Stranger in the Woods

by Geof Johnson

  “Yes.” They waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. Instead, he pointed at them one at a time and said, “You are Jason, Justin, and Shelby.” When his gaze reached Zach, a puzzled look crossed his features. “You are new to this group.”

  Zach swallowed and managed to croak, “I’m…I’m Zach. Zach Webster.”

  Bo nodded again, his large eyes locked on Zach’s. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you.”

  Finally? Zach felt his brow crease.

  “Don’t forget Beepee,” Shelby said and put her small hand on the dog’s back.

  “Of course.” He nodded at Beepee, too. “It is a pleasure to meet you, too.”

  “How do you know our names?” Jason said.

  “I have overheard you in the forest many times.”

  “Overheard?” Jason’s jaw hardened. “You been spyin’ on us?”

  Bo looked at his knees and touched his temple with one fingertip while his face became blank, then he lifted his head. “I know what that means. I have only been observing you.”

  “What’s the difference? Observin’, spyin’, they’re all the same.”

  “It is a difference of implication. Spying suggests a distrustful purpose. My intentions were benign.”

  Zach had to think hard to follow the giant’s conversation. He spoke like Zach imagined a college professor would, using words that Zach was unfamiliar with. He could almost hear his mother, then. Get the dictionary and look them up, Zach!

  “But….” Justin held his hand out with one finger raised, then shook it while he talked. “How could you hear us? We never saw you anywhere.”

  “You cannot see me in the forest unless I wish you to, and it is impossible not to hear you. You are nearly as loud as the thunder, sometimes.”

  Zach grunted a laugh and the faces of the brothers relaxed into surprised smiles. Bo’s face remained placid, as if unaware of his joke or intentionally deadpan.

  Beepee barked once and pulled forward on the leash, which Shelby still held tightly. “I think Beepee wants to meet you,” Shelby said.

  Bo gestured and Shelby released the dog. Beepee leaped to Bo and rubbed against his long shins while he stroked her head with one hand. “I do not have much experience with these animals.”

  “Beepee doesn’t seem to care,” Zach said.

  Shelby leaned toward him and widened her eyes. “Mr. Bo, are you…are you an elf?”

  Both of her brothers groaned at the same time, and Zach palmed his face and shook his head. Bo said, “Are you referring to the mythical supernatural being, found in some tales of fantasy?”

  “I guess. You seem like one, to me.”

  “Do you know many elves?”

  “Well, no, not really. I guess you’d be the first one.”

  “I am not an elf.”

  “What are you, then?”

  “I am a person.”

  “No, I mean, like, what race are you?”

  Both of her brothers were giving her angry looks by this time, and Zach could almost hear them wishing for her to shut up.

  “You cannot pronounce the name of my race, but translated to your language, it means The People.”

  “But we’re people, too, and you’re different from us. Your eyes and ears and stuff.”

  His features became unreadable again and he didn’t answer, and Zach got the sense that he was holding something back.

  “Are you an Indian?” Justin asked.

  “If you mean a Native American or an Aboriginal, then no, I am not, though I used to be friends with one, long ago when I first arrived in this forest.”

  “When was that?” Zach said.

  “Forty-four years and fifty-one days.”

  “Forty-four years? How old are you?”

  “By your standards, I believe that I am over sixty-two years old.”

  “No way! You look like you’re only about twenty, to me. You don’t have any wrinkles on your face or anything.”

  “I have no control over that, but I am not twenty years old.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Jason said with a deep frown. “You can’t be sixty-two.”

  “My people live a long time, relative to your lifespan.”

  “How long?” Justin said. “Over a hundred?”

  Bo took a long breath and seemed to be carefully considering what to say. “It is much longer than what you would expect.”

  Zach noticed a pattern with some of the strange man’s answers. Either they were vague or they didn’t come at all. Zach wondered if he was hiding something or unsure whether Zach and his friends would understand. Zach chose to believe the latter.

  Thunder boomed again, rattling the windows, and Beepee trembled until Bo rested his hand on her again. She instantly became calm, surprisingly so.

  Justin pointed a stiff finger at Bo. “How did you do that? And how did you know that it was going to rain when there weren’t any storm clouds around?”

  Bo didn’t answer. His expression remained blank.

  “And how did you do that thing with your footprints in the sand?” Jason said. “They disappeared and mine didn’t, even though they were in the sand, just like yours. Almost the same spot.”

  “No one can track me unless I choose to let them.”

  “But nobody was tracking us, were they?”

  “Not this time. Some have tried to track me before, though.”

  Jason and Justin exchanged quick looks, and Zach knew what they were thinking. Uncle Marty.

  “So,” the giant continued, “out of habit, I remove any sign of my passing.”

  “But how?” Zach said.

  “It is not hard.”

  “Can you teach us?”

  “I have tried to teach the skill before to a couple of people, without success, though they were much older. The young learn things that the old cannot.”

  “Is it magic?” Shelby said.

  “Aw, Shelby,” Justin groaned again. “Will you stop with that?”

  “No.” She pinched up her mouth. “I think he has magic, and you do, too, but you’re too chicken to ask.”

  Bo looked at Shelby for a few heartbeats before saying, “There is no such thing as magic.”

  “Yes there is!” She nodded firmly. “And you can do things regular people can’t. You can disappear without a—”

  “There is no such thing as magic!” he said with more force, as if to shut down the topic completely. The room became silent again for several painful seconds, while Zach and his friends glanced at each other with uneasy faces. Zach felt the urge to squirm again.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Bo.” Shelby’s chin fell. “I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

  “I am not angry.”

  “Yes you are,” she said quietly.

  “I would not be angry with you. I am glad that you are here. Some of your questions are difficult for me to answer. I am….” He looked at the far wall and put one big hand to the side of his head before turning back to them. “I am awkward around others. I have always been that way, even before I came here. You could say that I am lacking in social graces.”

  Justin grinned. “Then you fit right in with us.”

  Everyone laughed, even Bo, and the tension in the room evaporated. Bo pointed at the scar over Justin’s eyebrow and said, “You and your brother are identical except for that. Was that from an injury? What caused it?”

  Justin jerked one thumb toward Jason, sitting next to him on the end of the bench. “He did. He causes most of ’em.”

  “You compete with your siblings. That is natural. I competed with mine when I was young.”

  Zach tried to picture Bo as a kid, gangly with unruly white-blond hair and a Band-Aid on one dirty knee. I bet he was still big.

  “They fight all the time.” Shelby gestured toward the twins. “There’s something wrong with them.”

  Bo tightened his mouth and Zach thought he saw a smile stretching his lips. Bo said, “You are their sister, I can tell. You are at a disadvantage
because of their natural alliance. You must form alliances of your own to counter that.”

  He turned his gaze to Zach, who shook his head. “Don’t look at me. I’m not…I mean…I’m not forming alliances with anybody. I’m just their friend. All of them.” Out of the corner of his eye he could see Shelby glaring at him, but he refused to acknowledge her. Zach cleared his throat and said, “So, uh…do you live here by yourself?”

  “I do now, but I lived here for many years with another, a man named Dr. Sizemore, and we built this cabin, though I did most of the work. He obtained the windows, because I cannot fashion them myself, and a few other pieces of hardware that we needed. He also acquired the majority of the books, at the beginning, for he was a scholar, and an avid reader. He purchased the stove, also, though I had to carry it.”

  Zach eyed the black metal beast in the back corner and shook his head. “You carried that? It must weigh a ton.”

  “It is quite heavy, even for me.”

  “How long did the other guy live here?” Justin said.

  “Almost twenty-five years.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He died several years ago. I have been on my own ever since.”

  Zach could see how lonely it must be for him, living by himself in the middle of the forest, miles from anyone. There was no television, radio, or any other electronics in the cabin that Zach could see. “But you talk to some people once in a while, don’t you? You said you trade for books. Who do you trade with? Do they live out here in the forest, too?”

  “Only one person lives in the forest, a woman who calls herself a mountain witch. I have only recently discovered that it is against the law to live here permanently, so that it is why we are the only ones. The others live close to the forest, and I trade with them for things besides books. They can supply me with items that are difficult for me to obtain, such as lamp oil and medicinal herbs from other lands. Metal-tipped arrows, also. They are superior to stone or bone-tipped, and I am not a blacksmith. I cannot work in metal very well.”

  “You’re a pro with wood,” Jason said, “if you made those animals you gave us.”

  “A pro?”

  “That means you’re good at it.”

  “All of my people work with wood. I have no special talent for it.”

  “Are you kidding?” Shelby flung up both hands. “You’re a…a genius! An artist. My swan is the most beautiful thing ever.”

  “By the standards of my race, I would be considered ordinary.”

  Zach wondered what the talented ones were like, if Bo was not one of them. They must be incredible. Then a question popped into his head. “What do you need arrows for?”

  “My bow.” He pointed to the rear wall, and Zach saw it hanging with a leather quiver on a peg. “I use it to hunt. The deer meat and hides that I don’t need for myself, I can trade for supplies. I also trade a few healing powders that I make.”

  Zach wrinkled his brow. “Healing powders?”

  “I mainly trade those with the mountain witch, Mrs. Utley. She makes some herself and sells them. It is how she…how do you say it?” He held a finger near his mouth for a moment and then extended it toward Zach. “It is how she supports herself.”

  “Does she live near you?” Justin said.

  “She lives on the other side of the Nantahala Forest, close to where it becomes the Cherokee Forest, though I do not understand the distinction. It is all forest to me.”

  Jason’s face became thoughtful and he shook his head. “That’s like…more than a hundred miles, isn’t it?”

  “I do not know the distance by hu—” He closed his mouth for a couple of seconds and seemed to be rethinking his answer. “I do not know it by your standards. It is a two-day journey for me.”

  “You go on foot?”

  “It is my only means of travel.”

  “You can go over a hundred miles in two days, though the forest?”

  “Farther, sometimes. I can travel much faster than you. I have, I think you would say, a knack, or a talent for it.”

  Zach remembered the undergrowth and brush parting for them as they dashed through the woods to the cabin, and he could understand how Bo might be able to travel that far, that fast, his long legs eating up the distance at twice Zach’s stride or more. Except for one problem. “But…I don’t think normal people, I mean, regular people can go that far, can they? When I was little, my mom read me a book about some explorers, and they went like, twenty miles on a good day. Is that right?” Zach looked at the twins for confirmation. They only shrugged.

  “I can go even farther and faster if I am unburdened,” Bo said, “but I carry a pack on those trips, and it is usually loaded with goods for trading, like books. A pack full of seventy or eighty of those can be heavy when travelling long distances.”

  “My brothers wouldn’t know,” Shelby said. “They never carry books.”

  “So?” Jason said. “That’s ’cause we don’t like to read. It’s boring. We’d rather do stuff outside.”

  “I like to read, and also to be outside,” Bo said. “Learning is important to my people, and books are excellent teachers, but I learn things from the forest, too. It teaches me something almost every day, even after all these years.”

  Zach turned and looked at one of the shelves behind them. “How fast can you read a book?”

  “That depends on how long it is.”

  “How about a really big one, like….” He stood and went to the shelf, and pulled out the fattest volume. “How about War and Peace? Have you read that?”

  “Yes, twice.”

  “How long did it take you?”

  “Most of a day, each time.”

  “You can read this in one day?” Zach flipped it open to the end. “It’s over fourteen hundred pages long.”

  “I believe that I am a faster reader than you, and it was raining, then. There was not much else for me to do to pass the time.”

  “I could never read this.” Zach frowned at the heavy tome.

  “Yes you could.”

  “Lemme see it.” Jason gestured for it and Zach handed it to him. Jason thumbed through a few pages and frowned, too. “This looks hard. I don’t even think you could read this, Shelby.”

  Bo smiled at Shelby and said, “Do you like to read?”

  “I read all the time, but they don’t.”

  “Hey, I read, too!” Zach said quickly. “I’ve even got a library in my new house. It’s got lots of books. You could probably borrow some, if you want to, Mr. Bo.”

  “Thank you. I am always happy to have new things to read.”

  “What do you like?”

  “Anything. Science, nature, history, fiction. I learn much about your culture from novels.”

  “I can get you some from the public library,” Shelby said. “I have a library card now.”

  Her brothers seemed left out, all of a sudden, because they had nothing to offer the giant. It showed on their faces and the way they glanced at each other. Justin nudged Jason and said, “We can get library cards. Ain’t no big deal. Then we can get him some books, too.”

  Shelby crossed hers arms and huffed, “You’ve never had a library card.”

  “Never needed one before.”

  The cabin became silent again as the conversation lagged, and Zach pulled at the end of his T-shirt while the Ross kids fidgeted on the bench. Finally, Bo said, “The rain has ended.”

  Zach peered out of the closest window and saw that it was true. The light was brighter and the sun appeared to be coming out. “How long have we been gone? I didn’t wear my watch.”

  “Couple hours, at least,” Justin said, “maybe more, since we left your house.”

  “I need to head home soon because it’ll take us a while to get back. Mom’s gonna worry about me.”

  “Bo, can we come back and see you again?” Shelby said.

  “In five days’ time. I will be gone until then on a trading expedition.”

  �
�Aren’t you worried about somebody coming into your cabin while you’re gone?”

  “No one can find this cabin unless the forest allows them to, and the door will not open for anyone but me.”

  “I didn’t see a lock on it,” Zach said.

  “I have my own way of securing it.”

  And if I asked you what that was, you wouldn’t say, I bet.

  Justin swept a flattened hand through the air. “What if somebody flew over it in a plane? Couldn’t they see it from the air? That’s how they found our daddy’s marijuana crop.”

  “I do not believe so. Nor my vegetable garden.”

  “You have a garden?” Justin’s furrowed his brow. “I didn’t see it.”

  “That is because I did not let you. Not yet.”

  “Can we see it when we come back?”

  “In five days. Come to the forest and I will show you.”

  “How can you find us in the woods so easy? Is it some secret trick?”

  “The forest tells me.”

  “What?”

  Bo didn’t answer. His face returned to its blank state. Zach found it to be frustrating, but it piqued his curiosity. “Will you tell us more about yourself when we see you again?”

  “If you will tell me more about yourselves.”

  “Well, sure.” Zach glanced at his friends and they seemed to agree with him. “But I really need to be going now.”

  “The trail’s gonna be wet and slippery after the rain,” Jason said. “Gonna make it hard to get up the steeper places.”

  “I will lead you to the little structure that you are building,” Bo said, “and make sure that the trail is passable.”

  “Hope you really do have magic, ’cause you’ll have to dry it somehow.”

  Zach glanced out of the window once more. “If he says he can get us there, then I say we let him try, because I really have to go home or I might get grounded.

  Chapter 17

  Bo led them from his cabin to the incomplete clubhouse, and though the woods around them was dripping wet, the path beneath their feet was always dry. Zach didn’t bother asking how that could be because he knew Bo wouldn’t tell him. They waved goodbye to him at the granite mound, and he vanished into the forest again like a phantom.

  Jason insisted that they not talk about the giant until they were someplace where they couldn’t be overheard, and he didn’t think the woods was it. “Somebody could be listenin’,” he said as they hiked along the trail, all of them somber and introspective, even Beepee, who padded silently on her leash beside Shelby.