Before Familiar Woods

by Ian Pisarcik

  “You need to get an alarm clock.”

  “I have an alarm clock. It didn’t go off.”

  “Well, that’s not my problem. That’s not these kids’ problem either.” The driver reached for something on the dash. “I got a timer I keep in here for when kids aren’t outside. I set it for thirty seconds, and I sound the horn at the beginning and then again halfway through. If they ain’t out by the time the alarm goes off, then it’s too late. I been doing this fourteen years. All the kids know to be on time with me. All the kids know about me before they even ride this bus. Their parents too. I don’t know where you been.”

  “I said he’s coming.”

  “It’s already been thirty seconds since we been talking.” The man put the timer back on the dashboard. His stomach sat on his lap and the top button of his shirt was unbuttoned and silver hairs like guitar strings came up over the fabric.

  “Aren’t you cold in that shirt?” Milk asked.

  The driver looked down at his shirt as though he hadn’t noticed it before and then he looked back at Milk. “You ought to forget about my shirt and worry about why it is you can’t get your son up on time—why it is you’re standing out here arguing with me. Why it is you …”

  Milk looked toward the back of the bus, where the children were mostly quiet.

  “Go on then,” Milk said.

  “How’s that?”

  “You heard me—fuck off.”

  The driver straightened in his seat. “Real nice,” he said. “That’s real nice—and in front of the kids too.”

  “Fuck you,” Milk said. “You look like a marshmallow peep in that goddamn shirt.”

  Milk turned from the bus and headed back across the damp grass to the house. He heard the air being released as the door closed and then the rumble of the engine as the driver put the bus in gear and started down the road.

  Inside Milk went for his cigarettes. Daniel came running out of his bedroom with his hair sticking out in seven different directions and his goggles swinging from his hand.

  “Slow down,” Milk said. “I’m taking you to school.”

  “I’m going to be late.”

  “You’re not going to be late.”

  “The bus is leaving.”

  “Damn it, Daniel. Relax a minute. We’ll get to school before the bus does.”

  “You don’t know where it is.”

  “Where what is?”

  “The school.”

  “Daniel. I was going to that school before you were ever born. It hasn’t gone nowhere.”

  Daniel went to the window. His backpack was unzipped.

  “Come on,” Milk said. “Quit staring out the window and get your coat.”

  * * *

  THE TWO RODE along Stump Hollow in silence. A beat-up pickup passed them heading north, and Milk thought he might wash his truck when he got back to the duplex. He tried to recall whether he had seen a hose coiled up outside.

  When they turned onto Wicket Street, he flipped on the radio. Daniel held his goggles on his lap, and now and then he squeezed his eyes closed like he was trying to pass something through his digestive tract.

  “What’s going on?” Milk asked.

  “Nothing.”

  They continued up past the last of the farms to the small brick school that sat at the back of a paved lot partially fenced in with split rails. There were already a couple of buses pulled up next to the school, and there were children getting off the buses and making their way to the big red double doors. Milk slowed the truck and pulled in behind one of the buses that had its stop sign extended underneath the driver’s side window.

  “This is where the buses park,” Daniel said.

  “Think of me like a bus.”

  “You’re supposed to park with the cars.”

  “Jesus, Daniel. I’m only here a minute dropping you off.”

  Daniel opened the door without saying another word and jumped out.

  “I’m picking you up, too,” Milk shouted.

  Daniel shut the door, and Milk watched his son rush to join the other children, who were all headed toward the red double doors. His hair was still sticking out in every direction and his backpack was pulled tight against his shoulders, whereas all the other kids had theirs hung loose off their asses. Milk spotted a couple of boys huddled close together talking, and after a moment one of them with a blond bowl cut and a Boston Bruins hockey jersey came up behind Daniel and started stepping on the heels of his shoes. Daniel stumbled a couple times, but he didn’t turn around. Milk reached for the door handle but stopped himself. He watched the two walk for a little while before one of the female teachers came over and told the kid in the hockey jersey to knock it off. The teacher put her hand on Daniel’s shoulder, and the two of them walked through the doors together.

  RUTH FENN

  Ruth supposed she had time. Della had been holding her meetings at the church over the noon hour for the last three years. For a while it was only Mondays, but Elam had recently told Ruth she was up to three days a week. It wasn’t hard to believe. Della had always been a devoted member of the parish, and after William died she’d stuck to the church the way a dog sticks to a square of sunlight stretched across a cold floor.

  Ruth walked along the side of the road. The late-morning light came down sideways, and she kept her eyes on the ground to avoid stepping in borrow pits and erosion channels or tripping over spots where the pavement had frozen and cracked and lifted like warped boards. It was cold, but it was dry, and the sun felt nice on the side of her face.

  She continued around the bend just before Della’s house and stopped when she heard the start of an engine. She could see the back of the police cruiser between the oak trees. The forest-green paint with the horizontal yellow safety stripe. The cruiser began backing out of Della’s drive, and Ruth thought to step off the road and into the overgrowth where she might not be seen. But instead she stood perfectly still and watched the cruiser back out of the drive and rotate its tires and head south toward town.

  A moment later Della followed in her pickup. Ruth watched the vehicles disappear. She’d known Della would seek out Leo eventually, and she felt some relief in her having done so. But she felt angry, too. Angry that Leo might feel like he was needed. She remained in the road with the wind blowing the skeleton leaves in tight circles, and then she continued toward Della’s.

  The curtains were closed. The long chain was gone, and Ruth wondered if the dog had gotten free and run off somewhere. She lifted her nose and tested the air as though she might be able to tell something from smelling it, but she only picked up the scent of rotten leaves and damp pavement. She removed her glasses and wiped her eyes with her handkerchief. The sky to the west was cloudy, and it looked like it might start to rain again. She studied the quiet road and the trees and the gently sloped hills in the distance, and then she started down the drive.

  Elam’s clouded image came to her mind. A warm fall morning two years ago. He was sitting on the front porch with a mug of coffee tucked between his legs and the horse races on the radio. He greeted her when she stepped outside. He picked up his mug and set it on the railing beside the radio and gave her a small peck on the cheek. He asked her to sit down beside him in the old rocker, and even before she agreed he started to wipe away the leaves that were caught between the slats.

  The hills had turned the color of rust. She could hear the track announcer between stretches of static. Elam stared at the woods for a long time in silence until she began to think he might only want to sit beside her and look out at the changing colors and breathe in the sharp autumn air like they had done when they were young, before Mathew died and even before he was born.

  But after several moments he turned to her and said he had been thinking they should try again. She must have looked confused, because he leaned forward and said a child. Ruth was fifty years old. Mathew had been dead just over a year. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t even possible. But she didn’t have to
be so harsh. She didn’t have to let on that it was such a foolish idea.

  Elam had seemed happy. Blind as a water beetle to just what in the hell he was asking—but happy. That used to be enough for her. It used to be the most important thing to her, and she regretted not holding on to his happiness for a little while longer.

  The school bus sat on the dead grass next to Della and Horace’s house. The blue paint had faded on the hood, and she could make out the old route number. Brown curtains hung over the side windows, and sheets of plywood had been secured to the entry door. Two U-bolts clung to the plywood, and a bike chain had been looped through the bolts and secured.

  Ruth wasn’t sure what exactly she expected to find in the bus. She wasn’t even sure she would be able to get inside. But she knew Della and Horace kept their distance, and she knew Horace spent a lot of time in the bus with the rest of his friends, smoking and drinking and listening to baseball. He had been doing it ever since William was born and Della finally got up the courage to tell him he needed a new place to carry on without waking the baby. And so Ruth thought there might be something in the bus that would give her some idea where Horace had gone or what he had been doing talking to Elam at the Whistler.

  Besides, she didn’t have any better ideas, and she was past the point of sitting around and waiting on something close to luck to find her. Ruth looked back again to the empty road and then started along the east side of the bus, searching for gaps in the curtains.

  The thin whistle of a sparrow startled her, and she turned to the woods. The clouds had parted and filtered light shone down through the branches. The sparrow whistled again, and Ruth’s eyes followed the sound to a trash heap several yards into the woods. The sparrow fluttered above the trash heap and settled on a branch.

  Ruth continued along the side of the bus until she reached the rear window, where the same brown curtains had been hung. She looked back to the house. The pale-blue curtains were drawn. She was struck by the feeling that someone was watching her from behind them. But she knew that if there was, she would already have found out.

  Two silver handles were positioned vertically on the sides of the rear window of the bus. Ruth got up on her toes and pulled one and then the other so they sat parallel to the ground. She pulled the handles toward her. The window popped open. She looked around for something to stand on and spotted a white plastic bucket by the trash heap and started toward it. The bucket sat upright about fifteen feet into the woods. It was filled with leaves and rainwater and dead mosquitoes. She tipped it over and watched the oil-colored water snake under an arched bush with deep-red berries. The trash heap smelled like rotten eggs mixed with something sweet. It wasn’t compost, exactly. It was just a pile of trash, and she wondered what it was for.

  She carried the bucket back through the woods to the bus and positioned it on the dead grass under the rear window. She tested the bucket with the edge of her foot and then stepped up onto it and pulled the window all the way open.

  It was dark inside the bus. The air coming out smelled like warm beer and cigarettes. A couple of seats had been removed from the front driver’s side and a rug had been laid on the floor. Ruth cursed herself and swung her arms over the window and pulled. She wasn’t as young as she used to be. That wasn’t something she needed to climb through the window of a school bus to find out, but it did reinforce the point.

  She shut the rear window almost all the way and reached over one of the seats and pulled the curtain back to bring in some light. The seats were green vinyl and cracked with white spider veins. Some were torn, and straw-colored stuffing bulged from the openings. Others had been repaired and covered haphazardly in a glossy sealant. A thin layer of dust clung to everything.

  Ruth made her way down the aisle. Cigarette butts were caught in the thick ribbed flooring. She checked the seats like a child who had lost her winter gloves, but most were empty save for a couple of beer bottles with their labels torn and a can of Rust-Oleum without a cap. She tried to picture Horace sitting here with a group of guys smoking cigarettes and drinking beer, but it was hard for her to imagine grown men sitting on a school bus. She wondered about the logistics. Did any of them sit in the same seats? Did they stretch their legs across the benches or sit facing forward? Did they sit in the front or in the back? She wondered if Elam had ever been inside the bus.

  A small metal fan had been mounted on the dash to the left of the steering wheel. A faded pine tree air freshener hung from the stick shift. The rearview mirror was just a shell, its glass gone.

  Ruth reached over the steering wheel and drew back the curtain. She could see all the way to where the road disappeared around the bend. She watched the road, expecting to see Della’s truck appear, followed by the police cruiser, but when it didn’t come, she drew the curtain closed. She turned from the window and stepped on the rug that lay behind the driver’s seat where the bench seats had been removed and felt the floor bow.

  She stood there a moment looking down at the slight seam that ran across the center of the rug. Then she lowered herself to the ground and pulled up a corner. The cheap cotton had succumbed to dry rot and nearly crumpled in her hand. Damp leaves and all-but-disintegrated pieces of paper stuck to the floor.

  Ruth pulled the rug back to expose the seam running straight across the floor. She ran her finger over it and then pulled the rug into the aisle and dug her fingertips into the lip of the seam and lifted. A section of the floor came up easily, and the cold air came with it.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said.

  She looked through the floor into a hole in the ground. A wooden ladder extended down the side of the hole like an oil-change pit. She couldn’t see to the bottom, and her imagination started going places she wished it wouldn’t go.

  Ruth looked up at the dim light coming in through the curtained windshield. She thought for a moment that she might just forget about it. That she might close up the hole and move on like she’d never found it. But she knew she couldn’t do that. Knew her mind wouldn’t rest knowing the hole was there and not knowing what was inside it. She took a deep breath and got herself turned around and cursed herself for the second time that morning and started down the ladder.

  Elam hadn’t mentioned the child after that fall day. But something was different. It was as though the two were opposed in some way. They didn’t talk save the few words that were necessary. Elam started visiting Mathew’s grave more often. He left in the early mornings. Ruth knew when he had gone because he returned home smelling strongly of cigarettes and he was content to sit on the porch with his radio or watch the television. They no longer went to Mathew’s grave together. It was something Elam seemed to want to do alone. It worried her how easily it had happened, and she wondered if it made Elam feel as hopeless as it made her feel.

  Ruth reached the bottom of the hole and stepped cautiously onto the dirt floor. She looked back up at the school bus. The hole was just large enough to conceal her. The walls were roughly four feet apart from each other. If she reached upward, she could almost reach the opening.

  It was colder in the hole. The air was stagnant and metallic smelling. She ran her fingers over the walls that had been reinforced with cinder blocks. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she spotted a crumpled ball of aluminum foil in the corner. She picked it up and unraveled it. She studied the burn marks and held the foil to her face and smelled something like resin.

  She wasn’t so blind that she didn’t know what the foil was for, but she couldn’t see why Horace was climbing down into a hole to get high. She let the foil fall from her hands and stretched her arms out fully so that she touched each side of the hole. She thought about Mathew buried at the top of the hill behind her house, past the wide sweep of goldenrod underneath the slab of limestone, and her stomach turned over and sweat pricked on her forehead.

  She climbed the ladder and closed the door and positioned the rug back where it had been and then sat down in the front seat of the old North Falls schoo
l bus and let her stomach settle. Sitting there, she couldn’t help but think of Mathew and then of Elam.

  For years she had tried to teach her students to see things that other people let go unnoticed. She had given them an assignment where they were required to observe an object. The only rule was that it had to be an object whose name they didn’t know. She had them write down three words to describe it, and then she had them trade their three words with another student. Each student would have to sculpt something out of clay using the three words they were given. The game was designed to get the children to pay attention—to see things that went unnoticed. But for all her talk, she seemed in the end to have let her own son and then her own husband recede to some distant and unfocused point.

  And she wondered how it had happened. Wondered what it was about them and about her that had let it happen.

  RUTH FENN

  The seventh-grade play that year had been on the last day of school on a hot June midweek. The Christmas plays were always announced in the school bulletin, but the summer plays were a surprise every year, and the children were pretty good about keeping it that way, treasuring in some small way that little piece of information they held.

  Mathew generally played the lead. He was a quiet boy, but he enjoyed being on stage. It was different from baseball, where he tended to sit in the dugout and fill the water cups for the other boys and hope nobody asked him to grab a bat or glove and head out onto the field. Ruth thought it was the chance to be someone different that appealed to him. Maybe she should’ve been concerned, but she was only proud.

  Ruth and Elam drove to the school in the early evening with the sun still high and bright. Elam had purchased a new video camera, and he planned to use it the way some of the other fathers had done in years past: standing in the back of the auditorium with the heavy camera propped up on his shoulder.

  The sky was pure blue, and the old-growth trees were full and green and the light shone through their leaves and cast latticed shadows on the paved road. Mathew was already at the school, having stayed after to rehearse one last time with the new theater teacher, a younger man who had come from Boston and who had created a stir when he stood up at a town hall meeting to ask for more money for the art department and to preach the importance of sustainable theater in rural schools like North Falls. Prior to that day Mathew had been studying his lines on his own for months in his bedroom with his door closed, and Ruth was excited to see what he would do and also glad for it to be over so that he might go outside and play again.