Walk Two Moons

by Sharon Creech

FROM THE BOOK JACKET:

"Sometimes you know in your heart you love someone, but you have to
go away before your head can figure it out."

To trace the path of her missing mother, Sal embarks on a journey
from Ohio to Idaho with her grandparents. On the road, Sal tells the
strange and exciting story of her friend Phoebe. As the miles pass,
Phoebe's tale becomes more and more outrageous, while Sal's own
story begins to emerge. In unraveling Phoebe's mystery, Sal comes
ever closer to finding out the truth behind her own bittersweet
journey. What will she find at the end of the road?

---------------------------------------------------

"Don't judge a man
until you've walked two moons
in his moccasins."

CHAPTER ONE
A Face at the Window

Gramps says that I am a country girl at heart, and that is true. I
have lived most of my thirteen years in Bybanks, Kentucky, which is
not much more than a caboodle of houses roosting in a green spot
alongside the Ohio River. Just over a year ago, my father plucked me
up like a weed and took me and all our belongings (no, that is not
true--he did not bring the chestnut tree, the willow, the maple, the
hayloft, or the swimming hole, which all belonged to me) and we
drove three hundred miles straight north and stopped in front of a
house in Euclid, Ohio.

"No trees?" I said. "This is where we're going to live?"

"No," my father said. "This is Margaret's house."

The front door of the house opened and a lady with wild red hair
stood there. I looked up and down the street. The houses were all
jammed together like a row of birdhouses. In front of each house was
a tiny square of grass, and in front of that was a thin gray
sidewalk running alongside a gray road.

"Where's the barn?" I asked. "The river? The swimming hole?"

"Oh, Sal," my father said. "Come on. There's Margaret." He waved to
the lady at the door.

"We have to go back. I forgot something."

The lady with the wild red hair opened the door and came out onto
the porch.

"In the back of my closet," I said, "under the floorboards. I put
something there, and I've got to have it."

"Don't be a goose. Come and see Margaret."

I did not want to see Margaret. I stood there, looking around, and
that's when I saw the face pressed up against an upstairs window
next door. It was a round girl's face, and it looked afraid. I
didn't know it then, but that face belonged to Phoebe Winterbottom,
a girl who had a powerful imagination, who would become my friend,
and who would have many peculiar things happen to her.

Not long ago, when I was locked in a car with my grandparents for
six days, I told them the story of Phoebe, and when I finished
telling them--or maybe even as I was telling them--I realized that the
story of Phoebe was like the plaster wall in our old house in Bybanks,
Kentucky. My father started chipping away at a plaster wall in the
living room of our house in Bybanks shortly after my mother left us
one April morning. Our house was an old farmhouse that my parents had
been restoring, room by room. Each night as he waited to hear from my
mother, he chipped away at that wall.

On the night that we got the bad news--that she was not returning--he
pounded and pounded on that wall with a chisel and a hammer. At two
o'clock in the morning, he came up to my room. I was not asleep. He
led me downstairs and showed me what he had found. Hidden behind the
wall was a brick fireplace.

The reason that Phoebe's story reminds me of that plaster wall and
the hidden fireplace is that beneath Phoebe's story was another one.
Mine.

CHAPTER TWO
The Chickabiddy Starts a Story

It was after all the adventures of Phoebe that my grandparents came
up with a plan to drive from Kentucky to Ohio, where they would pick
me up, and then the three of us would drive two thousand miles west
to Lewiston, Idaho. This is how I came to be locked in a car with
them for nearly a week. It was not a trip that I was eager to take,
but it was one I had to take. Gramps had said, "We'll see the whole
ding-dong country!"

Gram squeezed my cheeks and said, "This trip will give me a chance
to be with my favorite chickabiddy again." I am, by the way, their
" only" chickabiddy.

My father said that Gram couldn't read maps worth a hill of beans,
and that he was grateful that I had agreed to go along and help them
find their way. I was only thirteen, and although I did have a way
with maps, it was not really because of that skill that I was going,
nor was it to see the "whole ding-dong country" that Gram and Gramps
were going. The real reasons were buried beneath piles and piles of
unsaid things.

Some of the real reasons were:

1. Gram and Gramps wanted to see Momma, who was resting peacefully
in Lewiston, Idaho.
2. Gram and Gramps knew that I wanted to see Momma, but that I was
afraid to.
3. Dad wanted to be alone with the red-headed Margaret Cadaver. He
had already seen Momma, and he had not taken me.

Also--although this wasn't as important--Dad did not trust Gram and
Gramps to behave themselves along the way unless they had me with
them. Dad said that if they tried to go on their own, he would save
everyone a lot of time and embarrassment by calling the police and
having them arrested before they even left the driveway. It might
sound a bit extreme for a man to call the police on his own tottery
old parents, but when my grandparents got in a car, trouble just
naturally followed them like a filly trailing behind a mare.

My grandparents Hiddle were my father's parents, full up to the tops
of their heads with goodness and sweetness, and mixed in with all
that goodness and sweetness was a large dash of peculiarity. This
combination made them interesting to know, but you could never
predict what they would do or say.

Once it was settled that the three of us would go, the journey took
on an alarming, expanding need to hurry that was like a walloping
great thundercloud assembling around me. During the week before we
left, the sound of the wind was "hurry, hurry, hurry," and at night
even the silent darkness whispered "rush, rush, rush." I did not
think we would ever leave, and yet I did not want to leave. I did
not really expect to survive the trip.

But I had decided to go and I would go, and I had to be there by my
mother's birthday. This was extremely important. I believed that if
there was any chance to bring my mother back home it would happen on
her birthday. If I had said this aloud to my father or to my
grandparents,
they would have said that I might as well try to catch a fish in the
air, so I did not say it aloud. But I believed it. Sometimes I am as
ornery and stubborn as an old donkey. My father says I lean on broken
reeds and will get a face full of swamp mud one day.

When at last Gram and Gramps Hiddle and I set out that first day of
the trip, I prayed for the first thirty minutes solid. I prayed that
we would not be in an accident (I was terrified of cars and buses)
and that we would get there by my mother's birthday--seven days
away--and that we would bring her home. Over and over, I prayed
the same thing. I prayed to trees. This was easier than praying
directly to God. There was nearly always a tree nearby.

As we pulled onto the Ohio Turnpike, which is the flattest,
straightest piece of road in God's whole creation, Gram interrupted
my prayers. "Salamanca-"

I should explain right off that my real name is Salamanca Tree
Hiddle. Salamanca, my parents thought, was the name of the Indian
tribe to which my great-great-grandmother belonged. My parents were
mistaken. The name of the tribe was Seneca, but since my parents did
not discover their error until after I was born and they were, by
then, used to my name, it remained Salamanca. My middle name, Tree,
comes from your basic tree, a thing of such beauty to my mother that
she made it part of my name. She wanted to be more specific and use
Sugar Maple Tree, her very favorite, but Salamanca Sugar Maple Tree
Hiddle was a bit much even for her.

My mother used to call me Salamanca, but after she left, only my
grandparents Hiddle called me Salamanca (when they were not calling
me chickabiddy). To most other people, I was Sal, and to a few boys
who thought they were especially amusing, I was Salamander.

In the car, as we started our long journey to Lewiston, Idaho, my
grandmother Hiddle said, "Salamanca, why don't you entertain us?"

"What sort of thing did you have in mind?"

Gramps said, "How about a story? Spin us a yarn."

I certainly do know heaps of stories, but I learned most of them
from Gramps. Gram suggested I tell one about my mother. That I could
not do. I had just reached the point where I could stop thinking
about her every minute of every day.

Gramps said, "Well then, what about your friends? You got any tales
to tell about them?"

Instantly, Phoebe Winterbottom came to mind. There was certainly a
hog's belly full of things to tell about her. "I could tell you an
extensively strange story," I warned.

"Oh, good!" Gram said. "Delicious!"

And that is how I happened to suspend my tree prayers and tell them
about Phoebe Winterbottom, her disappearing mother, and the lunatic.

CHAPTER THREE
Bravery

Because I first saw Phoebe on the day my father and I moved to
Euclid, I began my story of Phoebe with the visit to the red-headed
Margaret Cadaver's, where I also met Mrs. Partridge, her elderly
mother. Margaret nearly fell over herself being nice to me. "What
lovely hair," she said, and "Aren't you sweet!" I was "not" sweet
that day. I was being particularly ornery. I wouldn't sit down and I
wouldn't look at Margaret.

As we were leaving, Margaret whispered to my father, "John, have you
told her yet--how we met?"

My father looked uncomfortable. "No," he said. "I tried--but she
doesn't want to know."

Now that was the truth, absolutely. Who cares? I thought. Who cares
how he met Margaret Cadaver?

When at last we left Mrs. Cadaver and Mrs. Partridge, we drove for
approximately three minutes. Two blocks from Margaret Cadaver's was
the place where my father and I were now going to live.

Tiny, squirt trees. Little birdhouses in a row--and one of those
birdhouses was ours. No swimming hole, no barn, no cows, no chickens,
no pigs. Instead, a little white house with a miniature patch of
green grass in front of it. It wasn't enough grass to keep a cow
alive for five minutes.

"Let's take a tour," my father said, rather too heartily.

We walked through the tiny living room into the miniature kitchen
and upstairs into my father's pint-sized bedroom and on into my
pocket-sized bedroom and into the wee bathroom. I looked out the
upstairs window down into the backyard. Half of the tiny yard was a
cement patio and the other half was another patch of grass that our
imaginary cow would devour in two bites. There was a tall wooden
fence all around the yard, and to the left and right of our yard
were other, identical fenced plots.

After the moving van arrived and two men crammed our Bybanks
furniture into our birdhouse, my father and I inched into the living
room, crawling over sofas and chairs and tables and boxes, boxes,
boxes. "Mm," my father said. "It looks as if we tried to squeeze all
the animals into the chicken coop."

Three days later, I started school and saw Phoebe again. She was in
my class. Most of the kids in my new school spoke in quick, sharp
bursts and dressed in stiff, new clothes and wore braces on their
teeth. Most girls wore their hair in exactly the same way: in a
shoulder-length "bob" (that's what they called it) with long bangs
that they repeatedly shook out of their eyes. We once had a horse
who did that.

Everybody kept touching my hair. "Don't you ever cut it?" they said.
" Can you sit on it? How do you wash it? Is it naturally black like
that? Do you use conditioner?" I couldn't tell if they liked my hair
or if they thought I looked like a whang-doodle.

One girl, Mary Lou Finney, said the most peculiar things, like out
of the blue she would say, "Omnipotent!" or "Beef brain!" I couldn't
make any sense of it. There were Megan and Christy, who jumped up
and down like parched peas, moody Beth Ann, and pink-cheeked Alex.
There was Ben, who drew cartoons all day long, and a peculiar
English teacher named Mr. Birkway.

And then there was Phoebe Winterbottom. Ben called her "Free Bee Ice
Bottom" and drew a picture of a bumblebee with an ice cube on its
bottom. Phoebe tore it up.

Phoebe was a quiet girl who stayed mostly by herself. She had a
pleasant round face and huge, enormous sky-blue eyes. Around this
pleasant round face, her hair--as yellow as a crow's foot--curled in
short ringlets.

During that first week, when my father and I were at Margaret's (we
ate dinner there three times that week), I saw Phoebe's face twice
more at her window. Once I waved at her, but she didn't seem to notice,
and at school she never mentioned that she had seen me. Then one day
at lunch, she slid into the seat next to me and said, "Sal, you're
so courageous. You're ever so brave."

To tell you the truth, I was surprised. You could have knocked me
over with a chicken feather. "Me? I'm not brave," I said.

"You are. You are brave."

I was not. I, Salamanca Tree Hiddle, was afraid of lots and lots
of things. For example, I was terrified of car accidents, death,
cancer, brain tumors, nuclear war, pregnant women, loud noises,
strict teachers, elevators, and scads of other things. But I was
not afraid of spiders, snakes, and wasps. Phoebe, and nearly everyone
else in my new class, did not have much fondness for these creatures.

But on that day, when a dignified black spider was investigating my
desk, I cupped my hands around it, carried it to the open window,
and set it outside on the ledge. Mary Lou Finney said, "Alpha and
Omega, will you look at that!" Beth Ann was as white as milk. All
around the room, people were acting as if I had single handedly taken
on a fire-breathing dragon.

What I have since realized is that if people expect you to be brave,
sometimes you pretend that you are, even when you are frightened
down to your very bones. But this was later, during the whole thing
with Phoebe's lunatic, that I realized this.

At this point in my story, Gram interrupted me to say, "Why, Salamanca,
of course you're brave. All the Hiddles are brave. It's a family trait.
Look at your daddy--your momma--"

"Momma's not a real Hiddle," I said.

"She practically is," Gram said. "You can't be married to a Hiddle
that long and not 'become' a Hiddle."

That is not what my mother used to say. She would tell my father,
" You Hiddles are a mystery to me. I'll never be a true Hiddle." She
did not say this proudly. She said it as if she were sorry about it,
as if it were some sort of failing in her.

My mother's parents--my other set of grandparents--are Pickfords, and
they are as unlike my grandparents Hiddle as a donkey is unlike a
pickle. Grandmother and Grandfather Pickford stand straight up, as
if sturdy, steel poles ran down their backs. They wear starched,
ironed clothing, and when they are shocked or surprised (which is
often), they say, "Really? Is that so?" and their eyes open wide and
their mouths turn down at the corners.

Once I asked my mother why Grandmother and Grandfather Pickford
never laughed. My mother said, "They're just so busy being respectable.
It takes a lot of concentration to be that respectable." And then my
mother laughed and laughed, in a gentle way, and you could tell her own
spine was not made of steel because she bent in half, laughing and
laughing.

My mother said that Grandmother Pickford's one act of defiance in
her whole life as a Pickford was in naming her. Grandmother
Pickford, whose own name is Gayfeather, named my mother Chanhassen.
It's an Indian name, meaning "tree sweet juice," or--in other
words--maple sugar. Only Grandmother Pickford ever called my mother
by her Indian name, though. Everyone else called my mother Sugar.

Most of the time, my mother seemed nothing like her parents at all,
and it was hard for me to imagine that she had come from them. But
occasionally, in small, unexpected moments, the corners of my
mother's mouth would turn down and she'd say, "Really? Is that so?"
and sound exactly like a Pickford.

CHAPTER FOUR
That's What I'm Telling You

On the day that Phoebe sat next to me at lunch and told me I was
brave, she invited me to her house for dinner. To be honest, I was
relieved that I would not have to eat at Margaret's again. I did not
want to see Dad and Margaret smiling at each other.

I wanted everything to be like it was. I wanted to be back in
Bybanks, Kentucky, in the hills and the trees, near the cows and
chickens and pigs. I wanted to run down the hill from the barn and
through the kitchen door that banged behind me and see my mother and
my father sitting at the table peeling apples.

Phoebe and I walked home from school together. We stopped briefly at
my house so that I could call my father at work. Margaret had helped
him find a job selling farm machinery. He said it made him happy as
a clam at high water to know I had a new friend. Maybe this is
really why he was happy, I thought, or maybe it was because he could
be alone with Margaret Cadaver.

Phoebe and I then walked to her house. As we passed Margaret
Cadaver's house, a voice called out. "Sal? Sal? Is that you?"

In the shadows on the porch, Margaret's mother, Mrs. Partridge, sat
in a wicker rocker. A thick, gnarled cane with a handle carved in
the shape of a cobra's head lay across her knees. Her purple dress
had slipped up over her bony knees, which were spread apart, and I
hate to say it, but you could see right up her skirt. Around her
neck was a yellow feather scarf. ("My boa," she once told me, "my
most favoritest boa.")

As I started up the walk, Phoebe pulled on my arm. "Don't go up
there," she said.

"It's only Mrs. Partridge," I said. "Come on."

"Who's that with you?" Mrs. Partridge said. "What's that on her
face?" I knew what she was going to do. She did this with me the
first time I met her.

Phoebe placed her hands on her own round face and felt about.

"Come here," Mrs. Partridge said. She wriggled her crooked little
fingers at Phoebe.

Mrs. Partridge put her fingers up to Phoebe's face and mashed around
gently over her eyelids and down her cheeks. "Just as I thought.
It's two eyes, a nose, and a mouth." Mrs. Partridge laughed a wicked
laugh that sounded as if it were bouncing off jagged rocks. "You're
thirteen years old."

"Yes," Phoebe said.

"I knew it," Mrs. Partridge said. "I just knew it." She patted her
yellow feather boa.

"This is Phoebe Winterbottom," I said. "She lives right next door to
you."

When we left, Phoebe whispered, "I wish you hadn't done that. I wish
you hadn't told her I lived next door."

"Why not? You don't seem to know Mrs. Cadaver and Mrs. Partridge
very well--"

"They haven't lived there very long. Only a month or so."

"Don't you think it's remarkable that she guessed your age?"

"I don't see what is so remarkable about it." Before I could
explain, Phoebe started telling me about the time that she and her
mother, father, and sister, Prudence, had gone to the State Fair. At
one booth, a crowd was gathered around a tall, thin man.

"So what was he doing?" I asked.

"That's what I'm telling you," Phoebe said.

Paperback: Today's read ends on page 18.