Stranger in the Woods

by Geof Johnson

  Grandpa turned with a start and his jaw dropped when he saw Bo standing a few yards away. He had a canvas bag hanging from one shoulder. “I am sorry that I am late,” Bo said, “but I had to prepare something at my cabin.”

  Grandpa continued to gawk at Bo, and then managed to stammer, “You’re…uh…you’re the white giant.”

  Bo nodded solemnly. “I understand that some call me that.”

  “So it’s true?” Grandpa looked at Zach, and Zach nodded, too.

  “It’s all true,” Jason said. “We’re not making any of it up.”

  Grandpa turned back to Bo and said in an unsteady voice, “You’re the biggest son of a gun I’ve ever seen.” He grunted a nervous laugh. “I’m a big man, but you’re at least a head taller. You must be seven feet tall.”

  “Somewhat more. Dr. Sizemore measured me once.”

  “Who’s Dr. Sizemore?”

  “He’s the guy who used to live with him,” Zach said. “That’s why Bo speaks such good English. We didn’t have time to tell you everything.”

  Grandpa knitted his brow. “His English is really good, now that you mention it. I guess that’s not his first language. I didn’t think about that, being from another world and all.” Grandpa considered Bo for a long time, as if comparing him to some unseen rubric. “You’re really from another world? You look sorta normal, except for the eyes.” He peered more intently at Bo. “And the ears.” Grandpa put one hand on his scalp. “The hair can be explained, and there are a few basketball players who are almost your size, but their shoulders aren’t that big. Why should I believe you’re not from Earth?”

  “That is a fair question, and difficult to answer. Some demonstration is in order.” Bo cast his eyes around the area before settling on Beepee, who sat on her haunches beside Shelby. Beepee began wagging her and Bo said, “Your dog has a tick. It is on her front right leg, just below the middle joint.”

  “How do you know that?” Grandpa said.

  “She told me.”

  “What?”

  “Like we said earlier, Mr. Ogletree.” Shelby knelt beside Beepee and ran her fingers along Beepee’s leg. “Bo can do things that we can’t.” Shelby made a sour face. “Ugh. It’s a tick, all right.”

  Grandpa leaned over with a wince, and felt Beepee where Shelby’s hand had been. “I’ll be danged. I think there is one.”

  “Allow me.” Bo knelt next to the dog, too. “I can remove it and the tick will not leave its mouth parts in the skin.” He pinched a spot on Beepee’s leg and withdrew his hand, then flicked the dead parasite away.

  Grandpa narrowed his eyes. “That could’ve been a ploy. I don’t know how you knew that tick was there, but it’s possible you put it there yourself, somehow.”

  Bo compressed his lips into a line while he regarded Zach’s suspicious grandfather. “Another demonstration, then. I shall call a forest animal to us, if I can. It is not always possible, though. I require silence to do this.”

  Everyone hushed as Bo’s face became completely relaxed. They waited for a short while, and then Zach heard a rustling in the brush. A deer strode onto the path about thirty feet away and stopped, looking straight at them with her big brown eyes.

  “Oh, she’s beautiful,” Shelby whispered.

  “She is, isn’t she?” Grandpa whispered back.

  “Are you satisfied?” Bo said. The deer dashed away.

  “Lordamighty, I guess so,” Grandpa said. “You’re something different, all right. I’m not sure what you are, but….” He blew out a deep gust of air between tightened lips. “This is a lot for an old man to take in.”

  “We gotta help him, Grandpa,” Zach said, “and soon. We told you about the mark on his arm. It’s really important that we do this because nobody else can. And I feel kinda responsible because it’s Uncle Nicholas’s fault.”

  Grandpa stared at his feet and scratched his temple with one fingertip, his brow lined deeply. He turned to Zach and said, “Let’s talk about this at home, okay? I need to think about it for a spell.”

  “Before you go, I have something for you.” Bo reached into the canvas bag that he carried and pulled out a clear glass jar that was full of dark green paste. “This is for your knee. I understand you have an old injury that is causing you pain.”

  Grandpa accepted it with a questioning look, and Shelby said, “You remember when you asked about my asthma? I don’t think I have it anymore because Bo cured it! I haven’t been checked by the doctor yet, but I haven’t had an attack in a long time. That’s never happened before. Usually I have one almost every week, even if it’s only a mild one.”

  “She nearly died out here a while back,” Jason said. “It was pretty scary, but Bo saved her and then came up with a special treatment for her, and now she’s great.”

  Grandpa looked at the jar in his hand. “How…what do I do with this?”

  “Spread some on your kneecap once a day,” Bo said. “Leave it on for a short while. Use it every day until it is all gone.”

  “What will it do?”

  “It will alleviate the pain and help repair any structural damage. I learned how to make this from the mountain witch.”

  “The mountain witch? She’s real, too? I thought she was just a folk legend, like Bigfoot.” A sheepish look crossed his face. “Or the white giant.” His eyes grew wide. “I’m actually talking to the white giant. Hah! Imagine that.” He grinned and shook his head, then said to the Ross kids, “Don’t let your Uncle Marty know about him. He’ll probably try to shoot him.”

  “Don’t worry Mr. Ogletree,” Justin said. “We won’t. And people can’t find Bo unless he wants them to.”

  “Good. We need to get going.” He extended his hand to Bo and the giant shook it. “We’ll let you know what my decision is about the lab.”

  On the ride home, Grandpa drove slowly through the neighborhood, silently working his jaw from side to side. Zach watched him out of the corner of his eye while sitting next to him on the bench seat, fretting over what the old man was going to say about helping Bo. Please, Grandpa! Zach thought, hoping to telepathically convince him to decide in Bo’s favor. We can’t do it without you.

  Grandpa pulled into the driveway of his house and parked, and they all piled out of the truck and gathered by the tailgate, waiting to hear what he would say. Zach’s stomach had a knot in it like a stone fist, and he was sweating, even though the weather wasn’t hot.

  Grandpa put his hands in his pants pockets and his elbows dangled loosely while he regarded the kids for what seemed like a long time. The silence was stifling. Zach tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry. Finally Grandpa said, “Here’s my decision. I’m willing to help clean up the lab and repair it, but the key word here is help. You have to do most of the work, especially with the cleaning. You know I hate doing that.”

  He winked at Zach and the knot in Zach’s stomach immediately relaxed. Grandpa continued, “I’m sure there are a lot of components in Uncle Nicholas’s equipment that are burned out and need to be replaced. That won’t be cheap, and I’m not paying for it. You have to come up with a way to do that.”

  “How much do you think it’ll cost?” Zach asked.

  “Hundreds of dollars, more than likely. I won’t know until we start taking things apart and looking inside of them.”

  “Hundreds?” Zach’s heart fell, and judging by the expressions on his friends’ faces, theirs did, too. “We don’t have that much.”

  “Well,” Grandpa said, “I’ve been giving it some thought.” He turned his eyes toward the huge oak tree that towered over his front yard. “Fall is going to be here pretty soon, and all these leaves are going to start coming down. Most of our neighbors are old and can’t do yard work anymore, or don’t want to, and you can probably pick up some money by offering your services to them. There are other things you can do, too, like washing cars and mowing grass, or whatever. Use your imagination. You can print out flyers and go door-to-door and put them on their mailboxes.
”

  “Sure, we can do that,” Zach said, and his friends nodded with him. “But what about Mom? What will we tell her about the lab?”

  “You leave her to me,” Grandpa said.

  * * *

  Zach was nervous during dinner that night, wondering when and how Grandpa was going to break the news about the lab. Most of the conversation during the meal consisted of small talk, but when they were nearly finished, Grandpa set his fork on his plate and wiped his mouth casually with his napkin. “Since we got this house in pretty good shape now, I’ve decided to make the lab our next project. I want to clean it up and see if I can get some of Uncle Nicholas’s old equipment running again.”

  “Oh, Dad.” Zach’s mother shook her head, the way she always did when she didn’t like what she was hearing. “I wish you wouldn’t do that. We don’t know how safe it is.”

  “I used to repair electronics for a living, remember? I think I can manage to do it without frying myself.”

  “But it’s filthy! It’s going to take a lot of work to clean it up, and that doesn’t seem like something you’d like.”

  “Zach and his friends have promised to help me. In fact, it’s really their idea. They’ve offered to do a lot of the cleaning and to help pay for the replacement parts for the machinery. They’ll do yard work for the neighbors to raise the cash, and that’ll help teach them some responsibility.”

  “Mmm, no.” She shook her head harder. “I don’t want—”

  Grandpa thrust his hand toward her, palm out. “Hold on, Liz. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and it’s something I really want to do. I believe Uncle Nicholas left me his log book for a reason, and I’d like to figure out what that is. It’s kind of a mystery, and it’s giving me an itch to solve it. I think he had some unfinished business down there, and he wanted me to complete the job.”

  He set his napkin on his empty plate and stared at it for a couple of seconds before raising his eyes. “Plus, the last projects he was working on might’ve been worth something. He made a good living off his patents and such, so maybe I can resurrect one or two of them and make some money. Then I might be able to retire, finally.”

  “But don’t you think his work would be out of date by now? Technology has certainly roared ahead since he passed away.”

  “Uncle Nicholas was ahead of his time, a certified genius. It’s possible…no, it’s likely, that there’s something worth salvaging in his lab, and I’ve decided I’m going to do it. And Zach and his friends want to help me.”

  He gave her a firm look, as if to say I am your father and that’s final. Grandpa usually let her have her way on almost everything, but he was standing his ground this time. The air was electric with the sudden tension, and Zach clenched his teeth while he waited to see what would happen.

  “All right,” she sighed, “if you insist. Just be safe.” She pointed a finger at Zach. “And you and your friends need to be extra careful. It’s not a play room, so no horsing around or doing anything foolish. I know how Jason and Justin can be.”

  “They’ll be good,” Zach said. “Grandpa already warned them about it. If they act up, they don’t get to help, and they don’t want to get left out. They really want to do this. So does Shelby. Like Grandpa said, it was our idea in the first place.”

  His mother looked toward the window over the sink that had a view of the terrace and pressed her lips together. Zach knew she was having a hard time accepting her decision. She turned back to them and said, “I want to talk about something else while I’ve got you both here. I want to discuss Zach’s upcoming birthday.”

  “It’s soon, isn’t it?” Grandpa said.

  “It’s in three weeks. I want to have some kind of a party, even if it’s just the Ross family and us, if that’s all right with both of you. I thought we could have a cookout in the backyard like we did on the Fourth of July. Zach, are you okay with that?”

  He shrugged.

  “Have you thought about what you want for your present? Not something big, I hope, since I just got you the phone. Something that costs less than a hundred dollars.”

  “I want a bow,” he said without hesitating.

  “Like a bow and arrow set?”

  “Not a little kid’s bow. I want a good one. A real one.”

  “What for? For hunting? There’s no way I’m going—”

  “No! Not that. Just for target practice. I’ve been looking at videos on the Internet and it looks fun, so I thought it would be something I could do on my own in the backyard, ’cause it’s a perfect place for it, or I could do it with my friends. It would be something else we could do together besides going off to the woods, and it doesn’t require batteries or anything.” He forced a grin, but it felt stiff and unconvincing.

  She faced him for a long time before answering. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I’d rather you come up with something different for your present.”

  “I think it’ll be fine,” Grandpa said. He already knew about Zach and his friends practicing archery with Bo. “You do have a good yard for it, Liz, and it’s better than watching TV or messing around on the computer.”

  She frowned at Grandpa. “I wish you’d back me up on this. I don’t like you taking sides against me.”

  “I’m not taking sides, I’m just giving you my opinion. Zach’s not a little kid anymore, and he seems like he’s old enough to be responsible with a bow.”

  “What about Jason and Justin? They might shoot each other with it.”

  “I don’t think so. Those boys seem to be settling down a little bit.”

  “It’s true, Mom,” Zach said quickly. “They never shoot themselves with their BB guns anymore. I can’t even remember the last time I saw them with ’em.”

  “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “Every time I see that scar on Justin’s forehead I get worried.”

  “They’ll behave. I just know it.” Zach felt a pleading whine creeping into his voice and he hated it.

  She took a long breath while she held his gaze, then she said, “I still don’t understand why you want one so badly. A bow? I mean…that doesn’t sound like you.”

  “I’ll show you some videos of kids shooting them, and you’ll see how fun it looks. Some of the kids I’ve seen are a lot younger than me, like, eight or ten years old. Besides, this is something different. This is something Dad never did.”

  She blinked at him a few times and he knew he had hit his mark. She might let me have it, now.

  She sighed again, deeply. “I’ll have to think about it.”

  * * *

  Later that night, after Liz’s father had gone home and Zach had gone upstairs to take a bath, she sat at the kitchen table, chewing on a fingernail, staring at nothing. She was debating whether or not to honor Zach’s birthday request. Her motherly instincts said no, but something about Zach sincere appeal for the bow made her have second thoughts.

  Of all the arguments Zach had brought up, the one that bore the most weight was the last: This is something Dad never did.

  She knew that Zach was constantly comparing himself to his father, and was afraid that he’d never measure up to the impossible standard John had raised, but it was true — John never did archery, or, at least he never mentioned it.

  Maybe he tried it and failed. The thought almost made her laugh. He would never have told me about it. He was too proud. She realized then that Zach wouldn’t have to worry about any comparison with him for this sport. It could be something just for Zach.

  She decided she would buy the bow.

  Chapter 29

  Tina came over with her kids after lunch on Sunday, and she sat in the kitchen with Liz, drinking coffee and talking. Tina glanced toward the open doorway that led to the family room, where Jason, Justin, and Shelby huddled behind Zach’s shoulders while he sat at the computer, working on their flyer for their leaf raking business. “They sure are fired up about this. I’ve never seen my kids act this way.”

  “I have
n’t seen Zach so motivated before, either,” Liz said. “Just so they can fix up the lab? That’s crazy.”

  “That’s what I don’t get. If they were going to do yard work for the neighbors so they could have a little spending, money, I could see it, but this?” She shook her head. “This is not like my kids at all, especially Jason and Justin.”

  “I guess our kids are growing up, huh?”

  “Maybe.” She rubbed her pale cheek with the fingertips of one hand. “You know, my kids have changed a lot since the start of summer, and I think it has a lot to do with you and your family. You’ve been a good influence on them, especially my boys.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, for starters, neither of them has had to go to the emergency room since you moved here.” Her eyes closed as she chuckled, a light, happy sound. “And I caught them reading in bed the other night. Science books of all things, and they weren’t schoolbooks. My boys have never been big readers. Shelby, maybe, but not them.”

  “That’s strange, because Zach has been reading a Civil War history book, and it’s not for school, either. I wonder what’s gotten into them.”

  Tina tsked. “Don’t knock it. I’m all for my boys getting into books. Keeps ’em out of trouble. They seem to be doing better in school right now, too. All three of them. They’ve showed me their grades from a few recent tests, and…wow, they’re good. I hope they keep it up.”

  They both turned when Liz’s father walked in and said hello. Liz couldn’t help but notice he didn’t limp. She pointed at his knee and said, “Is that feeling better?”

  He nodded but remained standing. “I’ve been putting a little something on it, and it seems to be helping.” He flexed his leg and nodded again. “It’s helping a lot.”

  “What are you using on it?” Tina asked. “Sports cream?”

  “Something like that.” He shifted his eyes toward the family room. “Zach in there?”

  “He and his buddies are working on their flyer,” Liz said. “Beepee’s with them. They’ve been at it for almost an hour.”