“Look, I know you’re mad, kid,” he continued softly. “I’m sorry I can’t take you with me. And, I promise you, I’ll come and check in on you, after all this is said and done. I’ll come visit with you and your pa in your house in Boneville. You owe me a rabbit dinner, you know.”
He was trying to be conciliatory in tone, but this only aggravated me more. I was planning on not speaking to him at all, but my silence failed me.
“What if he doesn’t come back?” I said, my voice scratchy, like I’d swallowed fire. I didn’t look up when I said this. I was saying it to myself as much as I was saying it to him. I was saying it to Mittenwool, too. I was even saying it to Pa, in a way. His leaving me felt like a fresh wound, even though I knew why he left. It hit me now that being left alone is just about the worst thing in the world that can happen to a person. And here I was, about to be left alone again by this big old red-nosed man I’d just met. It was almost more than I could bear.
“What am I supposed to do if Pa doesn’t come back?” I said again, wearily.
Marshal Farmer cleared his throat. He didn’t answer right away.
“Well,” he replied solemnly. “Do you have any relations you could stay with?”
“No.”
“Your ma?”
“She’s dead.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“She died having me.”
“Does she have any family?”
“They disowned her when she married Pa, on account of his coming from nothing. So even if I knew where they lived, or what their names are, I wouldn’t in a million years go to them. And before you ask me, no, my pa never had any family of his own. It’s only me and him.”
“I see,” he answered, weighing his words. “So, all right, then maybe you could go live with friends.”
“I don’t have any friends.”
“What about your friend Mittenwool? I’m sure his family would let you stay with them.”
I could not help but snort. “No, I couldn’t stay with Mittenwool.”
“Why? Don’t you like his family?”
“He doesn’t have any family, either!”
“He doesn’t? How old is he?”
I shrugged. I just wanted Marshal Farmer to be quiet, at this point. So many doggone questions.
“Silas, how old is this friend of yours?” Marshal Farmer persisted. “I was assuming he was a kid like you.”
“No, he’s not a kid like me,” I answered loudly. “He’s not really a kid at all. I frankly don’t know how old he is.”
“Silas, be careful now,” Mittenwool cautioned me.
But I was done with this. I was tired of Marshal Farmer’s questions. I was as done as I could be.
“For all I know,” I continued, “Mittenwool could be a hundred years old. He could be a thousand years old. He doesn’t tell me stuff like that.”
“Why are you doing this, Silas?” cried Mittenwool.
“So he’s not a child, is that what you’re saying?” asked Marshal Farmer.
“Silas, think carefully before—”
“No, he’s not a child. He’s a ghost, all right?” I answered hastily. “He’s a ghost! You couldn’t see him even if you tried! He’s a ghost!”
I practically spat out the last three words. Mittenwool was looking over at me, and when I was finished, he shook his head mournfully and continued walking through the trees.
4
I SHOULD EXPLAIN THAT a long time ago, when I was about six or so, we had all agreed—me and Mittenwool, and me and Pa—that I was never to discuss Mittenwool with other people. We reached this accord after an unhappy incident involving some children, who overheard me talking to Mittenwool one afternoon as I waited for Pa outside the general store in Boneville. The children had asked me who I was talking to, and I, being innocent of how people viewed these things, told them without any trepidation: “I am talking to my friend Mittenwool!” You might well imagine how they taunted me afterward! Mocked and ridiculed me mercilessly. One boy even started twisting my arm, yelling loudly with his eyes closed, “Begone, ye devil!”
When Pa came out and saw them, the quiet fury in his eyes was something to behold. The children scattered before him like ravens in a field. Then he picked me up and put me in the cart, and gave me the reins—a thing that had never happened before, since Mule was feisty and my hands were still so small—and we rode out of Boneville. Pa was sitting on my right, and Mittenwool was on my left. Listen, Silas, Pa finally said, your friendship with Mittenwool is wondrous, and something to be treasured. But there are people who won’t understand it because they can’t see that kind of wonder. So maybe, and this is completely up to you, but maybe you should keep your friendship with Mittenwool to yourself, at least until you get to know someone very, very well. What do you think?
Mittenwool nodded. “Your pa is right, Silas. No one else needs to know about me.”
I regretted saying what I said to Marshal Farmer the moment I said it, but there was no going back. There was no going back on any of this, anything that had happened since those three riders showed up on our doorstep. I could no more unsay what I’d said than I could travel back in time. That was another thing Pa once told me: The world only spins in one direction, which is forward, and it goes so fast we cannot feel it. But I could feel it right now. The world was spinning forward, at dazzling speed, and it was only forward that I could go.
I was surprised that Marshal Farmer did not respond to my statement immediately. Instead, he let my words hang in the air a bit, let the birds swoop around them, the gnats float inside them, and all the wild Woods take them in.
We rode silently until we reached the birch copse, where we would take leave of each other. Marshal Farmer called for me to slow my pace, but I felt indifferent to his words just then. I was caught in the forward motion of Pony’s steps, and I could not will myself to rein him in. So the marshal trotted his horse in front of me and then turned in his saddle to face me. I figured he was going to say good-bye, and I was half right.
He removed his hat and scratched his head with the hand that held the hat. A fly had attached itself to his cheek, and he tried to chase it away with the hat. But it kept alighting on the same spot as he spoke.
“Son, I need you to be serious with me now, you hear?” he said solemnly. “Why are you toying with me like this? What is your reason for telling me all that before?”
I looked him right in the eyes. “Telling you all what before?”
He put his hat on and pursed his lips. “That business about your friend. Mittenwool.”
“You mean about his being a ghost?”
“God dangit,” he hollered, uncomfortable at the mere saying of the word. “You don’t really believe that, do you? You’re just messing with me, right?”
I shook my head and took a deep breath. Meanwhile, Mittenwool walked over and stood right between our horses.
“Tell him you were just joking, Silas,” he said quietly. “Let’s end this right now and go home.”
“I don’t want to go home,” I answered. “I just want to find Pa.”
“I know you do, kid,” Marshal Farmer answered.
“I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to Mittenwool,” I said defiantly.
Marshal Farmer again tried to brush the stubborn fly from his cheek, but I think he was just biding time to think how to respond.
“So,” he prodded cautiously, “you’re telling me that you’re talking to him right now. This Mittenwool is here right now?”
“Yes, he’s standing between our horses.” I looked at Mittenwool, who shrugged his disapproval at my course of action.
“Now you’ve gone and done it,” he muttered.
Marshal Farmer studied me carefully. He was sorely chagrined,
I could tell. He once again swatted at the stubborn fly hovering near his face as he contemplated what to answer.
I looked upward. Mostly because I didn’t want to look at him, but also because I wanted to take in the sky, and the birds flying overhead. This part of the Woods was so much brighter than where we’d been, and like night and day compared to the dark blue Woods I’d entered yesterday. I was now acquainting myself with the fact that forests, like all living things, are not just one thing or another, but a mix of many things together.
“Listen here,” the marshal finally said, breaking the silence of my thoughts. “I’ve had just about enough of this. I told you I’d bring you to the edge of the Woods, and here we are. If you follow this line of trees straight through, you’ll avoid hitting the Bog and get to the open in about an hour.” He pointed to the black birch trees that stood like pillars marking the way. “We’re a little north of where I found you, but if you stick to this trail, you should be home in time to sleep in your bed tonight.”
I knew he was looking at me, waiting for me to reply, but I just turned my face back up to the sky and closed my eyes. I’m sure he thought I was touched in the head. And it could be that I was. Am. Sometimes I don’t know.
I think maybe only a few seconds passed, but it felt like much longer.
“Or…or,” he stammered, “I suppose you can come with me.”
He said this so casually, I thought for sure I’d misheard him. I looked his way immediately. He was staring directly at me, his expression stone-cold and serious.
“But if you do come with me,” he continued, “I cannot guarantee your safety. And I won’t coddle you. If you get in my way, I’ll leave you behind. If you can’t keep up, I’ll leave you behind. And if you lie to me…”
“I won’t!” I cried happily, shaking my head. “I swear, Marshal Farmer, I’ll keep up with you! I won’t get in the way!”
He held up his parsnip finger to me, as if to warn me. “And if I hear you talk about a ghost again, or any such nonsense, so help me, I’m sending you away. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, sir,” I replied with humility.
“I don’t cotton to folderol like that,” he said hotly. “I’m a plain man and I speak plain English and I don’t have time for your flights of fancy. Maybe your pa put up with that kind of jibber-jabber, but I won’t. You hear me?”
He practically huffed the last few sentences, like he was saying the words through his nose in one long exhalation.
“Yes, sir.” I bobbed my head quickly.
“You sure?”
“Yes, sir!”
He nodded approvingly at my change in demeanor, for I was sitting straighter in the saddle now, to impress him. Yes, I’m small for my age, but I wanted to show him that I could be fierce, too. It seemed to me Pony perked up as well. Pawed the ground as if to say, I’m ready. Let’s charge!
All this time, I had done my best to avoid looking at Mittenwool, who I knew would be unhappy with this change of events. I spied him briefly some distance away, looking not at me but at the Woods before us. There was nothing to say to him, even if I could have.
“All right, then, now that we are agreed, let’s go,” Marshal Farmer said, wheeling his mare around and trotting past me. He veered away from the birch trees into a thicket, and I knew he was heading back into the heavy Woods. Taking a deep breath, like I was about to swim underwater, I turned Pony around quickly and trotted after him.
It is forward motion was all I could think of now. I was moving forward, not backward, on this quickly spinning earth.
5
I NEVER ATTENDED SCHOOL. When I was seven or so, I had gone for a brief time to the schoolhouse in Boneville run by a woman known as Widow Barnes. By then, however, word had spread that Martin Bird’s son was “addled” (that is what they called it), and when Widow Barnes heard those rumors, she confronted me one day in front of the class. Even though I was good at lying about Mittenwool at this point, and told her what she wanted to hear, she made me write There are no such things as ghosts on the blackboard while the children laughed behind me. And then she rapped my hand with a yardstick for good measure, telling me she wouldn’t abide any newfangled spiritualists in her schoolhouse, whatever that meant.
When I came home and Pa saw the welts on my hands, and heard my tearful explanation, he looked angrier than I had ever seen him look before. People like that old Widow Barnes have no business teaching, he said quietly, seething as he rubbed almond oil liniment on my knuckles. She has no idea of the grandeur that lies inside your mind, Silas. I’ve known people like that my whole life. They have no imagination. No fire in their minds. So they try to limit the world to the paltry things they can understand, but the world cannot be limited. The world is infinite! And you, young as you are, already know that.
He held up my pinkie.
You see this little finger? There is more greatness in this little finger of yours than in all the Widow Barneses of the world put together. She is not worthy of your tears, Silas.
Then he kissed my pinkie and told me I was never to set foot inside that schoolhouse again. He would be my teacher from now on.
Of course, this was the best thing that could have happened to me, because Pa was a far better teacher than old Widow Barnes. I say this not to brag in any way, but to point out that because of Pa’s schooling, I know things a child my age has no business knowing. Conversely, there are things a child my age should know that I don’t. But Pa says it’ll all balance itself out by the time I grow up. This is what I was learning as I ventured farther into the Woods. All those bits of things he’d taught me were coming back to me. Things I didn’t even know I knew, I was remembering.
Marshal Farmer and I made good time. We rode straight for most of the morning until we picked up the trail of the men we were pursuing. Four men on horseback leave their marks on the ground, especially when they don’t know they’re being pursued. The marshal pointed these signposts out to me as we went. Horse dung, which was the easiest to track because of the flies, like small fogs, that hovered over the mounds. Broken sticks on the forest floor. Bends in branches. Puddles too round to be natural. I got better at spotting these markers myself as the day progressed. And whenever I’d see a pressed twig on the ground, I’d think, Maybe it was Pa who made this dent. That alone was enough to keep me going, even though I was so tired at times I felt like I could sleep a hundred years.
We did not stop to eat at all, but sipped water from the streams that crisscrossed our path. It wasn’t until sometime in the midafternoon that we entered the part of the Woods that Marshal Farmer kept referring to as the Bog. We had been riding parallel to it this whole time. I would catch glimpses of it every once in a while, the murky tangle of trees on my right, darker-hued, impenetrable-seeming, and my spine would tingle just thinking about the voices I’d heard inside there the day before. I remembered Pa telling me that giant reptiles had walked the earth once, in the days of the primordial world, and this is what the Bog seemed to me. Something from another time, belonging to creatures of another age.
Still, we had no recourse but to go in. The men we were pursuing had entered, so we would enter, too. I did my best not to show my fear to the marshal. Steady on, steady on. I sat ramrod straight in the saddle as we went inside. Put on a brave face. Did not let my eyes linger on the vines that coiled like snakes around the trees. Or the branches so knotted together above us, it was like giant black daggers hung from the sky. As we twisted our way through, trunk by trunk, everything dripping around us, wet to the touch, I tried hard to ignore the cold I started feeling in my bones. The smoke coming out of my nostrils. The very air seemed thicker here. Then a fog moved in. And I started to hear the voices again.
They were distant at first. I thought maybe they were the mosquitoes that buzzed everywhere around us. But the farther we journeyed
on, the louder the buzzing became, and soon I heard them not as buzzing, but as voices. Cries and murmurs, same as yesterday. Same as all those years ago, when I first entered the Woods with Pa. How to describe that sound? It is like entering a vast room where hundreds of people are conversing at once, some loudly and some softly and some urgently. This time around, I did not even bother to tell myself they were part of some delusion of my imagination. I knew what they were. These were the voices of ghosts.
I was afraid Pony would bolt again, like he did yesterday, so I kept close behind Marshal Farmer, my head down, chin pressed against my neck. If I could have closed my eyes, I would have, but I needed to stay watchful to keep up. I kept telling myself, Be brave, Silas! You have defeated lightning.
Soon enough, out of the corner of my eyes, I started seeing forms among the trees. Not clearly, at first. They were only the motions of beings. They were not crisply drawn in my vision, but blurs of people walking through the morass. I dared not look at them directly, for fear that I would scream and have to explain myself to Marshal Farmer. I could feel the now-familiar flush of my cheeks, the quiver of my spine, the feverish shivers running through me. It was not only fear that my body was feeling, for that is a mental preoccupation, but the physical reaction of my body to theirs. I was a living boy, after all. And they were not living. They were the dead, all around me.
The farther inside the Bog we rode, the more the blurred figures took form in my eyes. Shapes in the shadows. Walking. Talking to themselves. Some whimpered. Some laughed. They were ghosts, each to their own purposes. Their own mysteries. Speaking their own stories. Young and old. Children, too. Drifting past us like water around a rock. If you were to ask me what they looked like, I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t bring myself to look at them directly. I didn’t want to see them at all.
One such form passed close enough to me that I thought she would touch me, so I moved my leg to avoid her. That was enough to cause her to look up at me, for at that moment she must have realized that I could see her. And though I had done my best to avoid looking at her directly, I had no recourse now. I took her in fully. Her one eye opened wide in terror. The other not there at all, for half her head was gone, a mass of pulp and blood.
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