Running

Colton Williams
 

“How long have we been gone?” I asked.

        “Long enough.”

        “Enough for what?” I held onto a flimsy tree branch and slid down the muddy hillside.

        “Long enough that we can stop.”

        I didn’t really know what he meant, but I followed him anyhow. He slowed his pace, rustling the dead leaves as he dragged his feet across the ground. He found a big rock and threw his backpack on it and then lied down. He patted the rock and motioned for me to sit. “C’mon, there’s enough room for both of us.”

        “We’re staying on a rock?”

        “Where else is there?”

        “All night we’re gonna stay here?”

        “I said where is else is there?”

        “I don’t know, we could probably find something on down.”

        “Go on down then.” He stretched out so his feet were almost touching me on the far end of the rock. He laid his head down on his backpack. “I’ll be here.”“No,” I said. “I’m not going by myself.”

        “Then I guess you’re staying on the rock.”

        I guessed I was too. I threw my bag down next to the rock and rested my head on my fist. For the first time I saw how dark it was. Just a little bit of moonlight lit up the trees in the distance, making shapes out of all the mangled, twisted branches. They seemed to create faces; ugly, creepy faces that watched you through the trees. I’d move a little in one direction or the other and that would change the picture the trees made.

        The moon was rising, and pretty soon I reckoned it would be right above us here on this rock. Henry hadn’t seemed to say anything for a while, so I tapped him on his foot and asked if the moon moves around the Earth or the Earth around the moon.

        “The moon orbits the Earth,” he said, and then proceeded to ignore me for what seemed like a lifetime more. I looked at the faces in the trees. I counted the ants running along a log. I whistled through a blade of grass.

        “Say, Henry?”

        “Yeah?” he said, his arm draped over his eyes.

        “When do you reckon we’ll head home?”

        “Home?”

“Yeah, when do you reckon we’ll head on home? It’s Sunday tomorrow and we’ll need to take a bath before church.”

        “We’re not taking baths this time.”

        I stretched up and sniffed my underarm. “Shoot, Henry, I don’t smell too good and I’d say you probably smell a good deal worse.”

        “That’s not what I meant, moron.”

        “Well what did you mean? Mama’s probably done laid our Sunday clothes out already and we’ll have to take a bath before we go and get in ‘em. You know how she hates for us to mess ‘em up.”

        He laughed and adjusted his bag. “Ain’t going back,” he said.

        “What do you mean?”

        “You’re a smart boy – the folks sure think so – what do you reckon it means?” Something about the way he said it made my insides hurt.

        “I’m going back,” I said.

        “Not now, you aren’t.”

        “You can’t boss me around, Henry.”

        “I sure can. I told you to come out here, didn’t I?”

        “That don’t mean nothing.”

        “And you listened.”

        I gritted my teeth. “I thought we were just running.”

        “You gotta listen to your elders now, ain’t that what they teach us on Sundays?”

He was still lying there with his eyes closed. I wanted to hit him. “Mama and Daddy’ll be out looking. They’ll get the dogs on us and be here in no time. I can’t imagine how much trouble I’ll be in cause of you.”

        “Oh, please, they won’t even notice.”

        “Sure they will, Mama’s done and laid out our Sunday clothes and saw we weren’t there and came out running and hollering for us.”

        “You’re naïve. When’s the last time you saw them come in our room at night?”

        I didn’t know what ‘naïve’ meant, and something told me he didn’t either, but he’d been using words like that a lot lately. “They’re gonna find us anyway, Henry, with you sleeping in the middle of the woods all night.”

        “I coulda walked right out the front door and they wouldn’t have even felt the draft.”

        “We did walk out the front door, Henry.”

        “It was a figure of speech, stupid.” He dug in his bag for his canteen. “Don’t you worry about us getting caught. Ain’t no one gonna come looking until before church. Later, if we’re lucky. Maybe no one at all.”

        “That ain’t true.”

        “Is.”

        “Is not.”

        “I ain’t playing those kiddy games anymore.” He took a swig of his water.

        I looked out and coulda swore I saw Mama in the trees. “You ain’t staying gone for long. I know it.”

        “Well, you’re wrong.”

“No, I know it. I’m going back. Right now. I’m gonna run and run until I get home and I’m gonna tell Mama and Daddy and we’re all gonna come get you.”

        He shook his head.

        “I know it. You’re gonna miss playing ball at the park. You’re gonna miss Grandma’s pies. You’re gonna miss helping Daddy fix up the car. Heck, I’d bet you’d even miss Sunday baths. Ain’t none of those things in the woods.”

        He stopped talking again. We just sat and watched the moon float higher and higher above us. I reckoned Henry saw Mama in the trees too, cause pretty soon he was packing up his bags and we were heading home.