2015 Young Explorer's Adventure Guide Page 41

  From the raised path I could look down into people’s backyards. You think of your backyard as private, but we could look right in. Building projects left abandoned, patio furniture still covered up, gardens that hadn’t been replanted, a little bit of everything.

  And all the dogs. If Jack hadn’t been convinced before that this walk was only for his benefit, the sheer numbers of his four-legged brothers would have done it. I think everyone in Albuquerque must have dogs. Not just one dog, either, but entire packs. As we walked behind houses, they would race up to their back fence, mad as all get-out because they couldn’t reach us, barking as hard as they could. Jack strained at the leash, but I’m not sure how many of those dogs felt friendly.

  A few of the yards didn’t have dogs. They were huge, and had horses or hens; one place had a little orchard. One house had peacocks, another had sheep. It’s hard to believe we’re in the largest city in this state when people are keeping sheep and chickens in their backyards.

  I ran my hand down the trunk of one of the cottonwoods. The bark split in little up-and-down slits over and over again, almost like a woven pattern. I put my arms out as if hugging the tree, but couldn’t reach all the way around it. Standing there with my face tilted up toward the leaves, Jack pulling on my wrist, I wondered how long this tree had been here. Dad had said the ditch had been used for a hundred years. Was the tree that old? Older even?

  After about an hour of walking we stopped for a break. Jack waited for me to pour his water and drank it in big noisy slurps. He curled up next to a tree stump, and I spread the long-sleeved shirt over the bark so it wouldn’t be scratchy against my legs. Jack gazed at the world with half-closed eyes, the way dogs do, while I wrote a little in my journal, and thought a little, and then stood up and repacked everything.

  "Another hour, boy. If we don’t find that river by then, we’ll try again tomorrow."

  It took closer to half an hour to get there. The narrow path opened out onto a broad grassy area, with small trees dotting the ground. Nothing lush, nothing that looked like photos I’ve seen of rivers. Muted greens and grays painted this landscape. We followed the ditch as it led to the river, and I looked behind me every few steps to make sure I could find the way back.

  Trees thickly lined the river, and small twisted bushes sprang up around them, trailing off the farther they grew away from the water.

  We walked to the water. It flowed sluggishly, muddy, low. You could see across the river to the other side; in places the water looked shallow enough to wade across. I stooped to rest my hand on the bank, then looked closer. The black mud sparkled in the light. I put my fingers in it and drew them across the back of my hand. It shone deep and rich. Jack came over to see what I had, and I put a streak of mud down his muzzle. Jack looked very handsome, gleaming in the sun, and I laughed watching him cross his eyes to see what I had done to him. I got my other hand muddy, then drew a mask around his eyes.

  "There. You’re now the Masked Dog of the River, mysterious and dashing."

  Jack is the most patient dog in the world. I think if I had younger brothers or sisters, I wouldn’t torment him like this. But I don’t and, for the most part, he puts up with it.

  Something nearby tickled my nose, triggering my allergies, and I had a sneezing fit. Reflexively, I went to cover my mouth like a good girl, and felt the mud from my hands smear on my face.

  "Happy? Now we’ll match."

  Jack looked up at me with his tongue spilling out of his open mouth and eyes rolling, and I decided not to worry about my mud mask either.

  With jumps and wags, Jack let me know he thought it would be much more fun to walk for a while right next to the river, and I decided to let him have his way. No one was around, so I let him off the leash, free to snuffle and explore as he wanted.

  The time to return home came sooner than we wanted. About where I figured we needed to cut through the trees and get back to our path, I saw a boy, crouched on the bank, almost in the water. He wore loose pants, and no shirt, and I couldn’t help but think about him getting sunburned; it happens to me so easily. Maybe his dark-gold skin and jet-black hair meant he didn’t need to worry about it so much. He looked thin and wiry, and the way he knelt I couldn’t tell his height. I saw him scoop up a great handful of black mud and put it into a little woven basket by his side.

  I stood still for a minute. What do you do in a situation like that? Say something stupid like, "Hi, I’m Maggie, what on earth are you doing?" I’m never sure how to talk to new people, but I couldn’t let the opportunity to talk to the first person I had seen close to my own age slip away. I needed a few moments to figure out how to approach him.

  Jack had no such worries. He bounded toward the boy, stuck his broad head into the boy’s side and knocked him off balance back into the dirt.

  The boy yelled at Jack and I called him back. I ran forward to apologize and felt my face heat. The boy’s wrist had gotten caught in something when he fell over. He tugged at it with his free hand, but it didn’t look like he could untangle himself with only one.

  "Here, let me." I knelt down and reached for his hand, but he snatched it away. "Please, it’s the least I can do after my dog startled you." I held my hands out and waited. He looked at me with wide golden eyes, and then slowly put his trapped hand back into mine. His eyes mirrored his skin; they made me think of hawks I’d seen caged at the zoo. I started working on the contraption. A frame of wood and bone held loops of string woven in complicated knots. I couldn’t imagine its purpose, but it must have gotten knocked over when Jack struck the boy. The string had tangled and tightened over his wrist. It had to hurt a lot, but the boy never said anything.

  I chattered while I struggled with the lines to fill up the silence. "Hi, I’m Maggie, and you’ve met Jack, and we just moved here. I’m sorry about this, I’ll be careful to just untangle it and not break it." He still didn’t say anything. Maybe he didn’t understand me. I knew a lot of people in New Mexico spoke Spanish, but I thought they would understand a little English.

  I tried to think back to the phrase or two of Spanish I had picked up in California.

  "Hola. Me llama Maggie?"

  I didn’t think that was quite right, but it should have been close enough. No reaction.

  Jack curled next to me while I worked, as if to make up for his bad behavior. The knotted strings made an elaborate pattern, like cat’s cradle but a million times worse. Untangling it, I saw that somehow all of the strings had pulled tight, snaring his wrist in a tangle of line.

  "Almost, hold still for a little longer." The strings went back over the framework, one by one, pulling the frame together, relaxing the rest of the lines. "There." I slipped the contraption off his wrist. Throughout the whole ordeal he’d stayed silent, even though I could see the angry red marks where the lines had cut into his wrist. My own wrist hurt just to see them.

  I stood up, brushed off my jeans and held out my hand. "What’s your name? Do you live around here?" Maybe this could be someone to spend the summer with. But once freed, he only stared at me for a few moments with his odd golden eyes, shoved the contraption into a bag at his side, grabbed the woven basket filled with mud, and ran for the trees.

  Stupid boy. Not my fault he got stuck in that thing. He probably shouldn’t have been carrying it. And he shouldn’t have been so caught up in getting mud to not notice a big black-and-white dog galloping down on him. He could have said thank you. Even in another language.

  As we turned for home I saw something under one of the bushes and spun back. For a moment I had seen something like a dog, but gray and tan, and somehow different, curled up, watching us with eyes way too smart to be in a dog’s head. But I saw nothing now, only a light-dappled shadow.

  The way home didn’t take as long. Tired out, Jack didn’t stop to investigate every smell. We paused for a while because I wanted to see the sheep a little closer. Sheep are not the white fluffy creatures you see in paintings. They looked dingy and yellow,
and they smelled. Jack fought for a bit to stay when I tugged him to keep walking. Only the promise of cookies got him moving again.

  Looking at the house as we scrambled back down the ditch was another reminder of how far we were from home. The new house sat low and long and didn’t seem to have any straight angles. Plain, smooth walls confronted me instead of the detailed woodwork of our Victorian house back in San Diego.

  A light-brown wall curved over the top of a wooden door, enclosing a courtyard, where bricks fit together in patterns to make the floor. A few trees stood in the back, huge, with rough trunks, and thick branches sprouting light green leaves curved into sharp points.

  The same thick, brown stuff formed the walls of the house, softly curved, like the half-melted battlements of a sandcastle. The bright-blue doorframe around the carved wooden double door provided the one bit of color on the entire house.

  Our late arrival home surprised Mom and Dad, still unpacking.

  "Good grief! How far did you go? And what is wrong with your face?"

  "Just up to the river. Not any farther. Just like you said." Jack flopped down on the cool brick floor the instant I took his harness off.

  I ran into the bathroom and burst out laughing. Smears of dried black mud covered my face. The pattern of my handprints wrapped up the side of my cheeks and up around my eyes. I scrubbed it off, and went back to the living room.

  They looked at each other, with that parental glance that never means well. I cut in again, before they could get started.

  "I did just like you said. It’s a perfectly safe path. And there were other people around, jogging and bicycling and stuff, so it’s not like we explored the middle of nowhere. Besides, I had Jack with me."

  We looked down at him, sprawled flat, tongue lolling out of his mouth.

  "And I’ve got lots of questions." Questions are always the best way to deflect my folks, so I poured them out in a rush, in the hope that at least a couple would catch their attention.

  "How old is the irrigation canal, anyway? Did you know people have sheep and chickens and horses around here? Isn’t there some sort of rule about farm animals in a city? And what’s the big wooded area by the river? Can we get Jack a sheep for Christmas? I think he’d really like one."

  "The area by the river is called the Bosque, the Spanish word for woods, and most of it in Albuquerque and around the city is a nature reserve."

  Mom cut Dad off before he got going. "A sheep? You want to get Jack a sheep for Christmas? Why?"

  "Just a little one? I don’t think he’d try to eat it or anything, just run in circles around it, and herd it and . . . whatever it is border collies do. I’ll bet he’s really good at herding."

  Mom started shaking her head.

  "Please? Wouldn’t a sheep even keep the grass short? No more mowing." Dad hates mowing the lawn. I do it sometimes, and I hate mowing too.

  Mom and Dad looked amused. I heaved a sigh of relief, amused meant I had distracted them from the worry. "We’ll talk about it closer to the holidays. By the end of the summer you can put together a report on what types of sheep would be suitable as a companion for Jack." Dad moved to the next room to get another box out. I leaned against the wall. Typical of him to assign homework. I think he’s been teaching for too long. Someday I’ll learn.

  Mom came over and put her arms around me. She used to be able to rest her chin on my head, but I’ve gotten too tall. I think it bothers her that I’m almost as tall as she is. Honestly, it bothers me too.

  "Don’t think you’ve completely distracted your father, dear." She dropped a quick kiss on my forehead. "Now come help me put away the dishes, will you? Your father started arranging his books, and I’ll never dig him out."

  * * *

  The next morning, fright took the scream from my throat. I rolled over to look out the window to see what sort of day it would be, and nearly screamed. A face peered in at me, framed on either side with outstretched hands pressed against the glass. I jerked out of bed, but the face was gone by the time I reached the window, no smears left on the glass, nothing.

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