by Jim Grimsley
Nathan gathers his books. When he stands, so does Roy. They walk together to Nathan’s house.
In the kitchen, Mom faces Roy with hardly a trace of surprise. Roy stands straight, brushes back his hair, asking his question in a manner that manages to be both courteous and bold. He says he wants to take Nathan camping for the weekend, till late Sunday, and he’s sorry not to have asked sooner but him and his friends just thought of the trip and this is the perfect weekend for it, almost the last one, really. The weatherman says it’s going to be warm and pretty, like a little taste of summer. He says he’ll look after Nathan and nothing will happen to him. She laughs nervously when he finally stops talking. “Nathan doesn’t even have a sleeping bag.”
“I have an extra one.”
He faces her with calm assurance. Something about his directness makes her shy away, as from a too-bright lamp, and she turns aside. “Yes, I guess it’s a good idea.”
“Pardon me, ma’am?”
“I said I guess it’s all right. He can go.” She nods her head toward Nathan without looking at him.
Roy comes upstairs with Nathan to pack, counting what he should bring on his fingers. The fact that Nathan’s dad could come home any time adds urgency, and they move quickly. Nathan owns no backpack so he gathers clothes and necessities in a bundle for packing at Roy’s house.
Roy explains the camping trip to his mother with an air of presumption. Nathan and he are to meet Burke and Randy at the Indian mound as soon as possible so maybe they can hike farther into the woods before sunset. This means you need to hurry, Roy says, moving deliberately from one task to the next. He sets his mother to packing provisions, and she slices bacon and cheese and wraps slices of bread in plastic. Roy gives Nathan clear, concise instructions on counting tent pegs, bundling them properly, tightening their shared canteen so it does not leak, fastening the snap over the head of the knife to keep it sheathed. He checks everything and finally divides the bundle into two packs. Nathan’s is lighter but the weight is still substantial, and the fact pleases Nathan in an odd way. He walks easily even with the weight on his back. He feels suddenly sturdy, as if he could carry the pack forever, and walk forever, into the woods.
Roy’s mother stands in the yard to wave them off. Nathan’s mother is nowhere to be seen.
Chapter Nine
It is easy for Nathan to refuse to look back. He has been granted two days of safety, and the woodland enfolds him in green gold. By now the pond and cemetery are familiar landmarks, and Nathan knows by certain signs—the particular twist of a branch, the bend of the creek that runs through the woods here—that they are following the path to the Indian mound. Roy’s long strides set an easy pace and his silence engulfs Nathan so that both move with attention to quiet. The country thereabouts is haunted with memories of the courtship between the boys, and near the creekbed they look at each other. “Don’t say anything about that,” Roy warns, but he is laughing when he says it.
On the Indian mound they see two figures waiting. Burke and Randy hoist their backpacks, moving in tandem. Burke hollers, “About time you lazy assholes got here,” and Roy answers, “I get where I’m going exactly when I please,” as he and Nathan climb the mound.
A shyness overtakes Nathan during the climb, and he is almost speechless when Randy claps him on the back. “I see you got your ma to let you come with us. That’s good, I’m glad.”
Burke spits into a patch of golden leaves, saliva stretching to a thread. “Nathan ain’t no baby.”
Wind sends a shower of maple leaves around them. The sharp chill of approaching dusk wakens Nathan to his freedom. Randy asks where they’re going, and Roy answers, with an air of mystery that restores his swagger, that it’s a secret place his uncle showed him, a good long walk into the woods, pretty far from everything. Up toward Handle, a direction the others seem to know. Burke and Randy ask more questions but Roy refuses answers. They will have to wait and see.
So Roy sets out walking east and everyone follows. The sun hangs high enough that the forest is full of light; and the peaceful afternoon expands. For Nathan it is as if he has walked out of Friday into some ceaseless stillness, a timelessness of superior quality. The shadow of Dad vanishes. They march through bright-colored splendors, high leafy vaults, waves of vine and frond. The red and silver maples have turned colors, but the oaks and pines are still retaining their green. The images of the other boys shimmer against the fervid backdrop. Burke’s bronze arms slide among the leaves, his dense body careens through the dusk, heavier than its surroundings; Randy’s rounder figure follows in Burke’s wake, his golden hair sometimes disappearing behind Burke’s back. Nathan occasionally turns back to study the two, but mostly watches Roy’s smooth gait, the movement of his shoulders beneath the backpack, the gloss of dusk in his jet hair. Nathan trails him like a lesser moon.
It is a kind of church, requiring reverence. This revelation comes to Nathan as he is gazing from side to side, guarding the delight and freedom of the moment as if they must be protected carefully in order to preserve them. He refuses to allow happiness to show in his expression, cultivating the careful indifference of Roy, the swagger of his hips, the practiced ease through-and-under branches. They are swimming through golden light, traveling through a green- and gold-leafed choir.
Down a drastic slope of hillside strewn with uprooted trees flows a creek through a dark cut of land, the creek swathed in Joe-Pye and cinnamon fern, overhung with shreds of Spanish moss. Along the flow of creek Roy leads them, where the moss is lush and the ground soft for walking. Nathan is careful of his silence here, where fallen branches threaten to break with a snap, where dry leaves crackle like bones. He has lost any sense of time, they might have walked for leagues. Only birdcalls and the caucusing of insects can be heard. Sunset threatens before they halt for the night, and Roy has really pushed them too far, as if to put distance between them and the farm. They scramble to set up camp before dark.
Roy builds a cook fire, digging a shallow pit and ringing it with stones. The fire burns like a golden shrub. A thin thread of smoke wraps round and round itself and climbs. Warmth creeps up Nathan’s arm. Roy grins. “You look happy.”
Nathan nods in a small motion. “I like the fire.”
“Me too.”
Burke and Randy have set their own tent near a shower of red maple, a splayed branch like an over-hanging mist; they move awkwardly with bent elbows, scowling as they unpack for the evening. The dark creek flows past, and blood-colored leaves corkscrew slowly toward the sea.
The woods are nearly dark but for the circle of the fire. When preparations for supper bring Randy within the perimeter, in the dregs of daylight Nathan searches out a path to the creek and stands at the edge, his reflection shimmering in the glassy surface. The songs of night birds have begun, added to the throb of crickets, the pulsing of tree frogs, the nearly human sobbing of a wildcat. Soon smells of frying bacon travel from the campfire, where Randy and Roy have begun cooking, a scene like alchemy, the two figures lost in swirling smoke and spark showers. As if he feels Nathan’s watching like a touch, Roy raises his head directly to Nathan across the glade. Their shared smile is a secret only they can see. The space between them has grown strong, suddenly. A room in which they are always walking.
The supper of small talk passes, bacon wrapped in white bread, water from the creek, cheese. Nathan washes the dishes afterward, kneeling by the creekbed. Neither stars nor moon can be seen tonight; dark clouds are rolling overhead. The pitch of insect and frog song rises, then the wind picks up the note and outsings everything. Gusts whip the campfire and towers of sparks rise briefly over the heads of the boys. They are listening to the forest, no one is speaking. Smoke from the fire flies toward the murky branches, vanishing within the tangles. Tonight the world is wide and has a clean, sharp smell; the feeling of open space overwhelms Nathan and he flares his nostrils at the change of air, the taste of lightning. Roy stands with his hands in his pockets and his head t
hrown back, drinking the world through closed lids. He is breathing with a strong, steady beat. “I’m glad we came out here,” he says, to no one in particular, and Burke grunts at him and Randy echoes his words.
Burke pulls out a little bottle and passes it around. Roy sips from it, and so does Randy. Nathan sniffs the whiskey and passes it back to Burke, who sneers. “Don’t want none for yourself?”
“No.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter.”
Burke swallows, then caps the bottle. He stares at Roy, at Roy’s face in the fire. “You want some more?”
“Not right now.”
Burke shrugs. “Just say when, podner.”
“It’s been a lot of people killed out in these woods.” Roy smiles at Nathan, across the fire.
“Don’t start this shit, Roy.” Randy takes the bottle from Burke.
Burke laughs.
“I mean it. It was two men killed out here this summer, wad’n it?” Roy nods to Burke.
“That’s right. Two of them.”
“Them two suckers from Blue Springs. They found one of them hanging upside down with his nuts cut off. You ’member, Burke?”
“You’re full of shit,” Randy says, “there wad’n anything cut off of them.”
“That’s not what the deputy sheriff told my dad. They found one of them men hanging upside down, and his nuts had been sliced off at the root, and his eyes popped open from hanging upside down like that, and he bled to death. They still don’t know who done it.”
“And they never found his nuts, neither,” Burke hooted, laughing.
“Nope, they never did.”
“You two sonofabitches better shut this shit up.”
The gale of laughter at Randy’s expense precedes silence, and the bottle goes round again. Roy drinks. “There was one man who was killed out here one time, they chopped his head up with a hatchet, so bad you couldn’t even tell who he was, and my dad used to see him sometimes in our back fields, still walking around like he was looking for something. He would come right to the edge of the woods and look out, and that was all he would do. Then he would go back and look somewheres else.”
Randy refuses to respond. Arms crossed, he stares upward into the shadows of branches.
“You know a lot of stories like that,” Burke says.
Roy takes this as praise, pleased with himself. “What do you say, Randy? You want to hear some more ghost stories?”
“Suit yourself.” Tight-lipped.
“Tell that one about the bloody red hand,” Burke says, “that’s the one I like, you know, with the mansion, and the knocking at the window, and all.”
Roy sips from the flask again, and stirs up the fire. Leaning back on his arms, he studies the fire and recites his story, about the man in Somersville who killed his girl-friend’s husband and chopped off his hand, only to be pursued thereafter for the remainder of his days by a Bloody Red Hand, which could enter through the window of even the most secure chamber, after knocking on the window three times first, and then entering and creeping across the windowsill and strangling its victims with bloody red fingers. Killing the killer’s most precious relations one at a time before finding the killer himself at last. “And the police have that whole story right down in their files in Somersville, only if you ask them about it, they act like it never happened.”
He tells the story of the Devil’s Stamping Ground, a place in the woods where the Devil comes to dance, you can see his hoofprints baked into the ground, and if you sleep too close to the circle, you’re never seen again.
Then he told the story about the time a driver stopped to pick up a hitchhiker near Goldsboro, and she told him who she was and said she was on her way back home from a dance when her boyfriend had car trouble. And her name was Sweet Sue and she seemed a little dazed, like something had happened to her, like maybe her date really dumped her on the side of the road, and so the driver took her home, to this address she gave him in Goldsboro. And when the driver parked the car and went around to help her out, she wasn’t there. So he went and knocked on the door of the house, and he told the story of what had happened to this old woman who came to the door, wrapped up in her housecoat. And she told him that she once had a daughter named Sue, and she died in a car accident twenty years ago, on the night of her high school prom. And now and then somebody like the driver would stop at their door and tell the story of how Sue was still trying to get somebody to bring her home, after all that time. “And I know that’s a true story for a fact, because my Uncle Heben lived next door to them people, and he was there sometimes when people would try to bring their daughter home.”
In the end, Randy listens like the others, and they pass the bottle back and forth while Roy tells every ghost story he knows. Till the wind redoubles, and Nathan glimpses the movement beyond the highest branches, the roiling of cloud bottoms across heaven.
“Listen to that,” Randy says.
“Storm coming up.” Roy points to the south. “Wind changed right after supper. Did you feel it?”
“You mean it’s going to rain?” Randy asks.
“Yep.”
Burke says, “Fuck.”
“My tent is dry, and I got it on high ground for the night. I don’t know about you.”
Burke glares at Roy for a moment. Then, silent, he lurches up from the ground and slouches off to check.
A moment later his deep voice booms for Randy, and they move their tent to a better vantage. Roy and Nathan follow to help.
The coursing air is a continual singing now, and the hollow sound sends a chill through Nathan. They move the tent quickly and Nathan soon finds himself at the creek again, staring into the darkness and listening. The keen fresh scent of the storm sweeps over the forest, over the boys and their small tents. The tattered fire is blowing in the rocks, bravely sustaining.
From behind, Roy says, “I hope you see something in that creek, you stare at it enough.” His tone is joking, but there is a serious shade.
“I was listening to the storm come up, I wasn’t really looking at anything.”
Momentary nearness allows the heat of his shoulder to cross to Nathan’s. They watch each other sidewise, they inhale. Wind drowns out thought and speech at once. A crashing. “Listen to that. Wild.”
“It sounds like somebody’s voice,” Nathan says. “I can almost hear words.”
They watch each other. Roy smiles. He almost reaches, almost embraces. But at the last moment his face clouds and the smile softens.
A drop of rain crashes against Nathan’s forehead, another on his shoulder, and around them leaves are shuddering with the impact. Roy is watching Nathan fervently. “You aren’t scared out here, are you?”
“No.”
But Roy goes on watching, and Nathan blushes.
Voices summon them from the campfire. Burke and Randy are waiting, Roy and Nathan return, as the fall of rain builds to steady percussion. “Listen to that wind,” Burke says. “It sounds like some girl crying her eyes out.”
“It sounds like your girlfriend crying because she has to stay home tonight,” Randy says.
The phrase pleases Burke visibly. “Hey Roy, what’s Evelyn doing tonight? Is she sitting home? Or did she find somebody else to take her out?”
Roy studies his hands, attempting to control his expression. “She’s home with her parents where she belongs.”
“You sure about that?”
“Ain’t none of your business what I’m sure about.” Brow darkening, he watches Burke with a warning expression. Scattering rain has begun to flatten his dark curls.
Burke grins and gives Nathan a wink. “I guess I heard that.”
“This rain sucks,” Randy says, eyeing the upper tiers of forest, where the air is filling with a gray wash. His voice disperses the sudden tension. “I sure wanted to sit around this fire for a while.”
“Well you can sit around some wet rocks if you want to, but that ain’t
going to be a fire but another minute or two.” Roy eyes the hissing of water drops in the bright embers. “I’m about ready to crawl in that tent. I’ll see you guys in the morning.”
Signaling Nathan with a glance, Roy heads to his tent. Randy has turned to do the same, leaving Burke alone in the clearing, rain plastering his shirt to his skin; he watches the fire with strange ferocity. Nathan follows Roy but turns at the last moment, as if summoned to do so. Burke is staring at Roy, his outline blurred by rain. From a pocket Burke pulls the narrow bottle a last time, uncaps it, drinks, licks his lips and pockets the bottle again. Still watching Roy. Nathan hurries forward.
Roy waits at the edge of the thicket, with rain scattering on the low underbrush and draining through the carpet of pine needles. Vague light encases him in a kind of cloud. He welcomes Nathan onto the high ground, into the trees; the rain swells in the air and both boys are wet when they crawl into the tent. Nathan can feel Roy breathing. They kneel, side by side, in the canvas darkness, with the mansion of dusk and rain collapsing around them.
They dry themselves with towels. Roy lies along his sleeping blanket, resting his head in the crook of his arm. Nathan hovers, they wait. Roy reaches for Nathan, pulls him down.
The scattering of rain becomes a rhythm, and their breathings merge with the easy, syncopated sound. Nathan closes his eyes, pretends the tent is a cave, pretends they are in a time a thousand years ago, or farther, they have traveled into prehistory, they are alone in the world. Roy’s face is like a light in the darkness, luminous from within like flowers at dusk, and when he exhales he voices the slightest note of music. His moist breath runs down the nape of Nathan’s neck, curling along the delicate spine. Peace runs through Nathan like currents of water, his body throbs with safety, and they seem so joined in that moment that Nathan can feel the pulse of happiness in Roy as well.
When Roy finally stirs, it is to release a fuller sound, a long, easy, expanding sigh.
“Thank you for bringing me out here,” Nathan says.