Adam's Woods

by Greg Walker

  He did pull his hand away then, firmly but he hoped not too rudely and held her gaze and answered, “Maybe, but I’m not the one that took off, Katy.” Anger rose in his breast and he refused it. Now wasn’t the time and Katy wasn’t the enemy. But it was time for her to go. He forced a smile and said,” It was so nice meeting you. I’ve started a new novel, and hopefully within a year or so it will be on the shelves. Check my website for updates.”

  She nodded, and he could tell she wanted to say more but wisely nodded in parting and said, “ I’ll do that. God bless you.”

  And he knew she meant it.

  He watched her go, the skirt hiding her lovely figure but not entirely, and then forced himself to finish the meal for which he had lost his appetite. He guessed that if he hung around Lincoln Corners for any period of time, there wouldn’t be anywhere to get hot food later. He wanted to call Katy back over and ask if she had any sisters, ask whether, if she’d seen her sister at the age of eight gutted like a deer by a murderer never punished let alone caught, she would still possess faith to carry her through. But he didn’t. He just unclenched hands that had somehow balled into fists and took a few deep breaths and blinked back the tear that had formed in memory of his brother.

  Chapter 2

  The town seemed like a miniature version of the place he'd grown up, had heard this phenomenon related from the accounts of others but had not returned to experience it first-hand. Appoaching Lincoln Corners from the east, he had driven over Willow Creek, over the bridge from where he and the neighborhood kids had jumped into the water below, always so cold no matter how hot the day. He had stopped the car and got out and remembered his first time, standing for maybe ten minutes on the concrete railing searching for courage to leap. Each moment delayed built a case for cowardice and a motion for stepping down, but he couldn’t do that either. His peers had at first urged and encouraged him, but had grown bored with his inertia and resorted to taunts.

  Chicken (and a few chickenshits from those bold enough to try cursing).

  Baby.

  Come on Eric. If you aren’t going to jump then get out of the way.

  He could hear them as if fresh echoes, the words spoken only moments ago.

  And then he’d just done it, stepped out into nothing while watching someone else’s legs directed by someone else’s brain, but his body that fell and splashed into the water, feet driven down into the gravel creek bed by his momentum. He had surfaced whooping with joy and triumph and pleased with the knowledge gained of himself and jumped a dozen more times before walking home accompanied by backslaps and cheers.

  The drop didn’t seem so far now, but he did notice that the gravel had piled up at the point of impact and doubted anyone could jump without breaking a leg. From there it was only a twenty-second drive to his house, a distance that seemed like a long hike to a weary but satisfied boy of eight. He had been eight on the first jump, the same age as Adam when he’d died. Adam, six then, had been in awe of him. The pleasure of the memory faded with the intrusion of his brother, sucked into that vortex as all of his childhood memories invariably were. He wondered just what the hell he was doing here again but got back in the car and continued on his pilgrimage.

  His mother had chosen the color of the boxy two story house, called goldenrod that must have held some appeal as a swatch in the paint store but looked like something a baby produced when applied on the actual structure. He was surprised to see it still bathed in that color. He was more surprised to see the For Sale sign in the front yard.

  Eric drove by, past the house and several others with mature maples and oaks fronting the road, down to the corner where the grocery store was still open and started around the block, lost in thought. He couldn’t believe he was actually considering calling the number on the sign. What could he possibly want with that house? Peace of mind, his mind answered. For the same reason he was writing a novel that touched on his crippling fear over two decades ago. To reach back and maybe grab the parts of him lost here to patch them up and fit them back in as best as he could. It wasn’t like he had to actually live here, or at least not all of the time.

  He came around by the church, where a right would repeat his route past the house and instead went left, up a small incline that had required standing and hard pedaling to summit on a child’s bicycle and pulled into the dirt lot that bordered the cemetery. There were a few houses up here. He didn’t see anyone but did catch the rustle of a curtain as he got out and weaved through the headstones. He stopped before Adam’s grave, grateful to whoever pulled the weeds and kept it presentable. Adam Kane, 1978-1986. The modest marker sat a little apart from the others. Most of the dead here represented families, generations interred in territorial blocs of hallowed ground. Adam was the only Kane in attendance. Their father had worked for a furniture manufacturer in Drake City about ten miles away, where they had been bused to school, and had bought a house here for the peace and safety that a close knit community offered to families with young children. The tragic irony of this philosophy lay six feet below ground in front of him.

  Whoever killed Adam hadn’t been caught. No one had seen anybody that shouldn’t have been there. No other kids disappeared or died or reported seeing a stranger. The boy who had found him, John Thomas Grove, fourteen at the time and a friend of Eric’s, had been suspected then and maybe even now by some. Eric had never believed that and still didn’t. It was if Hell had opened up, disgorged a monster to tear away his brother’s life, and then swallowed it back down into the depths without leaving a trace.

  The horror writer in him imagined his brother’s body in the coffin, tiny and desiccated and skeletal, but he quickly shut it off and instead thought of him living, his mischievous smile and the plans that got both of them into trouble that his parents always assumed originated with Eric. He was small for his age but afraid of nothing. He would have made the jump into the creek that same day or even before Eric, if their father hadn’t said he was too young and threatened punishment that would fall with the certainty of sunrise if invited. But living always circled back round to dead, and he felt the memory stir of that day. Sometimes it threatened to surface at the oddest times. At the grocery store, while brushing his teeth, and even once while making out on his couch with Mandy. He always refused it, beat it back down into the hole in his mind in which it lived. But today, so close to where it happened, to where it even now seemed to hang low and heavy in the air like an unseen fog, he couldn’t stop it. And he didn’t know if he wanted to. The stories didn’t seem to be venting enough of the pressure anymore. And so he remembered.

  Chapter 3

  “Eric, you’ve got to come out to the cabin. I just got a whole stack of new comic books for us to read.” John Thomas winked at him, its meaning ambiguous, although he suspected it wasn’t comic books JT had. The older boy didn’t like to be called JT, but Eric thought his name that way and usually said it the other.

  “Mom, can I go out for a while with John Thomas?”

  “Only if you take your brother. He needs to turn off that television and get outside.“

  His mother’s voice drifted from the kitchen along with the scent of baking cinnamon rolls to the front porch that housed their bicycles and a porch swing. The porch was enclosed all around by windows, and Eric stood at its screen door in his sock feet, shoulders slumping at the condition of bringing Adam.

  He usually didn’t mind when his little brother came along, but when JT showed up with a wink Eric knew it was something that Adam shouldn’t know about. Most of the time it was something he‘d be better off without, like the cigarettes or the quarter can of beer left on a coffee table and smuggled out to the cabin. The cigarette had made him puke, and the beer tasted like someone had peed into the can, but he was always game up to a point. Once JT had pulled out his father’s pistol and Eric had immediately left. He didn’t tell anyone, but that was going too far. He had avoided John Thomas for a few days until the older boy apologized and swore
he wouldn’t do it again. So far he’d kept his word.

  If Tony and Jeff Fisk weren’t in Erie at the mall shopping for school clothes, he probably would have suggested that they get a game of two-on-two football going with Adam as all time running back. He almost said no anyway, but JT must have seen the change of heart coming and said, “Come on, Eric. It’s something really good...but not dangerous. Adam can wait outside while I show you, and then we’ll all go fishing or something.”

  Fishing sounded good to Eric, so decided he’d indulge his friend to get a chance at the palomino trout in the hole behind the lumber yard, a wily fish at least twenty inches long that had turned up its nose so far at every bait tossed in to tempt it. His mother wouldn’t let him go alone.

  Adam came to the door whining about missing the end of Scooby-Doo, although to Eric they were all the same, the villain just someone dressed up in a costume. He could never understand why they still ran away at first, that experience should have taught them something by now. It was mid-August, a Saturday, still hot but the days growing shorter as an unwelcome reminder that school would start soon. Adam fell in behind, keeping a few steps back and grumbling.

  They walked passed a storage shed and through the mowed field behind the house that stretched the width of the backyard plus those of the neighbors on either side - a field great for football, baseball, or tag - and entered a small clearing in the woods beyond that. Several paths disappeared into the trees. One led to their homemade cabin, framed using the trunks of four small felled and stripped trees as corner posts, sided with a patchwork of scrap wood stolen from Mr. Fisk at the lumber yard, and roofed with some corrugated sheets of tin that had come from someone’s basement. There was an auto junkyard just on the outskirts of Lincoln Corners, and four of them, Eric and JT, Tony Fisk and Mary - a girl that sometimes hung out with them - had carried back a detached bench seat without getting caught, and now they had a sofa.

  When they reached the cabin, which even had a door, an ill-fitting piece of particle board attached by mismatched hinges, JT turned to Adam and said, “Okay, someone has to stand guard out here in case somebody comes. We’ll take turns and you’ll go first.”

  “Why do I have to go first? Why does someone have to stand guard anyway? I thought you said you had comic books. Who cares about comic books?” Eric could see through the petulance that Adam cared very much about comic books, and found himself hoping there really were some. He didn’t like excluding his brother and rarely picked on him. Not because he was weak - Adam had given him a fat lip and a bloody nose, respectively, on the two occasions that they’d really fought - but because he couldn’t stand the hurt he saw in his eyes. He felt a responsibility towards his brother, and though he liked JT, he loved Adam.

  “Look Adam, I’ll stand guard first and you go in,” Eric said.

  “No way, Eric. You first, or no one goes in. That’s the way it is,” JT answered.

  “Hold on a second,” he said, and disappeared through the door. He came out with a Batman comic and handed it to Adam.” Here, you can read this while on duty.”

  Adam grabbed it and examined the cover, and so mollified sat down on a log and didn’t glance at them as they both went into the cabin. JT positioned himself by the door in case their sentry tried to enter, and pointed at a stack of what looked to Eric like more comic books on the dirt floor, except the ones on the bottom were wider, some sort of magazine, maybe.

  Eric sat down on the seat, careful not to slide his legs against the cracks in the vinyl that could and had drawn blood, and picked up the stack. He loved being in the cabin, a small piece of the world that belonged only to them. Beneath the Spider-Mans, Hulks, and Thors, he found two Hustlers. His mouth went dry as he took in the blonde on the cover of the first, the puffed up hair like the high school girls, the bikini that had mostly slid off of her body held in place by strategically placed arms and hands to barely hide what he hoped the pages inside wouldn‘t.

  His heart quickened and he felt giddy and light-headed. He knew he shouldn’t be doing this, that he held in his hands a glossy monthly version of the forbidden fruit, but was already thumbing through the pages of this new frontier before his Sunday School teacher’s words on temptation could change his course.

  He was glad he’d put the magazine on his lap, and slowly made his way through, almost forgetting about JT until he asked Eric in a husky voice, “Isn’t it great?”

  Eric looked up and saw he’d brought out another from some other hiding place and perused it with a hungry smile that made Eric suddenly uncomfortable. He saw the bulge in JTs shorts he didn’t even try to hide, realized he needed to sound like more than a kid here.

  “Yeah, but its not like I haven’t seen these before,” he lied. A boy had ripped out a centerfold of his dad’s Playboy once and snuck it into the bathroom during class restroom break, but it had been confiscated and the kid marched to the principal’s office before Eric had a chance to see.

  “Yeah, I know. I’ve seen them too,” JT said, trying to act bored, and sitting down next to Eric, wary and self-conscious.” But there‘s a lot more, and we can look at them anytime we want.”

  “Where did you get them?”

  “Over in the junkyard. I was looking into some of the cars, and on the backseat of this one there’s a whole stack.” JT lifted his hand up about two feet high from the sofa for emphasis.

  “What are you guy’s doing in there?”Adam’s voice came from right outside the door. Eric was glad for JT’s presence. He knew that if it had just been him, Adam would have forced his way in. But he wouldn’t cross JT, stocky and strong and a master of the wedgie, dutch rub, noogie, and pink belly; forms of childhood torture that he‘d gleefully administer if given provocation.

  John Thomas hurriedly got up and grabbed another comic book, moved to the door and pushed it open enough to hand it to Adam. “Here’s an X-men. We’re almost done.”

  “I don’t want it. I want to see what you’re doing. You said I would get a turn.”

  “Well I changed my mind. You want to do something about it.”

  Eric couldn’t see Adam but knew well the defiant stare and retort his brother barely held in check and felt a pang of guilt, but the desire to look overcame all. “Just wait a little bit longer and we’ll go fishing, Adam. Read the comic book. You like X-men.” He was surprised at how thick his voice sounded.

  “No. I’m not waiting for you guys. You’re a couple of jerks, anyway.”

  Eric knew he should go out but he didn’t, even when he heard Adam stomping away, not towards the clearing and home but down the path leading deeper into the woods. But the woods weren’t that big and they both knew all of the trails. If he kept going all the way back, after a quarter mile he’d end up at the edge of a cornfield. Behind that was a much larger forest, but he knew Adam wouldn’t go in there by himself, nor did he fear that he’d tell their parents later. Adam knew that would get him banished for good from any future boyhood indiscretion, and anyway he wasn’t a snitch.

  Eric put down the first magazine and picked up another, this time featuring a brunette that looked a lot like their bus driver that he had a secret crush on. Inside was more of the same, but all new to him and he forgot about Adam. JT settled down with his own material, and from furtive glances at his friend Eric discerned from wide eyes and quick shallow breaths that John Thomas didn’t know anymore about this stuff than him, and wondered why they had to pretend otherwise; but they did, and he wouldn’t be the one to break the unwritten code of schoolyard machismo.

  Caught in this haze of pre-adolescent lust, Eric lost track of time. Eventually he began to feel sick like he’d eaten too much candy, and wanted to get away from the images and try to make sense of the powerful urges they stirred or maybe attempt to stuff them back inside. But that would be impossible. The magazines had been an education, and he now knew things he hadn’t guessed at and wasn‘t sure he wanted to know. But knowing and understanding were two different things.
He had a desire to talk to his father but didn’t dare, wondered if he could look at his mother the same way after this. Or Sandra the bus driver. Or Mary. He felt a stab of alarm that she might come here and find the magazines... and then he remembered Adam.

  “Hey, JT, I need to go look for Adam,” he said, glad to have an excuse to get away from the pictures.

  “He probably went home by now. What’s the rush, Eric? Are you a homo or something?”

  Eric ignored the remark and accompanying chuckle, though it did provoke a tickle of fear as he wondered if that could be the reason for his discomfort. He decided that JT was just getting back at him for exposing his overeagerness and attempted to think of a comeback, but gave up and refocused. He needed to find his brother.

  “No, he wouldn’t go home. He knows if mom finds out we aren’t with him, she’ll get mad and that would be like telling. Adam wouldn‘t tell.”

  JT threw one last look of longing at a redhead and closed the book, then gathered the others and shoved them under the seat, leaving the comic books out as a decoy. “He’d better not, or I’ll kill him. All right, let’s go.”