Before Familiar Woods

by Ian Pisarcik

  As he studied the blue paint—sections of which were already beginning to dry—he heard footsteps over the floor above him. He looked toward the ceiling at the sheets of plywood. The footsteps stopped and then started again. He waited to hear the toilet flush, and when it didn’t he figured he ought to go upstairs and check on his boy. Find out what he was doing walking around in the middle of the night. Maybe he was hungry. Milk hoped he was. His plan was to get some meat on the boy’s bones, and the best time to eat when a boy’s trying to bulk up is late at night when he’s just going to lay there in bed with the food sitting in his belly.

  Milk went up the steps and pushed open the metal door and stepped into the cold. Moonlight blanketed the pavement. He patted his shirt pocket but must have left his cigarettes inside the duplex. He went around the side of the building and pulled open the front door and entered the house and saw the light from where the boy slept spilling out on the hallway floor. His cigarettes were on the kitchen table, but he left them there and went down the narrow hallway toward the bedroom.

  He found his boy naked from the toes up stuffing his sheets behind his headboard. “What the hell are you doing?”

  The boy stopped. “Nothing.”

  “It ain’t nothing. You’re doing something. It’s what I can’t figure out.”

  The boy remained facing the bed, his pale butt like a dried stone on a riverbed.

  “Well?”

  “Nothing.”

  “We already been down that road.”

  “I had an accident.”

  “What kind of accident?”

  His boy was quiet, and then it hit Milk. The smell of piss. “Are you kidding me?” Milk raised the crook of his arm to cover his nose. “Why didn’t you use the bathroom?”

  “I didn’t wake up.”

  Milk lowered his hand. “I gotta potty-train you too now. Is that it?”

  “No.”

  “No? ’Cause it looks to me like you pissed your bed. Is that something someone does if they’re potty-trained?”

  The boy continued to stare at the bed.

  “You got clothes at least, don’t you?”

  The boy stood still.

  “Go on,” Milk said. “Take something from the drawer there. Hurry up.”

  Milk felt his muscles tighten. There were little boys in Iraq that would piss themselves sometimes when you cleared a school or a house. You told them you weren’t going to hurt them, but they just yelled and cried and yelled some more and then they pissed themselves. The soldiers called them mushrooms—as in, we got two mushrooms over here—because the piss would start out small and then expand across their pants like a mushroom cloud. Milk watched his boy get dressed. “What were you planning on doing with those sheets?”

  The boy’s shirt was on inside out and his eyes were red. “I don’t know.”

  “Wait here,” Milk said. He went to the kitchen and removed a trash bag from the cupboard. “Put them in here,” he said. “Then put the bag outside. In the morning we’ll take it to the laundry. There ain’t nothing we can do about it tonight.” The boy took the plastic bag from Milk, and Milk stood in the doorway. “You know I’m working my ass off for you down there, don’t you? Or don’t you have any idea about that?” He gripped the door frame. “Getting that workshop set up for you so you won’t be so helpless the rest of your life. And you’re up here pissing your sheets.” Milk patted his shirt again and then remembered the cigarettes were on the table. “I mean, goddammit. Is helpless what you want to be?”

  RUTH FENN

  In the morning Ruth walked to the front of the house where the sunlight poured in through the double-paned windows and pulled open the door. She stood there with her face cold, looking at Cecil, who stood on her front porch looking about the same as he always did, save for his right leg being a little thicker where she suspected a bandage was taped underneath his blue jeans.

  “I owe you an apology,” Ruth said. “I tried calling.”

  “Never mind that.”

  Cecil’s truck was parked in the middle of the gravel drive. The plow light was attached to the top of the cab.

  “What is it?” Ruth asked.

  “I found something.”

  “Found what?”

  “I’ll take you out there.”

  “Is it Elam?”

  “It ain’t Elam.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  Ruth looked out at the truck again.

  “Come on,” Cecil said.

  “Have you told anyone?”

  Cecil shook his head.

  Ruth stood in the doorway for another moment. “I’ll get my coat.”

  * * *

  THE MORNING WAS bright and clear. Cecil drove slowly and winced a little every time he had to push down on the brake or the gas.

  “I’m sorry about your leg.”

  “You already said that.”

  “It seems like it might be worth two apologies.”

  “It wasn’t you who stuck me in the leg with a six-inch buck knife.”

  “I pretty well brung it on, though.”

  “Well, you pissed off some cowhead son of a bitch—but that ain’t really all that hard.”

  Ruth removed her glasses and took the handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her eyes.

  “Those eyes don’t seem to have gotten any better.”

  Ruth settled herself and put her glasses back on. “Not without surgery.”

  “Surgery ain’t a cheap-sounding word.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s an expensive-sounding word.” Ruth looked out the window at the passing trees and the partial stone walls and the leaves blown to the side of the road. “I think Horace was using again.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I just got a feeling.”

  Cecil shifted the truck into second gear as they turned around a sharp corner and started up the hill past a broken-down barn.

  “You don’t seem surprised.”

  Cecil shrugged. “Whole town’s using. You can’t walk around the Whistler without stepping on plastic bags. Nobody’s even careful about it anymore.”

  “You know where he kept it?”

  “Where he kept what?”

  “What he was using. I don’t imagine he left it out in the open for Della to find.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know nothing about that. It wouldn’t be like Della to say nothing anyway. She’d just close her eyes and pray about it would be my guess.”

  Ruth took off her glasses and rested them on her lap. “I broke into his bus a couple days back.”

  Cecil turned to Ruth.

  “I know it. But I found a hole inside.”

  “A hole?”

  “Went straight through the floorboards and led to another hole in the ground. That one about twelve feet deep.”

  “What the hell would he need a hole like that for?”

  “Keep his heroin.”

  Cecil shook his head. “That’s like storing an ice cube in a freezer room. Besides, it’s not something you just hold on to.”

  “That’s what I thought at first. But then I got to thinking it might not be only his heroin.”

  Cecil turned to Ruth and then back to the road. “You think he was selling?”

  “Would it surprise you?”

  “I don’t know that it would surprise me. I don’t know that I would believe it either.”

  “What about Elam?”

  “What about him?”

  “Do you think he could be involved? Do you think Horace and him could be working something together?”

  Cecil shook his head. “No. Not Elam. Come on. You know that, Ruth.”

  A blue truck was parked on the side of the road above the brook. A man in brown waders leaned over the side and lifted a tackle box from the bed. Ruth watched him until she saw his heavily bearded face and then turned away.

  “If Horace were, though. If he were selling, I suppose he’d be w
orking with the guys at the motel. And I suppose that hole would be as good a place as any to hide what they were selling.”

  “I suppose,” Cecil said. “But I just can’t see it.” He lit a cigarette and kept his other hand tight on the steering wheel. The radio went to a commercial, and it was only then Ruth realized the radio had been on at all. “High winds been coming down from the northeast,” Cecil said. “Power outages being reported up in Mudhill—they’re saying three feet of snow in North Falls by tomorrow night.”

  The truck rattled over the frost heaves. They passed a hobby farm where behind a split-rail fence a group of cattle huddled in a circle to keep warm. A small cluster of sumac hung over the road. The wind-blown leaves caught in the thin branches. Ruth straightened her back a little. “Are you really gonna keep driving like this and not tell me where we’re headed?”

  “We’re just coming up on it here.”

  Cecil followed the road round a bend marked by a yellow sign with an arrow nailed to the trunk of a tree. He slowed the truck and pulled into a dirt drive and came to a stop in front of a wooden gate that marked one of the paths into the forest.

  “I saw the tracks from the road.” Cecil let the engine run and pointed to a plot of tall weeds under a canopy of hardwoods about twenty feet from the gate.

  The truck wasn’t visible from the road, but if you were looking in the right direction, if you had someone pointing it out for you, it wasn’t all that hard to find. Ruth grabbed the door handle.

  “Hold on,” Cecil said. “It might not even be Elam who left it here.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It just means we don’t know what we’re looking at.”

  Ruth opened the door. She pushed through weeds and swiped away low-lying branches. She ducked under the long limb of a maple, and when she reached the truck she pulled open the driver’s side door.

  The bench seat had three spots of blood spreading out like the seat had begun to rust. There was blood on the steering wheel and another spot of blood on the door handle.

  Cecil came up next to Ruth and stood looking into the truck. “Came upon it late yesterday. I spent most of the night searching the woods. I wanted to see if there was somebody needing help before I came for you.”

  “Or a body.”

  Cecil spat onto the ground. “Or a body.”

  There was some dirt and bits of gravel and a paper coffee cup on the floor of the truck next to a couple of red ratchet straps, but other than that the truck looked empty. “What is this, then?” Ruth asked. “What the hell is this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Ruth reached into the truck and pulled open the glove box. An empty pack of cigarettes and registration papers spotted with oil. She closed the glove box and faced Cecil. “And you still don’t think they were involved in something?”

  “It might not even be Elam. Could be somebody stole the truck.”

  “And then what? Where does that leave my husband?” Ruth shut the door. She looked into the thick stands of maple and beech. “It was dark,” she said. “When you looked?”

  Cecil nodded. “About one in the morning.”

  “Maybe you missed something.”

  “It’s a lot of woods.”

  “I’ll look again.”

  “Ruth.”

  “You don’t need to help. You’ve done plenty.”

  “What about calling Leo?”

  Ruth wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “I got somewhere I want to look first.”

  “I already checked where they found your boy, Ruth. There ain’t nothing there.”

  “I’ll check again.”

  “Fine,” Cecil said. “I’ll call Carl and Eddie, at least. We’ll start a few miles out and work our way back.” He started for his truck and then turned back. “Don’t get too far out there, Ruth. You can maybe make three or four miles and still get back. The temperature’s going to drop. Besides.” Cecil looked toward Elam’s truck and shook his head. “You just got to be careful.”

  * * *

  THE GREEN MOUNTAIN National Forest stretched more than four hundred thousand acres. Some of it was marsh and pond. But the wilderness that immediately surrounded North Falls was thick forest. Third-growth beech and ash and birch and maple. Steep hills and a massive ridgeline that cut through the wilderness like an artery delivering blood to the rest of the forest. Ruth could see a narrow shaft of light coming through the open canopy and shining down on a skid trail where several large stones were sprawled across the path.

  She swatted branches like steel tines from her face and headed deeper into the woods. The ground was hard and uneven. Trees had fallen every which way—deadfall from the storms the previous winter. She came upon the remnants of a crumbled stone wall and continued up the incline to where the ground leveled. She breathed heavily and looked back in the direction of the truck to see that she’d only gone a few hundred paces.

  When they found Mathew, they had entered the forest from the Sandy Pond entrance about a half mile up the road from where the truck was. So while Ruth didn’t know the woods well, she knew enough to know that the stream was about a half mile west of where she stood, and if she followed it for another mile or so north she would come to the spot where they’d found her boy. She stood listening but couldn’t hear the sound of running water. She was too far. She removed her glasses and wiped her eyes and headed north.

  * * *

  HER FIRST THOUGHT had been that Mathew and William were murdered. It was only later that she wondered why she hadn’t thought of an animal. The boys were alone in a tent in the middle of the woods, covered in bite marks deep enough to pierce their skin. There were bears around in the summer, and coyotes. Some people had even been reporting seeing catamounts. A week earlier Ruth had read about a high school girl who was jogging down Haystack Road when she saw one in a tree, and so the story should have been fresh in her mind. But she thought first of murder—of some hermit whose quiet might have been disturbed by the boys.

  The other thing that came to her was an image. It came in a flash but didn’t clear up until several days later. A group of children standing in a circle in the woods. Pale and faceless as little moons. They were looking down at something, and Ruth came to believe it was her boy. She didn’t believe in things not born from this world, but she wanted to believe those children existed somewhere and that they were helping Mathew.

  The flurries started to fall, and the sky turned the color of dusted stone. Ruth balled her fingers and tucked them inside the sleeves of her coat. She kept her eyes on the ground and navigated between tall trees, but all she saw were rocks and leaves and pockets of untouched snow.

  The woods seemed to insulate her from the world. There were sounds, but they weren’t the sounds of human life. She thought of her husband visiting the spot where their boy was found for some unforeseeable reason, and if he was there and unharmed, there would be hell to pay. Hell to pay for scaring her and for making her walk these same woods looking for another body.

  She pushed through a tangle of low branches, and when she was clear of them she could see the stream in the distance. She looked north but could not yet see the ridge or the fallen tree.

  She continued along the stream at a steady pace and then slowed, not sure that she wanted to get where she was going. She took to noticing things she hadn’t the first time around. Ferns protected by big hemlocks. Steep banks carved out by water. An old pine growing on a rock, its roots wrapped around the stone like an eagle’s claw.

  She continued for some distance before spotting the downed red maple that stretched from the top of the ridge to the stream. A section of the tree had split and was near hollow inside, and there was fungus growing along the hollow parts. She was exhausted, but she climbed the stony ridge and stood in the clearing where the tent had been. There was nothing there now. She scanned the surrounding woods and closed her eyes and pictured Mathew.

  She had come to understand that Mathew and William loved
one another. Whether they were lovers exactly didn’t seem to matter. She understood that they had cared for one another and that they had found comfort in one another. It brought her some peace now, but for three years she had carried the guilt of having turned from it. She had treated her son like a tanager that she could hear but not see. Content to know he was there but afraid to flush him out from the thick foliage where his color might be glimpsed.

  She told herself that she had only been worried about him. And that was partially true. From early in his life, she had been scared to death of what the world might do to a boy like Mathew. But her fear had kept her from accepting him. And it seemed so foolish now. Not to embrace her own child. She wished she could tell him she was wrong. She hated that he might have died feeling unwelcome. As though he had carried inside him a blinding light that made people turn away.

  Ruth heard footsteps over the snow. She opened her eyes. The wind swelled and the pines whistled and she lost the sound. She held her breath, but it was gone.

  The sky seemed to be coming down on her. The flurries piled on her shoulders and clung to her hair. She heard footsteps again. The sound of crunching leaves. She looked around the woods. Nothing but tall trees. Some of them almost two hundred years old. Her eyes moved from tree to tree. No telling what they had seen. But none of them were talking. She couldn’t hear a damn thing.

  RUTH FENN

  Ruth returned to Elam’s truck out of breath. She stood for a moment with her hands on her hips—letting her heart slow—and then reached under the trailer hitch and pulled out a small plastic box. She removed the spare key and went to return the box but hesitated when she caught a glimpse of the aluminum toolbox mounted in the bed.

  The toolbox was unlocked. The hasp was closed and the padlock hung from the loop, but the shackle was slightly uneven with the body. It wasn’t like Elam to leave it unlocked, not unless he had opened it recently and the padlock had frozen to the point he couldn’t get it closed again.