CHAPTER 19

  ON HIS OWN

  Having a twin can be frustrating at times. You never feel truly alone. Even when you live apart from your twin, it feels like you are always connected. On the farm that summer, I grew frustrated by the fact that I was never alone. This had been an ongoing issue since our parents had died. Darby didn’t let me out of sight. Everywhere I went, Darby went.

  If I managed to get some distance from Darby, Fitch was sure to be right there. No one gave me as much as five minutes alone, except when I was in the bathroom. I knew I needed some alone time to get into that cabin and get that map.

  Finally, I caught a break. The pump in the well had gone out. Fitch and Grandpa Jack worked on it for nearly an entire day. I learned something that day. A house without water makes females batty. Running water is like an obsession with them.

  Fitch and Grandpa Jack eventually went to Sacramento to get a part for the well pump. There was going to be no reading from the journals that day.

  Grandma Mimi kept Darby busy by teaching her to sew. This was finally my opportunity. I blurted out to them that I was going down to the barn to play with Romeo. Neither of them seemed to be listening, but Grandma gave me a polite nod while she showed Darby something on the sewing machine.

  Instead of going to the barn, I went back through the brush to the cabin. As I made my way to the cabin, I couldn't stop thinking about our agreement with Grandpa Jack. While he was sharing the history of the giants with us, we were to stay out of the cabin. It was important to him that we do it his way.

  I knew that because of this agreement, Grandpa was using the lock on the cabin very liberally. I had seen my grandpa on several occasions go in and come out of the cabin without even using the key. His level of trust had grown since the time we had broken into the cabin. I knew I was breaking that trust by making my way back to the cabin.

  I often wonder why it is we do things we know we shouldn't. Ultimately, I guess we think the rewards outweigh the repercussions of punishment and take the risk anyway. They say it's human nature to be fallible, to make mistakes, to do wrong things, only to learn from them and improve ourselves.

  I approached the cabin on the same south side we did when we broke in the first time. As I did, a level of guilt built up. Grandpa Jack trusted me even though we had already gotten into the cabin in the first place. As the guilt built up in me, I heard a voice in my head telling me that this is the only way to get Darby to believe. I convinced myself that I was doing the right thing. I needed that map to prove that she was wrong and that Grandpa Jack is right. Grandpa Jack would understand and appreciate that.

  I crawled up to the porch. Knowing that no one was around, I quickly jumped up and ran to the door. I held my breath as I reached for the doorknob and hoped it would be unlocked. I turned it hard, and the door easily slid open. I ran in quickly and closed the door behind me. My heart was racing again.

  Inside the cabin, I had to catch my breath. I stood there in the dark gathering myself and then moved slowly. I worked to memorize everything in the cabin. Turning my head to the side, I read the writing on the spines of each book. I scanned the shelves for giants, giants, giants. Where is it? Where would the map be? I noticed countless other interesting subjects in Grandpa Jack’s collection, but stayed focused.

  I realized that Grandpa Jack probably kept all his maps in one place, like in the map room at the university in Rome. Maybe there was a book of maps or a drawer. I turned to the other side of the room, where the wall was filled with dozens of drawers. In that moment, I thought I heard a truck go by, and I froze. They couldn’t be back from town already. I quickly realized it was just a truck driving by the farm on the gravel road.

  I quickened my pace. I walked over to the wall of drawers and looked for the word “maps.” There it was. The word “maps” but on a handful of drawers. I opened one of the drawers, and it was deep with maps, all bound together in books. I looked at the binding and there it was: “Giants – Maps”.

  The book was both long and wide. I couldn't just flip through it in my hands. I brought the book over to the desk in the center of the room to lay it down. I opened the cover, and there was a list of maps. A list included a map of Greece, a couple for Rome, France, some in the United States, Arizona, and finally one labeled “Map, Giant Encounters, Owensville, CA.” Its reference is 355-GIM, and its description was “Locations of Giant Encounters, Owensville, CA.”

  I flipped through the book, and there it was in the top left corner, “355-GIM.’ Without hesitation, I ripped the map out of the binding. I immediately paused as I realized what I had done. I had just ripped a page out of a book. As a book lover, this was a huge betrayal. I had come across books in the school library that had pages ripped out. I would be reading along, and then suddenly, it was clear that pages were missing. Some senseless idiot had ripped out a handful of pages from The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. It came at a critical part in the story. Johnny is saving the kids from the burning building. Then suddenly, he is in the hospital. What happened? How’d it happen? I was so hacked off! How could anyone do this to a fellow reader?

  Now, here I was ripping a page out of a book. A map book, yes. Not one someone would read. I justified it. I wasn't thinking about the act, just the result, which justified the action. I didn't have time to care.

  I immediately started folding up the map to shove in my pants pocket. I decided to hide the remaining evidence. No one would know the map was ripped out if they could not find the book. Instead of putting it back in the drawer where I found it, I opened and closed a bunch of other drawers to find one where the book could easily be stashed out of order. Another reader’s pet peeve: books not shelved in the correct place.

  I stashed the book in a drawer that looked messy, one in which books and papers had just been thrown together unorganized. I lifted a bunch of the books and papers with one hand and, with the other, crammed in the map book under them. I fixed the pile so that the map book was not visible when someone opened the drawer. I closed the drawer and looked around to make sure that all the other drawers were closed and that the cabin looked the same as it did when he had come in.

  I walked over to the door, opened it slightly to see if anyone was outside. My heart was racing, but I didn’t see anyone, so I dashed out, closing the door behind me. I jumped down on the side of the porch away from the house and made my escape. I made my way back to the barn through the brush around the cabin, my heart beating fast and breathing hard.

  I couldn't believe it. I did it. I was proud. I had no help from anyone. Not Darby, not Mom or Dad, no one had helped me. I did it all on my own and imagined my dad would be proud of my independence in spite of all I had done wrong.

  I quickly passed all the thick brush around the cabin, and again in the tall golden grass around the well house, I was able to run as fast as I could. The feeling from running in those tall grasses that day has stuck with me over the years. It remains golden.

  Once I was back on the dirt road leading to the barn, I broke free with a mad dash and began to laugh as I sprinted toward the barn. Arriving at the barn and the shadowy shade of its cover, I was safe.

  I stopped and was out of breath. I bent over and put my hands on my thighs to catch my breath. As I did, I felt the largely folded flat map beneath the fabric of my pants with my resting hand. I wanted to pull the map out and see if I could find where there were giants near the farm. I stood up straight and, with the air passing in and out of my lungs at an accelerated rate, I had a head rush. I take a second to allow the light-headedness to pass and let my breathing return to normal.

  As I did, I looked around to make sure no one was there. I heard Oyster grunt from his stall. He noticed I was there and was hopeful I had brought him something to eat. Unfortunately, I didn’t. I went up to his pen, rubbed his head, and promised to return later with something. I figured I could grab a piece of fruit and bring it to him. I figured it was better than nothing.

  I slowly walked over to Romeo's pen in the other corner and stopped at the railing. It was darker in that corner, but it had a bit of a spotlight that shone through a crack between the wood planks of the barn walls from the other side. I struggled to pull the map out through the small opening of my pocket. I wondered how I was able to get the map even in there in the first place. I remember crunching the map as much as I could and cramming it in my pocket as quickly as I could. Now, it seemed impossible to get the same map out.

  Sweat from the stress of the situation was starting to take its toll. I yanked and pulled but could not get the map out. I finally settled on a new approach. I would cut the pocket out of the jeans.

  Grandpa Jack had a workbench in the barn full of tools and other junk. I needed a pair of scissors, and I had seen some before. Big metal black-handled ones clearly too big to just cut paper, but very likely to cut out the fabric pocket that had been sewn into my jeans.

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  I found them, and now here is the thing. In order to cut that pocket out, I needed to be able to reach that fabric from the inside. The only way I was going to be able to do that was to take the pants off. The barn was a way from the house, and the road between the barn and the house had a clear view. If anyone approached by foot or truck, I would see them coming. At the same time, the fear of literally being caught with my pants not just down but off would be a terrible thing to have to explain.

  I told myself I had no choice. The map was the priority.

  I unbuttoned my jeans, and they slipped down my ankles. I left my shoes on, which made the removal of them more difficult, but being without shoes out in the dirt floor of the barn seemed more of a problem than I already had.

  Once they were off, there I stood in the barn in my underwear. My shirt just barely covered the whiteness of the boyish underpants I used to wear back then. My nervousness from being in the cabin returned. Why is it that near nakedness in a place you know you shouldn't be in that state is so much more stressful than in any other state?

  With my jeans off, I quickly turned them inside-out and saw the wadded-up map in a position that appeared unlikely to be removed by the pocket hole. There, at the bottom of the pocket fabric was enough of a gap that I was able to quickly cut with the larger, industrial scissors.

  I unrolled the sweaty, wrinkled map and looked behind me one more time before I began to unfold it. Once opened, I looked down at the map and was bewildered. It made no sense. There were lines and points marked with numbers running down the side and letters across the top, but nothing else. I couldn’t read it. I turned the map around, trying to figure it all out. Suddenly, I felt the map being tugged away from me. I looked up and there was Romeo in his pen, and he had a corner of the map in his mouth.

  “No Romeo!” I said and pulled to get the map away from the goat. As I did, the map came free, but not before a small corner of the map was left in Romeo’s mouth. The goat quickly chewed the corner, and it was gone. I looked at the damage. It was insignificant -- just a small corner.

  I walked away from their pens and continued to look over the map when I heard Darby calling me from the house. My time alone is gone. I quickly got my jeans over my shoes and buttoned them up. I folded up the map and crammed it back in my pocket. I quickly ran out of the barn to meet her at least halfway back to the house.

  “Come on,” she yelled. “Grandma is driving us into town. We need to go to the fabric store.”

  I wiped my sweat brow in relief. Darby looked at me, puzzled. She asked, “Are you alright? You look pale.”

  I quipped, “I’m fine. Leave me alone, would you?”

  “No need to get cranky. I was just asking. You look like a mess. You should take a bath tonight.”

  “Darby, knock it off. You’re not my mother!” This wasn’t the first time saying this to her, and she knew it would not be the last. She thought little of it. She turned back toward the house and said, “Come on, Grandma’s waiting.”

  I felt bad for the outburst but knew it was intentional. I thought about apologizing, but I didn’t. It wouldn’t feel natural in the situation, so I didn’t. I was thinking only of the map. I wasn’t going to tell Darby about the map until I could make heads or tails of it.

  That night in bed, I went over the map in my head. But it didn’t make any sense. I knew this is the type of thing Darby would love to figure out. She enjoyed puzzles. The more I thought about the map, the more I realized this is something I was going to need help with. But I wasn’t about to let her be the one to figure this out. I could do it on my own. I had to. I continued poring over his thoughts. He was certain I would figure it out. I had to.

  The next morning, I returned to the barn under the cover of cleaning the pens. I didn’t do anything to clean the pens that morning. Instead, I had pulled out the map again and was looking it over for any resemblance I would understand.

  “Darius! What are you looking at?” I heard Darby shout.

  I froze. I had been caught. I had been so focused on the map that I didn’t realize Darby walked into the barn. Without thinking, I fumbled with the map and tried to shove it in my pocket without folding it. I managed to stuff only a small fistful of the map inside. The rest remained a visible explosion of wrinkled paper.

  “What is that?” Darby pointed to the map.

  “I…I…I…” I stammered.

  Darby approached me quickly. “What did you find? What is it?”

  “It’s nothing,” I said, still trying to stuff the rest of the unfolded map in my pocket.

  Darby grabbed for it, but by that time I had shoved enough into my pocket that the map tore in two as she pulled on it.

  “Give me that,” I demanded.

  Darby quickly grabbed the map. I lunged after her, and we chased around inside the small barn. She looked confused. She couldn’t make out what she was looking at.

  “What is this?” she asked as I chased her.

  “It’s nothing. Give it back. You’re going to get us in a bunch of trouble.”

  Darby stopped running and turned to me. “Is this Grandpa’s?”

  I tried to grab the piece from her hand, but she jerked it away and held it out of reach.

  “Darius, stop!” She put her free hand up and pushed me back. “You'd better answer me and answer me right now! Where did you get this?”

  I stopped reaching for the map. “It’s just a map or something I found.”

  “Where did you find it? In the barn?” she asked, studying the piece in her hand.

  “Well, actually, I got it from the cabin.”

  “The CABIN! We’re not supposed to go in there. When did you go in the cabin? Where was I? Why? Why did you go there? We told Grandpa we would stay out. We promised. Oh, Darius, you’re going to get it.”

  She always had a way of making me feel bad for the things I did. I hated the way she talked to me like that.

  I snatched the piece from her hand and turned away to shove it back in my pocket.

  “Hey, not so fast,” Darby insisted, trying to get it back.

  I ignored her and walked out the side door of the barn, heading under the oak that overlooked Romeo’s pen.

  Darby followed. “Darius, what did you find when you were in there? Anything about Grandpa or Dad?”

  “No! I wasn’t looking for anything like that. Unlike you, I’m not suspicious of everything around here.”

  She snapped, “So what were you looking for?”

  “A map.”

  “A map of what? I’m sure if you wanted a map, Grandma could have gotten you one.”

  “Not just any map—this map.”

  “Why? What is it of? It just looks like a grid. I don’t think it’s a map at all.”

  Her words stung. I hated it when she thought I was stupid. “Shows what you know,” I said. “It is a map, one of Grandpa’s maps.”

  “Well, what’s it a map of then? If you’re so sure it’s a map.”

  “It’s a map of encounters Grandpa had here in Owensville, on the farm.”

  Darby shook her head. “Is that what Grandpa told you?”

  “No! He doesn’t even know I have it. I remembered it being listed on that notecard we found that time in the cabin. I went back to get it. It’s a map of encounters. I’m just trying to figure it out.”

  “So you think this is a map of actual encounters that Grandpa Jack had with giants here around the farm?”

  I began to answer, but she cut me off. “Wait—or are you just pretending that you’re looking for giants using a map you found?”

  “I’m not pretending. This is real, Darby. The map is real. I don’t need to pretend. Everything Grandpa has been telling us is real. I know you don’t believe, and that’s exactly why I needed to get this map.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because I know you don’t believe anything you can’t see. I was hoping that if I found Grandpa’s map, I could lead you to where the giants are. Then you’d see that Grandpa is telling the truth—and that I was right for believing, and you were wrong.”

  I paused. “The problem is that I can’t seem to figure out the map at all. It makes no sense.”

  Darby looked at me like I was misguided. Her sense of reality always kept her grounded, while my belief in Grandpa’s stories seemed to her like fantasy.

  She asked, “Why are you so sure this is a map?”

  “Because it says so!” I pulled out the worn, torn, wrinkled map. I unfolded it, and

  Darby leaned in. I pointed to the top left corner. “See? Right here—it says this is a map of the giant encounters of Owensville.”

  Darby studied it, and she frowned at its condition.

  “Oh, Darius, look at this. Is this how you found it? All torn and crinkled? Don’t you think Grandpa’s going to notice?”

  “Just look at it. I need your help. It doesn’t make sense to me. Now that you know about it, maybe you could figure it out.”

  I handed it to her. She turned it every which way, just as I had.

  “Well, what do you see?” I asked.

  “Hold on. It’s going to take me some time. There are no distinguishing locations. It doesn’t even look like a map to me. Just a grid with lines and dots and Xs. It doesn’t look like a map.”

  I pulled it back. “Grandpa Jack isn’t going to realize it’s missing. Do you think ‘X’ marks the spot where the giants are?”

  “I don’t know, Darius. I just don’t know. Unless…”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless this is just an overlay to an actual map. You know, like in the story Grandpa was telling in Rome.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. I hadn’t even looked further in the book I’d pulled it from. But now it made sense. “You’re right. It must be an overlay. Now I just need to get the map it goes with.”

  Just then Grandma Mimi called us.

  “Oh no,” Darby said. “We’re probably late for breakfast. Put this away.” She ran toward the front of the barn.

  “We’re coming, Grandma!” she called back.

  She turned to me. “Put the map away. We gotta go. We’ll figure it out later.”

  We ran back toward the house. As we did, Fitch stepped out from inside the barn and stood in the doorway. We hadn’t noticed he’d been there. I’d find that out much later. He watched us run, fully aware of what we were up to.

  The next day, with Grandpa Jack and Fitch in town, Darby and I decided she would keep Grandma Mimi busy while I went to the cabin alone.

  “Grandma, can you show me how to add some fancy buttons to one of my sweaters?” she asked.

  “Why, of course,” Grandma said excitedly.

  With her occupied, I returned to the cabin to find the map that went with the overlay.

  The plan worked perfectly. Once inside, I felt calm. The cabin had become familiar. My heart didn’t race, and my confidence steadied me. Darby and I had devised a plan—if someone came, she’d scream and throw herself down the porch steps. Only in a serious emergency.

  I looked around, not for anything but at everything in general. On the center table, I noticed a map that hadn’t been there before. It was exactly the one I needed—the farm and the surrounding areas. Unsure why it was suddenly there, I glanced around to see if anyone was setting me up. No one. What luck.

  I studied it for signs of use—nothing. I thought of just grabbing it, but that would be noticed. Maybe someone else had been looking for the overlay, but it didn’t matter.

  I pulled out the overlay from my pocket. It was brittle from all the use. I lined it up with the Owensville map. Perfect fit. I drew marks on the overlay, focusing on where most of the X’s clustered. Then I looked for the farm. It wasn’t close—too far for Darby and me to walk.

  But then I noticed a spot not far from the farm. I quickly drew the road that led from the farm, then the gravel road up the hill west of it. I saw a stream marked with encounters. I sketched that too. The stream was close—just up the road. If we followed it, we might reach the spot where activity had been recorded.

  Excitement rushed through me. I finally had the map and a plan. Before long, Darby would have the proof she needed. She’d believe Grandpa Jack—and I’d be right.