When Jack came back to the campsite, Stephen and Ben were nowhere to be found. Jack looked in the tent and took mental inventory of their gear. Nothing seemed to be missing, it was unlikely they had gone far. Unwilling to seem needy, Jack grabbed his knife and a branch. He squeezed with his knees to hold it. He proceeded to carve the branch into a spear. After a few seconds, Jack was interrupted by a distant voice.
“Help!” It sounded like Ben, but it wasn’t an alarmed call—it was almost matter-of-fact.
“Ben?” shouted Jack.
“Help,” he heard. Jack started off in the direction of the voice. When he crossed from the yard into the trees, a figure burst out from behind a large maple. Jack spun and defended with his right hand. Until he saw it reflect the leaf-dappled sun, he had forgotten that he still held the knife.
“Holy shit! Watch it!” yelled Stephen. Ben appeared directly behind Jack an circled around him at arm’s length.
“Jesus, he’s trying to stab someone,” accused Stephen.
“I’m so sorry, I forgot I had the knife out,” stammered Jack.
“Sorry, my ass. You’re a psycho,” replied Stephen.
“It was just an accident, could have happened to anyone,” said Ben. “Serves us right for tricking you, Jack—sorry.”
“That’s okay, no problem. I really didn’t mean it,” replied Jack.
“I know—no problem,” said Ben. “Right Stephen?”
“Yeah, yeah, just kidding man,” said Stephen.
“How’d you do that anyway—sound so far away like that?” asked Jack as they walked back to the campsite.
“What do you mean?” asked Ben. “Sound like what?”
“I heard you yelling ‘Help’,” said Jack.
Ben slowed down and looked at Jack—“Yelling? Jack, we weren’t yelling anything.”
“Seriously?” asked Jack. “Guys, I seriously heard someone yelling for help. It sounded like you, Ben, but not you.”
“Jack, I’m totally serious—we didn’t hear a thing,” said Ben. Jack looked back and forth between Ben and Stephen and shuddered slightly.
“True story, Jack,” added Stephen. “We didn’t hear a thing. Unless… Wait a sec, did it sound like ‘Help Me!’?” Stephen reproduced the voice perfectly and he and Ben started to crack up.
“Oh, you guys are assholes,” said Jack. “Both of you, total assholes.”
“Man, you really bought that,” laughed Ben. “Bought and paid for.”
Their laughter was infectious and Jack started to smile.
“Help! Help!” Jack mocked and began to really join the laughter. “It’s funny, all you have to do is try to sound like a girl, and you sound just like Ben,” he said to Stephen.
“Good one, son,” laughed Stephen.
Ben pretended to be offended, but couldn’t keep a straight face. Finally having something in common, they replayed the event dozens of times; laughing and cracking each other up as they sat at their campsite. Jack dug some cokes out of the cooler and they sipped soda and talked about what to do with the day.
They all agreed that they should check the weather and then plan a big hike if the weather was favorable. Ben and Jack gave Stephen the rundown of the places they’d been and where the unexplored trails were to be found.
“I should’ve brought my laptop,” said Stephen. “Do you get wireless out here?”
“Yeah,” began Jack, “but we have a pact.”
“No internets,” decried Ben. “Not at the campsite.”
“Whoa, really?” Stephen was surprised. “What’s with that?”
“We tried that once,” said Ben. “What’s the point of camping if we all just sit in the tent all day and surf?”
“It’s true,” added Jack. “It’s really all or nothing. We just check email like every two days when we have dinner with my parents, and cellphones don't even work in this area. We're in a valley or something.”
“Well, that’s gonna be tough,” said Stephen. “Sounds downright retarded if you ask me, but I guess it can’t be that bad. So how are we gonna check the weather then.”
“We can do that,” replied Ben. “But then we just get in and out.”
“That’s right,” added Jack. “On and off.”
“You guys are like those Pennsylvania Dutch people—I saw them on a field-trip,” said Stephen.
“Ya,” said Ben.
**********
After some more discussion and a weather-check, the boys packed sandwiches and headed into the woods. Ben and Jack had been making small improvements to the trail each time they hiked and it was a well-groomed path all the way to the power-lines. Ben took the lead and pointed out all the false turns and dead-ends they had created to throw off imagined pursuit.
Stephen thought they should add some traps to the path, but was vetoed by Ben and Jack.
“We thought of that, but little kids sometimes come out here,” said Jack.
They gave Stephen the grand tour of the woods bordering the neighborhood and popped on to the power-line cut at the top of a small hill. The clearing stretched east and west and the hill afforded them an excellent view. A large rock was selected as their picnic table. They opened their packs and unloaded provisions for lunch.
“Oh man, that’s good,” said Stephen through a mouthful of sandwich.
“The best,” agreed Ben.
“Remind me to thank your mom when we get back,” added Stephen. Jack focused on Stephen. “No, seriously,” he continued, “it was nice of her.”
“Yeah, okay, that’s cool,” said Jack.
Ben pointed out thunderheads building to their west.
“What happened to hot and dry?” asked Jack.
“They’re only right like half the time,” said Ben. “As long as it’s nice tomorrow. I like fireworks.”
“There’s hardly any bugs here, we were getting killed by them down south,” said Stephen.
“It’s been a good year—not too many bugs at all,” Jack boasted.
“Well, there was that one up your mom’s ass when we went hiking that time,” chuckled Ben.
“Hey!” said Jack. “Not cool. I told her we would keep her up-to-speed is all.” He paused. “That was when that guy was still out there.”
“What guy?” asked Stephen.
“One of the kids who lived down the street from Jack got abducted,” said Ben. “We saw the cops come and get the guy who did it though.”
“Seriously? That’s crazy!” exclaimed Stephen. “Where did he live?”
“Right next door to the kid,” said Ben. “We were right outside when it happened, and we saw the whole thing.”
“I still can’t believe it. Mr. Anderson was really cool,” added Jack. “He used to take care of that kid sometimes, when his parents couldn’t find a sitter and stuff. Just seems weird.”
“Yeah, but didn’t your dad say they had lots of evidence?” asked Ben.
“You guys need to back up a piece—what happened to the kid?” asked Stephen.
“Well, he went missing a couple of months ago,” explained Jack. “I don’t remember exactly when, but everyone was looking for him for a long time. After a while they just stopped. Not his dad though—that guy was really mad. We hadn’t heard anything about Gabe in weeks and weeks and then they showed up and took away Mr. Anderson.”
“Wow—where’s he now?” asked Stephen.
“I don’t know. We haven’t been watching the news or anything, but I think everyone thinks Gabe is dead by now,” replied Jack.
“And where did this kid live?” asked Stephen.
“Just down the street,” said Ben. “We’ll show you when we get back.”
“Wow. You live down the street from a dead kid,” said Stephen. “That’s trippy. But I think you’re right: it doesn’t make that much sense. I would think those guys wouldn’t grab a neighborhood kid. Too risky. They’d go for a kid who lived really far away so nobody would know.”
“Yeah, but maybe Gabe trusted him,” said Jack. “He grabbed him from pre-school, so maybe he just said he’d give him a ride or something.”
“That’s cool they caught him and all,” said Stephen. “My mom would probably freak if she thought there was a kid-toucher around somewhere.”
“Yeah, well we’ve been dealing with that for weeks,” said Ben.
“I think it’s getting better now,” offered Jack. “She didn’t even really ask where we were hiking today. Just told me to bring sunscreen.”
“Which you didn’t put on,” said Ben.
“Hey, leave him alone,” said Stephen, defending Jack. “He really needs a tan.”
Jack threw an empty can at Stephen—“You’re just as pale as me, buddy.”
“Yeah, but I just got here,” countered Stephen. “You and Ben have been nature-boys for weeks.”
“That’s actually a pretty solid point,” agreed Ben.
“Get bent,” said Jack. “Which way did you guys want to go, anyway?”
“You tell me—what’s where?” asked Stephen.
Ben pointed off to the west. “If we go that way just past that second hill we can take a right and get to the quarry. Over that way,” he pointed behind himself, “you can see that little river down there. It’s not that wide, but looks really deep and it moves fast. We’ve never gone across cuz it’s so cold.”
“We could make a raft or a bridge or something,” said Stephen.
“Yeah, that might be cool,” replied Ben.
“Did you ever follow it downstream to see how far it goes until there’s a real bridge?” asked Stephen.
“No, but we looked online,” said Jack. “The only bridge that way is the highway,” he pointed north.
“And back that way you’re all the way back to Jack’s house,” added Ben, pointing south.
“Yup,” said Jack.
“Well I guess there’s plenty of directions to go before we get desperate about that river anyway,” said Ben. “We still haven’t really gone much north from here, or west past the quarry anyway.”
Jack was digging through his bag. “Oh wait, check this out.” He pulled out a topographic map. “I forgot I had this.”
“Oh, nice. Thanks,” said Stephen as Jack handed him the map.
“So we’re about here,” Jack pointed. “And this is the quarry.” His map had all the local features. “It’s a little old, so it doesn’t have a couple of the newer roads, but it’s pretty accurate about this area.”
“What’s this here?” asked Stephen, pointing at the map.
“Looks like a little pond or something,” answered Ben.
“Don’t these lines mean that it’s uphill?” asked Stephen.
“Depends on the numbers, those are the height above sea-level,” said Jack. “They should be marked every fifty feet on the darker lines. Are they going up?”
“Yeah, look, five-hundred there, and five-fifty up here,” replied Stephen. “So that little pond is at the top of a hill. That sounds cool.”
Ben agreed—“Yeah, like a volcano or something.”
“Could be—we should go check it out. How far is it?” asked Stephen.
“Let me see,” said Jack. “Well, looks like a mile from here. Could be hard-hiking though, so maybe about an hour each way.”
“Do we have time?” asked Ben.
Jack cautioned: “We might, but it wouldn’t leave us much time to explore and stuff. I think we should plan a whole day around it.”
Stephen was the first to capitulate—“Yeah, let’s do that. Then we don’t have worry about getting right back,” said Stephen. “Actually, I think we might have to think about getting back before those clouds come.”
“Hey,” said Ben, “let’s go over to the quarry and see if we can get wet before we get wet.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Jack.
**********
The boys packed their trash back into their packs and headed down the hill to the west. Ben was in the lead and Jack pulled up the rear. Jack moved somewhat slower down the hills—his balance was affected by his immobilized arm. He managed to catch up on the flats though, and kept pace with Ben and Stephen.
Shielding his eyes and squinting, Stephen looked off to the woods often. When a plane would pass overhead, he would look up frequently until it had passed. He seemed to be focused on everything except the trail in front of him.