While they set up camp in the morning, Mike tried to tell Uncle Jerry he had no sense of direction. He meant to explain how often he got lost in unfamiliar places, thinking his uncle might take precautions. Uncle Jerry misunderstood.
“How old are you again?”
It was the summer of 1996 and he was twelve—almost thirteen, but regardless, the youngest on the trip, behind his brother Corey and cousin Ben, both seventeen and at a point in life when four or five years meant a world of difference.
“You kids get pressure these days.” Uncle Jerry shook his head—at the pressure, at the tent poles he struggled to erect. “You start worrying about sense of direction when you’re twelve, for Chrissake. I’m forty-five, and I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.”
Mike could imagine that was true. Uncle Jerry was a fun uncle—sports crazed, always amassing memorabilia like game-worn jerseys and autographed baseball cards. He had a day job, selling insurance or something, but never talked about that when Mike’s family came over and brushed it off when Mike’s dad asked him how work was going.
“Focus on what makes you happy,” Uncle Jerry said. “You’re only a kid once, then you’ll have a job like Corey and Ben over there, then before you know it, you’ll be married and have kids and a mortgage.” Uncle Jerry stepped back from the tent, hands poised, ready to catch it if it collapsed. He backed right into the duffel bag with the cans of baked beans, tipping it over, and nearly toppling himself as he barked a staccato goddamnit!
“What do you think, Ben?” Corey asked. He and Ben had already set up their tent—a new one, the nylon still a spotless blue because it had never been rained on, never touched dirt before that morning. “Is my brother ever going to get married?”
Ben was nicer to Mike when it was just the two of them. But when he was with Corey, it seemed like he couldn’t resist being an asshole. “Let’s set expectations appropriately.” Ben took on academic tone, a part of his shtick when he made fun of someone, to come across like he was only being logical or like he was too smart for a mere mortal to argue against. “Do I think your brother’s ever going to get to first base? Maybe—when he’s old enough to get someone intoxicated and lower her inhibitions.”
“Quiet you two!” Uncle Jerry said. The tent fell, and he scrambled to catch it while Corey and Ben laughed at him. “Why you don’t you two princesses leave Mike alone and help me get this tent right?”
They did help him but didn’t stop giving Mike a hard time. That night they, razzed him about not knowing how to stab his stick far enough through a marshmallow so it didn’t fall off into the fire and about how he’d never kissed a girl (Mike was pretty certain Corey hadn’t either, but Corey preemptively punched him hard enough in the arm that Mike didn’t say anything).
#
Early the next morning, Mike walked deep into the woods to pee and got lost.
It was a long enough pee to turn and target different leaves and what he thought might’ve been an ant hill. He thought better of peeing on it, in case something more menacing hid beneath the surface. It was only after he’d rotated three or four times and the stream had dried up that he realised he wasn’t sure which direction he’d come from.
#
Getting lost in the woods was an adventure, Mike decided, relieved when he couldn’t hear his brother or his cousin.
Alone in the woods, he could be anyone.
So, when Mike found a red bandana slung over a tree branch, he picked it up. He mused it could have been left over from a game of capture the flag, or maybe some hiker had dropped it as they passed through. Mike imagined someone planting it to declare the tree their own, and in taking it, Mike might prompt a band of prospectors or pirates to chase after him. It reminded him of the Indiana Jones-style fantasies he and Corey used to play out together, before Corey outgrew them and started making fun of Mike when he caught him playing pretend, so Mike relegated his imagination to stories written in the backs of spiral notebooks at school. The pencil in his hand couldn’t keep up with his thoughts, though, so despite periodic stabs at writing, Mike usually found himself staring off into space.
Mike climbed a tree so he could look out from a higher vantage point and scan the perimeter. He covered himself in fallen leaves, so no one could find him, then ran around in spirals to confuse anyone trying to trace his footsteps in the dirt. He was having the time of his life until he came across the bird.
Its brown feathers, white belly, and little orange feet stretched up in the air, its wings folded to its sides. The bird was small enough Mike might have fit it in his pocket. Stiff. Still. Dead.
Mike studied the corpse, roused from his game by something real, and laid the bandana down over the body.
#
Mike grew hungry. He’d foregone breakfast to leave camp and pee.
He came upon a sweet-smelling patch of wild berries. They looked something like blueberries, but were fragile like raspberries. He curled up the bottom of his t-shirt into a makeshift basket and gathered some.
As he walked on, though, he spotted a daddy long legs crawling through the berries cradled in his shirt, freaked, and sent the berries and spider flying.
And weren’t some berries poisonous? He bet Uncle Jerry would know which were safe to eat, but who knew how long it would be until Uncle Jerry got to him? Shouldn’t Mike have heard someone calling his name by now?
He was starving.
Better to forego the berries. Better to find his way back to camp. He called out Uncle Jerry! then Corey!
No answer.
#
Without a watch, there was no way of telling how long Mike had wandered the woods.
He came upon a plastic bag with frayed handles, the opening flapping free in the breeze. There were some leaves on top of it, suggesting it may have rested hidden until the wind blew away its cover. Mike guessed the bag hadn’t been there long when he saw the glossy pages inside still intact.
Inside: an issue of Entertainment Weekly with a cover photo of a starlet in a tank top, breasts pressed together, short-shorts revealing the length of her legs.
Inside: a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.
Inside: a Victoria’s Secret catalogue, the cover proclaiming it a Holiday Preview. A robe hung loose from a dark-haired woman’s arms, revealing a set of matching black underwear, her stomach bare.
Mike figured the stash must belong to another kid, someone not old enough to buy one of the magazines they kept on the top shelf at the drug store and not ballsy enough to steal one like Ben bragged about when Mike and Corey visited his house, extracting a Penthouse from beneath his mattress.
Mike leafed through the pages, stealing looks at the most risque pages quickly, lest Corey, Ben, or Uncle Jerry sneak up on him. Some of the magazine pages were particularly wrinkled, and he imagined the original owner clutching them tight.
Mike surprised himself when he found a picture from the Entertainment Weekly most provocative of all. Not the woman from the cover, and not even a star as far as he could tell, but a woman in a full-page ad for gum, posed with her head pitched back, wisps of blond hair flying free in the breeze. She wore a brown and blue flannel shirt tied at the midriff, acid wash jeans. She was barefoot, and she swung carefree in a tire swing while a man—her boyfriend, of course—ran up behind her, a little blurry.
Squint his eyes, and Mike imagined he could’ve been that boyfriend. He had the same dark brown hair, and Mike was already tall for his age. Once he filled out some, like Mom assured him he would, why couldn’t he be the broad-shouldered beau to a woman like this?
Mike took the magazine with him and kept it folded open to this page so he could fantasise about the woman—he decided her name was Stacy—walking with him through the woods, or else imagine, when he made his way past a particularly thick tree trunk or dense shrub, he’d find her swinging from a tire, waiting for him.
#
“Mike?”
Uncle Jerry wasn’t exactly shouting, but Mike nonetheless heard him before he saw him. Before his uncle could get into eyesight, Mike ripped the page with Stacy’s picture from its binding, folded it haphazardly and stuffed it in his pocket before he tossed the rest of the magazine into a bush.
“There you are,” Uncle Jerry said. “Just realised you weren’t with us. Come on, we’re going to get out on the water and see what we can catch for lunch.”
Mike followed him back without saying he hoped they didn’t catch anything at all. Every time he’d watched, let alone been cajoled into participating in deboning fish, it’d left him without an appetite, and he’d prefer the Spam he knew Uncle Jerry brought along as a backup.
He followed Uncle Jerry in silence, only briefly thinking to marvel at how this grown man knew his way so directly through the woods—probably some trick of following the sun’s position in the sky or the way the wind blew. They got back to the campsite in no time at all.
#
Back safe at the tents, Mike changed from his jeans to his swim trunks. Corey caught a little fish and Uncle Jerry caught a big one. Plenty for them all to have lunch. Mike daydreamed through most of their time on the boat, thinking of Stacy and wondering how the picture would hold up in his pocket, or what he’d say if it tumbled loose and his brother saw it.
Mike asked his uncle what time it was.
“Relax,” Uncle Jerry said. “Out here, time doesn’t matter.”
#
That night, Uncle Jerry drank too much beer, got drowsy, and turned in early. Then Corey and Ben disappeared into the woods. Alone by the campfire, Mike ventured a look at the magazine page.
It turned out, in his hurry, he’d ripped loose the wrong page, a wall of text on one side, an ad for the Ford Contour on the other. He looked closely at the car, a man and woman faintly visible on the far side of the windshield. Mike tried to see if it might be Stacy pictured there, too, but it wasn’t. This woman had darker hair, more angular features, an open-mouthed smile that looked overtly posed, not free and easy like Stacy’s. Stacy was somewhere in the woods where he’d never find her again.
Mike crumpled the page and tossed it in the fire. It amazed him how quickly something could burn. How quickly someone might be lost forever.
DoubleSpeak 