The Pricker Boy

by Reade Scott Whinnem

  “You’re right,” I say. “Unless he thought that we had gone first. Think about it. Ronnie is always odd man out. If he came back and saw that we were gone, he’d think that it was just another trick, just another jab at him. He’d think we left him behind.”

  Robin shakes her head. “Out here? No, I’d never leave him out here.”

  “I know we wouldn’t! But Ronnie doesn’t know that.”

  Robin thinks for a moment, shaking her head back and forth.

  “Look around!” I shout impatiently. “It’s already dusk. In a half hour or so, we won’t be able to see the thorns in front of our own faces. We have to head back.”

  “Okay,” she says. “But keep calling out to him.”

  As we turn away, I see something terrible. A white worm of smoke snakes up over the edge of the cellar hole and then back down inside. Another two roll up the side. One gets up and out and begins to wriggle across the ground toward us.

  I can barely speak, but I am able to get out one hoarse word. “Hurry.”

  “Oh God,” Robin says. I can’t tell if it’s because she sees what I see, or if it’s just the darkness pulling in toward us.

  I lead the way, Robin follows me, and the Cricket clings to her hand. Going back is easier. The path that we hacked through the thorns is still fresh, though a few strong branches have found their way back into it. In my mind I can picture those slow-moving things at the Hora House, drifting around the boulders, trying to find the path that we disappeared down.

  We are only halfway back when the real darkness comes. It comes quickly, and with it the woods change. Birds stop chirping, and the insects start calling. The wind seems louder in the trees, or maybe it is just our ears, which become more and more sensitive as our eyes become less and less useful. Either way, we find ourselves in another world.

  I feel ahead for the thorns. With each step they seem to grow thicker, as if in the darkness they have gathered in the path again, despite my beating them back with a stick just an hour ago. We take it step by step, moving slowly now, and every few feet I call out to Ronnie. I shout as loud as I can. I shout to make my voice carry through the darkness, not caring if anything out there other than Ronnie can hear me. I shout so that if Ronnie is out there, he’ll hear me and know that he is not alone. But no matter how loud I shout, it feels like something is knocking my voice down, like in a dream when you try to scream and nothing comes out.

  It is pitch-black when I finally get an answer to my calls.

  “Stucks!”

  It isn’t Ronnie’s voice that calls back through the darkness. It’s Emily’s.

  “Yeah!”

  “Did you find the Cricket?”

  “He’s with us!”

  I hear Vivek cheer through the darkness.

  “Is Ronnie with you?” I yell.

  There’s a short pause, and then a slightly confused response. “No! Isn’t he with you?” Emily calls.

  We break out of the path to the small clearing around the Hawthorns. “Don’t go near the Hawthorns,” Robin warns the Cricket. “Those spikes are dangerous, and we can’t see them in the dark.”

  In the distance I can see the Widow’s Stone. One of them went back for a flashlight, and the beam shines to us through the darkness.

  “We got separated from Ronnie!” I yell to him.

  “He’s not with us,” Vivek shouts.

  I watch the beam of light waver at us from the Widow’s Stone. Going to it means abandoning Ronnie to the woods.

  The thorns between us and the flashlight seem thicker than ever. They seem to have doubled since nightfall. Part of me wants to burst through, to just run for it, to try and make it to the back of Whale’s Jaw.

  I turn to Robin. My hands are shaking. “You take the Cricket home, and I’ll go back for Ronnie,” I say, not quite believing the words myself.

  “Are you sure?” Robin asks. “We can take him home together. I’ll come back with you to find Ronnie. But first we take care of the Cricket.” It’s the most sensible thing I have heard all day, and a more sensible idea than any I can think of at the moment.

  We start moving toward the Widow’s Stone together. I tell myself that once the Cricket is safe, I’ll have the courage to go back for Ronnie, that I’m not so frightened that I would abandon him out there altogether.

  We’re halfway to the Widow’s Stone when I hear the noise.

  “Do you hear that?” I ask Robin.

  “Hear what?” she says.

  “It’s a … like a clicking. Can’t you hear that?”

  It’s getting louder. Whatever is making the noise is getting closer to us, moving underneath the thorns off to our right.

  “I don’t hear anything,” she says. “Please, Stucks, you’re scaring the Cricket. Let’s just keep going.”

  We take a few more steps, then I stop again. There’s no way that she can’t hear it. It’s too loud now. Like a giant insect skittering along, its legs clicking together as it crawls.

  “You can’t hear that?” I shout at her.

  “No,” she says quietly. She starts again toward the Widow’s Stone.

  Now it’s not one insect but hundreds of them that I hear, all of them swarming under the thorns toward us. I try to ignore the sound, but it just gets louder, it just gets closer.

  I bow my head, close my eyes, and say out loud to myself, “I will not leave my friend behind, I will not leave my friend behind, I will not leave my friend behind.…” I raise my voice to drown out the clicking noises, but they just get louder and louder and louder. I start to shout, “I will not leave my friend behind! I will not leave my friend behind! I will not leave my friend behind!”

  I feel something at my ankle. It cuts into my skin. I fall to the ground, and as I do, thorn branches wrap around me. Something nearby, something close to the ground, hisses at me through the darkness.

  Robin is almost to the Widow’s Stone. I try to follow after her, but something is wrapping around me, grabbing my clothes tight, digging into my skin through my pants, through my shirt. Thick thorns drag across my face. I shut my eyes. Sharp points press against my eyelids. I’m afraid to open my mouth to scream.

  I hope that Robin has her arms around the Cricket, protecting him from whatever has gotten hold of me. I picture them rejoining Vivek and Emily. The Cricket is terrified, but he’s safe behind my friends. They have each other, and the Pricker Boy only takes kids who are alone.

  And I’m alone.

  I hear a voice from far away.

  “Stucks!” Ronnie shouts, his voice high and desperate. “Stucks, come back for me! Stucks, I can’t find my way without you!”

  Mr. Milkes is pulling me from the thorns. I think that I might have blacked out for a moment or two. My leg is stuck, and Mr. Milkes has to do some twisting just to break it free. Robin has gotten my mother and my father. Whatever was pulling me under the thorns has left, but I am still tangled in the branches.

  “Where’s Ronnie?” Mr. Milkes asks me, his voice unsympathetic.

  “I dunno,” I blurt. I feel stupid. “We got separated in the woods. He’s back there someplace, I think.”

  I feel my dad’s hand under my shoulder, yanking me to my feet. “Then you go back there with Mr. Milkes and find him,” my father says. He grabs the flashlight from Vivek and hands it to Mr. Milkes.

  Mr. Milkes and I start walking. “Call out to him,” he commands. Ronnie immediately answers me, and I tell him to keep yelling and to stay calm.

  I’m holding something tight in my palm. I loosen my grip. It’s that ring that we found in the package yesterday. At some point I must have taken it out of my pocket, but I don’t remember doing it. I start to put it back but then decide to tighten my fingers around it again.

  “I don’t know,” Mr. Milkes says to me. “There’s nothing simpler than, ‘Be home in time for dinner,’ is there? Huh, boy?” When I don’t answer quickly enough, he says, “Huh, boy?” again.

  “No sir, I don’t thin
k so. But it’s not Ronnie’s fault. We couldn’t find my little brother—”

  “Shouldn’t have been out here in the first place. Poison ivy. Pine sap. Mrs. Milkes works hard washing his clothes, keeping them clean. Works hard to get dinner on the table on time. Are you listening to me?”

  I keep nodding and agreeing, but I’m not really listening. We find Ronnie crouched down on the path, his arms wrapped around his legs. He’s badly scratched from head to toe, and I don’t think that Mrs. Milkes will be able to salvage his clothes. When the flashlight beam hits him, he turns away from it as if he’s ashamed to be seen. I am pretty sure he’s been crying, though his eyes have dried. Mr. Milkes turns his accusatory questions to Ronnie and leaves me alone.

  Not that there aren’t plenty of questions for me when we get back to the house. Robin sits at the dinner table, looking miserable and offers no protest to my parents’ inquest. I explain to them exactly what happened. I say that we had gone on a “nature discovery walk” into the woods and had returned in time for dinner, but that we were afraid that the Cricket was lost in the woods, so we went back to look for him. After we found him, it got dark, and coming home I stumbled into the thornbushes and freaked out.

  I leave out the part about the monster that lives back there. I don’t think that they’d understand.

  Through it all, the Cricket sits at the table and stares at his bare feet. The thrill of his joke has been replaced by guilt. He hates to see me get into trouble under any circumstances. When I finish my story, he taps his fist against his heart and makes the sucking sound with his mouth. I’M SORRY.

  My mother glares at him. “If anyone is in trouble here, it’s you,” she says, her voice raised. “Why would you go off into the woods with your brother and then start playing your hide-and-seek game? You could get lost out there!”

  The Cricket starts quietly crying, and I cross my arms and line my pinkies up. He sees me, smiles only slightly, but returns the sign.

  My father calls around to the Milkeses, the Patels, and the Habers and explains to all the parents that we were late because we were in the woods looking for the Cricket. He apologizes to each family, and with the exception of Ronnie, we all get off without any punishment.

  Or so we think. The itching begins on the afternoon of the next day. It starts on my arms, then spreads to my neck and onto my shoulders and the left side of my face. Within two days bubbles form, and my neck swells so much that I can’t move my head. Robin gets it too, worse than I do. Her little trip to the bushes got her in the worst place imagin able, and within days she can’t even sit down. Emily turns into something out of a horror movie. Her eyes swell shut, and her lips grow into a grotesque red bubbling mass. Her fingers swell into stiff claws, and only her first finger and thumb have any real movement. Vivek’s legs are covered with oozing blisters. Ronnie has it the worst, though we don’t know it at first because we don’t see him. He is locked inside the Milkes Fortress, and his grandparents probably give him hell right up until the ambulance arrives.

  I once tried to explain to a friend who had never been to the woods what it is like to have poison ivy. I said it’s like taking thick molasses and spreading it over your skin and then dunking your arm down into a bucketful of fire ants. You let the fire ants swim in the molasses and then dig down into your skin, hundreds of them, digging down deeper and deeper. They sit there and wiggle, and when they wiggle it makes you want to itch so bad you think you’re going to lose your mind. If you tried to scratch at them, you’d only succeed in popping them like little blisters, and their skins would quickly grow back and swell all the more. After a couple days, they’d all start to ooze yellow gunk, and a crust would form over the whole mess.

  My friend looked at me. “It ain’t like that,” he said.

  Well, it is. At least for me. For nine days it feels like fire ants have infested my neck, face, and shoulders, and for nine days Robin has fire ants on her upper thighs and Emily has them on her lips and the flesh around her eyes and Vivek has them crawling all over his legs.

  The Cricket gets nothing. No scratches, no poison ivy. He goes right on playing. Meanwhile, the first real summer heat wave comes, settling in on us like a heavy wool blanket and driving those fire ants insane. We don’t sleep; we don’t play; we just try to keep from sweating at all costs, because the salt and sweat only make it worse. When it gets really bad, the others crawl into the pond, where the cool water quiets the maddening itch for a while.

  I don’t go in the water. I won’t go in the water.

  The ambulance comes on the fourth day. I figure that’s when Ronnie’s blisters start to ooze. I’m sure that’s what sends Mrs. Milkes over the brink. I stand in the backyard with Nana, watching them walk Ronnie to the back of the ambulance.

  “If that boy can walk, he doesn’t need an ambulance! All he needs is a little jewelweed and peppermint!” Nana shouts to Mr. Milkes, who ignores her.

  Ronnie sees me as he steps into the back of the ambulance, but he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t wave, and his eyes quickly dart away. The driver closes the ambulance doors behind him.

  “I only rode in an ambulance once,” Nana says after the vehicle leaves. “And I didn’t need it any more than that boy.”

  “What’s that, Mrs. Cumberland?” Mr. Milkes says, stepping to the edge of his yard.

  “I said I only rode in an ambulance once, and I didn’t need it any more than that boy !”

  “Serves him right for being out there,” Mr. Milkes responds, then turns to head back into his cottage.

  “Thirty years!” Nana shouts at him, and he turns back around. Nana holds up her left hand so that Mr. Milkes can see the stump where her index finger was. “Thirty years I’ve been without that finger. Lost it at work in a grommet press.” Mr. Milkes nods and pretends to be interested. “You put your left hand in, you take your left hand out,” Nana sings. “Then whack! Your finger ain’t yours anymore. It belongs to the grommet press!”

  “And is that when you got to ride in the ambulance?” Mr. Milkes asks, glancing once at the doorway to his cottage.

  Nana scowls. “They forced me. I could walk! I could drive! I wasn’t ready to go to the hospital. You know what they say about having on clean underwear when you go to the hospital?”

  Mr. Milkes nods politely and then checks his watch. “Is that right? No clean underwear?”

  “It was clean, all right! Only it wasn’t mine. I hadn’t done laundry in a few days, and when I was getting ready for work and opened the dresser drawer—whoops! No underwear. So I looked in Mr. Cumberland’s drawer. He had clean underwear.”

  Mr. Milkes forgets about his watch and the door of his cottage and stares at Nana. “You wore your husband’s underwear?”

  “If I had it to do again, I’d do it differently, but yes.”

  “I can tell you truthfully, Mrs. Cumberland, that my wife has never worn my underwear.”

  “Don’t be so sure! A man never really knows what his wife is up to while he’s out of the house.”

  Mr. Milkes’s eyes flicker with anger. “What are you saying about my wife?”

  “I’m not talking about sex,” Nana says, shaking her head. She turns to me. “Is that all men think about?”

  Mr. Milkes starts toward the door of his cottage, but he only makes it a few steps.

  “Anyway, there they were, walking me out to the ambulance, and I was just desperate to get to my car so I could go home and put on my dirty underwear, which at least was for females.” Nana chuckles. “I’m so glad I married that old fool. God bless Mr. Cumberland!” She kisses the stub of her missing finger. “Nice talking to you, Mr. Milkes! I’ll brew up something for Ronnie and send it over with one of the boys.” I help her inside the house.

  One summer we raided the wild grapevines that grow all over the woods. When the grapes grow ripe each year, they become mushy and sour, and they leave purple stains on the bottoms of your feet after they drop to the ground. Early in the summer th
ey’re green, and they’re hard little pellets, hard enough to sting if thrown with enough force. Vivek got a handful, and he chucked some at Pete. Then Pete got a handful, and he chucked them back at Vivek. Emily wanted to stay out of the fight, so she climbed to the top of Whale’s Jaw with a book. I only had to fire a single barrage at her before she climbed down and chased me down the paths. And that was it: the Great Green Grape War had begun.

  Ronnie and I teamed up for a while, and he disappeared into the woods to “gather more grapes.” I could have killed him for leaving me alone to defend myself, but when he returned he had a whole grocery bag full of them, and together we were able to overtake Whale’s Jaw and drive Vivek and Pete back onto the paths. But then Ronnie kept talking about how we were “partners,” so I turned on him and joined Emily. Pete turned on Vivek, so Vivek went to Ronnie, and on and on.

  I’ll never forget the look of horror on Vivek’s face when he spun around and whipped a handful of the hard green pellets at what he thought was a Pete Morgan sneak attack. He had released his fist before realizing who he was throwing at, and with the sting of the grapes the Cricket started screaming bloody murder. I stood up from my hiding place and went to him, picking him up off the ground and rubbing the spots where little red welts had begun to form. I walked him back out of the woods. I walked quickly. I wanted to get the Cricket to safety, but I wanted to be back in the fray as soon as possible.

  I wasn’t back from the house for five minutes before the Cricket was back to watch the big kids again. I got angry with him, and I tried to ignore him. In a few minutes he was gone again. I ran a full-out assault on Ronnie, using the same grapes that he had gathered for us earlier in the day. I grabbed another handful of grapes and let loose on Vivek. It became a free-for-all, but Pete was long gone by then. He was at the pond, sitting with the Cricket by the water’s edge and building drip castles in the mud. I remember being ashamed when I found out how nice he’d been to my little brother.

  The poison ivy scabs are healing. I’m sitting on top of Whale’s Jaw. The woods have changed over the past few weeks. The summer heat has moved in. With it has come a dry spell, and the rich, humid air that we breathed under the trees just a week or so ago is now lighter and dustier. The smell of earth has been replaced by the smell of dry leaves and pine needles, and under our feet the ground no longer feels cool and damp, but dusty and loose.