Sammy Keyes and the Wild Things

  “Good analogy. Only it’s not nearly as sophisticated.”

  “Or as tall!” Bella called from the backseat.

  “Or as easy to get to!” Gabby groaned as we thumped and bumped over a really bad pothole.

  “But how do you track them? Do they have a chip implanted in them?”

  Robin took another careful turn. “Again, the same idea, but not as sophisticated. The condors have a transmitter and numbered tags attached to their wings; they don’t bother them a bit.”

  “But why do you track them? What good does it do?”

  “In the Pleistocene age there were thousands of condors in the wild. By 1890 that number was down to six hundred, and it continued to dwindle until 1983, when the population was a paltry twenty-two.”

  “Were people hunting them?”

  “People weren’t hunting them, but hunting is what caused part of the problem. Condors are nature’s cleanup crew. They eat animals that have died of natural causes, as well as gut piles left behind by hunters. They also eat carcasses of animals that have been poisoned by people who considered them to be pests. And if a condor eats poisonous lead from bullets or poison that was in a dead animal’s system, it kills the condor, too.

  “There was also a problem with pesticides like DDT, which made condor eggs so thin-shelled that they were easily crushed. And since condors breed slowly—one chick every two years, or thereabouts—and since they don’t reproduce until they’re about six years old, the population fell dramatically. By the late 1980s there were no condors left in the wild. The few birds remaining were in captivity.” She glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “They were really, really close to extinction.”

  I thought about all of this, then said, “I don’t even know what one looks like.”

  “You don’t?” everyone cried. Like I was the dumb one.

  So I scowled around the van and said, “How am I supposed to know what a condor looks like? There are only twenty-two of them, and we don’t exactly have a zoo in Santa Martina. . . .”

  “There’s more than twenty-two now,” Bella said.

  “Yeah!” Gabby chimed in. “And there’s pictures all over the Web.”

  Bella nodded. “And there’s one hanging at the Natural History Museum.”

  “Yeah! It’s been up for a year. Didn’t your school go there on a field trip?”

  God, they were driving me crazy. And then Robin says, “Here,” and hands me a pamphlet from the front seat. Can you believe that? They’re handing out pamphlets like they want to convert me to their birdbrain religion.

  Join the Condor Cult!

  Sacrifice your summer!

  Worship the Mighty Feathered Ones!

  Man, was I stuck or what?

  But really, what could I do?

  I took the stupid pamphlet, and when I turned it face-up, what did I see?

  The single ugliest bird imaginable. Big hunchy black body, bald, bloated red head and face, and what looks like a little black feather boa around its blotchy red neck.

  “That’s a condor?” I choke out.

  “It’s got an almost ten-foot wingspan,” Robin says. “An eagle can have up to a seven-foot wingspan, so that gives you some idea of how magnificent the condor is.”

  My eyes were bugging out at the brochure. How could she think this bird was magnificent? That was like calling a barracuda beautiful. So what if it had big wings? I couldn’t believe that this was what all the fuss was about. That this was worth building tracking stations for.

  What was wrong with these people?

  Then Robin said, “Vista Ridge Lookout was originally a Forest Service watchtower for spotting fires, but they stopped using it years ago, and then vandals wrecked it. But with the hard work of lots of volunteers—”

  “Like us!” Bella said.

  “Yeah, us!” Gabby chimed.

  Robin laughed. “—it’s become a useful tracking facility.”

  “You wouldn’t believe everything we’ve done,” Bella said.

  “Yeah! We painted!”

  “And cleared brush!”

  “And hung shelves!” Cricket tossed in.

  “And helped install windows!”

  “And shutters!”

  Robin snickered. “You girls make it sound like we did everything!” She glanced at me again. “We’re actually just a small part of a large and varied group of people who feel really passionate about saving the condor. The Forest Service, the Audubon Society, Fish and Wildlife, the Wilderness Society, university students—”

  “Who only do it for a good grade!” Bella said.

  “Yeah!” Gabby added. “Or so they can come up here and drink beer!”

  Robin raised an eyebrow. “Hey, now. Those kids would not go into environmental studies if they didn’t care about the environment.”

  “But you said they were snot-nosed partyers who had too much attitude and not enough aptitude!” Bella called from the back.

  Robin shot her daughter a dark look via the rearview mirror. “I muttered it, Bella. And I only said it about one particular student.”

  “Oh, right—that Vargus guy.”

  “Vargus Mayfield!” Gabby giggled, bouncing in her seat. “He was cute.”

  Bella gave Gabby a pained look. “Cute?”

  “They’re all cute at that age, girls,” Robin warned.

  “Like Quinn.” Gabby giggled again.

  Cricket jolted a little, and Bella backhanded Gabby, saying, “What’s up with you? Quinn’s twenty-two, he’s got a girlfriend, and he’s my cousin.”

  “He’s got a girlfriend?” Gabby asked, her voice suddenly small. “Since when?”

  “Since a few weeks ago!” Then Bella ran down the stats: “Her name’s Janey Griffin, and she’s new in town. She’s super-pretty and smart and athletic—you should see her ride her mountain bike! She works at the Natural History Museum and is really into the outdoors.” And as if she hadn’t already rubbed it in hard enough, she smiled at Gabby and said, “She is perfect for Quinn.”

  Robin dropped the van into a lower gear. “We are way off topic, girls. What I was trying to explain to Sammy is that a lot of people have donated a great deal of time, money, and energy to build a research facility so we can track the flight patterns and roosting habits of condors.”

  I still didn’t get it. So what if they tracked them? How did that help?

  Then Bella announced, “I have a really good feeling that this is going to be the trip, Mom!”

  “Me too,” Gabby said halfheartedly.

  “Let’s hope so, girls!” Robin said.

  “Wait a minute.” I looked back at Bella. “You’ve been doing this since fourth grade and none of you has ever seen a condor?”

  Bella shook her head. “Not in the wild.”

  For a second it was really quiet in the van. Then Gabby said, “But Quinn has. Lots of times. Right now he’s monitoring a juvenile and its mother out at Chumash Caves.” She gave a dreamy sigh. “He’s so devoted. He practically lives up here.”

  So there I am, stuck in a van on a dusty, bumpy mountain road with a bunch of condor nuts who obviously have mad crushes on other, older, more extreme condor nuts, when all of a sudden, a black jeep comes flying around the corner toward us.

  Robin slams on the brakes.

  Bella screams.

  Gabby screams louder.

  Cricket and I hold on tight while our eyes bug out, because the jeep is now totally out of control, sliding and swerving and kicking up clouds of dust as the driver tries frantically to skid to a stop.

  But he’s not stopping, and there’s just no place for him to go.

  No place but off the cliff.

  Or right into us.

  FOUR

  “Hold on, girls!” Robin shouts as she throws the van into reverse and guns it. She’s craned around backward, we’re thrust forward, and the jeep is skidding toward us sideways. Then, like it’s hit a patch of ice, the jeep’s back end swings around and slams into
the side of the mountain.

  “He crashed!” Bella shouts.

  Robin puts on the brakes, then just sits there clutching the wheel, panting for air as she looks through the windshield.

  Outside, everything is still. Everything but dust, drifting up through the air.

  Finally Robin loosens her grip on the wheel and asks, “Is everyone all right?”

  As a yes, we all start talking at once. “Man, that was close!” “Good driving, Mom!” “What’s the matter with that guy?” “He could have killed us!” “Do you think he’s hurt?”

  Then the driver steps out of the jeep and Bella gasps. “That’s Vargus Mayfield!”

  Gabby gasps, too. “It is . . . !”

  I turn to Cricket. “Who’s Vargus Mayfield again?”

  “That college student they were talking about earlier . . . ?”

  “Yeah,” Bella says, scowling at Gabby. “The one with more attitude than aptitude.”

  Robin gets out of the van saying, “You girls should probably stay put.”

  We give it a second, look at each other, then all pile out.

  Vargus Mayfield’s mouth is busy four-wheeling through some rough verbal terrain as he looks over the damage to his jeep.

  “The only person you should be mad at is yourself, Vargus,” Robin tells him. “There’s no way you should have been driving that fast on this road!”

  “Huh?” he says, blinking at her like he can’t quite place who she is. One by one he gives each of us a blank look, but when he gets to Bella, it clicks. “Oh, spare me!” he whines, his whole face contorting. “The goody-goody Girl Scouts?”

  Bella steps forward. “Don’t make fun of us, buddy! We’re not the ones with more attitude than aptitude! We’re not the ones trying to run innocent people off the road! We’re not the ones—”

  “Hey, hey, hey!” Robin pulls her back and whispers, “Let me handle this.”

  But Vargus is already going off. “Like this is my fault? I wouldn’t be up here at all if it wasn’t for that pigheaded Professor Prag! I left messages on his machine, like, twenty times, I taped notes to his office door, but does he bother to call me back? No!”

  Robin squints at him. “So you came clear out here to, what, find him?”

  “I was desperate, man! One of the other teachers told me he was probably at the Lookout, so I got up real early to catch him, but he’s not there! Nobody’s there.”

  “What are you desperate about? What can possibly be so urgent?”

  “He flunked me! He stopped me from graduating! I so did not deserve to flunk his stupid class and he knows it! I worked up at that miserable Lookout six weekends. Six weekends! I could have been home having a good time, partying with my friends, but instead I came up here. And for this I get a no credit? It’s just not fair! It’s not right! It’s—”

  Vargus had gotten all red in the face and looked like he was going to bust a gasket, so Robin grabbed his arm and said, “Hey, calm down.” But he kept right on ranting, so Robin grabbed him by both arms and shouted, “Vargus! Vargus, look at me. Look . . . at . . . me . . . !”

  Vargus looked at her.

  “Take a deep breath.”

  Vargus took a deep breath.

  “I know it seems like the end of the world now, but it’s going to be okay.”

  Vargus just stood there, holding his breath.

  We waited.

  And waited.

  His face turned redder.

  And redder.

  His eyes started bulging.

  “What is he doing?” Bella whispered.

  “I don’t know,” I whispered back.

  Finally Robin told him, “It’s okay to let it out, Vargus.”

  A great burst of air shot out of him, straight into Robin’s face, then he panted like crazy, looked at his jeep, and wailed, “I’m not gonna graduate, I wrecked my jeep . . . my dad is gonna kill me!”

  Robin took a deep breath herself, and after she watched him sob for a few minutes, she headed for the jeep, saying, “I’m going to see if it’ll drive or if we have to get you a tow.”

  “Hey!” he said, charging for the driver’s door. “I’ll do it!”

  She stuck her arm between him and the door. “I really don’t think you’re in any condition to drive, Vargus.”

  “I’m fine,” he said, edging her aside.

  Robin shrugged and backed off, and we all watched from a safe distance as Vargus revved up the jeep and maneuvered it away from the mountain until it was facing downhill.

  “He’s so lucky it was the back end that crunched and not the front end,” Cricket said.

  “He’s lucky he didn’t go off the cliff!” Robin muttered. “Hey!” Vargus shouted, hanging out his window. “Move your van, would you?!”

  So we all piled into the van and Robin backed up until there was enough room for Vargus to get his jeep past her easily. She watched him in the mirror until he’d disappeared in a cloud of dust, then shook her head and said, “Well, that was exciting,” and headed up the mountain.

  It was only another five or ten minutes before Robin pulled off the road, parking alongside a handful of other cars. “Here we are,” she said, tossing us a grin. “And in one piece!”

  I slid open the van door and nodded at the other cars. “Do a lot of people hike up to the Lookout?”

  “Sometimes,” Bella said, climbing out after Cricket. “But mostly people park here because it’s the trailhead for a bunch of other hikes.”

  “Yeah,” Gabby said. Then she pointed around, saying, “There’s an awesome loop that takes you from here along Sky Ridge, down to Rocky Ravine, through Hoghead Valley, beneath Chumash Caves, and around that way to Deer Creek, Devil’s Horn, Coldwater Pass, and the Bluffs. Then you can either cut off to go to the Lookout or loop around back to here.”

  “Takes about a week,” Cricket said.

  Bella opened the van’s back doors and pulled out her backpack. “I wouldn’t want to do it in the summer, though.”

  Gabby nodded, strapping on her pack. “Too many ticks.”

  “And rattlesnakes.”

  “And scorpions.”

  My eyes bugged. “Scorpions?” I turned to Cricket. “Rattlesnakes at least give you a little warning. But scorpions? And ticks? You didn’t say anything about scorpions and ticks!”

  Cricket threw Gabby and Bella a withering look, then said, “Don’t listen to them. I’ve only ever seen one scorpion, and that was way off in Hoghead Valley.”

  “One is plenty!”

  Boy, was I sounding like a sissy. So what if I saw a scorpion? Like I couldn’t just squash it with my tank-toed boot?

  But . . . what if one got inside our tent and jabbed me in the middle of the night?

  Or snuck up behind me as I was, you know, relieving myself in the wilderness?

  Cricket unloaded my backpack, saying, “Don’t freak out, Sammy. They’re just bugs.”

  Yeah. Bugs that’ll kill you. Or give you Lyme disease. Or suck your veins dry of blood. Or . . .

  “Take your backpack!” Cricket said, and she sounded kinda irritated ’cause I was just standing there like a moron while she held it out to me.

  So I took it, and I strapped it on like I knew what I was doing. And after Robin had the van locked up tight, we hit the road, them happy, me hoping we weren’t headed for Ticksville.

  The first thing we did was cross over a bouldery gully, which was not a good way to get used to a backpack. I felt like I was going to topple over and wind up on my back like a potato bug, kicking and flailing, helplessly trying to get back on my feet.

  But after we’d crossed the gully and had been going for a while, I got the hang of hiking with a backpack and actually started liking it. It wasn’t a big burden like carrying a backpack of schoolbooks is. A hiking backpack is way bigger, and even though it’s heavier, it feels lighter because it doesn’t really hang from your shoulders. The hip belt hoists the weight and sort of suspends it. There is some weight on
your shoulders, but it’s mostly braced by your hips.

  So the first half hour was great. I even forgot about ticks and scorpions and just hiked, keeping up with Cricket no problem. I think she was pushing herself kind of hard, too, because she wiped some sweat off her brow and panted, “I knew you’d be good at this!”

  “Thanks!” The sun was starting to really beat down and I was pretty thirsty, so I said, “Can you see which pocket my canteen is in?” because I didn’t remember, and the frame of the pack made it so I couldn’t really tell.

  She patted the side of my backpack. “Right here.”

  We both took a break for water, but after two little sips she put hers away. “Don’t drink so much, Sammy. Only a few swallows.”

  I lowered my bottle “Isn’t there water at the Lookout?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “It’s collected runoff. It needs to be filtered before you drink it.” She pointed to my water bottle. “That’s got to last you all the way to the top, and it gets steeper.”

  So I started to put the bottle away, but when Cricket began hiking again, I couldn’t resist—I took a couple more sips. And a couple more. We’d put the canteens in the freezer the night before, so the water was icy cold and so refreshing. And really, how much farther could the Lookout be?

  An hour later I understood that hiking five miles with a thirty-pound pack is nothing like walking five miles with a backpack of books. I was dying. The road was steep and dusty, the sun was blazing hot, and I had blisters.

  Really painful blisters.

  About the tenth time the group waited up for me, I finally broke down and said, “I need to put some Band-Aids on my feet. I’ve got blisters on my heels that are killing me.”

  So everyone had to wait while I dumped my backpack, unlaced my boots, and got a little lesson in moleskin.

  It’s not real skin from a mole. It’s this pink fuzzy stuff that you cut into a doughnut shape and put around your blister. At least that’s what they told me worked best. Robin said, “You absolutely don’t want to pop blisters—they’ll hurt worse, maybe bleed, and probably get infected. The moleskin doughnut keeps the pressure off the blister and will keep the shoe from rubbing that spot.” When she was done helping me apply it, she smiled at me and said, “There. You’re all set!”