THE CATERPILLARS QUESTION

"Why don't we go somewhere where I can paint?" Jack suggested. She acceded gladly. She wanted to go somewhere, certainly.

The day outside was beautiful. The bright sun sent shafts through the mountains and made the morning mists rise in perpendicular tails. He hauled his portable easel from the car along with a couple of canvases, and took Tappy by the hand.

The caretaker came out as they passed the lead cabin. "Going to do some painting," Jack called to him. "We'll be here a few days."

A few days! What was he doing?

"Av-uh," the man said knowledgeably, and went about his business. Jack had not told him that Tappy was blind.

Tappy led the way. There was definitely something she wanted to find. His curiosity thoroughly aroused, Jack cooperated. They climbed through field and forest, heading for the top of the mountain. That summit had looked very close from the cabins, almost overhanging them. Two hours later it still looked close.

He had not meant to subject the lame girl to this much labor, or himself, burdened with his painting apparatus.

Jack put his free arm around Tappy's waist to help her climb, as she did not wish to turn back. He discovered a hardness there. In a moment he realized that she had The Little Prince with her, tucked inside her blouse. All this time ... this was foolish of the girl, but it pleased him obscurely, and he gave her a friendly squeeze.

There was a dip in the thickening forest for a mountain stream whose bed comprised little more than a collection of massive round rocks. A driblet of water trickled between them, very cold.

Jack dipped his hand in it and splashed a few droplets on Tappy.

She shook them off prettily and tugged him on. Why was she so eager to make this climb?

The stream originated in a sandy patch beneath a huge old maple tree. Ancient sugaring spigots ringed the giant's gnarled trunk. Careless, he thought; these should have been removed. The water percolated up from some subterranean reservoir, as though this were the vanishing sap of the tree. Jack lay on his stomach and drank, feeling the moist coolness of the leaves and twigs against Life appeared. Little tubular shells decorated the bottom of the streamlet, and threadlike animalcules, and an agile salamander skittered magically away. A tiny gray and white bird watched them from its perch on a neighboring trunk-upside down. It proceeded to spiral on down, around and around the tree headfirst, until it reached the ground. It took wing for the next tree's upper section, then started down again.

He described it to Tappy, who listened attentively. She raised her hand toward the bird and smiled. For a moment he thought the nuthatch was coming to her; then it was gone, and they resumed the climb.

The ascent became ferociously steep near the end. They had to scramble over jutting rocks and tangled roots, and his painting paraphernalia neutralized a hand he needed. Tappy had no trouble, now that touch was the most important guide, and soon she was leading the way and indicating the best route for him.

He followed, trying to avoid staring up inside her skirt as her legs moved above him, feeling guilty for even being conscious of the impropriety. Her legs looked healthy; did she need that brace at all?

They made it at last. There was a brief clearing at the summit, a disk of grass and bare rock like the baking head of a friar. Tappy hurried to a big rock at the top, seeming much taken with it, yet somehow disappointed, too. She opened her blouse and brought out the book, setting it on the rock.

He stood there and marveled at the ring of mountains, row on row, circle beyond circle, extending as far as he could see. The very world seemed to turn under his feet, giving him a strange exhilaration and a sense of power.

There had been a time when he thought little of such displays, when a pi

But in his youth his father took him for a climb, one unexpected day, and when they rested on the height, fatigued and perspiring from the hike, he showed Jack the land. Now Jack relived that experience.

through the aeons of prehistory the earth itself crumpled and cracked, wrinkling into the jaggedly fresh peaks of a stony range.

Then came the rain, and the ice of a glacier, and the mightiest of mounts wore down with the burden of time. The green mold of verdure pried at its grandeur, the rivers spirited away Its substance for deposit to the accounts of alluvial banks. Natural history lived in the decline of the mountains, and it was written here, all around him, in the remnants of a range once greater than the RockIES.

It was as if he could see all the way into the past-and into the future, too.

How was he to record any fragment of this language of eternity on his poor flat canvas? Yet it was a joy to try!

Tappy sensed his mood, and she stood on her toes beside him and kissed him lightly on the cheek. Without thinking he turned and took her in his arms and kissed her deeply on the lips.

She clung to him, her slight eager body pressing tightly against his. Nothing seemed to matter but the indefinable emotion of the moment.

Jack withdrew, confused. This was a thirteen-year-old child, with outsized glasses and a nebulous fate. He had traveled with her only three days. He had to deliver her to "Let's settle down awhile and ... paint," he said, setting aside a situation too complex to be understood at once. He set up his easel and stood facing out onto the bowl of the world.

He glanced back to see Tappy comfortable on her large rock, the book on her lap. She was smiling slightly, her face made intriguing by the dark glasses. She was really quite fetching, framed by the backdrop of sky and cloud. He toyed with the idea of painting her portrait, but decided against this. It would be best to put her out of his mind for a time.

Jack's mind meandered as he painted. Perhaps the kiss had set his attention coursing along familiar cha

Jack applied a gray edge to a distant peak, humming a half-remembered folk son . How did it go? "Up on the mountain the other day the pretty little flowers grew; never did I know till the other day what love, oh love could do!"

He paused. What subliminal co

He cast about for some suitable subject for the extra.

"How about fetching me a spectacular tropical bird?" he asked Tappy. She cocked her glasses at him. There was a falsetto cry of some large bird in the distance.

Jack jumped, but it was only a crow. Nevertheless, he gave up the notion of painting anything more. It was time to begin the long trek down the mountain. Whatever imperative had brought Tappy here seemed to have abated. He didn't know whether to feel relieved or disappointed; he had really gotten curious about the identity of the thing on which she had oriented. Apparently it was only that large rock.

It was late afternoon by the time they made it back to the cabins, since they found descending almost as hard as ascending.

Tappy was tired, and he had his arm around her slim, book -braced midsection, almost carrying her as they traversed the last few hundred yards. The painting was taking a beating. The caretaker looked up as they went by. "Av-uh," he said.