Stranger in the Woods

by Geof Johnson

  “Grandpa?” Zach said. “How do find the leak?”

  “I’m gonna eyeball it, first, and see if there’s an obvious hole. This tire is pretty beat up, so there might be one in the tube. If I can’t find one, I’ll pump it up and hold it under some water. I got a big pan in the garage for that.”

  “What does that do?”

  “If there’s a pin hole, you’ll see bubbles coming from it where it’s under the water.”

  “That’s smart,” Justin said.

  “If it’s just a little hole, I might be able to patch it. I got an old kit around here somewhere, if the cement is still good.”

  “You fix all kinds of stuff, don’t you?” Jason said. “Mama said you used to have a TV repair shop a while back.”

  “Yep. Right after the mill closed. I was head of the maintenance crew there. But it shut down, so I opened a little place where I fixed TVs, VCRs, stereos, you name it. I had to close it because nobody gets those repaired anymore, they just buy new ones.”

  “That seems wasteful,” Zach said.

  “I thought so too, but that’s life. Now I do odd jobs.”

  “Mama said she’s gonna hire you real soon,” Jason said, “to fix the toilet in our back bathroom, soon as she’s got the money.”

  “Tell her I’m ready when she is. I’ll give her the Friends and Family discount.” He gave Jason a sly smile.

  Grandpa pulled the tire completely off, exposing the tube, which he inspected closely, rolling it between his fingers. He stopped and shook his head. “This can’t be fixed.” He pointed to a gash in the rubber. “See? Can’t patch that. What have you guys been riding over, glass?”

  Jason nodded as if he expected it. “It happened when we were at the old mill. There’s lots of junk around.”

  “You know you’re not supposed to be over there, don’t you? You could get hurt.”

  “I told them,” Shelby said, the first words she’d uttered in a while. “Mama said not to.”

  “Everybody does it,” Justin said. “There’s not much to do around here.”

  “I know.” Grandpa said. “Do you ever go swimming in the river?”

  “Used to,” Jason said, “but it’s too far to go without a bike, and Mama’s too busy to take us.”

  “Maybe you’ll take Zach over there after we fix your bikes. He might like to see it.”

  “You think Mom will let me go?” Zach said, and instantly regretted it. They’ll think I’m a baby for asking that.

  “She might. She used to go when she was your age.” He turned to Justin. “Do you go to where the old railroad bridge used to be?”

  “Yes sir. It’s the best spot. It’s fun to jump off the trestle supports.”

  “You know not to do that head first, right? You don’t want to get hurt like that kid last summer.”

  “What happened?” Zach looked at Justin.

  “This guy named Paul Stackhouse dove in and hit his head, and now he’s paralyzed.”

  Zach felt a sickening feeling flood his stomach. “I don’t know if I want to do that, Grandpa.”

  “As long as you go feet first you’ll be fine. We’ve had plenty of rain lately, too, so the water level is high. Last summer was really dry, and it was running low. It’s not a very big river anyway, and you can tell when there’s not enough water.”

  “But is it safe? Mom won’t let me go if it’s not.”

  “I’ll talk to her. Don’t worry about it.” He gestured at Justin. “Let’s check your bike.”

  He repeated the procedure on the other boy’s wheel, and got the same verdict. “Both you guys need new tubes.”

  “Are they expensive?” Jason asked.

  “Probably around ten or twelve bucks for the two of them.”

  “We don’t have no money.”

  There was a long, uneasy pause before Zach said, “I’ll loan you the money. I can use my allowance. I’ve been saving a little, lately. You can pay me back later.”

  “Don’t see how. We don’t get no allowance or nothin’.”

  Zach’s mind began to race as he tried to think of a solution. “Maybe you can help me and my mom at my house. She’s making me help fix it up, and there are a zillion things to do. It’s hard.”

  Grandpa raised his eyebrows. “You sure you want to give ’em the money?”

  “I want to go to the river.”

  “We can’t get to the bike shop, Mr. Ogletree,” Jason said.

  “We’ll go in my truck. You guys can pile in the back and Zach can ride up front with me.”

  “I want to ride in the back,” Zach said.

  “All right.” Grandpa said. “You boys sit in the back and Shelby can ride up front with me. Been a long time since I had a pretty girl ride with me, anyway.”

  Shelby’s face turned bright red while her brothers snickered. Pretty? Zach thought. She’s scrawny and has frizzy hair and glasses.

  Grandpa winked at him again and said, “Zach, go get your money and tell your mother where you’re going.”

  The short trip to the bike shop was rough but fun. Zach rode in the bed of the old pickup truck with the other two boys, and every bump in the road bounced them off their butts and rattled their bones, and the wind blasted their hair and their faces so that they had to squint their eyes to tiny slits. They smiled the whole way.

  Their destination was at the edge of the shopping district in the center of town — downtown, as the twins called it — in a tiny building tucked next to the No Name Deli and Restaurant. Inside, the shop was densely packed with merchandise, and it was air-conditoned, smelling strongly of rubber and new things. Zach and the other kids marveled at the amazing bikes that sat in tight rows inside, and they gawked at the prices — one particularly exotic machine was $2,900 — and they each vowed to have one just like it if they ever got rich.

  They returned to Grandpa’s house with the new tubes and he fixed the wounded bikes quickly. When Grandpa finished the second one, he set the pump aside and squeezed the tire with his thumb and forefinger. “That should do it. Good as new. You guys are ready to roll.” He stood up straight with a wince. “Let’s go talk your mom into letting you go to the river, Zach.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Liz said in a low voice and cast a glance at the three Ross kids, who waited at the bottom of the porch steps with their bikes while she stood with her father and Zach by the front door.

  “It’s safe enough,” her father said. “The water level’s good right now.”

  “But they’ll want to jump off the old trestle supports.”

  “You did it when you were their age, as I remember.”

  “But that was different.”

  “Why?” Zach said.

  “Because…oh…I don’t know.”

  “’Cause you think I’m a baby.”

  “No, it’s just….” You’re my baby, she wanted to say. My only child. “I just worry. Besides, it’s almost lunch.”

  “Please, Mom?”

  She could tell by the earnest look in his eyes that this was important to him. If she said no, he’d be humiliated in front of these new kids, and it would be a stain on their potential friendship. “Oh, all right, but only if I go, too.” Zach started to complain but she silenced him quickly. “Just this once, so I can make sure it’s okay.”

  “We can’t all fit in your car.”

  “Let them ride their bikes, Liz,” Grandpa said, “and you and I can follow them in my truck. That way I can bring Beepee. I haven’t been down there in a long time, anyway. Might be kinda fun. We could have lunch there on the bank.” He smiled. “A picnic, just like old times.”

  “Um….” She was ready to protest, but after thinking it over quickly, decided that she might enjoy it. It was a warm June day, perfect for swimming, and it would be nice to take a break from the hard work of fixing up the house. She turned to the kids standing below and said, “Would you like for me to make some sandwiches and bring them? It’ll have to be peanut butter.
That’s about all we have, right now.”

  Their expressions dulled immediately and Justin said, “That’s all right, thanks. We eat those every day.”

  “That’s all we eat,” Jason said with a sour frown. “We have to make our own lunch.”

  She rubbed her chin with one hand while she thought of other options. “I can make tuna salad sandwiches. I’ve got a couple cans of tuna fish, I think.”

  “We don’t like salad,” Justin said.

  Jason poked his brother on the shoulder. “It’s not that kind of salad, doofus. It’s not lettuce and stuff, it’s good.” He looked up at Liz and said, “We’d all like one, please.”

  “I’ll slice some fruit, too. But we can’t stay long. I promised Zach I’d take him to the library.”

  “The library?” Justin twisted up one side of his mouth.

  “Do you ever go?”

  “Only if we have to do something on the Internet for school. We don’t have it at our house.”

  “All right, then,” Grandpa said. “You guys go home and get your bathing suits and hurry back. Then you can ride your bikes with Zach to the river and we’ll follow you.”

  Zach rode with the three kids through town, pedaling furiously to keep up. Jason led the way, mostly, with Justin challenging him as if it were a race, and Shelby and Zach doing their best to stay close. “Shelby, do they always ride like this?” Zach said in between gulping breaths as they sped through the streets.

  “They’re showing off right now.”

  They passed the little bike shop and the No Name Deli as they neared the tiny downtown area, where no building was taller than two stories. A traffic light loomed ahead, changing from green to yellow. Jason and Justin dashed through it, and Zach and Shelby were forced to stop and wait for a line of cars to go across.

  Zach looked over his shoulder and saw his grandfather’s truck slow down at a reasonable distance behind them, and Zach was grateful. He doesn’t want to embarrass me. Zach turned to Shelby, who sat on her bike beside him with one foot on the pavement and the other on her pedal. “So, if your mom works all the time and your dad’s in prison, who takes care of you?”

  “We do it ourselves, mostly.”

  “Why’s your dad in prison?”

  Shelby’s face stiffened and he regretted asking the question. “Never mind. Forget I asked.”

  “It was for growing pot,” she said. “Out in the national forest. It wasn’t that much, and he was mostly doing it to help out his younger brother, Uncle Marty, who was gonna sell it, but my dad took all the blame when they got caught.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause Uncle Marty had been busted before. He woulda gone to prison for a long time, so Daddy took the blame, but he got ten years.”

  “Ten years! No way. You gotta be without your dad that whole time?”

  “We go to visit him about once a month in Asheville. That’s where the prison is. I hate it.”

  “I would too.”

  “How did your daddy die?” she said.

  “He, uh…he killed himself.” Zach heard her gasp and he added, “With a gun. In the bathroom.”

  “Oh, God. I’m sorry.”

  “Me too.” His gaze fell to the pavement and he didn’t notice when the light changed. Shelby got his attention and they rode on.

  Liz sat with her father on a grassy spot in the shade by the river. They were on an old quilt, with a picnic basket between them, loaded with sandwiches and crackers and sliced apples. Beepee ran up and down the bank, barking at the kids and making occasional half-hearted forays into the water before retreating to dry land.

  It hasn’t changed much out here, she thought as she regarded the place where she’d spent summer afternoons when she was young. Even though the river was deeper due to the early summer rains, it was barely 100 feet across. The three old block-and-concrete trestle supports were still there, standing like ancient gray monuments to past childhoods. Trees lined both banks, lush and green with growth, and birds flitted among the branches like fragments of melodies.

  In her mind she could see herself and her friends swimming there. We had so much fun. She remembered floating on a cheap, candy-colored inflatable air mattress, one hand holding on to a root or an exposed boulder to keep from drifting downstream. Or lying on the bank and soaking up the sun, gossiping with the girls around her and listening to music on a portable radio. Swinging out over the water on the long rope that hung from a high branch, shrieking and dropping in like kamikazes.

  She looked up at the familiar tree to see that the rope was no longer there. Only a frayed portion remained dangling from a limb above. Someone had tied a remnant of it to the top of one of the trestle supports, the middle one in the deepest part of the river, to make it easier to climb up there.

  Now the water was full of a new generation, her son and three strangers. All of the kids were in it except for Justin. He’s the one with the scar, she reminded herself. He stood on the middle trestle support, dripping wet in his cutoff jeans, and he leaned forward as if he were going to dive in headfirst.

  “No!” Shelby screamed from below. “You’ll get paralyzed.”

  Justin grinned at her and leaned farther and she screamed again, and Liz started to rise and yell Stop! but he leaped out and landed feet first with a terrific splash.

  Her father chuckled and said, “I think those boys like to terrorize their sister.”

  “Why does she put up with them,” Liz said.

  “She probably doesn’t have any other friends to hang out with.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of her dad, I guess. The other parents in their neighborhood have probably told their children to avoid these kids.”

  “Aw, that’s terrible. It’s not their fault their dad is a criminal.”

  “No, and he’s not such a bad fellow, either. I knew him a little bit before he got locked up. But you know how people are.”

  “It doesn’t seem fair.” She studied Shelby for a moment. She’d left her glasses on the bank, and her frizzy hair was slicked straight with water. Her features were delicate, almost angelic. She’s kind of pretty, in a way. She just needs to gain a little weight. “Shelby sure is skinny.”

  “I’m sure that’s why she doesn’t want to take off her T-shirt around Zach. I bet she’s embarrassed.”

  “She’s probably embarrassed by that bathing suit. It’s too small, and the little bit of it I can see looks faded. She needs a new one.”

  Jason cupped his hand in the water and splashed water toward Shelby, and she squealed and shielded her face with both arms.

  “Reminds me of you and your brother,” Liz’s father said.

  “Yes. I remember.” She watched as Zach grabbed the short, thick rope that was tied to the top of the trestle support and began pulling himself up, hand over hand, with the bottoms of his feet pushing against the stained gray concrete, just as Justin had minutes earlier. “Zach,” she called, “what do you think you’re doing?” He ignored her, and when he reached the top, he hoisted himself upright. His back was to her. “Zach, don’t you dare!”

  He jumped off, pulled his legs up to his chest, and cannonballed into the river, displacing a geyser of water onto the kids around him. Her heart stopped until he resurfaced with a shake of his head.

  “Liz,” her father said, “I wish you wouldn’t do that in front of those other kids.”

  She turned to face him, “And I wish you wouldn’t try to tell me how to raise my son!” His brow fell and she regretted sounding so harsh. “I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to snap. It’s just…I’m under a lot of strain right now and he scared me.” She glanced at the three strangers around Zach. “And I don’t know if I even want him to be friends with them.”

  “Why not? They’re not bad. They’re pretty polite. They say yes ma’am and no sir, and please and thank you. Their grammar’s terrible, and I know you hate that, but otherwise they’re decent folk. Besides, there aren’t a lot of other kids a
round for Zach to hang out with, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “We do live an old neighborhood, don’t we? But I can’t help that. Maybe he’ll make some other friends when school starts.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt him to have a few allies before he gets there. School can be rough on new kids. I have a feeling that these three would help him through that.”

  She studied Jason and Justin for a moment. They were standing waist-deep in the water, splashing each other savagely in a battle of titanic proportions. She said, “I guess I’d rather have them on Zach’s side than against him.”

  * * *

  The talk at dinner that night was all about the events of the day.

  “So, Zach,” Grandpa said as he spread butter on a roll, sitting at his regular spot at the end of the table in the kitchen. “What did you think of the river?”

  “It was great! Can I go back tomorrow?”

  “It’s going to storm in the afternoon.”

  Zach’s mother paused with her fork hovering over plate. “I hope it doesn’t rain in the morning. We’re supposed to get the house pressure washed. Your friend is still coming, I hope.”

  “Frank will be here,” Grandpa said. “Don’t worry.”

  “Then I need to get some paint for the front porch railing. Do you think the hardware store will have some in stock?”

  “As long as you don’t get anything too exotic. It’s not a big store.”

  “It’s just green paint. I need to get a few other things, too, like a plastic bucket and drop cloths and brushes.”

  “You should get those at the Val-U-Mart. They’ll be a lot cheaper.”

  She turned to Zach. “I’ll need your help with the painting.”

  “Do I have to? I don’t know how to paint.”

  “Yes, you have to help, and it’s not hard. It’s time you learned how.”

  “Are you doing it the day after tomorrow?” Grandpa said. “That’s when I was planning to trim the shrubs in your backyard because I’m off that day. I can’t do it alone. There are too many of them and they’re really overgrown. Even with Zach helping, it’ll take more than one day.”