Calvin (10 page)

Susie: Next to Noah's beans and bread, this is the best food I've eaten.

Me: Hunger is the best sauce.

Hobbes: Give me some.

I dropped some bits of the gorp at my side so Susie wouldn't see.

Susie: How far do you think we are, Calvin? Will it take as long tomorrow as you thought? Maybe we'll make brunch? How far?

Me: Did you know that zebra mussels are killing this lake?

Susie: That far? But you said we'd be there by lunchtime tomorrow. It's going to be dark again soon, and I don't see shore.

Me: Zebra mussels eat all the microbes and make the water nice and clean and clear, but then all those microbes are what the fish eat. The zebra mussel is destroying the entire ecosystem of the lake. One day the whole lake will just be a big tank full of zebra mussels. All thanks to ballast water dumped in the lake by a European boat. I found that out when I was doing avoidance research on my biology project.

Hobbes: That's it? These crumbs are all I get?

Susie: Tell me. I can deal.

Me: And then they'll go on to the next lake and destroy it.

Susie: Wow. You-won't-even-answer-me far?

Me: The largest freshwater lakes in the world and we're slowly turning them into cesspools, flushing our human waste into them, dumping our chemical waste into them, fishing them out faster than the fish can repopulate, tossing in anything we don't want to see anymore—shopping carts, cars …

Susie: You're depressing me now, Calvin.

Me: We're basically walking on a big frozen garbage Popsicle.

Susie: Shhh.

Me:

Susie: Thank you.

Me:

Susie:

Me:

Susie: It didn't help.

Me: What didn't help?

Susie: You shutting up—it didn't help. When we started out you told me seventeen hours.

Me: I said seventeen to twenty.

She got the compass out of her pocket.

Susie: I know how to use this thing. I know we're not going in circles.

Me: I wasn't counting on slogging through deep snow in some places, and climbing snow dunes, and going around snow goons. Seventeen hours was at five K an hour. We made four yesterday, but now I'm thinking we're down to three. Maybe.

Hobbes: Hungry … hungry …

Susie looked so worried sitting there on the sled that I knew I had to say something to make her happy.

Me: So, Susie, I was going to do my biology project on the pollution in the lake. So since I've done all this research, do you think Mr. Ferrige would give me an extension?

Susie (standing): Calvin!

Me: What?

Susie: Yes! That's exactly what you should do. Get an extension!

Me: Why are you suddenly so happy?

Susie: Because! Because you're not giving up! On school, I mean. What a relief! You need a good education … Look, all creative people are a bit crazy. But nobody worries about ten hertz as long as you do something great with it.

Me: Okay, so all I have to do is be brilliant or great and I'll be fine. I'll get right on that.

I grabbed the sled and started walking, and Susie kept up.

Susie: Charles Dickens, he thought the characters from his books were literally following him sometimes.

Me: Even better—I'll work on being a genius.

Susie stopped and looked at me.

Susie: But you are a genius already.

Hobbes: Hoo-boy!

Me (laughing):

Susie: What? You are.

Me: Now you're the crazy one. I am not a genius.

Susie: Calvin, I thought you knew.

I was impressed with my delusionary powers. Not only had I conjured up a whole girl, but she was Susie McLean, and she was saying things that were obviously all about making myself feel better about myself.

Hobbes: Why is she talking like that? Maybe she's just mocking you out of revenge for all those snowballs you chucked at her.

Suddenly I could hear whispering. Nothing I could really hear or understand, but I knew the whisperer was there, South Bay Bessie, or Jenny Greenteeth, or both, just under the ice, just a thin layer of frozen water between me and them. They thought I was one of them.

Me: I don't belong to you.

Susie: What?

Me: I wasn't talking to you.

Susie: I see.

Me: They're under the ice.

Susie: Oh, Calvin.

Me: They're waiting for me.

Susie: Well, they can wait, then. I won't let them have you.

I stopped. I stood still. The wind was in the hollows of my ears, but the voices were gone.

Me: You made them go away, Sooz.

Susie: Okay. Now we know something.

Me: We do?

Susie: Yeah. We do.

*   *   *

I walked a little faster to put distance between me and the whispers, and Susie kept up until she couldn't anymore, and then we went slow until we were beyond exhausted and it was getting dark.

 

I tried to be cheerful about setting up the tent before it got really dark.

Me: Okay, we're behind schedule, but after a good sleep we'll go faster. Maybe we will get there in time for lunch.

We untied the tent from the sled.

Me: Remember confidence, Susie. Believing we can do it. We packed that first, right?

She nodded.

Me: Okay, let's see. Let me do my winter camp checklist. Is there wind protection?

Susie sat on the ice as I did a full turn, examining the flat lake for wind protection.

Me: Unfortunately, no. But is the site free of avalanche danger?

I did another 360-degree turn. Susie put her chin on her knees and smiled.

Me: Yes, I can report that we are unlikely to have an avalanche. There's always an upside, right, Sooz? Let's see—reasonably safe from falling trees? Check. Privacy from other campers? Check. I say this is the place!

Susie pointed to a spot about ten feet away.

Susie: I say there would be better.

Me: Yes, I see your point. That would be an excellent spot.

Susie almost laughed and I did laugh, and even though it wasn't funny she really laughed then, and so did I, and we laughed until we had to stop, and then we laughed a bit more.

Susie: That wasn't funny.

We laughed some more.

*   *   *

I started setting up the tent. Susie told me not to look and wandered off to relieve herself.

Hobbes: I'm thirsty.

Me:

Hobbes: I'm thirsty and hungry.

Me: This tent fights back. I'm going to invent a one-button tent one of these days.

Hobbes was pacing back and forth behind me, growling.

Hobbes: I'm thirsty and hungry.

Me: Go hunt something then. Isn't that what tigers do?

Hobbes (a low, rumbling growl): Yes. That is what tigers do.

I could sense him looking in Susie's direction.

Hobbes: Not much to her. Pretty skinny.

I dropped the tent.

Me: Leave her alone.

Hobbes: Hungry—

Me: I'll fight you.

Hobbes (roaring): THIRSTY!

Me: All right! Here! Help yourself!

I poured a water bottle out onto the ice and while he was lapping it up, I threw some raisins onto the ice for him.

I thought Susie's eyes were going to bug out of her head when she saw that empty water bottle, Bill, the same way you would draw three sets of eyeballs when Calvin was scared silly.

Susie: Calvin—!

Me: It was Hobbes.

I sounded pathetic even to me.

Susie: Calvin, what have you done? That was half our water supply! And we don't have that much food left.

Hobbes was purring.

Me: Hobbes was looking at you like he looks at a steak.

Susie: Oh, Calvin.

I hated myself right then, Bill. I hated Hobbes, too, but mostly I hated myself. And then I felt nothing except fatigue.

Me: I'm sorry.

Susie: Me, too.

Me: Hey, we have a bazillion gallons of water right under our feet! And snow. We have a desert of un-walked-on, un-peed-on snow. We've got a world of water here!

Susie: Calvin, we can't eat snow. It's too cold, it takes too much body heat to melt it. You get hypothermia.

Me: I know that. You think I didn't know that?

Hobbes (chuckling):

Me (to Hobbes): Quiet! This is your fault.

Hobbes: I feel poetic. Tiger, tiger, burning bright / In the frozen of the night, / What immortal hand or eye / Could bake you up a pumpkin pie?

Me: That's not how it goes.

Hobbes: That's the original. Blake ruined it.

Me: Pumpkin pie?

Susie: I'll keep watch over the rest of the raisins and the peanut butter.

*   *   *

We finished setting up the tent in silence.

It would have been better if she'd yelled at me, but she was just quiet. We threw our sleeping bags in and then stood awkwardly outside the tent. I didn't know what to say. Well, are you coming to bed now? It just didn't sound right. Besides, I felt sick looking at the empty water bottle and smushed raisins on the ice. I looked everywhere but there.

Finally I looked up.

Stars.

Millions and bazillions of stars.

Not even stars—galaxies. Galaxies of stars. They filled every little dusky inch of sky, horizon to horizon, with creamy lights.

Me: Susie, look up.

She looked up and gasped.

Susie: It's like we're in a snow globe.

Me: A star globe. If God shook it, all those stars would fall down onto us, like snow.

Hobbes: In what distant deeps or skies / Burnt the fire of thine eyes? / All who see you do admire / And your fur coat do desire.

Me: Blake is rolling in his grave.

Hobbes: He should have asked me for advice.

Me: Right.

Susie: What did you say?

Me: I'm a dot.

Susie:

Me: I'm a dot on a lake, which is a dot on the planet, which is a dot in the galaxy, which is a dot in space. I'm a dot on a dot on a dot on a dot …

Susie (staring up): Yeah.

She said it softly, like I'd just said something profound.

Hobbes: Then the stars began to cheer / For the tiger without peer.

Susie: Somehow that sky puts things in perspective.

Hobbes: And what artist and what art / Could make you play your tiger part? / And when you began to lose some heat, / It made you long for good fresh meat.

Me (to Hobbes): You're killing me.

Susie: I'm going into the tent now.

She went into the tent.

Unbelievably, I went in, too.

*   *   *

Calvin the boy is in a tent with a girl.

A cute girl. A small tent.

Calvin is lying in a small tent with a cute girl.

He and the girl are cold.

He has heard about being cold. In a tent. With a girl.

True, the girl has on a parka and a hat and is in a sleeping bag. But Calvin takes his luck where he can get it.

When I was eleven, Bill, I wondered who came up with the gross idea of taking your germy mouth—the first thing you use in the digestive process—and smashing it up against somebody else's germy mouth, which minutes before could have been masticating slimy avocados or two-month-old fruitcake. Then I turned twelve and it sounded like the most brilliant idea ever invented, as long as it was with Susie. That's what I was thinking about lying there in the tent beside her.

Susie: This is the flimsiest excuse for a tent I've ever seen. This is supposed to protect us from this arctic wasteland?

The wind bucked the sides of the tent and we zipped our sleeping bags up to our chins. It felt amazing to lie down. My legs and feet were singing.

Susie: This thing doesn't want to be a tent, it wants to be a kite.

It was dark, but Susie—she was like this small, pale moon beside me, just a tiny bit shiny, like something was inside her that darkness couldn't put out.

We lay there not talking and my whole body couldn't get over that I was lying in the dark beside Susie. I mean, it couldn't be real, Bill, but it felt as true as anything. Even in a hat she was pretty.

Hobbes: Some tigers might even say she's hot.

We lay there for a while, not saying anything.

Me: I'm sorry for all the times I was mean to you when we were little kids.

She turned toward me. I could feel her looking at me.

Susie: I accept your apology.

But she said it softly. I could tell she was smiling when she said it. You can always hear a smile.

We lay in the dark on the hard ice, and I felt really far away from everything, like my parents and school and Leamington—like I was in space and they were all on a really far planet.

Me: Tell me what you did for your English project.

Susie: You mean the one that's worth 50 percent of your final mark and that you haven't even started?

Me: Yeah. That one.

Susie: I wrote a story. A long story.

Me: What about?

Susie: I'm not saying.

Me: Why?

Susie: You'll laugh at me.

Me: I promise I won't laugh.

Susie: I've fallen for that one before.

Hobbes: She has.

Me: I promise.

Susie: Okay. Let's say it was a novel about friendship and loyalty, and how a young woman comes to define those terms in the context of a difficult relationship—

Me (stifling laughter): A romance? Wow.

Susie: Not a romance! At least, not that kind of romance.

Hobbes: You know nothing about romance. Now, in my experience …

Me: How does it end?

Susie: I handed it in with an open ending.

Me: Why?

Susie: I don't know … Maybe I just haven't figured out the last chapter yet.

Me: You always finish your homework. I wish I could be like that. I just don't get why I have to learn all that stuff.

Susie: Because if you want to do something new and amazing, you have to know what the world already knows.

Me: Surprisingly that makes some sense. But that means they have to cram thousands of years of knowledge into the child's developing brain so that by the time it has achieved adulthood it has been initiated into the entire encyclopedic treasury of human knowledge.