The Anything Box

Since the Little House accommodates only two at a time, the rest of ususually wait against an outcropping of boulders that shelters a little from asoutheast wind which can cut a notch in your shinbones in less time than ittakes to tell it.
I was jerkily explaining this to Annie as I stumbled along thesemiovergrown path—it hadn't received its summer beating-down yet. I wasreaching out to trail my hand across the first boulder, when Liesle gasped andstumbled back against me, squashing my toe completely.
"What's the matter, child?" I gritted, waiting for the pain to stopshooting up my leg like a hot fountain. "There's nothing to be afraid of. YourMommie and I are here."
"I wanna go back!" she suddenly sobbed, clinging to Annie. "I wanna gohome!"
"Liesle, Liesle," crooned Annie, gathering her up in her arms. "Mother'shere. Daddy's here. No one is home. You'll have fun tomorrow, you'll see." Shelooked over Liesle's burrowing head at our goblinesque flashlighted faces."She's never camped before," she said apologetically. "She's homesick."
"I'm afraid! I can't go any farther!" sobbed Liesle. I clamped Jinnie's armsharply. She was making noises like getting scared, too—and she a veteran ofcradle-camping.
"There's nothing to be afraid of," I reiterated, wiggling my toe hopefully.Thank goodness, it could still wiggle. I thought it had been amputated.Liesle's answer was only a muffled wail. "Well, come on over here out of thewind," I said to Annie. "And 111 hold her while you go." I started to takeLiesle, but she twisted away from my hand.
"No, no!" she cried. "I can't go any farther!" Then she slithered like aneel out of Annie's arms and hit off back down the trail. The dark swallowed her.
"Liesle!" Annie set off in pursuit and I followed, trying to stab somehelpful light along the winding path. I caught up with the two of them on thecreek bridge. They were murmuring to each other, forehead to forehead. Annie'svoice was urgent, but Liesle was stubbornly shaking her head.
"She won't go back," said Annie.
"Oh, well," I said, suddenly feeling the altitude draining my blood out ofmy feathery head and burdening my tired feet with it. "Humor the childtonight. If she has to go, let her duck out in the bushes. She'll be okaytomorrow."
ABC Amber Palm Converter,http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
But she wasn't. The next day she still stubbornly refused to go that lastlittle way to the Little House. Jerry, her father, lost patience with her."It's utter nonsense!" he said. "Some fool notion. We're going to be up herefor two weeks. If you think I'm going to dig a special—
"You stay here," he said to Annie. He grabbed Liesle's arm and trotted herbriskly down the path. I followed. I make no bones about being curious aboutpeople and things—and as long as I keep my mouth shut, I seldom get a doorslammed in my face. Liesle went readily enough, whimpering a little, halfrunning before his prodding finger, down the path, across the bridge, alongthe bank. And flatly refused to go any farther. Jerry pushed and she doubleddown, backing against his legs. He shoved her forward and she fell to herhands and knees, scrambling back along the path, trying to force her way pasthim—all in deathly panting silence. His temper flared and he pushed her again.She slid flat on the path, digging her fingers into the weedy grass along theedge, her cheek pressed to the muddy path. I saw her face then, blanched,stricken—old in its fierce determination, pitifully young in its bare terror.
"Jerry—" I began.
Anger had deafened and blinded him. He picked her up bodily and starteddown the path. She writhed and screamed a wild, despairing scream, "Daddy!Daddy! No! It's open! It's open!"
He strode on, past the first boulder. He had taken one step beyond theaspen that leaned out between two boulders, when Liesle was snatched from hisarms. Relieved of her weight, his momentum carried him staggering forward,almost to his knees. Blankly, he looked around. Liesle was plastered to theboulder, spread-eagled above the path like a paper doll pasted on awall—except that this paper doll gurgled in speechless terror and was slowlybeing sucked into the rock. She was face to the rock, but as I gaped in shock,I could see her spine sinking in a concave curve, pushing her head and feetback sharper and sharper.
"Grab her!" I yelled. "Jerry! Grab her feet!" I got hold of her shouldersand pulled with all my strength. Jerry got his hands behind her knees and Iheard his breath grunt out as he pulled. "O God in Heaven!" I sobbed. "O Godin Heaven!"
There was a sucking, tearing sound and Liesle came loose from the rock. Thethree of us tumbled in a tangled heap in the marshy wetness beyond the trail.We sorted ourselves out and Jerry crouched in the muck rocking Liesle in hisarms, his face buried against her hair.
I sat there speechless, feeling the cold wetness penetrating my jeans. Whatwas there to say?
Finally Liesle stopped crying. She straightened up in Jerry's arms andlooked at the rock. "Oh," she said. "It's shut now."
She wiggled out of Jerry's arms. "Gramma, I gotta go." Automatically Ihelped her unzip her jeans and sat there slack-jawed as she trotted down thepath past the huge boulder and into the Little House.
"Don't ask me!" barked Jerry suddenly, rising dripping from the pathside."Don't ask me!"
So I didn't.
Well, a summer starting like that could be quite a summer, but insteadeverything settled down to a pleasant even pace and we fished and hiked andpicnicked and got rained on and climbed Baldy, sliding back down its snowslopes on the seats of our pants, much to their detriment.
Then came the afternoon some of us females were straggling down the trailto camp, feet soaked as usual and with the kids clutching grimy snowballssalvaged from the big drift on the sharp north slope below the Salt House. Thelast of the sun glinted from the white peak of Baldy where we had left theothers hours ago still scrabbling around in the dust looking for more Indianbone beads. We seemed to be swimming through a valley of shadows that werealmost tangible.
"I'm winded." Mrs. Davidson collapsed, panting, by the side of the trail,lying back on the smoothly rounded flank of one of the orderly little hills
ABC Amber Palm Converter,http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
near the creek.
"We're almost there," I said. "If I get down, I won't get up again short ofmidnight."
"So let it be midnight," she said, easing her shoulders back against thesoft crispness of the grass. "Maybe some robins will find us and cover us withstrawberries instead of strawberry leaves. Then we wouldn't have to cooksupper."
"That'd be fun," said Leslie, hugging her knees beside Mrs. Davidson.
"Oh, Liesle!" Jinnie was disgusted. "You don't think they really would, doyou?"
"Why not?" Liesle's eyes were wide.
"Oh, groan!" said Jinnie, folding up on the ground. "You'd believeanything! When you get as old as I am—"
"What a thought!" I said, easing my aching feet in my hiking boots. "Do yousuppose she'd ever be ten years old?" I looked longingly at the cluster oftents on the edge of the flat. "Oh, well," I said and subsided on the hillbeside the others. I flopped over on my stomach and cradled my head on myarms. "Why! It's warm!" I said as my palm burrowed through the grass to theunderlying soil.
"Sun," murmured Mrs. Davidson, her eyes hidden behind her folded arm. "Itsoaks it up all day and lets it out at night."
"Mmmm." I let relaxation wash over me.
"They're sleeping a long time," said Liesle.
"Who?" I was too lax for conversation.
"The beasts," she said. "These beasts we're on."
"What beasts?" It was like having a personal mosquito.