by Chris Lynch
“Who’s coming?” Gunnar said. He looked off into the distance, at the big mountain across the lake, like Attila ready to hit the Alps.
“I’m coming,” Lars said in a voice brave and clear and strong.
“Of course you are, ya dope,” Gunnar snapped. “I was asking them.”
“I’d do it,” Wolf said pathetically—like goofy little Tiny Tim in Scrooge. “But I’m afraid I’d only slow you down.”
“Ya, you would,” Gunnar said in a voice that might as well have said, “So, who asked ya?”
“I’ll go,” I said.
“I’ll go,” Ling said, waving his ever-present hatchet in the direction of the lake in a fine “Wagons, ho” motion.
“Hey,” Wolf called, pretending to be helpful. “Shouldn’t we be contacting the authorities on this?”
“No!” Gunnar screamed. “No. Steven’s an experienced camper. He knows how to survive lost for several hours at a time up here—he’s been through it plenty of times. And, he’s a Lundquist.”
As the four of us started down the slippery mud slope of the hill, Wolf called, “Oh, that’s right. I completely forgot about that. He’s all set then.”
The trek through the woods was a lot hairier than I’d expected it to be. Between Gunnar barking at everybody for no reason; Lars falling down, freaking out, and training his gun on everything that scared him; and Ling chopping his way through every single little impediment as if he were battling his way out of the man-eating spider-vine jungle—well, it was a mighty tense hike.
“Can we stop for a drink?” I asked when we approached a slow-moving stream.
“No!” Gunnar said, sweating like a sponge now and taking hits from his canteen every six seconds. Somehow the canteen didn’t seem to be helping him.
“Chew an orange,” Ling advised. “Or some ice chips.”
The best part about Ling was, there was no way of telling whether he even knew he was being funny.
“You got ice chips?” Lars asked me desperately.
“Well, I did,” I said, “but I forgot to wear my refrigerated pants, so they melted.”
“Shaddup, all of ya,” Gunnar said, trudging on.
Every ten yards or so, Gunnar stooped to pick something up, to pinch a low-lying branch between his fingers, or to scratch a piece of dirt.
“He hasn’t been here” was always his conclusion. “Let’s press on.”
Finally, after we’d marched around for an hour and a quarter, Gunnar permitted us to stop.
He must have been tapped out, because he even shared his rations. He passed the canteen to his brother, who took a long drink, winced, then passed it to Ling, who never would have drunk out of it anyway, but who couldn’t resist taking a sniff, out of jungle-boy curiosity. His head snapped back as if he’d been punched, and his great fleshy nose retracted halfway to his forehead in an effort to escape. He then offered it to me, but I just shook my head.
I figured I had spent enough time with the brothers Lundquist and more than enough to express my concern for my long-lost friend.
“I think maybe I should head back to camp,” I said. “Check on how Wolfgang’s doing, see if maybe Steven’s shown up.”
Gunnar stood, stretched like a waking bear, then growled like one. “No.”
“No?” My heart sank. “No, I can’t go back to the camp?”
“No, I mean no, Steven hasn’t returned.” He sniffed the air. “I’m a mountain man. I can sense these things. I can feel them. The boy’s not back there. He’s out here someplace, and it’s going to take ol’ Johnny Chesthair himself to find him.”
“Okay, then, I think I’ll just go on back, hold down the old fort, as they say. Ling?” I tried to get his attention. He was spellbound, sitting and looking up at Gunnar like the disciple at the master’s feet. “Ling? Hello, do you think we should probably be getting back now, together?” I was practically waving my arms, trying to give him the high sign.
Ling turned a look on me as if I had just called in our location to the enemy.
“I am not leaving these woods,” he said, voice cracking, “until we locate Steven.”
Lars nodded righteously, took the canteen back, swigged, and passed it to his brother. Gunnar took a slug, then pulled Ling up by the hand and gave him a big bear hug, complete with noisy back slaps.
“Sheesh,” I said quietly as I watched the scene. Once again, the Lingster had lost track of the program, and we had lost the Lingster.
And they’re all armed, I thought with a shudder, as I started back for camp.
9 Power Play
AS EXPECTED, I DIDN’T find any He-Man Women Haters in our little tent city. And it wasn’t hard to figure out where they were. I just followed the music.
It wasn’t blasting, but it was coming through loud enough that I knew before I even got there that there was a party going on over at Lundquist Lodge. Yet when I did reach the clearing, I was surprised all over again.
First by the shot.
Pop-bang. The pellet sailed right past me and exploded with a grand azure splash all over the birch trunk behind me.
“All right, I’ve had just about all I’m going to take of this,” I hollered as I lay belly to the ground. “Not only is it degrading and probably illegal for everybody who feels like it to keep hunting me for sport, but has it occurred to any of you that I am the leader of this club?”
There were two distinct rounds of laughter before I heard the next round of gunfire.
Pop-bang. Same tree. But this time it was a nice frog-belly green splat.
“Friend or foe?” Wolf called.
“Now, there’s a joke,” I answered. “What’s the difference, as far as you’re concerned?”
“If you say foe, I shoot you. For obvious reasons. If you say friend, I shoot you. For my own amusement.”
“Jerome,” Steven called. “Don’t listen to him. Come on in, I won’t let him shoot you.”
“Thanks, Stev—” I was standing already, dusting myself off when I heard it. But by now I was pretty familiar with the old pop-bang. I hit the deck before it came to the bang part.
“I’m going back to get the brothers,” I threatened.
“Cease fire,” Steven immediately called.
I cautiously made my way to their post out in front of Lundquist Lodge.
“Nice to see you alive again,” I said as I approached Steven. More than just surviving, he looked happier and more relaxed than I had ever seen him before. He lay there, completely reclined in one of the chaise lounges, with Wolf right next to him in the other one. Music from the local country station wafted out the window of the trailer behind them, and the boys were sipping Coke out of two-liter bottles with straws.
“Bonding today, guys?”
“Well you know,” Wolf said, “you’d be amazed how close a couple of He-Men can get while roughing it under such brutal conditions.”
Quite brutal. The rain had stopped, the sun was beaming down in a private little column on just the two of them. I expected a double rainbow to arc over them any second.
“And you even trained yourselves to shoot intruders without leaving your lounges,” I mentioned as I joined them, taking up the one vacant seat—the empty wheelchair.
“I already knew how,” Steven said. “This is the kind of stuff you learn when you hunt with the Lundquists. Most days, to them hunting means lying right here with the TV propped up on a rock and taking the occasional shot at whatever happens to come within range.”
“Which wouldn’t figure to be much,” Wolf guessed.
“Let’s just say you couldn’t survive long by eating the brains of the creatures they bring down,” Steven answered.
We all kicked back then, listening to the music and passing around the Cokes and a box of Screaming Yellow Zonkers Steven had retrieved for an early lunch.
“So, where’d you leave them?” Steven asked.
“Right about the spot where your dad shot us yesterday.”
“Good,” he said.
“Question.”
“Yes, Wolfgang?” I said cautiously. This couldn’t be good.
“Did you really think these were real guns, and he was really going to gun you down? You didn’t really think that, did you … head He-Man?”
Wolf has a way of framing questions … you’re kind of shot down before you even answer them.
“So?” was the best I could do.
He shook his head sadly, slowly. “I don’t know there, Jerome. I think we may have been a little hasty in our last leadership changeover …”
“Yesss,” Steven said, raising both fists.
Wolf couldn’t leave him alone either. “Dream on, Duke of Puke. That doesn’t mean we want you back in charge. We’ve all seen what you’ve got in your tank.”
“Hey,” I snapped, even though snapping was not my leadership style. But this was a time for decisive action. “I was voted in fair and square, and I expect to serve my term. Which, I believe, is four years.”
They laughed so hard I thought they were both going to roll out of their lounges and down the mountain.
“Jerome,” Steven said. “Buddy, if you are still in this club four years from now, then I agree, you have every right to be president. In fact, if you’re still in the club when you’re seventeen, then you might as well just stay on and rule forever.”
“And maybe you could do yourself a favor, respectwise,” Wolf added, “if you took off the garbage bag you’re wearing. Especially in the sunshine, you know, it looks a little …”
“You people,” I said, getting agitated and beginning to wheel myself around the compound in Wolf’s chair like a hot rod in a parking lot. “This is the appreciation I get. I try my best to hold this sorry group together, to set an example …”
You couldn’t even hear the radio anymore, they were laughing so hard.
“Fine, then, who’s going to be president? You, Wolf?”
He stopped laughing briefly. “Not on your life. Not for all the Girl Scout cookies in America.”
I watched, with pleasure, as a little shudder ran through Steven. Steven’s kryptonite is Girl Scout cookies. Because they come from Girl Scouts. Girl Scouts named Monica. It’s a long story.
“I can’t be the boss,” Wolf went on. “If I’m boss, who am I going to disrespect?”
“Well, it’s settled then,” I said, figuring I would make my last official proclamation a real lollapalooza. “Ling is in charge.”
All the laughter stopped. What I got now in return was not quite respect, but at least it wasn’t open ridicule.
“Ling can’t be in charge,” Steven said. “How are we going to finish the school year if Ling takes over and then declares war on Cuba or something? I know my mom won’t let me go fight Cuba.”
As I made one more circuit of the grounds—I was loving the wheelchair by this time—Wolf grabbed my arm and stopped me short. “Okay, you get an extension of your contract. But you better start showing some decisiveness. And maybe some guts. Some guts would be nice, don’t you think, Steve-o?”
“Absolutely. The guts issue is what croaked me out of office.”
“Done,” I said. “You, He-Man Wolfgang, hop on.” I angled up alongside of him so he could board the wheelchair with me. Then I began wheeling us over to the gas grill. “Steven,” I commanded.
“Yes, sir.”
“Get in there and find us some bloody red meat to cook up. I declare lunchtime.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, and did just as I told him to.
It’s all in the delivery.
“Do you suppose they’ll surprise us, eating their stuff?” Wolf asked as Steven reemerged, carrying the beef.
“Not a chance,” he said. “I get ‘lost’ up here every couple of years. He always eventually finds me, but he won’t come back empty-handed, not if it takes him a month.”
Wolf’s eyes went wide, with concern. I figured he was thinking what I was thinking: Where do we stop, then? And how do we stop? And is it, really, morally right, what we’re—
“Then maybe you should run the television out here,” Wolf said, addressing his deep concern. “And see if you can scare up a couple more pillows and some guacamole.”
10 Party till You Drop
IN THE AFTERNOON IT rained some more, so we brought the party indoors.
Still no sign of the Great White Hunters.
“Can you believe the reception they get up here?” Wolf said, marveling as he flicked the satellite-aided television from one station to another to another and on, never returning to the same one twice.
“He doesn’t even let us get cable at home,” Steven grumbled.
“Well, you sure got it now, boy,” Wolf said, pressing the channel-changer with his thumb and holding it. We all watched the stations race by like a high-tech Mardi Gras parade.
“Let’s get a pay-per-view,” I suggested.
“Brilliant,” Wolf said. “But you need a phone for that.”
We turned to Steven. “Of course they do,” he answered before we asked. He fished the cellular phone unit out of a cabinet.
“Oh, let me do the calling,” Wolf said, backtracking to try to find the preview station on the TV. Once he found it, we started shopping for a feature. “You guys pick. I just want to use the phone.”
“My mother doesn’t even have his phone number,” Steven muttered.
“Check it out. Preset numbers. Eeny meenie minie …”
Wolf waited, holding the phone close to his ear. Then suddenly he responded. “Yes, lady, I am twenty-one years old—”
Steven snatched the phone out of his hand. “No dames, remember? Not even simulated ones.”
So Steven ordered the movie, which was a Jean-Claude Van Damme. It showed up so quickly on our screen that twelve people were dead before the microwave popcorn was even popped. Something about a Schwarzenegger or Stallone or Van Damme picture that just gets the He-Men all lathered up, boy, and they just have to get physical about it. Steven and Wolf spent the whole time arm wrestling. First time, Wolfgang won without bothering to look away from the screen. Second, same thing. Steven’s face turned purple from the embarrassment or the rage or the effort. Third time, Wolf asked me to pass him the popcorn bag while he was pinning Steven’s hand down on the card table.
“Maybe you should take a rest, Steven,” I said, trying to be helpful.
“Oh ya,” he answered, panting. “Why don’t you take a rest.”
Good one, Steve-o.
To give Steven a more dignified retreat (note: the dignified retreat, a major He-Man preoccupation), I busied myself with the stereo. “Anyone mind if I play some music?” I asked.
I had my back to them now, but even the soundtrack to their arm-wrestle marathon was pretty descriptive.
“No problem,” Wolf said coolly. “You don’t need the sound much for one of these movies anyway. Besides, Steve-o here is making all the same noises as the bad guys, so we won’t miss them.”
I listened. Son of a gun, he was right. “Arggghh. Nuhhhh. Rurrrrr. Ug. Nug. Yahhhhh.”
Poor Steven. This sure seemed important to him. I glanced back over my shoulder to watch him pulling with both hands on Wolfgang’s one. With his free hand Wolf was busy sorting the old maids out of the popcorn.
I started flipping through the tapes, looking for some relaxing music to ease us into a less hostile atmosphere, like they do in doctors’ offices.
I landed on something interesting. “Queen?” This, to me, was mind-blowing. “Steven, your father and uncle have a tape of a band called Queen? Up here at the House of Grunt?”
Steven was in no condition to answer. He was just leaning, with everything he had, on Wolfgang’s steady arm. There was no indication Steven was diverting any energy to the task of breathing.
“I have to try this,” I said, and stuck in the tape.
Boom … ba-ba … boom … ba-ba …
When the sound thundered out of the speakers, all other activity in
the room stopped. I was blown back from the stereo. Wolf slammed Steven once more—this time for good—tipping over the popcorn and splashing drinks and buckling two of the table’s fold-up legs, sending Steven sprawling backward all over the floor.
“We will, we will … ROCK YOU …”
“Hey,” Wolfgang hollered, hammering the arm of his chair to the beat of the song. “Hey, that’s no Queen. We know that song.”
“Everybody knows that song,” Steven added, pulling himself and the card table back together.
“You got blood on your face/You big dis-grace/ Slander my name/All over the place …”
“That’s the Boston Bruins fight song!” Wolf cried.
Now, I myself had never been to a Bruins game, but I certainly recognized this as a fight song of some kind. Guys with big necks and baseball caps were forever cruising around the city before and after important sporting events singing, chanting, screaming, stomping that song, in big scary gang sing-alongs. It always scared the potassium out of me to hear that song rounding a corner.
But under the right circumstances … it could be a positively infectious little number.
“Weeeeeee/Are the champ-yuns/My friends …” Queen sang, along with Wolfgang.
“And weeeee’ll/Go on fighting/Till the end …”
“Throw me that microphone,” Steven said, and I did. I turned the volume up as loud as it would go, Steven and Wolf huddled together at the microphone, and I was pulled along like when an undertow gets me at the beach.
“We are the champ-yuns/We are the champ-yuns/ No time for looooo-serrrs/’cause we are the champ-yuns … of the worrrllld.”
I didn’t know if we were doing any structural damage to the Lundquists’ trailer, but from the way the place shook, it sure seemed likely.
But I didn’t care! I was feeling it, the madness, the beautiful insanity that the basket cases who run with the bulls in Spain or who maul each other at English soccer games get swept up in. I was wild, I was loud, I was dangerous, I was happy, I was a man, a rutting herd animal with no concern for whatever got in my way. I was …
“Did you hear something?” Steven screamed over the music.
