The Madman of Piney Woods

  It gave me a chance to look at his face.

  His open mouth showed that his gums were home to only one tooth on the top and two or three on the bottom. I saw that the hat everyone said he never took off wasn’t a hat at all – it was hair. Thick, tangled, long hair with a rainbow of blacks and silvers and oranges winding from one end to the other.

  It’s odd where your brain goes when part of you wants to be terrified and another part wants to take notes. As I looked at his hair, I thought what a nightmare it would be for the Madman of Piney Woods if he was forced to sit like Patience does whilst Mother wrestled a comb through his tangled, twisted hair.

  That fight would go on for days.

  The Madman’s laugh ended and my eyes were captured by his again.

  “I seent you ’bout these woods for years, boy. Don’t you never go to school?”

  “Uh … school, sir? School’s out for the summer.”

  The Madman said, “Oh, that’s right. Who your people, boy?”

  “My father’s Timothy Alston, Senior, sir, and my mother’s –”

  “Timmy Alston? Whoo-ha! I thought so. That mean you’s TooToo’s boy!”

  I’d been brave up to this point, but those words frightened me. How was this possible? How in the world could the Madman of Piney Woods know Mother’s nickname? Most folk used her proper name. Only Father and some of the really old people in Buxton called her TooToo.

  “Yes, sir! But how do you know her other name?”

  Was he spying on me at home too?

  “What you mean how I know your momma’s name?”

  “I just thought you were too … I mean, how could someone who’s … um …”

  He laughed again.

  “Oh, I see. What you wanna say is how come some crazy old man who lost his mind and been chasing ’round for his soul in the forest know all this ’bout your momma?”

  “No, sir,” I lied, “it just seems odd to me that you know something about my mother that not many people do.”

  The Madman said, “I been watching over everything what go on in these woods for more years than you been born, boy.”

  He had been watching me!

  “But that don’t mean my ma birthed me under no rock out here.”

  Only every once in a while did his eyes lock on mine. Most times they watched the woods. The peculiar thing was that, even though his eyes were darting from side to side and up and down, rolling ’bout like a couple of dark brown marbles in a pot of boiling, yellowy milk, his head never moved. Just like an owl.

  It wouldn’t have surprised me if he flew into a tree and started asking, “Whoo-whoo? Whoo-whoo?”

  He said, “Not to change no subjects, boy, but from what I seent and what I heard, there’s something in you what call to mind myself.”

  “Really?”

  He threw his head back and laughed again, giving me the chance to look him up and down.

  He wore a buckskin shirt and trousers. Around his waist was a chain attached to a couple of muskrat traps. There was something odd about the chain’s and traps’ colour, but before I could tell what it was, his eyes came back to me and I had to look up.

  “It look like that shock you, boy. Don’t you know anytime someone tell you you remind them of themselves, it the highest compliment they can give? ’Stead of looking like you just got chunked in the head with a rock, you should be thanking me.”

  I mumbled, “Uh … thank you, sir?”

  I wasn’t slow to answer because I didn’t agree; it was because what he said was something I’d thought of too. No one would ever say to a liar or a thief or a complete idiot, “There’s a lot about you that reminds me of me,” would they?

  “Pay attention, boy. I knowed your ma when she waren’t nothing but a babe. I knowed her when she first come to Buxton.”

  His eyes began jumping even more. I could tell he was done talking to me. Without another word, he took two steps back and quickly started walking away.

  I had to act fast. If I lost sight of him, he’d be able to disappear and I might never have this chance again.

  I yelled, “Sir, wait, please!”

  He looked back at me but kept walking. I ran after him. There were a thousand questions I wanted to ask.

  The newspaperman in me jumped up and down in glee when he stopped.

  I could have asked him anything.

  Such as why he stayed in the woods when he could have easily come live in Buxton.

  Such as didn’t he ever get sad or scared or lonely being out here all alone?

  Such as how he knows so much about my mother.

  I was sore disappointed in myself when the first thing I asked was, “What is it about me that reminds you of yourself?”

  His eyes calmed as he smiled.

  “It’s these woods, boy. You’s more comforted being out here than anywhere else, huh?”

  “Why, yes, sir.”

  “So’s I. That one the things we got in common. You get feelings out here just like me ’cause these woods is constant talking to you.”

  He swiped his hand at the hair on the side of his head over and over, as though a fly or skeeter was buzzing ’round his ear. If there was, I couldn’t see or hear it.

  “I know how it is,” he said. “If you knows how to listen, the woods is constant gibber-jabbering at you. They been telling you all along you being watched. I seent how you gets all tetchity when, even though you ain’t never seent me watching, you feels it. It’s these woods what’s telling you I’m there. They’s talking to you near’s much they talks to me; it won’t be long afore you understand what they saying near’s good as me.”

  He was right again! In a strange kind of way, I did feel like the woods and everything in the forest talked to me.

  He said, “I seent how whilst no one, ’cluding that pack of mo-ron boys you be leading out here, ain’t got no idea they’s being spied on, you do. And you got the good sense not to tell ’em what you feeling. You been keeping the woods’ secrets to yourself.”

  He called Spence and the boys “mo-rons”!

  “I also seent how it been harder and harder for me to stay hid from you and that mean the woods is pulling you in too, drawing you closer to they boo-sum. You showed ’em you’s worthy of trust; you getting that good.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “But truth be told, boy, I envies you.”

  He looked straight in my eyes. “You and me traveled different roads to reach this here point. I envies you ’cause the journey here come natural and easy for you. Ain’t no big price been paid by you.

  “Me? Shoot, boy, to get here, I had to go through trials and fire and pain you caint come up with in your worse nightmare. Umm-hmm, I envies you most of all for the things you ain’t seen. But that don’t matter. The woods is the judge, and if they say you and me’s one in the same, who’s I to be thinking elsewise?”

  He was quiet for a moment, then said, “Everything’s a circle, boy. Just like I’m where I’m at, you gonna come ’round this way ’fore long. Just like I been watching you, there’s something out here what watching me. And just like you fount me, I ain’t resting till I find them. ’Round and ’round and ’round we go, and I ain’t gonna stop till I find them monsters.”

  A chill brushed over me.

  “Monsters?”

  “That’s what I said. Monsters is watching me all the time and I ain’t gonna rest till I fount out why. These woods is talking to them too, but the monsters get the messages from the forest on the tips of the wings of crows.”

  I must not have done a good job of hiding what I felt.

  The Madman of Piney Woods laughed again and said, “Oh-ho! Now you gonna look at me like I’m the one who crazy. But you got me worried, boy. Maybe them rumours is true; could be that I lost my mind. ’Cause me getting told I’s crazy by someone who durn near kilt hisself tearing a tree house out a tree, only to put it back upside down, is pretty good proof I might for sure be gone mad. ’Cause like th
ey say, it take one to know one, and when it come to crazy, all signs point to you knowing what you talking ’bout.”

  With that he folded himself back into the curtain of the forest.

  I blinked and stood there shocked.

  It wasn’t until I was home that I realized I was probably the only person in the world to get insulted by the Madman of Piney Woods and live to tell the story.

  But I wasn’t going to let anyone know about this meeting. He’d given me a lot to think about and even though it would near kill me not to tell Spencer and the boys what the Madman had said about them, I wouldn’t.

  But that didn’t mean it couldn’t be in today’s headline:

  PROOF FINALLY IN! MADMAN OF PINEY WOODS AGREES SPENCER ALEXANDER AND THE REST OF MY CHUMS ARE A PACK OF MO-RONS!

  Just like the forest’s other secrets, and the Madman of Piney Woods and me meeting up, I was keeping this to myself.

  Since I am a scientist, I am loath to believe in anything superstitious or otherworldly. Yet Grandmother O’Toole’s old saying “Speak of the divil and surely he shall come a-knocking” was all I thought of.

  Mere hours after the lads and I had debated whose fish was larger, I climbed one of the trees near the creek and found myself dozing. I have no idea how long I napped before a movement or sound from below roused me. I rolled my head in the direction of the disturbance and suffered a searing moment of white-hot terror.

  Below, not fifty yards away, an odd, human-seeming figure materialized from between the trees of the forest. This apparition before me, which seemed to slip in like a fog, could be only one person: I had the dire misfortune of awakening and having my eyes fall on the South Woods Lion Man!

  The drumbeat of my heart filled my ears as the realization of what a horrible plight I was in dawned on me. My mind became confused and took flight. It danced and flitted much as would a sparrow being pursued by a hawk. The only parts of me that seemed capable of movement were my eyes. And what a dreadful sight they beheld! I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. This wasn’t possible, but as I saw the Lion Man, I realized every story about this half-human creature’s appearance was true!

  Even from a distance he was huge, much larger than any of the unfortunate giants who come to Chatham with the summer circus. Maybe not eight feet tall, but at least seven and a half, and he weighed four hundred pounds if he weighed an ounce!

  His head was covered with a thick tangle of black and red and white snakes, which waved and bobbed through the air around his shoulders! And there were golden slave shackles hanging from his waist. Even more confusing was that he walked without making a sound; the chains that held his slave shackles in place were silent. Had I been struck deaf? Was this some horrible nightmare?

  He seemed to be homing in on where I had unfortunately chosen to nap, forcing me to study this ghastly vision even more closely.

  As he drew closer, it appeared his head was covered by a hood, something you would wear to keep your ears safe from the deepest winter’s bite. As his head turned this way and that, I saw it was not a hood; it was more like a lion’s mane, a thick, dense mass of fur. Soon I could make out a confused mixture of silvers and blacks near his dark brown forehead fanning out into orangish reds as the mane spread down his shoulders and back like a short cloak.

  I was close enough to see it was hair, a massive clump of snarled hair fanning out in thick, snakelike tendrils that were tangled and woven in the manner of the most impenetrable bramble one could imagine.

  The more I studied him, the more quickly I began to doubt the other stories and my own first impressions. Particularly the ones proclaiming how he fed himself by running down full-sized deer, clubbing them with the trunk of a tree before he bloodily used his teeth to tear the animal’s organs from its still-kicking body.

  The Lion Man appeared to be too old for such feats. Even though his dark brown face was smooth and unwrinkled, the way his lower jaw and chin seemed collapsed showed he had suffered the same malady many of the older people in Chatham had – he’d lost most of his teeth. And if he actually did run game to ground, why would he need what he was carrying, a very old musket, not the entire trunk of a centuries-old tree?

  My eyes moved down. His clothes were much like what the Cree and Ojibwa, who occasionally came through the woods, wore. They were made from the tanned hides of some animal.

  Chains did hang from his waist, but they didn’t terminate in slave shackles; at their ends were spring traps for small game. And he’d wrapped each link of the chain with some type of yellowed reed or dried grass, which stopped them from rattling as he walked.

  Despite all of these normal explanations for the mysteries told about him, each step he took in my direction made him seem even more terrifying! He finally stopped right below my tree, and I knew he’d run me to ground and wasn’t allowing me to know I’d been spotted. His next actions would probably be to scamper up the tree in the manner of a giant rabid squirrel and dispose of me in a most horrible and painful way.

  I prayed it would be quick.

  In those final seconds before I was to be eaten, I hoped this beast wouldn’t leave my body tangled in the high branches of this oak. If he did, my loving father would never know what a cruel end befell his only child. I imagined him walking by the tree time and time again calling out to me, not knowing my rotting, disemboweled corpse was a mere twenty feet above his head.

  The final sliver of hope I held, that perhaps it was a coincidence that he’d come in this direction, that he hadn’t noticed me, vanished when the Lion Man leaned his musket against my tree and lingered there.

  With a sound that reminded me of the puffing snort a horse gives after a strenuous race, he closed his eyes, threw back his head, and released a long sigh, no doubt gathering his strength to better scamper up the tree and kill me.

  As I prayed for forgiveness, my confused ears imagined the sound of splashing water. I nearly passed out in fear before I realized what was happening.

  The South Woods Lion Man was peeing on my tree!

  Perhaps I too gave a sigh, one of relief; perhaps even though he was old, he still possessed those unnaturally sharp senses. For a hummingbird’s wings could not have completed one beat in the time it took his eyes to shoot up and lock on mine!

  My terror, which had seconds before begun to leave me, came home to roost with a glowing, red-hot intensity.

  We stared at each other for the longest time; I was extremely confused. His eyes were soft and, it’s odd to say, there was kindness in them. His face slowly dissolved into a mostly toothless smile. Then, with a look that was shy or almost embarrassed, he put his hand to his head as if tipping a hat and said, in clearly spoken English, “I do apologize, boy. If I’d-a knowed this here tree was occ-a-pied, I’d-a sure u-ro-nated elsewhere.”

  And with those words, he picked up his musket and disappeared back into the woods.

  While I remember clinging to the tree’s branch, I don’t recall how I got home. I’m fairly certain I would’ve remembered if I had run in screaming horror as the Baylis boys had done after their encounter with the South Woods Lion Man. I’m almost certain I behaved in a more dignified manner. But honesty forces me to say it wasn’t because I’m braver than those lads; it was the fact that I was in shock.

  My first actual memory after coming face-to-face with the ghost of the woods was being in bed at home with the covers pulled tight under my chin, staring at the ceiling, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

  When dawn came, after a night of pondering and sweating and examining, I came to the conclusion that if one reaches a point where one is absolutely convinced life is about to come to an end, God works to cushion the blow. He reveals that death is normal, that everyone who has lived, everyone who is living, and everyone who will someday live has to walk this same path.

  One reaches a point of accepting that one’s allotted time on earth is at an end. Whether the end comes because of having carelessly chosen to cross a
road just as a runaway team of horses hauling lumber to the mill is barreling by, or after fighting some dis-ease of the body for months and understanding the point has been reached where there’s no more fight to give, or waking to the chilling sight of a murderous, half-human, half-lion beast, God leads one to accept and surrender to the circumstances.

  It’s similar to playing chess with Father. There’s a point when the checkmate is inevitable and any further wiggling is senseless. The wise person uses what dignity he has left to tip his king and resign.

  There comes an epiphany that fighting is useless, and once that point is reached, there is relaxation, there is calmness, there is almost light-headed happiness. A sense of coolness and relief had come over me in that tree, much as though I’d stepped into the icehouse in the midst of a brutal July heat wave.

  But if something happens and the runaway team of horses is somehow diverted, or the illness disappears, or the South Woods Lion Man chooses at the last second only to pee on your oak tree and then acts embarrassed about it, one is left in a bit of a quandary.

  Something has been drained. Life can never be the same. I’m not certain if that’s good or bad. I do know I will not be visiting the forest any time soon.

  A week after I was pardoned from the Amen Corner, Mother and Father called me to the kitchen table.

  It was a real relief when I saw they didn’t have any other pieces of fake evidence that Patience had come up with. This meeting was about something other than a bunch of lies told about me.

  Father said, “Benjamin, your mother and I have decided that it’s far past the time you learned the value of money.”

  “Sir?”

  “Some of your actions show you don’t have no real ’preciation of the cost of getting by from day to day. You needs to start getting paid so you can understand how rough it is to get a dime. You’ve got to learn the only things that come cheap or easy is cheap and easy things.”