Next on my YA shelf:
My personal favorite of Judy Blume’s: Tiger Eyes. I have the same copy that I had when I was a teenager. I read it to pieces back then.
Why isn’t this a movie? All you would need to do would be to film exactly what Blume wrote. The script is already there. The whole thing is on the page already. Easiest job ever.
Davey is 16 years old and her father was murdered in his 7-11 store. Davey’s mom becomes incapacitated by grief and so she ends up moving the entire family from New Jersey out to New Mexico to stay with relatives (all of whom are employed at Los Alamos, giving the book a political subtext of unease that I really clicked with as a teenager. After all, I grew up during the end of the Cold War, when The Day After was a major major television event). Davey is still reeling from the loss of her father and is overwhelmed by the strange beauty and difference of New Mexico. Everything seems surreal.
Judy Blume’s writing has never been better. Davey starts to go hiking down in the canyon every day, in order to get away, have some alone time and during her first hike she meets a Native American guy who calls himself Wolf.
I remember having such a crush on him when I was a teenager. Wolf is a solid listening presence, nonjudgmental, but not a wimp. Davey has a lot of secrets, a lot of things she’s hiding. He doesn’t push, he doesn’t try to get sexual with her, and so they become friends. Because Davey’s father was murdered violently, she sees the world as a dangerous threatening place. It is not easy for her to trust.
I’ll excerpt the first meeting between Davey and Wolf. Davey has climbed to the bottom of the canyon in a reverie about her lost father. She is beside herself with grief. She starts shouting, “Daddy?? Daddy?” She hears the echo coming back. Then along comes Wolf.
Listen to how Blume writes dialogue. It’s so simple, yet it feels so real it lives ON the page. You can hear it, feel it, it has flow. That takes real writing chops.
From Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
Then I hear a voice, answering mine and it isn’t my echo.
“Hey … hey down there,” it calls.
I spin around, trying to find it.
“Hey … are you all right?”
I catch a glimpse of him. He is standing half way up the canyon and is partly hidden by a tree.
“Who … me?” I ask, as if it might be someone else.
“Yeah … you,” he calls, as he begins to climb down. I shade my eyes from the sun and see that he is very sure footed. He is not slipping or sliding or falling, the way I did.
He reaches the bottom quickly and comes toward me. He is about nineteen or twenty, wearing faded cut-offs, hiking boots with wool socks sticking out over the tops and no shirt. He has a knapsack on his back. He is maybe 5’9″, with suntanned skin and dark hair.
“I thought you were in trouble,” he says. “The way you were calling …”
His eyes are dark brown.
No, I say. I’m fine.
“What are you doing down here?” He sounds less friendly now.
“Thinking,” I tell him. “Is there a law against thinking?” The truth is, I am scared out of my mind. My heart is pounding. Suppose he’s a crazy, I think. Suppose he’s a rapist or worse. If he is, I’m in for it. I have to prepare myself. There’s no way I’m going to let him take me by surprise. I know what to do. I’ll smash his head in with a rock. A rock. I have to find the right rock. I scan the ground and see a good one, not ten feet away. I move toward it, slowly, wishing I had my breadknife with me.
“No law against thinking,” he says, “except that you’re alone.”
He’s probably a junkie. He probably comes to the canyon to shoot up, I think, or to trip or just to get stoned.
“So … I’m alone,” I say, sounding bitchier by the minute. “Is there a law against that?” I am standing right in front of the rock now. All I have to do is bend over, pick it up, and wham …
“No, but there should be,” he says.
“Oh, yeah … why?” I am having trouble following our conversation but I know it is best to keep him talking. The longer he talks the less likely that he’ll attack. I read that somewhere.
“Who’s going to get help if you need it?” he asks me.
I think that’s an interesting question, coming from him. I keep my eye on the rock. Every muscle in my body is tensed and ready to spring into action, if necessary.
“Suppose you trip and fall …” he begins.
“Suppose you do? You’re alone too, aren’t you?” Yes, that’s good. Put some fear into him. Let him think that maybe I’m the crazy, waiting, waiting to pounce on him in the silence of the canyon.
“I’ve had plenty of experience,” he says.
“And how do you know I haven’t?”
Then he laughs. His teeth are very white against his suntanned skin. “You don’t know your ass from your armpit,” he says.
Elbow, I think. He means elbow. “Listen, Machoman,” I say, looking him in the eye. “Buzz off!” I sound really tough.
But all he does is laugh again. “Are you always so bitchy?”
“No,” I say. “Just when I feel like it.”
“You’re new around here.” He says this as a statement, not a question.
“So what if I am?”
“Hey, relax … I’m not going to bite you. All I’m trying to say is next time, bring a friend. It’s safer that way.”
“I don’t have any friends.”
“Find some,” he tells me. He bends over and I panic, thinking that he is going for my rock. That he is going to use it on me. But all he does is pick up a handful of stones. He jiggles them around in his hand. Then, without looking at me he says, “Who are you so pissed off at, anyway?”
“The world!” I tell him, without even thinking about it. I am surprised by my answer to his question and by the anger in my voice. It is the first time I realize I am not only sad about my father, but angry, too. Angry that he had to die. And angry at whoever killed him.
He sits down on a rock, opens his knapsack and pulls out a bottle of water. I watch, as he takes a swig. I am so thirsty I can hardly stand it. The inside of my mouth is dried out. My tongue feels thick and furry. I would do anything for a drink of water.
He must sense this because he looks at me and says, “You’re thirsty.”
“A little,” I tell him, licking my parched lips.
“You came into the canyon without a water bottle?”
“I forgot it,” I lie. “It’s home.”
“Here …” He passes his to me. I am so relieved I feel like crying. I mean to take a quick swig, but once it’s to my lips I can’t stop. I drink and drink until he takes it from me.
“Easy,” he says, “or you’ll get sick.”
I begin to relax. He’s not out to get me after all.
“What’s your name?” I ask him.
“You can call me Wolf.”
“Is that a first name or a last name?”
“Either,” he says.
“Oh.” I can’t think of anything else to say.
He stands, puts the water bottle back into his knapsack, stretches and says, “Okay … let’s go.”
“Go?” I shouldn’t have let down my guard. “Where?”
“Back up,” he says. “It’s one o’clock. I’ve got an appointment at two.”
“So, go,” I tell him.
“You’re going with me.”
“Really!” I say.
“Yeah … really.”
“Guess again,” I say.
“I’m not about to leave you down here by yourself. I’m not in the mood to be called by Search and Rescue later. I have other things to do.”
“Search and Rescue?”
“Right.”
I think about the fourteen-year-old boy who was killed by a falling rock and about the woman who broke her leg and went into shock and I wonder if Wolf was called in then. But I don’t ask him. Instead I say, “I’m tougher than I look.”
“Sure you are. Let’s go. I’m in a hurry.”
“How do I know I can trust you?”
“You see anybody you can trust more?”
I look around. He begins to walk away. I decide to follow him.
He climbs quickly. I try to step exactly where he does.
After a while I ask him if he goes to school around here.
He doesn’t answer.
I say it again, louder. “You go to school around here, Wolf?”
“The more you talk the harder time you’re going to have climbing,” he says, without turning around.
Okay, I think. So I’m having trouble keeping up. So I’m breathing hard. So I’m a little out of shape. So what? I don’t say any of this. Instead I watch the muscles in his legs. I notice how brown and smooth the skin is on his back, how his hair hangs just past the nape of his neck, how narrow his hips are, how strong his arms and shoulders look.
As if he knows what I am thinking, he turns. “How’re you doing?”
“Okay. Just fine. I told you, I’m tough.” I wipe the sweat off my face with the back of my hand.
Wolf turns and begins to climb again.
I follow him, then trip on a rock and skin my knee. I feel like crying out but I don’t. I have to hurry to catch up with him. He doesn’t seem to notice.
Finally, we reach the top and Wolf walks me to my bicycle and then, out to the road. I wonder if I will have the strength to ride home, then I remember that it will be almost all downhill.
Wolf leans against a tree, chewing on a piece of grass.
“Well, thanks,” I say. “Thanks for the water and the guided tour.”
He nods. We are both quiet for a minute. Then he says, “Get yourself a decent pair of boots. Adidas are okay for tennis, not rock climbing. And next time, bring a water bottle.”
I get on my bicycle.
“What’s your name?” he asks me, as I am about to pedal away.
I think for a minute before answering. When I do face him and say, “You can call me Tiger.”
“Is that a first name or a last name?”
“Neither!” I say and this time I do pedal away. I know that he’s watching me, but I don’t turn around. I can hear him laughing.
And I laugh too.
I love this book. I think of it often–so many scenes and images from it have stayed with me. And Wolf: what a babe. I’m going to go back and reread it.
Also, re: comments in the “Are You There …” post … why do I have a memory of the cover of that book being purple, not yellow?
I remember when I was little that this was supposed to be one of the “grown up” Judy Blume books that some kids weren’t allowed to read. One of my friends that snuck and read it – she was considered a courageous rebel for it – told me it was “scary” and I never got around to it. I think I’m going to pick up a copy today.