Stranger in the Woods

by Geof Johnson

“Where are you going to put it?” she asked. “On the mantle with the others or in your room?”

  “I might give it to Jason and them.” That wasn’t what he really planned to do with it, but he couldn’t tell her what that was. I’m going to give it to a giant alien with white hair.

  “Then you should print another for yourself.”

  “I’ve got it on my phone. I can look at it whenever I want, soon as you give it back. By the way, I think I got a good grade on my last math test. It might be posted online by now.”

  “Let’s check. If it’s a B or higher, you can have it.”

  Chapter 40

  Zach realized that Justin had been right. It seemed that most of their neighbors had waited until the last minute to get their leaves raked. Zach and his friends had four jobs scheduled for the next week.

  The first one was on Monday after school, and it was harder than usual because it rained that morning and the leaves were wet and heavy. It took until nearly dark to finish the chore, and Zach trudged home afterward, tired and soggy and itchy. All he wanted to do was wash up, eat dinner, and go to bed, but he couldn’t because he still had homework.

  After he put the wheelbarrow and the other tools away in the garage, he plodded through the back door into the kitchen, where he found his mother cooking. “You look like a wet, worn out dog,” she said when she saw him.

  “I feel like it.”

  “Well, hurry upstairs and take a bath. But you may want to see what your grandfather is up to, first.” She gestured with her head toward the open basement door. “He’s working on something in the lab. He said you might be interested in it.”

  Zach seemed to find new energy then, and he hurried downstairs. Grandpa was standing at the work bench on the far wall, facing away from Zach and studying a partially disassembled electronic chassis. He turned when Zach approached and he said, “It’s working so far.”

  A tiny thrill rippled through Zach. “What’s working?”

  Grandpa nodded at the device before him. “This part of the control station. The tubes came in today. UPS brought ’em this afternoon, so I installed them in the first section of this contraption and hooked up power to it with these.” He pointed to a pair of alligator clips that held wires on one end of the device. Another pair snaked to the circuit tester, and the needle of its meter twitched near the midway point of its arc.

  “So what does it mean? Are we going to be able to send Bo back home soon?”

  “Who knows? We still need the rest of the tubes and a couple of other parts so we can finish putting this whole thing back together. Your mom said you had a job today. Do you have enough money now?”

  “Maybe by the end of the week. We have three more jobs before then.”

  Grandpa nodded again as he listened. “You want to order the rest of the tubes after dinner?”

  “I can’t pay for them, yet.”

  “But you have enough work scheduled, for sure?”

  “I think so, unless somebody cancels.”

  “Is there a chance of that happening?”

  “Hope not. Is hasn’t happened yet.”

  “Then let’s order the tubes, anyway.”

  “You’re going to pay for them before I have the cash? You said you wouldn’t do that.”

  “Well….” He stretched his mouth into a line and looked at the concrete floor for a moment before facing Zach again. “Yesterday I flipped my calendar over to the new month, and there was November staring me in the face. It kinda hit me that we’re getting low on time, with December coming and maybe our first snowfall. We gotta get this equipment running again, and soon, so I’m willing to front you the money if you’re certain that you can pay me back right away.”

  “I’ll give it to you, Grandpa. You know I will. But I can’t get on the computer to order them tonight because I have too much homework. Mom will make us stop working on this if I screw up my grades again.”

  “Just get me going on the Internet, and I’ll order the stuff by myself. You can set me up, can’t you?”

  “I thought you hated using the computer.”

  “It’s time I got over that. Tonight is as good a time as any to start.”

  * * *

  Zach caught up with his friends early the next morning at school and led them to a less-travelled part of the hallway to give them the good news.

  “It worked?” Jason said. “Awesome.”

  Justin lowered his voice and leaned closer to Zach. “What do you mean when you say it worked? What did it do, exactly?”

  “Not much, really,” Zach said, “but Grandpa seemed to be satisfied with it. He had his tester hooked up to part of it and he said it was doing what it should, so far. We won’t know more until the other tubes come in. We ordered them last night, or rather, Grandpa did.”

  Shelby wrinkled her brow. “I thought we didn’t have enough money yet. Did your mom give you an advance on your allowance?”

  “I asked her but she said no. We’ll have enough by the end of the week after we finish our jobs, but just barely. We still need more for an emergency fund.”

  “Any more calls for work?” Justin said.

  “Not yet. We don’t have anything on the calendar after this week.”

  “We’ll get some more,” Shelby said. “Have faith. I have a babysitting job this Saturday, too. I’ll put that money into the kitty just to be sure.”

  “Aw,” Zach said, “you shouldn’t have to do that.”

  “I don’t mind. Besides, once Bo’s gone, I can keep the money for myself. It’s just for a short while.”

  Jason tightened his eyes and grunted. “Too short.”

  * * *

  Liz was home when Zach’s friends came over on Saturday morning. They said they didn’t have a leaf-raking job lined up, so they’d decided to head to the woods for the day. Liz had given up worrying about them going there so often. Somehow, they managed to return safely after every outing, so she finally realized they were capable of handling themselves without her guidance. It was hard to admit it, though.

  Zach and the twins went upstairs to Zach’s room to get his bow, and Shelby stayed with Liz in the kitchen. Liz leaned back against the counter and rested her palms on the tiled edge as she faced the slender girl, sitting at the table. “Zach told me you have another babysitting job.”

  Shelby’s smile was quick. “It’s tonight, for the same family. They like me for some reason.”

  “Do you need for me to ask Zach to walk you home?”

  “I already did, and he said yes, since my useless brothers won’t do it.”

  Liz wanted to ask her if she liked it when Zach walked with her, but caught her breath instead and held it for a moment. “Have you had calls from anybody else about babysitting?”

  “No, but the people I’m sitting for tonight said they have some friends who are looking for someone, and that they’ll refer me to them. They said they didn’t want to, though, because a good sitter is hard to find and they don’t want to lose me to another family.”

  “That’s good to know. Why do you think they like you so much?”

  “Because….” She bit her lower lip. “Because I think I’m good at it.” She lifted her chin and nodded, and Liz couldn’t help but think that it was such a different gesture from the Shelby she’d first met months ago, the one who stood on Liz’s front porch after knocking on the door, staring at her feet while she talked in a small voice. Now her head was up, and she fixed Liz with a steady, bright gaze.

  “I’m sure you are good at it, Shelby. They’re lucky to have you.

  * * *

  The next day was Sunday, and Zach was bored. His friends had to go to the prison in Asheville to visit their father, and their mother had somehow talked Shelby into going with them, leaving Zach with nobody to hang out with. His grandfather was working in the lab, but he said he didn’t need Zach’s help.

  Zach spent part of the morning in the backyard, practicing archery. The weather had turned cooler,
and he had to wear a jacket, which seemed to get in the way. Beepee came out with him and kept trying to snatch the arrows from the target after Zach shot them, and he had no one with him to keep her at bay, so he had to put her back inside. Then she scratched on the back door endlessly, until he finally gave up and put his bow away in his bedroom.

  He went downstairs to the lab and watched his grandfather work for a while. The old man sat on a wooden stool at one of the benches of the lab, soldering tiny wires and parts into another section of the control station and checking them with his circuit tester. Zach had printed some enlarged schematics from the log book for him, and those were taped to the wall over the bench. His grandfather frequently looked up from his task to refer to them, leaning forward and squinting at them, sometimes emitting a low, “Hmm.”

  After a several quiet minutes, his grandfather said over his shoulder, “You know, if you don’t have anything to do right now, this would be a good time to search through the log book for any mention of Bo’s arrival here. Or have you already found it?”

  “I would’ve told you if I had. I haven’t looked through it much, lately. We had four leaf-raking jobs this past week and I had a lot of studying to do, so I couldn’t.”

  “Is the studying paying off?”

  Zach reached into his back pocket and pulled out his phone. “Mom gave this to me after I got a B plus on my last math test.”

  Grandpa nodded and shifted his attention back to the soldering iron and the small, disc-shaped part he was installing.

  “Are you doing things exactly the way Uncle Nicholas did?” Zach said. “Everything in the machine is going to be the same?”

  “As much as possible. Ideally, this thing wouldn’t use tubes, but I’m leery of switching them out for modern components because that might change its performance, even if it’s only a little bit. I was tempted to put in an internal breaker or a regulator to lessen the chances of it burning out again, but I’m afraid the dang thing won’t work the same as before and we’ll end up sending Bo to Mars.”

  “I don’t think he’d like that. There are no forests there.”

  His grandfather didn’t respond; instead he focused on one of the schematics again, studying it carefully before resuming his soldering.

  Zach took a moment to survey the lab, comparing its current state to the dusty, cobwebbed-covered one they encountered when they first opened the door to that secretive room.

  The area around the work bench was now surprisingly tidy. His grandfather must’ve been straightening up while Zach wasn’t around, because the tools and parts were arranged neatly, and the outside surface of the control station and the two matching cylinders were cleaner than Zach had ever seen them, almost gleaming.

  “Grandpa, this is less messy than your house.”

  Grandpa snorted a laugh. “It is, isn’t it?”

  A thought suddenly occurred to Zach and he said, “Do ever miss your repair shop?”

  Grandpa lowered the soldering iron and furrowed his brow. “Sometimes I do, now that you mention it. I enjoy this kind of work.”

  “Better than the kind of work you’re doing now?”

  “You mean fixing toilets and crawling under people’s houses to find leaky pipes, and repairing rotten flooring and rusted gutters and such? Hmm…tough question.”

  “I guess it was probably easier, staying in an air conditioned shop all day and not having to drive all over town and stuff. And you probably didn’t get as dirty, either.”

  “The customers are different, too. People are always looking for some kind of discount when they hire me now, and I can’t say I blame ’em. Half the time I can tell they’re just scraping by, and they want me to fix something instead of replacing it, hoping they can save a little money.”

  “Like Mrs. Ross?”

  “Tina? Yeah. But I don’t mind giving them a break, ’cause they’re friends and all. And they’ve been dealt a tough hand, if you know what I mean. It’s not their fault they’re in a bind, financially. It’s not like she’s lazy.” He set the soldering iron down on its metal stand and turned around to face Zach. “Lots of folks around here got it tough now. Ever since the mill closed, there just aren’t enough good-paying jobs in this town, not like when I was younger. Not like when your mom was growing up.”

  “Justin told me he heard that an outdoor adventure company is going to open here this spring, and offer rafting and canoeing on the river, and zip lining, and guided tours through the forest and other stuff.”

  “That’s good, but that won’t generate a lot of jobs, not like the mill used to. Still, that’s some good news, finally. Somebody told me that business was brisk at the hotels and bed and breakfast inns this summer, because folks were coming here to visit the new state park and campgrounds and such. I guess the national forest is appealing to the outdoorsy, nature-lovin’ types. That’s supposed to be all the rage, now. What do they call that? Ecotourism?”

  Zach glanced at the door to make sure his mother wasn’t nearby and said in a hushed voice, “I hope that people hiking in the forest won’t be able to find Bo’s cabin. He’s going to give it to us after he leaves.”

  “Really?” Grandpa raised his eyebrows. “That’s really generous. I’d like to see it.”

  “It’s pretty deep in the woods. Think you can make the hike?”

  “How far is it?”

  “Not sure, exactly. We ride our bikes part way, maybe ten or fifteen minutes, and then we walk for about thirty minutes with Bo leading the way. Sometimes less, if he’s in a hurry. He can really move through the woods, fast.”

  Grandpa turned back to the bench and picked up his soldering iron again. “You told me about the undergrowth parting for him. That sounds like magic, though I never believed in that before.”

  “He said it’s not, but Shelby still thinks it is.”

  “That Shelby, she’s something, isn’t she? Bet she’s got pictures of rainbows and unicorns on her bedroom wall.”

  “No, swans, I think, though I’ve never been in their house. They can’t have company if their mom’s not home.” Zach watched his grandfather work for a moment, admiring the sureness of his hands, the efficiency of every motion, the competence and confidence. “So, anyway, Bo has offered to let us have his cabin after he leaves. If he leaves.”

  His grandfather turned to fully face Zach again. “You don’t think we’re going to pull it off, fixing this machine?”

  “Do you?”

  “I believe we can make it work, but you need to find that entry in the log book we were just talking about. Can’t send him home until we know the settings. I think they’re like an address for where the machine was tuned to at the time. Can’t say that for certain, but that makes the most sense to me.”

  “All right, Grandpa. I’ll work on it.” Zach started to walk away but paused. “You know, I’ve been thinking about Grandma a lot since our last conversation, and I was wondering if you’ve been sleeping upstairs in your old bedroom.”

  “Yep. Every night. I thought it would feel strange at first, since I haven’t slept there in so long. I was afraid it would seem…I dunno…sad, or lonely. But it’s not too bad. I sleep like a baby. I still miss Ella, but it’s nice being back in our bed.”

  The room got quiet and Zach thought about his grandmother again, trying to picture her face, but he couldn’t. He had been young the last time he’d seen her, and his memories of her were hazy. “Wish I had known her better.”

  “Me too, Zach. You’d love her. Most everybody did. She was a sweet and wonderful woman. She was the glue that held this family together.”

  “Do you think if she were still alive that Uncle Will would come to visit and bring his family?”

  “Probably. He didn’t make it to the funeral, but he had a pretty fair excuse, I guess, being out of the country and all.” His lowered his head and rubbed his cheek with one hand, and took a couple of deep breaths. “But there’s nothing we can do about it now. Why don’t you run alon
g and get serious with that log book while we still have some time before dinner?”

  Zach settled at his desk with Uncle Nicholas’s book and forced himself to scour the pages for any mention of a white-haired giant coming though one of the cylinders in the lab. That was over forty-four years ago, he reminded himself. And it must’ve been during the spring or summer because Bo said the weather was nice. Zach focused initially on log entries for March, April, and May (Uncle Nicholas had been scrupulous about noting the dates), and ignored the others. That seemed to help.

  The tiny writing, however, did not. It wasn’t all horizontal, either. Some notes were scribbled sideways in corners, or crammed at angles beside drawings of equipment or schematics. He zeroed in on those, since he hadn’t paid much attention to them before.

  After a few minutes he leaned back and rubbed his eyes. This is awful. I need some help. He rummaged through his top desk drawer until he found his magnifying glass, and he cleaned it by rubbing it on his shirttail until the smudges vanished.

  He held it over the miniscule text, and everything immediately became clear. He scanned a few entries in April of the year that Bo might’ve arrived, and then May, and found a couple of promising references to experiments that involved placing large melons and vegetables in the machine. Soon he stumbled on a passage in the bottom corner of one page, highlighted with an asterisk and written at such a steep slant that he had to rotate the book to read it. It said: Unexpected success! Set up for a test today, but out of the blue, a strange man passed through cylinder 1. Totally unforeseen result, but promising. Huge, light-haired (Scandinavian?). Unfamiliar language. Disoriented and agitated, possibly a side effect of the transport (must speak to General H about this at our next meeting). Escaped before I could question him.

  “This is it!” He snatched it from his desk and rushed out of his room.

  Zach walked through the kitchen with the log book in one hand, trying to appear unhurried even though his heart was galloping like a racehorse and he kept forgetting to breathe. His mother looked at him from the stove, where she was sautéing chicken pieces and vegetables in a frying pan while Beepee sat on the floor beside her. She said, “Could you tell your grandfather it’s almost dinnertime? I called to him but I don’t think he heard me.”