#6: Lost in the Woods
“Can you be lost on an adventure?”
(Last time, the guys got caught in a fiery rave.)
“You know, I think we’re lost,” Danny said as we stood outside the car on the edge of some access road.
“We’re on an adventure.” Ralph declared and added, “Can you be lost on an adventure?”
After leaving the rave, we had crashed at the first motel we could find. At 11:02 AM, the motel manager had woken us by banging on the door and yelling that he would call the police if we didn’t leave immediately—or agree to pay for another night. Check-out was, after all, at 10:30. So we left without even unpacking our bags. Last night’s alcohol and lipstick clung to my mouth like a scum.
We had been trying to get to Western Pennsylvania so that we could at least start to consider whether we wanted to do the Appalachian Trail or not. But Ralph had been driving, and we had missed a turn—or turns. And somehow we had ended up getting further and further from the highway or any signs of civilization. Not one car had passed us.
“All that matters,” Pat said, as he stretched, “is that we have enough time to make it to Kentucky.”
“Oh, you’ve decided we’re going?” My back ached from the hours in the car, so I was rubbing my spine.
Pat grinned, the ridges of his lips like the serrations of a knife. “Come on, Charlie, you know you want to go.”
I wanted happiness—joy—a phoenix’s burst. But how to get from the woods of Pennsylvania to there—well, that was the great mystery. “I don’t know if they were serious.” How could they have been?
“Affairs of the heart,” Ralph said, “are always of the, uh, utmost seriousness.”
“And foolishness,” I said. But, even if it was foolish, I couldn’t deny the throb in my chest thinking about going there. I could listen to Bonnie play again. I could see her smile. I could dance with her, maybe. “What do you think, Danny?”
He looked up from the pile of maps and gazettes on the hood of the car. “About what?”
“About Kentucky?”
“Well, if we want to skip the AT or cut corners somewhere else, we can do it.”
Pat laughed. “Cut corners—I knew I was finally corrupting you, Danny-boy. Besides, Charlie, you wouldn’t want to disappoint Bonnie, would you?”
“I don’t even know where we are,” Danny lamented.
“You boys looking for something?” a reedy voice called out from behind me.
I spun to see a man in faded overalls walking toward us with one hand in his pocket. His frayed blue shirt whipped behind him like a tattered flag.
“Oh, we’re fine,” Pat said loudly.
“We’re lost,” Danny said, instead.
We explained where we were hoping to go, and the man listened, his jaw quivering like he was chewing invisible bubble gum. A yellowed stubble coated his thin cheeks, and the heavy wrinkles around his eyes made him look like he was used to squinting. At last, the man smiled. “You are lost.” He flashed his crooked teeth in a laugh. “So where you’uns heading?”
“Iowa—or maybe Kentucky.”
Pat rushed in on the heels of Ralph’s words. “We like to keep our options open.”
The man shook his head. “Those are some options.” He considered. “You’re deep here in the woods. Most people don’t come out this far. I don’t see folks out here that often.” Danny got out a pad of paper, and the man described the route back. Then he added, “You’uns got a tent back there? You’re welcome to stay at my camp tonight, a little down the way.”
“Sure,” Pat said before anyone else could say anything.
The man—Chester—waved us down a leaf-covered path just wider than a car.
“Pat,” Danny whispered, “are you sure this is a good idea?”
Pat shrugged. “There’s four of us and one of him. If he really wanted to hurt us, he could have picked us off from the woods. We’re here for an adventure, remember?”
A little down the road, the trees parted in a small clearing. A small camper was on one side, with a firepit and a couple folding chairs nearby. At the edge was parked a rusty red pickup truck.
“This is…interesting,” Ralph said.
“This is how life used to be,” Pat replied. “People going into virgin wilderness—becoming pioneers. This is the life.”
“Welcome to my home away from it all,” Chester called as he made his way up from the path. “I’ve been here for a couple years now. It’s nice in the summer.”
“I bet,” Pat said.
We began to set up our tents on the far edge of the clearing. The day had reached a threshold hour, when the light tumbles into darker hues. Humming to himself, Chester started a fire in the pit. “I split the wood myself,” he said. “Good exercise these days.”
“So what do you do around here?” I asked.
“Mostly this. The day has a nice rhythm. Go to town once or twice a week. Get some books from the library. I do a lot of puzzles. And there’s nothing better than sitting under the stars. You can see ‘em so much clearer out here.”
Mostly this included drinking. He pulled a giant cooler out of the trailer. Beer cans bobbed in an ocean of melting ice. “Take a load off,” he said once we were done with the tents. He had also pulled out a few tired beach chairs.
The beer was cold and cheap. I stretched in the chair and felt like I could fall through the frail weave at the back.
“Thanks for the beer,” Danny said, taking a wary sip.
“Ah, I like to drink with company. It gets lonely out here. So what you’uns doing here?”
“We’re on our way to Kentstock,” Ralph said. When Chester squinted, he added, “It’s, ah, a music festival at Allegria, the estate of Mickey Kent.”
“Mickey Kent! I didn’t know kids listened to Mickey Kent anymore.”
“Some of us have more discriminating tastes,” Ralph said.
Chester smiled. “I remember back when I was a kid, younger than you’uns, that we’d play his songs at dances, at diners...What was that song of his—Maybe I’d be better off with you?”
“‘Out of the Blue,’” Pat answered. It was one of his favorites.
“Yeah, ‘Out of the Blue.’ They don’t make music like that anymore.”
“Tell me about it,” Ralph said.
“Back then, songs had a melody. They’d be nice to listen to—not like that rap stuff today. You kids listen to that?” He didn’t wait for us to answer. “I remember that song. I was just getting out of the Army then.”
“You served?” I asked.
“Yeah, yeah. I was called, and I served.”
“My father served—my brothers, too,” I said, “Well, they’re serving.”
He lifted his can in a toast. “Good men. Now, I didn’t fight. This was before Nam took off. Was your pop there?”
“Yes.”
“Better man than me. I just went to North Carolina for a while. Then, Germany. Tell you, getting back here—hearing your man, Mickey Kent—was like I was back in the promised land.”
After the army, Chester had worked at a steel mill for many years. The mill had closed in the early 90s, and he had bounced around for a few years before he went on disability. “I guess you can say I’ve gone back to nature!” he said with a laugh.
“It’s nice here,” Ralph said. “Uh, nice and peaceful.”
“Best thing I ever bought. Scraped together everything I could for the trailer but never regretted it for a minute. I always wanted to get away, even if it can sometimes get a little strange out here.”
“Strange, how?” I asked.
“Strange like strange things happen,” he said, “like I can’t explain. Sounds in the woods. Sounds like someone’s tapping on the door. Shadows at the edge of the fire late at night. You’uns ever hear about the boskrijgers?”
We all shook our heads.
He took a sip of his beer. “Well, I got a story to tell you, then.”
Undone
Silence was one of H.R. Stanley’s greatest weapons.
An affectation he had picked up during graduate school in Chicago, the cigarette holder was wedged like a smoking scepter between his fingers. He irritably dismissed university policy against smoking inside—“philistine health-nuttery”—so his window was always wedged open with a small fan running next to it.
“I haven’t seen you for a while,” he had said when we first entered his office. “I even had the departmental secretary send you an e-mail.” And then he waited.
He had seen me on the street, put his arm around mine, and said “let’s have a chat”—then started talking about how the wild eruptions of spring always reminded him of Nietzsche.
At last, I broke. “I don’t have the thesis done.”
He barked a nicotine-stained laugh. “I assumed as much. The real question is when will it be done?”
I turned my eyes to the stained white tips of my Converse sneakers. “I don’t know.” Like much else, Xenophon’s writing turned to curlicues whenever I tried to concentrate on it.
“You need to have the thesis to graduate, you know.”
“I do.” The deadline for submitting it had come and gone.
“This isn’t like you,” he said.
In the two classes I had taken with him, Stanley had never shown such a combination of frustration and disappointment.
He continued, “The first part was very good. Xenophon’s Symposium is underdiscussed, so that close reading—especially on the theme of love—is needed. But you need to finish it.”
“I’ve just hit a block, I think.” Even in the fog, I could write a dozen pages for term papers for other classes or march bewildered through a final exam—enough for B’s and C’s. But the thesis was like climbing a sheer steel plate.
“You’re on the cusp of going out into the world and doing things. Things that matter.”
Now, it was my turn to be silent.
Stanley took a long drag and inspected me. Combined with his bushy eyebrows and gray-streaked beard, his new round glasses made him look especially owl-like. “What’s this about—this block?”
I figured honesty would embarrass me less than a lie he could pierce. “My girlfriend and I broke up.” Not honest enough. “Well, she broke up with me.”
“Oh,” he coughed and brightened. “That’s almost noble. The heart has its costs and all that. Part of being intellectually serious is to feel seriously.”
By the end of our discussion that afternoon, we had agreed: After this semester, I would go on leave. “Just finish it. Whenever. Send it to me, we can have the defense and file for graduation.”
So my college degree had fluttered in the air like a half-severed appendage, waiting along with everything else.