by Lorn, Edward
“We turn around and come back. Our original path didn’t branch, right?”
“I don’t think so. But I can’t be sure.” Tony said.
“Crap…neither can I.” Bobby admitted.
“Now what?”
“No clue.”
“Should I scream some more?”
“Not yet. Save your voice. I think you’re going to need it.”
“All this because Mom wanted us to ‘go be boys.’ Fucking hell, what a bitch.”
“That’s your mother, dude.”
“Yeah, well, my mother’s a cunt. I’mma get dressed. No use standing around in my drawers, seeing that my clothes are already wet anyway.”
Bobby looked down at his bundle and growled. “Dang it!”
“One of these days, you’re going to slip up and cuss, and I’m going to be there to con-fucking-gratulate you on growing some hair on your nuts.”
“Any idiot can cuss. A real man can express himself without foul language.”
Tony used a patch of grass to rake the dirt off the soles of his feet before putting on his pants. “Your dad cusses all the time. Like, all the time.”
Bobby stepped into his pants and zipped them up. “He also thinks you’re a closet racist, so there’s that to consider.”
Tony froze. He felt like he’d been shot. “What? Why would he think that?”
“Because you’re white, and he thinks all pasty-pale people, like yourself, hate us brown folk.”
“Your dad really thinks I’m racist though?”
“Dude, calm down. Dad’s just like that. He’s terrified I’m going to be the next Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown, as if I’m going to get blasted just for walking down the street.”
“Oh.” Tony fell silent for a moment and watched Bobby tug on his shirt. “Yeah. Yeah, I can kinda see that.”
“See what?” Bobby asked.
“Why he’d be so worried.”
“Michael Brown ran at a cop, and Trayvon Martin got in a fight with a pudgy Mexican-looking dude twice his age. I don’t start beef with ignorant people, and I certainly don’t antagonize the cops. I act right and trust those around me to do the same. And when fools wanna step, I do the best thing and turn the other cheek.”
Tony said, “So did Martin Luther King, and they shot that motherfucker. Just sayin’.”
“You sound like my father, man. Who exactly is this ‘They’ you guys are always talking about?”
“Sorry,” Tony said, dropping his gaze a bit to break eye contact with his best friend, a friend whose skin seemed to darken more and more as this damn conversation went on. “Sorry, I don’t guess I meant ‘They.’ I guess I meant ‘We’.”
Bobby stared at Tony, his face unreadable.
Once both boys were dressed, Tony picked the center trail on the right. This trail was easily crossed off the list of possibles, because, about fifty feet in, it forked. Tony and Bobby turned around and headed back to the clearing with the waterfall.
Bobby chose the trail this time, and the boys took off down the center path to the left. This one seemed right, but also seemed to go on too long. Tony started counting steps after about five minutes of walking. When he reached one hundred, Bobby said that was far enough.
“Why?”
Bobby said, “I don’t think we came this far.”
“But it kinda looks familiar, doesn’t it?”
“This is the woods. Everything looks the same. Trees and bushes and dirt and rocks. That’s it.”
“Well, I don’t know then. I say we keep on going. We’re bound to stumble upon something, right? Another branching path, or a dead end, right? Or we’ll hit the way we came in. And if we don’t, we turn around.”
“I guess so.” Bobby looked left and right, surveying the woods around them. “I’m just—I don’t know—I guess I’m worried that when we do hit the way we came in, that we aren’t going to realize it.”
“Now what the fuck are you going on about?” Tony screeched. “Why wouldn’t we know?”
“Think about it. We took a trail to get to the trail that led to the waterfall. If we come to a T junction, we need to turn right, but how do we know it’s the correct T junction?”
“Motherfucker!” Tony exploded. “Are you fucking shitting me? Why didn’t you say that shit to begin with?All this fucking walking and there ain’t any guarantee we’re going to find our way back?”
“Calm down. Have a Snickers, or something.”
“You got one?”
“No. I was joking.” Bobby forced a smile.
“Oh great. We’re in trouble—fucking lost and shit—and your ass is trying to be funny. Your ass isn’t funny.”
3
Bobby knew damn well that now was not the time to be joking around, but he was at a loss for what he should be doing.
Tony continued to fuss, and Bobby continued to think. If they—
Something moved on the path, back the way they’d come. Bobby snapped his neck to the right, but whatever had been there was gone. It had been small, but not tiny. Maybe the size of a mouse but not as big as a squirrel. A chipmunk, maybe? He couldn’t be sure. But this thing had been gray, and Bobby was pretty sure chipmunks weren’t gray. They were brown and white, right? Like Chip and Dale. Bobby realized he had absolutely no idea what a real chipmunk looked like and decided to let the comparison drift away unmentioned.
Did it have wings? Was that why he hadn’t gotten a good look at it, because of the blur of its wings as it flew into the bushes lining the path?
“Did you see that?” Bobby asked, butting in to Tony’s latest rage-filled bout of questions, questions that assumed Bobby knew everything and was simply holding back on his best friend.
“See what?” Tony erupted. His face was bright red and his forehead oily with a sheen of sweat. Bobby wasn’t the least bit hot. He assumed anger was stoking Tony’s furnace.
“Something over there.” Bobby walked in the direction he pointed, approached the spot where he’d seen the small gray something, his back to Tony.
“What did it look like?” Tony asked.
“I don’t know. It was about three or four inches tall. Maybe it had wings. I only saw it for a second before it zipped away.”
“We don’t have time for this shit, man. Come on.”
“Start calling for your mom again. See if she can hear us now. I’m going to check this out.”
“Check what out?” Tony sounded exasperated.
“I don’t know. If I knew, I wouldn’t have to check it out, would I?”
“You don’t have to be a dick, dick.” There was a second’s silence before Tony sighed and began screaming for his mother again. “MOOOOOOOOOM!”
The closer Bobby came to the spot where he’d seen the small gray blur, the more uneasy he felt. There was nothing to see, really, and that’s what was bothering him. Beyond a certain point, both Tony’s and his footprints stopped. In the place of their tread marks were subtle ripples in the dirt where it showed through the grass. At first, Bobby thought it looked like tiny dunes, but he soon realized what he was really looking at.
Something had brushed their prints away. Something had destroyed their tracks.
“Tone. Tone, you need to see this.”
“MOOOOOOOOOOOM!”
“Tony?”
“MOOOOOOOOOOOM!”
“TONY!”
“What? Shit!”
“Come here!”
“The fuck you want?” Tony stepped up beside his friend. Bobby pointed to the path before them. “What? I don’t see shit.”
“Exactly. Our tracks are gone. See? See here?” Bobby dropped into a catcher’s stance and jabbed a finger at where their tracks ended and the ripples in the dirt began.
Tony knelt beside his friend. “What the hell?”
“Something’s been wiping away our tracks. That’s why we couldn’t find the way we’d come in, I bet you money.” Bobby’s heart beat the shit out of his ribs. He was even breathi
ng faster, and he was one who could run a lap at school and only be slightly winded.
“Who?” Tony asked, looking about as scared as Bobby felt.
“I don’t think it’s a ‘who.’ What I saw was…I don’t know, man. It was more of a ‘what’ than a ‘who’.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It was small, Tone. No bigger than a mouse. And it was quick. I saw it out of the corner of my eye, and by the time it registered and I jerked my head to the side, the little thing was gone into the bushes. Which means—which means two things. Not only is it hiding our tracks, but it’s also smart enough to fear me seeing it.” Bobby swallowed a lump and watched speculation rise in Tony’s face.
“You’re fucking with me, aren’t you?”
“Wha—How? How could I possibly be messing with you?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t like it. Quit that shit.” And with that, Tony turned and walked away. Bobby, rooted in place by his friend’s stupidity, simply watched him go.
Incredulously, Bobby said, “You’re just going to ignore the possibility that something is wiping away our tracks? You’re kidding, right? Joking?”
“Come on, Bobby. We don’t have time for this shit.”
“I’m not—”
Tony actually stopped and stomped his foot. His balled up fists jabbed toward the floor, once, twice, like a toddler throwing a tantrum. Bobby couldn’t believe his eyes.
“I’m not fucking with you. Come on, or I leave your ass behind.” Without another word, Tony started walking again.
Bobby had no idea what to do. Tony’s actions didn’t compute, did not parse. Stunned, Bobby took a tentative step forward, and then another. Soon he was walking, though he didn’t know where they were going. Hopefully this was the way. As long as they didn’t stray from this path, they wouldn’t need their tracks to find the way back. All they’d have to do is turn around and go back. Simple as pie.
Pie?
Great. Now he was hungry.
4
Lucy Paul parked in front of the Park Ranger’s trailer and got out of her Prius. She clopped across the black asphalt of the lot and up the rickety black iron staircase, which consisted of three whole steps, and into the double wide.
The interior was as it should be, aside from the fact that it was empty. The old aluminum and faux-wood desk sat in the middle of the room, its round legs stabbed into the shit-brown carpet she’d been trying to get the higher-ups to replace for the past century, or so it seemed. She was sure that ninety-five percent of her nasal allergies stemmed from the unbearable shag beneath her feet. A relic of the sixties, the carpet smelled its age, and like her, had its liver spots. Did it really matter that the carpet’s spots were coffee stains? She thought not. The analogy was a fine one, she decided, and went to fix a fresh pot of joe.
Above the coffee pot, pinned to a four-by-four cork board that hung on the wood paneling that served as the trailer’s walls, were pictures of Smokey the Bear and several California Park and Rec documents meant to warn people from partaking in shenanigans that could cause harm to the surrounding forest. Some of these memos warned of the problem with vagrancy and brushfires and what to do in case you came across either. Lucy gazed over them as she poured four packets of sugar into her mug (she liked a little coffee with her sugar), looking for something she hadn’t read a hundred times over. There was nothing. Good deal.
Charlie and the new guy would be back by three-thirty, or so said the email Charlie had left her. She sat in front of her terminal, and blew steam off the top of her coffee. In the reflection of the antiquated CRT monitor, she saw her hair was still a puffy cloud of silver hair soaked in Aqua-Net. Her hairdo had not shifted on the way to work, something she only slightly worried her little head over.
She absentmindedly straightened and rotated the four picture frames that were perched precariously on the front edge of her desk. One showed her and her late hubby Peter standing in front of the Palomar Observatory. Cal Tech had just finished construction and Peter, who’d been part of the astrology team that had frequented the Hale Telescope before his death from brain cancer nearly a decade ago, had been invited to the grand opening the day Ralph—a good friend of theirs and another part of the astrology team—had snapped the picture. In the next two were Lucy’s two girls, all grown up and married off to good men, and their respective children. The last photo was of Lucy as she was now—all alone. In the pic, she sat stoic on a red stool, her hands clasped in front of her, while behind her was a simulated field of daisies. Walmart Special, this picture. She’d wanted a reminder of this late stage of her life, her sixtieth year upon the earth.
For reasons she could not understand, she liked being old and alone. She’d married young and took pregnant almost right away. Both of her daughters were now in their forties and their own children were grown or in their last years of high school. Peter was long in the ground, and Lucy appreciated how well she got along without anyone’s help. Another five years and she could retire and die in peace within six months of retirement like every other widow or widower with a full work history and a long-loved spouse behind them. Who wanted to live forever? Fuck that.
Her only problem, currently, was an annoyingly-persistent struggle with insomnia. As she’d tell people, “I’m old as shit, and I need my fucking rest.” So she drank. On the weekends, she drank for fun. On weeknights, she drank until the yawns came in rapid succession. In her opinion, it was better than the poison doctors peddled these days. Ambien and Valium and all that other nonsense made her feel outside herself more than they made her sleepy. As if she were in someone else’s dreams. Her own dreams were quite enough, thank you very much.
“Old girl,” Lucy said, tapping the Walmart Special, “you’re going to make it another day until you don’t.” Those words had become her mantra, and they never failed to make her smile.
She glanced up at the clock on the wall and saw it was almost four o’clock. She spun her chair around and grabbed a walkie-talkie from the bank of them sitting on the cabinetry along the back wall. She twirled to face her computer again and checked Charlie’s email for the second time. At the bottom, where he’d signed off as “Chaz,” he’d left the channel where she could reach him and the new guy.
She twisted the knob on the top of the radio, scrolled through the channels until she reached the proper one, and depressed the call button. “Base to Chaz. Base to Chaz. Come back.”
Nothing but silence.
“Chaz, you old son of a bitch, did you forget your radio?”
Nothing.
“Goddamn it.” Lucy glanced over her shoulder and made sure Charlie’s radio was actually missing. It was. So was a second one. In fact, now that she’d taken hers, only one radio was left in the charging base, which was made to hold a total of four.
Well, he hadn’t left it behind. Maybe he’d left it in the truck while doing his rounds. She doubted it, as such a thing was unlike her coworker. Charlie was a creature of routine. Lucy tried to remember one time in the thirty years she had worked with Charlie when he had forgotten his radio. She honestly didn’t think he ever had. Charlie having a senior moment while alone she could see, but the newbie leaving his radio somewhere too? Would Charlie stand for such? She didn’t think he would.
“Where the hell are you, Chaz?” Lucy asked an empty room.
She tried to think of every possible circumstance where Charlie would be unable to answer her calls and came up with nothing good. Maybe he’d had a car accident in the middle of nowhere. Maybe Charlie and his trainee had driven off a cliff. That would most certainly explain the radio silence. Hell, Charlie was older than she was. His heart could very well have failed as he rounded a bend overlooking a steep drop. She saw Charlie behind the wheel, his eyes popping and his hands clutching his traitorous pump, as his truck sailed over the edge of a rocky cliff. In the passenger seat, a faceless, nameless man (the trainee’s name would come to her, she was sure, but for now it was a fart
in a windstorm) screamed as the two men fell to their doom.
In the end, she decided to wait a while more. If she didn’t hear from Charlie and his trainee by five o’clock, she’d take a truck out to look for them.
5
“We’re fucking lost,” Tony said as he collapsed cross-legged onto a grassy patch in front of the waterfall’s pool.
“I don’t get it,” Bobby said, crashing down beside his friend. “I mean, we never even found the T junction. How is that possible that not one of the trails led out?”
“Fuck if I know.” Tony’s voice weakened. He sounded as defeated as Bobby felt.
Bobby could feel the sky, deep purple and spotted with the coming evening’s brightest stars, bearing down on him like a heavy bully. Roaming the woods during the day was one thing, but that time had passed. There would be no more trying to find their way back tonight. Not if they were smart about the situation. If Tony so much as broached the subject, Bobby would laugh in his friend’s face. Harsh maniacal laughter, the kind involving lots of spit and bad breath.
“I’m worried about my mom.” Tony’s tone was somber.
“You should be worried about us first. We’re tired and hungry and lost in the woods. If anything, your mom is looking for us. Now that it’s nightfall and she hasn’t heard from us, she’s bound to call for help.”
“Right.” Tony didn’t sound convinced. He had the air of a person who would agree to anything just so long as the person talking would shut up and leave him alone.
After a moment’s silence, Tony said, “She didn’t answer. She didn’t answer when I called.”
Bobby heard Tony’s first sniffle and his stomach dropped. He’d never seen or heard his best friend cry. Tony was a tough kid. He’d been through a lot. Even during his parents’ divorce he was unshakable. And now…well, now look at him—a sobbing mess.
Tony drew his knees to his chest and hugged them, cried into his knees.
Bobby sat in silence and wondered who would come to their rescue, and when. He tried not to think about all the news reports of missing hikers and animal attacks and bones found in shallow graves that seemed the topic of discussion on the nightly news. But as the forest around him came alive with the sounds of nocturnal hunters leaving their daytime roosts, Bobby became scared. Even with Tony at his side, he felt utterly alone.