The Pricker Boy

by Reade Scott Whinnem

  Emily breaks in. “It was dark. There was no light to see by. We were all frightened. We heard animals making noises.”

  “And you saw three women come out of the woods and kick our lanterns and run away. Now we’re all having nightmares, the same nightmares each time we go to sleep.” Emily doesn’t have any response to that, so I continue. “If we can agree that we’re beyond what can be explained, then maybe our response needs to include the unexplainable. The symbolic. The spiritual.”

  “The paranormal?” Emily asks skeptically.

  “No, the supernatural. And when I say that, I mean it literally. Super, as in great. Nature on a deeper, more power ful level.”

  “You’re getting this from your nana,” Ronnie says.

  Beside me, the Cricket nods.

  “Nana once told me a story,” I say. “She and my grand father had a daughter after my dad was born. The child was stillborn. They were devastated. They had already named her. They tried to get over it, to be grateful for the two healthy sons that they had. But a year later, they still hadn’t recovered, and their pain was beginning to wedge them apart. So on what would have been their daughter’s first birthday, they rowed out to the middle of the pond. They brought a stack of paper with them. My grandmother took a piece of paper and wrote her daughter’s name at the top, and then she wrote that her daughter would have been walking by now. She folded the paper into a cup, set it in the water, lit it on fire, and watched it float away. Then my grandfather did the same, writing down what her first words might have been. He placed his folded cup into the water and lit it on fire. They took turns writing out everything that they hoped their daughter would become as she grew older: her desires, her loves, her fears, her dreams. And one by one they set them adrift and watched the flames take them away.”

  The Cricket has stopped throwing mussels and is listening intently to me.

  “It took them hours to let go of a future that would never be, but it worked. Grandpa and Nana were able to let go of her after that and get back to their family.”

  “That story always breaks my heart,” Robin says.

  Ronnie heard this story once when we were younger, back when we used to help Nana in her garden. He probably doesn’t remember all of it.

  “So you want us to row out into the pond and—” Vivek starts.

  “Not the pond. They chose the pond because to them the pond had always been a place of magic. We need to go to our own place of magic. I say we go up to the Hawthorns at dusk tonight, we write our nightmares out on slips of paper, and one by one we burn them in the hope that they will be exorcised from our minds.”

  “But it was more than just that,” Robin chimes in. “Don’t you remember, Stucks? Nana and Grandpa threw sprigs of pennyroyal over the water to protect the baby from evil. They floated morning glories so that she would know peace.”

  “We don’t have to worry about all that,” I say. “Not to take care of the dreams. We just need a ritual.”

  I’m expecting them to scoff. Maybe not Ronnie, who has already tried the widow’s walk. But Vivek might toss a joke out there. And this idea of placing ashes on the wind is not Emily’s style at all.

  But Vivek doesn’t say anything, and Emily just nods her head. “I’ll try anything,” she says.

  I don’t feel well. It will pass.

  I wait by Whale’s Jaw for the others to arrive. I listen to the cicadas. It was better when I didn’t notice them. They used to be just background noise, the sound track of summer, but lately I haven’t been able to ignore them. Maybe it’s the heat. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep. But I keep hearing them, and when I try to focus on something else, they only seem to get louder. And it’s not just the cicadas. The other day a hornet flew past my ear, and the sound seemed to slice my face. At night I try to ignore the crickets, but their chirping sounds like crying—relentless, monotonous weeping.

  I can’t not hear them.

  The others show up just before dusk. Ronnie has brought a stack of paper and a handful of pens. We march up to the Hawthorns together.

  Emily was curious the last time we visited the Hawthorns. She would say that she was “interested.” This time she seems reverent. It’s as if she recognizes the trees from somewhere, somewhere other than this spot where they have always grown.

  “How do we do this?” Vivek asks. “Is there a script? We don’t have to get naked, do we? Cover ourselves with pine sap and feathers?”

  “If you’re going to mock this,” Robin says, “then we’d rather you just leave.”

  “Sorry,” Vivek says.

  Ronnie hands out sheets of paper and pens to everyone. I give them all instructions. “Everyone write down your dream with as much detail as possible. Write everything that you can remember. Don’t leave anything out, because if you leave something out, if there’s something so troubling that you don’t want to put it on paper, then that one thing will stay with you. You won’t be able to get rid of it.”

  I find myself in a dilemma. Do I write down the nightmare that I actually had, or do I write down the dream that I told them I had? I look around. Ronnie is scribbling furiously. Emily appears to be making a list. Vivek is done. It’ll serve him right if he only gets rid of part of his nightmare.

  Robin is writing and crying. It seems that she can’t do anything without crying anymore.

  I decide to write down the dream that I lied about. I can’t purge the other one just yet. I’ll need it later on tonight.

  “Roll your dream into a scroll,” I tell everyone after we’re done. We stand in a circle around the offering stone. “There’s a way to do this, and a way not to. We shouldn’t make up our own rules. It’s important that we do this right, otherwise it may not work.”

  “This is getting cree-ee-eepy,” Vivek says. Robin glares at him and he quiets down.

  “What we’re going to do is—”

  “Stucks?” Robin says. “Can I go first? They’ll get the picture. There’s no need to turn this into a big production.” She turns to the rest of the group. “Watch what I do, do as I do, listen to what I say, repeat what I say, and go in order around the circle. Clear?”

  Robin steps forward. I hand her a rag and some matches that I’d stuffed into my pocket. She places the rag on the offering stone and lights it. She holds her scroll up to the flame, and once it catches fire, she drops it onto the stone. “I release my pain into the fire. I trust the fire to turn my pain to ashes. I trust the ashes to rise onto the wind. I trust the wind to scatter my pain away.”

  She remembers the whole thing. I’m impressed.

  She waits until her scroll has completely burned and then steps back to her place in the circle.

  Vivek is next. “Whoa,” he says. “What is this? I mean, uh, I read up on the Salem witch trials, and those people were crushed under stones, so—”

  “Stop!” Robin says.

  “Haven’t you figured this out yet?” Emily asks Vivek.

  “What?” he answers. “This is weird. This whole business has been freaking me out for days, and I don’t see how this is going to help. Who made this up anyway? ‘I trust the ashes to rise onto the wind’?”

  Ronnie tries to explain. “Their nana … well …”

  Robin turns to Vivek. “Let’s just say that it’s a family thing and leave it at that.”

  “Oh,” Vivek says. He looks at Robin and me as if we’re animals in a zoo. I’m not sure which one of us, me or Robin, is going to lose our patience first.

  “Look, Vivek,” I say, “either do this or don’t. But make up your mind now.”

  “Okay,” Vivek says. “But you might have to talk me through this. I didn’t get everything on that first run.” He steps forward, lights his scroll on the burning rag, then drops it onto the stone. “I release this pain to the wind.”

  “Fire,” Robin says.

  “Fire. I trust the fire to—to turn my—to turn my …” Vivek stumbles over the words. Now that he’s in front of us, it’s not
so easy to make fun of what we’re doing. This kind of thing has a way of flowing into you. You begin to feel it pulling your burden away. Pulling at you, like that thing that is pulling at me, making me feel sicker. It’s something in my head, something loud. Something making my stomach tighten.

  “To turn my pain to ashes,” Robin says.

  “To turn my pain to ashes. I trust the ashes to rise onto the wind. …”

  “I trust the wind to scatter my pain away.”

  “I trust the wind to scatter my pain away.”

  Vivek watches his scroll disappear and then sheepishly walks back to his place in the circle.

  Ronnie goes next, at least I think he does. I feel like I might fall over, so I can’t be sure. Maybe not, maybe I missed him, because now I see Emily up there, see a flame in her hand, hear her saying something like, “Fire to speak to wind to speak to ashes to speak …”

  She’s getting it all wrong, or maybe I am, because she’s too smart to get it so wrong. Too smart, too beautiful.

  I can’t hear her anymore. The screaming of the cicadas has grown too loud. The others don’t notice. Why can’t they hear it? I turn and look up at the trees.

  The next thing I know Robin is staring at me. “Stucks?” she says, but I can barely hear her. I don’t know what she wants, why she is calling my name.

  “What?” I say. But my voice is drowning.

  I feel someone grab me under the arm. I think that it’s Robin. Someone else is on my other side; I can’t tell who it is. They carry me. Robin takes my wrist and pulls it forward. I feel a burning near my fingers and instinctively let go of whatever is in my hand.

  There are voices next to me. “He releases his pain … turn his pain … trust the wind … scatter … away.”

  The buzzing seems to crawl inside my head; it feels like a thousand hornets inside my skull. I open my mouth to speak. I think I’m shouting; I have to, so that they can hear me over the buzzing.

  Hornets rush from my brain and fly out my mouth and nose and sting them all over their bodies and drive them to their knees drive them rolling to the ground burning stinging flames smoking blackened dying writhing everything ashes gone away—

  I see black, I see lies, I see black, and I see …

  “Stucks? Stucks, can you hear me?”

  It’s Robin. I can hear her. I can hear her fine. I just can’t open my mouth yet to tell her.

  The next voice I hear is Vivek’s. “What happened? Is he possessed or something?”

  “You’re a fool,” Robin answers.

  “I’m serious. I’m worried about him.”

  I open my eyes. “Fine,” I say. “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not fine,” Robin says. “You know it and I know. Nana warned us about things like this. We should have asked her to help.”

  “Just water,” I say. “It was hot. I didn’t drink enough water today. And sleep. I need sleep. We can all sleep now.”

  I force myself to sit up. Nausea almost knocks me back down, but I shake it off. I push myself to my feet, stumble a bit. Vivek catches me, steadies me.

  There are leaves in my hair, dirt on my elbows. Grit is stuck to the backs of my legs. I notice for the first time in a long time just how dirty my feet are.

  “Nope, nope, fine,” I say. “Just need sleep. Water and sleep.”

  “Help me get him home,” Robin says.

  They’re all concerned. I can see it in their faces.

  By the time we step out of the woods, my head has cleared. I can walk on my own, so I pull myself from their hold. “I just got overwhelmed. It all swam into my head at once. I’ll go home now.”

  “Thanks, guys,” Robin tells them. “I’ll take care of him. And with any luck, we’ll all sleep better tonight.”

  “Your Nana wouldn’t call it luck, would she, Stucks?” Ronnie says. There’s something in his voice. Suspicion.

  “You’re right, she wouldn’t,” I say.

  Robin and I walk away. At one point she reaches out for me, but I pull away from her. She holds her hand out behind my shoulder anyway, just in case I lose my balance again.

  I look back at the others. Only Ronnie is still standing there. He’s watching me. He knows something.

  Back in the house, I head toward the bathroom. Robin asks me where I’m going. “The shower,” I tell her. My mother asks me why I don’t just swim in the pond instead of taking a shower.

  “I’m kinda dirty, Ma. I’d like to use soap and hot water.”

  She’s reading a book in the living room, and she doesn’t even look up as she talks to me. “But it’s been so dry, and we’re beginning to worry about the well. I’d rather you went in the pond.”

  “You can’t get clean in the pond.”

  “But, Stucks, you always used to—”

  “I’m not going in the pond, Ma. I’ll stay dirty before I go in the pond.”

  She puts her book down and looks up at me. “Okay, Stucks,” she says.

  “Ma, I am not going in that goddamned pond!”

  “Oh, Stucks,” Robin says. I think she’s going to cry again, and at this point I don’t really care if she turns on the tears or not. She’s like a damned water park this summer.

  My father stops what he’s doing in the kitchen and steps into the living room. He is about to say something when my mother rises from her chair and comes over to me. She puts one hand on my shoulder and another on the side of my head. “Okay, okay,” she says. “Take a shower. It’s fine.” She’s petting my filthy, matted hair. Only a mother could love a kid when he’s this dirty. “It’s just that you used to love the water, and I’d hate to think that you’re never going to go swimming again, that’s all. I wasn’t thinking.”

  I know I should apologize to her, but I can’t. I turn away and go into the bathroom. I lock the door and turn on the water. I begin to peel away the rind of sweat and dirt and clothes that has attached itself to me over the course of the day. I step in and duck my head under the shower, spread my arms out, and turn my face up to the water. My ears fill with cottony silence. I let the water have my body because it doesn’t feel like my body belongs to me anymore.

  There are bees at the window. I can hear them buzzing, clawing at the screen.

  Two years ago on the last day of summer, the others were up at their cottages packing up and getting ready to go home, and Pete and I were down by the water in front of his place. He had gone to his father’s shed and grabbed an old grass sickle. It worked like a normal sickle, but you swung it like a golf club, and the blade flew horizontally through the surface of the grass and cut it to whatever length you wanted. Pete’s dad never used the thing anymore, probably never had. He had a small lawn mower that gagged a bit as it cut, but it got the job done. As far as I could tell, the grass sickle served no real purpose. It was just one of those useless things that lean against the wall inside a shed.

  Pete was swinging the sickle back and forth across a tuft of long grass at the edge of the pond. The grass started out at eight inches, then Pete whacked it down to six. Then three. Then a half-inch. When the grass was gone, he started whacking at the ground, spraying dirt out into the water.

  I had planned on wandering from house to house to say goodbye to people, but Pete didn’t want to do that. I asked him if he wanted to go dig around in the woods, but he said no. I asked him what he wanted to do, but he said that he didn’t know. We wandered down to the edge of the pond, and Pete starting his aggressive pruning.

  He kept smacking the edge of the sickle into the dirt, and when it bent he stood up and with both hands chucked it as far as he could out into the water. I watched it go, and its fall drew my eyes directly across the pond to Noah’s Beach.

  Noah’s Beach had always seemed like some sort of foreign country where quirky people went about their business in strange and mysterious ways. On our side, we had our yards and our rope swing and our paths to the water. On their side, a half-mile away, they had grass and sand. We had the waterfro
nts of multiple cottages, and where we jumped into the water on any day depended on our mood. They had one single beach, with a raft that a couple dozen families from a couple dozen houses in some sort of association used. I never understood how someone could even consider swimming there. I mean … it wasn’t home.

  “You think we could make it all the way straight across to Noah’s Beach?” I asked Pete.

  “Hell yeah,” Pete said. It was stupid of me to ask because the full answer was obviously, “Yes, but who would want to?”

  “I think we could too,” I said. I also thought that the swim might help to distract Pete from whatever had gotten under his skin. I stripped off my T-shirt, threw it on the ground, and then emptied my pockets onto it. I shouted to my mother up at the cottage.

  “Yeah?” she yelled down.

  “Pete and I are gonna swim down the cove!”

  “Okay!”

  She didn’t need to know the truth of where we were going. It would only make her nervous. Little lies are good for a mother’s mental health.

  I jumped into the water, and Pete jumped after me. As we swam, we shifted to keep our muscles from getting too tired. We started with an overhand swim, then turned to the backstroke. Most of the time, we just did a cross between the crawl and the doggy paddle. It was the slowest, but it was also the easiest on the muscles.

  I’ve never understood anyone who says they don’t know how to swim. You just swim. You get in the water and you swim. To me, saying that you don’t know how to swim is like saying that you don’t know how to breathe or swallow food. Sometimes I think that when me and Pete were babies, our mothers threw us into the water in June and didn’t come to fish us out until September. We could swim all day, and the idea that anyone would ever get tired and start to drown was the craziest idea in the world. In order to drown, either you had to get drunk and pass out in the water, or you had to get dragged under by a Volkswagen-sized snapping turtle. What other excuse could there be?

  Swimming to Noah’s Beach took a lot longer than we expected it to. The water can make things seem closer than they are, and when you only move a yard with each kick of your legs, the process can get pretty monotonous. It took us forty-five minutes to get over there, and while my legs and lungs could have gone on for longer, I was happy to finally be there.