-- Num ---- Username ---- Category ------------- Posted -- Expires --- Pages ---
| 44450 | STU_RSFURR   | STORIES              | 12/15/92 | 12/22/92 |    14    |
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| Description: a story at last                                                 |
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This is the first draft of a story I'm writing for my creative
writing class. I thought it might go over well here in STORIES....
   ronin
 
 
 
     The tire tracks, three or four inches deep in the red clay,
were slowly filling with water. Looked at just right, and they
seemed two ribbons of steel, or maybe silver, as the solid mass of
clouds drifted across the six-inch sky. But then he moved his head,
and they went back to being red and brown, cloudy water. There was
a stick, a little brown knobby stick, not even a twig, that had
fallen into the tracks not too long ago. The rain hadn't forced it
under the water. But then, he noticed, the rain was slowing, maybe
stopping for the first time in days. There was blue sky to the
north, letting one of those stairways to heaven through, but that
quickly closed.
     There was  noise, a sort of brushing-aside of forest
undergrowth noise, and he looked up. Maybe they'd come back. Maybe
they were finished. But no, it was just a buck deer. Small horns,
a brown hide that stood out against the grey bark and the dark
rotting leaves of the forest. It, he maybe, looked at the boy. The
boy looked at it. Are they its or hes he wondered. A blink, and the
buck was gone, running across the bent-grass meadow, green-gray-
black lines bent by the rain, brushed aside by the buck. The buck
left the grass a little straighter behind him, he'd knocked off the
water that held the blades down.
     The boy walked over to where the buck had been, standing just
at the edge of the forest. There, pressed into the leaf and stick
crpeting, were little half-circles, punched through the rotting
car.
     It was cold, and it was better to stand in the open and let
the rain hit you square on, than sit under a tree, getting the
concentrated drips off of the branches above. Weren't they done
yet?
     They might not be, he conceded, whatever they were doing had
to be something important, and important things take time. That's
what Pa had always said. Maybe he was making sure, being patient,
doing what he always said he did. But it was cold, and so hard to
wait. The house was up the hill, but the house was cold too. "A
real Virginian house," he'd heard a Tech professor say, when the
man had been by for something. "A real Virginian house." The boy
guessed that a real Virginian house was something that was always
cold, where boards creaked, and you had to always be getting sheet
metal for the roof, and there were boxes piled up outside,
cardboard and styrofoam and wooden, all sorts of boxes to play in.
Pa was proud for a while after the professor had left, looking
around the house, but before long he'd gone back to normal, like
he'd given up again.
     But that wasn't now, and Pa was off with Joseph in the woods,
doing something that they wouldn't tell Billy about. "You'd just
tell, you would." Joseph said. Joseph was sixteen, he knew a lot,
and thought he knew even more. He'd been to high school and
everything. Billy wanted to go to high school, but Joseph had
laughed.
     The rain picked up again.
     Billy looked around. Maybe he should go to the house. Pa had
said he shouldn't, but Pa wasn't here. He looked at the house.
There was a stream of water coming off the roof, but inside, in the
box that he kept, he could be warm and dry, even if the roof was
leaking again.
     Maybe that was it? Maybe Pa was worried about him. Billy'd
heard stories about water and ... electriity. No, he decided.
There wasn't any electricity in the house now, and Pa hadn't even
looked at him this morning, just told him to stay out of the house
until they got back, and then he left.
     The tire tracks were melting now. The sides were sliding into
the center, and it was just mud now. He poked  stick into the
clay, and heard a sucking noise as he pulled it out.
     The grass where the buck had passed was bent down again, so
he couldn't see where the deer had gone. He looked, but the path
wasn't there anymore, just the two softening lines of the tire
tracks.
     You can't kick at the ground in the rain. The foot's supposed
to scuff off of the ground and keep swinging, but Billy's foot just
hit the ground and stuck.
     Billy cried at not being able to scuff his feet. It was a
little thing, he knew, but everything was ganging up on him.  was
cold, he was alone, he couldn't go to the only place in the world
he wanted to be, and it roke him. He ran over to the edge of the
forest gain, knelt on a fallen log, or maybe a rock, because even
then he knew enough to keep his knees out of the mud, and hugged
a tree, a rough-barked, grey-fungus covered tree, just big enough
for a kid to hug. He squeezed that tree, hugged it and cried like
he had wanted to hug and cry for so long. The beaded water that had
collected on the tree's branches showered down on him, but he
didn't care this time. He was crying.
     The rain running down his face mixed with his tears, and the
first salty taste running into his mouth halted his sobbing.
     He just knelt there, for a while, feeling the ice coldness
absorb his knees, his legs, and only then did he move. His legs
were fuzzy, numb, and he stumbled a little getting up.
     There were lights on up the other hill, big bright lights
through wide windows, he noticed. The light gray bunch of clouds,
that he guessed hid the sun, was down near the horizon, and it was
getting dark.
     He sniffled, rubbing his nose with his wet arm, feeling the
coldness of his arm with his now-red nose. Maybe he could go to the
Finch's house, maybe hide under the eaves if the Finch family
didn't want him inside. They were rich, the Finches, he supposed.
They had two cars, and twenty-three acres where they didn't want
anybody hunting, and both the father and the mother hd jobs. But
that was the direction Pa and Joseph had gone with the truck, and
he knew Pa'd be upset if Pa found him walking that way.
     He looked back at the house, sitting in the middle of a circle
of tall grass and tiny trees, with Pa's junk pile outside. There
was a box and a little rug there, he could take those, and make a
house to wait in out here. Maybe it'd be like camping out, like on
the tv. Billy ran up the short slope and grabbed the box, pulling
it downhill, pushing and struggling. It weighed more than he did,
but eventually he got it mostly down the hill.  Was this far
enough? Would Pa be mad? Billy didn't want Pa to hit him again, or
maybe even worse, maybe make him stay out here overnight, without
a box, like he did to Joseph that time that Joseph asked the
Michalelis girl out. He decided to try and get it a little further
away from the house.
     The box slid easily over the grass, but got stuck in the mud-
tracks of Pa's pickup. Trying to push it a little further, just a
little further, Billy got a splinter in his hand. It hurt, but not
a lot, and he wanted to be out of the rain more than he wanted to
try and get the splinter out. But that far was good enough, he
figured. He rn back up, feeling the water in his shoes, feeling
good to be doing something, even though Pa had said he'd never be
good for anything. The carpet was there, all rolled up, and tied
with a shoelace. Pa had never said where he got it. It was a nice
carpet, soft and warm with really smooth designs on it. If you
looked at it in the light, there were dragons, and funny curly-cue
shapes, but the colors had ran together when Pa had just left it
outside, and it wasn't near as pretty as it had been. But it was
soft, and thick enough to keep the cold out.
     The box had a lid on it, one with a hinge, and he'd pushed it
so that the lid could be like a little door. He pulled the lid up
and went inside, with the carpet. It was a tight fit, putting the
carpet down, but eventually it was neat, and Billy settled in his
warm spot, listening to the rain outside, feeling the heat of his
body make the water go away.
     Then he heard the two flat echoing booms. Shotguns, e knew,
from when Pa had gone deerhunting. ut that was a long time ago,
and Pa hadn't come back with any deer. He'd sworn up and down that
there wasn't any deer left in these parts, even though Joseph had
told Billy when Pa had stormed off with his bottle of liquor that
there were deer, Pa had just missed them. But the booms were the
same. They sounded just like the ones that Billy'd heard then.
Then, after that, there were a lot of little snap-crack noises,
like they were far away, and those stopped too.
     Billy opened the lid to listen some more, but all he heard was
a car driving along the valley road.
     It was cold out there, and warm in the box, so Billy closed
the lid and wrapped his arms around him, leaning against the back.
He wanted his blanket, or his knife, a wonderful red and silver
knife that Pa'd told him came from a yard sale, that he'd slept
with for a year. But all he had was himself to hold on to, so he
did.
     After a while, he slept.
     Later, how muh later he didn't know, he heard a car crunch
gravel on the driveway, and awoke. There wasn't any daylight coming
through the cracks in the box, it was dark, but there were
headlight-lights from the hill.
     Billy didn't want to leave, it was warm, and Pa hadn't come
back, but he knew that the truck didn't have working headlights any
more, and he had to see what was going on. He opened the lid, and
yelped with pain as his stiff arm protested, but he crawled out.
It was dark, and the rain had died down to a little misty drizzle.
The headlights were next to the house, square ones, that cast
sharp-edged shadows. Billy's eyes hurt, and his back and arms, but
he ran up to the stand of trees close to the house and looked. It
was a car, a car like you saw on tv, with lots of antennas coming
out the top, and it was white all over, and Pa was in the back
seat.
There were two men with him, one in the car's driver's seat, with
the door open, and another shining a light around the place. Billy
couldn't see the one outside too well, but the one in the car was
wearing a dark shirt. Billy went a little closer. What was Pa
doing? Where was Joseph?
     "All right, now where's this son of yours?" the man in the
dark shirt said. Pa just looked at the floor. Billy couldn't see
his face, but he said something back.
     "What?" the man said.
     Pa looked up, he was mad. "I said, I tol him to wait for me
down the hill!"
     "Chuck, go look down the hill. Wherever that is." The man with
the flashlight started coming towards Billy, waving his flashlight,
moving slowly. "I think you're just trying to give the real son a
chance to get away, with this nonsense. You don't have another
son."
     "I do too!" Pa cried, rain or tears down his face. "When Mary
almost died in that damned hospital with Joseph, I said I wasn't
never going to take her there again, and when she died after Billy
was born, I just took her in and never tol the government about
him!"
     "Sure. Right. Why wouldn't he be in the house, then? Why would
he be down the hill waiting for you at four o'clock in the
morning?" the man said. The man with the flashlight had seen
something over away from Billy and was shining his flashlight
there. Billy shrunk back.
     "'Cause I tol him to wait! And he knows if he didn't do what
I said, I'd wallop him one!" Pa looked like normal, for a second
there, but then he just lost himself, and went back to being sad.
     "No," said the man in the car." I don't think you have another
son. You're just letting that other son away. It won't work,
though. There's another car looking for him."
     "I ain't tryin to let nobody away! I dearly hope to God that
Joe does make it away, I don't want him dying in no prison. Just
let him be!" Pa was crying, Billy saw. "Let him be." he repeated.
Pa had never cried before.
     Billy started crying. Pa was crying. The man with the
flashlight spun around, shining a beam of light like a scalpel
right at Billy. Billy froze.
     "Holy...! He was right! There is a boy here!" the man with the
flashlight said, starting to walk towards the clump of trees.
     That broke the spell, and Billy started scrabbling backwards,
away from the man.
     "Hold on, son!" the man said, starting to run a little faster.
"I'm not going to hurt you." He had a kind voice, but Pa was
crying, and Billy got up to run away from the man who was making
Pa cry. He made a few steps and then tripped, and the man was up
to him, holding out a hand, helping him up. The man knelt.
     "Son, is that man your father?" He pointed to Pa, and Billy
nodded. "Son, your father tried to do a very bad thing today." THe
man tried to continue, but Pa jumped out of the car, and Billy saw
he was handcuffed.
     "Is trying to give your sons something so damned bad?" he
cried, and tried to run to Billy, but the other man held him back.
     The man with the flashlight continued talking. "He's got to
go away for a while, and so will your brother. We'll take care of
you, since he won't be able to any more. Now wait here for a
second, all right?"
     Billy nodded again, and the man ran a few steps up the slope
to the car.  "Can you take care of him, Bob? I'd like to stay here
with the boy."
     The other man nodded, and pushed Pa back in the car, and
closed the door on him. Pa just bowed his head again. "You'll be
all right until we can get another unit out here?"
     "I'll be fine." said the man with the flashlight. He turned
and walked back to Billy, turning back to wave as the car pulled
out and away. He knelt again by Billy. "Come on, son. It'll be
drier inside." he held out a hand, but Billy didn't move.
     In the light of a flashlight, there was a spiderweb,
glistening with beaded rain, with a single strand stuck to Billy's
shoulder. The man reached out and broke the strand, shaking drops
of light onto the forest floor. "Come on." He held out his hand
again, and Billy, still crying started walking. He almost fell, but
the man supported him, and then swung him up to his shoulders.
Billy hugged him, and cried again, in the strong arms tht carried
him up the hill, to the house. Before they got there, he was asleep
once more.