The Madman of Piney Woods

by Christopher Paul Curtis

  “Where did it happen?”

  “I was told by the big bend in the river.”

  “Wait here, I need to get my clothes.”

  “Good, we’ll need as much help as we can get. Bring your friends.”

  “No. This is something you and I will do alone.”

  I can’t understand why he didn’t want help. I hoped he knew what he was doing.

  Benji Alston ran back to the other Buxton boys.

  I only half remember running back for my clothes.

  Spencer said, “Holy Michalamacalack, Benji, you near scared me to death! I didn’t know you’d left. Where did you go?”

  I pulled my trousers, shirt, and shoes on without saying a word. The other lads became suspicious as well.

  “I’ve got to go back. I don’t think I fed the horse today, and Mother will have my scalp for it.”

  Spencer got up and walked to the pile of our clothes.

  “No, Spence. I’ll do it alone. Stay. I’ll see you later.”

  I hoped Red wouldn’t easily tire. If we ran hard, we could be at the bend in the river in a little less than an hour.

  I’m glad Benji didn’t want to talk as we ran toward the river. I struggled to breathe so much that I wouldn’t’ve been able to say a word with the pace he was keeping.

  He was leading me off the beaten track and we reached the big bend much sooner than if we’d taken the road.

  When the sounds of the river splashing over rocks reached us, Benji slowed and began approaching with care. I followed.

  He said, “Do you know on which side it was supposed to have happened?”

  “No, he said he’d been sleeping and was disturbed by sounds at the river so …”

  Benji pointed to his left. A bottle of Wild Kentucky bourbon was thrown on the ground at the edge of the woods.

  He walked over and picked the bottle up. His brow wrinkled when he said, “Look, someone did lie here recently.”

  The dead leaves were disturbed as if they’d been scooped together for a pillow.

  Benji sighed and stood at the edge of the forest, looking at the river.

  After scanning the water and the other side of the river, he walked to the shore. “You go upstream,” he said. “I’ll go down.”

  “What am I looking for?”

  “Anything that’s unusual. If it happened yesterday, there may not be much left, but just look for something that doesn’t seem right.”

  “How far up the river should I go?”

  “No more than a half mile. If you find anything, whistle loud. If you go that far and don’t see anything, head back here. Keep your senses sharp for my whistle as well.”

  Benji went downstream and I headed up.

  My heart sank when I saw the empty bottle of whiskey. The label was fresh; the sun nor the rains nor the woods themselves had done anything to fade the colours of the huge turkey on the label. I smelled it, and the strong tang of alcohol burned my nose. It hadn’t been out here for long.

  This was the worst sign there could have been. It probably meant that at least some of the story the drunken man had told was true.

  I hope Red didn’t notice how scared I was when I told him to go upstream. He’d just slow me down and if I did come across something terrible, if I did find the Madman dead along the river, I think it would only be right that someone from Buxton be there first for him. Even though Red was nothing more than a newborn babe in the woods, at least he’d be out of the way. Who knows, maybe there would be a real obvious sign that he would notice, maybe not. I told him to go half a mile and whistle; that way I could come get him and double-check on the way there.

  As I followed the river downstream, there was nothing out of place. A doe and her fawns had crossed here, one of the fawns losing its footing; a red-tailed hawk had pecked a fish into a skeleton there; a dog had stopped to drink in another spot. I’d covered a mile and not heard anything from Red, so I decided to go back.

  Not a hundred yards upriver from where we’d first come out of the woods, my eyes were drawn to a muddy spot along the shore. There was a slew of raccoon tracks bunched together in the damp mud, like they’d been tussling over something. What was odd was that there were no fish scales or bones of any kind, so the raccoons hadn’t been feeding. Atop the tracks were crow footprints, as if they’d bobbed in the area for quite a while.

  I looked toward the land; there was nothing unusual there. I looked toward the river. My heart stopped.

  Just in the river, in the shallowest part, a stone sat at the end of a smooth, foot-long furrow, as if it had been pushed there. I stepped into the water and stood over the stone, looking carefully where I stepped so as to disturb as little as possible. Someone’s foot had pushed the stone to where it rested, someone who was in some sort of distress.

  All of the pieces of the jigsaw were coming together.

  My heart beat as if my blood had suddenly thickened.

  Under the shallow water, almost exactly an arm’s length away from the spot where the slid stone had come to a rest, were four small dents in the mud. Silt and debris were working to fill them but they were spread just far enough from each other that I knew what they were. They would perfectly match a person’s fingers, the fingers of someone trying to pull himself out of the river.

  And the spot where the raccoons and crows had danced was where those scavengers were doing their job and cleaning the forest, bringing it back to the way it was supposed to be.

  Removing from the woods the memory of the poor Madman’s blood.

  And judging by the number of prints and the size of land they’d covered, there’d been a lot of blood.

  I looked toward the forest and saw the spot where he most likely would have stumbled into the woods. I started to follow, but stopped.

  I didn’t want to do this alone. The idea of running to the mayor hit me with such force that I realized that was what I should do.

  I ran through the woods but hadn’t gone fifty yards before I stopped.

  Red. I couldn’t leave him out here not knowing what I’d found.

  But he’d missed the signs. It would be just deserts if I left him.

  But he had come to get help for the Madman. He didn’t have to do that. And he was my responsibility since I’d sent him upriver.

  And he was my friend.

  I went back.

  The moment I saw the prints, my courage left me again. I wished my eyes could see what Red had probably seen, just a group of animal prints. I wished the signs of what had happened weren’t screaming at me, unwinding like a stage play.

  I wished I didn’t see a monster raising a gun and firing.

  I wished I couldn’t see the Madman falling into the river.

  I wished I didn’t know that he had struggled, trying to pull himself out of the water.

  I could have easily batted my hand at my ears like I was being buzzed by a fly or a skeeter. I wished that much that the woods would quit talking to me.

  I was comforted that the signs and prints couldn’t tell me how long he’d lain in the river before he did try to get out.

  But they also couldn’t tell me how badly he’d been wounded.

  I looked to the spot where he’d gone into the woods. Maybe he was close to death and the time it would take me to get Red would send him over. I should follow the trail.

  I tried. It would be the easiest thing in the world to trail the Madman. I tried, I really did.

  But I knew I couldn’t do it alone.

  I was glad my newest friend was here to go with me.

  I’d seen nothing going upstream and had been walking back for only a few minutes when Benji’s whistle reached me. There was a shrill urgency to it, so I quickened my pace.

  He was standing not far from where we’d first come out of the woods.

  It took me a moment to catch my breath.

  I was stunned as he explained what the foot and claw prints meant. I was embarrassed that I hadn’t noticed.

/>   He said, “Don’t feel bad. It would be like speaking French, I guess; if you don’t know it, you don’t …”

  He peered at the river.

  “Benji, what is it?”

  He said, “The light has changed since we first got out here. Look.”

  I followed his pointing finger. The only thing I could see was a stick at a forty-five-degree angle perhaps ten yards from the shore.

  Benji waded into the water up to his knees.

  He reached down and pulled out something long, muddy, and dripping.

  An old musket!

  Benji looked toward the woods and, pointing at a spot that looked to me the same as every other, said, “There, that’s where he went into the woods.”

  The farther we went into the woods, the more my spirits rose. If the Madman had the strength to wander this far, he couldn’t have been hurt too bad. We’d been on his trail for close to half an hour and there hadn’t been any signs of blood for quite some time.

  What worried me was the direction he seemed to be running. It made sense to me that since he had been born in Buxton, he would head southwest to reach help. But he was running more in a wandering, northeast way, heading toward neither Chatham nor Buxton. This might mean he was hurt so bad that he was running in panic. If that were the case, we might reach him only after he’d run himself to death.

  Red was about thirty yards behind me. I’d told him to follow me at a distance and double-check if there was anything I’d missed. Every once in a while, I’d see him through the trees, his hair a bright red flare. And even if I couldn’t see him, he was making enough noise that I knew where he was. I wanted to keep him close so he wouldn’t wander off and get lost. But also in case … well, in case of anything.

  A good woodsman knows when he’s near to whatever he’s trailing, and the woods were telling me we were very close. The Madman of Piney Woods was close, but whether he was alive or not, I couldn’t tell.

  I froze. There was a sound that didn’t belong.

  I closed my eyes to try to feel where the sound was coming from.

  The second I heard the dry wheeze, a memory began fighting its way from deep inside me. I should know why this sound was so familiar, but try as I might, I didn’t. This was that same bad feeling I get when there’s a word stuck on the tip of my tongue and nothing will make it fall off.

  I waited, but the memory refused to cut itself loose. I opened my eyes and took a few more careful steps.

  As the wind shifted, I flared my nostrils and closed my eyes. What I smelled caused the memory to explode from within me.

  Clinging close to the ground like a low fog was a strong scent. A scent of rot and fear.

  I gasped.

  I remembered the lung-shot deer Father tells that story about!

  Father had misremembered that afternoon in the North Woods those many years ago. It must have been May or June, because we had been hunting morels, not coming back from fishing. I remember how much fun it was seeing which of us could spot more of the mushrooms. I’d gathered twice as many as he had, though I had the feeling he was letting me win.

  I’d heard the same dry wheezing sound I was hearing now, and I did tell Father to stop.

  He heard it too and I pointed at a tangle of underbrush and vines to our left.

  I had followed him, and what he said after he moved the underbrush aside and fell to his knees was spoken so low and so soft, it caught my attention like the loudest scream would.

  He’d moaned, “Aww, naw, naw, naw … you poor girl.”

  There was a note in his voice that I’d never heard from my father. It was almost a cry, and it had scared me like I’d never been scared before.

  I’d rushed to him and buried my face against his back, wrapping my arms around his neck, afraid to see what had forced those horrible sounds from the strongest, bravest man in Canada.

  I was scared, but I looked over Father’s shoulder anyway. I saw the doe lying on her right side, tangled in the underbrush. She drew another wheezing, bubbly, crackling breath. Her rib cage rose and fell like air going into and seeping out of a punctured brown-and-white balloon.

  I remembered a moment of relief. I’d feared, when I looked over Father’s shoulder, there would be some horribly hurt little girl lying there.

  Father’s hand was on the animal’s neck. He stroked the doe and almost whispered, “It’s all right, girl, it’s all right.”

  That was when Father said, almost to himself, “Some ignorant …” and for the first and only time in my life, I heard my father swear.

  He didn’t say “fool” at all like he says in the story. Father swore.

  And they weren’t just mild swear words either; they were the type of words you hear from men who’ve drunk alcohol for hours. But the way Father spit them out was different. They weren’t sloppy like the drunkards slur them. Father’s words were crackling and alive with anger. The words jumped off his lips, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if they’d started a fire as they sparked and danced through the dry brush and undergrowth of the North Woods.

  I finally understood why adults are always telling us not to swear.

  Father knew how swearing was supposed to be done, and when it was done right, it wasn’t something a child would be able to handle. Even with me being as young as I was, the deep respect and fear I already had for the power of words grew even more.

  He’d forgotten I was there. I squeezed his neck harder and he quickly changed his words to “Some ignorant fool’s lung-shot her.”

  He kept stroking the doe’s neck and asked me, “Did you bring your knife, son?”

  That was the first time the doe knew we were there. Its front legs kicked once and it wheezed again, drawing my eyes to where a ragged, black, blood-crusted hole interrupted the beautiful white of its underbelly. Maggots crawled there, so impatient that they couldn’t wait for death.

  I patted my right-hand pocket, then pulled my knife out as Father moaned again, “Aww, look at her teats; she’s nursing a fawn somewhere.”

  The doe tried to get up but could only raise her head and neck a bit before she crashed back to the forest floor.

  She looked at Father.

  Her eyes swung over Father’s shoulder and she looked right at me. There was so much fear and sadness and gentleness in her eyes that for the first and only time in my life, my heart skipped a beat. The injured doe wheezed again and began twitching. Her movements sent a foul, frightening smell into the air.

  I can’t believe I’d forgotten all of this, but I do remember thinking it was all too much.

  I’m sure I could have easily handled any one of the things that had happened back in the North Woods all those years ago if they’d’ve happened by themselves. Maybe even two of them happening at the same time would not have bothered me so.

  But when you added up Father’s swearing with the ragged wheezing sound of death, with the way the doe looked at me, with the humiliation and shame of being eaten alive by the maggots, with the thought of a fawn slowly starving in the forest or becoming so weak it wouldn’t be able to outrun whatever wanted to pull it down and kill it, the sum was way too much.

  Father had been right about me leaving him right after we found that poor doe, but it wasn’t like he’d said. It was much worse. Like a bad reporter, he’d left out all the details that gave the story its heart, its touch to human emotions.

  I remember I’d set my knife on the ground, put my hands over my ears, and wanted to get away from all that I had just seen and heard.

  Father had changed the story, and I knew why. It wasn’t to teach me a lesson or because he misremembered or because he wanted to poke fun at me. No, Father had changed what happened because he knew the truth would embarrass me.

  I hadn’t just walked off into the woods, I panicked. I ran and ran and maybe screamed, because as I tore through the forest, I remember a sound trailing behind me.

  I’d forgotten all of that until this moment.

  Un
til the emotions of sound and smell triggered a memory of the forest.

  I fought to find the courage to separate the twisted vines and discover what was making this familiar wheezing sound. If Father had done it, I could too, even though I knew this time when I looked I’d find what I’d dreaded seeing that late spring way back when. I knew this ghastly sound was going to lead me to a person, a human being, someone my Mother knew and used to be friends with, and he would be very near death.

  As I began pulling at the vines, I hoped I wouldn’t run. I hoped I’d be able to do what Father had done and supply some type of comfort.

  I paused when I saw what looked like a strange-shaped, gnarled black root.

  My mind reeled when I realized it wasn’t a root at all. It was a man’s foot tangled in the vines, his toes tightly clenched, folded down upon the sole of his foot.

  My head spun, but I kept on.

  My eyes followed from the foot to the leg of a pair of buckskin trousers.

  I felt tears start to burn my eyes, but I kept tearing at more of the vines.

  And once again my eyes fell upon the poor man we used to call the Madman of Piney Woods.

  And this time I felt no fear.

  “Red! Red! Over here!”

  The sound bounced off trees, first seeming to come from this way, then that, giving me no clue to the direction from which Benji was calling. But the tone in his voice left no doubt that he had discovered something loathsome.

  Each time he called my name, a chill brushed down my neck.

  “Benji! Where are you?”

  “Oh, Red, over here! Come quickly!”

  The thicket to my right seemed to be the source of Benji’s voice.

  His broken sobs pulled me closer.

  “Benji! I hear you but can’t see where you are!”

  “Here, just in front of you, on the ground. Pull these aside.” He shook the vines to show me which ones to move.

  I began tugging at the grapevines that choked this part of the forest floor.

  Soon I came upon Benji’s hunched back.

  “Benji? Did you find him? Is he …”