Stranger in the Woods

by Geof Johnson

  He pulled the string back, took a breath and focused. The animal raised its head and looked directly at Zach, but didn’t move. Zach didn’t fire.

  “Shoot it,” someone whispered urgently from behind him.

  Zach held the draw for a moment longer, then lowered the bow and shook his head. The deer bolted into the underbrush.

  “Aw, man,” Jason groaned. “Why didn’t you shoot it?”

  Zach shook his head again and stared at the ground. Bo stooped until he was eye level with Zach and said, “Why did you not make the kill?”

  “I don’t know,” he mumbled toward his feet. “Just couldn’t do it.”

  “You coulda hit it, easy,” Justin said. “It was right there, like, spittin’ distance.”

  “I know.” Zach looked at Bo. “But I couldn’t think of a good reason to do it, when the time came. You said you don’t need any more meat or hides right now, and I certainly don’t. I can’t take it home. None of us can.” He gestured at his three friends. “So it seemed kinda wasteful. And wrong. Just…seemed wrong.”

  Bo nodded solemnly. “It is wrong to kill for pleasure. I agree that none of us had a use for that fine animal.”

  “Then why did you have us hunt it?”

  “I wanted to see if you could track well enough now.”

  “But how about the killing part? What would have happened if I had taken the shot?”

  “I am certain that you would have hit your mark, and an animal’s life would have been wasted.”

  “But you didn’t, Zach,” Shelby said. “I’m glad.”

  “But, dang!” Jason said. “I mean, it was so close and everything, and it would’ve been your first one.”

  Zach gave him a level-eyed look. “Would you have done it?”

  “Yeah, maybe.” He shrugged. “Well…I dunno. Now that you mention it, I’d hate to see that buck all bloody and gross. He was a beauty.”

  “Yeah, he was,” his brother added. “I don’t know if I coulda shot it, either. Ain’t the same as shootin’ targets, I guess.”

  “You did the right thing, Zach,” Bo said.

  “Was this some kind of test?”

  “Every day of your life is a test.”

  “Did I pass?”

  “You all did, and continue to do so.”

  Zach knew he was blushing but refused to hide it. Instead, he checked his watch and said, “We gotta go home. Shelby’s got a babysitting job tonight.”

  Shelby looked at her brothers. “Is one of you going to walk me home?”

  They answered with stony faces. She turned to Zach. “Will you?”

  Zach glanced at the unwilling twins before answering. “Just tell me where and when.”

  * * *

  That night during dinner, Liz waited until the small talk ended before she said to her father, “Did Zach tell you what he made on his last math test? He got a C minus.”

  Grandpa paused with a forkful of mashed potatoes near his mouth. “That’s bad, right?”

  “Of course it’s bad! It’s terrible.” She turned to Zach and frowned. “You assured me that you could do all these leaf raking jobs and clean the lab and still keep your grades up.”

  Zach lowered his face and pressed his lips together before saying, “I know. I’m sorry. I just got a little lazy this week.”

  “You watched TV almost every night, and that was after you told me you’d finished your homework.”

  “I did my assignments, and I thought I’d done enough studying, but I guess I was wrong. We started a new unit in math and it’s hard.”

  “Something is going to have to give, then. No more raking or working in the lab until I see a good grade in that class. And definitely no TV during the week.”

  “Mom! You can’t do that! I’ve gotta have the money from the raking jobs. If you want to punish me, take something else away, like my phone. I don’t mind the TV. I can live without that.”

  “It’s not punishment, I’m just trying to make sure your grades don’t slip.”

  “No, Mom. No,” Zach moaned.

  Grandpa held up one hand and waved it lightly. “Liz, you know I promised not to interfere with your parenting, but can I make a point? If you take the raking and the lab away from him, you’re taking it away from the Ross kids, too, and that’s not exactly fair to them.”

  “That’s just too bad. Maybe they’ll pressure Zach to work harder in school, or they can rake without him.”

  “They won’t,” Zach said.

  “They won’t what? Pressure you or rake?”

  “Either one.”

  “How do you know?”

  “They just won’t.”

  “Liz,” Grandpa said, “think about it before you make this decision final. The leaf raking and cleaning up the lab are probably doing those Ross kids a world of good, especially the boys. It’s keeping them out of trouble and giving them something constructive to do with their time.”

  “That’s a good point.” She rubbed her cheek while she considered it. Then she turned back to Zach and shook her index finger at him to accent her words. “All right then, here’s the deal. Give me your phone, and no TV during the week. I don’t care if you’ve finished your homework or not. And definitely no Internet unless it’s for school, and I need to be with when you’re doing it so you don’t sneak onto Facebook or something.”

  “Okay.” Zach nodded once, then nodded again, quickly. “How about my bow? Can I still shoot it?”

  “Only on the weekends, until your grades go up.”

  “But I can still rake leaves with my friends and work on the lab?”

  “If your grades are good, and I want to see every test you get back from your teachers.”

  “Can we still go out to the woods? We only do that on weekends, anyway. It doesn’t affect my school work at all.”

  She thought about it and was ready to say no, but the pleading look in his eyes made her change her mind. “Only for a few hours at a time.” She spread her napkin in her lap again. It had nearly fallen to the floor, so she smoothed until it was perfectly situated. Then she said to her father, “Did you find somebody to paint the house for me?”

  “They can do it later this week. Are you sure you want to have it done so soon after paying for the windows?”

  “I’ll have to use a little bit of my savings, but I’d have to do that no matter when I had it done. I’d rather do it now so we can enjoy it. How long do you think it will take?”

  “Three or four days. This is a big house. They’ll spray it, for the most part, but they still have to do some prep work. It’s a good thing you had it pressure washed already. That’ll speed things up.”

  “Then I’ll pick out the paint this weekend. It’s going to look great, I just know it. Don’t you think so, Zach?”

  He answered with as, “Whatever,” his attention fixed on his plate.

  “One more thing,” her father said. “I’m getting firewood this week. Do want some, too?”

  “That would be a good idea. Winter’s coming and I don’t want to get caught with the power out and no way for us to stay warm.”

  “I’ll get a couple of truckloads this week, then. Zach, you and your buddies can help me unload it and stack it in the back, if that’s okay with your mom.”

  She said, “As long as it doesn’t interfere with his homework.”

  * * *

  Zach and his friends rushed through their Saturday morning raking job, then rode their bikes out to the woods to check on Bo. Afterward, they hurried back to Zach’s house to work in the lab for a couple of hours. Zach was out of breath for most of the day, it seemed.

  Grandpa assigned the boys to cleaning the rest of the electrical contacts in the equipment while he supervised Shelby, who was soldering new wires into the chassis of the control station. He watched her work for several minutes, and apparently convinced that she was doing a good job, he turned his attention to the tall cylinders, disassembling the bottom plate of one and inspecting it
carefully.

  “Hey, guys,” Grandpa said and beckoned them closer. “Let me show you something. This must be what Uncle Nicholas meant in the log book when he said he was burning out coils. I was thinking of a regular electronic coil like you’d see in other equipment, but it looks like he was making custom ones of his own design.”

  He pointed to a horse collar-shaped device that circled the circumference of the round pedestal base of the cylinder. At first glance it appeared to be made of solid metal, but when Zach looked closer, he saw that it was comprised of one long strand of copper, wound tightly, end to end, around a ceramic tube the width of his thumb, and it had several other electronic parts connected to it.

  “I’m not really sure what that thing does, but it looks newer than the other components in here,” Grandpa continued. “You can tell because it’s hardly tarnished or oxidized like the rest of this stuff. Uncle Nicholas must’ve replaced it at least once.”

  Justin gestured at it and frowned. “Are we going to have to pay for new parts for this thing, too?”

  “Maybe not. I’ll put my circuit tester to it and check it out, but from just eyeballin’ it, it doesn’t look as bad as the control station. There’s no soot in there, at least. The other cylinder is probably in similar condition.”

  “So what do you want us to do now?” Zach said. “Keep cleaning?”

  “For the time being. The outside of the control station is still pretty grungy, but remember what I said about cleaning it. Don’t rub too hard on it if you’re using a scrub brush because you might wear off the paint. I still can’t see any numbers or letters on it, and I don’t want you to accidently ruin them, ’cause we won’t know how to mark the settings on this thing. Speaking of which, have you found any mention of that in the log book yet?”

  “Nothing that makes sense. Maybe you need to have a look at it again.”

  “Hmm.” Grandpa pulled at his chin and stared at the disassembled contraption. “Hope we can figure it out soon.”

  Zach, Jason, and Justin resumed cleaning the control station. All of the meters, knobs, and toggle switches had been removed, and now it was just a metal shell with uniform rows of holes in the slanted top, most of them the diameter of a pencil. Justin sprayed it with some Spic and Span, and helped Zach and Jason wipe it with paper towels. They worked for a few minutes, and capital letters began to appear below one row of holes.

  “Hey, Grandpa,” Zach said. “Look at this.”

  His grandfather joined them and examined what Zach’s cleaning had revealed. Grandpa tapped one letter, an upper case C, with a fingertip. “This is where the big knobs were.” He leaned closer and squinted at the panel. “Looks like there’s D beside the next one.”

  Zach suddenly remembered something he’d seen in the lab log. “Hold on! I’ll be right back.” He ran out the door and dashed upstairs to his bedroom. He grabbed the log book from his desk and hurried back to the lab, where everyone waited for him.

  Zach flipped the cover open while they gathered around him. “I saw something in here about that.” He turned a few pages until he found what he was looking for. It was a row of letters in alphabetical order, A through L, each followed by a number, like zero or seven, none higher than ten. “He has a lot of entries like this. These must be the settings for the knobs.”

  Also in the entry was a list of numbers, each followed by either On or Off, like 1-On, 2-On, 3-Off, etcetera, up through number twenty four. Grandpa checked the control panel, counting empty holes. “Those numbers must correspond to where the switches go, and indicate their positions during a particular experiment. You say there are a lot of entries like this in the log?”

  “Dozens, probably. Maybe more.”

  “Good. Now you need to see if you can find some reference to Bo in there so we’ll know what the settings were for the day he got here.” Grandpa closed the book and handed it to Zach. “I know you’re real busy these days, but try to make some time to search for that entry.”

  “I can’t skip studying. Mom will make us stop working on this.”

  “Just do the best you can.” He nodded slowly with his mouth pressed into a wide line. Then he turned to Zach’s friends and said, “By the way, I saw your Uncle Marty up at Bennie’s the other night. He came in and tried to order a beer, but the bartender wouldn’t serve him. Marty got real belligerent about it, and a couple of the regulars threw him out.”

  “Why’d they do that?” Jason asked.

  “I kinda spread the word about what he did, breaking into your house and all, and now he’s a persona non grata up there.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Means he’s not welcome. I just wanted you to know that your daddy’s still got a few friends around here. Not everybody’s against you. It might seem like it sometimes, but they’re not.”

  Chapter 38

  Liz woke up on Sunday morning, lying on her side in a tight ball with the covers pulled up, and the skin on her face felt cool, though the ceiling fan was off. The temperature in her room had dropped noticeably overnight, even with the new windows keeping out the draft. She knew that the air outside would be crisp and sparkling, typical North Carolina weather in late October, especially so close to the mountains. She shivered as she sat up. She wrapped her arms around her chest. I’m going to have to turn the furnace on soon. Winter is coming.

  She put on her long, terry cloth robe and fuzzy slippers and went to the bathroom, settled her dark-blonde hair with a quick brushing and left.

  She tiptoed down the hall toward the stairs so that she wouldn’t wake Zach, but as she neared his door, she realized that it was wide open and he was already up. She heard a noise from the room opposite his and she went inside to see what it was.

  Zach was there, cleaning the trophies. He didn’t notice her at first, casually flicking the feather duster over the shelf full of baseball awards, giving each of them only the slightest attention.

  He used to clean all of them thoroughly, every morning, but he’d finally taken her advice and switched to only once a week. Normally he did it on Saturday.

  “Did you forget yesterday?” she said, and Zach flinched.

  “You scared me,” he said.

  “Sorry. Did you forget to clean this stuff?”

  “I suppose.” He resumed his chore, moving the feather duster to the next shelf. “I probably could’ve waited even longer. They’re fine.”

  “Are you changing your priorities?”

  He replied with a noncommittal twitch of a shoulder.

  “You’re pretty busy now,” she said. “Not like during the summer when you had a lot of spare time.”

  “Still needs doing, I guess. You won’t do it, so I have to.”

  She leaned against the doorway and watched him work, thinking about the importance of all the awards, and she decided their only significance was what she and Zach attached to them. She knew at one time they meant the world to him, but now, seeing the modest, almost careless effort he made at cleaning them, she wondered if that had changed.

  To her, they meant all the things that John thought he was — the winner, the hero — and all the things Zach would never be.

  But she had gone through them again the other night and was certain there was no award for archery. Zach could win at that. He could have his own trophies. Then we could box these up and put them away.

  Zach moved to the last shelf on the other side of the room and barely touched the feather duster to each little fake brass statuette and cheap marble pedestal. It didn’t seem like he was even going to bother with the ribbons and medals on the bed.

  “You’re not doing the most thorough job ever,” she said.

  “It’s good enough.”

  She started to object, but held her tongue. Then she wondered what John would think. He had loved those trophies. He had loved life. Something inside him had gone wrong, though, and he’d given up. He became what he despised. A loser. A quitter.

  Ever since her husband
had killed himself, she’d felt he’d abandoned her and Zach. John put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger, while she and Zach bore the scars, especially Zach.

  Watching Zach just then made her wonder if things were different now. Maybe the scars were changing to callouses.

  * * *

  Zach and his friends had three more raking jobs that week, but Zach began to worry because the trees in the neighborhood had already dropped half of their leaves, and some, like the poplars, were almost completely bare. That meant that their source of income would soon vanish.

  They didn’t have a job on Saturday, and they wanted to work on the lab, but Grandpa said he had things to do down there by himself and they’d only get in the way. They went to the woods to see Bo, instead.

  Sunday, Grandpa said he only needed Shelby with him working on the equipment in the lab. “You boys have just about finished with the cleaning and such, but Shelby has lots more soldering to do.”

  Zach and the twins went to his backyard to practice archery. They put a fresh target on the hay bales and resumed shooting Zach’s bow. Their hearts weren’t into it. They mostly talked.

  Jason released an arrow and watched it fly to the target, where it thumped into the blue ring, joining the other four already stuck in nearby colors. “Zach, how many jobs we got next week?”

  “Two. One’s tomorrow.”

  “Two? That’s all?”

  “I haven’t been getting as many calls lately.”

  “Dang.” Jason squeezed his lips together and watched his brother pull the arrows loose and walk toward the terrace with all of them in one hand, ready for his turn.

  “I’m kinda worried,” Zach said.

  When Justin reached them, he accepted the bow from Jason and said, “Zach, did I hear you say we only have two jobs?”

  “That’s all. Usually the answer machine has a couple of messages on it at a time, but there’s nothing on it now. I don’t know what to do. I don’t think passing out more flyers will make a difference.”