Forest Day

Forest Day

 Embracing aimlessness

Article by Logan Smith, art by  Andrew Little 

Lindy didn’t come to the forest on Sunday. She woke up with a runny nose that morning and her mother made her stay home.

Owen heard about Lindy’s cold from his mother and felt a sense of betrayal that his eight-year-old brain wasn’t yet able to apply a word to. Nonetheless, he found himself wondering why Lindy couldn’t have just chosen to make her nose run tomorrow, or the next day, or even the day after that. Sundays were forest days. They’d always been. Everyone knew that it was wrong to miss a forest day.

Owen’s mother wouldn’t let him go across the street to Lindy’s to ask her to make her nose stop running because it was “rude.” Owen didn’t see how any part of asking Lindy to make her nose stop running could be rude. If she took his advice, she’d probably feel better. When Owen asked a sixth time, his mother sighed loudly and left him alone in the kitchen.

Without Lindy, it was only Owen, Sammy, and Joe. It was harder with three. One of them would have to hold both flashlights—Sammy’s dad told them that it was always a good idea to bring at least two flashlights, no matter what time of day it was. Someone had to track down a new field journal. Lindy’s was blue with sparkly daisies, and though Sammy’s suggestion to break through Lindy’s window to grab it from her desk was compelling for a second, the boys ultimately decided against it. It probably would make Lindy’s mom mad. Plus, Lindy was the only one who could open it anyway—it was one of those secret journals with a lock, and Lindy wore the key around her neck on a silver chain from her mother.

         After taking one of the notebooks from Joe’s sister’s desk, the boys argued for about thirty minutes over who’d be the scribe, who’d have to hold both flashlights, and who’d get to be inspector. Owen realized that without Lindy, forest days were a lot harder to organize. Everyone knew that Lindy was the smartest in the group. Nobody else knew as many fairy facts and spells as Lindy did. Plus, Owen thought that she smelled better than the rest of them.

         In the end, as the second smartest person in the group, Owen convinced the rest of the boys to let him be inspector, as per usual. If anyone could flip rocks over quickly, it was Owen with his agile fingers. Sammy was assigned to flashlight duty and Joe was scribe. They set out, each wearing a pair of rain boots that swallowed their legs up to the kneecap. It wasn’t raining but the rain boots were a part of the procedure that, just like the flashlights, could not be broken. Tradition had to be maintained on forest days.

         “11:30 AM. Without Lindy, we won’t be able to find any fairy clues. So today, we’re looking for cool bugs,” Joe spoke aloud as he scribbled into his sister’s journal.

         “Cool or gross,” Sammy corrected him. Joe nodded and pushed the eraser against the page. They hadn’t even entered the forest and Owen could already see the sweat beading on Joe’s forehead. He was beginning to wonder if they’d ever get anything done without Lindy.

         At the end of the street, trees began to replace the houses, tickling the clouds and bending inward towards each other. Owen tried to count them a few weeks before, very quickly giving up as soon as he reached fifty. When Joe asked him how many there were at the end of the day, Owen said: “More than one hundred,” just to be safe.

         “Ready, boys?” Owen asked, teeth gritted and eyebrows furrowed to really emphasize how much business he meant. Forest days made Owen feel important. Like an adult. Or even better, like a superhero of sorts.

         “Ready, boss,” Sammy and Joe said in unison. Owen’s favorite part of forest days was the tradition of calling the inspector “boss.” Perhaps because Owen got to play inspector nearly every time and was also the one to both create and enforce this aspect of forest days.

         Cheek pressed into the dirt, Sammy yelled, “Boss! Look at this! Now!” He had very carefully focused the collective beam of his two flashlights onto a large brown leaf. Owen lay flat on the ground beside him and squinted at it.

         “So, you think it’s alive, inspector?” Sammy said.

         “That’s a leaf.”

         “Or is it a bug?”

         Owen brought a hesitant finger to it and gently flipped it over, revealing thirsty veins on its underside. Owen sighed and lifted himself off of the ground.“Told you so.” 

         Sammy sighed and stood back up. Owen heard Joe murmur under his breath as he scribbled into the notebook:

        “Bug was not bug, but really was leaf the whole time,” 

         He held the pencil like a cartoon turkey leg, fist clenched tightly around it as he dug its dull graphite into the paper. When Owen leaned over his shoulder to read his notes, there was not a single legible word on the page.

         “Let’s keep going,” Owen told them. The boys set forth, and when Sammy tripped in his oversized yellow rain boots, Owen and Joe pretended not to notice.

         Owen found a worm beside a bush and the boys fell silent as he began to poke it with a stick.

         “I don’t think it has magical powers,” Owen said. Joe nodded and stuck his tongue out in concentration as he copied down Owen’s words.

         “Wait, why not?” Sammy asked.

         “Because he probably wouldn’t let me poke him with this stick if he had magical powers.”

         “Oh. Yeah, that makes sense.” Sammy focused the flashlight beams on the worm and watched its slick body shimmer.

         “Not magic, but gross. Write that down, Joe,” Sammy said.

         “Hey!” Owen yelped.

         “What?”

         “I am the inspector. Write that down, Joe.”

         “Got it, boss,” Joe said, wiping his running nose across his wrist.

         It had only been about half an hour and the boys had already seen ten worms. It had rained the day before and Owen remembered how his mother once said that worms decided when they wanted to come out and most of the time, they only came out when it was wet and cool. In this way, Owen fancied worms as being sort of magical in their own right. They were elusive and mysterious, and Owen missed them when it wasn’t raining.

         It was when they reached the twelfth worm that Sammy began to groan and on the thirteenth he said, “Worms are boring. I’m gonna run ahead and see if there’s anything cool over there.”

         “We don’t split up!” Owen responded, putting his foot down in the same way his mother often did when she was angry.

         “But we’ll see more cool stuff if we do.”

         “Who’s the inspector?” Owen said.

         “You’re always the inspector. You never give anyone else a turn,” Sammy said.

         Owen scoffed and looked to Joe for support, but his nose was running so fast that he had trouble focusing on anything else. 

“It’s because I’m the best inspector,” Owen said. “Right, Joe?”

         “What?” Joe looked up from his crusted-over navy blue sleeve. 

         “I’m the best at playing inspector, so I play it every time, right?”

         “Uh… I—should I write that down?” Joe asked.

         “No. Just, don’t you agree that I’m the best inspector?”

         “Well, you never really give anyone else a turn.”

         “Ha!” Sammy shouted, his curls bouncing around his face as he jabbed a finger in Joe’s direction. “See? Even Joe agrees. So hold these flashlights and let me be inspector today.”

         Owen glared down at the flashlights balanced in Sammy’s grubby palms. “Fine,” he said, taking them from Sammy.

         “Then, on we go, boys!” Sammy yelled, trudging onward at a pace much too fast to notice worms at.

         Owen tried his best not to be visibly angry, but he felt Joe’s stare every time he took a step that was too stomp-like.

         “Look at this!” The boys heard Sammy scream from behind a tree.

Owen thought he looked little, the way his rain boots swallowed up the bottom half of his body and how his tangled curls covered most of his face. Without Lindy, Sammy was suddenly the smallest in the group.

“Herman!” Sammy yelled, motioning to a blob moving amongst crispy orange leaves. “The tallest spider in the world!”

“Why Herman?” Owen said.

“Because Herman is a name that a lot of tall people have.”

Joe nodded and scribbled down the name “Herman” in massive, crooked block letters. Owen realized that he was missing Lindy more and more by the minute. She had special handwriting, unlike anything Owen had ever seen. 

Herman walked in sporadic zigzags. They followed him close. Sammy on his hands and knees beside him, Owen crouched low—tongue out as he focused the beams on Herman’s long, spindly legs—Joe hovering above them at a safe distance, pretending to be far too busy with taking notes to actually examine Herman’s terrifying figure.

Herman led them to spots on the forest floor where the leaves pooled, rusty oranges and reds slowly invading bodies that were once green. Owen’s mother didn’t like autumn. She said that it made her feel like the world was spinning too fast. Owen didn’t understand how spinning fast could be anything other than fun. He never asked her.

At every pile of leaves they encountered, Sammy pocketed one. The first was bright orange, the second a pale yellow, and the third was red. A deep red with brighter dots of red across the surface. Sammy held it up to Owen’s flashlight and motioned Joe to take a closer look at it.

“Did you ever see a leaf with spots?” he asked. “It could be a fairy clue. Write this all down for Lindy.”

“I’ve seen a leaf with spots before,” Owen said.

Sammy glared. “Not spots like this. Focus the flashlights better.”

“I’m focusing them fine,” Owen growled.

Sammy’s thin eyebrows furrowed. “Are not! Focus them better,” he grunted, reaching for the lights secured tightly in Owen’s hands.

“I am doing fine!” Owen yelled.

“Do better!” Sammy yelled back.

“Hey… it’s just a game,” Joe said softly, though neither boy heard him.

“If you really focused the light, you’d see. You’d see the spots are different!”

“They’re just regular old spots!” Owen shoved Sammy and he fell into the crunchy, rotting leaves.

“You probably made me crush Herman!” he screamed.

“Get over it!” Owen yelled back. He waited for a response from Sammy that didn’t come. Sammy closed one eye and held the leaf up to the other, noticing something new.

“They aren’t regular spots,” he said softly. Owen and Joe leaned over Sammy’s shoulder.

“Ketchup?” Joe asked, pointing at the red, now smeared across the surface of the leaf.

Sammy’s eye caught the trail of red on the surface of the soil. “There’s more,” he whispered.

The boys shifted into a line, shoulders pressed tightly against one another. In sync, they followed the scattered red dots to a tree.

“What do you think is behind it?” Joe whispered.

Nobody answered him, but the line became tighter. Owen was suddenly finding it much harder to breathe. The air felt heavy in his lungs and each exhale seemed to swirl aimlessly overhead. In the past five minutes, the temperature must have dropped about ten degrees, turning the boys’ breath into thick, suspending fog.

Then, just as quickly as the chill had set over the air, Sammy snapped into something else. A different creature—entirely unafraid as his hands morphed into fists and his brows furrowed. Owen thought he looked like a grownup and copied him. Joe did the same, and in a less tight line now, the boys made their way towards the tree, creeping slowly but confidently around it.

Shoes. Black shiny shoes with gray laces—sort of like the ones Owen’s dad wore to work everyday—attached to legs, attached to a torso, attached to a bleeding chest. Owen paused at the blood. So did Sammy. So did Joe.

Fingers loosened, brows unfurrowed. The fearlessness that had fueled them just seconds ago had suddenly been swallowed whole by the slow trickle of blood creeping from this stranger’s chest. 

Joe screamed after a minute of silence. A loud, shrill, infantile scream. He sat down criss-cross applesauce in the dirt and buried his face in his hands.

“Is that guy dead?” Sammy whispered.

“Probably,” Owen said quietly.

“Should I poke him?”

“I don’t know.”

“He looks how they do in the movies,” Sammy said.

Joe lifted his head from his palms to whimper, “It’s nothing like the movies. Movies aren’t real.”

“What do we do?” Sammy asked.

“I don’t know,” Owen said. 

“Should we run away?”

“I don’t know.”

Silence tangled itself around Joe’s sharp whimpers and wheezes and the blood continued to spill from the man’s chest. Owen thought it did look sort of like ketchup. He wished it were.

He started to imagine what Lindy might do at this moment. She didn’t seem to be afraid of anything.

Owen knelt down next to Joe to pick up the pencil and notebook. In all capital letters, he scribbled, DEAD GUY. BLOODY. OLD.

“Can we go home?” Joe whispered, tugging at Owen’s sleeve, eyes wide and glossy.

“No. We have to solve this” Owen said, a quiet conviction growing in him.

“This is a grown-up thing to solve,” Joe said, his voice wavering even more now. “We should go home. It isn’t for kids.”

“We aren’t just kids. We’re detectives.” Owen stood up tall now, trying his very hardest to look the exact opposite of scared. Sammy’s eyes were still fixed on the man.

“Right, Sammy?” Owen said.

Sammy didn’t answer, but he didn’t look scared either. Owen moved to stand beside him, staring straight at the man too. He looked like he was sleeping. Owen always thought being dead would look scarier than being asleep.

“Listen, boys! I’m the inspector and I say that we need to go tell Lindy,” Sammy said finally.

Joe nodded and swiped at his nose, the snot flowing again. 

“But Lindy has a cold,” Owen whispered, taking into account the way his voice seemed to dissipate into the forest air.

“It doesn’t matter. Lindy always knows what to do,” Sammy said. He really did play a good inspector, as much as Owen hated to admit it. The boys turned and ran back towards Lindy’s house. 

If not for Queso, getting to Lindy’s bedroom window would be way too easy. She was on the first floor, just past the brown fence leading to the backyard. All they’d have to do is unlatch the fence and walk about five feet to her window. It was quiet in the backyard, but Owen knew Queso was deceptive. He could be very quiet if he wanted to be. 

“Do you think he’s back there?” Joe asked. Owen could hear the fear in his voice. 

“We don’t have time to worry about stupid Queso,” Sammy grumbled. He began to unlatch the fence and ignored Owen when he tried to cry out in protest. 

As soon as Sammy entered the backyard, a small gray blur vibrated and pulsated around the corner.

Owen tried to scream out to warn Sammy, but it was too late. Queso was upon him making dizzying, hellish rotations around his calves, nipping and screeching. Sammy yelped in fear or pain or both. Owen had already accepted Sammy’s death when he heard Lindy’s voice call out, “Here, Queso!” And everything went still. 

Queso transformed from his demon state back into a chihuahua, ears and tail reaching towards the crescent moon. 

The boys heard Lindy’s window squeak open wider and again she called, “Queso!” and poked her head out. 

“Hi Lindy,” Owen said. 

Lindy wiped the sleep from her eyes and hoisted herself out of her window. “Why are you guys here?” 

“Emergency,” Sammy said, rubbing his calves where the dog had been nipping. 

Lindy scooped Queso up and cradled him in her arms like an ugly, hairy baby. His tongue aimlessly lapped at the cold night air. “Didn’t my mom tell your moms that I’m sick today?” 

“Yeah, but we have a big emergency,” Joe said. Owen could see that his hands, which were clasped around his sister’s notebook, were shaking. “We found someone who’s dead,” he whispered. 

“What are you talking about?”
“Look!” Joe said, holding up the notebook to her face. “Look! It says—”

“I can read,” Lindy said and Joe shut his mouth. She took a moment to scan the page before she said, “I told you I can’t play today.” 

“We aren’t playing,” Sammy said slowly. “That’s real. We really did find a dead guy in the forest.”

         “No way Jose,” Lindy said.

         “Yes way Jose!” Joe countered. “Yes way! Yes way Jose!”

         Lindy dropped Queso and took a step closer to the boys. Sammy winced as the dog’s paws hit the ground, but Queso sat politely next to Lindy, suddenly a completely different dog. 

         “If you saw a dead guy in the forest, how come you’re not crying?” she asked, her voice more whisper-like now.

         Sammy and Owen pointed at Joe and said, “He did.” Joe shrugged and nodded.

         Lindy examined the puffiness of Joe’s red face and the way nervous sweat had plastered his red hair across his expansive forehead.

         “Okay,” she said, nodding. “Okay, I believe you.”

         “Then you gotta come see!” Sammy said.

         “But my mom said I can’t leave the house ‘til I get rid of this,” she said, jabbing a finger toward her nose.

         “Joe always has a runny nose but he still comes to the forest,” Sammy said.

         “It’s true!” Joe confirmed, wiping the snot from his own nose onto the crusty sleeve of his sweater.

         She picked Queso back up from the grass and cradled him in her arms again. “If my nose doesn’t stop running, I’ll never be able to see.”

         “We really need your help,” Owen said desperately.

         “All right,” she said. “Tomorrow after school.”

         “You have to promise,” Sammy said.

         “Yeah! Cross your heart! And also pinky swear,” Joe said, holding out his finger.

         “I don’t want to pinky. You wipe your nose with that hand. But I cross my heart. Tomorrow after school.”

         “Should I tell my dad?” Sammy asked.

         Lindy considered this for a moment. “No,” she said. “If our parents know about this, we’ll never have another forest day ever again. Nobody tell your parents. That’s a deal. Okay?”

“Okay,” Sammy said. He looked down at his feet and Owen noticed that the fearless leader he had played in the woods was beginning to melt away.

The light in Lindy’s parents’ room clicked on and Lindy gasped and scrambled back over to her window. Before climbing back into the dark abyss of her bedroom, Lindy whispered once more, “Tomorrow.” 

For a moment, the boys stood in silence. The frogs from the forest were beginning their nighttime croaking. It almost made Owen feel better. 

Sammy squeezed between the gate and wall. None of them made a single comment about the blood dotting his pants or how it was similar to what they had just seen in the woods.

Joe squeezed the notebook to his chest even tighter than before. Owen watched his exhalations dance through the cold, dark air like smoke out of a dragon’s mouth.

         “Like Lindy said,” Sammy whispered. “Tomorrow.”

They didn’t say much after that, but walked toward their homes, the air silent except for the squeaking of rain boots and the chorus of frogs.