The Pricker Boy

by Reade Scott Whinnem

  For all the lake kids,

  wherever they may be

  1. Waking at Whale’s Jaw

  2. The Boys in the Bushes

  3. Old Stories

  4. Song of Bees and Dragons

  5. Turning Stones

  6. A Witch at the Dinner Table

  7. Blood on the Ground

  8. Disappearance

  9. The Poison Seeps

  10. Lanterns

  11. Nana’s Crow

  12. The Numbers and the Glass

  13. Flames on Water and Stone

  14. The Pond in Black and White

  15. Purification

  16. The Life I Didn’t Save

  17. Family Gathering

  18. First and Last

  Four years ago I was abandoned in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

  I have nightmares about a lot of things, but the scariest nightmares I have are about that day as a ten-year-old kid left alone in New York City. I relive those forty-five minutes in my sleep, except that in the dream version someone walks up to me and promises to help. It’s always a friendly-looking stranger—sometimes a security guard, and sometimes an old woman with a grandmotherly face. The person takes me out of the museum and puts me in a car. We’re miles away before it begins to dawn on me that this person is not who they said they were. It comes upon me the way things do in dreams, the way you just know that something has turned, something has gone wrong, something has never been right, only you couldn’t see it at first. The next thing I know it’s nighttime, and the streets outside the car look like a war has just ended, like those black-and-white pictures of Germany near the end of World War II. Sometimes there are bodies in the streets, bodies of children, and other times those children are alive, but they have no parents or families or anyplace to call home. I beg the person to take me home, but they just smile and tell me that I don’t deserve to go home. I don’t deserve to ever go home again.

  And there’s truth to those nightmares—a little truth anyway. Anyone could have walked up to me, smiled gently, and offered me help. I would have been so relieved that I would have poured myself into their waiting hand. Anyone who looked even a little trustworthy could have led me anywhere.

  It may seem obvious to you that I should’ve just found a security guard or a clerk and said that I was lost. It’s obvious to me now, but it wasn’t then. Back then I was too scared to do anything.

  My best friend, Pete Morgan, was on that field trip too. We’d worked together on a science project and earned the highest grade of anyone in the entire fourth grade. That got us two seats on the field trip usually reserved just for the fifth graders.

  There was only one thing at the Met that I wanted to see—the Arms and Armor exhibit. Just thinking about suits of armor gave me the chills. It still does today. It’s something about the way they’re frozen in place. Once there was a living man inside moving around and swinging his ax and making all that metal rise to violent life. When you get close to something like that, you get to thinking that just maybe there could be a man still hiding in there after all this time. Or maybe just his ghost. Maybe he can still move, and he’s just waiting for the right moment to swing that giant battle-ax down through the protective glass case. Maybe while you’re standing right there in front of it. Kinda thrilling, if you ask me.

  That exhibit’s all I talked about the whole two-hour bus ride down to the city. It felt so sweet to be away in New York City while all our friends were stuck back in school.

  Around noon we gathered outside the museum to eat our brown-bag lunches, and afterward we had some time to go to the gift shop. I wandered to the back, and I guess I wasn’t paying attention to the time. I didn’t see anyone come to look for me, though Pete said that he did. When the parent chaperone counted heads, she got it wrong, and everyone took off. I was left alone looking at a book filled with pictures of swords and daggers and shining armor.

  About ten minutes went by before I realized something was wrong. I walked all around the store but couldn’t find a single person that I recognized. For a moment I thought it was some kind of joke. I thought they might be hiding from me to teach me a lesson. I rushed around the store as if I were playing a desperate game of hide-and-seek. Then I realized that I was alone, and that I was a long way from home. The one thing that I remember most clearly is panic. It felt like someone had poured boiling water into my heart. I had no idea, no idea at all, what to do.

  I was afraid that if I left the store, I might get lost forever, might never even be able to find my way back to the gift shop. I walked to the doorway and looked out into the Met’s great marble hall, but I didn’t see a familiar face anywhere.

  The group finally came back. Our chaperone realized at some point that I wasn’t there, and she turned the entire group of kids around. I was still standing in the gift-shop doorway when I saw Janis Terkle, a fifth grader everyone called Turtle because her neck was so short, coming toward me. When I saw her face, I didn’t care how short her neck was, and I never made fun of her again after that day. That first recognized face meant that someone would lead me out of there, put me on a bus, and take me on the long ride home. That recognized face meant that I would see my mom and dad and little brother and grandmother and our house by the pond again. They had all been gone for those forty-five minutes. They had been gone for good.

  I could tell that the other kids were ticked off. One of them barked at me for screwing up the whole afternoon. In the chaperone’s voice I could hear relief salted with anger, but I couldn’t hear her words exactly because I burst out crying. I didn’t want the fifth graders to see me doing it, but I couldn’t help myself.

  I didn’t get to see the Arms and Armor exhibit, and neither did the other kids. The teachers cut the afternoon short because of me. Some of the fifth-grade guys tossed me a sarcastic “Thanks, Stucks,” or “Good going, Stucks,” as they filed onto the bus.

  On the whole ride back, Pete stayed right by my side. The chaperones made me sit up at the front of the bus, and Pete could’ve gone back there with the older kids, but he didn’t. I wasn’t saying much of anything, but he kept talking to me about the woods and fishing and all our friends coming back to their cottages for the summer. At one point I turned around and saw one of the older kids laughing and pretending to wipe tears away from his eyes. His name was Manny Fields. Pete saw Manny too. The next thing I knew, Pete was up and out of his seat and back the whole length of the bus and on top of Manny, driving fist after fist into his face, and then when Manny fell over, into the back of his head and between his shoulder blades. Pete broke Manny’s nose and one of his own fingers. There was blood all over that seat in the back, and those older kids had to sit and look at Manny’s blood the whole ride home.

  Pete was suspended for the rest of the school year, but it didn’t matter so much. It was late spring and school was about to get out anyway, and because I’d helped Pete with his work, his grades were high enough for him to pass for the year.

  A few days later one of the fifth graders told me that Pete had given our chaperone the thumbs-up when she did her head count, even though he knew I was still inside the gift shop. Kenny Fortner told me. Kenny was a pretty good kid, and even though he was good friends with Manny, he wasn’t the kind of kid who would lie.

  Word got round quickly about how I cried. The other kids were pretty amused by it all, and I heard their laughing at lunch and in gym class and during quiet time when we were all supposed to be reading.

  I don’t like people laughing at me. Not for crying or anything else.

  So that’s when I decided to stop.

  And I did. I never cry. It’s been four years, and I haven’t cried since. I won’t cry, despite all t
he things that have happened lately, despite all the things that are going on right now. And there’s nothing you could ever do to me, nothing you could ever say or show me or tell me that would make me let you see me cry.

  Nothing. Try it. Try it right now. You’ll see.

  I’m dreaming about the Met as I wake up in the dirt, curled around the stones of the fire pit. I’ve walked in my sleep again. It’s almost dawn, and I’m all the way across the dirt road, into the woods, and up by the fifteen-foot-high split granite boulder that we all call Whale’s Jaw. When I wake up, Boris is there—faithful Boris, old Boris, who always seems to have one more summer left in him. He’s growling.

  I’m used to waking up in the yard. Even though I close my eyes in my room, I often open them in the bushes or down by the edge of the pond. Nine times out of ten, Boris is snoring next to me, his back pressed up against mine. What I’m not used to is finding myself out in the woods, and I’m not used to Boris growling. His tail is straight, and his eyes are locked on the path that leads up to the stone wall about two dozen yards away at the top of the hill. I instinctively want to get up on the back of Whale’s Jaw. It’s always been home base for any game we ever played as kids, and that means it’s safe. But I stick with Boris. I scratch his back and ask him what’s wrong. I ask him what he smells. I try to calm him, but my nightmare of the city hasn’t completely faded, and I just want to give in to my superstitions and climb the back of that rock as fast as I can.

  Something small hits last summer’s hard ashes in the middle of the fire pit. Something else, tiny and hard, hits the back of my skull. I look up just as Pete lobs a third pebble down from Whale’s Jaw. It hits me just above my right eye.

  “Oh man!” he laughs. “I’m sorry, dude! I didn’t expect you to turn around.” I can see by his eyes that he’s been up all night. He looks like cigarette smoke and stale sleep.

  I rub the spot where the pebble hit. “What’s going on?” I ask him.

  He laughs at me and shakes his head. “I saw you sleeping and figured I’d wake you up.”

  “What’s up with Boris?” I ask. I stroke the dog between the ears. His growl rolls around in his belly. The hair on his back bristles.

  “How the hell should I know?” Pete says. From the top of Whale’s Jaw, it looks like you’re perched on the snout of a breaching whale, and you get a decent view of the woods. Pete stands and looks up the path that leads to the stone wall. “I don’t see anything,” Pete says. He tosses a pebble down at Boris. “Go get ’em, fleabag. Go up there and roust ’em out!”

  Boris doesn’t even look at Pete. “What is it, Boris?” I ask. Boris looks up at me, flaps his tail, and whines softly.

  “Crazy dog,” Pete declares. “What do you smell, crazy dog?”

  Whatever is up the path, it’s concealed in the thorns and brush just past the stone wall at the crest of the hill. Boris can smell it, and he doesn’t like what he smells. I have seen him chase after just about everything. He’ll gallop happily after a squirrel or rabbit, or romp fearless and stupid after a skunk. Boris isn’t smart enough to be scared of any living thing that I know of, but something up the path is scaring him now.

  “Probably just a chipmunk,” Pete says. “That dog’s a stink bomb, and he’s dumb as a bag of hammers.” He looks me over, smiles at the dirt on my arms and the pine needles in my hair. “Damn, you look like I feel. But at least you’re wearing pajama bottoms. Remember that time you woke up in the yard in your underwear? Man, that was funny as hell.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “but this is the first time that I’ve ever left the yard. I’ve never crossed the road before.”

  “Congratulations! You’re getting better and better with each passing year!” Pete laughs. “You know, I do smell something. Can you smell it?”

  “No.”

  “Soap or something. Too strong. Stinks.” He takes a cigarette out of his pocket. He lights up, then waves the cigarette around until he’s surrounded by the smoke. He breathes deep. “That’s better.” He smiles, then takes a drag.

  The threat in the thorns must have moved on, because Boris stops growling. He grunts, slaps his tongue against his teeth, drops his ass down into the spot where I slept last night, and thumps his tail in the dirt. I pat his side and praise him for being a good dog.

  “Does it freak you out waking up out here?” Pete asks. “Hey, if there is something out there, you think that hiding on top of this rock will save you?” Pete smirks and waits for my response, but I don’t offer one. “What is it that Ronnie says about the thorns and the mist?” Pete lets the cigarette in his hand dangle limply when he says Ronnie’s name. As he quotes Ronnie, he lisps, which isn’t fair because Ronnie doesn’t lisp. “‘On cold mornings, the fog rises from the center of Tanner Pond and makes its way up over the road and into the woods, drifting past Whale’s Jaw and on up into the dark places near the Hawthorn Trees, only to find itself shredded to strands on the thorns of the backwoods.’” Pete holds his cigarette still so that a thin line of smoke actually does drift away toward the path up the hill. “‘The strands of mist wriggle like worms in a puddle before they just disappear altogether, dissolving into the ground and never finding their way back down to the pond.’” Pete chuckles. “What a wuss.”

  “Ronnie doesn’t talk like that,” I say, but I make sure to chuckle along with Pete when I say it so it doesn’t really sound like I’m correcting him.

  “He might as well talk like that,” Pete replies.

  “What are you doing out here anyway?” I guess I must sound like I’m accusing him of something, because he glares at me.

  “It beats being at home.” Then Pete uses some words that no one should ever use to describe their father, all the time sucking on his cigarette and squinting. “You should be happy with the parents you’ve got, Stucks. Be happy with your whole family. You Cumberlands may be crazy, and you may all have crazy nicknames for each other. Hell, sometimes I wonder if you even know what your real names are. But you’re all okay. You won the lottery when you were born into that house.”

  Pete flicks cigarette ash down onto Whale’s Jaw. “You know, Stucks, these woods are our woods. Yours and mine, year-round. No one else’s. We made every path here, you and me, with our bare feet. We know every tree, know where the poison ivy is, know the names of every bug. Those summer kids, they’ve been around and all, and I used to think they were pretty good kids. But they don’t know anything. They can’t tell poison ivy from creeping Jennie. They’re used to sidewalks and streetlights. They get scared out here as soon as the sun goes down. And all those stories … they’re just stupid. Those townies, they’re stupid. They believe anything that Ronnie says. They want to believe it. I’m never hanging around with those idiots again.”

  Pete takes another dramatic drag on his cigarette. He’s trying too hard. He wants to look like he’s smoking a cigarette more than he wants to smoke a cigarette. I’d probably be annoyed with him if he weren’t my friend. I want to tell him to give it up, but it’s tough to tell Pete to do anything.

  “What about you? Are you an idiot? You think there’s a bogeyman back there?” he asks me from his perch on Whale’s Jaw.

  “You tell me,” I say.

  “I’ve seen it all, Stucks. Seen more than Ronnie has seen anyway.” Pete stares at me quietly for a full thirty seconds, long enough to make me squirm under the weight of his eyes. “And that pond …” Pete gestures with his cigarette toward the path that leads back to the houses and the water. “There’s something nasty about that pond, for sure. That’s what you need to watch out for. That pond’s a tomb. There’s zombies down the bottom just waiting to grab your ankles.”

  Now I know he’s teasing. I laugh, and Pete laughs with me. “I should make up my own story,” he chuckles. “The Tanner Pond Zombies! I could put Ronnie out of business!”

  Boris looks at me and barks. He seems to have forgotten all about whatever was bothering him. “I’m going back home,” I say to Pete. “You
coming?”

  “Nah.” Pete snuffs out his cigarette on the top of the rock.

  “Okay,” I say. I don’t know what else to say. I stand there awkwardly for a few moments. I feel like a stupid kid.

  “So … I’ll see you later, okay?” I offer. Pete waves me off. Boris and I take off down the path back to the house.

  I don’t know what to make of what Pete has told me. That happens a lot. Last summer he told me that it had gotten too noisy around, but I still don’t understand what he meant by that. I rarely even hear a car, just birds and bugs and the wind. Pete said that all he could hear was noise, and that the only time he ever heard real quiet was when he swam out into the pond and floated on his back and let the water fill his ears. Even then, he said, the quiet never lasted very long.

  Nana says that if you row out to the center of the pond on Memorial Day and drop a rock over the side, you’ll hear it hit bottom on the day of the first frost. Of course, she winks when she says it. One thing’s for sure: the pond is as deep as it is quiet. When we were little, we were warned not to swim out too far, but of course we pushed it, stretching the limit a little bit more each year.

  But our parents never warned us about the thorns. They didn’t have to. We know the rules back there, and we’ve always known never to test them. Pete was only half right when he said the woods belong to us. Part of them isn’t ours. But we know the difference. We know where the line is. We know where not to go.

  The truth about Tanner Pond and the thorns of the backwoods is a tricky thing to nail down. Ronnie Milkes says that from each and every thornbush a hundred branches grow, and a thousand thorns cover each branch. He says that if you walk beyond the stone wall alone, you might feel the thorn branches twist like studded fingers around your ankles and wrists. You could try to scream, but you’d be on the other side of the line then. On the other side, the thorns only answer to one voice, and that voice is not yours.

  But Pete says that’s all bullshit made up by a summer townie.