Wilder Boys

by Brandon Wallace

  “Mom!” Taylor gave his mother a hug.

  “Mind if I sit?” she asked.

  Jake quickly slid their father’s journal under Taylor’s pillow and got up to help their mother over to his brother’s bed. The boys perched on either side of her, while Cody leaped up and circled twice before resting his chin in Jennifer’s lap.

  “So,” she asked, stroking the dog’s head. “How was the second-to-last day of school?”

  “Good,” Taylor said. “No homework!”

  Both Jake and his mom laughed.

  “I checked out some extra books from the library,” Jake told her.

  “It’s too bad they can’t keep it open for you—” Jennifer stopped midsentence and reached up to touch the red mark on Jake’s cheek. Even as sick as she was, concern etched her face. “What happened to you?”

  “He—” Taylor began, but Jake cut him off.

  “I ran into a metal post at school.”

  Jennifer might be depressed, but she wasn’t stupid. “Who did this, Jake?”

  “Uh, I had a little disagreement with someone. My face got in the way of his hand.”

  Jennifer lowered her own hand, and her body seemed to slump.

  “It was nothing,” Jake quickly assured her, putting his arm around her back for support.

  Jennifer didn’t respond, just breathed wheezily in and out. Finally she said, “Promise me, boys . . . that you will try to be good. And promise me you’ll try to get along with Bull.”

  “Why? We all know he’s no good!” Jake hissed.

  Jennifer’s eyes met Jake’s. “He’s the only thing we’ve got right now,” she said softly. “We’re lucky to have a man around here at all.”

  “Why? So he can spend your disability checks and use your food stamps to buy pizza for his friends?”

  Jennifer dropped her eyes. “No, not for that.”

  “Then what?” Taylor asked.

  “Because,” their mother said, “we don’t have anyone else.”

  “But we don’t need anyone else,” Taylor insisted. “You, me, and Jake would do fine by ourselves. Jake and I could take care of you until you get better.”

  Jennifer managed a smile and kissed her younger son on the top of his head, ruffling his wavy hair. “I know you could, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  Jake guessed what his mother was thinking—that she might get even sicker—but he didn’t dare say it. Instead he said, “You should get back to bed, Mom. Come on, Taylor. Gimme a hand.”

  The short conversation had clearly exhausted their mother. Once they got her back to her room and settled into her own bed, she asked the boys to snuggle up for a while.

  “Okay!” Taylor eagerly responded. He climbed in on the far side while Jake sat next to his mom’s pillow. Looking down at her, Jake couldn’t believe how thin and pale she’d grown in the past year. He swallowed, but it didn’t get rid of the sadness he felt—or his worry that she might be getting even worse.

  “Tell us about Dad again,” Taylor asked.

  Jake saw his mother bite her lip, but then she began. “Your father loved you very much.”

  “I wish I could remember him.”

  “Your dad was a good man . . . mostly,” Jennifer said. “He knew everything about animals and nature. He could do anything he set his mind to.”

  “Then why did he leave?”

  Jennifer took a deep breath. “He was a dreamer. It wasn’t enough for him to make a living. He always had bigger ideas, and when his company let him go . . .”

  “That was his chance to go live in the wilderness,” Jake offered.

  “Yes.”

  “Is that why he left?” Taylor pressed.

  Their mom nodded.

  “Didn’t he want us to go with him?”

  Jake saw his mother again bite her lip. “He . . .”

  “He what?” Taylor asked.

  Jennifer paused, the conversation clearly taking a toll on her. Then she said, “Boys . . . I need to show you something.”

  Jake and Taylor glanced at each other, confused.

  “Jake, go into my closet and look behind my coat.”

  Jake got up and stepped over to the closet.

  “Under the sweaters, you’ll see a box. Bring it to me.”

  Jake lifted up some old sweaters and was surprised to find a faded orange shoe box. He slid it out from under the sweaters and carried it to his mom.

  “What’s that?” Taylor asked.

  His mom slowly raised herself up. Jake quickly piled pillows behind her for her to lean against.

  “When Abe—your father—went out West, he . . . wanted us to go with him.”

  Jake’s and Taylor’s eyes met, wide with surprise.

  “He wrote to me a lot,” Jennifer continued, “pleading with me to take you both out to Wyoming.”

  “Why didn’t we go?” Jake asked.

  His mom’s jaw clenched. “Maybe I should have,” she said. “But I just didn’t know if it was right for you boys.”

  “But why not?” Taylor pressed, growing more agitated. “Wyoming would have been great!”

  “Shush, Taylor,” Jake said.

  Jennifer continued. “Your father, he didn’t have a job out there. He constantly moved around. I didn’t see how you could go to school, or even how we could survive. I almost got us bus tickets a couple of times, but then I got sick. That made the decision once and for all.”

  No one said anything for a few moments. Taylor slowly shook his head. Jake was stunned. Finally he said, “What’s in the box?”

  Jennifer patted the orange shoe box. “These are the letters he wrote to me. You should have them. Maybe they’ll answer some of the questions I know you have.”

  “But why are you telling us now?” Taylor asked.

  Jennifer’s body seemed to slump again. “I thought it was time. . . . Boys, I’m tired. I need to sleep for a while.”

  Jake helped his mother get comfortable again while Taylor pulled the blankets up snugly around her neck.

  “Thanks,” Jennifer said weakly. “I love you, boys.”

  “We love you, Mom,” said Taylor.

  Jake opened his mouth to say something, but his mother’s eyes were already closing.

  “C’mon, Taylor. Let’s let Mom rest,” Jake whispered.

  As he slid off the bed and placed his foot on the floor, Jake felt something slip beneath it. He looked down to see one of the floor tiles had moved.

  Great, he thought. One more thing that needs to be fixed.

  As he bent down to replace the tile, however, he noticed a hole underneath it.

  “What are you doing?” Taylor asked, placing the orange shoe box on the floor.

  “There’s a space here under this tile,” Jake whispered.

  “Really? Is anything in there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Jake got down on his knees and reached into the shallow hole. He pulled out something heavy wrapped in an old shirt. Feeling the shape of the object under the thin material, he hoped it wasn’t what he thought it was as he carefully pulled back the cloth.

  “A gun!” Taylor cried, reaching out for it.

  “Get off, Taylor,” Jake said, pulling the weapon away from him.

  “Let me see it!”

  “No!” Jake didn’t know much about guns, but he did know that they spelled trouble.

  “Is that a six-shooter?” Taylor asked.

  Jake studied the weapon. It was definitely a revolver of some kind, with a brown plastic grip. Jake saw the words .38 SPECIAL engraved into the short chrome barrel, and remembered reading about those guns in detective novels. He was just as curious as Taylor, but he knew that they’d stumbled across something they shouldn’t have, and he tried to make out like it was no big deal.

  “Yeah. I think it’s a six-shooter,” Jake said, wrapping the weapon back up.

  “Why can’t I see it?”

  “Because you just can’t, so don’t ask aga
in.”

  Taylor sulked while Jake set the gun aside, and he peered down into the hole. This time he pulled out a large Ziploc plastic bag.

  “Money!” Taylor gasped.

  Even through the plastic, Jake could see the blurred portraits of Benjamin Franklin and Ulysses S. Grant on bundles of fifty- and one-hundred-dollar bills. First a gun and now cash—it didn’t take a detective to figure out what was going on.

  “How much is in there?” Taylor asked.

  Jake opened the bag and quickly flicked through the bundles of bills.

  “Looks like thousands,” he told his brother.

  “Wow! Where’d it come from?”

  “Take a wild guess.”

  “Bull? You mean he’s had money all along?”

  “Looks like.”

  “Well, let’s take some of it.”

  Again, Jake’s voice grew harsh. “No! And forget you saw it. The gun and this money could get us both killed.”

  “But, Jake . . .”

  “I mean it, Taylor. Just forget you ever saw them.” Jake sealed the bag of cash back up and placed it and the gun carefully back into the hole. “If Bull knew we’d found this, he’d . . .”

  But Jake didn’t have to finish the sentence. Both Taylor and Jake had seen Bull’s violent streak more than enough times to imagine the possibilities—and none of them were good.

  3 Jake glanced at his mother and then outside, where the afternoon sky had begun to dissolve into dusk.

  “Quick,” he whispered to his brother. “Put the tile back and follow me.”

  “Why?”

  Jake didn’t answer, just picked up the orange shoe box and hurried back to their room, Cody and Taylor on his heels. Taylor closed the door behind them, and they sat down on Jake’s bed with the box between them. Cody hopped up and sniffed the box before curling up on Jake’s pillow.

  Carefully, Jake leaned forward and lifted the battered lid. Taylor gasped. The box was packed with letters and cards with ragged and torn edges, some unopened but faded with age.

  “I can’t believe Mom was getting letters from Dad for so long,” Taylor said, thrusting his hand into the box and pulling out a handful of envelopes. As he did so, half a dozen photographs spilled out onto the bed. Jake picked one up. He recognized younger versions of his mom and dad; they were sitting on a park bench somewhere. Both of them were smiling, and a baby boy bounced on his dad’s lap.

  Me! Jake realized with a shock.

  “And this?” Taylor asked, and handed Jake another photo of a baby, this one dressed up in embarrassing infant overalls.

  “That’s you.”

  Taylor’s mouth dropped open. “Huh?

  Jake smiled. “Yep. Look how fat you were.”

  Taylor socked his brother in the shoulder. “Not as fat as you were,” he said, peering at the photo in Jake’s hand.

  But the photos didn’t interest Jake half as much as the letters. He picked out one addressed to the boys. It was dated almost seven years ago and, like all the letters, had been postmarked from Wyoming. He removed the single sheet of paper from the envelope and began reading.

  “What’s it say?” asked Taylor

  At first Jake was too engrossed in the letter to respond.

  Taylor nudged him. “Tell me.”

  “It . . .”

  “It what?”

  Jake glanced over at Taylor. “Dad says here that he loves the wilderness and thinks he’s heard about some sort of hidden valley.”

  “You’re kidding! What else?”

  “He’s telling us and Mom that life on the East Coast was killing him—and ruining all of our lives. He says he misses us and wants Mom to bring us out to Wyoming. . . . He even says he’s enclosing money for bus tickets.”

  Jake lowered the letter, and he and Taylor stared at each other.

  Finally Taylor whispered, “Jake, Dad really wanted us to be with him.”

  The thought hung like silent fog between them. Jake reached back into the box. “Let’s see what the rest of them say.”

  The boys scoured their newfound treasure. Each letter overflowed with descriptions of Wyoming, and stories of the people there. Much like their father’s journal, some letters had practical tips for living off the land, while others shared stories of encounters with wildlife and their dad’s own struggles to learn how to survive. However, two themes ran through all the letters: a suspicion about the modern world, and a desperate desire to have Jennifer, Jake, and Taylor join him.

  “Why didn’t Mom ever tell us?” Taylor asked when they’d almost reached the bottom of the box. Jake looked up to see his brother’s eyes brimming with tears.

  Jake shook his head. “Maybe she really thought he was crazy. Maybe she thought she’d be putting us in danger, taking us out there.”

  “But she loved him, didn’t she? I mean, why didn’t she believe in him? Give him a chance, at least?”

  “Maybe she wanted to. But she got sick, Taylor. Remember, she had to go into the hospital?”

  “Right after she met Bull?”

  “Yeah.”

  The boys sat there, trying to make sense of it all. Then Jake spotted one more letter in the bottom of the box. He picked it up and saw that it was addressed to their mom, but this one wasn’t tattered or faded—this one was clean and recent.

  Jake tore open the letter and read it aloud:

  Dear Jennifer,

  I’ve found it—the perfect place for us and the boys! Tucked away in a valley high in the Rockies, an area completely unspoiled by humans. It’s the kind of place we talked about moving to when we were younger. It’s a place where we can live off of the land and be away from the hassle of city life.

  I know you got sick of me talking about it, but I always felt sure about this, and now I know that it is REAL! I’m writing in the hopes that if you ever need me, you’ll know where to find me.

  I’m not going to send you exact directions in case this falls into the wrong hands, but I will leave you pointers for how to find me at a spot nearby—where I once saw the aurora borealis when I was younger. Look out for the landmarks I have described, and I’ll be there every summer, waiting for you. I know you can make it.

  I love you and always will.

  Abe

  “Is there anything else?” Taylor asked.

  Jake removed a second sheet of paper, and the boys studied it. On it their father had hastily sketched a map of a lake with a waterfall coming down into it. Across the bottom were the words Teton NP, along with some notes about leaving inspiration behind them and seeing the aurora borealis. At the bottom of the page was one final sentence: Look across the moose’s neck to where the wildflower falls.

  “What’s ‘NP’?” Taylor asked.

  “National park, I think.”

  “Well, what’s this about inspiration—and looking across the moose’s neck?”

  Jake shook his head. “I guess these are all some kind of clues.”

  “Not very good ones,” said Taylor, hopping off the bed. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t go find him!”

  “What?” Jake stared at his brother.

  “Don’t you see, Jake? This changes everything. Dad wanted us all to go join him! We can get out of here and away from Bull!”

  Cody seemed to agree. He stood up on the bed, his tail wagging excitedly.

  For Jake, though, the letters had generated a mix of emotions. Anger. Excitement. Worry. Resentment.

  Even if he were looking for a lost valley, Jake thought, what kind of man would leave us here—and not come back to get us himself?

  “So what do you say, Jake? What are we waiting for?”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Jake said.

  “What?”

  “Mom.”

  Taylor’s face suddenly sagged. “Oh . . .”

  “We can’t just leave her here. Not with Bull. She needs us, Taylor.”

  Taylor sat back on his own bed. “Yeah . . . you’re right. I forgot.”
Then his face brightened again. “What about after she gets better?”

  Jake had never shared their mother’s true outlook with his brother. But maybe Taylor was old enough to hear the truth.

  “Taylor . . .”

  His brother stared at him. “What?”

  Jake tried to say the words, but he couldn’t get them out.

  She’s probably not going to get better.

  “Never mind,” Jake said. “Never mind.”

  4 Bull didn’t return that evening. For supper, Jake and Taylor heated up a can of tomato soup for their mother and helped themselves to more of Bull’s hot dogs—cooked, this time. Later, after getting their mom settled, the boys climbed into their own beds. Jake propped up his pillows and plunged into an adventure story by one of his favorite authors, Will Hobbs. Cody hopped onto Taylor’s bed and curled up next to his head. Soon Jake could hear the steady breathing of both of them from across the room. He couldn’t stop thinking about the map his dad had sent. What did it mean? Finally Jake picked up a pad of paper and began doodling a picture of a moose with flowers around its neck. Then he added the word Teton in an arch above it. . . . It still didn’t mean anything to him. But it must have meant something to his dad.

  After a while Jake turned off the light and lay in his bed thinking about the box of letters, the gun, and the big bag of cash—more than enough discoveries for one day. Eventually his eyes grew heavy, and he drifted off to sleep—only to be awoken with a start a couple of hours later.

  “Huh?” he grunted, rolling over to look at their clock. At first he thought it might be time to get up, but the red glowing display read only 4:28 a.m.

  Then he heard Cody scratching at the front door.

  “Co-deee,” Jake moaned under his breath. “It’s the middle of the night. Can’t you hold it till morning?”

  Still half asleep, Jack staggered to the front door, where he found the terrier prancing impatiently.

  “What? Didn’t those hot dogs agree with you?” Jake asked as he opened the door.

  Cody leaped to the ground and sprinted away.

  Strange, Jake thought to himself as he sat down in the hallway to wait for Cody to finish his business. The minutes passed, and his eyes were beginning to get heavy once again, but the dog still hadn’t returned.