Gone to the Woods

by Gary Paulsen

  The ball was heavy and moving fast. The pins were heavy, flying through the air like bombs going off. If either the ball or a pin caught you, you’d go out like a light and wish to God you hadn’t agreed to set pins for the league night.

  But you couldn’t complain. If you threw a cussword up the alley loud enough to be heard, you wouldn’t get any tips.

  Eleven cents a line. Two lanes going steady. Ten men bowling three games each. Thirty lines a night. Thirty times eleven—over three dollars. Three dollars and thirty cents for the night of dangerous work.

  Plus tips.

  Might make five dollars a night when it was added to and shared with other pinsetters. But only if you didn’t complain. You’d carry an old pin with you when you left at night to head back to the basement so the big kids wouldn’t try to take your money. Had to do it once, take a pin to their heads to protect your earnings, and then they knew. He’d hit a big kid named Kenny with a bowling pin one time—a good full swing with great follow-through—and Kenny went down like he’d been poleaxed. After that, they left him alone and he would disappear in the alleys and be away, his pin money and tip in his pocket, an old pin in his hand, just in case.

  There came a day, though, when he moved too slowly. Bowlers were drunk. Lot of bad laughter. Stupid laughter. He worked the pit on the left, then the one on the right, and he had lowered himself down to pick up pins when a drunk bowler, laughing drunk bowler, threw his ball down on purpose to see just how fast a pinsetter could move.

  Truth was, he just about made it. Almost cleared the pit but … not … quite.

  He was clear from the pins flying in all directions, but the ball caught him a glancing blow on the left calf just as he pulled the leg up toward the bench. Hurt some, but didn’t seem that bad. He was mostly bothered because he’d been caught off guard setting two alleys at the same time. Shouldn’t have been caught at all, but he was just clipped, and the ball could have easily broken his leg, could have killed him, catch him in the head and he’d be gone. Happened before. Kid named Curt had been hit in the head and it didn’t kill him, but he could never walk or talk right again. Kept saying things over and walked leaning to the side with one eye closed. Might have been better off dead.

  So, other than a brief pain jolt, he was lucky that he was all right and he went on setting pins for the rest of the league night. All the while thinking that someday, when he was grown, he would catch the turd who threw the ball at him and beat the crap out of him. He limped a little after that, not a lot, but enough so it showed when the day got a little long and he would become tired and the leg would ache some.

  The entrance to the front of the library had three steps, and when he climbed them after he’d been hit by the drunk bowler, he felt a twinge. As he moved over to the magazine rack, the twinge became more of a nagging pain, so he took an outdoor hunting magazine and sat down at one of the oak tables.

  He hadn’t been there two, three minutes looking at some art in the magazine showing a man shooting a bow and arrow at an attacking bear—never happen that way—when he felt somebody in back of him.

  He looked up and saw the librarian.

  Standing there smiling at him.

  Warm smile.

  But she was still a grown-up and she was still noticing him.

  She would probably tell him to leave now. Just get out—people like you don’t belong here. Drop the warm smile and kick him out.

  “Can I help you?”

  That was what she said: Can I help you?

  He looked up at her. Looked away. Let his eyes fall on the wood of the table. Straight grain. Solid oak. A tiny groove where somebody had scratched the wood with something sharp. Stupid thing to do. He took a breath and thought, Can you help me? God, lady, if you only knew …

  He shook his head, mumbled something about coming in to get warm. Mumbling worked, seemed to work, when it came to avoiding problems from meeting grown-ups. Adults expected kids to mumble. Act shy, keep looking down, mumble how cold it was outside. Thinking, why did I sit down at the table, looking like I was planning to stay and I got caught. Time to go. Now. How many steps to the door? Four, five, then down the little stairs and out. Away. Not to come back. Not now that she’d noticed him, spoken to him.

  But his legs didn’t move, his body wouldn’t move. He kept his eyes on the table. Waiting. Waiting for her to say it: Get out.

  He looked up, a quick glance. Stunned that she was still smiling. Warm smile.

  “Can I help you?”

  Soft voice. Smiling sound in her voice. Same question. Not saying get out. Offering to help.

  Again he shook his head, mumbled something about getting warm. Lied and said: “I’m all right.”

  But never all right. Sometimes a little more right than others, but never completely right. Every little thing never ever completely all right.

  “Would you like a library card?”

  And there it was: the hook. The gimmick. There was always that side reason for grown-ups being nice, they always wanted you to do something.

  He looked up at her again. She still had that same smile on her face, but now he had it figured out—she was after something from him.

  “How much does it cost?”

  “The card is free. It doesn’t cost anything.”

  Right, he thought. I’m thirteen, a hard thirteen, with three years as a kid in the streets of Manila, walking by those awful stains on the wall every day for three years, living the rest of the time in a drunk swamp of a life, or trying to live in it with the vipers, and except for his grandmother giving him pie and rubbing his knees when they hurt, and Edy and Sig giving him a room of his own and jobs of work, nobody had ever given him anything free.

  Not a thing.

  Ever.

  And he thought then that he would leave, should leave. No reason to stay. Not really. But there was her smile and it was warm and it was cold outside and the room was warm and in his brain was this … this thing. A smart-aleck-kid thing that made him want to ride this out and see where this was going. See what the gimmick turned out to be. Cocky-kid thinking. Maybe learn the gimmick and then use it against them.

  Not sure who “them” was, or could be, but positive there was a “them.” Somebody who would use the card against him.

  The card.

  So he looked up at her again. Longer this time. And then nodded. “Sure—give me a library card for nothing.”

  He had to follow her to the front desk, where she had an old, clunky office typewriter and typed his name on a small piece of something like cardboard. Stiff paper. Had a little metal tag in it with a number and he saw she spelled his last name right. Most people ended it “–son,” but she typed it “–sen.” The right way. Correct way.

  And then she handed him the card.

  Didn’t say anything, just smiled again as he looked at the card, held it in his hand, and studied it. His name. His number. And here a strange thing happened. Somehow the card … made him real to himself. It was his name, his number. Right there.

  In all the world, he had finally become a real person. Right there. In the world. A real person right there …

  “What do I do with it?”

  “You use it.”

  “For what?”

  “To get books from the library.”

  “What books?”

  “Anything you want that we have here. Or I can order books from other libraries if you want something we don’t have. It might take a week or so to get it mailed here but…”

  He held up his hand. Not high. They had moved to the desk in front to get his card printed and he just held the hand up a couple of inches off the countertop. But it was still an interruption and went against everything he knew about dealing with grown-ups. You never interrupted them. “But what does it cost when you actually want to get a book?”

  “It’s all free. Like I said. Any book you want and it doesn’t cost anything. We are a lending library. You take a book home and read it a
nd bring it back when you’re done. One week, two weeks—is the usual time.”

  He leaned back, looked at the room, the walls of shelves, shelves built in the middle. All full of books. Thing was, he thought, thing was he hardly ever read very much. He had learned to read, but it wasn’t something he spent much time practicing. He couldn’t remember actually reading a full book. Oh, some picture books when he was a kid, but not now. Not a whole book with lots of pages. You had to work page to page on those big suckers, had to crank it up, work the pages, one to the next, like a job of work. “I wouldn’t know where to start…”

  And he realized with a small jolt that he’d said it aloud. Man, he was loading up the mistakes. He’d thought he was thinking, but it came out. Stinking brain took over, didn’t it? Talking on its own. Like he was just there watching and his brain was having a talk with the librarian.

  “It’s a lot of books,” she said with a nod. Still smiling. Warm smile. “Would you like me to pick one for you to get started?”

  He could still have run, could have gotten away clean. And yet he did not go. Did not run. Instead another hot worm came into his brain and he thought: What kind of book could she possibly pick that I could read? Would read? And his curiosity took over the way his brain had taken over and it opened his mouth and he said:

  “Sure.”

  Just like that. Cocky little bugger. Like he’d been talking to librarians all his life, and she motioned for him to follow her as she led him back into one of the stacks, looked up at the books for a moment, then pulled a book down and handed it to him.

  “It’s about a boy who lives in the jungle,” she said, “and what he has to do to survive. I think you might like it.”

  But he only half heard her. He was looking at the book, which had a worn cloth backing, rubbed and rounded corners. Didn’t open it. Not yet. Felt the corners, the touch of it. Felt warm. The same warm way the librarian smiled. Not a threat. More like an invitation—like the book was almost calling to him. The way her smile pulled him in. Saying come on, follow me. Follow me. He’d seen books before. Of course. But never one that seemed so … so alive. Like it wanted to be his friend. Silly thought; how can a book be a friend? But the librarian had done the same thing, said follow me. Into this stack of books.

  And for the first time in his life he truly wanted to know this book, know what was in it, how it was, and what he had to do to know what it was saying to him. Really wanted to know.

  Without thinking or understanding, he pulled the book closer to his chest. “And I can take this?”

  She nodded. In the shade between the shelves and stacks, the light came through in a golden ray, a spray of sun with bits of dust in it that made her face seem to glow. Like the paintings in the churches in Manila. Pictures of a woman bathed in light smiling down on him.

  “I need the card from the back of the book so I can print the number of your library card on it and file it by the date it’s due to be returned, and then off you go. The normal lending period is two weeks, but if you need more time to finish, you can get an extension.”

  And although it was all new to him, this different part of life, in some ways, it seemed familiar. He watched as she turned his card over to copy his number down on the card from the book, then got his library card back and moved out into the streets. He didn’t hit the bars to phony-sell papers and slide change from the drunks. Instead, he went into the alleys and worked back to his basement.

  Cold outside, so cold it made the hair in his nose crinkle. He had a woolen navy watch cap he’d bought for a quarter at the surplus store that was only a little stained with something that probably wasn’t blood, and it kept his ears warm, but he worried about the book. Wondered if the cold would damage it, and if it did, he did not want to go back to the librarian and tell her the book was hurt. Maybe frozen. Could you freeze a book? Break it?

  He tucked it inside his jacket and held it against his chest with his arm. Kept it warm. At least a little warm. Not much of a jacket, but it trapped some body heat, maybe enough to protect the book.

  It was warm when he got to the basement, and he had a reasonably new loaf of white bread and a jar of peanut butter and a fifteen-cent can of sardines. Made toast and ate a peanut-butter-and-sardine sandwich, drank the leftover sardine juice in the can, sipped a bit of water from the faucet in the old wash sink against the wall, and settled into the chair with the book.

  His book, his book.

  From his library card.

  His library card.

  And he was going to read his book, from his library card, no matter how long it took.

  Read the whole thing.

  By God.

  BOOKS

  Took him almost two weeks.

  One hundred and forty-six pages of words to read not counting the extra pages for title and legal mumbo-jumbo. Took him close on two weeks because he was a slow reader. He could read two, three pages at a time, but then he’d forget what happened and he’d have to go back to see what he missed. Read two or three more pages and then flip back to check.

  Life went on while he was reading. It was deer season, so he stayed out of the woods while the crazies were out there, shooting at noise and movement, not hunting so much as killing.

  Stupid fools would shoot a rabbit or grouse with a deer rifle. Blow small animals like that to smithereens. No meat left. Just shreds. They’d shoot him if he wiggled a bush. Nothing worse than a drunk trying to hunt with a gun too big for him, and a lot of them were so drunk they wound up shooting themselves or other hunters. Every year, eight or ten of them were shot and killed by other hunters.

  So he didn’t go in the woods for a couple weeks. And this time of the year you couldn’t snag below the dam. The fish weren’t running until spring, and besides, it was cold. Ice rimmed the river and the temperature stayed below zero. Being near the water made it feel colder and if your hands got wet …

  Bad news.

  So he worked the bars a little more, and Elmer paid him a dollar a day on top of a free grease-bomb burger to sprinkle sawdust on the floor and sweep it up with a push broom. Hunters came into the bar every night and worked at their drunks and made a mess, but Elmer didn’t mind because they spent money as fast as they could. Mostly the floor job was spit and puke, but every now and then the broom would push up a quarter or two.

  A little money.

  And he set pins at the bowling alley when it was offered.

  A little more money.

  Fifty cents a day to clean out the coal clinkers where the boiler in the furnace dumped them. Then check the apartment when the vipers passed out and see what there was in his father’s pants or in his mother’s purse.

  It all added up, and when he caught up each day, he’d sit in his chair by the furnace in the basement and read.

  Pretty good book, he thought, but at the same time he wasn’t sure if he was capable of knowing whether a book was good or not. He liked it. Sort of. About a boy and his family living on a jungle island in the Pacific Ocean. Caught fish, ate fish cooked in coconut milk, ate rice with their fingers, ate fruit from the trees. Now and then killed a wild pig with a spear and cooked it buried in the ground over hot coals covered with thick leaves.

  Green Hope.

  That was the title, although he never quite figured out what they might have been hoping for. They had plenty of food, and nobody seemed upset about anything. His parents didn’t drink; they were nice to him. The kid swam in a warm ocean and the sharks didn’t hit at him.

  He read the book.

  Read the whole book.

  And, when at last he was finished, he sat thinking about it. Furnace humming next to him, bright bulb hanging down over him, he closed his eyes and tried to visualize what he’d read, tried to make word-brain pictures from what the writer said about the jungle. About hope.

  Thing is, he had spent quite a lot of time in the jungles around Manila when he was a kid and ate fruit from the trees and rice and sardines with his fi
ngers and it wasn’t … quite … the same as the writer seemed to think. He’d written that you swung through the trees when you wanted to pick mangoes, but he knew better. Mangoes fell from the tree when they were ripe and ready to eat. You could walk along and hear them hitting the ground.

  Thump.

  You didn’t have to climb the trees. Just had to get to them on the ground before the other animals did. Besides, you get up in the trees like you owned them, swinging around grabbing fruit, and the monkeys would bite you. They had teeth like buzz saws and they were flat mean. Especially if you were taking their food. He’d never seen a happy monkey, but he’d seen plenty of them that weren’t happy. Just snotty mean. Now and then he would see a python that caught a monkey and swallowed it whole. The monkey made a big lump in the snake and he never felt bad about it. You only had to be bitten once to not think much of the monkeys.

  Finally, one evening when he had finished the book, he took it back to the library.

  He stood inside the door and waited, feeling shy for some reason. The librarian had been talking to some of the old ladies who had started to come again to the oak tables when it got cold and he waited until she was back at the front desk.

  He handed her the book, set it on the top of the counter, and pushed it across, like an offering.

  “Did you like it?” Smile. Same warm smile.

  He nodded. He didn’t say anything, even though he’d thought he might tell her about what really happened in the jungle. Nothing came out, though, and he just nodded.

  “Could you see what the writer was trying to get across?”

  He thought on it. Wasn’t sure if he really did. Started to nod and instead opened his mouth, but stopped before the words came out.

  She waited for him to continue with the same patient smile.

  “The words made pictures in my brain. He wrote about jungles and I could see them. I’ve seen jungles, and when he talked about how green they were, I could see them again in my brain. And the ocean. So blue. And monkeys, but they’re mean. And pythons eat them. And mangoes just fall on the ground, you don’t need to climb to get them, and then the juice runs down your chin when you bite into them, and there were rotten bodies of dead enemy soldiers in the jungle, the real jungle that I saw, not the one he wrote about…”