Landscape: Memory (27 page)

17 OCTOBER 1915

That Men's Club fellow took me aside and charmed me into saying yes I would come along for their little festival in the woods. Actually I stood my ground, insisting that Duncan be invited as well, though no club members had met him, and we shook hands to seal the agreement. I was uncertain it was the right thing. In fact, I was fairly certain it was not, but flattery is never lost on me and really we both like the woods well enough to enjoy ourselves even if it is with a bunch of fat, boring men, as Duncan had described them.The way Fletcher described it (his name is Fletcher, though he allowed that I may call him "Fletch"), we were going on a picnic with delightful food and unspecified fun. He alluded to a game, a sort of treasure hunt, but withheld the details. We were to meet them at the corner of Euclid and Rose at five o'clock p.m.

 
* * *
 

The first thing they did was to blindfold us. Duncan had agreed to go because I was so insistent and I'd managed to make it sound like fun.

"You didn't mention blindfolds," he said to me as we bounced about in the bed of the truck they'd picked us up in.

"Fletcher didn't say anything about them," I answered. "He did say the game would be challenging. Maybe it's part of the game." We were sitting on the truck bed's dirty floor with seven or eight other boys our age and two or three of the elegantly sweatered men. All the boys wore blindfolds, I believe, and the men kept quiet. Duncan started talking to his neighbor, shouting over the roar of the engine and the noise of our bumpy ride up into the hills.

"Have you been in the club long?" he asked from behind his blindfold.

The one who answered had a voice I'd heard in Health class, though I couldn't remember the face that went with it. "I'm not in the club," he said. "I got a card once, but I never went." His face came back to me, a soft round face with blush on the cheeks and thin lips.

"Same here," Duncan said to him. "We got a card but it seemed dumb to go."

"Yeah," his neighbor agreed. "But this sounded okay. There's supposed to be food and a film."

"A film?" Duncan shouted back.

"Yeah. They've got a projector and the screen. That's why it has to be dusk and all. They're showing it in the woods."

"Max," Duncan called, turning toward me. "What about this film?"

I didn't know anything about a film. "What film?" It seemed an unlikely thing. Where would they find electricity?

"This guy says there's a film." It was all too confusing. I didn't want to bother Duncan with it.

"Yeah, the film," I improvised. "In the woods, right?"

"Right. Why didn't you mention it?"

"The film?"

"Yeah, the film."

"I didn't mention it?"

"Max."

But he gave up and we sat in the dusty truck bed, rumbling blindly along the winding road, on our way to the mysterious picnic.

When the truck finally stopped we were in a cool, shaded woods, east of Berkeley I surmised. The ride had been uncomfortable and dizzying, and I felt a great sense of relief when they finally told us to take our blindfolds off It was indeed the woods that run by Wildcat Canyon. Duncan, just to be charming, at first refused to remove his blindfold. He stumbled around by the dusty shoulder of the road, bruising his shins on the truck fender and moaning as if he were an old man. It was just his way of telling them how stupid the whole thing seemed. Of course, his subtle critique was lost on them, and I finally convinced him to just take the damned thing off so we could get on with the fun part.

The sun was hanging low to the west, its light dappling through the green branches. The dust that had lifted off the road hung in the air, illuminated by shafts of sunlight. We sat in a small grassy meadow just a few yards off the road. "Fletch," as he now introduced himself, began to explain the treasure hunt while the other men in the club handed out small flags to each of the guests. The flags, in fact, had been our blindfolds only moments before.

"There is a treasure hidden in these woods. The picnic begins when it is found." I didn't much like the idea. Holding food for ransom is among the lowest forms of motivation. I harrumphed to myself and vowed to find the treasure pronto. "To find the treasure," Fletch continued, "you simply follow the markers in the woods." He stopped and smiled as if concluding his short lecture. But a few things had been left unclear.

"What do the markers look like?" the round-faced fellow asked, anticipating my very question. All of the sweatered men looked at one another and chuckled. This was some sort of secret joke.

"That," Fletch said, "is the hard part. You'll know them when you see them."

"Do we have to be blindfolded?" Duncan asked, holding up the little flags we all held.

"Those aren't blindfolds," the man who'd driven explained. "Those are flags."

"You've got to keep your flag to stay in the game," Fletch added. "If one of us takes your flag away you're out." The game was beginning to sound like fun. I still wondered how on earth anyone would find a marker in so big a woods with no idea what the marker was going to be. But the thought of being chased and eluding capture was really quite appealing. Duncan raised his brow at me, evidently delighted, too, by this new twist.

"Once we find this treasure, then we eat?" I wanted to make certain everything was laid out straight.

"
If
one of you finds it, you all eat."

The sun had sunk into the treetops, visible every now and then through the thick branches. The club men were sitting by the truck chatting, passing a little flask around. I'd started off into the woods, wandering in the meadow with Duncan and two other boys. The ground was firm and grassy but quickly became bare as we left the meadow for the trees. I could hear quail cooing and what I thought might be the distant buzz of an aeroplane. Looking up, though, I saw nothing mechanical in the sky, only a wisp of a cloud and the blue sky. The soft bird songs were suddenly shattered by loud screaming, as the men came rushing down off the road at full speed. The game, evidently, had begun.

 * * * 

I bolted straight down a small drop and into the cool woods, Duncan running a zigzag path to my right. The other guests had gone off in a different direction, unwisely I thought, for the chances of eluding the men near the road seemed slight. Already a small handful had been caught. I could hear the laughing and derisive yells of the club men rippling through the trees. I kept steady on, running and leaping by instinct, not really thinking out my course or direction. I caught a last glimpse of Duncan as he jumped up onto a rock outcropping with two or three following him. The air was cool and full with the smell of eucalyptus. My footfall crunched the long dry leaves and peels of bark with every step. I could hear nothing but that and my breathing and the wind whistling past my ears.

It was a thrill that ran through me like blood. The running and leaps and dodges, down farther and farther into these shadowed woods. It made me think kindly of Duncan's love of running, though I still couldn't fathom why he'd run on a track or a straight road. Careening through the wild woods. That's what thrilled me. Running like a cascading creek or like a deer. The blood was pounding in my ears. I could touch the trees as I flew past them, adjusting my direction in midstride and cutting back across to slip between two tall firs.

I wondered if Duncan might still be near and turned to take a quick look, but there was no one. No one at all. I looked quickly again and saw nothing and stopped. All around me the trees stood, bending slightly with the wind at their tops. It was empty. The wind sound rustled, as even as silence, and I gulped breaths of air, trying to catch my wind. Duncan must've gone far and fast, I thought, and maybe drawn my pursuers away.

Birds called, high up in the branches, near where the last sun was turning the woods golden. I shuffled my feet on the dry ground, rustling the peels of bark. I stood still and listened, but heard only silence. I wondered where, exactly, I was. I'd come downhill, mostly, and from the west. But where I stood now the uphill went north, not back west, and it didn't look like the woods I'd just run through. The woods west looked unfamiliar too. Above me the sunlight slipped up toward the tops of the trees, narrowing the small bright band until finally it was gone.

"Oooo-hooo," I called to the west. My little flag dangled from my belt where I'd tucked it. Nothing called back. A creek was rippling in a gully nearby, near enough to add its sound to the evening stillness. "Oooo-hooo.''

I started walking north, up the steep hill, hoping to see something familiar from that vantage point. The woods were mostly eucalyptus and oak, the ground clear of cover and littered with old leaves and dried bark. In the gullies stands of fir grew, and the ground grew thick with brush and rhododendron. Fog had started drifting in from the west, slipping over the lip of the Berkeley hills and settling down into the trees. A quail burst out from a bush to my right, its round little body flung, but hardly flying. It came down like a bomb and landed squat, bobbing its tiny little tufted head.

"Oooo-hooo," I called again. The quail looked at me and waddled away into the woods, cooing and warbling as it went. The fog hung in the canopy, muffling the rustle of the trees. I didn't recognize any landmarks, so I decided to keep going west, knowing I'd hit the road eventually. I watched above me. The trees wobbled among the gray mists. Little animals and birds crashed in the branches, knocking dead leaves down to the ground. I was nervous in my legs, stepping forward tentatively, hoping the woods would open up ahead, or the sound of an auto or horse might be heard. It must've been near to half past six. Dusk had come with the fog. I dipped down through the rill, looking for footholds up the other side, when I saw a small pile of stones. It was only a few inches high, but it was clearly made, and made recently. A little stick extended out from it, pointing ahead.

It was a marker. I had recognized it when I saw it. Ahead of me the rill dumped down into a wider gully. No water ran there, but the stones were all washed clean as though it ran wet quite often. Someone had laid sticks down there to form another arrow, and so I followed. The cold air of evening was dropping down through the trees, trailing wisps of the thick fog with it. I felt a chill up my spine where my back was wet with sweat, and it turned into a shiver at my neck. The stones of the gully were easy to travel on. I leapt along at a slow run, easily seeing each marker now, though the light had grown dim.

At the head of the creek bed, where the gully had begun, a final arrow pointed in under a tangle of roots. I knelt down by it and reached my arm into the hiding place. The rich smell of dark, cool dirt wrapped around me as my searching knocked some of it loose. The stones settled some under my feet. There was a wooden box inside. I pulled it out to inspect it.

The heavy wooden box had a simple lid on two hinges with a small metal clasp to hold it shut. It was as big as a cigar box and sounded empty when I shook it. Inside there was only a card, another invitation to come to an initiation thing. This one was a bit fancier than the first and, I guess, more exclusive. It was hardly a treasure worth having. But I had found it, and it did mean we'd get to feast.

The woods were quite dark now. The brightest light came from the gray mists. It was all around me by now. The trees rose up into it, disappearing into the drifting fog about twenty feet above my head. I held my small treasure to my chest and climbed out of the gully, walking, I hoped, west again. I pulled my arms up into my shirt to keep warmer and held the treasure inside.

The forest floor was busy with scooting and scampering sounds. I saw squirrels, and heard much more. Something very big must have passed through the woods to my right because I felt its footfall through the dry tamped earth and heard it crashing through a fallen oak branch. Thankfully I never saw it. A chill drifted down from the fog like rain. I kept on with my even stride, making small sounds to myself to keep up courage. The crackling of bark and leaves kept on all around me and only finally frightened me most when it stopped. I heard it all go still. I stopped and held my breath, listening to the silence. There was nothing. I couldn't see well through the trees, but everywhere I tried I was certain I saw shadows. The leaves crackled again, under some heavy foot. I kept still but strained to see.

"Max?" a voice called. "Max? Is that you?" It was Duncan. I sprinted toward his voice and called his name back and there he was, looking dirty and disheveled but very glad, as I'm certain I looked to him. I knocked him over onto the ground and squeezed him so hard I thought I'd burst.

"I think we're lost," he said, not letting go of me even enough to get up off the ground.

"Yeah, We're lost," I agreed. "Did you get away?"

"No." He was all sweaty and smudged. "Did you?"

"Yeah," I said proudly, showing him my flag. "And we won, because I found the treasure." I put the little box into his hand and showed him the card. "It's a dumb treasure," I allowed as he looked inside the box, "but at least we'll get our feast." He put the card back and sat up, brushing dirt from off his clothes. He didn't seem very happy about my prize.

"There's not any food. Max, you know that." He stood up and offered me a hand.

"Yes there is. I've got the treasure." I stood up next to him and let him brush my back off.

"They've all gone. Max. They never brought any food. They left as soon as they'd caught us all."

"But they never caught me. I won." None of what he was saying made sense.

"They drove away."

"You let them just drive away?"

"They tied me to a tree. They tied a bunch of us to trees. They were laughing like it was a big joke."

I tried to imagine that they might have done that. I knew that they'd done that, feeling now like I'd been so stupid all along to ever think they wouldn't just do that. It made the pleasure I'd felt about the little box so awful and embarrassing, knowing how pleased I'd been. Duncan tugged at my arm and we started walking, not saying any more, because there really wasn't any more to say.