The Woods Out Back Read online

Chapter 2 The Cemetery, the Jeep, and the Hobbit

 

  A cemetery covered most of the distance between the shop and home. This was not a morbid place to Gary. Far from it; he and his friends had spent endless hours in the cemetery, playing Fox and Hounds or Capture the Flag, using the large empty field (the water table was too high for graves) in the back corner for baseball games and football games. The importance of the place had not diminished as the group grew older. This was where you brought your girlfriend, hoping, praying, to uncover some of those "mysteries" in a Bob Seger song. This was where you sneaked thePlayboy magazines a friend had lifted from his father's drawer, or the six-pack someone's over-twenty-one brother had bought (for a 100 percent delivery charge!). A thousand memories were tied up in this place, memories of a vital time of youth, and of learning about life.

  In a cemetery.

  The irony of that thought never failed to touch Gary as he walked through here each morning and night, to and from the grind of the grinder. He could see his parents' house from the cemetery, a two-story garrison up on the hill beyond the graveyard's chain-link fence. Hell, he could see all of his life from here, the games, the first love, limitations and boundless dreams. And now, a bit older, Gary could see, too, his own inevitable fate, could grasp the importance of those rows of headstones and understand that the people buried here had once had hopes and dreams just like his own, once wondered about the meaning and the worth of their lives.

  Still, it remained not a morbid place, but heavy with nostalgia, a place of long ago and far away, and edged in the sadness of realized mortality. And as each day, each precious day, passed him by, Gary stood on a stool beside a metal table, loading chunks of scrap plastic into a whirring grinder.

  Somehow, somewhere, there had to be more.

  The stones and the sadness were left behind as soon as Gary hopped the six-foot fence across from his home. His tan Wrangler sat in front of the hedgerow, quiet and still as usual. Gary laughed to himself, at himself, every time he passed his four-wheel-drive toy. He had bought it for the promise of adventure, so he told others - and told himself at those times he was feeling gullible. There weren't a lot of trails in Lancashire; in the six months Gary had owned the Jeep, he had taken it off-road exactly twice. Six months and only three thousand miles clocked on the odometer - hardly worth the payments.

  But those payments were the real reason Gary had bought the Jeep, and in his heart he knew it. Gary had realized that he needed a reason to go stand on that stool and get filthy every day, a reason to answer the beckon of the rising sun. When he had bought the Jeep, he had played the all-American game, the sacrifice of precious time for things that someone else, some make-believe model in a make-believe world, told him he really wanted to have. Like everything else, it seemed, this Jeep was the end result of just one more of those rules that Gary had played by all his life.

  "Ah, the road to adventure," Gary muttered, tapping the front fender as he passed. The previous night's rain had left brown spots all over the Jeep, but Gary didn't care. His filthy fingers left a blue streak of plastics' coloring above the headlight, but he didn't even notice.

  He heard the words before his mother even spoke them.

  "Oh my God," she groaned when he walked in the door. "Look at you. "

  "I am the ghost of Christmas past!" Gary moaned, holding his arms stiffly in front of him, opening his blue-painted eyes wide, and advancing a step towards her, reaching for her with grimy fingers.

  "Get away!" she cried. "And get those filthy clothes in the laundry chute. "

  "Seventeen words," Gary whispered to his father as he passed him by on his way to the stairs. It was their inside joke. Every single day his mother said those same seventeen words. There was something comfortable in that uncanny predictability, something eternal and immortal.

  Gary's step lightened considerably as he bounded up the carpeted stairs to the bathroom. This was home; this in his life, at least, was real, was the way it was supposed to be. His mother whined and complained at him constantly about his job, but he knew that was only because she truly cared, because she wanted better for her youngest child. She couldn't imagine her baby losing fingers to some hungry molding machine, or covering himself and filling up his lungs with a blue powder that was probably a carcinogen, or a something-ogen. (Wasn't everything?) This was Mom's support, given the only way Mom knew how to give it, and it did not fall on deaf ears where Gary Leger was concerned.

  His father, too, was sympathetic and supportive. The elder Leger male understood Gary's realities better than his mom, Gary knew. Dad had been there, after all, pitching World Series into the letter sorters. "It will get better," he often promised Gary, and if Dad said it was so, then to Gary, it was so.

  Period.

  Gary spent a long time in front of the mirror, using cold cream in an attempt to get the blue powder away from the edges of his green eyes. He wondered if it would be there forever, vocational makeup. It amazed him how a job could change his appearance. No longer did his hair seem to hold its previous luster, as though its shiny blackness was being dulled as surely as Gary's hopes and dreams.

  Much more than blue plastic washed down the shower drain. Responsibility, tedium, and Tomo all went with the filthy powder. Even thoughts of mortality and wasted time. Now the day belonged to Gary, just to Gary. Not to rules and whirring grinders and cynical old men seeking company in their helpless misery.

  The shower marked the transition.

  "Dave called," his father yelled from the bottom of the stairs when he exited the bathroom. "He wants you to play for him this weekend. "

  Gary shrugged - big surprise - and moved to his room. He came back out in just a minute, wearing a tank top, shorts, and sneakers, free of his steel-toed work boots, jeans thick with grime, and heavy gloves. He got to the stairs, then snapped his fingers and spun about, returning to his room to scoop up his worn copy of J. R. R. Tolkien'sThe Hobbit. Yes, the rest of the day belonged to Gary, and he had plans.

  "You gonna call him?" his father asked when he skipped through the kitchen. Gary stopped suddenly, caught off guard by the urgency in his father's tone.

  As soon as he looked at his dad, the image of himself in forty years, Gary remembered the importance of the tournament. He hadn't really known his father as a young man. Gary was the youngest of seven and his dad was closer to fifty than forty when he was born. But Gary had heard the stories; he knew that Dad had been one heck of a ball player. "Could've gone pro, your father," the old cronies in the neighborhood bars asserted. "But there wasn't no money in the game back then and he had a family. "

  Ouch.

  Play by the rules; pitch your World Series in the post office's slotted wall.

  "He's not home now," Gary lied. "I'll get him tonight. "

  "Are you gonna play for him?"

  Gary shrugged. "The shop's putting a team in. Leo wants me in left-center. "

  That satisfied Dad, and Gary, full of nothing but respect and admiration for his father, would have settled for nothing less. Still, thoughts of softball left him as soon as he stepped outside the house, the same way thoughts of work had washed away down the shower drain. The day was indeed beautiful - Gary could see that clearly now, with the blue powder no longer tinting his vision - and he had his favorite book under his arm.

  He headed off down the dead-end road, the cemetery fence on his right and neighbors he had known all his life on his left. The road ended just a few houses down, spilling into a small wood, another of those special growing-up places.

  The forest seemed lighter and smaller to Gary than he remembered it from the faraway days. Part of it, of course, was simply that he was a grown man, physically larger now. And the other part, truly, was that the forest was lighter, and smaller than it had been in Gary's younger days. Three new houses cut into this end of the wood, the western side; the eastern end had been chopped to make way for a state swimming pool and a new school; th
e northern edge had been cleared for a new playground; even the cemetery had played a role, spilling over into the southern end. Gary's forest was under assault from every side. Often he wondered what he might find if he moved away and came back twenty years from now. Would this wood, his wood, be no more than a handful of trees surrounded by asphalt and cement?

  That thought disturbed Gary as profoundly as the notion of losing fingers to a hungry molding machine.

  There was still some serenity and privacy to be found in the small wood, though. Gary moved in a few dozen yards, then turned north on a fire road, purposely keeping his eyes on the trees as he passed the new houses, the new trespassers. He came up to one ridge, cleared except for the remains of a few burned-out trees and a number of waist-high blueberry bushes. He kept far from the ridge's lip, not because of any dangerous drop - there were no dangerous drops in this wood - but because to look over the edge was to look down upon the new school, nestled in what had once been Gary's favorite valley.

  The fire road, becoming no more than a foot-wide trail among the blueberries, dipped steeply into a darker region, a hillside engulfed by thick oaks and elms. This was the center of the wood, too far from any of the encircling roads to hear the unending traffic and packed with enough trees and bushes to block out the unwelcome sights of progress. No sunlight came in here at this time of the afternoon except for one spot on a west-facing, mossy banking.

  Privacy and serenity.

  Gary plopped down on the thick moss and took out his book. The bookmark showed him to be on one of the later chapters, but he opened the book near the front, as he always did, to consider the introduction, written by some man that Gary did not know named Peter S. Beagle. It was dated July 14, 1973, and filled with thoughts surely based in the "radical" sixties. How relevant those ideas of "progress" and "escape" seemed to Gary, sitting in his dwindling wood more than fifteen years later.

  The last line, "Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams," held particular interest for Gary, a justification of imagination and of his own escapism. When Gary read this introduction and that last line, he did not feel so silly about standing by the grinder shooting down alien aircraft.

  His sigh was one of thanks to the late Mr. Tolkien, and he reverently opened the book to the marked page and plowed ahead on the great adventure of one hobbit, Mr. Bilbo Baggins.

  Time held no meaning to Gary as he read. Only if he looked back to see how many pages he had flipped could he guess whether minutes or hours had passed. At this time of the year, the mossy banking would catch enough sun to read by for two or three hours before twilight, he knew, so when his light ran out it would be time for supper. That was all the clock Gary Leger needed or wanted.

  He read two chapters, then took a good stretch and a good yawn, cupped his hands behind his head, and lay back on the natural carpet. He could see pieces of the blue sky through the thick leaves, one white cloud lazily meandering west to east, to Boston and the Atlantic Ocean fifty miles away.

  "Fifty miles?" Gary asked aloud, chuckling and stretching again. Here with his book, it might as well have been five thousand miles. But this moment of freedom was fleeting, he knew. The light was already fading; he figured he might have time for one more chapter. He forced himself back up to a sitting posture - he was getting too comfortable - and took up his book.

  Then he heard a small rustle to the side. He was up in an instant, quietly, crouching low and looking all about. It could have been a field mouse or, more likely, a chipmunk. Or maybe a snake; Gary hoped it wasn't a snake. He had never been fond of the slithery things, though the only ones around here were garters, without fangs or poison, and most of them too small to give even a half-assed bite, certainly not as nasty a nip as a mouse or chipmunk could deliver. Still, Gary hoped it wasn't a snake. If he found a snake here, he'd probably never be able to lie down comfortably on the mossy banking again.

  His careful scan showed him something quite unexpected. "A doll?" he mouthed, staring at the tiny figure. He wondered how he could possibly have missed that before, or who might have put it here, in this place he thought reserved for his exclusive use. He crouched lower and moved a step closer, meaning to pick the thing up. He had never seen one like it before. "Robin Hood?" he whispered, though it seemed more of an elf-like figure, sharp-featured (incredibly detailed!), dressed in woodland greens and browns, and wearing a longbow (a very short longbow, of course) over one shoulder and a pointed cap on its head.

  Gary reached for it but recoiled quickly in amazement.

  The thing had taken the bow off its shoulder! Gary thought he must have imagined it, but even as he tried to convince himself of his foolishness, he continued to watch the living doll. It showed no fear of Gary at all, just calmly pulled an arrow from its quiver and drew back on the bowstring.

  Oh my God! Gary's face crinkled in confusion; he looked back to his book accusingly, as though it had something to do with all of this.

  "Where the heck did you come from?" Gary stuttered. Oh my God! He glanced all around, searched the trees and the bushes for something, someone with a projector. Oh my God!

  It seemed like the trick of a high-tech movie: "Help me, Obiwon Canobe, you're my only hope. "

  Oh my God!

  The doll, the elf, whatever it was, seemed to pay his movements little heed. It took aim at Gary and fired.

  "Hey!" Gary cried, throwing a hand out to block the projectile. His reality sense told him it was just another trick, another image from the unseen projector. But he felt a sting in his palm, as real as one a bee might give, then looked down incredulously to see a tiny dart sticking out of it.

  Oh my God!

  "Why'd you do that?" Gary protested. He looked back to the tiny figure, more curious than angry. It leaned casually on its bow, looking about and whistling in a tiny, mousey voice. How calm it seemed, considering that Gary could lift one foot and crush it out like a discarded cigarette.

  "Why'd. . . ," Gary started to ask again, but he stopped and tried hard to hold himself steady as a wave of dizziness swept over him.

  Had the sun already set?

  A gray fog engulfed the woods - or was the fog in his eyes?

  He still heard the squeaky whistling, more clearly now, but all the rest of the world seemed to be getting farther away.

  Had the sun already set?

  Instinctively Gary headed towards home, back up the dirt road. The. . . the thing - oh my God, what the hell was it? - had shot him! Had fricken shot him!

  The thing, what the hell was it?

  The smell of blueberries filled Gary's nose as he came up over the embankment. He tried to stay on the path but wandered often into the tangling bushes.

  The sudden rush of air was the only indication Gary had that he was falling. A soft grassy patch padded his landing, but Gary, deep in the slumbers of pixie poison, wouldn't have noticed anyway, even if he had clunked down on a sheet of cement.

  It was night - how had he missed the sunset?

  Gary forced himself to his feet and tried to get his bearings. The aroma of blueberries reminded him where he was, and he knew how to get home. But it was night, and he had probably missed supper - try explaining that to his fretful mother!

  His limbs still weary, he struggled to rise.

  And then he froze in startlement and wonderment. He remembered the pixie archer, for the sprite was suddenly there again, right before him, this time joined by scores of its little friends. They danced and twirled around the grassy patch, wrapping Gary in a shimmering cocoon of tiny song and sparkling light.

  Oh my God!

  Sparkling. The light blurred together into a single curtain, exuded calmness. The fairie song came to his ears, compelling him to lie back down.

  Lie back down and sleep.