Going Where It's Dark

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  “Sure,” Buck told him.

  Outside, he wheeled his bike down to the end of the gravel driveway, steering with one hand, envelopes in the other. But when he reached the mailbox and leaned forward, trying to open the flap and hold his bike up too, the envelopes scattered on the ground beneath, and Buck had to prop his bike against the post and pick them up. Electric bill, gas bill, telephone company, Speech and Hearing Association, and then, the last envelope, Buck discovered, was addressed to Jacob.

  He paused, wondering if he should take it back to the house, but there, beside Jacob’s name that someone had addressed in blue-inked handwriting, Jacob had printed in big black letters: RETURN TO SENDER.

  •••

  Despite his careful planning, Buck did not go to the Hole on Thursday.

  It rained the day before.

  He had wakened to the sound of rain Wednesday morning, and he could tell by the look of the sky that it was not just a brief shower; it was a hard, steady, dreary rain with no intention of letting up anytime soon, and the Hole would be a mess the next day. Buck heaved himself over and faced the wall.

  He realized now that it was useless to wait for the perfect day. There would never be a day he could count on, the Hole dry, and everyone in the family gone so that he could have a long time to explore without being missed.

  To begin, it was about an hour’s bike ride to the old Wilmer place by the main highway; and now that Ethan had seen him out there, Buck had decided he’d have to take a back route, which meant an hour and a half, at least.

  He could always wash off his arms and legs in the creek when he was through, but he’d need to take a complete change of clothing and hide it somewhere in the bushes. Dad and Joel sometimes came home for lunch, and if they didn’t see Buck around, it was no big deal. Same with Mel and Katie and Gramps. But he couldn’t miss being on time for dinner. That was a big deal at the Andersons.

  But…if Mom found his muddy clothes in the washing machine before he’d had a chance to turn it on, or if Mel wasn’t on a run and didn’t see him around all day, or if Mom got off work early and no one knew where Buck had gone—not even Katie—questions would be asked, and Buck had never been much good at lying.

  One of these days he’d simply have to take a chance. He’d go with Dad and Joel to cut timber on Thursday, and maybe they wouldn’t ask him for the rest of the summer. Maybe the rain now was a good thing.

  And then he remembered the matinee at the Palace, so he still had something fun to look forward to. Nat called to say that his mom would drive them because of the rain, and all Buck had to say over the phone was “Hello” and “Okay.”

  They each got a tub of popcorn and a cola and settled down in the next to last row. There they watched an American spy jump from a helicopter, board a ship in the dead of night, steal a map, launch a speedboat, survive a collision, rappel up a cliff, and get to an embassy in time to stop a bombing, all in the space of twenty-four hours.

  “Cool!” Nat said when it was over. “There’s a Western on next week. Want to see it?”

  So maybe, just like that, they were friends?

  •••

  The sky was still gray on Thursday, but the thunderclouds were gone. Buck sat in the two-ton truck beside his dad, Joel to follow on the log-skidder tractor. The engine noise was loud, and the truck’s large wheels made a smacking sound when they ran over wet places on the pavement.

  Not many other dads did this kind of work anymore, Buck knew, and there was pride in it—that folks still called on him or Gramps when they had woods that needed thinning. The whole family knew that Dad would rather be out here cutting timber than hoeing potatoes in the field; Gramps would prefer sawing tree trunks into planks than standing behind a counter in the shop beside the sawmill, selling building supplies. Because it all started out here in the woods, felling the mature trees that needed to be harvested before they died, and that was what they seemed to love the most. But the family needed more money than cutting timber for the sawmill would provide, so the vegetable garden and the lumberyard store were necessary.

  “You packed those lunch buckets, didn’t you?” Dad asked as he steered with one hand, left arm resting on the open window, the faded blue cap low enough on his forehead to shield his eyes from the morning sun.

  “Yep,” said Buck. “And the thermos.”

  His dad nodded. “Hope the ground’s not too wet to go in. Pretty thick bed of pine needles, if I remember. If it seems too wet, I’ll not take the truck in very far.”

  “Where’s the f…forklift?”

  “I drove it over here yesterday after the rain quit—Joel picked me up. I think it’s pretty safe back there in the trees. Though these days, never can tell….”

  At last they turned onto a dirt road and drove another few miles into a small clearing, leaving just enough room for Joel to park the tractor when he arrived. Buck climbed out and saw a patch of yellow off in the trees; the forklift was still there.

  He had to admit that next to the muddy, moldy smell of underground, he liked the scent of a forest best. The woods had the same earthy wet smell, but this time there was the scent of pine and fresh leaf rot.

  “How m…many acres are there?” Buck asked, waving away a cloud of gnats that greeted him and flew at his eyes.

  “Only ten or twelve,” his dad said. “Let’s take a look.”

  There weren’t any trails to speak of, but they tramped through the underbrush to where the pine needles and moss took over. Every now and then they came to a tree trunk circled with a white paint line—a mark the forester had left to indicate which trees had reached maturity and should be felled.

  Both Buck and his father were counting as they went, but in some places the tangle of brush was so thick that they didn’t go on, just scanned the trees ahead and tried to make an estimate.

  “We’ve got to check for ticks when we get home tonight,” Dad said as they started back to where they’d parked. “A lot of deer around here. A lot.”

  When they reached the clearing, Dad poured himself some coffee from the thermos, and they stood leaning against the truck, waiting for Joel. Buck tipped his head back as far as he could to see the tops of the trees. The poplars were the tallest around, maybe a hundred feet, Gramps had said, their branches starting far up the trunk, and they were ready to be cut in twenty-five or thirty years. But the oldest trees here were likely the hard red oaks that grew more slowly, only forty feet in eighty years.

  Gramps liked figures like that, and knew dozens more, but these were the only ones Buck remembered.

  “Got to cut out the old and let the young ones come along,” he’d said, and Buck wondered if Gramps ever felt like an old red oak himself—he, and then Dad….

  Don Anderson must have been thinking the same thing.

  “You know,” he said, arms folded over his chest, his feet crossed at the ankles, “you and Joel and Katie could do a lot worse than taking over this business someday.”

  Sort of a strange way to put it, Buck thought.

  “When Gramps and I are gone,” Dad continued, “you’re either going to have to run it or sell it, and being out in the woods all day with your brother just might be the ticket for you.”

  “T…to what?” Buck asked.

  “To doing work you like. I tell you…there’s something about seeing new trees coming along…cleaning out a woods so the sunlight gets through…you’re giving ’em a chance. Same with a garden. I don’t like hoeing any more than you do, but I get to the end of a row and see a long line of green coming along behind me, there’s even satisfaction in that, the kind you don’t get sitting in an office somewhere, shuffling papers.”

  And when Buck didn’t respond, he added, “Just something to think on, Buck. You’d be working a lot by yourself…nobody else much to deal with….” And then Dad said it again: “Could do a lot worse.”

  He could hardly have said it more directly: …for a stutterer like you.

  Buck didn’t
have anything against logging or running a sawmill. But he wanted to choose a job because he liked it, not because he stuttered.

  •••

  Buck was the first to hear the far-off grind of the tractor. Dad opened the tailgate and lifted out two chain saws, one at a time. He carried them to the base of the huge red oak just beyond the forklift and laid them down.

  “Get the safety goggles, would you, Buck? There under the seat?” he called.

  When the tractor pulled up and Joel got out, he called, “How many trees we got, Dad?”

  “Buck and I figure around twenty. No more than two loads.”

  It wasn’t long before a chain saw jerked to life in Don Anderson’s big hands and, leaning over, he cut a notch a foot above the base of the first oak tree and angled the saw in. The whine grew louder the deeper it cut, and finally the heavy oak crashed to the ground, branches crackling, followed by a chorus of rustling leaves. Buck felt the thud in the soles of his feet as the earth vibrated, and then the woods were still.

  He and Joel and their dad gathered around the fresh stump, a clean cut, and examined the butt ends for signs of rot, but this tree had no insect tunnels, no slivers. Buck began counting the rings as Dad and Joel moved along the trunk with their saws to cut it into logs.

  “…seventy-four, seventy-five…It’s s…seventy-six years old, Dad,” Buck called.

  “A good long life,” Dad said. And then the air was split with the buzzing shriek of first one, then two chain saws—Don Anderson cutting the heavy oak into sections just short enough to be hauled away, and Joel separating the branches from the trunk.

  They moved on to the next marked tree, a poplar that seemed to tower above the rest of the woods, and when it began to topple, it seemed to fall in slow motion. Its high leafy branches were cushioned by the trees around it, snagging here and there, but ultimately ripping through the foliage and, once again, the earth shuddered as the poplar hit the ground with a thud.

  Gramps had told stories of loggers who made sloppy cuts, or estimated the wrong direction the tree would fall. And as Buck followed along after his dad and older brother, making stacks of firewood from the smaller branches Joel had cut, he was already working up a new adventure for Pukeman. “Pukeman Fells a Tree”—and there he would be in the first square, cutting a notch in a tree with a hatchet. In the next square, Buck would draw him smiling broadly at the deep cut he had made, unaware that the tree was tilting in his direction, and in the third square, he’s lying on the ground, Xs for eyes, the tree on top of him, and little birds, from a nest in the fallen branches, flying circles around his head and tweeting.

  At noon, they stopped for lunch. Cutting the trees and sawing them into logs was the easy part. Using the tractor skidder to haul the wood through the forest and back to the clearing, then maneuvering the forklift to get the logs onto the truck, thicker ones first, was the hard part.

  The three of them sat across from each other on two logs, eating the ham and cheese sandwiches Buck had packed that morning, and half an apple pie, plus the coffee and some lemonade.

  Buck liked the weather of early summer. Not so insufferably hot the way it would get in July and August. That was when the Hole would feel the best. Fifty-six degrees all year round, the temperature of most caves.

  “Gramps would have liked to c…come,” he said, pausing between bites of his sandwich.

  “I know, but somebody’s got to keep shop, and the way his back’s been acting up, he’s got no business hauling a saw around out here,” said Dad. “I think he figured that out for himself. Besides, he wants you guys to get a taste of the business. See how you measure up.”

  So it was still on Dad’s mind. Give it a rest, Buck thought. He had a long time yet to think about that.

  Joel, though, rubbed one shoulder and said, “Oh…I don’t know….”

  “What? Your shoulder’s hurting already?” Dad teased. “You getting to be an old man at the grand age of nineteen?”

  “Naw. I just…maybe like to do something different, I guess,” Joel said, and turned his face away as though waiting for another breeze to come through the stand of trees and cool it.

  “This is different from being at the mill all day,” Dad said.

  Joel reached for the thermos and slowly poured some coffee into his plastic cup. Then he set it down carefully beside him on the log, pulled at his earlobe and said, “Been thinking of joining the navy….”

  Buck stopped chewing and stared at his older brother. Joel, the least talkative member of the family, next to Buck himself, had just said something so extraordinary that Buck could hardly believe it.

  “The navy!” Dad was staring too, and then he snorted and put down his sandwich. “Where’d you get a cockamamie idea like that?”

  “It’s a job, like everything else,” Joel said. “Learn a trade. They’d teach me one.”

  “You’re learning a trade right here! What do you think we’ve been doing all morning? You’re helping out at the mill, earning yourself some money….”

  “I don’t want to spend my whole life just ‘helping out,’ ” Joel said, and turned his face away again.

  Dad sat shaking his head. “What makes you think the navy will even take you?”

  Joel snapped around again. “What makes you think they won’t?”

  “Well, I don’t know, son. What I mean is…this idea just come to you all of a sudden, or what?”

  “I’ve been thinking on it a good long while,” Joel answered, and bit into his sandwich again, jaws tight as he chewed.

  Buck stayed so quiet he thought he could almost hear a beetle working its way up the bark on the log where he and Joel were sitting.

  “Have you been talking about this with Mel?” Dad asked finally.

  “Mel’s got nothing to do with it. I’ve never mentioned it to anyone except my friends.”

  “So…some of them thinking of signing up too? Is this what’s got you going? Or has some fast-talking recruiter come through?” There was a touch of anger in Dad’s voice, like he needed to blame somebody for this idea.

  “Jimmy…he’s thinking on it. Can’t swim, though….”

  “Can you?” Dad asked.

  “I swim!” Joel retorted.

  Don Anderson leaned forward, resting his big arms on his knees, and stared out toward the road. “Well, Joel, I’m not about to hold you back, you make up your mind on something. But just for your mother’s sake, think on it awhile, will you? Don’t go signing something you can’t reverse.”

  They set to work again, a growing silence between them, only the skittering sound as a squirrel chased another around a tree trunk. But at some point in the afternoon, Buck heard his dad say, “Let’s do that big poplar next, Joel. Why don’t you notch it this time, and I’ll just watch. You lay it down, and Buck and I will chop it up.”

  Maybe it was the first time Joel had been allowed to fell a tree, Buck thought. It wasn’t a clean cut—it splintered some when it fell—but it was a tall, straight tree, and it crashed exactly where it was supposed to fall.

  “Good job!” Dad said as he inspected the end of the trunk.

  But Buck doubted it would change anything.

  Everyone was ravenously hungry at dinner, and Mel had gotten home early, bringing a couple of cherry pies he’d picked up along the way. Katie, in shorts and a checkered top, hair in a French braid, had made a centerpiece for the table. She had used an assortment of wild flowers, greenery, and twigs she’d found in the field next to their property.

  Uncle Mel eyed the bouquet with suspicion.

  “Nothing in there about to erupt, is there?” he asked, and that brought a laugh from everyone, remembering the mass of praying mantis eggs that had come in two months before on one of Katie’s bouquets; they had hatched right in the middle of dinner.

  “Prepare to vacate!” Joel cried, and Buck jokingly grabbed one corner of the tablecloth, the way they had back in April. They had carried it outside where dozens of tiny man
tids rapidly scurried off into the grass, and they had to gather up all the silverware and put it back on the table.

  “Lucky we hadn’t put the plates and food on yet,” Doris Anderson said. “I know they’re a friend to man, but they’d got in my pork roast, I’d have smashed them flat.”

  Gramps wasn’t his usual witty self, however. “Sure makes for a long day when I got to run the shop alone,” he complained, resting one bony arm next to his plate. The frayed denim shirt he wore winter and summer alike was still buttoned at the wrist, and the sleeve opening seemed far too large for his wrinkled hand.

  “Well, Joel and I have got to go back and finish that lot tomorrow, Pop. Figure one more day should do it,” Dad said, passing the bowl of creamed peas around the table, “but we could let you have Buck tomorrow.”

  It wasn’t the first time Buck noticed that his dad passed him around as easily as he’d loan out a ladder to a neighbor. He didn’t mind especially, but it would have been nice to be asked first.

  Gramps didn’t respond one way or the other.

  “Would that help?” Dad asked him.

  Gramps dipped a bite of bread in his gravy and thrust it in his mouth. Chewed as though either his jaws were painful or the words he was about to say hurt them: “What would help is somebody taking it seriously, the thievin’ at the shop.”

  “Oh, Dad, you going on about that again?” Don Anderson said, and gave his head a small shake.

  Gramps caught it, though, and raised his voice: “All right now, you listen. While you were all at the woods today, I did some figuring.” He took a minute to wipe the big blue napkin across his mouth and laid his fork across his plate. “Three weeks ago, see, I numbered every one of those plywood sheets—small numbers there on the edge. Wouldn’t see ’em at all if you weren’t looking for ’em. Did the same with my pine planks and my fence posts—every last thing we keep outside under cover, and whenever I sold a piece, I recorded that number.”