In the Woods

by Carrie Jones

I stiffen at the sound of Mr. Lawson Smith’s voice. After what Katie was yelling, I’m more than a little worried he’s going to be mad at me when I didn’t even do anything. What if he tells Chrystal they’re leaving right now and then the monster gets her? What if he thinks my offer to let them stay here was just so I could get with his daughter? I don’t want him to think that. I don’t want Chrystal to think that either. I don’t think she does. I turn to face Mr. Lawson Smith.

  “The lights won’t keep him out,” he says.

  He doesn’t mention Chrystal. He doesn’t look at me like I’m the devil. I let myself breathe.

  “No, sir,” I agree. “We were guarding the cattle and we thought the lights might at least help us get a good shot at him.”

  He nods. “That they might do.”

  He seems different. Kind of lifeless, like all his energy has been drained out of him. I guess he’s pretending not to have heard Katie screaming about kissing.

  “You’re tired, Dad,” Chrystal says. “You should get some rest.”

  “I will,” he promises. “I just wanted to be sure you’re okay up here.” There’s some implication in that line and I redden a little.

  Something knots up inside my stomach and someone behind Mr. Lawson Smith clears his throat.

  In the hall, my dad stops in the doorway and looks in at us. “Everything all right up here?”

  “Yeah, we’re fine,” I tell him.

  “Logan, you behave yourself,” he warns. So, obviously, he heard Katie too.

  I insist, “Dad, we’re fine. We’re not doing anything.”

  “Let Chrystal get to sleep. She’s had a big day. I’m going to bed,” he says, then moves on down the hall. I hear my parents’ bedroom door close.

  “Well, all right. I’m going back downstairs,” Mr. Lawson Smith says. Before he goes, though, he comes over to Chrystal, and there’s a little of his old bounce in his step as he reaches for her and hugs her real tight. “Good night,” he tells her, then nods at me. “Thank you again for having us.”

  “We’re glad to do it, Mr. Lawson Smith,” I say.

  He leaves the room and almost bumps into Mom.

  “You’re all set up, Mr. Lawson Smith,” she says after they laugh a little over the near collision.

  “Please, call me Matt,” he says. “Thank you again. Really, I can’t tell you how much it means to us to be invited into your home.”

  Mom waves his words away like they’re mosquitoes. “Go get some rest, Matt. You look beat.” She peers into the room. “Logan, you come out of there and let Chrystal get to sleep, too.”

  “She needs some clothes, Mom. The thing tore up all of hers. I’m going to give her one of my T-shirts to wear.”

  Mom nods, then says, “I think I have some shorts you can wear, Chrystal.” She disappears and Mr. Lawson Smith also moves away. His feet thump against the wood as he goes down the stairs.

  “Here you go.” Mom reappears and offers Chrystal a pair of blue terry-cloth shorts. “They’re old. I guess nobody wears shorts like this anymore. I had them when I was about your age. And size. I kept them, always hoping I’d get back to that size, but after three kids…” She lets her words trail away. “Go get the shirt, Logan. I’ll stay with Chrystal.”

  She waves me away, so I go to my room and find my newest Forest Road Consolidated High School 4-H Club T-shirt. I’ve only worn it a couple times, so it shouldn’t have any manure stains on it, but I give it a quick check just to be sure. It’s good.

  Outside the bedroom, I hear Chrystal and Mom talking about me.

  “Logan’s a good Christian boy,” Mom says. “He’s never really had a girlfriend, so he probably doesn’t know how to treat a girl he’s interested in. He should know better, but if he gets out of line, you just let me know.”

  I step into the room. “Yeah, Mom, he is,” I say, and try to smile like I think the whole thing is funny and not horribly humiliating.

  “I know, Logan,” Mom says. “I know. It’s just that this is a pretty unusual circumstance. Oh, I know you’ll behave.” She comes over and hugs me, then pulls my head down to her level so she can kiss my forehead.

  “Mom,” I whine. “Come on. You’ll be showing her the naked baby pictures next.”

  “I have to save something for tomorrow,” she teases.

  Chrystal looks like she’s about to bust up laughing again. Her eyes have an extra sparkle. As soon as Mom leaves the room, Chrystal puts a hand over her mouth to smother the giggles.

  “I found you a shirt,” I say, offering it to her.

  She takes the shirt and whispers, “Your mom is really nice.”

  “She’s not usually so embarrassing,” I promise.

  We still stand there, like two chocolate Easter bunnies that have melted and fused together after being left in a hot car. I can smell her hair now. It’s very … girly. Like a field of flowers after a light rain.

  “You smell so good,” I whisper.

  “You too,” she says.

  “I have to go.”

  “Umm-hmm,” she agrees.

  It’s a huge effort of will, but I finally pull myself away from her. Our hands connect and cling as I back toward the door until finally they fall away from each other.

  “Good night,” I tell her.

  “Good night.”

  Sleep is a long time coming and full of questions about monsters and missing women.

  * * *

  I’m up before dawn, like usual, and helping Dad with the milking. Kelsey comes to join us about halfway through. She looks sleepy.

  “What are you doing up so early, pumpkin?” Dad asks.

  “Katie’s bed is too small. She kept kicking me and I couldn’t sleep,” Kelsey answers.

  “Well, tell ya what,” Dad says. “Logan here’ll go up in the attic today and bring down a couple camping cots and we’ll see if we can’t make everyone more comfortable tonight.”

  “Thanks for giving up your room,” I add.

  “For your girlfriend,” Kelsey teases, then laughs. “She’s really nice.”

  “Yeah.” Girlfriend …

  “Mom’s going to make a huge breakfast,” Kelsey says.

  “Then let’s get these girls out of here, so we can help her.” Dad slaps the rump of a Holstein he’s just taken the electric milker off and backs her up.

  Dad and I milk, while Kelsey shuffles the cows in and out of the milking barn. The job isn’t so hard. The cows eat grain from a trough while me and Dad slip the teat cups onto the udders. By the time we’ve attached the cups to the last cow, the first one is about finished, her milk sucked out and sent to the bulk tank via big yellow hoses. The bulk tank is in the next room and holds the milk until Nate Saul arrives in the Double O truck to take it to be pasteurized.

  “After what happened yesterday with Chrystal and the deputy, the men in town are going out hunting that thing again today,” Dad says.

  “Are you taking Mr. Lawson Smith?” I ask as we wait for the last few cows to be finished.

  Dad sighs. “I don’t know. I guess I should ask him if he wants to. Handing him a gun makes me a little nervous, though.”

  “You never know. He could be a crack shot,” I say.

  Dad grunts. “Maybe.”

  “He seemed really sad last night,” Kelsey adds.

  “His daughter was almost the latest victim of that thing,” Dad reminds us. “Any father is going to be sad. And mad.”

  Conversation is pretty much dead after that. We run the last cow out of the barn and watch her trot along the worn trail up the hill and into the trees where I first saw the monster. There are two man-made ponds on the other side of the rise, and the cattle usually go up there for water after the milking. I wonder how many cow pictures there are on Mr. Lawson Smith’s tree cameras up there.

  “Who’s going to wash it down?” Dad asks.

  We all look back inside at the floor of the milk barn. Cows don’t mind pooping while they eat and get milked. Dark-green c
ow flops, most with deep hoofprints in them, dot the floor behind where the animals had been standing.

  “I’ll do it,” Kelsey says reluctantly.

  “I’ll help,” I say. “I’ll shovel and you wash.”

  “I appreciate that, Logan,” Dad says. “It’s daylight and we’re right here in the barn, but I don’t want your sister out here alone. I don’t want you out here alone. I don’t want anyone out here alone.”

  Dad’s just full of cheer this morning.

  I get the wheelbarrow and a shovel. For the next ten minutes, I scoop up cow pies and haul them around back to add to a pile in a corner of the yard well out of sight of the house. Not much of anything goes to waste on a farm. Not even waste. The manure is mixed with straw and Dad sells it as compost to other farmers with vegetable crops. Once I have the patties scooped up, Kelsey washes the concrete floor, directing the small bits I missed into a grated drain where it runs out of the barn. Naturally she sprays me with water several times … after I toss a couple fresh pies toward her feet. It’s all good farm fun.

  * * *

  Inside the house, Dad has cleaned up and is already wearing the bright-orange vest he always wears when he’s going hunting. I can see the rectangular shapes of shell boxes in the pockets of the vest. His face is set and grim. I know he’s worried about the hunt, about the danger of hunting something unknown, and of leaving the house and his family.

  Mr. Lawson Smith isn’t on the couch. I ask Mom about him and learn that he’s taking a shower. Pretty soon the seven of us are crowded around the long dining table. Mom put the leaf in to make it longer. We pass around a platter of biscuits, a bowl of gravy, another platter of bacon, and scrambled eggs. After a while, Dad breaks the silence.

  “Matt,” he says to Mr. Lawson Smith, “do you want to go out with me and some of the other men today to hunt for that thing? Or do you have your own plans?”

  Mr. Lawson Smith’s old enthusiasm seems to have come back in the night. “Oh, thank you. Thank you. But no. You see, I’m not good at all with a gun. No good at all.” He waves his fork as he talks. “A camera, that’s what I usually hunt with. No, I’m going to go back to our hotel room to see what evidence I can gather. That’s first on my agenda, then I hope to talk to the policeman who was injured.”

  Dad stabs a chunk of gravy-covered biscuit. “The cops might not let you back in that room.”

  “Oh, I’m sure they’ll let me in. Tell me: How will you hunt the … the monster?”

  “Sam Davis, over at the feedstore, made some calls and got the best dogs in the county over here. We’re going to start at your hotel room. The trail will be a little cold now, and I’m not sure the dogs will even know what scent it is they’re supposed to track, but that’s where we’re starting.” Dad gulps his coffee.

  “You be careful, Ron,” Mom says. I finally notice she’s barely touched her food.

  “I will,” Dad says, then looks at me. “Logan, keep your gun with you. Stay out of the woods. Keep close to the house.” He points at Kelsey and Katie with his fork. “You two stay right around the house. I mean it. Don’t leave the yard, and I want you to have Logan or one of the dogs with you anytime you’re outside. Understand?” They both nod. “All right. Well, I need to get out of here.”

  Dad gets up and kisses Mom where she sits at the table. We all watch as he walks to the front door and picks up his rifle from next to a bookshelf. He gives a final wave, then leaves us. The house is quiet for a long while.

  “He’s going to be okay.” Other than a brief greeting, it’s the first thing Chrystal’s said since coming downstairs. I watch Mom smile at her.

  “I know,” Mom says. “Still, this whole situation is just strange. Makes me think of when I was a little girl and saw that movie about the monster over in Fouke, Arkansas. That scared me to death, especially the scene where the man was sitting on the toilet and the monster reached through the window. But … I guess I never believed monsters were real until now.”

  14

  CHRYSTAL

  “I’m really not sure how I feel about guns,” I say as Logan hops onto the back of this four-wheeled ATV. “I’m sort of against violence.”

  “Spraying that thing with fire wasn’t violent?” Logan raises an eyebrow.

  “True.” I stand there looking down at him. There’s a bit of wind today, and it blows his hair around. At his side, Galahad, who is the goofiest dog ever, wags his tail at me. I bend down and scratch behind his cutie-pie ear. “Who is the cutest doggy ever? Who is?”

  “You’re going to spoil him.” Logan smiles at us and then goes right back on topic. “And you wouldn’t have shot him—the creature, not Galahad—if you’d had a gun?”

  I think about it for less than a second because I can’t delude myself about it for that long, even. “Oh, I would have shot it.”

  His lips are grim and set. “Exactly.”

  “My father would rather keep him alive. He thinks of him more as an endangered animal or something. He thinks it’s wrong to kill another life-form just because we don’t understand it, or because it has the potential to hurt us.”

  “So he’s never killed a mosquito or a tick?”

  “Well, those aren’t exactly endangered, are they?”

  Kelsey yells something in the house. We hear Katie yell back, but I can’t make out the words. Logan motions for me to hop on the ATV. I climb on behind him and wrap my arms around his chest, trying to be careful of my blisters. He’s not super-big, but he’s solid and strong, wiry. The cotton of his T-shirt doesn’t hide the fact that he’s got this sexy-guy thing going on underneath. I give in to the urge and rest the side of my head against his back as he starts up the engine. I’ve never actually been on an ATV before, but it’s beyond loud and beyond bumpy. I lift my head to watch the fields and cows as we gallop/wheel/bump over the terrain. Galahad runs after us, still wagging his tail.

  “Can you make it go faster?” I yell in Logan’s ear. His hair smells like coconut.

  His head tips upward and back as he laughs. “Oh yeah…”

  And then we’re really hauling across the field. I scream, but it’s a totally happy scream, not like my screams last night. Riding this is like zipping on a roller-coaster ride. I reach my hands up above my head and whoop like a cowgirl, which cracks Logan up so much that he starts to slow down. Then he must think better of it and we’re off again.

  He brings me past pecan trees to a smaller field filled with some sort of waist-high plant. Hopping off, he points to the targets right by the tree line. Two are just bull’s-eyes painted on plywood. Then there’s one that’s the silhouette of a bear, and another of a wolf or a coyote. The last is the outline of a man.

  I must make a face, because Logan bumps me with his hip.

  “Yeah, we’re just outlaws,” he says. “Total hicks.”

  “You’re not hicks,” I say.

  “You’re so nice, Chrystal. I can’t believe how nice you are.”

  I’m about to protest that I’m not really exceptionally nice, I’m just me, but something seems to shift in him. His hands go into his hair, and he sort of runs them through it before he gets off the ATV and grabs the guns off the back. He stands there for a second and swallows so hard that I can actually see him do it.

  Galahad catches up with us and his happy doggy face leaves him. His tail droops and he whines as he stares at Logan. Wow. He must really love his master.

  I step toward Logan even though he’s holding guns and I’m not exactly sure what the etiquette is on that sort of thing. Logan looks so sad. I reach up to touch his shoulder just as a crow caws, and say, “What is it?”

  “It’s just…” He looks away, and then it’s like he’s willing himself to man up and meet my eyes. I almost wish he hadn’t, because his eyes are full of hurt. “It’s my fault, you know?”

  “What’s your fault?”

  “The monster thing … the attacks…” His chin tilts up and he breaks our gaze. His eyes go to the sky.


  My heart lurches in my chest, pounding. “Why? It’s not you, is it?”

  “What?” He steps back. His mouth drops open. And I realize how stupid I’m being. He doesn’t even know Dad’s werewolf theory.

  “How could it possibly be your fault?” I ask.

  “Because I didn’t kill that thing when I saw him.” His voice is flat, dead. “If I’d had my gun that night … If I had killed him, you wouldn’t have almost died, Karen wouldn’t be dead, that deputy wouldn’t be hurt. Our fathers wouldn’t be hunting the thing down. Everyone’s at risk now because I didn’t kill it.”

  “Oh…” I can’t think of what to say. I grab for him again and he snuffs like he might cry. I pull him into a hug. “It’s not your fault, Logan Jennings. It couldn’t possibly be your fault.”

  He hiccups and says some more, but I can’t make out the words. We stand there and I rock him back and forth, wishing I could magically take all his guilt away.

  “You don’t always carry your gun with you, do you?” I ask.

  I feel him shake his head against my shoulder as he mumbles, “No.”

  “You didn’t have any reason to have it that night. You couldn’t have known what you were going to see. It’s not your fault,” I tell him.

  Galahad whimpers and nudges at us with his head. He goes for my calf and then Logan’s, one and then the other, over and over again.

  “He wants in on the hug,” I say, and pull Logan down so that we’re both squatting in the grass with Galahad by our knees. The dog takes the opportunity to start licking Logan’s cheek. Logan almost smiles and sort of waves Galahad away, but Galahad won’t stop. I lean forward and lick Logan’s other cheek, which makes Logan’s eyes go wide with surprise.

  “Hey!” He laughs.

  Him laughing is so much better than him crying, so I lay my hands on his chest and push him over, knocking him onto his back. He stretches his arm out and lets go of the guns. I climb up and lick the other side of his face again, hoping it’s not too sloppy. His face tastes like salt and sadness, tears and sun. He cracks up.

  “Stop! Stop!” he begs.