by Harry Mazer
He found a path. Then he found another path. Then he was all mixed up. Every way, there were trees, trees, trees. He was sick of trees. He wanted to see houses and cars and stores. He wanted his mother and his sister. He even wanted Carl. The time was four thirty-one. He’d better go home fast. His mother would be calling, “Sammy, supper time.”
Was he lost? Don’t say lost. Lost was bad. He was turned around, was all. Like being spun around in a game and getting all dizzy and mixed up. He just needed to be pointed in the right direction.
Suddenly a bunch of noisy birds flew through the trees. He followed them. They were fast, but then they stopped and yelled at him. Right where he stopped, there were wooden cleats on the tree. He climbed up to a platform and sat there. This was his tree house, where he could stay till someone came for him.
It was raining again. Just a little at first. It was still dry against the trunk. But then it rained harder, and the air was full of wetness. His knees got wet, and his head and the whole platform got wet. Everything was wet; his face was wet all over.
He climbed down and buried into a dark tangle of trees. Rough, stabby branches reached to the ground. They grabbed at him and tore at his jacket, but underneath it was like a room and it was dry.
He sat with his knees drawn up and his collar raised, listening to the soft drip of rain. He broke off little branches and made tiny houses and a street, and he made one branch a car and drove it to his house. Then he made a stick mother and a stick sister. And he jumped out of the car and kissed his stick mother and his stick sister, and they kissed him.
5
Little beeps, like tiny bike horns, woke him. He thought somebody had brought him his bike and was beeping the horn. “Hey!” he said. “Here I am.” Branches stuck him as he crawled out. The tree kept hooking him, holding him back. Several big birds with long, skinny necks and little gnarly heads that bopped this way and that flew up into the trees. Turkeys!
He’d never seen real living turkeys before. “Hi, you birds.” Sammy waved. He was happy for their company, but they disappeared through the trees.
He stretched and brushed himself off. He’d slept well, not waking once. He’d never slept in the woods before. Wait till he told everybody. Boy, oh boy, I slept in the woods. His mother would be surprised. She never even let him sleep over at Billy’s house. She said he’d make too much work for Mrs. Pryor. His watch said five-thirty in the morning. Boy, oh boy. He never got up this early. That was something else to say to his mother.
He started walking. The ground went up and down, and he went up and down. He liked going down, but then he had to go up.
He found black berries hanging in a tree, and he tasted them. They were like little sour grapes with seeds. He didn’t like them, but he ate them because he was hungry.
“Keep walking,” he told himself. “That’s the way.” When he walked, the worry thoughts slipped away.
When he got high enough, on top of the highest hill, he knew he would see something. It would be like the day his whole class went up on the roof of the school. Mrs. Hoffman had explained how you make a map and how you use a compass to know direction. He wished his watch had a compass on it. That way he would never get lost.
Not that he was lost. Lost wasn’t a good word, and he didn’t use it. He was just a little mixed up. Sort of turned around. He just had to turn himself straight. It was like the time he was little and wandered away and went in the wrong house. “Mommy,” he called. A man came, and he looked surprised to see Sammy, and then he laughed and showed him which way to go.
But here in the woods, there were no houses, only trees, leaning together, watching him go by. They were whispering about him, he thought, but he couldn’t understand their talk.
Near the edge of a steep ravine, there was a big pine tree with lots of dead branches to hold on to, and he climbed it. He was a good climber. When he got to the top, he was disappointed. It was like looking down at the back of a giant green and brown dog. There were no roads, no shopping mall, not even one little house. Just trees, trees, trees.
The wind blew, and the pine tree swayed. The forest was green and brown, and the sun was hidden behind a white sky. Sammy didn’t know what to do next. Maybe another airplane would fly over and see him on top of the tree. Maybe Carl would be looking for him in the airplane. He waited a long time, but no plane came.
It was harder going down the tree than going up, because he had to feel around for the branches with his feet. “Watch your step, Sammy.” A branch broke. He lost his footing and slid down too fast. “Hey,” he yelled. He grabbed for a branch, but it broke under his weight, and he fell out of the tree and tumbled down an embankment. Down Sammy went. Down, down, down, all the way down.
6
He was lying next to a pile of brush with a window in it. It looked like a camper window. His friend Billy Pryor’s father had a window like that on his camper.
A window in the woods? That was funny.
He saw a face looking through the window. An animal was peering out at him, an animal with long cat eyes.
He backed away, not taking his eyes from the face. He backed and backed, then turned and ran. He dove into a bush and lay still. He heard the animal thing sniffing around. He could smell it.
It reached in, grabbed him by the ankle, and pulled him out. Sammy’s face was in the ground. He lay very still. He heard the animal breathing, and he remembered a story of a little boy sitting in the arms of a bear. The boy said, “Don’t eat me.” So the bear didn’t.
“Don’t eat me,” Sammy said.
“Who the hell are you?”
The animal talked.
“Please don’t eat my face,” Sammy said.
“Where the hell you come from?”
Sammy opened his eyes a crack. The animal was naked, except for a pair of ragged jeans. But it wasn’t an animal. It was a person with a regular face. A tall, skinny kid with long arms and legs.
He turned Sammy over and sat on him. He pinned Sammy’s arms with his sharp knees and held his hand over Sammy’s mouth. He kept looking all around with his big, dark animal eyes.
Sammy twisted. The wild kid was choking him.
He dragged Sammy through a hole and into a dark place that smelled of dirt and fire and garbage. “Let me go, please,” Sammy said.
“Keep your mouth shut!” He had hair on his face and around his chin, like a goat. “Where are they? Who’s with you?”
“There’s nobody, just me.”
The wild kid taped Sammy’s hands behind him, then taped his feet together, then his mouth.
Then the wild kid went away. Sammy was alone in the dark, except for the light that filtered through the little window.
7
Sammy threw himself around. He couldn’t breathe and his nose was clogged. The gag stuck to his skin.
He was in a little room, not really a room, more like a cave. Not even a cave. More like a hole scooped out under some rocks. A torn piece of plastic hung over the opening. A scrap of dirty green rug was on the ground, and a mattress and some cardboard boxes and plastic pails.
The wild kid came back. He grabbed Sammy by his jacket, and pushed him into the back of the cave. He knelt on his hands and knees, staring at Sammy, his face so close, Sammy could smell his stinky breath.
Sammy stayed still, afraid to move. The kid went through Sammy’s pockets and took his dollars and change. “Who are you?” he asked. He tore the tape off Sammy’s mouth. “Where’d you come from? What’s your name?”
Sammy licked his lips. “Sammy,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“How’d you get here?” He had a snake tattoo around his wrist. “Where you from?”
“I got lost. I’m sorry I fell on your house. Let me loose, please. I’ll go away, I promise.”
“Who sent you?” He talked funny. He had teeth missing.
“Nobody.” Sammy shook his head as hard as he could. “Somebody took my bike, and then I got lost. Can I go hom
e now?” Sammy glanced at the snake tattoo. He didn’t like snakes. His stomach hurt, and he was sore all over.
The kid pulled a knife from his belt and pointed it at Sammy. “You know what I can do with this?” He drove it down into his own hand.
Sammy gasped, and the kid laughed. “Gotcha!” He had driven the knife between his outspread fingers.
“That’s a good trick,” Sammy said. He kept licking his lips.
The wild kid stabbed at his spread fingers, again and again, the darting blade coming close, but missing each time. “You ever see anybody do that?”
“No.”
“You bet. Nobody’s got the nerve, but me. Who else is with you?” he said suddenly.
“Nobody. I told you.”
“You’re a liar.”
“I don’t lie. Only bad boys lie.”
The kid stared at him with a look that, even in the dimness, Sammy recognized.
“How old are you, anyway?” the kid said.
“I’m twelve. In twenty-eight days I’ll be thirteen.”
“So, what are you, dumb?”
“No. I’m Down’s.” Sometimes it was okay to tell, but sometimes people teased. “I’m young for my age. I’m a special person.”
“You’re a dumb person,” the kid said. “Only a dumb person like you would find me.”
“Because I lost my bike.” Sammy explained how he’d left his bike for five minutes and ten seconds, and how he’d run after the stealer, and about getting in the truck, and being chased into the woods and getting lost and climbing the tree and falling down.
“And then I fell on your house.” He wanted to demonstrate the way he’d tripped and tumbled down, but it was hard to do without using his hands and feet. All he could do was yell, “Uh! Oh! Oh!” the way he had yelled falling down the hill.
“You’re stupid,” the kid said. “You don’t leave your bike where somebody can take it. If I saw it, I would have taken it in a minute. You’re really dumb.”
“I’m not dumb. You can be retarded and not dumb.”
“Dumb.”
“That’s not nice,” Sammy said.
“You got it right that time, dummy. I’m a bad guy, so look out, Mr. Goody Boy. I suppose you never did anything bad?”
Sammy said nothing.
“Well, did you?”
Sammy nodded. “Sometimes.”
“Right! I got you, you little hypocrite. Don’t look at me with those big baby eyes and lie to me. I can tell, just by looking at you, that you lie all the time. Now, you’d better tell me the truth. You going to run away if I untie you?”
“No. I promise.”
The kid freed Sammy’s hands and then his feet. Sammy rubbed his wrists and his ankles.
“Just remember, you try anything, and I can tie you up again in a second,” the kid said. He wadded up the tape and threw it away, then crouched by the entrance, looking out. “What am I going to do with this dumb kid? What’s he want?”
Who was he talking to? Sammy crept closer.
“I let him go, and what? He goes back and tells everybody he found this guy in the woods. He starts blabbing about Kevin in the woods, and they say, ‘So that’s where he is!’ And then the whole army and air force and helicopters and search dogs come looking for me. They’ll get me and lock me up, and that’ll be the end of Kevin. I’ve got to kill him.”
He turned and shoved Sammy into the back again. “You got me in a fix now, dummy!”
“I can go home,” Sammy said. “I will. I’ll go right straight home.”
“You’ll be home, and I’ll be back at Fieldstone, that rat hole. They’re going to say, ‘Where’d you get this kid from?’ They’re going to say I kidnapped you. Anything I tell them, they’ll say it’s a lie.
“Fieldstone?” Sammy said. “Is that where you live?”
“Fieldstone is where they send me if they catch me. It’s a school you can’t leave. No way, man. Nobody’s grabbing K-Man and locking him up.”
8
“Don’t even think about going out.” Kevin’s mattress was right in front of the doorway. He was lying down, hooked up to a tape player. “You want to be tied up again? Get back there.”
Sammy had to stay in back. There was a plank he could sit on, but there wasn’t enough room to stand up. He was hungry and he had to pee, but he was afraid to say anything.
Kevin lay on his back, and sometimes one foot went up and bounced around and then the other.
“Is that good music?” Sammy asked.
Kevin didn’t answer.
Sammy held his watch up to the light. Yesterday, right now, he was home. He was talking to Bethan, trying to climb into her room.
Kevin was eating a Pop-Tart and drinking from a plastic water bottle.
Sammy lay down on the plank. He turned from one side to the other. He couldn’t get comfortable. Sammy wished he could go to sleep and wake up in his own bed. He lay on his back like Kevin with his knees bent. He reached up to the ceiling with his feet. He could almost touch it. When he sat up and put his hands over his head, he could touch it.
Kevin was looking at him. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing.” Sammy put his hands down and examined them, finger by finger. They were all scratched up and dirty. Kevin had no sink in his house, no faucet; no water, even. When she saw him, his mother would wash his hands and face for him. “People see your dirty face and they say you’re a dirty boy. Are you a dirty boy, Sammy?” She liked to wash him, and he only minded when his friends were over.
“I’ve got to pee,” he said.
“Hold it,” Kevin said.
“I can’t. I’ve been holding it too long.”
Kevin gave him a hateful look. He got up and pushed Sammy out through the narrow opening. “Don’t do it around here. And don’t get any ideas. I’m watching you.”
Sammy found a tree a few steps from the cave. It was a relief to be outside and on his feet.
“Hurry up!” Kevin said.
“I’m really thirsty,” Sammy said when they went back in. He sat down on the bench again.
Kevin pointed to a row of plastic water bottles. “Take one. That’s yours,” he said. “It gets empty, you fill it up.”
“Where?”
“Don’t worry about it. You’ll find out.” Kevin opened a metal trunk and took out a box of Pop-Tarts. Sammy smelled them and moved closer. Kevin pushed him away. “Stay on your side!” He ate a Pop-Tart and threw away the box.
It was empty except for some crumbs that Sammy licked up. He drank from his water bottle, then sat there, holding it in his arms.
9
That night, Kevin tied Sammy up and went out. He left Sammy lying on the ground. It was darker than dark. It was the darkest dark Sammy had ever been in. Darker than being in a closet with the door closed.
There were sounds all around him. Crinkly sounds, like somebody walking toward him. They stopped, and another sound started, like papers being torn into little pieces. He listened; he listened so hard, he thought his ears got as big as TV dishes. Something was moving from one place to another. Inside? Snakes? Sammy drew his head in. He wished he was a turtle and could pull his whole self into a safe little house.
“Oh, Mom, where are you?” There was comfort in hearing a voice, any voice. It was his own, Sammy’s voice. Kevin said he had to be quiet, but he was talking, anyway.
“I want to go home. I want to see my mother. I want to see Bethan, my sister. I want to go home.” He said it loud. Then louder. Then he shouted it. “I WANT TO GO HOME.”
* * *
He slept and woke. Hunger kept waking him up. His stomach was eating him. It was so dark, sometimes he didn’t know if he was asleep or awake or where the dark ended and he started. He closed his eyes. It was better to sleep. Sleep, he told himself. Maybe this time, he’d wake up in the right place, his own place, in his own bed.
* * *
Sammy was asleep when Kevin returned. Kevin’s flashlight woke him. �
��Kevin?”
“Don’t call me that.” Kevin flashed the light in Sammy’s eyes, then all around. “Don’t call me that, never, ever.” He lit a candle. “Call me that and I’ll kill you.”
“I’ll never call you that,” Sammy said.
“I hate the name Kevin.”
“Me, too,” Sammy said.
The wild kid untied him, then lay down on the mattress, hands hooked under his head. “Tell me that story again, how they put you out of the house.”
“They pushed me out.”
“Who’s they?”
“My mom and Carl.” Each time he said his mother’s name he was glad. Kevin would know he wasn’t alone. There were a whole lot of people waiting for him. His mother and his sister and Carl.
“Who’s Carl?”
“My mother’s friend.” Sammy moved his hands up and down. He wanted words, more words. He wanted to keep talking, to say more things to Kevin, because it made Kevin not so scary.
“Carl’s really my mom’s boyfriend, but she says he’s sort of like an uncle.”
“Uncle!” Kevin snorted. “Is that what she said? What did they throw you out for? I bet you’re a king-size, royal pain in the ass. You must have done something to get them going.”
“I said a bad word.”
“Bad word! How many bad words? Just one? What was it?”
When Kevin heard the word, he went, “Hoo-eee,” and kicked his legs up in the air. He had an exploding, motor kind of laugh that never stopped. “Tell me more. This is really good. They kicked you out for that word? You want to hear some bad words?”
