Beyond the Firefly Field

by Munzing, R. E.

  “Are these the booby trap drawings?” Ron asked.

  “These are booby traps, folding fairy furniture, and a design for a spiral staircase around the tree to get up here. I'm sick of using that stupid rope ladder,” Karl announced.

  Everyone took that to mean that they would soon be working on the tree house again. It would be a time and labor-consuming project, but it would offer diversion and relief from the problems they were facing. Instead of the expected groans and arguments, the boys seemed eager to work as they crowded around to see Karl’s drawings. He happily explained how the stairway would be made of logs, with anchor posts going past handrails to support a roof over the winding stairs. The more details of its construction he provided, the more excited the kids became about the project.

  As that topic ran out of steam, drawings of the folding furniture were unveiled. Those sketches received a similar reception. Karl designed tables and benches that could be pulled down from the walls and folded back up when not in use.

  Other drawings featured fold-out shelves, pop-up windowsill tables, and additional folding chairs. Everyone wanted to work on the furniture, so they all picked a favorite piece to build.

  Eventually, they uncovered a booby trap design. As the drawing above the trap was removed and the sinister diagram exposed, the group fell silent. It reminded them of the fairies they must save, and how much their lives had changed since first meeting the little creatures.

  Every moment awake was consumed by the fairies. They were always thinking about them, trying to get to them, or actually being with them. The fairies even claimed their dreams. As a startling afterthought, Clayton realized how much they really needed everyday normal things back in their lives. He was also beginning to wonder if their lives hadn’t been better off before meeting the fairies.

  Getting back to the task at hand, they studied the booby trap drawings while Karl explained each one. “Too bad Penny isn’t here. I made this drawing just for her.” The drawing showed an old washing machine balanced on a high tree limb. “When the deserving victim steps on the trip wire, the washer crashes down on him and he gets seriously whacked.”

  “She’d like that,” Clayton said as Karl crumpled the drawing and tossed it aside.

  Under the Penny-inspired design were drawings of log and rock piles that would avalanche down on someone climbing out of a gully. One showed a dead tree falling on the trail, like the one that Farmer Hawkins almost dropped on them.

  Another showed an unbalanced log rolling down a gully to smash into a trail walker. Some diagrams featured pits or small holes dug into the trail and covered with leaves to conceal them. The last booby trap design, one everybody particularly liked, involved an arrow from a crossbow slamming into a beehive. Coincidently, there was a beehive tucked into the bottom of a rotting branch on a large tree on the trail halfway to the firefly field. All traps had concealed trip wires, so they were invisible as unsuspecting intruders tried to follow the trail.

  After thinking it over, Clayton said, “The only ones we can really get away with are the small stone avalanche, the rolling log, and the bee invasion. The others are too obvious, and they would definitely get back at us if we tried them.”

  “Don’t bees cause a lot of harm to people?” Ron questioned.

  “I’m counting on those guys to make a quick getaway, and only getting stung once or twice in the process,” Karl defended.

  “We owe them payback anyway, Ron,” Brian said. “We’ve had sticks and stones thrown at us on our trips to the tree house.”

  “We all get stung once or twice every summer. It’s no big deal,” Karl said to close the subject. The others agreed, wanting to construct the booby traps immediately.

  No one brought stuff for an outing, so they needed to make a quick trip to Clayton’s house for supplies. They figured they wouldn’t be gone that long, so water bottles and snacks were all that would be needed for their booby trap-setting adventure. The pocket knife and a hatchet that Karl brought from his dad’s shed were the only equipment they would need. He also tucked twine into his belt loop to use for the trip wires. Before they left, no one could turn down a quick soup and sandwich lunch offered by the twins’ mother.

  Once they finally got moving, they quietly walked the first third of the way to the firefly field. They were constantly checking the woods to see if they were being watched. Occasionally, someone would stay behind to hide and see if they were being followed by Mike and his guys.

  They eventually came to a gully suitable for staging an avalanche and gathered stones into a pile atop the far side. Although the stones weren’t big enough to hurt anyone too much, it would be the first annoying incident along the trail, to be followed by others.

  Satisfied with their first creation, they continued along. They took the same precautions while traveling the trail as before, although they never saw anyone. Soon they came to a place where a log could be rigged to roll into another gully. Again, not enough to hurt too much, but just enough to annoy and discourage any interloper.

  Pleased with their cunning skills, the kids headed to their next objective. The bee tree was located five feet from the trail. For the booby trap to be effective, Mike and his friends had to stand under the branch with the hive positioned directly above them. The boys concocted a devious plan to make sure it happened, and then set out to build the trap, which turned out to be pretty complicated.

  A sapling was cut for the bow and tied into shape with string. Two straight sticks were fastened at the center to create a crossbow. The arrow was made from the straightest stick they could find. The string was pulled to test-fire the arrow, which perched nicely between the two extended sticks, and a target was set twice as far. This was extra insurance.

  They found three saplings to attach and hold the bow so it pointed the arrow directly at the hive. The bow was pulled back, and a stick was jammed between the bow and string to keep it taut. The tripwire string was attached to this stick.

  The tripwire trigger for the crossbow was a fine example of Karl’s ingenuity and was quite intricate. The string hanging from the bow pull-stick was tied to a dangling log, not quite heavy enough to pull the stick out and send the arrow flying. The string continued straight down where a forked stick was jammed into the ground, and then went under the fork and along the ground, then up to a branch in a tree next to the one holding the hive. There it was tied to a waist-high branch.

  They figured that Mike wouldn’t come alone. Once he and his friends were tricked into going behind the big tree, one of them would have to push the branch out of his way to make room for the others, thus springing the trap. The strings near the ground were heavily concealed with leaves and plants.

  When the dastardly masterpiece was finished, Karl placed the arrow onto the bow and laughed with glee. The boys sat down near the bee tree to rest and enjoy their snacks and water.

  “I told you to bring more water,” Phil said to Paul.

  “You were standing next to it. Why didn’t you bring it?”

  “I was bringing everything else.”

  “You were not.”

  “I was too.”

  “Were not.”

  “Was too.”

  “Not.”

  “Was.”

  “N–”

  “This will be so cool,” Karl interrupted. “You can’t even tell it’s a booby trap. They’ll never know what hit them. They don’t know who they’re dealing with!”

  “Karl the Mighty!” Phil said as he raised his arms and bowed at the waist.

  “Oh, get over yourself,” Clayton admonished.

  “You guys know I’m the best,” Karl said, beaming with pride.

  “He’s the best?” Ron asked.

  “Yeah,” Clayton reluctantly agreed. “During the booby trap craze, we didn’t pick on Karl a lot because he was too good at picking on us.”

  Karl laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

  “Well, we’re done here,” Clayton said. “
And it only took two and a half hours,” he added, impressed with their teamwork.

  “As long as we’re this far, we might as well see if Farmer Hawkins’s road goes as far as the firefly field,” Ron suggested.

  “But we’ll have to be real quiet and quick,” Clayton warned. “Some of us have things to do at home before we can come back to visit the fairies tonight.”

  They all agreed, especially the twins, who had a big lawn to cut and had been arguing about who had already cut more than the other.

  They checked the bee tree one last time. Sunlight hit in patches, breaking through the leafy canopy and shining on bees flying around the nest, now hidden on the other side of the tree. With smiles of anticipation and satisfaction, they turned and headed off down the trail as quickly and quietly as possible.

  While walking the trail with Ron and Brian leading, Clayton kept looking into the brightly lit woods. Other times he had walked this part of the trail, the light of day was already dimming. Today it was still bright, and the sun brought warmth that had been missing the last few days. Clayton felt like he was sightseeing as he walked along the trial, not that there was much to see. Gently rolling, wooded hills traveled up and down, working away from the trail on both sides. There were also scattered, brightly lit spots, indicating small clearings. Fall colors were starting to decorate the trees with an autumn palette, although it would seem less beautiful this year, having seen the glorious color of fairies’ wings.

  Clayton’s daydreaming was suddenly interrupted by Brian and Ron. They had been walking so fast that he lost sight of them around a bend in the trail. They were now running back at him, screaming at the top of their lungs. By the time Clayton turned to follow them, Brian and Ron were long past and charging full speed ahead.

  Everyone joined them running down the trail, with no one wanting to be last, even though they had no clue what they were running from. Finally, the screaming stopped, but the running didn’t. Clayton passed Karl on the trail, then flew by Paul and Phil before seeing Brian and Ron hunched over on the trail ahead. They were almost at the bee tree and were desperately gasping for breath. The boys stood bent, with hands on knees, their heads turning to see what was coming down the trail.

  “What are we running from?” Clayton asked between gasps.

  “Big…” Ron panted, “black…bear!”

  “Standing on trail. Huge. Eating berries. Looked at us, right in the eye,” Brian wheezed in broken sentences while trying to catch his breath.

  “Oh geez, you dummy,” Karl complained while sweating and breathing hard.

  “You don’t have to run from a black bear,” Paul added in his “don’t-you-know-anything” tone of voice.

  “It probably ran from you,” Phil added in rare agreement.

  “They didn’t know,” Clayton said in their defense. “Up here, there are lots of bears. They roam all over the woods, and they eat constantly in late summer. They need to fatten up for the winter, so they wander everywhere looking for food. In a few more weeks, they’ll be knocking on our back doors begging. Luckily, they’re more afraid of us than we are of them.”

  “I don’t think so,” Brian said. “That bear would have had to faint dead away to be more afraid than I was.”

  “You can’t run faster than a bear anyway,” Karl chided.

  “I thought I heard that somewhere before, so I was only trying to run faster than Ron.”

  “Thanks, Brian. Leave me there to get eaten by a bear.”

  “Well, you do need to be afraid in the spring, when the cubs are running around. You don’t want to get between them and their mothers,” Clayton advised. “Now we have to walk back there all over again.”

  “You’re not serious,” Brian objected.

  “I am. The bear’s gone. Let’s go.” Having said that, Clayton walked back up the trail, and one by one, the others followed.

  When they were no longer winded, they picked up the pace. Quickly and quietly, they covered the distance to the spot where Brian and Ron had seen the bear. Deep tracks in the trail indicated where the bear had stood up on its hind legs.

  Clayton squatted down and sunk his hand into one of the tracks, his fingers barely filling the claw marks. “Female,” he announced, standing up again. “A male would have been much bigger. They run away, too, usually. If you talk and make a lot of noise when you’re in the woods, they leave before you even know they were there.”

  “I don’t want to see a bigger bear,” Ron said.

  They continued walking until they came to the section of the trail they had covered up earlier. They navigated this part slowly; the sounds offered by rain-moistened leaves were in sharp contrast to the last time they’d crossed when the leaves were exceptionally dry. They hadn’t heard the chainsaw, but the sneaky old farmer could still be around, and they sure didn’t want to escape down the trail again. They soon reached the uncovered part of the trail and walked the rest of the way in silence.

  When they reached the field, it was bathed in sunlight. Tall grasses and wildflowers proclaimed their own beauty in the daylight. Ignoring this display of ordinary nature, the boys squinted, shading their eyes with their hands to find the fairy tree.

  They couldn’t see any fairies because it was too early, but they wanted to cross to it anyway. They would have to be satisfied with going there later. They looked to the right where the farmer’s road would reach the field. Something seemed to be missing. Since Farmer Hawkins wasn’t around, they headed along the field’s edge with growing unease. Halfway to the corner of the field, their hearts sank. Not only was the farmer’s road at the field, but he had cut part of the field to the ground. Stalks of grass and flowers lay flat on the ground in an arc two hundred feet across, the center road carving into the woods like the stem of a fan.

  “This could be disastrous. Is he going to cut the whole field? Will the fireflies live through it? Where will the fairies go?” Brian rambled.

  “I don’t know,” Clayton replied anxiously.

  “Now we really have to warn the fairies,” Phil said.

  “It has to be for his cows,” Karl offered.

  Clayton shook his head. “I could understand that if he still had hundreds of cattle in his herd. He might want to split them up so they can graze in different places. But he’s only got about a hundred cows now with plenty of places to put them near his barns.” Frustrated, he rubbed his temples. “Whatever he’s doing, there’s nothing we can do but warn the fairies. Let’s go home so we can get back before dark.”

  They left the field and practically ran the whole way back home to make up for lost time.

  As they all had chores to do and suppers to eat with their families, there was no set time to arrive at the tree house. They were all eager to get there as soon as possible, more anxious than ever to see the fairies again. They knew it would be getting colder soon and fewer fireflies would be in the fields. SeeLee’s words of invitation echoed in their minds, “Whenever the fireflies gather…”

  The chores were the same for everyone. Wood needed to be chopped for basement wood burners since both old and new houses used them to reduce heating fuel costs. At least fifteen cords of wood for each burner were needed for the winter months, but even with all summer to get the job done, everyone naturally waited until the last couple weeks to start chopping. Unfortunately, it was the clashing of the seasons, so days were also filled with yard mowing. The grass eagerly devoured late summer rains and showed its appreciation by doubling its height every day. All the boys were behind with their chores and needed weekends to catch up. Penny was happy to be unconcerned about such mundane matters. She went to the tree house right after supper, before a chore happened to find her.

  After what seemed a long time, the boys finally started showing up. Paul and Phil were sweaty and tired from rushing through as much work as possible. When the sun dropped low in the sky, those still doing chores couldn’t stand it any longer. They left what they were doing and arrived at the tree hou
se within ten minutes of each other. They sat on the cool leaves at the base of the tree, resting briefly before starting their trail trek.

  “You wouldn’t believe how much grass we just cut,” Paul bragged to Clayton. “Phil would run up a row, then come back on the next one. Then I’d grab the lawn mower and do the next two. We cut the whole front yard, running like crazy, before we even got tired,” he boasted.

  “Dillon already started mowing, so I did a little more, then chopped a pile of wood,” Clayton bragged.

  “We all worked our butts off, but we’re the ones who had to walk over three miles to get here,” Brian complained.

  “You get to rest your butts for two more minutes, then we have to go,” Karl advised everyone.

  “Where are your watches?” Ron asked Karl.

  “The battery is dead in one, and the other stopped working from when we were building the tree house. I kept banging it around.”

  “Is the two minutes going to be more like twenty then, Mr. Time Warp?” Paul asked, still breathing hard and sweating.

  “I guess nobody’s going to come up here to see how I cleaned the place up,” Penny said as she climbed down from the tree house.

  “Good guess,” Clayton shot back.

  “You guys are pigs. There was mud everywhere,” Penny exaggerated as she continued to describe the many things she had to do to straighten the place. Ugh, boys were such slobs.

  “Our humble apologies, Oh, Wonderful Penny, Queen of the Universe,” Brian intoned.

  “Save the complaints for the trail. We need to talk a lot so Mike will know we’re on our way and follow us if he’s out here. Time’s up. We have to go,” Karl said.

  With plenty of groaning and complaining, everyone got up and started walking. Once on the trail, aches and tiredness were replaced with the anticipation of seeing the fairies again. Talking came easy since everybody was in a good mood. This happy-go-lucky attitude didn’t keep the kids from paying extra attention to every tree and bush, hoping to see Mike hiding in wait for them.