* * *
I lay in bed that night wondering how the car I had actually seen gleaming with reflected sunlight deep in the forest—not the cars at the Connolly yard that Fat Bobby assumed I’d seen—had ended up where it was.
According to Jim the access road barricades were put in place a long time before, when careless campers or hunters would improperly put out campfires; the embers would be caught in a breeze after the people had left, and acres were burnt to crisp and ashes. Only rangers and the fire department had keys to unlock the chains of the barricades, and hefty fines and jail time kept most people from messing with them.
This left me with only a few options and conclusions.
One, the access road at the Connolly yard that Jim had shown us seemed to be the closest route to the general area in which I had seen my single, distinct, reflective surface, me presuming it’s a car. Since that road was barricaded, obviously if anyone had used it, it had been someone with the keys to the chain. This would mean a ranger or the fire department. But Jim hadn’t said anything about seeing rangers or fire trucks use that road, and it was a pretty good chance, him and his dad working there, one of them would have seen or heard a vehicle driving that road. Add to that the fact that I hadn’t seen any smoke or fire when I had seen the shiny object in the distance, my fallen star, and that pretty much ruled out the rangers or fire department.
This led naturally to conclusion number two. If it hadn’t been a ranger or fire truck out there, someone authorized to pass through the barricades, then maybe it was someone with no legitimate right whatsoever. Maybe someone had busted through one of the barricades; an off-season poacher possibly, or kids doing the fleshy tango in an out of the way place, or perhaps a coven of Satanists for all I knew, dancing naked smeared with blood and chanting to the Dark Lord. Sacrificing goats, having orgies, all that crap. But the access road barricade at the Connolly yard, the most direct route to the general area of the light I’d seen, obviously hadn’t been run down or forced open.
That didn’t mean another access road hadn’t been used, and I’d asked Jim how many there were. He said several, exactly how many he didn’t know. But they were all barricaded, he said, and the rangers were real regular with their duties, checking on the barricades and patrolling the woods. Fat Bobby verified this by saying that Tara’s dad was a ranger, and he always saw the man out and about in his park jeep or truck around town, and when he wasn’t around town he was presumably out in the forest, checking on things.
I nodded at this like it made sense, which it did, but inside I was cursing up a storm at Fat Bobby for once again knowing more about this beautiful girl than I did.
So, if only rangers and the fire department could easily get vehicles into the woods, and neither one of them had been there when I saw the bright light on the ground, then that left only one other option I could think of. And it was this one that left me tossing and turning for some time, thinking of adventures and mysteries and all things that made a boy’s heart and mind race with life.
What if the car I’d seen shining back the sunlight like a beacon had been there in the woods before the barricades had gone up? How long ago would that have been? Years? Decades? And why was this possible car still there after so much time had passed? Was it forgotten? Or did people just not know where to find it? I’d only seen it myself because I’d been on high ground, looking in a particular direction.
That last intrigued me the most for some reason.
If people didn’t know where to find it, why not? Had someone put the car out there intentionally? Was there something there that wasn’t supposed to be found?
For me, in the long stretch of summer with nothing but time on my hands and a fertile imagination, this wasn’t something I could just forget. Plans were already forming in my head and the morning seemed too far away, dangling like a carrot in front of a horse, beckoning, teasing. The night lingered, taunting me, and sleep seemed a misty thing to catch, slipping through my fingers in ethereal tendrils.
3.
Fat Bobby lived north down the highway heading into town, about a quarter mile from our place. I hadn’t been to his house before, but he’d pointed it out once from a distance when we’d been walking home from town. Whereas my neighborhood seemed something of a checkerboard with immaculate well-tended lawns and freshly painted, manicured houses interspersed with weed-strewn dirt expanses where a lawn had once been, and run-down affairs that could have been boxes and rusted shingles slapped together disguised as houses, Fat Bobby’s neighborhood was nothing but the latter. Houses with exteriors of peeling paint like flaky scabs, rusted automobiles parked out front like the husks of dead creatures, and mangy beasts with matted hair chained to posts that I could only guess were some sort of dog, were tossed about his street as if by a tornado.
It was because of these last, the dirt encrusted, sun beaten animals I thought were dogs, that I left Bandit home this time around. That might seem counterintuitive, leaving behind my dog and best protection when I was planning on walking a neighborhood populated by canine monstrosities. But that was exactly why I left him behind. Not wanting Bandit in any sort of dogfight with these sad and horrid beasts, perhaps hosting an early stage of rabies, I trusted myself to outrun these mangy mutts, but not Bandit to avoid getting into a scuffle where he might end up poisoned by the contaminated spit sluicing about their jaws.
Turning off onto Fat Bobby’s street, I moved warily along the dilapidated and depressing dirt landscape of his neighborhood. This area held not a hint of the Old West vibe that the town of Payne proper had held for me when I’d seen it from atop the hill. Rather, this neighborhood seemed like a Calcutta or something akin to one of those African villages seen on the Give-Us-Your-Money heartstring-plucking Christian Children’s Fund commercials. These weren’t homes I was seeing, but hovels, trailers weather-beaten and uncared for so that they seemed not like trailers at all, but like the shells of structures after a nuclear blast. Trees tried growing in a few of the dirt lawns and seemed like the emaciated skeletal structures of ancient beasts, gnarled and twisted by age and decay.
I approached the trailer Fat Bobby had pointed out before, a rectangular thing with duct-taped windows and flaky wisps of what might have once been blue paint fluttering down from its walls, like dying butterflies. Empty lawn chairs sat before it with loose flaps slapping about in a light breeze, like little flags.
I don’t know what I expected Bobby’s dad to look like; I guess maybe I leaned towards something like Fat Bobby himself, just a larger version. A fat and lazy man with a gut like a beach ball stuffed beneath his shirt, and beer cans littered about his feet like carelessly delivered babies.
But the man in the yard that the trailer sat on, leaning over the hood of a white Toyota pickup, wasn’t fat, and the thick cords of muscles glistened by sweat and shiny by sun showed he wasn’t lazy. He heard me approaching, stopped fidgeting with whatever part under the hood he’d been fidgeting with, and withdrew from beneath the hood to stretch to full height.
And the height was mountainous.
As I’ve said before, my dad was a large man. I was used to being dwarfed by the larger of my gender. But whereas Dad was lean and muscled like a fast stallion, Fat Bobby’s father was thick and solid like a bull. Mr. Templeton’s face was likewise bulbous, as if it was permanently swollen. This wasn’t a swelling by anything like a bee sting neither, but a red swelling of meanness, as if there was something on the inside of him that wouldn’t go away. Maybe a volcanic pressure, and at any moment he could explode with the force of the heat inside him. He looked at me like he was looking at a fly that had alighted on his food and taken a shit.
He wanted to squash me, no doubt in my mind.
Yet it wasn’t personal either. I remember thinking he wanted to squash anyone and everyone. Like the existence of other people was offensive.
Dad was no pushover by any definition of the word, but seeing this man, in torn jeans and a faded flannel shi
rt like he was some lumberjack-Sasquatch hybrid, I thought of the two of them tangling, Dad and Mr. Templeton, and I didn’t think I’d want to place any bets either way.
“What the hell you want?” he asked.
His lips moved beneath a wild beard like a miniature wilderness. I wondered if food crumbs and bugs lived in that tangle somewhere, in a little world separate from the one we were in. Maybe there was a whole civilization of lost bits of food and beetles in there somewhere, and when he talked it was like an earthquake and the voice of God from on high to the wee beard folk.
For a moment I thought I’d laugh.
Then I knew if that happened, I’d die, and so I didn’t laugh.
“I’m here to see Bobby, sir.”
I tried sounding as respectful as I could muster. Afraid of my head being popped like a grape, I think I did pretty good. Fear’s a fabulous motivator.
“Are you the kid he’s been hanging out with so much?” I thought about answering but he kept on talking, and so I clacked my mouth shut. “He’s been shirking his chores, the fat lazy bastard. Gone all day long, comes home late, like this is some sort of motel he can just come and go from whenever he likes.”
He paused like maybe he wanted me to say something, but I didn’t know what to say so I continued to keep my mouth shut.
“You shirk your chores too? Out here running around like you got nothing to do.” Silence still seemed the best option on my end. Then: “Your parents some kind of fucking hippies? Let their kids run around and shit?”
“No, sir,” I said, not really knowing which part I was answering to.
“Yeah right,” he said, and I didn’t know which he was referring to either. Not that it mattered, even with him talking bad about my parents in some offhand manner. I imagined myself briefly trying to stick up for my folks, flipping this guy off or something, and him coming at me, and me trying to use one of the tricky leg maneuvers that Dad had taught me. This guy just laughing as I tried to tangle his legs with mine, or kick at a kneecap like a boulder, and he just twitched a big toe or something and I busted like a little glass figurine.
“May I see Bobby, sir?” I said, deciding politeness was still the best course of action.
“You talk like a fruit, kid.” He smiled, and he had teeth yellow-stained by years of nicotine. As I watched he pulled a crumpled pack of Camels from a breast pocket, pulled out its last inhabitant, and lit it up with a lighter shaped like a little pistol. “‘May I?’” he mocked, murmuring around the cigarette. “‘Sir,’” he said in a high and whiny voice. “Goddamn queers everywhere nowadays.”
At that moment the door to the trailer swung open and hit the wall it was attached to with a metallic rattle. We both turned at the sound, and there was Fat Bobby standing in the doorframe. It took a second or two for me to notice what was different about my friend. The dark ring around his right eye seemed to call my gaze to it, like the target circle of a dartboard.
I looked back at Mr. Templeton.
He looked at his son, then looked down at me. It was clear he knew what I’d seen but he didn’t seem much concerned. As in not at all.
“You know what happens in another body’s family isn’t none of your concern, don’t you, fairy boy?” he asked, and immediately, obediently, I nodded. “You don’t doubt that if you caused me any sort of trouble I wouldn’t think twice about bouncing you around some, do you?”
I shook my head. No, I didn’t doubt it one bit.
“Good,” he said, then he looked from me back to Bobby, still standing silent and slouched in the doorway of the trailer. “Get out of my sight.”
Turning back to the Toyota he leaned once again under the hood.
Bobby stepped off the porch lightly, making almost no sound, which, with his girth, was a tremendous feat of skill. Slowly, he walked towards me, moving as if he were trying to avoid disturbing a beehive. When he was close, he waved for me to follow and together we walked softly away from the miserable trailer, out of the neighborhood like a Third World ghost town, and onto the highway. After several minutes of silence like a period of mourning, I finally opened my mouth and told him what I wanted to do.
Fat Bobby smiled as I spoke, and with that smile the effect of the black eye seemed to dwindle. Though we cheered up considerably talking about what we were going to do, time and again I turned to look at my friend and that shiner and, in my mind, I saw the fist that caused it coming down like a hammer.
* * *
On the way to the Connolly yard, we stopped at the hill on the dirt road overlooking the woods. I immediately saw the object casting back the sunlight that I’d seen before, far out into the forest among the thick carpet of trees. Fat Bobby saw it too, and I actually heard him breathe out something like an ‘ahhhhh’ of amazement.
“That isn’t ghost lights or a UFO,” he said.
“No, it isn’t,” I said and looked at my watch. It was approaching noon, and I tried to think back to that day I’d first met Fat Bobby, and what time I’d been standing on this very hill. It could have been around noon. Which meant that the object down there, be it abandoned car or something else, for some reason only reflected the sun at a certain time of the day and from a certain angle.
This was intriguing, and I was eager to get on with our plans.
“Come on,” I said and started to walk again. Bobby lingered for a moment, as if the light down there held him by a tether and was reluctant to let go. I knew the feeling. It’s that thing between boys and the mysterious, the unknown. Like an umbilical cord that gives and returns life.
* * *
Before hitting the Connolly yard we stopped by my house to pick up Bandit. The aroma of fresh cookies wrapped about us like tantalizing fingers as soon as we walked inside. We stayed awhile, watching my mom in the kitchen pulling out trays lined with brown baked delights and scooping them onto the counter to cool. We wanted them hot and begged for them, and Mom gave us each a handful. A glass of cool lemonade that fogged the glasses just a bit accompanied this feast, and we ate slowly, enjoying every bite and swallow as if they might never come again.
Mom noticed Fat Bobby’s shiner, but she didn’t say anything. She gave me a look and I gave her one back, and somewhere in that secret exchange she understood the message: Not now. I’ll tell you later. She nodded as if she’d actually heard this, told us to enjoy our cookies, and then was off somewhere else in the house.
As we were putting our glasses in the sink, Sarah came down the stairs in a summer dress, and her hair and face were all done up like for some sort of pageant. Date, I said to myself, and had to smile. Apparently, her true love in California was forgotten. Out of sight and out of mind.
She saw us in the kitchen, saw my blooming smile, and pointed at me threateningly.
“Don’t say a word,” she said, and that was like an invitation.
“I think you need more makeup,” I said. “We can still see your face.”
There was something in her other hand, the one not pointing like a dagger at me, and she wound up her arm and threw it and, too late, I saw it was her sandals and one of them hit me in the chest. The heel was broad and thick and it hurt when it struck. I laughed, though, seeing my sister’s face had turned red with the jab.
“You don’t want him to know you’re a mutant on the first date.”
And here came the other sandal, fast, and I stepped aside at the last moment and it sailed by my head, striking the refrigerator with a thump. My sister stomped determinedly towards me, and that was when Mom stepped back into the kitchen from the living room and planted herself between us.
“What on earth is going on in here?”
“Oh, Joey!” my sister bawled. “Why do you have to be such a retard?!”
She was away and back up the stairs as quick as she’d appeared, not even bothering to gather up her ballistic missile sandals. Upstairs a door slammed, the impact reverberating throughout the house. I imagined her in her room or in the bathroom, staring at herse
lf, wiping her face clean and trying again with the makeup and lipstick and whatever other chemicals and goop girls used.
That made me smile.
That smile made my mom frown.
It wasn’t one of her vaguely comical-puzzled frowns, either, that asked “How did this happen?” Rather, it was one of her dangerous and angry frowns that said: “What the hell is your problem?” and sometimes ended with her whapping me upside the head. In moments, under that reproachful gaze, my smile dwindled and then faded altogether.
“Why are you and your sister so mean to each other?”
I shrugged. Looked down and away from her disappointment.
“You know someday it’ll just be you and her,” Mom said. “Your dad and I won’t be around forever.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I murmured.
“Someday you’ll need each other.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I muttered, really thinking: Yeah, right, like I need a rash on my sack.
“She’s growing up, Joey. Jokes like that aren’t so funny anymore. She needs to feel good about herself.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, head still hung low.
“You might not understand now, but someday you’ll meet a girl and want to say nice things to her. Then maybe you’ll think back to now and the things you said to your sister.”
I thought of Tara. I thought of the things I wanted to say to her. I thought of her in her dress at the bookstore. The shape of her. How the lights caught in the swirls of her hair. Her smile and her skin like velvet.
Suddenly, the things I’d said to my sister indeed didn’t seem so funny. But I wouldn’t—couldn’t—admit as much to my mom. So I settled with another “Yes, ma’am”, and then my mother was moving upstairs, trailing after my sister, and me and Fat Bobby were free and so we headed outside. Bandit trotted along beside us.
“Why are you so mean to your sister?” Fat Bobby asked after we were across my yard and back on the dirt road.
“Because she’s a dork,” I said, as if that explained it all.
If You Go Down to the Woods Page 6