Run Thru' The Forest

A Run Thru' The Forest
By Shane Waldo

It's late February, spring on the heels of winter. Trees leafless,
swaying in the muddled chill of the wind; the sun dapples and bends its
way through the skeletal branches with afternoon's amber light. The boy
is hiding behind a large tree on the fork of a small creek that runs
through the woods behind where he lives. He is hiding. Hiding from the
teenagers. The boy and his best friend come to these woods almost every
day, all day in the summer. There are few dangers really, deadfalls,
mud, rusty nails from forgotten tree houses, snakes, nothing a boy of
nine couldn't handle; if he was watchful. The teenagers. The boy wished
his best friend were here now. He felt safer along his side. He was two
years older than the boy and quite a bit heavier. The boy's best friend
had to go to his aunts today so the boy went alone.

The boy craned his neck left, right, squinting his eyes looking for
them. Of them he saw no sign. So the boy listened. He heard the
babbling of the creek water over the mud and rocks, the grass swaying
in yellow oceans; the trees groan and creek like old men but heard no
foot falls. The boy wondered dimly if they could maybe hear the steady
thumping of his heart and dismissed it as paranoia, even though the
word was not yet in his vocabulary. The sweat he had worked up running
here, to his hiding place, was now drying in cool waves down his back.
The boy thought in another few minutes he would try for home and he
thought he would make it, if he was careful.

In the short time that passed before the boy got the nerve to make for
home he thought of many things, the teenagers mostly. They came to
these woods to smoke and do drugs and have the sex. Of the first and
the latter he was sure. He and his best friend were always finding
cigarette butts lying around by the creek's banks. Once they had
happened across a blankets laid out under a large oak. On the plaid
design of the throw there was something, which reminded the boy of a
jellyfish. His friend said it was a condom. The boy didn't know exactly
what that was or did, but he knew it meant the sex had gone on here.
The boy also thought about the tree house he and his best friend had
built from the leftover lumber of his friend's father's deck. They
spent the better part of a week working on it. Shimming up the tree and
nailing boards to boards to boards and nailing and getting blisters and
hitting your thumb but when it was finished the boy and his best friend
sat in it and felt accomplished. They used it to talk or meet or have
the fun boys of that age usually do. It was their sacred place where no
grown up's could come and bother them. The boy could not imagine his
mother of father lumbering through the brush and climbing up the tree
to their clubhouse. It was the boy's idea not to put hand holds or a
ladder to it, so no one but them could get up to it. But inevitably
someone did. The teenagers did. They left cigarette butts and beer cans
in it. They pissed in the holy water. The tree house was no longer
sacred grounds.

Sitting here on his knees the boy was again, as he always was,
saddened at the way he and his friend's handy work had been abused,
violated. The boy looked at the sun and judged ten or so minutes had
passed. A trick he learned from his father. The boy stood up as he
looked cautiously for them. They were easy to spot with their black
leather jackets or their brightly colored clothing, with their vulgar
haircuts. With no one in sight the boy decided to go home. He crawled
up the protruding roots, washed with the flood waters of the winger
melts and stood at ground level taking in his surroundings like a field
leader in some world war two movie. The direction home was as clear as
yellow line in a road, at least to the boy, and he headed home on its
bearing.

The boy ran through the forest; ran like an escaped convict on his day
of flight. He had his brand spankin' new Nike airs laced up and was
sure they made him run faster. His mother forbade him to wear them in
the woods but hey, what she didn't know wouldn't hurt her. It wasn't as
if he was stepping on all the sidewalk cracks with ill omen toward his
mother's spinal health. So on he ran. Ran on and on, ducking tree
branches and jumping fallen limbs. Dodging the rip grass, nasty stuff
that tore long gashed in your legs, and skipped over gopher holes. The
boy didn't realize it then, we never do when it happens but he would
remember their runs for a long time. When he remembered them he would
do so with a mingled sense of loss and nostalgia. Never in his life
would things be so free and simple, so clear-cut. He would realize
these feelings as an older man with a balking head and a beer gut
wishing he could strap on new shoes and run like that again.

Halfway across a clearing of dead long grass and weeds the boy spotted
two teenagers. How could I have let my guard down, he thought but he
new. He was wrapped up in the elemental beauty of the run home. The boy
ducked down quickly obscuring himself. The grass was a good three feet
tall and he knew from experience you couldn't see stuff until you were
right on top of it. The boy could feel the ground through his jeans and
flannel shirt. Distantly he could hear them walking, hear their wind
muddled conversation.

The boy's parents took him to Sunday school and he knew about his
savior Jesus and the God man. Knew about Moses and the Ark and the fall
of Babel. He only grasped these things as stories, never quite put them
to place in the real world. He was not a dumb boy, actually rather
smart even if he was an average C student. The boy just didn't get the
Big Picture he guessed he never would. Even though the logistics were
alien to him, he prayed now huddled down in the grass from the
teenagers. The boy didn't picture the man he had once thought of as
God, a large man with a white robe and a sliver beard. He got a clear
image of his best friend and prayed to him instead. Prayed he would get
out of this mess.

The boy could hear them, getting closer. He heard their shuffled
footfalls like mice in the walls of an old house. Heard the muddy words
of their conversation. He wanted badly to peak his head up to get a
location, make sure his mind was registering the right distances but
no, that would give his position away. Closer, they were right next to
him, he would swear it, then still closer. Now he could smell them.
Smell the cigarettes smoke, smell the leather of their coats. Smell
their vulgar ness. Now the boy thought a horrid thing. What if they
trip right over me? They would surely beat me up or make me do the bad
stuff or kill me. The boy put his face in his hands wanting to cry but
knowing it would be a bad idea. Now he could see them out of the corner
of his vision. The boy turned his head watching their black visages
pass by to his left. He stared back down at the matting of grass and
dirt, then as if by his thoughts alone the footsteps started to trail
away.

The boy lay there for half an hour after he heard the last sign of
them. When he finally stood up and looked around the cool February wind
made his eyes burn. He realized that his cheeks were wet. The boy ran
the next mile home in a feverish boulder dash. He fell twice once only
on the soft earth, the other cutting his palm on a jutting tree stump.
Those moments between hiding in the grass and making it to the houses
of his edition passed by in a kind of haze, like watching a whole movie
in fast forward then trying to remember what happened.

He was out of the woods now, walking up the house-lined street to his
home. Mud caked his new sneakers and smeared his pants, hands and face.
Blood was clotting in his left palm. His eyes were still puffy and red
but when he finally saw his house he felt relived, warm. The boy
suddenly didn't hear his heart trip hammering in his chest. Didn't feel
the sting of his palm. Didn't care if his mother yelled at him for
ruining his now shoes. The boy decided something then. A promise he
only broke once, thirty or so years later. He would never go into the
woods without his friend. He was his safety net, his compadre'. The boy
went home, got an ear full for his troubles but was happy to be home,
where his heart was.

Thirty years later the boy now a man, discovered where his heart truly
did lie. The man sat on the jutting roots of a tree between the forks
of the creek in the woods behind where he lived as a child. He sat in
his dress pants and button up shirt that stretched over his ample
belly. He sat and thought about the past. The man knew where his life
had been lived, where the only true battles were won and lost. The
place in witch his heart would long for until the day he died. The man,
once a boy but now on the dawn of his fortieth birthday, put his head
in his hands thinking he would cry. He knew better of it though, this
wasn't the kind of hurt a sober man could cry over and maybe that was
the worst part. He cried when he lost his first girl, cried when he put
his dog to sleep but this feeling this lost and lonely longing he felt
could not be let out. It must constantly be there to remind him of when
his life was good and clean and simple.