Adam's Woods (3 page)

“
Only if you take your brother. He needs to turn off that television and get outside.“

His mother’s voice drifted from the kitchen along with the scent of baking cinnamon rolls to the front porch that housed their bicycles and a porch swing. The porch was enclosed all around by windows, and Eric stood at its screen door in his sock feet, shoulders slumping at the condition of bringing Adam.

He usually didn’t mind when his little brother came along, but when JT showed up with a wink Eric knew it was something that Adam shouldn’t know about. Most of the time it was something he‘d be better off without, like the cigarettes or the quarter can of beer left on a coffee table and smuggled out to the cabin. The cigarette had made him puke, and the beer tasted like someone had peed into the can, but he was always game up to a point. Once JT had pulled out his father’s pistol and Eric had immediately left. He didn’t tell anyone, but that was going too far. He had avoided John Thomas for a few days until the older boy apologized and swore he wouldn’t do it again. So far he’d kept his word.

If Tony and Jeff Fisk weren’t in Erie at the mall shopping for school clothes, he probably would have suggested that they get a game of two-on-two football going with Adam as all time running back. He almost said no anyway, but JT must have seen the change of heart coming and said, “Come on, Eric. It’s something really good...but not dangerous. Adam can wait outside while I show you, and then we’ll all go fishing or something.”

Fishing sounded good to Eric, so decided he’d indulge his friend to get a chance at the palomino trout in the hole behind the lumber yard, a wily fish at least twenty inches long that had turned up its nose so far at every bait tossed in to tempt it. His mother wouldn’t let him go alone.

Adam came to the door whining about missing the end of Scooby-Doo, although to Eric they were all the same, the villain just someone dressed up in a costume. He could never understand why they still ran away at first, that experience should have taught them something by now. It was mid-August, a Saturday, still hot but the days growing shorter as an unwelcome reminder that school would start soon. Adam fell in behind, keeping a few steps back and grumbling.

They walked passed a storage shed and through the mowed field behind the house that stretched the width of the backyard plus those of the neighbors on either side - a field great for football, baseball, or tag - and entered a small clearing in the woods beyond that. Several paths disappeared into the trees. One led to their homemade cabin, framed using the trunks of four small felled and stripped trees as corner posts, sided with a patchwork of scrap wood stolen from Mr. Fisk at the lumber yard, and roofed with some corrugated sheets of tin that had come from someone’s basement. There was an auto junkyard just on the outskirts of Lincoln Corners, and four of them, Eric and JT, Tony Fisk and Mary - a girl that sometimes hung out with them - had carried back a detached bench seat without getting caught, and now they had a sofa.

When they reached the cabin, which even had a door, an ill-fitting piece of particle board attached by mismatched hinges, JT turned to Adam and said, “Okay, someone has to stand guard out here in case somebody comes. We’ll take turns and you’ll go first.”

“
Why do I have to go first? Why does someone have to stand guard anyway? I thought you said you had comic books. Who cares about comic books?” Eric could see through the petulance that Adam cared very much about comic books, and found himself hoping there really were some. He didn’t like excluding his brother and rarely picked on him. Not because he was weak - Adam had given him a fat lip and a bloody nose, respectively, on the two occasions that they’d really fought - but because he couldn’t stand the hurt he saw in his eyes. He felt a responsibility towards his brother, and though he liked JT, he loved Adam.

“
Look Adam, I’ll stand guard first and you go in,” Eric said.

“
No way, Eric. You first, or no one goes in. That’s the way it is,” JT answered.

“
Hold on a second,” he said, and disappeared through the door. He came out with a Batman comic and handed it to Adam.” Here, you can read this while on duty.”

Adam grabbed it and examined the cover, and so mollified sat down on a log and didn’t glance at them as they both went into the cabin. JT positioned himself by the door in case their sentry tried to enter, and pointed at a stack of what looked to Eric like more comic books on the dirt floor, except the ones on the bottom were wider, some sort of magazine, maybe.

Eric sat down on the seat, careful not to slide his legs against the cracks in the vinyl that could and had drawn blood, and picked up the stack. He loved being in the cabin, a small piece of the world that belonged only to them. Beneath the Spider-Mans, Hulks, and Thors, he found two Hustlers. His mouth went dry as he took in the blonde on the cover of the first, the puffed up hair like the high school girls, the bikini that had mostly slid off of her body held in place by strategically placed arms and hands to barely hide what he hoped the pages inside wouldn‘t.

His heart quickened and he felt giddy and light-headed. He knew he shouldn’t be doing this, that he held in his hands a glossy monthly version of the forbidden fruit, but was already thumbing through the pages of this new frontier before his Sunday School teacher’s words on temptation could change his course.

He was glad he’d put the magazine on his lap, and slowly made his way through, almost forgetting about JT until he asked Eric in a husky voice, “Isn’t it great?”

Eric looked up and saw he’d brought out another from some other hiding place and perused it with a hungry smile that made Eric suddenly uncomfortable. He saw the bulge in JTs shorts he didn’t even try to hide, realized he needed to sound like more than a kid here.

“
Yeah, but its not like I haven’t seen these before,” he lied. A boy had ripped out a centerfold of his dad’s Playboy once and snuck it into the bathroom during class restroom break, but it had been confiscated and the kid marched to the principal’s office before Eric had a chance to see.

“
Yeah, I know. I’ve seen them too,” JT said, trying to act bored, and sitting down next to Eric, wary and self-conscious.” But there‘s a lot more, and we can look at them anytime we want.”

“
Where did you get them?”

“
Over in the junkyard. I was looking into some of the cars, and on the backseat of this one there’s a whole stack.” JT lifted his hand up about two feet high from the sofa for emphasis.

“
What are you guy’s doing in there?”Adam’s voice came from right outside the door. Eric was glad for JT’s presence. He knew that if it had just been him, Adam would have forced his way in. But he wouldn’t cross JT, stocky and strong and a master of the wedgie, dutch rub, noogie, and pink belly; forms of childhood torture that he‘d gleefully administer if given provocation.

John Thomas hurriedly got up and grabbed another comic book, moved to the door and pushed it open enough to hand it to Adam. “Here’s an X-men. We’re almost done.”

“
I don’t want it. I want to see what you’re doing. You said I would get a turn.”

“
Well I changed my mind. You want to do something about it.”

Eric couldn’t see Adam but knew well the defiant stare and retort his brother barely held in check and felt a pang of guilt, but the desire to look overcame all. “Just wait a little bit longer and we’ll go fishing, Adam. Read the comic book. You like X-men.” He was surprised at how thick his voice sounded.

“
No. I’m not waiting for you guys. You’re a couple of jerks, anyway.”

Eric knew he should go out but he didn’t, even when he heard Adam stomping away, not towards the clearing and home but down the path leading deeper into the woods. But the woods weren’t that big and they both knew all of the trails. If he kept going all the way back, after a quarter mile he’d end up at the edge of a cornfield. Behind that was a much larger forest, but he knew Adam wouldn’t go in there by himself, nor did he fear that he’d tell their parents later. Adam knew that would get him banished for good from any future boyhood indiscretion, and anyway he wasn’t a snitch.

Eric put down the first magazine and picked up another, this time featuring a brunette that looked a lot like their bus driver that he had a secret crush on. Inside was more of the same, but all new to him and he forgot about Adam. JT settled down with his own material, and from furtive glances at his friend Eric discerned from wide eyes and quick shallow breaths that John Thomas didn’t know anymore about this stuff than him, and wondered why they had to pretend otherwise; but they did, and he wouldn’t be the one to break the unwritten code of schoolyard machismo.

Caught in this haze of pre-adolescent lust, Eric lost track of time. Eventually he began to feel sick like he’d eaten too much candy, and wanted to get away from the images and try to make sense of the powerful urges they stirred or maybe attempt to stuff them back inside. But that would be impossible. The magazines had been an education, and he now knew things he hadn’t guessed at and wasn‘t sure he wanted to know. But knowing and understanding were two different things. He had a desire to talk to his father but didn’t dare, wondered if he could look at his mother the same way after this. Or Sandra the bus driver. Or Mary. He felt a stab of alarm that she might come here and find the magazines... and then he remembered Adam.

“
Hey, JT, I need to go look for Adam,” he said, glad to have an excuse to get away from the pictures.

“
He probably went home by now. What’s the rush, Eric? Are you a homo or something?”

Eric ignored the remark and accompanying chuckle, though it did provoke a tickle of fear as he wondered if that could be the reason for his discomfort. He decided that JT was just getting back at him for exposing his overeagerness and attempted to think of a comeback, but gave up and refocused. He needed to find his brother.

“
No, he wouldn’t go home. He knows if mom finds out we aren’t with him, she’ll get mad and that would be like telling. Adam wouldn‘t tell.”

JT threw one last look of longing at a redhead and closed the book, then gathered the others and shoved them under the seat, leaving the comic books out as a decoy. “He’d better not, or I’ll kill him. All right, let’s go.”

They followed the path Adam had taken, and after a hundred yards it forked. The path to the left went to the edge of the swamp into which they liked to poke sticks and search for frogs and other creatures, and the main trail passed a bow hunter’s tree stand and then emptied into the cornfield. Just down from the field, at a former excavation site, garter snakes could be found hiding under large flat rocks, and Eric thought he might have gone there. Or to the swamp. He could see Adam choosing either attraction.

“
Let’s split up. I’ll go to the swamp and you go to the cornfield,” JT said. Whoever finds him can yell and we’ll meet back here.”

“
Okay,” Eric said, feeling like he’d become part of a stupid Scooby-Doo cartoon. He started down the trail of packed earth. They used them all enough to thwart the growth of weeds, but some briars did reach out far enough to scratch his legs and arms so that he was stinging and bleeding by the time he stepped out from the shade of the trees into the fierce sun. The corn had been harvested already, and the amputated stalks slumped in their rows like a routed army. He called out for his brother, but got no answer. Eric was hot and sweating and thinking maybe a swim in the creek would be better than fishing today. Probably too hot for the fish to bite anyway.

He began to trudge to the excavation site, what they called the “gravel pit”, thinking that maybe Adam had heard but nursed a grudge, and would exact his revenge through silence. He glanced up at the “Big Woods”, always hoping to catch a buck standing at its edge or a Bigfoot fleeing for cover. He was thirsty and getting angry with Adam and himself, still unable to push away the pictures that had seared themselves into his brain. He vowed never to look again, and at the same time wanted to go back for another helping.

Adam wasn’t at the gravel pit, and there were no stones that looked recently displaced. He stood still listening for JT’s yell but heard nothing but bugs and the croak of resident frogs in a shin-deep depression permanently filled with rainwater.

He began to hike back, wondering if JT had returned to the cabin to be alone with the ladies instead of helping to look. He reached the fork in the path with a new collection of scratches - already felt the sting when he stepped into the bath tonight - and walked towards the swamp. Rounding a bend on the trail, he almost stumbled over JT sitting on the ground. His face was pale and something red covered his hands, with smears on his shorts and shirt.