it. Not a loud argument. They keep their voices down so they won’t disturb Joelle.

  Vernon talks in spurts, in a soft, high, outraged voice. Aunt Mary Louise answers in a lower, more sensible-sounding tone, but in the end, she still won’t be persuaded to see a doctor. She’s getting better, she says. It would be a waste of money.

  “You’ve got every penny in the chicks. You don’t need any big bills right now.”

  “That’s no issue,” Vernon tells her. “I have backers who are helping.”

  “What’s this? You never told me. Who are they?”

  “Nevermind.”

  “Oh, I see. Another one of your big secrets,” Aunt Mary Louise accuses him.

  “Secrets? What secrets?” Vernon asks. Even through the wall, his voice sounds nervous and dishonest.

  “You think I’m stupid, don’t you?” Aunt Mary Louise says. “You think I’m not onto this story you’ve cooked up about Joelle. Well, I know more than you think.”

  “What story?” Vernon asks.

  “You know what. It’s a wonder I’m not sicker than I am. All your baloney floating around, clogging the air.”

  At this Vernon gets up with a big crash, goes down to the kitchen, and opens a can of beer. He stands around in there for a while in the dark. The house is small enough that Joelle can always tell what anyone is doing, even if they are standing in the kitchen in the dark.

  Finally, Vernon comes back upstairs to the bedroom and starts to put on his clothes, but Aunt Mary Louise begins to cry, so he takes them off again and gets into bed with her. Maybe he puts his arm around her, or maybe they’re both just lying there side by side looking up at the ceiling. Joelle can’t tell because, after the first creak of bedsprings when Vernon gets in, there’s no more noise.

  Out in the street a single car goes by, its tires slapping the cold, wet pavement. Joelle feels alone and, suddenly, very scared.

  * * *

  A week passes, during which Carlos does not appear on the morning walk to school, and Joelle studiously avoids making eye contact with him in the halls. In Spanish class they occupy separate planets—Carlos in the back row, bent over his notebook; Joelle up front, staring grimly at Mrs. Correja and the blackboard. After school she heads for the library to put off going home. She hides in the stacks near the big mural, where, if she finishes her homework, she can look for more material on the Narragansetts. She likes best reading the original journals and diaries of the first settlers. Their language is old-fashioned and their accounts often colored by religious and cultural biases, but their impressions of the Native Americans sound fresh and direct.

  Joelle catches sight of native lives ruled by the often brutal realities of existence in the wild, and at the same time of a people full of warmth and humanity.

  Their affections, especially to their children, are very strong so that I have known a father to take so grievously the loss of his child that he hath cut and stabbed himself with grief and rage.

  —ROGER WILLIAMS, 1643

  Yet . . . many times they take their children and bury them in the snow all but their faces for a time, to make them the better to endure cold.

  —CAPTAIN CHRISTOPHER LEVETT, 1624

  When there is a youth who begins to approach manhood, he is taken by his father, uncle or nearest friend, and is conducted blindfolded into a wilderness, in order that he may not know the way, and is left alone there with a bow and arrows, and a hatchet and a knife. . . . He must survive there a whole winter with what the scanty earth furnishes.

  —ISAAK DERASIERES, 1628

  By occasion of their frequent lying in the fields and woods, they much observe the stars, and their smallest children can give names to many of them and observe their motions.

  —ROGER WILLIAMS, 1643

  Over her own head, the mural keeps Joelle company. Its inhabitants are no longer the stereotypes she first saw. They’ve become familiar: young mothers with plump, brown-faced babies on their backs; a small boy showing off with a bow and arrow before his friends; the arriving hunters; the crafty-faced white men; an old woman sewing a pair of new deerskin moccasins. Joelle can’t help inventing plots for them as she stares up. And there are the two sisters in the shadows for whom, mysteriously, she feels a kinship. Like her, they look on, unseen and uninvited, at the village activities, though they are part of this native world, and Joelle is not—and never will be, she thinks, with a sadness and longing she doesn’t really understand.

  * * *

  Early one weekday morning, before school, the telephone rings. When Joelle picks up, she hears Carlos’s voice on the other end, abrupt and forced.

  “I asked him,” he says.

  “Who?” It’s been so long since they talked.

  Carlos pauses, registering irritation. “My father! He told me where the rocks are. We could go today if you want. I think it’s supposed to rain, though. Maybe even snow.”

  “I want to go,” Joelle says. “No matter what.”

  “All right, we’ll go. We can leave the same time we usually do for school. Meet me in the park, down at the end behind the trees. That way, no one will see us.”

  “Carlos, nobody is going to see us. They don’t even care!”

  “Maybe they don’t in your family, but they do in mine.”

  Joelle imagines him looking guiltily over his shoulder at one or another of his parents. She thinks what a baby he is, always worried that he’ll displease or disappoint them in some way. If it weren’t for her desperate desire to see the Crying Rocks, she wouldn’t even bother with him.

  “I can’t believe you finally asked your father,” she scoffs.

  He ignores this insult. “Bring your own water this time. I’m not carrying for both of us.”

  “Well, if it’s going to rain, we’ll certainly have plenty of water.”

  “Just bring it!” Carlos says, and hangs up on her.

  An hour later, when they meet in the park, he’s still in a huff and barely glances at her from under his baseball cap. She’s over her annoyance by then and, excited about the hike, attempts a friendly greeting. When he only frowns back, she lets him march ahead. She knows how it is to feel angry at a person even after they’ve offered to make peace. She can carry a grudge all day once her back is up, and has a temper worthy of Vernon’s, as Aunt Mary Louise has often said. After all, Carlos is a gentler soul.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, turning back to her as they approach the main road. “I guess I kind of lost it on the phone. I shouldn’t have hung up like that.”

  “No problem. I was acting dumb too.”

  “No, really. There’s something I think I should tell you. You know this place we’re going to? It’s where my brother fell.”

  Joelle stops walking. “Your br
other who died?”

  Carlos nods.

  “Is that how . . . ?”

  “Yes,” Carlos says. He stares at something invisible on the ground. “We were there with my father, and he fell down between some boulders. That’s why I wasn’t too happy about asking where the place is. I was afraid it might upset my father to think about it again.”

  “Did it?”

  “I couldn’t tell. He keeps everything hidden. We’ve never really talked about what happened. I was only seven.”

  “It happened at the Crying Rocks?”

  Carlos nods. “My father wanted to see them, because of the stories. He was into Native American history. No one had told him when he was young that there was Native American blood in our family, and he wanted Daniel and me to know about it and appreciate it. We’d go on these hikes around here to see places where the Narragansetts had been, like to the cave I showed you and the overlook. We were going to take a trip out West to visit Sioux territory, too, but . . .”

  Carlos shrugs. “Afterward my father wasn’t interested in going. We didn’t go hiking anymore either.” He looks up and meets her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Joelle says.

  “It’s okay. It was a long time ago. I really can’t remember it that well. It’s like an old dream.”

  “I mean, I’m sorry I made you ask him. I think you’re right, I am too pushy.”

  “I’m glad I finally did ask,” Carlos says. “I’ve thought about going back. I just never did anything about it.”

  “Are you sure you want to? Won’t it bring up bad memories?”

  “I don’t think so. Come on, let’s get moving. It’s cold standing here.”

  “At least it’s not raining,” Joelle says, looking up. The sky is overcast but—at the moment, anyway—unthreatening. “Guess what? I brought my own water.”

  She hefts the knapsack on her back and smiles. The air between them has cleared, and she feels good about Carlos again. She misread him. He’s a nice guy.

  “I brought a couple of sandwiches, too, ham and cheese. I knew you probably couldn’t make anything with your parents watching. My aunt doesn’t come downstairs in the morning.”

  Carlos nods and grins, almost back to his old self. They head off down the road single file, cars buzzing past.

  The forest, when they enter it, wears an entirely different face than on their last visit. Where it had been welcoming and glowing with color before, now, without the sun, a feeling of gray emptiness has taken over the atmosphere. The deciduous trees are completely leafless, as stark and bony as old skeletons. Carlos and Joelle wind between them on the trail, their footfalls echoing loudly. All noises are magnified in the vacant spaces that the leaves used to fill, and long before the two reach the brook, they hear its chilly waters racketing over the rocks. When they do arrive on its bank, the water looks dark and oily, churning with wood and forest debris, not anything like the magical place Joelle remembers from a few weeks earlier. She pulls the collar of her jacket up around her neck and follows Carlos when he turns off the trail. Keeping the brook on their right, they head away, through thick brush and trees.

  “We’re supposed to follow the stream for about two miles,” he explains over his shoulder, “then look for a grove of pines. The rocks are beyond that. I think they’re pretty big. They’re at the edge of a swamp, my father said.”

  Joelle feels a jab of adrenaline shoot through her system. She’s excited, and also a little apprehensive.

  “Don’t you remember anything about them?” she asks.

  “Hardly anything.”

  “So you didn’t hear the rocks crying when you were there before?”

  “No,” Carlos answers briefly, from which she knows not to talk about it anymore.

  A good half hour of tramping goes by before Joelle ventures into conversation again. “We’re getting really far out in the woods. I’d be lost without this brook,” she says.

  “Me too,” Carlos admits. “Usually, I can navigate by the sun.” He looks up at the heavy gray sky and shakes his head. “Come on, let’s speed up.”

  They attempt a slightly faster clip, but it’s not easy. The forest is dense with undergrowth, and they are constantly having to step over fallen trees or beat their way through thickets of brambles and bushes to follow the water. The ground is often damp as well, and though the air is cold, mud oozes up the sides of their boots. Carlos is just bending over to take a closer look at where the brook has gone under a heavy growth of bushes when a loud crash erupts from somewhere in front of them and then, frighteningly, a series of smaller crunches and crashes, as of feet departing rapidly.

  Joelle turns around, ready to run herself, but Carlos grabs her arm.

  “Look over there,” he whispers.

  Ten yards away a large, antlered buck is standing motionless, a perfect blend of all that lies around him. His colors are the muted browns and grays of the winter forest. His antlers, branching out grandly above his narrow head, might be mistaken for tree limbs. Except for his dark eyes, which stare at them with wary keenness, it’s almost as if a patch of woods had risen up and come to life.

  Joelle breathes in quietly. Near the buck she begins to pick out the stationary forms of other deer. Like hidden shapes in a jigsaw puzzle, they emerge, their shiny, coal black eyes trained upon her. She and Carlos have stumbled on a good-size herd of does and yearlings in the company of their patriarch.

  A full minute passes before anyone moves. Then the buck tosses his head ever so slightly, and as if responding to a signal, the herd bounds off with a flicker of white tails. They vanish like magic into the gray woods. The buck follows, ambling regally.

  Carlos laughs out loud. “What a show-off!”

  “What a herd!” Joelle is laughing too. “I didn’t know there were that many deer around here.”

  “Oh, they’re taking over,” Carlos says, “getting into the suburbs and eating flower gardens. People are beginning to hunt them out there. Here they’re safe and they know it. This is an ancient swamp thicket. Not only deer have found hiding places, I’ll bet.”

  “Do you think Narragansetts hid here too?”

  “It’s exactly the kind of place they’d come—and disappear into just as fast as those deer. Impenetrable to the white man.”

  “But here we are!” Joelle exclaims. “On their track.”

  “But we are not white,” Carlos tells her solemnly. “I’m a Sioux today.”

  “All one sixteenth of you.”

  “It’s enough,” Carlos answers. “It’s enough to feel things.”

  She knows what he means. Once again they’ve come away from the Pilgrim world of whiteness, away from towns and streets, shopping centers and construction sites, chain saws, car horns. She hears the wind kicking up, calling with its forest voice through the trees. She smells the odor of mud under her feet, thick and cold, and the bare-limbed trees’ spicy wood. As they turn and plod on through this strange, swampy place, her Indian imagination rises too, and she feels a sort of wildness creep into her.

  The pale-faced killers have been left behind. They will never penetrate this world. Like a deer, she has vanished. Her long, straight body is part tree now. Her skin is the color of bark. Her eyes, if she could see them, would have the coal black gleam of a buck surveying his domain. And there, what is that?

  She is aware of something else: a shadow-shape following behind her. As they walk the shape is careful to place its feet exactly inside the footprints Joelle is leaving behind, just as their Indian mother taught them, to deceive enemy trackers.

  Who is this invisible follower?

  It’s Joelle’s sister, the second Indian girl from the mural. In the story lighting up the stage in Joelle’s mind, they are on the run. The murderous white warriors have driven them from their village, and now they must find safety in some other place.

  The attack was terrifying. First came a loud pounding of many guns, then the appearance of white warriors running with fire
held high on torches above their heads. Suddenly, the whole village was in flames, and screams and wails echoed from all sides.

  “Run with me!” Joelle had cried, grabbing her sister’s hand. They’d gone to a place where hungry dogs had dug out a tunnel under the rough stockade of tree trunks surrounding the village. Along with other children, they had crawled through the hole and run into the swamp, which was frozen and easy to pass over. Now they were on their way to the big rocks to hide, traveling silently and swiftly through swamp-woods and leaving no extra footprints. The white warriors coming after were poor trackers. Perhaps they would be fooled by the line of single prints and give up the chase. In any case, they will be forced to move slowly, eyes on the ground, which will give the sisters time to reach the rocks.

  With blood drumming in her ears, Joelle imagines this drama as she and Carlos plow their way through the dense growth of trees and bushes toward the Crying Rocks. She becomes so wrapped up in her story that a sudden loud shriek over her head makes her jump and shriek herself.

  Carlos whirls around. “What’s the matter?”

  “What was that?”

  “Just a bird! Are you all right?”

  Joelle nods, embarrassed.

  They start off again. Behind her the shadow-shape starts up too, so clearly in Joelle’s mind that at times she believes she could turn around and touch her. She imagines her Indian sister’s fear and how it’s necessary to reach back and take her hand whenever a forest noise startles her. She imagines her sister’s face turned to hers with wide eyes that say: “Wait! Don’t leave me behind.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you,” Joelle whispers under her breath. “Follow me. We’ll be safe.”

  The terrain has been rising. The ground is becoming harder and drier. Up ahead a darkness looms, and Carlos says: “There’s the pine grove. The rocks are a little beyond.”

  But, having said that, he stands still. The woods around them, which had seemed noisy with their passage, quiet. They hear their own breaths, and see them too; the temperature is dropping. They hear the long, low silence of the forest spreading away from them, for miles perhaps. The stream has disappeared underground into a rise of land. Or rather, as Carlos is now at pains to explain, the spring that is the stream’s main source is beneath this rise. He takes a drink from his water bottle and stares around himself again, clearly stalling.