Watcher in the Woods

by Robert Liparulo

  “Cannonball,” Xander said. “I think the Confederates are advancing. We can’t stay here.”

  When David had awakened that morning with the first day of school on his mind, it had never occurred to him that he would die that same night in the dirt by a Union soldier’s musket ball. He squeezed his eyes closed. He tried not to think about the rifle fire and the screams, the smoke that stung his nostrils and scorched his throat.

  He forced himself to think of home. He would have liked to have tasted Toria’s meat loaf, to have kicked the mayor of Pinedale in the shin, to have used their mission control center at least once. That got him thinking about something he wanted to write on Dad’s flip chart: What is it about these worlds and WAR? In his mind, he underlined WAR three times. WWII. The Civil War. He would even say Xander’s battle with the gladiator was a form of war. What else would you call it when people tried to kill you—whether it was a single person or many—and other people approved.

  The chorus of gunfire they had been hearing in the distance grew louder, closer. Another cannonball slammed down, too close for comfort.

  “We can’t stay here,” Xander repeated.

  “What are we supposed to do?” David gasped. “As soon as I stand up, they’ll shoot me.”

  Xander was quiet for what seemed like a long time. Finally he said, “I’m sorry I got you into this, Dae.”

  “I don’t want to hear it, Xander,” David said. “Don’t apologize; just get me home.”

  Xander squirmed above him, apparently looking for something that would save them.

  “Xander, Xander,” David said. “Listen, you go. I’ll stay here and play dead.”

  “I can’t do that,” Xander said loudly into his ear. “Anything could happen.” He paused. Then: “Wait, wait, wait.” He rolled off of David and vanished into a wall of drifting smoke.

  “Xander!” David rose up onto his elbow. “Xander!” The barrel of a rifle jutted straight toward his face. He screamed and dropped his head into the dirt. He covered himself with his good arm as if it could protect him from a musket load. He wondered if he would hear the gunfire, or if the next thing he heard would be angels welcoming him into heaven.

  When neither an explosion nor heavenly voices reached his ears, he lowered his arm and looked up. The opening of the barrel was big and black and six inches in front of his eyes. At the other end stood Xander, staring off to the side. Xander swung his attention back to David.

  “Come on!” Xander said, “Didn’t you hear me? Get up.”

  “Xander, what—“

  Xander’s eyes flicked around, then he said, “Don’t say my name. You’re my prisoner, understand? That’s how we’re getting out of here. Let’s go.”

  David fought back a smile. He wiped the sleeve of his troublesome jacket under his nose, leaving a streak of snot and dirt. He rose and noticed that the other soldiers in blue were moving backwards, firing in the opposite direction. He turned to head the same way, raised his good hand, and began walking.

  Behind him Xander said, “Take off your hat so they can see you’re just a boy.”

  David pulled it off and held it above him in his hand.

  “Don’t hold it up like that,” Xander said. “Let’s not give anybody a gray target to shoot at.”

  “Don’t we need it to find the portal?”

  “Stick it in your belt,” Xander instructed.

  David lowered his hand to do that. He thought that having his arm down out of a surrender position made him fair game for anyone who wanted to shoot. He got his hand back in the air as fast as he could. He said, “Xander . . . ?”

  “Don’t use my name!”

  “What if the portal home is on the Confederate side? I’m not feeling the items pull me yet.”

  Xander said, “Back when I was lying on you, I thought I felt my jacket pulling in this direction. But it might have been the wind . . . or you. Wherever it is, David, we’ll get to it. I promise.”

  David believed his brother. On a list of character traits, Xander’s top two would be determination and stubbornness.

  David said, “Don’t use my name.”

  CHAPTER thirty - six

  They marched for a long time. They went over one, two, three hills, past the slow-moving injured and those who would never move again. Some soldiers ran by on their way to the front lines. They frowned at David. The anger in their eyes seemed to change to sadness when they registered his age. One man nodded at Xander and said, “Good job, private.”

  Dutifully, Xander replied, “Thank you, sir.”

  Finally, tents and groups of scurrying soldiers came into view. As they drew closer, an older man with a closely cropped black beard broke away from a small group of soldiers to walk toward them. His jacket had a high collar and two rows of brass buttons running down his chest. Patches embroidered with stars were sewn to the top of each shoulder. He stepped in front of David. His eyes roamed down to David’s feet, then back to his face.

  “How old are you, son?” the man said.

  David pulled his jacket closed in front, making sure his cast was hidden. He said, “Twelve, sir.”

  “And those cur dogs got you fighting?”

  David thought fast. He figured an officer wouldn’t take kindly to an enemy combatant regardless of age. He said, “No, sir. I’m only a drummer boy.”

  The officer narrowed his eyes at David. “Caught without your drum?”

  David said, “Taken from me, sir.”

  The man said, “You know what I hear about young recruits?”

  “Sir?”

  “If they want to fight, they scrawl the number 18 on a piece of paper and put it in their shoe. When enlistment officers ask them if they’re ‘over eighteen,’ they can honestly answer, ‘Yes, sir, I am.’ Those dogs are so desperate for soldiers, they take them at their word even when they know they’re putting a child on the battlefield.” The man stepped closer. “What concerns me are all the Southern children who do that in order to put musket balls in my men. You didn’t do that, son, did you?”

  Every organ in David’s body felt shriveled to the size of a pea. It was all he could do to keep from passing out. He said, “No, sir. Just a drummer boy.”

  The man squinted down at David’s sneakers. He said, “Son, those are the strangest shoes I’ve ever seen.”

  “Sneak—” David started, then backed up. “I mean, sir, my mother made them.”

  “No offense to your mama, but I think she could use some lessons.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The man looked past David to Xander. “Oh, no,” he said. “How old are you?”

  “Fif—” Xander’s voice suddenly grew deep. “Eighteen, sir.”

  The man frowned. “Beauregard hit our blind side. What’s your take?”

  “Pretty bad, sir. We saw . . . uh, I saw lots of casualties back there.”

  The bearded man nodded. He said—more to himself than to Xander, David thought—“Retreat is not dishonorable. Unnecessary retreat is. I don’t believe it’s time to shoot the horse.”

  “No, sir.”

  The man scowled at Xander. “You know where the stockade is?” Conveniently, he pointed down the camp’s center aisle.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Carry on, then.” The man stepped aside.

  David felt the barrel of the rifle poke his spine. His feet felt like they were made of cement, but they moved on down the middle of the encampment.

  “What was that ‘shoot the horse’ stuff ?” David whispered.

  “I think it’s his version of throwing in the towel. Do you know who that was?”

  “A guy who almost shot me,” David said flatly.

  “Ulysses S. Grant.”

  When David said nothing, Xander went on: “He became president of the United States. He’s on the fifty-dollar bill.”

  Xander seemed more impressed by this last fact than by the first.

  David simply nodded. As they moved toward the back of the camp,
he finally spoke up. “How come I got the gray uniform?”

  “Luck of the draw, Dae.” After a few moments, he added, “And I am sorry about this.”

  “I know.” He walked a few paces. “Xander—”

  “Don’t use my—“

  David said, “Xander, Xander, Xander.”

  Xander sighed and said, “What?”

  “I don’t see any way we could look for Mom like this. And I just want to go home.”

  “Yeah,” Xander said. “I have an idea. Come on.” He grabbed David by the collar and tugged him toward a tent.

  “Hey!” David said. “What are you—?”

  “Just trying to make it look real. You’re my prisoner, remember? Now, shhh.”

  Xander pulled the tent flap back. Past his brother, David saw a man getting dressed. Xander said, “Excuse me.” He let the flap fall back into place and pushed David on.

  “What are we doing?” David whispered.

  “I’m looking for something.”

  “What?”

  But they had reached the flap of the next tent. Xander had his ear close to the canvas, listening. Inside, someone was screaming in pain.

  “Xander, let’s go to the next one!” David said.

  Xander pulled back the flap and gasped. David couldn’t keep his eyes from looking. A man lay on a table, convulsing. Blood jutted from a wound in his neck. His screams became gurgles. A woman in what David assumed was a nurse’s hat and covered in blood held a cloth to another injury in the man’s chest. She looked up quickly.

  “Boy!” she yelled. “You must fetch Dr. Scott. Two tents down. Hurry!”

  “I . . . just . . .”

  “Now!”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Then something caught Xander’s eye. He let go of David and stepped into the tent.

  “Xander! ” David whispered harshly.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” the nurse said. “Two tents down!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Xander repeated, but he continued into the tent. David saw that he was heading for a row of bodies lying near the side of the tent. A swath of tan canvas covered each body; only bare feet and hands protruded. On each covering was written a name: A. Powell, J. Davis . . . Xander bent and picked up the piece of charcoal beside the bodies.

  “What are you doing?”

  Yeah, David thought. What are you doing!

  The nurse had reached the end of her patience with Xander. She screamed, “Help! Dr. Scott! Help!”

  Xander darted to the tent flap and pushed David through it.

  “What was that about?” David said. Then he realized that the nurse’s yells were largely muffled by the tent material. With the yelling of commands to the soldiers and cries from the other wounded, no one would be able to hear her.

  David pointed. “This way, I think. Dr. Scott, she said?”

  “Hey,” Xander scolded. “You’re a prisoner.”

  They headed toward the tent she had indicated. Before reaching it, David felt a strong tug on his body, like a surf ’s undercurrent. Just as he realized what it was, Xander grabbed his shoulder.

  “David!” he said. “The portal. My clothes are pulling me that way. The rifle too.”

  “I feel it too,” David said. “Just go tell the doctor—”

  “Are you crazy? We gotta go now. The portal moves. We can’t risk losing it.”

  “But, Xander, that man.”

  “We’re not supposed to be here,” Xander said. “If he dies, that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Now, come on.”

  He grabbed David’s collar again and yanked him toward where they both knew they would find the portal—beyond the row of tents opposite the ones Xander had been looking into.

  David looked back at the tents. What if that man died because they didn’t get the doctor for him? The nurse had not asked Xander for a glass of water but for a doctor, a lifesaver. He felt he was walking away from something important. The dying man was out of sight. And they weren’t doctors. They couldn’t really help the guy, could they? But did these things—that they couldn’t see the person who needed help, that their help was limited to getting real help—mean they didn’t have to try as hard as when David had saved the little girl from being run over by the Nazi tank?

  Then again, Xander was right. They knew from watching the worlds through the doorways that the portals drifted around. It was as though they were caught in a river current. And they didn’t know enough about how they worked to know for sure they wouldn’t simply drift away or vanish altogether. If they didn’t reach the portal when they had a chance, they could be stuck in Civil War world forever. They might die there—and sooner rather than later. What good would that do?

  He let Xander pull him more easily toward the portal. Then his legs were moving fast alongside Xander’s, and he pushed the dying man from his mind.

  “Do you feel it?” he said. “Is the pull getting stronger? I can’t tell.”

  “I think so. Come on.” They ran between two tents. David thought he saw it: a hundred yards away where the field met the woods, the base of a tree seemed to shimmer and ripple, as though he were seeing it through the heat waves of fire.

  “There it is!” David yelled and picked up his pace.

  Xander grabbed his arm and stopped him. “Hold on a sec.”

  He ran back toward the front of the tent.

  “Xander, come on! What are you doing?”

  Xander disappeared around the edge of the tent. When David reached the corner, he found Xander drawing on the canvas of the tent with the charcoal he had picked up. David recognized the cartoon face that was his family’s inside joke. The way he was drawing it, it would be four feet up, right on the front of the tent.

  “What are you doing?” David yelled.

  “I’ll explain later,” Xander said. “Go to the portal.”

  David looked back through the tents. His heart sank. The portal was gone. Then he saw it again, deeper into the woods. It was drifting. He knew at any moment it could just . . . float away.

  “Hey, you!” someone yelled.

  David turned to see a soldier standing in the camp’s center aisle pointing at him—or at Xander, who was still drawing on the tent. Either way, this kind of attention wasn’t good. Several of the pointing soldier’s comrades turned to look. Whether they didn’t like Xander defacing the tent or a Confederate soldier standing in their camp, unshackled and unguarded, he didn’t know. But that something disturbed them was clear: two of the soldiers raised their rifles.

  “Xander!” David yelled.

  His brother’s eyes darted toward him, then around to the object of David’s concern. Xander dropped the chalk and bolted around the corner of the tent, slapping David on the back as he did. They ran for the woods.

  Was the portal getting smaller or just farther away? Didn’t matter—David would keep running until he reached it, and if he had to, he’d squeeze into a space the size of a mouse hole to get home.

  Behind them someone yelled again, more insistently.

  David’s cast bounced against his ribs, causing jagged bolts of pain in both his arms and his ribs. The side of his jacket that had been hung loosely over his cast slipped off. It flapped behind him as he ran as fast as he could, staying right on Xander’s heels.

  A shot rang out. The musket ball tore through the woods ahead of them, sending branches and pine needles flipping through the air.

  David would not have thought he could run any faster, but he did. He pulled even with Xander, then passed him.

  Another shot, but he didn’t see where that one went. A sickening thought crossed his mind. He yelled, “Xander?” He could not hear his brother’s footsteps or breathing over his own.

  He was ready to stop when Xander answered right behind him: “Go! Go!”

  They hit the line of trees. David leaped over a tangle of branches. He came down on a small bush, almost fell, stayed up.

  Without pausing, he ran directly into the shimmering, swirling portal.


  CHAPTER thirty - seven

  TUESDAY, 1 : 22 A . M .

  David was still running when he burst into the antechamber. He hit the far door at full speed. His cast hit first, then his knees and forehead. He began falling backward, when Xander came through the portal, just as fast. Xander slammed David back into the door. Both of them crashed to the floor.

  “Ahhhg!” David screamed. It felt as though his entire left arm was on fire. The pain was so intense he saw nothing but a bright, blinding light in his head. He felt a hand clamp over his mouth.

  “Shhh! You’ll wake Dad.”

  “I . . . don’t . . . care,” David said through clenched teeth and Xander’s hand. “My arm! My arm!”

  Xander wrapped his arms around him, hugging him tightly, the way Dad would have done. “I know it hurts,” he said, “but it’s just your arm, Dae. You didn’t get shot. You’re alive.”

  It felt as though a sword had been run up the entire length of his arm. Slowly, while Xander rocked him, the agony diminished. The sword became a hot wire, then a throbbing pulse, like his blood was having a hard time traveling through the damaged highways of his veins and arteries.

  After a while, David opened his eyes. They were sitting on the floor, leaning against the door he had crashed into. The portal door on the opposite side of the room was closed. Of course it was: it always slammed shut after a person went through. This time it had waited until both of them—Xander and David—had reentered the antechamber.

  “Okay,” David said, pushing Xander off him. “I’m okay.” But he wasn’t sure it was true. Each time his arm throbbed—which kept perfect time with the beating of his heart—pain shot into his shoulder and head. On the downbeats, when the pain took little breaks, his arm tingled. “My arm feels like it’s asleep,” he said. “When it’s not—uuuhhhgg—killing me.”

  Xander scooted back on the floor and leaned into the bench. He was smiling.

  “What’s so funny?” David said. He was holding his teeth so tight against the pain, it felt like his molars would crumble.

  “How many times did you get shot at?” Xander said. “And you wait till you get back home to get hurt.”