the woods,” he repeated. “Like how far out?”
“I don’t know. I thought we could hike somewhere, spend the night, and
then come back in the mornin’. We’d take a compass, and sandwiches, and
Kool-Aid, and we’d take knapsacks and stuff.”
“And what would happen if one of you boys broke an ankle?” Mom asked. “Or
got bitten by a rattlesnake? Or fell down in poison ivy, and Lord knows that’s
everywhere this summer.” I hung on; she was working up to full speed. “What
would happen if you got attacked by a bobcat? Lord, a hundred things could
happen to you in the woods, and none of them good!”
“We’d be all right, Mom,” I said. “We’re not little kids anymore.”
“You’re not grown up enough to go wanderin’ around out in the woods by
yourselves, either! What if you got out there at night two miles from home and
a storm blew up? What if it started lightnin’ and thunderin’? What if you or
one of the others got sick to your stomach? You know, you can’t just find a
phone and call home out there. Tell him it’s a bad idea, Tom.”
He made a face; the dirty jobs always fell to the father.
“Go on,” Mom urged. “Tell him he can wait until he’s thirteen.”
“You said last year I could wait until I was twelve,” I reminded her.
“Don’t talk smart, now! Tom, tell him.”
I awaited the firm, resolute “no.” It came as a real surprise, then, when
my dad asked, “Where would you get the compass?”
Mom looked at him in horror. I felt a spark of hope leap within me. “From
Davy Ray’s dad,” I said. “He uses it when he goes huntin’.”
“Compasses can break!” Mom insisted. “Can’t they?” she asked Dad.
My father kept his attention on me, his expression solid and serious.
“Goin’ out on an overnight hike isn’t any game for children. I know plenty of
men who’ve gotten lost in the woods, and they’ll tell you right off what it
feels like to be without a bed or a bathroom, have to sleep on wet leaves and
scratch skeeter bites all night. That sound like fun to you?”
“I’d like to go,” I said.
“You talk to the other guys about this?”
“Yes sir. They all said they’d like to go, too, if their folks’ll let
’em.”
“Tom, he’s too young!” Mom said. “Maybe next year!”
“No,” my father answered, “he’s not too young.” My mother wore a stricken
look; she started to speak again, but Dad put a finger to her lips. “I made a
deal with him,” he told her. “In this house, a man stands on his word.” His
gaze swung back to me again. “Call ’em. If their parents say all right, it’s
all right with us, too. But we’ll talk about how far you can go, and when we
expect you back, and if you’re not back by the time we agree on, you’ll have a
tough time sittin’ down for a week. Okay?”
“Okay!” I said, and I started to go for the phone but Dad said, “Hold on.
Finish your supper first.”
After this, events gained momentum. Ben’s parents gave their approval.
Davy Ray’s folks said okay. Johnny, however, could not go with us, though he
pleaded for my dad to talk to his. Dad did what he could, but the judgment was
already passed. Because of Johnny’s dizzy spells, his parents were afraid for
him to be out in the woods overnight. Once again the Branlins had robbed him.
And so, on a sunny Friday afternoon, laden with knapsacks, sandwiches,
canteens of water, mosquito repellent, snakebite kits, matches, flashlights,
and county maps we’d gotten from the courthouse, Davy Ray, Ben, and I struck
out from my house into the beckoning forest. All our good-byes had been said,
our dogs locked up, our bicycles porched and chained. Davy carried his
father’s compass, and he wore a camouflage-print hunting cap. We all wore long
pants, to guard our shins against thorns and snake fangs, and our winter
boots. We were in it for the long haul, and we set our faces against the sun
like pioneers entering the forest primeval. Before we reached the woods,
though, my mother the constant worrier called from the back porch, “Cory! Have
you got enough toilet paper?”
I said I did. Somehow, I couldn’t imagine Daniel Boone’s mother asking
him that question.
We climbed the hill and crossed the clearing from where we had flown on
the first day of summer. Beyond it the serious woods began, a green domain
that might’ve given Tarzan pause. I looked back at Zephyr lying below us, and
Ben stopped and then so did Davy Ray. Everything seemed so orderly: the
streets, the roofs, the mowed lawns, the sidewalks, the flowerbeds. What we
were about to enter was a wild entanglement, a dangerous realm that offered
neither comfort nor safety; in other words, in that one moment I realized
exactly what I’d gotten myself into.
“Well,” Davy Ray said at last, “I guess we’d better get movin’.”
“Yeah,” Ben murmured. “Get movin’.”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
We stood there, the breeze on our faces and sweat on our necks. Behind
us, the forest rustled. I thought of the hydra’s heads, swaying and hissing,
in Jason and the Argonauts.
“I’m goin’,” Davy Ray said, and he started off. I turned away from Zephyr
and followed him, because he was the guy with the compass. Ben hitched his
knapsack’s straps in a notch tighter, the tail of his shirt already beginning
to wander out of his pants, and he said, “Hold up!” and came on as fast as he
could.
The forest, which had been waiting a hundred years for three boys just
like us, let us in and then closed its limbs and leaves at our backs. Now we
had set foot in the wilderness, and we were on our own.
Pretty soon we were drenched with sweat. Going up and down wooded ridges
in the heavy August heat was no easy task, and Ben started puffing and asking
Davy Ray to slow down. “Snake hole!” Davy Ray shouted, pointing at an
imaginary hole at Ben’s feet, and that got Ben moving lickety-split again. We
traveled through a green kingdom of sun and shadow, and we found honeysuckle
boiling in sweet profusion and blackberries growing wild and of course we had
to stop for a while and take a taste. Then we were on the march again,
following the compass and the sun, masters of our destinies. Atop a hill we
found a huge boulder to sit on, and we discovered what appeared to be Indian
symbols carved into the stone. Alas, though, we weren’t the first to make this
find, because nearby was a Moon Pie wrapper and a broken 7-Up bottle. We went
on, deeper into the forest, determined to find a place where no human foot had
ever marked the dirt. We came to a dried-up streambed and followed it, the
stones crunching under our boots. A dead possum, swarming with flies, snared
our attention for a few minutes. Davy Ray threatened to pick up the possum’s
carcass and throw it at Ben, but I talked him out of such a grisly display and
Ben shuddered with relief. Farther ahead, at a place where the trees thinned
and white rocks jutted from the earth like dinosaur ribs, Davy Ray stopped and
bent down. He came up holding a black arrowhead, almost perfectly formed,
which he put in his pocket for Johnny’s collection.
The sun was falling. We were sweaty and dusty, and gnats spun around our
heads and darted at our eyeballs. I have never understood the attraction of
gnats to eyeballs, but I believe it’s the equivalent of moths to flames; in
any case, we spent a lot of time digging the little dead things out of our
watering orbs. But as the sun settled and the air cooled, the gnats went away.
We began to wonder where we might find a place to spend the night, and it was
right about then that the truth of the matter came clear.
There were no mothers and fathers around to make our suppers. There were
no televisions, no radios, no bathtubs, no beds, and no lights, which we began
to fully realize as the sky darkened to the east. How far we were from home we
didn’t know, but for the last two hours we’d seen no mark of civilization.
“We’d better stop here,” I told Davy Ray, and I indicated a clearing, but he
said, “Ah, we can go on a little farther,” and I knew his curiosity about what
lay over the next ridge was pulling him onward. Ben and I kept up with him; as
I’ve said before, he was the guy with the compass.
Our flashlights came out to spear through the gathering gloom. Something
fluttered in front of my face and spun away: a bat on the prowl. Another
something scuttled away through the underbrush at our approach, and Ben kept
asking, “What was that? What was that?” but neither of us could answer. At
last Davy Ray stopped walking, and he shone his flashlight around and
announced, “We’ll set up camp here.” It was none too soon for Ben and me,
because our legs were whipped. We shrugged the knapsacks off our aching
shoulders and peed in the pine straw and then we set about finding wood for a
fire. In this case we were lucky, because there were plenty of pine branches
and pine cones lying about and those burned on half a match. So before long we
had a sensible fire going, the firepit rimmed with stones as my dad had told
me to do, and by its ruddy light we three frontiersmen ate the sandwiches our
mothers had made.
The flames crackled. Ben discovered a pack of marshmallows his mom had
put in his knapsack. We found sticks and began the joyful task of toasting.
All around our circle was nothing but dark beyond the firelight’s edge, and
lightning bugs blinked in the trees. A breath of wind stirred the treetops,
and way up there we could see the blaze of the Milky Way across the sky.
In this forest sanctuary our voices were quiet, respectful for where we
were. We talked about our dismal Little League season, vowing that somehow
we’d get Nemo Curliss on our team next year. We talked about the Branlins, and
how somebody ought to clean their clocks for screwing up Johnny’s summer. We
talked about how far we must be from home; five or six miles, Davy Ray
believed, while Ben said it must be more like ten or twelve. We wondered aloud
what our folks were doing at that very same instant, and we all agreed they
were probably worried sick about us but this experience would be good for
them. We were growing up now, and it was high time they understood our
childhood days were numbered.
In the distance an owl began to hoot. Davy Ray talked with great
anticipation about Snowdown, who must even now be somewhere in the same woods
sharing these sights and sounds, perhaps hearing the same owl. Ben talked
about school getting ready to start soon, but we shushed him. We lay on our
backs as the firelight dimmed, and stared up at the sky as we talked about
Zephyr and the people who lived there. It was a magic town, we all agreed. And
we were touched with magic, too, for having been born there.
Sometime after the flames had died and the embers glowed red, after the
owl had gone to sleep and the soft warm breeze brought the fragrance of wild
cherries into our campsite, we watched shooting stars streak incandescent blue
and gold across the heavens. When the show had ended and we were all lying
there thinking, Davy Ray said, “Hey, Cory. How about tellin’ us a story?”
“Nah,” I said. “I can’t think of anythin’.”
“Just make one up,” Davy Ray urged. “Come on. Okay?”
“Yeah, but don’t make it too scary,” Ben said. “I don’t wanna have bad
dreams.”
I thought for a while, and then I began. “Did you guys know they had a
prison camp for Nazis around here? Dad told me all about it. Yeah, he said
they had all these Nazis in this camp in the woods, and all of ’em were the
worst killers you can think of. It was right near the Air Force base, only
this is before it was an Air Force base.”
“Is this for real?” Ben asked warily.
“Naw, dummy!” Davy Ray said. “He’s makin’ it up!”
“Maybe I am,” I told him, “and maybe I’m not.”
Davy Ray was silent.
“Anyway,” I went on, “there was a fire in this prison camp, and some of
the Nazis got out. And some of ’em were all burned up, like their faces were
all messed up and stuff, but they got out, right in these woods, and—”
“You saw this on ‘Thriller,’ didn’t you?” Davy Ray asked.
“No,” I said. “It’s what my dad told me. This happened a long time ago,
before any of us were even bora. So these Nazis got out into the woods right
near here, and their leader—his name was Bruno—was a big guy with a
scarred-up, burned face and he found a cave for everybody to live in. But
there wasn’t enough food for everybody, and so when some of them died the
others cut up the bodies with knives and—”
“Oh, gross!” Ben said.
“And ate ’em, and Bruno always got the brains. He cracked open their
skulls like walnuts, scooped out the brains with both hands, and threw ’em
down his gullet.”
“I’m gonna puke!” Davy Ray cried out, and made retching noises. Then he
laughed and Ben laughed, too.
“After a long time—like two years—Bruno was the only one left, and he was
bigger’n ever,” I continued. “But his face never healed up from the fire. He
had one eye on his forehead and the other eye hung down on his chin.” This
brought more gusts of laughter. “So after all that time in the cave, and
eatin’ the other Nazis up, Bruno was crazy. He was hungry, but he only wanted
one thing to eat: brains.”
“Yech!” Ben said.
“Brains was all he wanted,” I told my audience of two. “He was seven feet
tall and he weighed three hundred pounds, and he had a long knife that could
slice the top of your head right off. Well, the police and the army were
lookin’ for him all this time but they never could find him. They found a
forest ranger with the top of his head cut off and his brains gone. They found
an old moonshiner dead and his brains gone, too, and they figured Bruno was
gettin’ closer and closer to Zephyr.”
“Then they called in James Bond and Batman!” Davy Ray said.
“No!” I shook my head gravely. “There wasn’t anybody to call in. There
was just the policemen and the army soldiers, and every night Bruno walked
through the forest carryin’ his knife and a lantern, and his face was so ugly
it could freeze people solid like Medusa and then slash! he cut somebody’s
head open and splatter! there were the brains down his throat.”
