Wednesday, October 19, 2016

The Field



    He awoke to the sound of birds. He could identify the a few of the sounds: the crows, because of their distinctive caw; the short bursts of sound from the goldfinches, as they were often at his house; the call of the chickadee, because he knew the sound is the bird’s namesake. The sounds turned over in his mind; they triggered memories. Soon after he woke, he shook off the dust that settles on the brain in the night, and it became clear that the patterns of sound he heard were not familiar. They didn’t come from the birds at his house.
    He sat up in his sleeping bag, which was positioned in the center of a small field. It was cold. The tall blades of grass had knitted the morning dew into complex patterns of frost long before he woke. Beside him lay a ring of small stones which he had collected the night before. Within this ring lay lumps of blackened wood, the coals from the night before now laden with the same frost that encrusted the field. The ice particles clung to the dead coals, strangling any heat that may have remained from the previous fire. He needed to get warm.
    Shimmying out of the black down sleeping bag, he slipped on his worn tennis shoes and he headed for the woods. The field was almost a perfect rectangle, and the boy had no idea why it was there. To access it, one had to hike about twenty-five minutes into the woods on a poorly-marked trail. It was extremely difficult to find during the night, as the trail leading there had many twists and turns. The boy, of course, had managed to find it in the darkness. He knew where the stones and shrubs lay that might trip him, and despite not being able to see them, he could avoid them easily. He knew the path better than most. In fact, most knew not that the path existed.
    When he reached the edge of the rectangular field, he climbed over a stone wall to enter the forest. First, he searched for birch bark and the tiny, dead branches of hemlock trees. He had learned in summer camp about three years before, when he was ten years old, that these made for fantastic kindling and could start a fire easily, even when wet.
    After he had collected the kindling, he collected sticks by size. He started by picking up twigs, gradually increasing the size of the sticks until he had a wide variety of sizes and shapes. When he was satisfied, he crossed the stone wall once more, back towards the small ring of stones in the center of the field. Here he started rebuilding his fire. Using one of the medium-sized sticks he had grabbed, he pushed aside the hunks of charcoal occupying the space in the center of the ring. He replaced them with a ball of the kindling, and built a cone of twigs around the ball. He pulled a box of matches from his pocket and set the cone aflame. As the cone caught, he added more sticks the fire, again in order of size. In a matter of minutes the fire was blazing, and he crouched by the yellow flames with his hands outstretched.
    It was a longing to escape that had brought the small boy of thirteen to this field in the woods, that brought him to sleep exposed to the elements, his only shelter the down sleeping bag he had taken from his older sister’s closet the night before. He remembered the last time he slept outside. He was ten years old, at a summer camp that he didn’t want to go to. His father thought it would be good for him.
    The boy’s father was not a kind man, and he treated his family quite poorly. They were wealthy, yes, but that didn’t improve their situation significantly. The boy had listened to his father scream at his mother night after night for almost two years. Their wealth fixed none of their problems: his father took to the bottle each afternoon, immediately after he returned from work, and the bottle turned him into a monster.
    The night before this particular ordeal in the woods, the boy’s mother left the house, afraid for her life. The boy’s father had never hinted at physical violence before, but on this fateful night, he almost hit her. He stopped himself before the blow hit its target, but the damage had already been done. She tried to take him and his sister, but their father would not let her. She fled. Once he realized that his mother was gone, the boy grabbed his backpack and a sleeping bag out of his sisters closet and took off to the one place where he knew he could be alone: the field.
    Making a fire had been easy; there were many stones scattered among the grass, and the surrounding woods provided plenty of fuel. His problem was that he had forgotten food, and in the morning he had to wait to search for it. It was too cold in the early hours to travel far from the fire, and all he had brought for warmth was a cotton sweatshirt. He had to wait for the frost to melt, for the air to warm.
    In the meantime, he searched for entertainment. As the backpack he brought was the same one he brought every day to school, it provided little to do. He did have a couple of writing utensils: a pencil, a few black pens, and one red pen for corrections. Falling prey to boredom, the boy took hold of his pens, and began to draw on his clothing, as he had no other medium with him.
    On his left sleeve, he drew a daisy, carefully placing each petal around its center. On his right, he drew the ocean, creating layers of waves with one glistening shark fin emerging from the shallows. On his pants he drew patterns, swirling designs and strange shapes. Some areas looked organic, revealing intricate curls and lifelike shapes, while others looked artificial, featuring sharp angles and parallel lines.
    Soon the air had warmed, so the boy entered the forest in search of food and water. He walked in a straight line, worried about losing his way and being unable to find the field again. He made sure to kick up the stiff leaves as much he could, creating a ruckus while trying to mark his path. He thought about summer camp, about how they had searched the woods for edible plants and fungi. “Chicken of the woods” was a phrase he remembered, and he searched the forest for this common mushroom. He stumbled upon some about twenty minutes into his journey, and he picked the fungus with glee. He ran back to his campsite, elated by his find.
    When he reached his sleeping bag, he set the mushroom in the grass, and headed back towards the woods in search of water. Before he reached the stone wall, however, he thought of an animal stealing his precious food. He ran back to the mushroom, hid it deep in his sleeping bag, and returned to the woods. He walked in a straight line again, but this time in a different direction. He listened intently for the sound of water, but he heard nothing other than the sounds of animals in their own search of sustenance and the breeze blowing through the dying leaves.
    He had been walking for almost an hour when he reached a pond. When he spotted the water through the brightly-colored leaves, he began to run. He sprinted into branches that whipped his face, staining it red and making it burn. He ran into holes that made him trip, but each time he fell, he got up once more. When he reached the pond, he stared at it intently. It was a small pond, not more than one hundred square feet. Leaves floated on its surface, breaking his reflection as he stared. The water was brown and murky, and it left much to desire. He saw small creatures writhing in the mud, clouds of muck blossoming as they did. He knew he couldn’t drink from it.
    Disappointed, he walked on. He thought of his life at home, of his sister and his mother. He didn’t know his sister well, as she was significantly older than him. She spent most of her time with her friends, and she would come home late in the night, usually after the boy had gone to bed. He missed his mother. She was a tender soul, always willing to help with anything she could. She would get frustrated sometimes, yes, and make a hurtful comment. When this happened, the boy would usually flee to his room. She always felt genuine remorse after this, and she would knock quietly on his door, enter, and apologize. His father was different. He used to be tender, but he had changed. He was no longer the kind and caring father of the boy’s youth, he was now bitter and cold. He would say things that made his mother cry. He would yell. The boy’s sister refused to talk to him, she would walk right by him when she came home from school or the house of a friend and head straight to her bedroom. He would attempt to talk to her, but he never elicited a response.
    When another hour had passed, he realized he probably wouldn’t find water by continuing this way. Not wanting to get lost, he decided to return to the field and journey back into the woods, this time in another direction. While he was walking back to the field, he pondered the practicality of his plan to stay there. As of that moment, he had no source of water and limited food. Even his food, now, he had doubts about. The last time he had seen chicken of the woods was three years before. He only vaguely remembered what it looked like, and he wasn’t sure if he could identify what he had collected. He was hungry. He was thirsty. This was the longest he had gone without food or water in his life, and he could feel it. He reached the stone wall once more, and he sat on it for a while this time, taking a break from all the walking he had done. He knew, however, that he had much more to do: so he trekked off in the woods in yet another direction, kicking up leaves and humming.
    So the boy trudged on through the forest, with ink covering his clothes, trying to draw on old memories of a summer camp he attended so long ago. An hour passed, and he neither heard nor saw any hint of water. He walked on. A second hour passed, and still, he had no luck. It was starting to get dark, and the boy decided it was time to head back.
    He reached his campsite once more. He was starving and he was parched. He wanted to tear his stomach out of his torso, as he didn’t want to deal with the pain. His head throbbed. He sat down. The fire was out at this point, and he quietly rebuilt it. His movements were less precise than before: where earlier he had placed the ball of kindling in the center of the ring, he now slapped it somewhere off to the left. Instead of placing the twigs on the kindling in a conical shape, he threw them on top of it, making an ugly pile. He struck a match and held it to the ball. It caught. He piled some sticks on it and collapsed. After a while he had the thought that, despite being thirsty and hungry, at least he was warm. He was exhausted. He crawled into his sleeping bag, grabbing the mushroom that he couldn’t quite identify now and throwing it away from him, and he drifted off to sleep.
    He woke up in the middle of the night, cold. Something smelled strange, almost like incense. The fire was producing its last dying flames, licking towards the blackened wood, reaching for the sustenance that it could not attain. The flames died quickly. Next to the red coals lay a charred mushroom, his only possible food source crumbled and burned. He began to cry. He was cold, he was lonely, and he missed his mother.
    The boy stopped crying abruptly and struggled out of his sleeping bag, his face painted crimson with anger. He stomped on the fire, on the coals and the charred mushroom. He kicked the small stones every which way. He grabbed the sleeping bag and his backpack, threw them over his shoulder, and marched toward the path from which he came, the dew fleeing from the grip of the grass to soak his ink stained pants.
    When he emerged from the path and onto the road, he was blinded by the headlights of a speeding car. The night was dark, as the moon was in the last stages of its waning. A truck flew by him, and the wind it produced made him shiver. He wanted to go home. The pavement felt like it was radiating cold air.
    He knew the way home well, but it was much too far to walk considering the low temperature, so he developed a plan. He started walking backwards towards his house, looking at the traffic coming at him. He stuck his hand out and raised his thumb.
    He remembered this gesture from a movie he had watched when he was younger, a movie had watched on the leather couch of his living room, surrounded by his family. Blue light from the television hung heavy in the air, and the soft sounds of voices entered his ears.He remembered the image of a road on the screen, an image of tall evergreens looming over the pavement, and image of a mountain watching over everything in the distance. He remembered sitting on the couch next to his father: his sister in the recliner and his mother already in bed. His body was curled in fetal position as he drifted to sleep, his body impressed upon the worn leather of the couch, his head resting lightly on his father’s lap.

2 comments:

  1. Wow, this story was really sad, but well written, I like the way you described all the things he was doing. It sort of reminded me of Into The Wild. The vivid description really made the story come to life.

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  2. This is a very interesting story. Your introduction with your descriptions of the birds is very engaging and a good way to begin. You did a nice job of explaining enough to engage the reader but not giving away too much information so that there is still room to think and question. The diction you use is strong and descriptive. One of my favorite lines was "creatures writhing in the mud, clouds of muck blossoming". It painted a vivid picture in my head of what the boy was experiencing. I also liked that you did not give the boy a name. I think this makes the story more relatable perhaps. If someone has a similar experience with family issues they can insert themselves into the story and connect. Nice job.

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