Stranger in the Woods

by Geof Johnson

  “I want to go with you.”

  “Are you sure you don’t have to call your mother?”

  “She said you’re not a stranger.”

  “Did she warn you about those?”

  “We can’t talk to strangers.”

  “That’s good advice. Let me get my purse and we’ll go.”

  Liz turned right at the end of their street and steered her Honda toward the Val-U-Mart on the other side of town. She struggled to make conversation with Shelby, who seemed reluctant to talk, more interested in the little swan that she cradled in her hands.

  “That was nice of Zach to give that to you.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Shelby said without taking her eyes from the origami sculpture resting on her palms. “I love swans.”

  “Do you have any porcelain figurines of them that at home? I’ve seen them in gift shops before.”

  “I had a little glass one that Daddy bought me a long time ago, but Jason broke it. I still have a stuffed one that Mama got at the thrift store and I sleep with it. Jason and Justin tried to use it as football once, so I hide it in my closet until bedtime.”

  “Brothers can be rough. I bet they tease you a lot, don’t they?”

  “Yes ma’am. All the time.”

  “Do they call you funny names?”

  Shelby scowled for a moment before saying, “They call me Smell-me. They think that’s so funny. And they make fun of my hair and everything.”

  “I have a brother named Will. He’s almost three years older. My full name is Elisabeth, but everybody calls me Liz. He called me Lizard.”

  A tiny giggle bubbled out of Shelby. “He did?”

  “He used to pick on me mercilessly. When I was young, I used to lie in bed at night and think of ways to kill him.”

  “You wouldn’t!”

  “Of course not, though in his case I might’ve made an exception.” Liz laughed, and out of the corner of her eye she could see a grin break across Shelby’s face. Liz slowed the car at a traffic light and stopped. She faced Shelby and nodded once. “So I know what you’re going through.”

  “But I have two of them, and you only have one.”

  “Brothers? Well, that’s true, but I guess that means you’ll grow up to be twice as tough.” And you’ll need to be because your life may be twice as hard.

  Liz and Shelby made their way through the store, picking out items from the list: drop cloths, a plastic bucket, paint brushes and other things. Liz found it refreshing to shop with a kid who wasn’t griping and whining, urging her to hurry. Shelby seemed to be enjoying herself. Her head was up, and she wore a smile.

  They passed a rack of teen’s apparel and Liz stopped. “Look, Shelby, girls’ bathing suits.” She pulled out a yellow one-piece and held it up to Shelby. “This is about your size, too. You really need a new one, don’t you?”

  Her chin fell again. “I don’t have any money.”

  “But these are so cheap, and it looks like they just went on sale. They’ll get picked over fast, so we can’t wait.” Shelby’s chin fell so far that it touched her T-shirt. Liz wanted to cup her hands to the small girl’s face and lift it.

  “Can’t get it today,” Shelby said to her feet.

  “But the one you have is too small and it’s faded. Don’t you want a new one?”

  She nodded, barely. Liz regarded the girl for a moment and said, “How about if I buy it for you? I have enough money with me.”

  “Mama said not to mooch off you.”

  “Well….” Liz looked to the far side of the store while she considered her options. “How about if we make it part of your pay for painting tomorrow? You are going to help me, aren’t you?”

  “Yes ma’am. But I need the twenty dollars more than the bathing suit.”

  “I want to give it to you in addition to the twenty dollars. It’s going to take us a long time to get the painting done, so this can be part of your payment. A bonus, if you do a good job.”

  Her chin lifted and her face brightened, then she said, “But if you give me that, my brothers will get jealous.”

  Liz started to shrug, but stopped when she realized what Shelby was doing. She’s speaking up for her brothers even though they tease her cruelly. “How about if I get them something, too? I’ve still got to get some T-shirts for Zach today because they’re on sale, so maybe I can get one for each of your brothers for their bonus. Do you think they’d like that?”

  “They haven’t gotten any new clothes since last summer.”

  “Then it’s a deal.” Liz pulled several bathing suits from the rack. “Now let’s go find the dressing room and try these on.”

  * * *

  Liz answered the door at ten o’clock the next morning to find the Ross kids waiting on the front porch. “You’re right on time.”

  Jason had a plastic shopping bag in one hand and he offered it to her. “Mama said we can’t have these ’till we finish our jobs for you.”

  “What is it?” She looked inside and saw the girl’s bathing suit and the two T-shirts. “Oh. That’s fair, I guess.” She wondered briefly if she had insulted their mother by buying the clothes for them. “Did she say if it was okay for you to eat here? I bought some sliced turkey to make sandwiches. I don’t expect you to work through lunch.”

  “We should probably go back to our house to eat.”

  “I insist. It’s part of the deal. I bought a big bag of potato chips, and I’ll make lemonade, too.”

  All of their faces perked up, and Jason said, “Okay, if you insist. Mama will just have to forgive us.”

  Liz’s father came over with his yard tools: long-handled clippers, a limb saw, and a bow saw like the one Liz already had. He took the boys to the backyard to begin work on the shrubs while Liz set out the materials for painting the front porch.

  Shelby had on the same things she’d worn when Liz first met her, the faded shirt and shorts, and the sneakers with the hole on one side. Liz eyed Shelby’s attire and said, “I don’t suppose those are your old clothes, are they?”

  “These are my regular ones.”

  “You’re going to get paint on them. We need to do something about that. Wait here for a minute.” Liz went inside and ran upstairs to her room, and returned with one of her oldest T-shirts, a stained one she often wore when she did grubby work around the house. She offered it to Shelby and said, “This should do the trick. It’ll serve as a smock.”

  Shelby pulled it over her head and settled it into place. The shirt swallowed her small frame like a bed sheet, hanging loosely from her narrow shoulders. Liz tried not to laugh. “Well, you won’t win any fashion awards with that outfit, but it’ll do for painting.”

  She spread a long plastic drop cloth under the porch railing, opened a can of paint and poured some into the plastic bucket, which she handed to Shelby along with a small brush. “There you go.”

  Shelby sat cross-legged before the rail and stared at the mildewed wood without moving a muscle, a frizzy-haired statue.

  “What’s the matter, honey?”

  “I don’t…I can’t.” She looked up at Liz with troubled eyes. “I can’t do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just…I’ve never done it before. I’m sorry, Mrs. Webster.”

  “It’s really not hard at all, and it’s not like you’re getting graded on it or anything.”

  “But what if I mess up? Everybody will be able to see it, and it’s your house. I know you want to make it nice.”

  “Shelby.” Liz sat down beside her and put her hand on the thin girl’s back. “You’re going to do it just fine. Just take your time and be careful. Every house painter in the world had to start like this. It doesn’t take an artist to do it.” Shelby gave her another forlorn look and Liz added, “This is how I learned, from my mother. She was always sprucing up the house, and she made me help. I painted the porch, too, the one at Zach’s Grandfather’s house. You saw that, didn’t you? Didn’t it look okay?”

  “
I suppose.”

  “Well, it’s time for you to give it a try.”

  Shelby swallowed hard, then dipped her brush into the plastic bucket of paint and carefully applied her first stroke to the vertical wooden rail in front of her.

  “See?” Liz said. “That’s easy as sneezin’, as my father likes to say.” Shelby dipped the brush a second time. Liz stayed beside her and watched, and after a few minutes, Liz pronounced her ready to do it without any further direction.

  Liz began working on the gingerbread trim overhead, standing on the old stepstool with a bucket of paint in one hand and a brush in the other. After a short while she stopped and said, “You know what we need? We need some music!” She went back into the house and retrieved her boom box, and she took it outside and plugged it into an extension cord that she ran through the front door.

  She knelt beside it and turned it on, then spun the tuning dial and gave her head a tight shake. “I don’t know what the good stations are around here anymore.”

  “We don’t have very many,” Shelby said.

  Liz stood and gestured at the gray plastic box. “You pick.”

  “Ow!” Zach snatched his hand back and held it close to his face, inspecting the wound from the shrub he’d been cutting with a bow saw. When he saw a spot of blood form on the knuckle of his middle finger, he stuck it into his mouth. Wish Mom had remembered to buy gloves. She had an old pair he could’ve worn, but he wouldn’t because the other two boys didn’t have any.

  Jason, who was working beside him, cast him a sideways look. Zach immediately dropped his hand. “It’s bleeding,” Zach said defensively. Jason gave a small shrug, then looked around to find Justin, who was using a limb saw a few yards farther down the row of bushes.

  Jason picked up a short, thick branch from the ground and hurled it at his unsuspecting brother. It struck him squarely on the shoulder and he yelped. “Dammit, Jason!” he snarled and threw the saw at him.

  Jason dodged it and Beepee began to bark furiously. The boys looked like they were on the verge of grappling with each other, and Grandpa yelled from the end of the row of shrubs, “Hey, guys, cut it out. You’re not getting paid to fight. Do that on your own time.”

  Justin scowled and pointed a finger at Jason. “I’ll get you later.”

  “Ooh, I’m scared.” Jason smirked, and the two boys resumed their tasks.

  Zach set the saw blade back on the branch he’d been working on and started cutting again. “You guys sure fight a lot, seems like.”

  “It’s fun,” Jason said.

  “Do you always shoot each other with BB guns?”

  “Nah. Only when we have BBs.” He barked a laugh. “We’re gonna buy some more after your mom pays us. We’re out right now and Mama won’t buy none.”

  Won’t buy any, Jason corrected him silently. “How did Justin get that scar over his eye?”

  “That little thing?” Jason laughed again. “I did it. I threw a piece of glass at him.”

  “You threw glass? Are you crazy?”

  He grinned wickedly for his answer. “We were just foolin’ around one day over at the old mill, looking for something to do. We were walkin’ by the edge of the building, and me and Shelby was behind him. We stepped over some glass from a busted out window, and I picked up a piece and chucked it at him like a Frisbee.” He flicked one hand out, mimicking the motion. “Didn’t give it much thought at the time.”

  Obviously, Zach almost said aloud.

  “Probably wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t yelled look out! ’Cause then he turned around and it hit him square in the face. Shoulda seen it! He bled like a fountain.” He laughed harder. “Mama was ticked off. It took nine stitches to patch it, and she had to pay the emergency room bill.” Then he frowned. “We had to eat macaroni casserole for two months. Guess it was kinda stupid, throwin’ that glass.”

  “You guess?”

  “He hit me with a rock earlier, so we were even.” Jason shrugged again and dropped another cut branch to the ground. “Hey, you don’t know what it’s like. You ain’t got no brothers and sisters.”

  “You don’t know what it’s like being an only kid. Especially now, since it’s just me and my mom. And I had to move away from school and my friends and everything. It sucks!” He hacked savagely at the shrub, the bow saw shaking the whole bush as it bit into the wood.

  “Did you have a nice house back where you used to live? That was Raleigh, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, and it was almost new, not a creepy old dump like this one. And we had a neighborhood swimming pool and it was great, and I had a lot of friends and we went swimming all the time. That’s where I’d be right now if we hadn’t moved.”

  “A pool would be nice. I like swimming in the river though. It’s fun. Maybe we can go today after we’re done with this.”

  “Is that all there is to do around here? Go swimming in the river and shoot yourself with BB guns?”

  Jason glanced at Zach’s grandfather, who was still working at the end of the yard, then edged closer to Zach and said in a low voice, “Nah. But if I tell you, you gotta promise not to tell. Not your Grandpa or your mom or nobody. You promise?” He gave Zach a steady look.

  “Sure, unless it’s dangerous. I don’t want to go to the emergency room or anything.”

  “It ain’t like that.” He lowered his voice even more. “We’re building a secret clubhouse out in the woods. Nobody knows about it. You been there yet?”

  “You mean the national forest? No. I didn’t know you could.”

  “’Course you can. That’s what it’s for. Hikers and campers do it all the time. You just can’t hunt during the off season, that’s all.”

  “Is that what you do with your BB guns?”

  “We used to shoot at birds and squirrels, but Shelby didn’t like it. Justin killed a robin once and she cried for a week, seems like. So mostly we just shoot cans and bottles, now.”

  “And each other.”

  “’Course. And Mr. Norris’s dog.” Jason chuckled. “So anyway, we been building this clubhouse out of scrap wood and branches and stuff, and you can help, if you want.” He gestured at the saw Zach was holding. “Is that one yours?”

  “Yes, this one is. The other one is Grandpa’s.”

  “You reckon we could use it? It would make it a lot easier.”

  “I’d have to ask my mom.” Jason gave him a narrow-eyed look as if Zach had just said something ridiculous, so Zach added, “I’d get in trouble and she’d ground me. I couldn’t go to the river or anything, and I sure couldn’t go out in the woods.”

  “You ask her, then. Maybe we can go tomorrow.”

  “That would be good. That’s when the people from the cable company and the phone company are coming. I don’t want to hang around while they’re working.”

  They had lunch in the kitchen at the big table, and the Ross kids wolfed down their turkey sandwiches as if they were starving, even Shelby. She popped the last bite of hers into her mouth before Zach had finished half of his, and he said, “Where do you put it all? You’re so skinny.”

  She wiped her mouth with the back of her paint-speckled hand. “I was hungry.”

  Zach’s mother, standing behind them at the counter, glanced out of the window over the sink, which offered a view of the terrace and the backyard. “Looks like you’re making good progress on the shrubs.”

  “We’ll finish by late-afternoon,” Grandpa said. “But I don’t know if the kids will have time to go to the river.”

  “I think I should pay you kids a little more,” she said. “I didn’t realize it was going to take so long. You too, Shelby. Does ten dollars extra sound fair? It’s all the cash I have right now.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Jason said quickly and his siblings agreed.

  “How about me?” Zach said. “I’m working, too.”

  “It’s your house, honey, and I give you an allowance. I’ll give you a little something, but not until I have a chance to go to the
bank.”

  Jason caught Zach’s eye and nodded toward Zach’s mother. He mouthed, “Ask her.”

  It took Zach a moment to understand what he meant. “Uh, Mom? Can we borrow the bow saw tomorrow?”

  “What for?”

  “Um….” He looked at Jason and thought, what should I tell her?

  “We need it out in the woods,” Jason said smoothly. “A small tree fell into the creek and it’s blocking the water. We want to clear it out.”

  “Out in the national forest?” Grandpa said.

  “Yes sir. We go out there sometimes, and Zach said he hasn’t been yet. We thought we’d show him around.”

  Zach’s mother faced them and he recognized the look in her eyes. She’s going to say no. “It’s okay, Mom,” he said. “You used to go out there. That’s what Grandpa told me.”

  For a moment it seemed as if she were going to disagree, but then she said, “You can go out in the forest for a while, since the cable and telephone people will be here, but you can’t use the saw. I don’t want you taking tools out of the house.”

  “But what about the tree in the creek?”

  “Somebody from the Forestry Service will have to take care of it.”

  “They have to rely on volunteers to do stuff like that,” Grandpa said. “They help maintain the trails and other things.”

  “Mom, we’ll be volunteers,” Zach said hopefully.

  “But not with our tools.”

  “Can I still go out to the woods?”

  “You have to promise me you’ll be careful.”

  “It’s just a bunch of trees. How much trouble can we can into?”

  Later, when they were back outside working on the bushes, Jason moved close to Zach and said quietly enough so that Grandpa couldn’t hear, “So what are you gonna do about the saw?”

  “You heard her. She said we can’t use it.”

  “Are you gonna accept that?”

  “What else can I do? When she says no, she means no.”

  “If you want to see the clubhouse, then you gotta bring the saw.”

  Zach bit his lower lip while he considered the ultimatum — disobey your mother or get left out. It was a choice he’d never had to make before, and he felt his stomach twist while he briefly struggled with the decision. “Uh, how am I going to do it?”