Gary Paulsen: Brian's Return

He told Caleb about his life in the woods, and though Caleb seldom said much this talking helped Brian to understand himself and what was happening — and what was going to happen to him.

Caleb would make a pot of tea — nothing fancy, just hot water and a tea bag with some cream and sugar — and have a cup waiting when Brian got there. Brian had never thought much of tea but the first time he put sugar in it and sipped it while he spoke it somehow seemed to always have been a part of him. It was so natural that after only a small bit of thought he added tea to his list for the woods. Tea — and sugar in cubes.

He would take the tea, sit down in the iron chair, look at Caleb and say. ‘‘What do you want to hear about today?’’

‘‘I wouldn’t even know what to ask. You pick it.’’

And Brian would think a moment and then tell a story of moose or fishing or the sun on the water or the way beaver build a house or the lonely cry of a loon in the night or the stomach-tightening wail of a wolf singing to the moon and Caleb would listen quietly, his eyes staring off, sometimes crying or laughing, sometimes surprised, sometimes sad.

Then there came a day when school was nearly done, when Brian had received nearly all the things on the List, and Caleb sighed and said, ‘‘It’s time for you to go back, to find what you’re looking for.’’

Brian agreed. They’d spoken about his going back and how he had to know what it was that pulled him and made him feel empty. ‘‘But I don’t know exactly how to do it,’’ Brian said.

‘‘I’ll help you.’’

‘‘You will?’’

Caleb shrugged. ‘‘I’m supposed to be helping you ‘recover your mental health,’ aren’t I? Well, it’s clear that for you to be mentally healthy you have to go back to the woods and find what you left there.’’

‘‘That’s true.’’

‘‘What about that Cree family who rescued you? The trappers?’’

‘‘The Smallhorns.’’ Brian thought of them often. ‘‘What about them?’’

‘‘Didn’t they want you to come back and visit them?’’

Brian stared. ‘‘Of course. It’s perfect. Why didn’t I think of that?’’

It wasn’t easy at first. He had expected difficulties with his parents and he wasn’t mistaken. His mother had a terrible fear of the bush — which had developed in the weeks when he had disappeared and she had had to believe he was dead. They talked many nights before she relented. He was older now, more seasoned, and she knew that. He had done well the past summer, when he had returned with Derek. With Caleb’s help, his mother came around.

‘‘How will you find the Smallhorns?’’ she asked.

‘‘The pilot, the man who flew me out, will know where they are.’’

Brian had kept the pilot’s name. The man had a one-plane operation working out of International Falls, on the Minnesota-Canada border, and Brian called.

‘‘The Smallhorns? Yeah — they’re up in the Williams Lake area in a fish camp but I’m not due to go up there until fall. I’m booked solid all summer with fishing charters. I can’t take the time to run you up there.’’

‘‘How about getting me close? I can make my own way in a canoe.’’

‘‘Just a minute.’’ Brian heard papers shuffling as the pilot went through his records. ‘‘Yeah, here. I’m due to take a couple of guys fishing in ten days. We’re going to the Granite Lake area and with my fuel I can take you maybe another hundred miles. That’s still a hundred miles short of the Smallhorns’ camp but it’s all chain lakes up there and you can do it without any really bad portages. I’ll give you a good map. How heavy is your gear?’’

‘‘Maybe two hundred pounds, plus me and a canoe. Can you haul a canoe?’’

‘‘Sure. On the floats. We’re taking one canoe and I can fit yours on the other float. When are you figuring on coming out?’’

‘‘I’m not. . sure.’’

‘‘I’m due to make a supply run to them in the fall before trapping season and bad weather sets in. You could come out then.’’

‘‘Sure.’’

‘‘All right — you just fly up to International Falls and I’ll meet you there.’’

He didn’t exactly lie to his mother, he just didn’t tell her the whole truth. She thought the plane was taking him all the way and he didn’t correct her. When he called to tell his father about his ‘‘visit,’’ he left the same impression, although he didn’t think it would have mattered to his father that he planned to do the last hundred miles by canoe. His relationship with his father had also changed in the last year— they had grown somehow farther apart and closer at the same time. His father no longer seemed to think of him as a boy and didn’t talk down to him. Now he spoke to Brian more as an equal.

‘‘It sounds great,’’ he said. ‘‘A long visit will do you good. You’ll have a wonderful time.’’

The canoe was the problem. He had to pay extra for shipping it and from Minneapolis north he had to send it by truck. The airlines took care of all the arrangements. He had to send it early for the canoe to be there when he arrived and he worried that something would happen to it — hated to let it out of his sight. But the airline called to say when it arrived safely in International Falls — a full four days before he flew up himself.

The rest of his gear he put in two backpacks, except for the bow and arrows. He checked the bow on the plane in a thick paper tube and the arrows went in boxes with his packs.

He did not take winter or cold-weather gear except for a windbreaker-anorak and two Polar Fleece pullovers. He wasn’t sure why. When he walked around the house or through town or was at school there was not a thought in his mind of coming back. Perhaps he would, but. . As television had soured for him he had started to read more, studied history more and knew that in the past many young men his age, nearly sixteen — were away and into their lives. In the Civil War sixteen-year-olds had been fighting, dying. With his parents’ permission, Brian could enlist in the army at seventeen. For better or worse, he was set on his own path and he didn’t think of coming back and yet he didn’t take winter gear.

It was the lack of room, he told himself — he could get it later. He just didn’t have enough room.

The last two weeks were filled with calling the travel agent, assuring everybody he would be all right, making certain everything on the List was packed, and visiting Caleb.

Then finally the last day came and he visited Caleb to say goodbye.

‘‘You’ll write,’’ Caleb said, and it was not a question but a statement. ‘‘I’ll want to know how you’re doing.’’

Brian nodded. ‘‘Except that I won’t be able to get any mail out.’’

‘‘In the fall. There will be the supply run you told me about. You could send letters then.’’

‘‘I will. I promise.’’

‘‘Well, then. .’’

Brian stood and they started to shake hands. Then Caleb moved around the desk and grabbed him up in a bear hug. Brian’s feet actually left the ground.

‘‘I’ll write,’’ he promised when he was loose.

‘‘Tell me everything,’’ Caleb said. ‘‘Tell me about light and colors. All of it. .’’

‘‘I will.’’ He paused. ‘‘I don’t know how to thank you.’’

Caleb smiled. ‘‘You already have. Just write.’’

His mother drove him to the airport and helped him with all his gear. At the check-in she put her hand on one of the packs and he looked at her and she was crying.

‘‘I’ll be fine, Mom.’’

‘‘I know. I just remembered how it all started. The small plane, and the hatchet I gave you. It all seems so long ago and it was just two years.’’