If You Go Down to the Woods

by Seth C. Adams

  Sarah screamed.

  Then she had the presence of mind to realize what this might mean for me if she pissed off this nutjob, the Collector. She cut off her shriek with a hand clapped to her mouth like a clamp.

  “It matters not whether you live or die,” he said, whispering to me, but I had no doubt including my sister as well. “All I require is what was in the car, and you may continue to live.”

  “I … don’t know … where it is,” I squeaked.

  The slightest pressure was added to the knife, and I felt it press into my throat. I felt its edge first kiss, and then bite. I felt a trickle of coolness down the slope of my neck. Blood-drool from the site of my proposed new mouth.

  I pissed my pants.

  I’m not proud of it, but I’m not ashamed of it now or then. Have one big bastard of a knife pressed to your throat and see how brave you are. Besides, I think that was what saved my life, wetting my pants like a big fucking baby.

  It was an honest response. It made me as genuine as any words could have.

  “I believe you,” said the Collector. The knife left my throat and I heard the almost inaudible sounds of his footfalls receding. The rustle of leaves dancing as he withdrew from me and back into the shadows that birthed him. “You have two days to find where it has gone, and then I’ll be back to collect. Here. Midnight. Either the money, or you. Your choice.”

  As he faded into the night, his voice drifted back to us once more like dark music carried on a breeze:

  “I’ve disposed of one body already. If necessary, more can be added to that grave.”

  Alone then, my sister and I, me in the warmth of my piss-soaked jeans, my sister breathing hard and fast, puffing a chill mist, and a lone finger in the space between us. That pale digit a reminder of what could have been, what still might be.

  2.

  “Where is it?” I demanded, grabbing Fat Bobby by the front of his plaid shirt and shaking him.

  Sarah had come with me to the meeting of the Outsiders’ Club atop Lookout Mountain. Though the light of day cast everything in summer hues of greens and browns and blues, the events of the previous night were just as fresh and urgent as they had been when they occurred, and all the world seemed darker to me, muted. Sleep hadn’t come at all the night prior, and I was tired and frightened and angry.

  I shook Fat Bobby a few more times and then Sarah, Tara, and Jim pulled me away from him. Jim especially was rough with me, yanking me and propelling me away with a nice good shove, so that I clenched my fists and targeted him next. Bandit barked in confusion, not sure what was going on, who the bad guy was and who he should bite.

  “Where’s the money, Jim?” I said through clenched teeth. “This guy wasn’t joking around.”

  By shouts and curses I’d already told them what had happened the night before, about the Collector, and how he collected things owed and sometimes for himself. About the severed finger sailing through the air, its stub of bone poking out catching the moonlight and sparkling for a moment like a grim jewel.

  “If you’d calm down for a fucking second,” Jim said, seeing my fists and making a couple of his own, just in case I guess, “that’s what we were going to tell you.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “You’re standing on it,” Jim said.

  I looked at my feet, and the rounded and stoned peak of the mountain we were standing on. I saw nothing out of place: no freshly dug and refilled hole; no stones rolled out of and back into place to hide things under.

  “What’re you talking about?” I said, getting angrier by the second. My throat was buzzing with that phantom sensation of the blade pushed up against it.

  “Next to it might be more accurate,” Jim said and walked past Bobby, holding his shirt together where my yanking and pulling had ripped a couple buttons loose, to the tall upright stone that looked like an Easter Island statue.

  I followed him.

  Stretching on tiptoes, Jim reached for the top of the upright stone and boosted himself up to a sitting position atop it. I did the same. He leaned over, and so did I. There it was, in a recess made by the upright stone and others behind it, perhaps a yard deep and less than a foot wide: the canvas sacks, the green banded stacks of bills glimpsed through the open mouths.

  Sarah strode over and boosted herself up also, leaned over, saw all the money, said: “Holy shit.” I scooted and leapt back down to the others. Jim did the same, dusting his hands on his jeans after he landed. Leaning over for a few moments longer looking at all that money, Sarah came down last, like she was reluctant to leave it.

  I knew the feeling.

  “Why’d you move it?” I asked.

  “We were afraid someone might find it,” Fat Bobby muttered.

  He had that hurt expression on his face, that pitiful slacking of his cheeks and mouth that made me want to slap him and made me feel rotten at the same time.

  “Who the hell would find it?” I asked, knowing the stupidity of my question even as I voiced it, and not giving a shit. I’d had a goddamn knife to my throat the night before, and I’d pissed my pants in front of my sister, so I wasn’t in such a good mood.

  “Well, Joey, obviously someone was looking for it,” Tara said in a soft, lilting tone, trying to defuse the situation at hand.

  “And don’t forget Sheriff Glover saw us on the road with the car,” Jim added, his fists finally relaxing, fingers hooking into his pockets. “We couldn’t leave the money there after he’d seen the car.”

  I couldn’t help but feel betrayed that Tara was the one who spoke the obvious truth. It had been foolish to leave the money in the car. Especially after the confrontation with Sheriff Glover.

  That didn’t mean I had to like being kept out of the loop. I was the one who’d found the car and led us all to it. I’d brought us all together, and I should have been included in all things. Then I looked at Tara’s face, her eyes, her mouth, those brown curls, and I softened considerably. I took a deep breath and calmed myself.

  “Did you recognize him?” Jim asked. “Either of you,” he added, looking at Sarah too. He still had a mild look of irritation when he looked at her, and each time he did he’d quickly look at me with a sort of accusatory stare. I knew what he was silently asking me: Why’d you bring her? As in: Why is she part of this now? And though I was irritated and angry, I guess I understood. I imagined how I’d feel if I’d arrived to find any of them had brought new people into the fold, so to speak.

  “No,” Sarah said.

  I shook my head.

  “Nothing?” Jim said. “You didn’t get a look at his face? You didn’t recognize his voice?”

  “No,” I repeated.

  “And we have two days until he comes back?” Tara said. She and Jim exchanged looks, and I knew that they were thinking along the same lines. I felt left out, wanting to know what it was they were thinking.

  Sarah and I nodded again.

  “A finger?” Fat Bobby said and we all turned at the interruption. He had blanched, as he had when I’d first mentioned the finger. He kind of half turned, his cheeks puffing a bit, as if he might throw up.

  Tara and Jim turned back to me, ignoring him.

  “I say we do what the Outsiders’ Club does best,” Tara said.

  Jim smiled, apparently knowing where she was going with this declaration. I had a vague idea, quickly forming, but didn’t want to say anything yet. I didn’t much like the idea that was forming in my head. I remembered what had almost happened last time.

  “Let him come,” Jim said, sharing another look with Tara, and she was smiling now too. “We’ll be ready.”

  Certain of what they intended now, or something close to it, I spoke:

  “Throwing rocks isn’t going to stop this guy.”

  “What are you talking about?” Sarah asked.

  Reluctantly, but seeing no way around it, I told my sister about the confrontation with Sheriff Glover. How he’d hit me and Bobby, pulled his gun on us, and we’d all
countered with rocks, beating him bloody. I thought Sarah would insist we tell Dad and Mom then, tell them everything, and the worried expression that passed over her face made me think she was considering just that. I needn’t have worried, however, as the look of concern was quickly replaced by a smile, and she high-fived me.

  “Joey’s right,” Sarah said, and she got that irritated look from Jim again, and I got mine, and I knew he wasn’t happy about an outsider giving her opinion on things. “We’re not going to stop this guy with a bunch of rocks.”

  “Then we use more than rocks,” Tara said.

  What that implied I didn’t know or wasn’t ready to admit to myself, but it scared the hell out of me. It seemed we were being pushed in a direction, like maybe down the very hill we were standing on. Propelled forward and rolling down and gaining momentum we’d soon be going so fast that we wouldn’t be able to stop ourselves. Not until we crashed, that was, and that sense of losing control worried me. But I didn’t know how to share those thoughts with my friends. Didn’t know how to put them into words that would carry the weight of the feeling.

  “Wait,” Jim said. He was still looking at Sarah. “Who said anything about ‘we’?”

  He pointed at her to punctuate his words.

  “I’m involved now,” my sister said, her hands on her hips and this look on her face like she was ready to walk over and rip his nuts off if he argued the point. I wouldn’t put it past her either. The line between noogies and testicular removal seemed a small and fine one to me.

  Jim wasn’t so easily cowed.

  He’d never had a sister. Didn’t understand his folly.

  “The hell you are. This is our money.”

  “It won’t be anyone’s money if the police hear about it,” she said, and she gave Jim this triumphant smile, like she was saying: Top that, jerk.

  “You’d do that?” he said. Jim’s face had gone paler than I ever imagined a black person’s could. It looked like the transformation of Michael Jackson packed into a couple seconds.

  “I just might.”

  They looked at each other and the clash of wills was almost tangible, like a military skirmish was playing out right before us. I could almost hear the sounds of battle, and the screams of the dying.

  I was fairly sure my sister was bluffing. The fact that she’d gone with me the night before to the woods and the access road, and her acknowledgement that it would take more than stones to stop the Collector, revealed that she was as invested in this as the rest of us. The car was our find. The woods and the road that had hidden it, our place, our realm. These things belonged to us, in ways not fully explainable in words. I’m not so sure I understand it even now. But it was our duty to protect these things—the car, the body that had been in it, and yes, the money—for as long as we could.

  Yet I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried then and there, watching the battle of wills between my sister and friend. Everything seemed perched on a razor thin edge in those passing moments. If pushed the wrong way, it could all end in a moment.

  Jim finally let out this deep sigh and then looked at me.

  “Fine. She’s in.”

  As if it was by his decree and not his submission that this was concluded.

  Tara moved forward and gave my sister a hug, and for some reason this was embarrassing. The tension about us seemed a tangible force lifting and floating away. I sighed in relief, and my body eased.

  “Nice to have another girl in the club,” Tara said, and Sarah smiled.

  “You need a code name,” Fat Bobby said, and we all turned to him, like we’d forgotten he was there. I saw a steaming pile of something chunky on the ground beside him, and realized he indeed had vomited.

  “Code name?” Sarah said.

  “Yeah,” I said, and I began to go down the roster, gesturing at everyone. “Tomboy Tara, Nigger Jim, and Fat Bobby.”

  “And what about you?” she asked.

  “You can call me Master,” I said.

  “Yeah, right. How about Joey Pisspants?”

  My face turned red. I shoved her, she shoved me back. No one asked for elaboration on my proposed new nickname, and I was grateful.

  “How about Ugly?” I suggested, shoving her again.

  “How about I kick your ass in front of your girlfriend?” she said, and slapped me upside the head. Bandit jumped up between us, wanting in on the game. His paws left a smear on Sarah’s blouse, and she pushed Bandit away.

  “Dammit, Joey,” she said, brushing angrily at the smear with her hands. “That dog’s retarded.”

  “At least his nickname isn’t Ugly,” I said.

  It went on like that for a few moments more, until she hit me a pretty good one on the shoulder, and I tried not to show how much it hurt. But I thought about her threat and didn’t much want to get a wedgie or noogie in front of Tara, and so ignored the further insults coming to mind and stood a safe distance from my sister, rubbing my tender arm. Jim and Tara took the opening to start talking about what we’d do, and “more than rocks” was the understatement of the year. What we were talking about doing was something, even at that age, I knew could never be undone and would be with me until the end of my days.

  3.

  We’d finished our little club conference atop Lookout Mountain with Jim, Tara, and Bobby going back to the Connolly yard to see to some preparations. Sarah, Bandit and I headed home in the off-chance that we were being watched. We didn’t want the Collector to get suspicious or anything if he was the one doing the watching.

  Jim had pointed out the fact that the Collector could have been watching us up on Lookout Mountain during our whole talk, and that maybe he saw us boost onto the upright stone and peer into the recess there. That when we left he’d come out of hiding, find the money, and that would be that.

  When Jim said this, we all stopped what we were doing, even Bandit, as if he sensed the direness and inherent threat of Jim’s words, and stood and looked around at the trees around and below us. I watched for the slightest shake of a branch; listened for the slightest snap or pop of crushing footfalls; saw and heard nothing but the forest. No one else did either.

  There was nothing else we could do but proceed as we had planned. Either the Collector was watching us and now knew where the money was, or he’d concluded last night that it had been hidden somewhere far away and discreet, and was confident in his promise of violence to see the money brought to him.

  The Outsiders’ Club silently parted ways at the edge of the woods, without a goodbye or even a wave, as if the task we were about demanded solemnity rather than joviality. I was actually appreciative of my sister’s presence, along with my dog’s.

  The weight I felt pushing on me seemed too heavy to bear alone.

  * * *

  Now, you’d think a missing body, a buttload of money, and a creepy guy in a fedora and coat calling himself the Collector threatening to kill you and your sister, would be enough for God or Fate or whatever ran the universe to put on one kid’s plate at any given time. But you’d be wrong, because apparently God’s got a mean streak or Fate was a neglected stepchild and is working out issues or something.

  When Sarah and I arrived home we were greeted by the following scene: our dad in the yard face to face with the lumberjack-Sasquatch, Mr. Templeton. The way Bobby’s father stood, legs firmly set and arms crossed at his chest, and the close proximity with which our father planted himself before the bull-like man, made it clear that this wasn’t an impromptu PTA meeting.

  The tension in the air was like a substance you could reach out and touch. We were in the driveway, Dad and Mr. Templeton a short distance away in the green summer grass of our yard, and though I knew Dad had seen us approach, he never once let his eyes drift away from the larger man in front of him.

  I’d forgotten how truly huge Bobby’s dad was. He was a mountain sprouted legs.

  I remembered that day at the trailer trash neighborhood, the street like a ghost town or a Third W
orld village. Seeing the man turn to me. The feeling of being the focus of his bored and sleepy anger, like it was something that was always there, this rage, but dulled or lazy by its constancy.

  I remembered how I’d thought the bearish man could break me like a twig.

  I held that same conclusion as I watched him and Dad square off.

  This wasn’t me he was facing this time, though, and my dad was no twig.

  “Where’s my boy?” Mr. Templeton said.

  He had the same or similar flannel shirt and jeans he’d had on the day I’d first seen him. His lumberjack outfit. He asked this question as if he’d asked it a time or two already, and there was something like a disinterested irritation in his tone, if that made any sense. Like he expected my dad to answer, but really didn’t give a shit either.

  “I already told you,” Dad said. “I don’t know.”

  Dad’s shirt was halfway tucked in, half hanging out like a drooping lip, as if he’d been in the middle of dressing when he’d become aware of his visitor outside. Mom was on the porch, a vague silhouette behind the screen and leaning on the handrail, wringing a dish towel or drying her hands or something else. All I knew was that towel was getting manhandled and hadn’t done a damn thing to anyone. Which meant Mom felt what I did. That thick tension like a fog or a curtain that you could brush at in front of your face.

  Something was going to happen.

  And it wasn’t going to be pretty.

  “And I already told you I think you’re full of shit,” Bobby’s dad said, again, not losing his cool but just stating a fact. Bored and tired. “He’s been spending a lot of time with that brat of yours,” and he hooked one large thumb over his shoulder directly at me. That frightened me, him knowing I was there without even having turned to see me. Then he did turn to look at me, and I froze like an animal in the headlights of an oncoming car. “Where’s my boy, little faggot. He’s been shirking chores, that fat fuck, and I want to know where he is.”