The Pricker Boy

by Reade Scott Whinnem

  I reach into my pocket and pull out the ring that we found in the Hawthorns. No one’s claimed it, so I’ve kept it. It’s mine as much as anybody’s, I guess.

  Small green pellets rain onto me. I figure it’s one of the others sneaking up on me, but I thought I was alone out here. I spin around to see Pete smiling at me. He launches another handful of green grapes my way.

  “Oh, it’s you,” I say, tucking my head in as the green hail falls around me.

  “Oh, it’s you,” he mocks me. “Some friend. You haven’t seen me in a week and all you can say is, ‘Oh, it’s you.’”

  “I thought you were someone else,” I say, settling back down on the rock. He eyes the ring I keep fiddling with but doesn’t ask me about it.

  Pete climbs up and sits next to me. “Who’d you think I was? Ronnie? Or Emily? You know, the other day I was up on the hill behind her cottage, and you know how they have that outside shower? Well, she came out to take a shower, and I could see everything … everything.”

  I try to ignore him, but it’s difficult when he’s sitting right next to me. He takes the green grapes one by one and drops them down the back of Whale’s Jaw, watching them bounce down to the dirt below.

  “Last year she was just a kid, but look at her now. I almost walked right out of the woods and gave that townie a real country welcome, you know.”

  “Pete, stop.”

  “I’ll stop when I feel like stopping.”

  “Why do you have to talk like that? She was your friend.”

  “Yeah, well …” is the only answer he has to give.

  I shake my head. “Sometimes I don’t understand you.”

  “You got something on your mind?” he asks me. “If you’ve got something to say, just say it.”

  I don’t respond right away because I don’t want to confront Pete on anything. He reaches over quickly and snaps the ring out of my fingers. I try to grab it back, but he holds it out of my reach. He laughs. “What? I can’t see it? I just want to look at it, Stucks.”

  “Give it back.”

  “Give it back! Give it back!” he squeals. He holds out the ring to me, but when I reach for it, he yanks it away.

  “Friends for life, and I can’t even look at a stupid ring.” He takes a quick look at it, then obviously loses interest, but he doesn’t give it back to me.

  “Do you know who it belongs to?” I ask.

  “Don’t know, don’t care,” he says. He stands up and chucks the ring off into the woods.

  “Don’t!” I spring to my feet. “Pete! Why did you—”

  Pete laughs and holds out his hand. He had only mimed the throw. The ring is still in his hand.

  “Give it back.”

  He doesn’t respond.

  “Give it back now.”

  He stares at me. He offers it twice, each time pulling away at the last second. On the third offer, he drops it down into the brush on the steep side of Whale’s Jaw. He sits back down.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I ask him.

  “Same thing that’s always been the matter with me.” He laughs as if he understands things that I’m incapable of seeing. “My doctor told me that I was, uh, how did he say it? He gave me some disorder or something. Hyperactive defiant something or other. ‘With potential for violence.’ That was my favorite part. ‘With potential for violence.’”

  I’m scared to sit back down next to him.

  “Your family’s as batty as all hell, but I’ll bet none of you has ‘a potential for violence’—am I right?” He stares at me for a minute. “Anyway, so there’s this pill and that pill and ‘keeping a journal of your thoughts’ and ‘reconnecting with your family’ and the bottom line is that it’s all crap.”

  I climb down the back of Whale’s Jaw. Pete watches me as I push through the brush to the steep side and begin searching the ground for the ring. “Is it magic? You lost your magic ring, little boy?”

  I ignore him. I move the low branches of a young maple tree out of the way so that I can see better. I spot a glint of gold and grab the ring. I stand and brush it off.

  Suddenly Pete jumps from the top of Whale’s Jaw and lands right near me, knocking me backward. I look up and wonder how he did that without breaking his ankle.

  “So what do you think?” he asks.

  I stick the ring back into my pocket before he has a chance to steal it away again. “About what?”

  “Do you think that I have a potential for violence?”

  I turn around and push through the brush back to the other side of Whale’s Jaw.

  “Sure, I guess. I don’t know. Maybe everybody does.”

  He grabs my shoulder, spins me around. “But everybody doesn’t have it written down on paper, where your teachers and parents can see it, do they?”

  I don’t answer. He’d grabbed my shoulder pretty hard, harder than was necessary. I take a step backward. He smiles and steps forward. He locks his eyes on my eyes. He reaches out and slams his open palm into the center of my chest, kicking the air out of my lungs and knocking me off my feet.

  I try to scramble away from him, but he follows after me. He drags his feet in the dirt and kicks the dust up at me. I feel my back bump hard against Whale’s Jaw. I place my arms over my face to protect myself. “Leave me alone!” I shout at him.

  He starts laughing. “I’m just messing with you!” He reaches down and helps me up. “But you should have seen the look on your face.”

  I brush myself off but I keep my eyes on him just in case he jumps at me again.

  “You sure were ready to run away. Like a little bunny rabbit. Your family’s got a rabbit and a cricket. A rabbit, a cricket, and a crazy old grandma.”

  Again he goes silent. He’s studying me. Studying me the way you’d study an anthill before kicking it. Studying me the way you’d study the ants afterward to see how they’d react.

  “I can’t tell you how glad I am that my father didn’t raise me to be like you,” he says.

  Now I don’t care how much potential for violence he might have. He can say what he wants about me, but he should leave my family out of it. “My family has always been good to you. They’ve always kept a seat at the table for you. My father … well, he’s been like a second father to you.”

  “Maybe,” he says. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. He lights one and pulls a few drags off it as he watches me.

  “Enough of this,” he says. “I’m going to ask you one last time. Are you going to hang with those little brats all summer? Come out with me tonight. We’re not doing anything except driving around, maybe heading up to Tucker’s Corner. There’s a lake out there that people go out and party at. Or maybe we’ll all just drive … wherever. It doesn’t matter.”

  “No. No thanks.”

  He walks up to me very slowly, watching to see if I’ll back away. He doesn’t stop until his face is inches from my face. “You smell, you know. You smell like, I don’t know. Like flowers?” He takes a long breath in through his nose. “Not perfume. Like some woman’s lilac water or something. Something someone’s grandmother would wear. You smell like an old woman trying to cover up her stink.” He takes a long drag off his cigarette, blows the smoke over me, then looks me up and down like I’m the most disgusting thing he’s ever seen. “I don’t like you anymore. And that’s something that you should remember the next time you see me.”

  But this time it’s me staring. This time it’s me studying him. “That’s not true,” I say firmly. “And just so you know, our table is still open to you.”

  He backs off, shaking his head. He turns and walks up the hill toward the Widow’s Stone. “I’m not that hungry anymore,” he calls back over his shoulder.

  I reach into my pocket and pull out the ring. I press it hard into my palm and pull it away. There’s an imprint of a circle left behind. It’s way too big for a kid to have worn, but that doesn’t mean that one of us didn’t treasure it for some reason. Found it i
n the leaves or in the shallow water of the pond. Picked it up and gloated about our lucky find. But if it was so important that it was sacrificed for a widow’s walk, then someone should remember it.

  “So I guess it’s just a normal summer from now on,” I say to the others.

  Light from the Japanese lanterns flickers off the ring. Earlier in the evening, my father pulled me aside and told me that we couldn’t have a fire out at Whale’s Jaw. I was going to say, “What are you talking about, Dad? We don’t have fires out at Whale’s Jaw.” Instead I said, “We keep buckets of water out there. Just like you used to when we were little. We’re careful.”

  “It’s been dry,” my father said. “So use the lanterns.”

  The lanterns are a pain in the ass, and I told my father so.

  “I wouldn’t even let you use the lanterns if there was a breeze. Look, I don’t care what you guys do out there. Roast marshmallows, tell ghost stories, curse and call your parents assholes … whatever. But if I take a walk into the woods and see a fire tonight, then I’m coming out there, and the party’s over.”

  “I’ll make a deal with you, Dad. Ronnie’s planning on telling a pretty scary one tonight. Lots of blood and gore in this one. Could you keep the Cricket home tonight?”

  A little white lie never hurts, and if it keeps the Cricket from hearing anything about what’s really going on, then it’s worth it.

  “That won’t be easy,” he said.

  “Just one night. And I won’t be out late, so it’s not like you’ll have to hold him for long.”

  Dad agreed. I carried the lanterns out to Whale’s Jaw, Boris wheezing and panting by my side. I hung them by Christmas-tree hooks on the branches around the fire pit and lit them with votive candles.

  Now we’re sitting by the fire pit and watching dusk fall. The lanterns are becoming red and green and yellow orbs glowing in the trees. They’re pretty creepy. I’d really rather have a fire.

  I close my fist tightly around the ring and look up at Vivek, Ronnie, Emily, and Robin. “How about it? Normal summer? Catchin’ fireflies and swimmin’ in the pond and playin’ tag?”

  Emily reaches over and pinches one of the accordionlike rice-paper folds on a green lantern. “There was nothing that happened out in the woods that can’t be chalked up to overactive imaginations,” she says. She releases the fold and then gently taps the side of the lantern.

  I have a tough time holding back my anger. “Overactive imaginations! The package, the words carved in the stone, even the Hawthorn Trees! What was it you said? Those fairies get very upset if the tree is harmed in any way. Something about sickness to the house of the offender? And what’s the first thing you do? Pluck the berries! Well, look around! We’ve been scratching at scabs for a week now.”

  “Don’t you point that one at me,” she shoots back. “You know poison ivy better than any of us. You must have seen it. So let’s not blame the Hawthorns.”

  “I told you it was poison ivy, you jerk,” Robin chimes in. “You wouldn’t know poison ivy if your own name was written on the leaves.” She folds her arms, leans back in her seat, and looks off into the trees. She continues talking, but it sounds more like she’s talking to the lanterns than to us. “I learned my lesson. I’m not going back there again. Poison ivy in my crotch! If they want to go back, they can, but I’m no dope.”

  “I can’t go back,” Ronnie says. “My grandpa says—”

  I sneer at him. “Your grandpa says what? Did he offer you a cookie if you promised not to go back into the woods again?”

  I shake my head. I slide the ring over my thumb and pick up my fire poker. I jab at the ground, and the soil crumbles to powder. There hasn’t been a drop of rain in three weeks, and there isn’t any expected for some time. You can almost hear the ground beneath us crying with thirst.

  “I don’t believe in fairies or woodland demons, Stucks,” Emily states. “I’ll admit that when I was a kid it scared me a little, but I never believed in the Pricker Boy any more than I believed in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. And I gave up Santa and the Easter Bunny a long time ago.”

  “I’m Hindu,” Vivek says. “I never had to give up Santa or the Easter Bunny. Just women with lots of arms. Whole lots.”

  I glare at him. “You know, I’m getting pretty sick and tired of your dumbass jokes.”

  “I don’t know any other kinds of jokes. Sorry!”

  We look at each other over the fire for a moment, and then Emily interrupts our staring contest. “Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny aside, I’m still … interested,” she says. Boris wanders over to Emily and sticks his nose into her palm. She scratches his head. “And if one of you is orchestrating this whole thing—the package, the carving on the stone, the things you claim that you’ve seen—then now’s the time to stop. Because if it turns out that one or both of you set this up as some kind of prank, then I’m going to lose interest pretty quickly. Both in this story and in you.”

  “She’s talking about us!” Ronnie says, looking over at me.

  Emily ignores him at first. She reaches into the pouch of her sweatshirt and pulls out a dog biscuit. She sniffs it once before handing it over to Boris. He flops to the ground and begins crunching. Finally Emily says, “Yes, I’m talking about you.”

  “Hey, I know this is my story, so I guess that makes me the prime suspect for putting that package out there, but I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t leave any of you out there on your own either.”

  Robin releases a sad sigh, then reaches over and squeezes Ronnie’s arm. “We told you, Ronnie. We thought that you’d headed back. We never would have left you out there on purpose. I swear, Ronnie. I feel so bad about what happened.”

  “If you knew how to pee properly, then it never would have happened,” I say.

  Vivek raises an eyebrow and turns toward Ronnie. “You don’t know how to pee?”

  “You’re all just trying to embarrass me again!” Ronnie blurts. “You left me out there! You left me!”

  At first, I think Vivek’s going to make another dumb joke. But then something in his face changes.

  “It’s not their fault, Ronnie,” he says. “It’s mine.”

  Ronnie looks confused. “But you weren’t even there.”

  “Exactly. I was the one who said that we would all stay together. I should have been back there with you guys, but I wasn’t. And I’m sorry about that, bud. It never should have happened. Never.”

  The way Vivek says “never” stretches his apology back further than our one-day trek out into the woods. Ronnie looks like he wants to say something, but no words come out.

  So I speak first.

  “I guess I’m the only one here who still believes in the Easter Bunny, because that thing out there scares the hell out of me,” I say. “Emily, do you really think that I’ve set this up? How could I have gotten hold of the old baseball cards, the locket, the book? I believe that there is something in those woods, something I can’t explain, and maybe I’m supposed to be too old to believe in it, but I do anyway. I told you, I saw that stone pit. You could see it from the ridge above! Are you saying that I rolled those boulders over so that they surrounded the Hora House? Or maybe I went back in time and actually built the Hora House?”

  Emily turns to Robin. “Did you see this stone pit?”

  “No,” she admits. I am just about to chuck a few choice words at her when she adds, “but I wasn’t looking down. I was too worried about the Cricket. I can’t say that it was down there … but I won’t say that it wasn’t.”

  “Fair enough,” I say, nodding. I have to admit, I’m surprised by what she just said. But because no one else seems willing to give me the benefit of the doubt, I add, “There’s one thing that no one here is considering. If there is any truth to the story—”

  “That’s a good question,” Emily says, picking at the flaky remnants of poison-ivy rash on her jaw. She turns to Ronnie. “The time for ‘stories’ is over. You’ve been telling us for years
that this is a true story, one that you did not make up. I want the truth.”

  Ronnie slumps down in his chair. “Parts of it are true. Parts are made up. Those kids really died. My grandpa told me so when I was little so I wouldn’t go too far into the woods. And I know people have claimed to have seen him. A lot of the details were made up, filled in.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell us that before we went out into the woods?” Robin asks.

  “Because it’s my story,” Ronnie says, sulking. “I made it. It’s mine. But it’s beginning to feel true. I didn’t tell you guys, but I thought I saw something out there too. That’s why I wasn’t at the Hora House when you got back. I saw a little boy and thought it was the Cricket and pushed through the bushes after him. But then it laughed and vanished, and for a few minutes I couldn’t find my way back. When I did, you guys were gone.”

  “But you couldn’t have gone far,” Robin says. “Didn’t you hear us shouting for you?”

  “I didn’t hear anything at all.” He shivers, then whispers, “I’m scared.”

  A curious expression comes over Vivek’s face. He leans over and looks at the ground. “Did one of you guys start smoking?” he asks, plucking a cigarette butt off the ground and tossing it into the fire pit. He finds two more and picks them up—

  Boris leaps to his feet, the hair on his back rising. He looks up toward the Widow’s Stone and barks. Just like before, just like on the first day of summer.

  I reach down and try to calm him, but he spins in the dirt, takes a few steps toward the path, and looks back over his shoulder.

  Then a sound rises from the woods, a gruesome sound, frightened and sobbing. We all jump to our feet. Ronnie’s chair falls over. Robin knocks into one of the lanterns, and it falls to the ground. The votive topples out, snuffing itself out in the dirt.