Chapter 6

The trees provided shade from the unrelenting sun and gave relief from the sweltering heat, so that it was again nearing mid-morning before anyone awoke.
 
Sam stirred first and gathered more firewood and began the morning meal while he thought in quiet reflection. So far, this trip was nothing like he had expected. When Mr. Frodo had asked him along, he figured he would be taking care of all the cooking and other such preparations, yet that was not what happened. Mr. Frodo had easily assumed an equality of duties among the four companions and his cousins had fallen quickly in line. Sam made no complaints, but he was beginning to wonder why his master had wanted him to come if it was not to see after things.

And then there had been last night. He didn’t mind being ignored. In fact, he preferred it to having to scramble frantically through his head for stories and being the center of such expectant attention. But he had felt like an intruder, hearing all those family tales, like he was one of them when he was not, learning things he had no right to know. He could well imagine what his father would think of all this camaraderie.

Sam shifted uncomfortably. He had allowed himself to get caught up in the moment last night, but he would be mindful not to do so again. Despite what his father might think, Sam had not forgotten his boundaries altogether and he could remain within them. He would not step out of line again.

Merry woke next and again found his arms full of a peacefully sleeping Pippin. He untangled himself with a small shake of his head at his young friend and joined Sam. He was glad to find the two of them alone again. This would give him another opportunity to get back on friendly – truly friendly – terms with Sam. For of course, Sam was always properly friendly to everyone, even the loathsome Sackville-Bagginses, but Merry wanted more than that. He wanted to be able to confide in Sam, the same as he did Frodo and Pippin, and he wanted Sam to feel free to do likewise.

“Here Sam, let me help you with that,” Merry offered and started to reach for the frying pan.

Sam shook his head. “No need to trouble yourself, Mr. Merry. I’ve got everything under control.”

“It’s no trouble at all.”

“Really, Mr. Merry, I’ve got it handled,” Sam insisted. “You don’t need to be helping, it ain’t proper.”

“Not proper?” Merry said lightly. “Now what’s not proper about wanting to help a friend?”

“Nothing, but…” Sam didn’t finish the sentence and trailed off to an uncomfortable silence. He didn’t need to finish. The thought hung palpably in the air between them, stinging sorely. But we aren’t friends.

Sam returned to his cooking, stirring hastily and avoiding Merry’s gaze. He kept his head bent and poured all his attention into the skillet in his hand. He could feel Merry watching him intently and tried his best to act normally. He didn’t like the distance between them any more than Merry did, but there were some things that should not be tempted and his friendship with Merry had landed him into more trouble than he cared to remember.

Merry clenched his jaw in frustration and took a slow, deep breath while reminding himself that he already knew this was going to be difficult. Naturally, he hadn’t thought it would be this difficult. He felt like he was constantly running into a brick wall. Another thing he was learning on this trip about the gardener was that Sam could be incredibly stubborn. Merry could be even more stubborn though and he was not about to give up. He waited a few minutes, then tried a different approach.

“It occurs to me that you didn’t get to tell any stories last night, Sam,” he said. “We shouldn’t have hogged the floor like that; it was incredibly rude of us and I apologize.”

Sam shrugged without looking up. “Oh, ‘tis all right Mr. Merry. I didn’t have aught interesting to say anyhow.”

“Come now, I find that impossible,” Merry said. “Everyone has stories.”

“Aye, that we do, but you ain’t knowing any of my friends is all. They wouldn’t be very interesting to you, I don’t think,” Sam explained.

“Well then, tell me about your friends,” Merry said and tried not to show his concern when Sam cast him a doubtful, questioning look. He waited until Sam stirred the contents in the frying pan and added peppers to the mix. “I met your friend Robin once, and I’ve met Tom a few times. I met his siblings at the Birthday Party, remember? We had fun that day, playing all those games,” Merry supplied. “Pippin and I, you and your sisters, Tom, Jolly and… the other two brothers.”

“Nick and Nibs, sir.”

“Right, I knew that. And his sister Rosie. I understand that you have a fondness for Rosie. Are you going to start courting her now that you’re of age?”

“She’s twenty-eight, sir,” Sam said so quietly Merry could barely hear him. He shifted restlessly and there was a crinkle now in his brow as he single-mindedly diced the sausages into small bits and added them to the pan. Then he gazed up at the treetops and easily changed the subject. “Too bad I couldn’t have brought any more of those eggs with us. That’d be right fine in this dish, but eggs ain’t something as you can carry about too easy and these trees here are far too tall to be climbing to look for any. I could of brought taters from home though, I suppose, and we’re out of onions now. Should of brought a few more of those as well.”

Merry nodded absently, gazing up at the trees also, not looking for eggs or bird nests but sending up a silent request for some way to break through that wall Sam had built up. Clearly, beating around the bush wasn’t going to work. He’d have to come straight out and say it. “Sam, I want us to be friends again.”

Sam paused in his inspection of the trees and looked sharply at Merry, the shock evident in his eyes. Only the sizzling of the food finally got him moving again. He went back to his stirring, not sure at all how to respond to what Merry had said. In the end, he simply muttered, “It wouldn’t be proper, sir.”

“So we’re back to proper again, are we?” Merry asked and he couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. He felt more frustrated than he had in years and he suddenly pitied Frodo with what his cousin must have to put up with day in and day out. … Frodo! “You’re friends with Frodo,” Merry pointed out.

“He’s my employer,” Sam replied, the doubtful, questioning crease returning to his eyebrows.

“So you’re only his friend because you have to be?”

“Of course not,” Sam said, clearly insulted.

“But don’t you see? If you can be his friend, you can be mine,” Merry stressed. “I know we stopped being friends years ago and I know that’s largely my fault. I got you in trouble with your Gaffer and he no doubt told you to keep clear of me for your own good. But it’s different now. We’re older, we can make our own decisions about who our friends are.”

Sam was truly miserable now, but he tried his best not to show it. Letting Mr. Merry see how uncomfortable he was wouldn’t help Sam’s position or make what he was about to say any easier on either of them.

“Not all of us are so free in our decisions, sir, if you don’t mind my saying.”

“Of course you are. Everyone’s free to make their own decisions. We’re no different from each other in that respect,” Merry replied.

Sam finally met his eyes and held the gaze long and steady. Then he shook his head ever so slightly. “Meaning no disrespect, but you’re in the position where you can be saying that, sir. I’m not. That’s what makes us different.”

Merry stopped at this, caught off guard by such a calm and sad proclamation. He knew what Sam said was true. He also knew it was ridiculous. And he knew there was no way around it. They came from two different spheres of the social classes, and with that came different rules, different customs, different traditions and expectations, different ways of seeing the world and interacting with those in it, even different ways of dressing and talking. Merry remembered sharply the day a few years back when he had teased Frodo about ‘spending too much time with the gardener.’ Frodo had been visiting Brandy Hall and had lingered behind in the library, promising to “catch you up” in a few minutes. Merry cringed now to think about it and hoped desperately Sam had not heard about that quip.

“Good morning!” a cheerful Tookish lilt greeted, interrupting the strained silence. He plopped down next to Merry, oblivious of the tension into which he had broken. He sniffed the air and licked his lips in anticipation. “Is it almost ready? I’m starving.”

“It’s just about finished, Master Pippin.”

“I wonder what Frodo has planned for today,” Pippin said. “Exploring again, I suppose. Do you know what it is Sam?”

“I don’t, sir,” Sam answered as he placed some slices of bread near the fire for toasting.

“Come on, Pippin,” Merry said suddenly and abruptly stood. “Let’s get more wood.” He walked away at a quick, stiff pace, and Pippin scrambled to follow him.

Sam let out a frustrated sigh when they were out of eyesight. He had never been happier to see Master Pippin awake and he hoped the topic wouldn’t come up again, but knowing Mr. Merry, it most likely would. He would have to think hard about what Mr. Merry had said.  

“I didn’t think it would be this hard,” Merry complained to Pippin once they were an adequate distance from camp.

Pippin didn’t need more of an explanation than that. He hummed sympathetically and hurried to keep up with Merry, who was walking blindly through the trees, not even attempting to look for firewood.

“It’s as if he doesn’t trust me enough to be my friend. He never has, not since… well, he just never has,” Merry continued as he crashed thoughtlessly through the bushes.

“Well, you are the one who set the bonfires ablaze and nearly burnt up half the Party Field,” Pippin reminded needlessly. “Sam took quite a few lashings for that.”

“I know that, Pippin,” Merry seethed.

That memory was still too painfully shameful to think about even after all these years, so he pushed it to the back of his mind and continued stomping through the forest until he came to a wall of brush too thick to storm through. He came to an abrupt halt and Pippin nearly collided with him. Merry frowned angrily at the bushes, as if they had materialized there simply to get in his way. He turned left and continued his reckless stomping until he came to another wall, and then another and another. Finally, he found a rock and sat down upon it dejectedly.

“But that was years ago,” Merry said at last. “Shouldn’t he have, I don’t know…”

“Forgotten about it?” Pippin supplied.

“Forgiven me?” Merry whispered with a defeated sigh. Then a moment later, he jumped up and started pacing back and forth. “It’s just so frustrating, the way we wander back and forth between being almost friends and being barely more than acquaintances.”

There had been many times over the years since that dreadful Harvest Moon Dance when Merry believed that the rift between him and Sam could be mended. Until the next day arrived or the following visit came around, and Merry found to his consternation and chagrin that Sam had distanced himself yet again.

“Take Bilbo’s Birthday Party for instance,” Merry went on. “Not even a year after that little fire and on the same exact field no less! You were there, you know. We played all those games with Sam and his sisters and friends, and no one even batted an eye about ‘improper’ anything. And what about that time we all four went to Michel Delving for the Free Fair? No one cared; there was no talk about Sam trying to be ‘above himself.’ He didn’t seem to mind being our friend then. Why does it matter now? Why is it only acceptable when there’s some sort of festivity or event?”

Pippin stood back and watched his cousin silently. He knew that when Merry got like this, it was best to be quiet and to just let him rant until the storm had run its course. The only thing that was required on his part was to occasionally offer an “I’m sorry Merry” or another such comforting phrase when his cousin paused to draw breath.

Only this time, he said, “Have you ever asked him to?”

“Hmm?” Merry said distractedly. He stopped pacing and stared at Pippin blankly. “Asked him to what?”

“To forgive you, of course,” Pippin clarified.

Merry scratched his head uncertainly. “Well, no, I haven’t.”

Pippin lifted an eyebrow and shook his head. “Now honestly Merry, he can’t forgive you if you don’t ask him to,” he pointed out. “Maybe that’s all there is to it. Maybe he doesn’t think you’re being sincere and are only trying to compete with Frodo for his friendship.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because it wasn’t until after Sam declared his friendship with Frodo to his Gaffer in no uncertain terms that you suddenly decided you wanted to be his friend again,” Pippin said.

“That has nothing to do with it,” Merry replied, taken aback by the very thought and horrified that he had just tried using that same exact argument with Sam. Would Sam really think that? “That was just a coincidence of timing. I had been thinking about it for quite a long time before that. I just didn’t think Sam would take to the idea until he said that about Frodo.”

“And because you’re competitive,” Pippin continued as if Merry hadn’t spoken.

“I am not competitive.”

“Yes you are, and it would do you well to put your pride aside and ask him to forgive you, properly.”

Merry considered this carefully and regarded his little cousin with an appreciative nod. “When did you get so smart?”

“I’ve always been smart,” Pippin said, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “In fact, I’m smarter than you really, I just don’t like to flaunt it in front of you. I know how sensitive you can be about such things, seeing as you’re so competitive and all.”

“I am not competitive,” Merry said, a smile on his face now.

“Oh no? I’ll race you back to camp then, and since you’re not competitive, I know you’ll let me win,” Pippin said and dashed off.

“I am not a fool either,” Merry said and gave chase with a laugh. “You just want to beat me back to the food!”

“Do not!” Pippin squealed as he darted ahead of Merry, evading the older lad’s tackles with practiced ease.

They chased after each other, their laughter rising through the trees and filling the forest with cheer and delight.  

“Where are the others?” Frodo asked as soon as he woke up and found Merry and Pippin gone again. “Getting firewood again?”

Sam shrugged. “So they said,” he muttered into the frying pan.

“They didn’t take their walking sticks,” Frodo noted as he came and sat by the fire, spying all four walking sticks leaning against the tent.

He held his hands out to the fire, more out of habit than need for warmth. If possible, today seemed set on being even warmer than the day before and he only hoped his cousins’ good-natured ways could hold out for the rest of the trip. They had made no complaints so far, but they were tearing through the water skins at an alarming rate and they would soon be on their last one. Frodo would have to break the news to them as soon as they returned and had a bit of food to eat. And speaking of the food…

“I’m surprised Pippin would wander off when there’s food to be had,” Frodo said lightly. “That lad nearly eats Paladin out of house and home. There’s no end to his appetite. I’m amazed we still have food left.”

Sam chuckled, grateful that his master seemed unaware of his dour mood. He put it aside as best he could and gave the meat a final turning before grinning up at Frodo. “He’s a typical growing lad. Truth is, I’ve seen worse. My brother Halfred for one could have put Master Pippin to shame in his day.”

Frodo laughed at this. He had met Halfred on his earlier visits to Bag End and liked the lad quite a lot. He too had noticed Halfred’s insatiable appetite. “Be that as it may, I find it hard to believe anyone could be worse than Pippin, though I think your Fred does come in a close second.”

“You’ve the right of it, sir. Gaffer used to say as Fred et enough ‘to fill up two hollow legs and an arm besides.’ But Dad had ways of curbing Fred’s appetite right enough,” Sam said.

“Is that why you’re so efficient with curbing Pippin’s appetite?” Frodo asked, for it had not escaped his attention either that Sam had a unique gift for keeping Pippin from eating everything in sight.

Sam blushed now and chuckled again, shyly now. “Oh, we got a bit of an understanding, Master Pippin and me.”

“What’s that?” Frodo asked, intrigued.

“If you don’t mind, sir, it’s between him and me,” Sam said. “I made him a promise see?”

“Well, I don’t obviously,” Frodo said, and then shrugged. “But keep your secrets if that’s what it takes to keep us in vittles until we return home.” He was a bit disappointed to be honest, but he wouldn’t pry into Sam’s affairs.

After few more minutes, the food was ready for serving. Frodo and Sam ate in pleasant silence, listening to the birds in the trees and catching the occasional glimpse of rabbits and squirrels running about. Sam banked up the fire with the remaining wood to keep the food warm, and then they took a quick inventory of their remaining stores.

“We’ll be having to go look for some water today, I see,” Sam said as he assessed the water skins with a critical eye. “I reckon you know where we can be finding some hereabouts.”

Frodo gave an apologetic shrug. “I don’t actually. Do you have any suggestions?”

Sam looked about at the vegetation and scratched his head. “Well, where there’s plants, there’s water, if you’re willing to dig deep enough to find it that is, which I don’t reckon you are.”

“Not particularly,” Frodo said. “It would be quicker to walk to the Sea and back. I suppose we’ll have to turn around early and go home.”

Sam grinned knowingly. “Trying to end the trip so soon are you, Master? Not to be forward, sir, but you seem as you’re enjoying yourself.”

“Oh, I am,” Frodo said, the surprise evident in his voice and the relief in his eyes. “I’m actually starting to wonder why I delayed doing this for so long. After all, I’ve gone on short hikes with them numerous times, but it was always the camping out that worried me. It’s going quite smoothly really.”

“I’m right glad we didn’t spoil your fun.”

“And I’m right glad you tricked me into inviting them and agreed to come yourself,” Frodo said and laughed at Sam’s abashed expression. “I’m not angry with you, Sam, but don’t think I’ll be so easily duped again in the future.”

“I wouldn’t never,” Sam insisted, a tease now evident in his voice as well. He relaxed visibly and sighed with relief. He continued repacking all the travel bags, distributing everything fairly, and didn’t notice Frodo’s sudden stillness until his master spoke.

“Where are Merry and Pippin?” he asked again, worry creeping into his voice. He stared at the cooled remains of breakfast and his cousins’ walking sticks lying against the tent and frowned. It wasn’t like his cousins to be late for a meal, most especially the first one of the day.

Sam looked up and frowned also, a twinge of guilt in his gut. He knew the real reason for Mr. Merry leaving like he did, and Master Pippin following him of course. He glanced up at the sun and noticed with trepidation that nearly an hour had passed since they had left. “We better go looking for them.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Frodo agreed and stooped down to pick up the empty water skins. “We may as well take these with us. Cover up the food with something, lad. We don’t need anything wandering into camp and sniffing around while we’re all gone.”

When the camp was secure, they went off in the direction Sam had seen Merry and Pippin go, calling their names as they went.
 
 
 

To be continued…