The Woods: Part One

and shrugged.

  Rolling waves of asphalt eventually took them away from Monroe and into an unincorporated piece of land called Bushnell. Bushnell was the last stop between the expansive country of Monroe and the city of Bugby. Bugby was a real in-between city. There were plenty of other cities in Ohio that were better and worse, which allowed Bugby to slip between the cracks of congestive innovation and the sparseness of a town where everyone knew your name, and still wrote checks.

  On the corner of the only traffic light in Bushnell, the rickety old truck pulled into the parking lot of Cray's Hardware, dodging cracks in the sun-beaten pavement that resembled the aftermath of an earthquake.

  "I thought we were getting deer feed?" James asked, “The sign says it's a hardware store?”

  "Oh, they have it. Out here, a hardware store does a little bit of everything."

  Right in front of a thirty-year-old ice chest sat a police cruiser that looked out of place in front of the worn-down hardware store. It was shiny with curves everywhere. This cruiser was considerably nicer than the one they had just seen and across the door a decal read BUGBY POLICE in bold bright letters.

  "Don't see many city cops out here," Nolan said as if he was exclusively from the country now. It annoyed James that his dad had drawn a line between city and country and boasted about his side so openly. The man he used to know as his father drifted further away from who James had known his entire life. He was now different than before, which dashed his childish dreams of his parents ever getting back together.

  As they walked in together, an officer passed them and returned to his car. James couldn't believe how he looked so like the other officer he had just seen. An old man walked around from behind the cash register to greet Nolan and his son.

  "Hey Nolan," the old man smiled, "good to see you again!"

  "Hey, Sam," Nolan said wrapping his arm around James's shoulder, "my son and I are looking for some deer feed."

  "Of course, got some in the back.” Nolan and James followed in his wake which smelled heavily of medicated ointment and grass clippings. At the back, they reached racks of bagged feed on pallets.

  "What happened, Sam?" Nolan asked.

  "Oh, you mean the cruiser out front?” he asked as he pulled a rag from his back pocket and wiped the sweat from his forehead. “He was just asking questions about Farmer Dell down the road. You couldn't have missed him on the way in?”

  Nolan and James nodded in unison.

  “Dell’s had Route 193 blocked all morning. Apparently, he woke up to find that his prized tractor had escaped from the field.”

  “Escaped?” James asked.

  Sam shot a glance at him and laughed softly. “Yes, Dell’s had nearly a half-dozen of Bugby’s finest tied up all morning. He insists that someone stole his tractor. Probably just got on it drunk again and drove it off the property. He was always in and out of here picking up things to give it more torque than a tugboat.” Sam laughed at his analogy. “I told him by the time he was finished he'd be able to pull his whole house around the farm!”

  James laughed politely along with his father and Sam. He didn't know anything about torque.

  "Well, here's the feed,” Sam said, “Do you want me to get Charlie to take it to the truck for you?”

  Nolan looked down at James and smiled, "Want to give it a shot?"

  "Uh sure," James said. He grabbed the twenty-five-pound bag from the rack and struggled to lift it, sinking down from the force as it landed on his shoulder.

  "You got it!" Nolan shouted then walked to the counter with Sam to pay.

  James couldn't carry the weight and quickly dropped it. He managed to start dragging it across the floor, at least. Sweat dripped into his eyes and he stopped for a minute to catch his breath.

  "Let me help you," a shaky voice said. James looked up to see the hardware clerk, Charlie, standing above him. Charlie was a seventeen-year-old senior with bright orange hair that hung in his eyes and the strength of two grown men. His pale frame was splattered with freckles and his muscles bulged beneath a lime green t-shirt. He lifted the bag with ease and offered James a hand up. They walked out to the truck and Charlie set it down in the back effortlessly.

  "Thanks," James said still catching his breath.

  "No prob," Charlie said with a smile. He patted the bed of the truck then walked back toward the store without saying another word. James stood against the truck and watched as the police officer finished doing whatever it was they did in their cars and pulled out. He hit the pavement and sped away. James had no doubts that he was headed back to deal with Farmer Dell. He remembered the look on his face as they drove by, a curious mix of anger and concern. The more James thought about it the more he felt bad for the old farmer. His hysterics were only because something he loved was lost, and that's as normal a response as he could imagine.

  "Ready to go?" Nolan asked as he approached the truck. "I was thinking ice cream, what do you think?"

  "Sure," James said hopping into the passenger’s side.

  “Good, we can avoid Dell that way, too.” Nolan threw a bag onto James’s lap. It was heavy.

  "What's this?" James asked before even looking.

  "I thought it would help," Nolan said smiling.

  James opened the bag and inside was a pair of binoculars. "Awesome," he whispered.

  6

  After getting the ice cream, James was left with nothing to do except stare out the window. Everything seemed better with chocolate ice cream—that was James's mantra, anyway. He thought that maybe his dad was on to something when it came to the country. It was only his second day and the hardened shell of city-life conditioning was already beginning to fracture. He didn't miss TV, large numbers of people, or the constant noise. In fact, he was really starting to enjoy the quiet. He always thought the city was full of life and color, but the countryside was slowly revealing itself to him—and it was amazing. Even the binoculars had given him new eyes.

  He stared out the window and licked his ice cream, desperately trying to keep it from melting as the sun turned up the heat. Through the binoculars, he saw trees, rolling hills of grain, and the faces of houses set way back from the road. It seemed to be a trend, he noticed, for a house in the country to have a long driveway and be far from the road. It was as if they were trying to avoid the last lifeline they had back to the city. Most of the houses he saw were much older looking through the binoculars than he first thought and he saw a lot more animals than he thought were out there—even a couple of turkeys.

  Nolan took the "scenic" route back home, even though every route in the country was scenic as far as James was concerned. The road curved and then straightened out, cutting right through a green ocean of corn stalks that stretched as far as the eye could see, even with binoculars, on both sides. His father was no farmer, but James hadn't seen anything growing behind his dad's house.

  "How come there's no corn or anything behind the house?" James asked.

  "What do you mean?" Nolan said, fiddling with the radio for a station.

  "Well, all these other houses seem to be actual farms and there's nothing but grass at ours." James felt weird calling his dad’s house his own.

  Nolan thought for a moment then his face lit up, "Oh! That's because of the fire."

  "Fire?"

  "Yes, the house that was on that property burned down, and thanks to the extremely dry summer, the cornfield was so dried out it went up, too. The barn barely made it out, if you look at it you can still see burn marks from the flames." Nolan beamed, "It's one of the reasons I got such a good deal on the property. The guy said some chemical accelerants that got caught up in the fire ruined the field and it would have to be dug pretty deep and re-fertilized. You know how it is, the more work something needs, the cheaper it is. I saved so much money on the property it was actually cheaper to buy the land and build a new house than to buy one."

  "Wow," James said, "why didn't you just rebuild the barn then, too?"

  "
I thought it added character. A little charm from its old life. Works out double for me because I don't have to tend to the field since it takes up most the backyard. I love the country but I don't want to be a farmer. Funny how things seem to always work out.”

  All talking stopped as they turned back onto Nolan's dirt road and proceeded with the simulation of re-entering Earth's atmosphere. He eventually slowed down and turned into the driveway.

  "Why did you build such a big house then?" James asked as he stuffed the rest of his ice cream cone in his mouth.

  "The apartment was way too small, and besides, I don't plan on living alone forever," Nolan said, winking at him.

  That made the rest of James's ice cream taste sour. He had been seeing hints for a while that his dad was moving on but he didn't want to believe it. His dad made his way into the house, happy as always and James lagged behind. He kicked the large gravel in the driveway and moped to the steps. It wasn't until he was in the kitchen, washing away the sticky remnants of his sloppy ice cream eating that he happened to glance out the window. At the back of the yard staring back at him was the gray figure crouching in the same spot it had before. James looked around frantically for the binoculars.

  "Oh no, where did I put them?" he said panicking. He frantically searched the table and counters, periodically peeking out the window to make sure the creature was still there. It just sat there, still as the deer feeder in the middle of the field in