Hall of Small Mammals

by Thomas Pierce

  “We’re just in it for the camping trips.”

  “Us too. I wanted my son to stop playing his stupid computer games.”

  “Has it worked?”

  “Not really. He’s got some kind of portable thing. Miracle he never trips.”

  “I wanted my son to feel like he’s a part of something,” Flynn says.

  “Even if what he’s a part of is a little cultish? I’m sorry, guys, but it is, right?”

  “It is, yeah.”

  “A little bit.”

  “My boy’s alone most afternoons,” Flynn continues, “and that gets him into all sorts of trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble? Because there’s trouble and then there’s trouble.”

  “I don’t know,” Flynn mutters. “Typical kid stuff, I guess.”

  “My boy used to trap squirrels so he could drown them in the pool.”

  “My kid used to shoot a crossbow into the neighbor’s yard, and one time he put an arrow in her leg. She’s almost eighty! God, that was awful.”

  “Alex, he’s my stepson. Years ago we caught him with a hammer standing over his little sister’s crib.”

  “My son likes fire,” Flynn says. “But I think he does it for the attention.”

  “My kid Gene had a fire thing for a while. He almost burned down the garage.”

  The camp director pokes his head out the door and asks them to come inside for announcements, and they look at each other like, Is this guy for real? Flynn smiles at his new friends.

  That night in the tent, Flynn lets his son fall asleep first. He takes Mookie the bear out to the car and hides him under a piece of luggage. He’s stripping down for bed when he sees his son’s eyes on him.

  “Just try it without the bear,” Flynn says.

  The boy closes his eyes.

  But Flynn has not won this battle, not yet. In the morning, the bear is back on its T-shirt throne. Flynn is undaunted. The dew sparkles with sunshine and, Flynn imagines, with promise. Ryan goes off to the art shack for leather making. The camp isn’t really designed for earning beads—that’s what the weekly meetings are for—but he might be able to earn a bead of skill this morning.

  Flynn crosses the field, and by the time he reaches the edge of the woods, his boots are soaked. He has offered to help build the sweat lodge. John Price is there with a cup of coffee and a cigarette. The camp director, a giant ring of keys jangling from his belt, introduces a special visitor, a man with a long brown-and-gray ponytail down his back. His name is Henri, pronounced the French way, though he has a distinctly southern accent. He says he’s one-sixteenth Cherokee. He has a certificate in Native American studies. Sweat lodges are used as a means of purification, he says, of the body and the spirit. Sitting in a sweat lodge can help you reach a deeper level of consciousness. Sometimes the spirit travels.

  Henri asks for volunteers to gather the firewood and rocks. He asks for more volunteers to cut down and strip small saplings. He distributes hatchets. He uses string and a stick to sketch out a circle with a ten-foot diameter. He instructs everyone to be as silent as possible. He’s tapping on a drum. John Price rolls his eyes at Flynn. They jam the saplings into the ground and bend them toward the center. Henri sends John Price and Flynn to collect grasses for the floor of the lodge, and if they find any sage, even better.

  They move through the trees, hunched like hunter-gatherers.

  “Where did they find this guy anyway?” John Price asks. “Do you think they just Googled hippie and bullshit and this guy was number one on the list?”

  Flynn’s not sure. Will John Price try it out, though?

  “Sure, why not?”

  Their arms are full of green grass and dead leaves. “So,” John Price says, smiling, “I finally got it out of my son last night. The First Truth.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. He was on the verge of falling asleep. I feel a little guilty about it. To be honest, I thought it was kind of anticlimactic. But I suppose that’s the way it is with these things. There’s a reason the Catholic Church only wanted priests reading the Bible, you know? You want me to tell you what it is?”

  “Okay,” Flynn says.

  “You sure you want to know?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, here it goes. Let the mind enter itself. Let the dark burn bright.”

  They’re walking back to the sweat lodge. Flynn is quiet.

  “It’s okay,” John Price says. “I have no idea what it means either. My kid definitely doesn’t. Probably doesn’t mean anything. You know the guy who founded the Grasshoppers did time in prison, right? He also wrote fantasy books. That’s how he made all his money.”

  “What was he in jail for?”

  “Tax evasion, maybe. I can’t remember. Something very white-collar. This was way back. In the fifties. Before he came up with this Grasshoppers idea. You probably know this already, but in the beginning the group had a strong flower-power element. Very antiestablishment. Very get-in-touch-with-your-inner-self. You can tell from the pledge. That bit about finding your way around walls? All the beads and the rules and the levels, that got added later, along with all the membership fees.”

  They emerge from the woods, and the fathers have stretched a black tarp over the skeletal sapling frame. Henri is still tapping on his drum. They spread the grasses across the interior and then stand back to admire their construction. The camp director takes a photograph for the Grasshopper newsletter.

  The sweat lodge sign-up sheet is posted now in the dining hall and at lunch Flynn schedules time for him and his son. Ryan returns from the leather-working class with a bead and a new friend. The boy’s name is Trevor. His face is freckled, his hair red and wild. They find seats together in the dining hall. Both boys are sporting the moccasins they made in class, the thin leather tight around their feet. They don’t talk to each other, only sit and slurp up spaghetti casserole. Flynn asks Trevor about his father, if he’ll be joining them for the meal. Trevor shrugs.

  Does Trevor like being a Grasshopper?

  “Sometimes,” he says.

  What does Trevor’s father do for a living?

  “He flies airplanes. He’s a pilot.”

  “I’ll bet you get to fly all the time, then, huh?”

  “Definitely.”

  The camp director concludes the meal with his usual announcements: thank you to all the fathers who helped build the sweat lodge; the snake problem has been resolved, and the lake is open for swimming again; and would the fathers who smoke kindly stop dropping the butts off the edge of the porch?

  Trevor’s father, a skinny man with blue jeans sagging, finds them after lunch.

  “There you are,” he says to his son.

  “I hear you’re a pilot,” Flynn says, and introduces himself.

  The man gazes down at Flynn’s feet for what feels like a long time. “You’ve got me confused,” he says, and then walks ahead toward the tents with his son.

  • • •

  The sweat lodge fits ten father-son pairs at a time. Thick steam rises from the rocks at its center. The hot coals beneath glow orange in the darkness. As instructed, Flynn sits cross-legged next to his son, both of them shirtless, dressed in swim trunks. If anyone feels faint, Henri warns them from the door, they should come outside and drink some water. Flynn can feel the trickles of sweat traveling down his back and his arms. He’s swaying a little. His son stares wide-eyed at the rocks, then at the door, shifting restlessly.

  Flynn wonders what his son might be thinking. About fire again? Does the steam remind him of smoke? He’s made a friend and earned a bead. Is it belonging he feels? If he painted a picture, what colors would he choose? If he wrote a song, would the key be major or minor? Flynn worries he’s failed the boy. Could Ryan be ashamed of him? Does he wish Flynn had more money? That he flew airplanes? Flynn fe
els like he is in an airplane now, the air rumbling all around him, a bumpy takeoff. He can feel himself rising—or, maybe, falling.

  Flynn opens his eyes. He’s outside again, in the sunlight. Three faces hover above him. They put the water to his lips, and he drinks. Flynn passed out in the sweat lodge, but he’s okay. He just needed some air. He should have had more water.

  Henri is there. “Go someplace interesting?”

  As Flynn guzzles down an entire canteen of water, Ryan sits nearby on a stump, drawing shapes in the dirt with his finger.

  “You should probably lay down for a while,” someone says.

  Flynn nods and stands to go, his legs like two iron bars hinged at his hips, but somehow he gets them swinging. He’s moving down the trail, and thankfully so is Ryan, though he lags a few feet behind until they reach the tent. The air inside the tent is hot and sticky, so hot that Flynn throws the door up over the rain-fly to let in the breeze. He slides across his sleeping bag on his belly, not bothering to take off his shoes, his toes in the grass just outside the door. In the distance he can hear a stereo and laughter, and closer by, just outside the tent, his son’s voice, his words like stones skipped across the water, such little soft bursts. He’s talking to someone.

  “No, he’s not dead,” Ryan says. “Just tired.”

  “Someone said he was dead.” It’s Trevor.

  “Nope.”

  “You still got that cell phone? Let’s call something.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. I’m starving. Nothing good to eat here.”

  “There’s no one to call,” Ryan says. “This is all there is. Besides, just a few more days left.”

  “I’m never coming back,” Trevor says, his voice mousy and distant. They’re walking away from the tent together.

  Exhausted, Flynn closes his eyes and lets his body sink. He sleeps.

  When he comes to, it’s morning. He unzips the tent door. Pale sunlight slips into the tent. Flynn is still in his swim trunks, though his shoes have been removed and placed under the rain-fly. The entire camp is quiet, and he flips to find Ryan’s owlish eyes on him, hardly blinking. In his arms is Mookie the bear.

  “You missed dinner,” the boy reports.

  “Who’d you eat with?”

  “Trevor.”

  “Sorry I missed it,” he says.

  • • •

  Flynn spends the day in a daze. He digs his emergency smokes out of the glove compartment. The lighter is dead, but in his pocket he discovers the yellow matchbook, the one he took from Ryan on the front lawn. In plain black letters on the cover it says Big Fixin’s, which is a diner they used to go to when Ryan was little. Flynn blows through half a pack on the dining hall porch while Ryan is off at archery and then smokes a few more while Ryan’s at the low-ropes course.

  Aimlessly, Flynn walks the perimeter of camp, exploring its boundaries. He finds a tennis court, cracked and full of puddles. Somewhere high up in the trees he hears bees. A thin path through the woods takes him to the back of the director’s cabin. Flynn smells the cigar smoke before he sees the men on the back deck.

  “Who’s out there?” the camp director yells.

  Flynn emerges from behind the trees with a wave. “It’s me,” he says, “I was just exploring.”

  Bill Tierney is there, along with a few other men. They’re holding glasses with a light brown liquid. Scotch. Flynn can almost taste it.

  “Come on up here,” Bill Tierney says.

  Flynn climbs the steps. He feels like a kid called to the principal’s office.

  Tierney offers him a drink, and Flynn says no, thanks.

  “Come on, just one drink.”

  “I can’t,” Flynn says. “What I mean is, I don’t anymore.”

  “I see, I see,” Tierney says, and brushes a pine needle from his puffy hair. “We were just talking about Vince’s son”—he pats one of the other men on the back—“who’s up for his Second Truth Bead tonight. At the bonfire.”

  “My boy has no idea,” the man says, grinning.

  “This is the last stage,” Tierney says. “Once you get both Truth Beads, you’re a Grasshopper King. A very high honor. How’s your boy doing, Flynn? He enjoying himself?”

  Flynn says that Ryan has made some good friends. That he’s loving it here.

  “They always do,” the camp director says. “My son’s too old to come back now, but I remember the night he got his Second Truth Bead. We were so proud.”

  “Flynn, your son’s starting a little later than most,” Tierney says, “but if he works hard, he might be able to finish.”

  “How old’s your kid?” the director asks.

  “Nine,” Flynn says.

  “Oh,” Tierney says. “For some reason I had it in my head he was seven or eight. Statistically speaking, he may not have enough time to be a King. Not that he should give up. It’s not all about becoming a Grasshopper King.”

  “I’d love to see Ryan get there.”

  “Of course,” Tierney says, grinning. “Anything is possible, I guess.”

  They swirl the ice in their liquor drinks.

  “Hey, now,” the director says to Flynn. “You the one who passed out in the sweat lodge yesterday?”

  Flynn turns red. “That was me.”

  They all take long sips, smiling into their ice cubes. An old Willie Nelson record plays from a speaker propped up in the screen window. Then Bill Tierney turns to the others and says, “All right, fellas, should we get started? You’ll have to forgive us, Flynn, but we have some planning to do for tonight. Logistics and whatnot. We’ll see you there, right?”

  “You will.” He leaves them on the deck and sets off for the dining hall. Inside every group, he decides, there are more groups. Circles within circles, and inside of those, more circles still, all of them infinitely divisible. You could spend your whole life wondering which ones you’re in and which ones you’re not and which ones really want you and which ones are holes that have no bottom.

  • • •

  The bonfire is built in the outdoor amphitheater at the edge of the lake. The logs are stacked two across two, up and up, the kindling stuffed inside the column and doused with kerosene. The fathers cross their legs and swat mosquitoes. The boys fidget and squirm. John Price is there with his son. The camp director stands to the side with Henri, who’s wearing overalls now, his drum put away. The sun sinks behind the pine trees on the opposite bank.

  The ceremony begins with a procession of boys, most of them probably twelve or thirteen years old, gawky and pimpled, moving down the center row, some goofy and others somber. The one in front carries a long torch, rolls of toilet paper jammed on the end of a stick. Another torchbearer approaches in a canoe on the lake, a starlike light and its rippled reflection moving through the darkness toward the assembled. Flynn is reminded of the First Truth. Let the dark burn bright. The boys are forming a semicircle around the unlit bonfire, waiting for the second torchbearer to reach the shore. They all have one Truth Bead on their uniform. Are they thinking about the First Truth too? Is this ceremony designed to invoke it?

  The torches meet at the logs, and the entire structure, almost ten feet tall, bursts into flames, red and blue and yellow. Flynn is five rows back and can feel the blaze. Next to him, his son’s face shines too. But he’s not looking at the flames. He’s looking up at Flynn.

  “Can you see okay? What do you think?”

  The boy says it’s interesting.

  The camp director opens a notebook. He tosses some grass into the fire, and the smoke curls around him. His voice is hoarse and thin.

  “Grasshoppers feast on the grass,” he reads, “and so do the flames. Grasshoppers are virtuous and vibrant, resourceful and resilient, patient and peaceful, creative and kind. These are the qualities we, this community, value most.
When the first grasshopper molted and shook the morning dew from his new wings, the world marveled at this development. The world took notice. Tonight, some of you have sprouted wings, and we are here to marvel at your achievements, to take notice, to bask in your light. Tonight, we are awarding ten boys with their Second Truth Bead.”

  One by one, the director names the boys in the semicircle around the bonfire, and, one by one, those boys step forward with unusually good posture. A red bead is placed in ten sweaty palms. The boys are all smiles as they’re led to the other side of the fire, away from the audience, and the director whispers something in each of their ears, one by one.

  “They’re learning the Second Truth,” Flynn tells Ryan.

  “What’s the Second Truth?”

  “Only Grasshopper Kings are supposed to know,” Flynn says. He puts his arm around his son, who will never be a Grasshopper King. One day he’ll have to explain to his son how most games are rigged, and how sometimes it’s best not to play at all.

  After the ceremony, Trevor comes over with a Ziploc bag full of marshmallows and a coat hanger for Ryan. Flynn overhears Trevor telling Ryan how his uncle once branded himself with a red-hot hanger.

  “Then your uncle’s an idiot,” Flynn interrupts.

  “My uncle is a military general,” Trevor says.

  Flynn grabs their coat hangers and then rummages in the brush for two sticks. He gives those to the boys, and they run off to the fire. Flynn walks over to John Price, who stands next to his son. The son has a chin like his father’s, one that slopes down to his chest in a gentle, fleshy curve.

  “He did it,” John Price reports. “He got that Second Truth.”

  “Congratulations,” Flynn says. “You must be proud.”

  “Oh, of course. And maybe now I can get that next Truth out of him. I’ll let you know what I find out. Say, you feeling better after the sweat lodge? I heard you passed out? That true?”

  “Didn’t drink enough beforehand,” Flynn says.

  “Yep, number-one hippie rule. Hydrate before going on your vision quest. Listen, you’ll have to excuse me, Flynn. Apparently, all the Grasshopper Kings and their dads are supposed to go to some kind of function now at the director’s cabin. Probably a cake-and-punch thing.”