by Jon Sindell
though. You know, Tom said that stuff has DEET in it, it’s not like, good for you. It’s like—”
“Who is Tom?”
The man who’s been raising me, the son told himself, pronouncing the syllables in his head as distinctly as a courtroom indictment. “Well,” he offered, “this stuff’s a lot better than nothing, that’s for sure.” He shook the can and looked up at his dad with an effort to reconstitute the trusting gaze of childhood. “How do you—”
The father mistrusted the malformed gaze. “Like this,” he said warily, rubbing wrists together and applying the spray to forehead, cheeks, and neck. “Watch your eyes and nose or you’ll mess yourself up.”
The son complied, then watched his father for further instructions.
“Hey, let’s build that fire now, what do you say? Why don’t you go gather some twigs for—”—he gazed into the redwoods with pioneer eyes and located the elusive word—”—kindling.”
The son discerned that his dad had finished issuing instructions, and tromped over to the fringe of the wood to pick up handfuls of small branches and twigs—free of moss, as his stepdad had taught him. His father built a criss–crossed structure of firelogs and gestured vaguely at its base. The boy squatted and poked twigs through the openings, taking care to allow room for ventilation. A teenaged girl the next campground over set interested eyes on the boy. The man proudly followed the girl’s gaze to his son.
“Want to light it?” the dad asked, nodding at the impressive structure.
The son shrugged ambivalently, noted the disappointment in his father’s eyes, then reached compliantly for the proffered lighter. Beneath his father’s gaze he knelt and probed the structure’s orifices until burnt orange flames rendered a castle on fire.
“It reminds me of that jack–o–lantern we carved last—” The dad choked off the sentence: It was his fourteen–year–old stepson with whom he had carved.
The boy whirled like a bitten feral cat and perceived a blurred impression of the glowing smile of the girl at the next campsite. He set eyes rich with teen code upon her, and she smiled back.
“Danny?” The man looked up from his haunches at the profile of his son’s jaw and cheekbones: they were hardening fast, but were not yet a man’s. “Let’s eat.” He approached his son, but his son couldn’t hear, so he tapped him on the shoulder and the boy jerked away. The dad pantomimed “take out the earbuds,” and when the boy did so, the man added, “I’ve got your favorite eats” in the coaxing “come up out of the basement” tone that had worked well years before. “Foot–longs.”
The boy snapped his gaze at him. “Man, I told you I don’t eat animal flesh!”
The unexpected intensity of the reply knocked the dad’s head back and upset his balance. He stumbled backward and tripped on the unused fire logs and fell down backwards into the fire ring, collapsing the wood and sending showers of sparks sizzling upwards. With a howl he rolled out of the pit and desperately ground his back into the dirt to stifle the embers nipping his back. When he finally stopped wriggling, the boy stood over him and reached down his hand to help his dad up, but the man ignored this and panted from flat on his back: “Stop, drop, and roll, Danny. Remember that if you’re ever on fire. You’ve got to deny oxygen to the fire.”
Looking down at his father, an overturned turtle dispensing advice, the boy fought the impulse to laugh but did not fight it hard, and quickly succumbed to a giggle that grew into full throated laughter ringing orange and black like sparks in the night. The night had changed from purple to coal–black, and the boy’s laughter transformed into whimpered convulsions of sorrow, elation, freedom, and fear. He turned his gaze to the girl in the next campsite. Her face had darkened in dismay at the discord, and she sat down in a camp chair next to her parents with her back to the boy.
The father set to rebuilding the fire, but the logs were nearly spent, and a poor blaze resulted. He rounded his back and bent over the fire and munched defiantly on a foot–long hot dog; then a second; then a third; while his son chomped sullenly on a bun stuffed with onions and relish. The night sky deepened, the soft chatter and melancholy guitar chords at nearby campsites diminished with the fires, and the stars shone cold and silver.
The boy raised his eyes to the multitude of stars, drew a draft of cold air and shuddered. His father had disappeared within the embers. The boy felt an impulse to turn to his father;—he fought it, faltered, and turned to the man.
“Dad—” the boy started, but the dad’s cell phone’s ring tone indicated his second wife, and he did not hear.
“Not interrupting a thing, best moment of the day,” he said loud and clear and heedless of his son, who, hearing this, dialed his iPod to shut out the world and seal in Wordsworth’s ode to the glory of nature, the freshness of dreams, and thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
~ end ~
Thank you very much for reading “Woodsmen.” If you enjoyed this free ebook, please do share it —that’s why it’s free. “Like” it, too, if you have a spare moment, and please consider reviewing the tale. For more of my short fiction, and other literary goodies, please visit Jon Sindell Fiction. You may also want to check out The Mighty Roman, “a fast, funny, thought–provoking novel about baseball and the modern American man.” Finally, please do feel free to connect with me on Facebook, on Goodreads, or via email to [email protected], as I love connecting with readers.
Now, here’s the context of the quoted Wordsworth line, which concludes his Ode: Intimations Of Immortality:
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.