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One Story, #11, October 28, 2002 The deputy seemed to be measuring the boys up. He looked about the place from his cruiser, his window down. Beyond Nate and Donnie Holland there was just the desolate November woods and the endless hills and Milford Run meandering next to the road among its thickets. It was chilly and the children wore heavy coats; their breath billowed in the air in front of them. "Boy run off Thursday from the Industrial School," the deputy told them. "Neither a you seen a blond-headed kid, 'bout your age?" He was looking at Donnie. Donnie was twelve. "No sir. We ain't seen anybody out today." "Your parents home, are they?" he asked. The boys were quiet for a moment. "Our Mom," Nate started to say, but then stopped there. Their father had been in the hospital for the better part of two weeks, but Nate could think of no good way to explain this and could think of no reason why it would matter to the deputy. "We live in the green house just down the bottom of the hill," he said finally. He wanted to make sure the deputy understood the way things were. They were not runaways. They weren't even old enough yet to be criminals. Nate was eight. The deputy sat there for a long, awkward time. He pulled a red cigarette pack from his shirt pocket and tapped one out and lit it. Nate knew about the Boys' Industrial School. The kids at school called it BIS. It was up Milford Run, fifteen miles-an old, beautiful building, surely built for some purpose other than detaining juvenile delinquents. Nate had seen pictures of Europe in his third-grade history book, and to him, the building looked like it belonged in Italy or France-except for the high, chain-link fence and the razor wire on top. There were guards who patrolled the grounds and there was a single cylindrical tower, from which, his brother had told him, the guards shot at the runaways. Boys there wore blue coveralls. The deputy seemed to make a decision. He put the car into gear and it idled faster as he held his foot on the brake. "You boys be careful," he said. "That's a mean kid I'm looking for." "Yessir," Donnie said. "All right." He pulled away slowly, eyeing them cautiously in his rearview mirror all-the-while. An hour later, the boys had stolen pops from the out-building behind the Howards' place and were squatting in a culvert along the creek. The water trickled, a spartan winter flow. It was snowing now-hard for November. They opened their pops on a birch stump and drank them as they plotted how to find the boy. Donnie said they should borrow a few of the horses on the other side of the ridge. They would need them to track with, he said. Not steal them. Just take them out for a while. "You ever rode a horse bareback before?" Nate asked, knowing the answer. "Shoot yeah," Donnie said. "Me and Riley used to ride them horses over at Williams' all the time." It was just enough detail to make it seem plausible. "Do you think there'll be a reward for the boy?" Nate asked. "Bingo," Donnie said. "Somebody give the smart kid a prize." There was already an inch of a snow on the ground when they dropped down within sight of Lape's meadow. The field looked whiter than anything else, long stems of pale grass poking through. "What if they buck us?" Nate asked. "You hang on, wrap your arms around tight," Donnie said. "They're good horses." "Yeah, but what if they don't want us on them?" "They don't mind," Donnie said. "That's what they're for." Nate waited under a juniper while Donnie went to find the horses. He could smell the coal issue from the Lape's chimney on down the hill. Soon he saw something emerge, and then another something, and another. It was the horses, galloping at first and then stopping and looking around themselves. Donnie was behind them with a branch in his hand. Nate got up and walked toward his brother, and the three horses stood anxiously nearby and feigned eating the snow-covered grass. "I'll take that paint there," Donnie said. "Which one should I take?" "Go for the little one. The brown one." Donnie approached his horse, talking to it all the while. "Hey there, Mister. I ain't gonna do nothing." Nate watched, waited. He reached down and picked up a handful of the grass and held it out as he neared the horse. The animal took anxious side steps, but did not run. Donnie extended the grass and it finally bent its head toward the grass and chewed. The boy began to pet its mane and its nose. The horse stared at him impassively when it had finished eating. Donnie was talking to it still and then he stepped back and almost in the same motion, rushed forward and grabbed a fistful of mane and leaped toward its back. The horse bucked and kicked as Donnie fell to the ground, its rear legs just missing his shoulder. "She-it," Donnie said, picking himself up. The horse ran a few steps away and looked back in the direction of the boys. "Come on," Nate said. "We ain't gonna be able to ride these horses." "She-it." Donnie brushed the snow off his coat. He was looking at all three horses now. "These ones fright too easy," he said. "Snow probably scares 'em." On the way home, Nate slipped into a deep spot in Milford Run up to his knee. Donnie couldn't stop laughing. "Mr. Straight-As," he said. "That last step's a doozy." "Shut up," Nate said. He left the creek, crawled by himself through twenty yards of bushes to the road and then walked toward home. A half hour later, his mom was helping him get his pants off. "Where's you're brother?" she asked. "I don't know," he told her. It was almost dark when Donnie came back. Nate was watching television. He was still mad and wouldn't speak to Donnie. Soon, their mother called them into the kitchen to eat the tuna casserole she'd prepared, and the three of them sat there quietly eating while the sober voice of AM radio news drifted through the room. The boys shared a big room on the second floor, and their beds ran parallel, about ten feet apart. They each had a small plastic radio-Donnie's was blue, Nate's red-with a single white earphone that fit into one ear and plugged into a jack on the radio. After the lights were out, Nate liked to listen to his as loud as it would go. The boom of radio voices flitted about the dark room. Donnie never complained, though. He never complained about anything. Nate often listened to WLW out of Cincinnati, but it didn't matter, really; he'd listen to whatever would come in. Sometimes it was hockey from out West-Denver or Calgary-or a sports talk show from Chicago. He caught Ohio University playing Marshall at the Convocation Center. He memorized players' names and eventually got the Encyclopedia out and learned the geography of the region this way. During school recesses that fall when the boys split up into teams, Eric Stimson would always yell out, "We're the Buckeyes." "So," Nate yelled back one day. "We're the Thundering Herd." He loved that name. "What?" said Stimson. "There ain't no such thing." Nate shrugged. There was such a thing as the Thundering Herd, he said. They played for a university called Marshall. Marshall University was in Huntington, West Virginia. West Virginia bordered Ohio on the southeast. Its capital was Charleston. Its major export was coal. It was known as "the Mountain State." "That's stupid," Stimson said, but Nate's team liked the idea of being something beside the hapless Buckeyes, who were having a particularly bad season that year anyway. "Yeah," a fourth grader said. "We're the Thundering Herd." He stomped his feet like a one-man stampede. "Now kick us the dang ball." Nate wrote about this in his journal. The book had been a Christmas gift from their father and it had a lock and key. Sometimes Donnie picked it with an old pen knife. He held it up high and recited sections out loud. "Last night I dreamed me and Cara was getting chased by robbers. We found a note someone wrote us, but it was in French or Russian. I read it anyway. It said to hide behind Foodtown." Nate would have to fight him to get it back. It got worse. Donnie stole the journal often enough that Nate stopped writing about his own thoughts, and instead began making up stories about his brother. Donnie talks all night in his sleep. Donnie snores. Donnie farts so loud at night it wakes me up. Sometimes he walks all around the house in his sleep, screaming about monsters under his bed and crying for Daddy. It worked. His brother left the journal alone and Nate was able to keep his secrets again. They set out early on Sunday. Donnie said the trip would not be for the weak. He knew a place where they'd probably find the boy, an abandoned village up in the woods called Clayville. It was a ways, he said. "What're we going to do when we catch him?" Nate asked. "Tie him up, numbnuts," Donnie said. "March him to someone's house and call the Sheriff." "We got any rope?" Donnie pulled a forty foot section of twine from his pack. "What if he's big?" "We'll be able to take him," Donnie said. "There's two of us." They packed sandwiches and fruit and brownies and little quarts of milk stolen from school. They took crackers. Donnie went through the back of the pantry and found some crackers and peanut butter. They also had some old C-rations they'd gotten from their cousin who was in the National Guard. It was warmer out today, and they soon tied their coats around their waists. They walked quietly. Donnie operated in two modes, and didn't shift well between them. He was either silent for great lengths of time, or he was talking non-stop. Nate had learned to accept this, and when Donnie was silent, he was silent, too. That morning, Donnie was silent. They followed the creek at first. There was an animal trail there, but they had to cross the stream a lot, stepping on fallen trees and mid-stream rocks. In a few places, they jumped where it was deep and narrow with a high cutbank, the water hardly moving beneath them. They landed on the other side and rolled. Always Donnie first. At Pederson's they cut toward the ridge to the west and hiked up the hill and over the top to the next valley over. They could hear Shepard and Mollie, the McCaslin's coon dogs, howling from where they were chained next to the old trailer the family lived in. When they finally stopped to rest, Nate opened his pack to find something to eat. Donnie pulled out a pack of cigarettes and smoked one. "Where'd you get those?" "Store in Perry." He said it like he'd been smoking them his whole life. "Mom'll smell it on you." "Mom don't know squat," Donnie said. Nate shrugged and stared at the smoke coming from his brother's nose. "Come on," Donnie said, getting up. "We've got some miles to cover." "Along the ridge up here for a while," Donnie said as they walked on, gesturing with a nod of his head, a mannerism he'd picked up from their father, who'd used it to indicate the direction of some approaching weather, say, or to indicate the location of his truck in a crowded parking lot. Despite poor grades and poor behavior reports-despite all that suggested his universal incompetence-Donnie possessed an infallible natural compass; he navigated like a bird. For Nate, it was like another language that people spoke and you couldn't understand them. He'd been told that moss grows on the north sides of trees and that you could find your way by signs, but Donnie wasn't using moss or any other kind of tool or trick. He just knew. They moved along at a steady pace for a few hours, but the march was wearing Nate down. While crossing a fence, he lost concentration and got his leg caught between a branch and the wire and he fell, head first, to the other side, landing on his arm. The pain ran through him like a current and for a long moment he was inconsolable, his brain too overloaded to even register his brother's questions about breakage and where it hurt. He lay face down, his head in a pile of wet leaves. He screamed and pressed his arm against the damp earth and clenched his entire body as if expecting another fall. He thought he might very well die. "Calm down," Donnie was telling him. "You're okay." Donnie took off his pack and untied his coat and then pulled off his shirt. He tore part of it up and made a sling. Soon, he was able to sit Nate up and lean him against a tree. He doctored Nate's arm, putting the sling on him, tying it close to his body. "You're doing good, Little Man," he was saying. "We're close now. You're gonna be all right." Nate was crying. He knew that he could make Donnie take him back. "We gonna do this?" Donnie said at last, smiling. Nate nodded. Donnie picked up both packs and carried them now. They came out of the woods less than a half hour later onto a dirt bike trail. Deep tire canals worn into the ground, lightly frozen in the weather. The path led to a series of ruined buildings: Clayville. A sign nailed to a tree said so. Donnie dropped the packs near a rock and disappeared into one of the doorways. Nate sat down and found some crackers and began eating them, all the while careful not to agitate his arm. Soon Donnie came back and sat beside him and opened a can of C-rations-beans and weiners. "What'd you find?" he asked. "Nobody here," he said. "What should we do?" Donnie shrugged and seemed to take the first step toward drifting into the impassivity he often occupied, his senses of the outside world seemingly shutting down. He watched TV that way, and you needed to turn it off to get his attention; he didn't hear you otherwise. In one of the buildings there was some noise. "Donnie," Nate said, and he shoved him. His brother pulled out a book from his jacket-a Western-and lit a cigarette. The blond convict emerged and approached them down what must have been Main Street or Broad Street or Market Street. He was, like the deputy had said, about Donnie's size. He wore blue coveralls that were ratty and muddy in patches. The uniform lent him the look of an overworked auto mechanic. His head was shorn in what must have once been a crewcut, the hair now grown out and standing on end, not long enough yet to lay down. He had freckles and his face was straight, almost somber, as he neared. "The boy," Nate said. Donnie did not even seem to hear him. When the convict was close enough not to yell, he called out, "I bum a 'rette?" Donnie looked up now, calmly, as if looking up at a sunset someone was calling his attention to. He nodded and, when the boy was closer, he threw him the pack and the lighter. The boy caught both, each with his right hand, and he proceeded to maneuver a cigarette out and light it. He crouched near where they were sitting, catcher-style. Nate could smell him and he reeked like an outside animal, of earth and sweat and other less identifiable outside things. "What you guys doing up here?" he asked. "Scoutin deer," Donnie said, instantly. "A hunter, are you?" "Last year was my first," Donnie said. "Little man here's too young yet." The boy nodded. "I got a nine point buck last winter down toward Lawrence County," he said. "Yeah?" Donnie said. "We seen a twelve point not two miles that way." Lies, Nate thought. Every last thing that came out of his brother's mouth was a lie. He realized then that he no more understood the inner-workings of his brother's mind than he did the inner-workings of his transistor radio. He also saw that Donnie had a secret life of his own that he didn't bother documenting in a journal. He sat and watched the two boys-the criminal and his brother-as if they were a movie and he was waiting to see what would happen next. Nate was terrified and the boy seemed to know it, cautiously taking glances at him in between the conversation. "Ya'll from nearby?" he asked. "Down Milford Run Road a way," Donnie told him. His brother seemed impossibly comfortable, smoking the last of his cigarette, his Western novel in his other hand. "Where you from?" "Portsmouth, man. It's a good long morning's drive from here. I just been over to BIS since last April. I run off the other day during road crew. Had all I could take." "That's why you got the nice blue suit there?" Donnie said. "Yeah," the boy said. It was hard to tell if he was annoyed or ashamed. "What are you gonna do?" Nate asked. "Little Man speaks," he said to the ground, and spat. Then he looked at Nate. "What do you care? You workin for the High Sheriff?" "No," Nate said. The boy looked back down. "I'll probably hitch a ride down to Oklahoma. I got some relation down there." They were all quiet for a time. "You ain't got any food in your pack, do you?" the boy said. "Hell, son," Donnie said. "It's like a damn grocery in there." He opened it and pulled out what they had left. "You got your peanut butter sandwiches. Bananas. Brownies. A little crackers left." The boy took what Donnie handed him. "Thanks," he said. "I been starvin' out here. And freezin. I ain't been able to start a fire. No Boy Scout. I'll tell you that." The boy ate everything they had. After a time Nate went to the woods to go to the bathroom. As he came back he heard the boy ask about him. "Nate?" Donnie said. "He's alright. I gotta get him home before his bedtime, though." "Just gotta be careful, you know," the boy said. "How far is it to the highway, you reckon?" "Long way," Donnie said. "Probably five mile." "That way?" He pointed toward the west. "Nah," Donnie said. "You'll want to head that way." He was pointing north. "I walk with you guys, you be able to sneak me some food later on? And some matches?" "Sure," Donnie said. "I an get you all the stuff you want." "What about a road map?" "Yeah," Donnie said. "There's a stack of maps downstairs nobody pays any attention to." "All right," he said. Nate decided to join them again. "What's a matter with your arm, Little Man?" the boy asked, noticing the sling. "I fell," Nate said. "It broke or something?" Nate shook his head and felt ashamed. He tested the limb with his good arm and it felt fine now, and he pulled the sling off. "It's better," he said. The boy laughed. "Let's go," Donnie said, and the three of them started walking toward the ramshackle farmhouse in silence. It had taken the boys a long time to get out there, and now they would be pushing it to get back before dark. The sky clouded up and the weather turned colder. When they rested, Donnie passed the cigarettes over and the boy told them about BIS. "They got you picking up trash?" Donnie asked. "Yeah, they always got us doing something. Sometimes it's building bridges on trails or digging ditches for culverts or raking leaves." "What are the other kids like?" Nate asked. He shrugged. "They're just kids," he said. "Like at school pretty much." "There fights?" Nate asked. "Some." "Anybody get stabbed?" "Where you getting these questions, Little Man?" "I just heard at school that a kid got stabbed at BIS." "Nobody I seen," the boy said. "They don't let you eat with real silverware." "What did you do to get sent there?" Nate asked, getting bolder. "I killed a kid with my dad's 30 aught," he said. Donnie looked at the boy and Nate looked at Donnie. The boy laughed. "I'm just messin' with you," he said. "I stole a truck and wrecked it." "That all?" Donnie said. "No," the boy said. "I stole some bike parts from a store back home and I also threw a desk out of a window at school to see what would happen." "What happened?" Nate asked. "It exploded on the cement just like you'd think it would. But a leg broke off and caught a guidance counselor in the ass. That was the real problem." Nate didn't ask anymore questions after that. He was wondering how someone comes to be the kind of person who steals things and smashes them and runs away. The line between throwing desks out of a windows and not throwing desks out of windows didn't seem altogether clear just then. Everyone wanted to do these things. Being good seemed to be a question of stopping yourself. Donnie and Nate left the blond boy at one of their forts up in the pines. Nate didn't speak until they were almost to the yard. "What are we gonna do?" "Sittin duck, ain't he?" Donnie said. For a moment, Nate couldn't believe how good Donnie had been. He was as calm as some TV undercover cop. "We call the sheriff?" Nate asked. "No," Donnie said. "Not yet. You just act like nothing happened. It's easy. Mom asks, you just tell her we took a long hike up into the woods." Nate nodded. "Why?" "Because he'll be on the lookout for a setup tonight. I'll bring him out some food and then we'll call the pigs in the morning. He'll still be asleep and we'll lead them right to him." Inside their mom was watching TV. "The lost have returned," she said. She ordered baths before dinner. If they wanted to see the Sunday Night Movie, they'd have to hurry. The three of them ate in front of the TV. A rare treat. Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo. Later that night Nate was listening to the BBC in bed. He noticed Donnie getting dressed. "You going out there now?" Nate asked. "Uh huh." Nate sat up. "Should I come with you?" Donnie laughed. "You wuss," he said. "It would take Coxey's Army to get you out into the woods tonight." "No," Nate said. "I'll go. We're in this together, ain't we?" "Yeah," Donnie said. "We're in it together. You do your part and cover for me if mom comes in." "How?" "Tell her I'm in the bathroom. I don't know. You're supposed to be the smart one." Nate nodded. And then Donnie was gone out the window, onto the roof over the porch where he could easily jump down to the ground, and Nate eventually got tired of waiting up for him to return and nodded off. The next morning Donnie's bed was empty. He wasn't in the kitchen when Nate came down for breakfast. "Donnie!" their mom yelled up the stairs. She turned to Nate. "Where's your brother?" He froze. "I don't know." "He upstairs?" "He wasn't in his bed." She went upstairs and then came back down. "Where is your brother?" He shook his head. She went outside and yelled for Donnie again, then came back in. Nate ate a bowl of cereal. "Get ready for the bus," she told him. "Brush your teeth." Nate did as he was told. As he was sitting tying his shoes he thought, what if Donnie was in trouble? He should tell, he decided, and then he changed his mind back. And then back again. He was still running in this reasoning loop sitting on the bus on the way to school. The bus lumbered on up Milford Run Road, climbing into the hills with seeming pain. It was cold. The winter had finally come for good. The road turned west toward town before they went far enough to see BIS and Nate imagined the place as he remembered it, piecing together the brief glimpses he'd had. Sitting there, he quietly resigned himself to whatever came. He would play ignorant until he couldn't anymore. It didn't make any sense that Donnie would go with the boy, but maybe he did. That night, when Donnie didn't show up after school, Nate heard their mother call the Sheriff's department and report him missing; there was a wrecked quality in her voice, a despondent, crumbling thing he wished he could right. But he didn't have any idea how he might do this, and telling her about Donnie and the blond boy would only make it worse. After she called the Sheriff, she sat out on the front porch in the cold, as if she could get a better view of the world from out there. Nate lay on his bed and waited. All of the possible explanations felt a little unreal. They were almost not possibilities at all, but someone's ridiculous idea of the way the world works-that his brother had been hurt or killed or had run off, or most improbable of all, had gotten lost somehow out there in the dark and was even now wandering around the big woods, searching for some clue of where he was. Nate found himself wishing for the return of single moments-of squatting in the culvert down beyond the Howards-when the thought of capturing the boy existed only in their minds. Somehow Nate felt like it was still all in his mind; but into his consciousness crept the truth, prying its way in, capitalizing on every weak moment, every lapse of his imagination. It filed in and filled Nate's heart with fear for his brother and for himself. Two days later, Donnie came back. He was alone and he was dirty and he smelled like the blond boy, of leaves and dirt. Their mother pulled Donnie to her and held him tightly before she hit him. Then she called the Sheriff's Department to tell them that Donnie was okay. At around eight that night the deputy who had questioned them on the road pulled into their driveway. He spoke to Donnie in the kitchen. Nate listened from the TV room. "Where you been these last few days?" the Sheriff asked. "I was up in the woods," Donnie told him. "Thought I'd camp out." "In November?" "I don't know. Ain't nothin' ever just grabbed you and then you just did it?" The man sighed. "Did you come across this boy?" He was probably holding up a photograph of the blond kid. "Nope, never saw no one." "Where did you go?" "Told you. I was just camping up in the woods. I can show you where." The deputy sent Donnie away and talked to their mom outside. Their voices were low and their mother closed the front door quietly as the engine of his patrol car started up. Later, when the boys were lying in bed, Donnie said, "Good job, buddy." "For what?" Nate asked. "For not ratting." Nate was quiet. "I was scared," he said. "I thought that boy might've killed you or something. What happened?" "I changed my mind about ole boy. I took him to the highway." "Why?" "I don't know. Just felt like it." "I thought we was going to turn him in," Nate said. "No," Donnie said. "He ain't no criminal." "How do you know?" Donnie was quiet for a minute. Then he said, in a tone of finality, "You can tell a criminal." He turned over and pulled the covers over his head. Nate was still mad, though. "Donnie," he whispered a few minutes later. His brother breathed lightly, sleeping. "Donnie," Nate said, louder this time. "Yeah?" "Why'd you help that boy escape?" "I don't know." "Why?" Nate asked again. "I told you. I don't know." "Come on, Donnie. Just tell me and I won't bother you again." Donnie didn't say anything for a long time. Nate held his breath and waited and listened to the silence. He was about to ask again when his brother spoke. "I figured it was better'n going to school. Alright?" Nate thought on it for a minute. Then he understood. They weren't in this together. It didn't matter why or why not. "Yeah," Nate said then. "Alright. Goodnight." Donnie didn't answer, though, and Nate couldn't help but imagine that this difference between them was going to grow. His brother was going to run off again-someday possibly for good. Nate lay awake for a long time trying not to imagine, but then imagining anyway, his and his mother's life when Donnie disappeared. There seemed no preparation for that, no way of bracing himself. "Donnie?" Nate could not close his eyes. It was not dread exactly, but it resembled it-somehow anticipated it. He called his brother's name again, and then once more. He waited, but nothing, it seemed, was going to break the long, whispered, measured breath of sleep drifting across the room from his brother. |