8 Zella Makes Sense

Chapter 8 IN WHICH Zella Makes Sense The answer to where Alice is going is in Bando's cabin. I jog up the dusty road that follows the creek. I'll soon know where she's headed. Then I'll go home and do the chores. As I climb over the fence into Bando's pasture, a song sparrow clicks out his alarm note from the raspberry thicket. I assume I am his enemy until I see a crow sneaking toward his nest intent upon eating the eggs. I rush the crow. He flies off, crying his alarm caws. Bando looks up when he hears the crow and hails me. He's in front of his cabin in the shade of the big slippery elm tree, contemplating a twisted limb. Bando really is serious about making Adirondack furniture. He's up and at work, and the sun is hardly over the treetops. "What brings you here, Sam?" he asks when I join him. His prematurely white hair is cut so short that

it looks like a skullcap. Bando is getting a little paunch, but I like it, especially right now. He looks older and wiser, and that makes me feel better. This has been a bad week: first Frightful, then Alice. "You look like you ate a green persimmon, Sam," he says. "Alice ran away." He drops the twisted wood. "Really? Where did she go?" "I don't know." Bando looks worried so I quickly add, "She's perfectly all right. She made a sun compass in the sand along the marsh creek to plot her direction. I'll know where she's going if I can look at your maps." "Sure," he says. "Come on in." Bando has been collecting the same maps Alice got from her school course ever since he bought his cabin. They are the U.S. Geological Survey topographic maps and are a good thing to own in these wild mountains. "She can't be going far," I say as we step up on a large doorstep of rock and into the cabin. "She has

a pig." "A pig?" he asks incredulously. Bando dislikes pigs as much as I do. A bunch of them from the farm below him got loose this spring and made a mud hole of his garden. Zella comes in through the back door. "Did I hear you say Alice ran away?" "Good morning, Zella," I say. "She sure did. She left me a note saying she was leaving, but she didn't say where she was going or how long she'd be staying." Zella looks nice this morning in a dark blue jacket and skirt. I guess she's going to work. Her black hair is pulled back from her face with silver combs. Dark-rimmed glasses over her long-lashed eyes make her look very professional and also pretty. "So, at last she's done it," Zella says with a whimsical smile. "Done what?" I ask. "Gone off on her own. She's wanted to do it for a long time." "She has? She never told me about it."

"Perhaps she didn't want anyone to know where she's gone." She winks at me. I didn't want anyone to know where I was either for fear they'd take me home. "I think she does want me to know," I say. "She left me a message in the sand along the swamp stream. She told me she's going east by northeast —to somewhere." Bando has spread several of the topographical maps on his big oak table. The maps, which you order through the United States Department of Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, are masterpieces of mapmaking. They reflect the shape of the Earth's surface, portrayed by contour lines twenty feet apart. These brown lines are the distinctive characteristic of topographic maps. They tell you exactly where and how high you are, so you can never get lost. They also show roads, buildings, railroads, transmission lines, mines and caves, vegetation, and towns, cities, rivers, lakes, canals, marshes, and waterfalls. Bando leans over the state map. "You say she's going east by northeast?" he says taking out a compass with a housing that has 360

degrees marked on it, as well as a clear plastic base-plate with straight sides that can be used as a ruler. It also has a directional, or pointer, arrow drawn on it. The compass is for orienteering— finding your way with a map—and saves you a lot of time plotting your course. You don't have to use a protractor to figure out the degrees. Bando lines up the state map with north and, placing his compass approximately on the swamp creek, turns the housing to 70 degrees, or east by northeast. The directional arrow points to the Helderberg Mountains. "Do you suppose she's going there?" I ask. "That's the most interesting spot on the east by northeast line," Bando says. "Beyond that's Albany, and we know she's not going there. "But why the Helderbergs?" he muses. "They're not as spectacular as the Catskills or Adirondacks." "I wouldn't mind going there myself," I say. "Miss Turner said there is a pair of goshawks that nest on the Helderberg Escarpment. I'd sure like to see them."

"Goshawks?" says Bando. "I would, too. I read a book about one. What a remarkable, spirited bird." "They're the most aggressive of all the birds of prey," I say. "Many of the kings of medieval England preferred them to peregrine falcons— they can capture huge cranes and buzzards. And they're downright ferocious when it comes to defending their young. Miss Turner said the Helderberg pair knocked a man out of their nest tree." "Let me look at the map of the Helderbergs," Zella says, then picks up the magnifying glass and studies the map Bando spreads out for her. "I see a lot of waterfalls," she says. On the maps, waterfalls are the blue lines going through brown contour lines drawn closely together, thereby indicating a steep incline or cliff. "Once Alice told me," Zella goes on, "that her dream was to go on a long hike, clamber beautiful waterfalls, with the water splashing around her, and sleep beside them at night." "Hey, Bando," I say. "That could be what she's doing all right. She really does like waterfalls.