Wilder Boys

by Brandon Wallace

  “Its pupils are round,” he told his brother. “There’s only one snake in the United States that has round pupils and is venomous. The coral snake. And this doesn’t look anything like a coral snake.”

  “I don’t care. That thing looks like it wants to kill us!”

  Right on cue, the snake struck at Jake. The full length of its body uncoiled and launched itself toward him. Jake jerked back out of harm’s way, his heart racing.

  “Whoa! That was close!” said Taylor.

  “I think it’s just scared,” Jake said, unslinging his backpack. As Taylor and Cody backed away, Jake pulled out their dad’s journal and began looking for the sketch he’d seen.

  “Here,” he said. Reluctantly, Taylor moved closer. Jake pointed to a pencil drawing his father had made of a skinny serpent with stripes on it.

  “This looks like the same snake, doesn’t it?” Jake asked his brother.

  Taylor—still clutching Cody—looked from the drawing to the snake and back again. “I guess . . .?”

  “Well, it says here that it’s a garter snake—‘a harmless species common to this part of the state.’ ”

  “Did you say harmless?”

  “Right. Look how tiny its teeth are. It could bite you, and you probably wouldn’t even feel it.”

  “No, thanks,” Taylor said, but his body relaxed.

  “Keep Cody back,” Jake said, and with his shoe, he nudged the snake off the trail. The garter snake hissed again but didn’t strike. Instead it quickly slithered into the grass and disappeared under a nearby rock. When the snake had gone, Taylor and Jake stared at each other. Then they both burst out laughing.

  “Boy, do we have a lot to learn,” said Taylor.

  Jake nodded, but his thoughts turned serious, remembering the hikers’ warning about grizzly bears—they might not be so lucky the next time they met a wild animal. It wasn’t just the likes of Bull and the authorities that were out to get them. Here, there were wild animals to be avoided. Their lives could actually be in danger.

  “We should try to pick up some of that bear spray somewhere.”

  “Cody’ll protect us,” Taylor said. The terrier was busily sniffing the rock the garter snake had disappeared under.

  “Maybe,” Jake said, not sounding too sure.

  Still amped from their “near-death” encounter with the snake, Jake, Taylor, and Cody hopped the stream and continued along the trail. By now, the bison had wandered out of sight, but the boys soon had bigger concerns than bison. Even though the afternoon sun had dipped behind the mountain peaks, the dry warm air had forced them to drink the last of Taylor’s water.

  “Man, it’s hot,” Taylor complained as they staggered up another low-rising hill.

  “Yeah,” Jake agreed, salty sweat stinging his eyes. For the hundredth time he kicked himself for forgetting to fill his water bottle. He couldn’t remember ever feeling this thirsty, and Taylor was barely managing to stagger along behind him on the trail. Even Cody’s long pink tongue hung out.

  Taylor halted and bent over, hands on his knees. “Jake, I don’t feel so good.”

  “What’s wrong?” Jake walked back to his brother and squatted down to look him in the eyes.

  “My muscles keep knotting up, and my stomach . . .”

  “You feel like you’re going to throw up?”

  Taylor breathed heavily. “Maybe.”

  Jake straightened back up—now he was seriously worried. His own calf muscles were cramping, and his skin felt a lot hotter than it should. They had already come dangerously close to running out of water on the bus. But here they weren’t going to stumble across any bottled water.

  We need to find water, fast.

  Jake pulled out their map. He saw that a large lake lay about a mile ahead, but he didn’t know if Taylor could make it that far.

  On second thought, I might not be able to make it a mile either.

  Just then he heard a noise overhead and swiveled to see a couple of ducks flying less than fifty feet over their heads. They looked like they were coming in for a landing somewhere.

  “C’mon,” Jake told his brother. “There might be some water through those trees.”

  Taylor didn’t speak, just forced himself to follow his brother. Jake led them through a hundred yards of sagebrush. Cody seemed to sense something up ahead and ran in front of them, following another rabbit trail until they reached some cottonwood trees. It was only a half mile to where the birds had landed, and Jake wanted to urge his brother on, but his tongue was sticking to the roof of his mouth. Instead he just nodded. He could see dark rings forming around Taylor’s green eyes and wondered if his brother could go on. But the younger boy brushed back the hair from his sweating forehead, and soldiered on under the blazing sun.

  Through the trees, hidden from the trail, the trio finally emerged into the clearing where the birds had landed. Cattails grew on the side of a small pond, and two ducks—mallards, Jake thought—paused in their feeding to warily eye the intruders. Jake felt like kissing the ground in relief as he saw the bright sunlight bounce back off the water’s shimmering surface.

  “Water!” Taylor shouted. He dropped his pack, and without even undressing, he plunged into the pool. Panicked, the ducks took off, but Cody sprinted after Taylor and also leaped in.

  Taylor gulped huge mouthfuls of the water. Jake could only hope that if it was good enough for the birds, it was good enough for them. He also dropped his pack and then dove into the pool.

  “It’s freezing!” he shouted.

  “I know! Isn’t it great?” Taylor asked. He swam on his back like an otter, Cody happily paddling along behind him.

  “Don’t drink too much of it, Taylor,” Jake warned again. “Remember, we need to boil it first.”

  “It tastes fine,” Taylor said, taking another drink.

  “Yeah, but it’s not how it tastes . . .,” Jake began, but then he, too, surrendered and took a huge swallow himself.

  The boys stayed in the pond until the cold stabbed needles through their flesh. Smiling, they finally staggered out and flopped down on the bank.

  “Man, that felt good,” said Taylor.

  “You can say that again.”

  “Man, that felt good.”

  Jake threw a stick at him. Already, both the boys felt better, and Taylor was back to his normal goofy self.

  “This is a great spot,” said Taylor. “Maybe we should stay here tonight.”

  Jake surveyed the pond and its surroundings. It actually did seem like a good place to camp. The trees kept them hidden from other hikers and nosey rangers. Beneath the trees and in the surrounding brush, there were plenty of dead sticks and logs that they could use to build a fire.

  “Okay,” said Jake, “but it’s going to get cold early. Let’s wash our clothes and get them hung up to dry.”

  Taylor groaned, but the swim in the pond had revived him.

  “You rinse them out,” Jake told him. “Even the ones we’re wearing.”

  “What?” Taylor stared, his mouth open. “You want us to walk around naked?”

  Jake sighed and waved his arm at their surroundings. “Taylor, who’s going to see us out here?”

  Taylor glanced around. “Those ducks might come back!”

  Jake couldn’t help laughing. He stepped out of his underwear and threw his boxers at his brother. “Just do it.”

  “Oh, great,” Taylor grumbled. “Now I have to wash your stinky old underwear.” He gathered all their clothes together, though, and got started.

  While Taylor did laundry, Jake started thinking about a fire. He pulled his dad’s journal out from his pack to see what he could find.

  The journal sketch showed twigs leaned up against a log or a rock, with larger and larger sticks crossed back and forth over it, forming a crude lean-to grating. Another note said, Put paper under here, and had an arrow pointing under the grating.

  As Taylor hung up their dripping clothes on the low branches of some young
cottonwood trees, Jake gathered sticks of different size and thickness. Then he carefully arranged the sticks against a medium-size dead cottonwood log. He couldn’t find any paper to use as a starter, but he did find plenty of dried dead cottonwood leaves.

  “These will probably burn,” he muttered to himself.

  Taylor finished hanging the clothes and walked over. Already, both boys had forgotten they were naked.

  “What are you doing?” Taylor asked.

  “Just getting a fire ready,” said Jake. “Go get the matches, okay?”

  “Sure, where are they?”

  Jake looked at him. “Very funny. They’re in your pack.”

  Taylor shook his head. “I didn’t pack any matches. Did you?”

  Jake groaned. “Are you serious? I just thought . . .”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Maybe we can rub some sticks together,” Taylor suggested. “Or use an ax like that boy did in Hatchet?”

  “We don’t have an ax.”

  “We’ve got pocketknives.”

  Jake shrugged. “It’s worth a try.”

  He dug out his pocketknife, and then found a couple of different kinds of rocks. He whacked the blade of the knife against the rocks, but nothing happened.

  “Here, let me try,” said Taylor, trying to coax some sparks out of the knife.

  “All we’re doing is messing up the blade,” Jake finally said.

  “Let’s try sticks.”

  Jake was pretty sure that wasn’t going to work either, but he said, “Be my guest.”

  By this time, chilly air had begun to flow down from the snow-covered peaks. Fortunately, their clothes had almost dried, so the boys got dressed again. Jake took out a can of spaghetti with sauce and opened it.

  “Any luck with the fire?” Jake called.

  Taylor threw the sticks down in disgust. “Can’t even get them warm,” he said, and wandered back over to Jake.

  “Well, dinner is served.”

  The two brothers sat on the ground, passing the can of cold spaghetti back and forth, sharing some with Cody. They were still so hungry, they decided to open another can, and they quickly devoured that, too.

  “Man, I could eat ten of those things,” said Taylor as the last light began fading above the mountains.

  “Me too. What do you say we eat the last of our peanut butter cups?”

  Taylor’s face brightened. “Sure! I forgot we had any of those left!”

  When unwrapped, the candy looked like little balls of moose poop after being melted and cooled over and over, but Jake and Taylor didn’t mind.

  “Man, this is the best dessert I’ve ever eaten,” Taylor exclaimed.

  “Yeah,” Jake muttered.

  As they were licking their fingers, another gust of cool wind made Jake ponder the night ahead.

  “It’s almost dark. We need to make a bed of some kind.”

  “What about using leaves, like Dad showed in his journal?”

  Jake nodded. Together the boys dug a shallow depression under a nearby tree. They lined it with leaves and then piled another mound of leaves next to it. By the time they finished, the temperature had begun to drop dramatically, and they put on every piece of clothing they had in their packs.

  Then both boys sat down in their bed of leaves and piled the extra leaves on top of them. Cody snuggled between them, carving out a place for himself in the makeshift bed. Using their packs for pillows, they stared up through the cottonwood branches to watch the stars pop out of the sky one by one.

  “This isn’t so bad.” Jake sighed.

  “These leaves are a little scratchy, but it beats being back in Pittsburgh with Bull, that’s for sure,” Taylor agreed.

  With mostly full stomachs and each other and Cody to keep them warm, the boys listened to the croaking of frogs and the hoot of an owl. For the first time since leaving Pittsburgh, Jake relaxed enough to appreciate the sense of adventure coursing through him. For the first time in weeks, he fell asleep with a smile on his lips.

  13 Their nest kept them warm—for a while.

  After a couple of hours Jake woke up shivering. He scooted closer to Taylor and Cody, who also squirmed to keep warm, but whichever position he tried would leave his other side more exposed to the cold air. When pale light finally brightened the eastern horizon, a new problem swarmed in—mosquitoes. Even with the hood of his parka pulled tightly around his head, the pesky insects managed to find bare skin, and in no time Jake could feel at least a dozen bites swelling around his cheeks and neck.

  After swatting away the buzzing bloodsuckers and trying to get warm, Jake finally raised the surrender flag and crawled out of their leaf-filled bed. Cody just stared at him as he stood up, content to stay snuggled against Taylor.

  “Man’s best friend, my foot,” Jake grumbled at him.

  After taking a drink of water, Jake explored the lakeshore. The mosquitoes continued to follow him, and he wished he’d thought to throw some insect repellent into his pack before they left. He remembered a trick he and Taylor had learned at summer camp last year—rubbing mud over exposed areas of skin. Maybe we could try that later, he thought. What we really need is a good shelter.

  The leaf bed was better than the floor of the freight car on their ride out to Chicago, but not by much. As he walked along the shore, though, he suddenly stopped. About a hundred yards away, a mound of sticks and mud rose up out of the water. It was about the size of one of those tents they used on mountain-climbing expeditions, and even though he’d never seen one of these stick structures with his own eyes, Jake immediately recognized it.

  “A beaver lodge!” he exclaimed.

  Jake sat down on the shore, hoping to see a beaver pop his head out. Unfortunately, the beavers stayed out of sight, but Jake did enjoy watching a pair of redheaded ducks with sharp pointed bills paddle around the lake with their babies trailing behind. Sitting quietly, he also saw the eyes of a frog pop up from some waterweeds near the shoreline, and a very fast bird with swept-back wings dart over the lake.

  I’ll bet that’s some kind of falcon, Jake thought to himself, looking for a meal.

  Just the thought of food sent Jake’s stomach growling, and soon he stood up and hurried back to camp. He found Taylor and Cody rummaging through their packs.

  “Any food left?” Jake asked.

  “That’s what I’m looking for,” Taylor said. “There’s some cheese, but I think it’s gone bad.”

  “Any chips left?”

  Taylor gave him a look. “Like we’d leave those lying around. All I found is a couple of packs of Pop-Tarts.”

  He held out one to Jake, and they sat down to breakfast. Each package held two cinnamon-flavored pastries, and the boys inhaled the first one faster than you could say gulp.

  “Every meal’s a banquet,” Taylor said.

  Jake looked over at him, and they laughed. But Jake felt a twinge of guilt, thinking about Sharon.

  “I feel bad running off like that,” Jake admitted, giving half of his second Pop-Tart to Cody. “She did a lot for us.”

  Taylor did the same, then said, “Maybe after we find Dad, we can send her something to the Traveler’s Rest—she does spend a lotta time there.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. A present. She seems to like T-shirts.”

  “Good idea,” said Jake. “But first we gotta figure out what we’re going to do today.”

  “This lake’s pretty nice. Do you think we should stay here?”

  Jake shook his head. “Too many mosquitoes, and besides, the sooner we find Dad, the better.”

  “Man, I’m hungry.”

  “Yeah, me too. I never thought I’d miss the sloppy joes at school.”

  Taylor chuckled. “Maybe we can catch some fish. Do you think there’s any in this lake?”

  “Yeah, a few, but I think we should keep going. Dad said to leave inspiration behind, right? From the map, Inspiration Point’s only a
couple of miles away. Maybe we’ll find another clue there—and a better campsite.”

  Taylor swatted at a cloud of mosquitoes buzzing around his face. “Well, what are we waiting for?”

  The boys quickly packed up what little gear they had, and set off. Even though the sun now crawled above the horizon, Jake figured it was only about seven in the morning, and the boys and Cody had the trail to themselves. In no time they’d covered the distance to the south end of Jenny Lake, and they paused on the shoreline to look at their map.

  “It says there’s a visitor center right over there,” Taylor said, pointing to the east side of the lake. “Maybe we could get some food there. And a better map of the park.”

  Jake frowned. “Yeah, but what if people are looking for us?”

  “Well, we can do what we did before,” said Taylor. “I can stay hidden with Cody while you go in to check it out.”

  Jake knew it was risky—but so was starving to death or getting lost in the wilderness.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s do it.” He spit in his hands and rubbed the dirt off his face in an effort to look a little less disheveled. He wasn’t sure how well it worked.

  The Jenny Lake Visitor Center lay about half a mile away and was just opening up when Jake walked in, trying to look like a regular tourist. He casually picked up one of the park service maps and opened it. It was a lot better than what they had, but he was hoping for something else he’d learned about at camp last year.

  “May I help you?” asked a man in his forties or so, wearing a wide-brimmed ranger hat and a gold tag that read PETE GARCIA.

  “Um, yeah,” said Jake. “My, uh, parents sent me in to see if you have, um, any topographical maps of the area.”

  “You planning to head into the backcountry?” Ranger Garcia asked.

  “Um, not this trip, but maybe next year or something.”

  The ranger smiled. “Glad to hear it. Too many people just race through the park in their RVs and cars, and don’t take time to explore.”

  Jake smiled back at him. “Well, I wish we had time this year.”

  The ranger went to a little cabinet and pulled out a large map and laid it out in front of Jake. “This is the largest scale we have,” said Ranger Garcia. “It should give you enough detail. . . .” He paused, glancing sidelong at Jake, as if remembering something. Shaking his head, forgetting again, he continued, “Erm, but if you want even more, you might try the forest service office down in Jackson Hole.”