Where I Belong (15 page)

Shea calls down to him, “Hey, you got a new T-shirt!”

He smiles. “My other shirt disintegrated. I got this for twenty-five cents at the Goodwill store.” He scratches his belly. “Dylan and me go back a long way.”

He squints up at us, shading his eyes with his hand. “Come on down here. I want to get a good look at you, Master Brendan. I've missed you, lad.”

“I've missed you, too,” I admit. I scramble down the tree with Shea just behind, showering my head with rotten wood and bark.

The Green Man studies me. “Your hair's growing back,” he says. “Pretty soon you'll look like those boring real boys with crewcuts. You're still skinny, though.”

“He'll always be skinny.” Shea gives me a poke in the ribs, which makes me wince. “Oops, sorry, I forgot about your bruises.”

Shea and I share our lunch with the Green Man. Which is fine, because Shea brought more than enough for the two of us. Maybe she knew who'd be here, hungry and thirsty.

After we finish eating, the Green Man stretches out on his back and stares up at the treetops far above our heads. “I love the way the sun shines through the leaves,” he says, “and how the trunks all seem to curve in and form a roof.”

He looks like he might fall asleep, but Shea has other ideas. “You promised to show us your hut,” she reminds him. “Can we go there now? Please? Please?”

“You sure you want to see it?” The Green Man scratches his belly. “It's a hidey-hole, not very clean, a bit dark and damp and full of junk.”

“Yes,” she and I say. “Yes.”

With a shrug of his heavy shoulders, the Green Man shambles ahead like a big bear. We follow him a long way into the woods, on a trail so faint and twisting, it might have been made by a deer—or a unicorn that didn't want to lead anyone to its hiding place.

He stops near a tall, twisted tree almost as old as my tree. Moss furs its bark with a thick green coat. “We're close,” he says. “You can almost reach out and touch it from here.”

Shea and I peer this way and that. We brush bushes and branches aside, ducking brambles, avoiding poison ivy. We look up in case it's a tree house. We look down in case it's truly a hole in the ground.

“It's not here.” Shea's lower lip juts out like it does when she's mad.

I stare at him. Not so long ago, I would've thought he'd cast a spell of invisibility on his shelter.

“Come.” The Green Man leads us off the path and down a hill, threading his way between lichen-splashed boulders that erupted from the earth thousands of years ago. You can still feel the power that thrust them aboveground, only it's dormant now.

We're in a ravine beside a creek before we see the hut. Like Shea told me, it's a combination of canvas tarps and logs and cinder blocks. The canvas has a camouflage pattern. Grape vines and blackberry bushes cover it. The logs and cinder blocks are covered with moss and lichens.

“You have to be less than six inches away to figure out what it is.” I keep my voice low. Who knows who could be listening or watching from the dense shade?

“And even then you could miss it,” Shea whispers. “It's like a fairy's cottage, hidden from everybody, unless the fairy allows you to see it.”

She looks at me, and I see a glint in her eye that tells me she's thinking maybe he's the Green Man after all.

The Green Man walks around to the side facing the stream and moves a pile of branches that hide a small door, as gray and weathered as the old logs on the ground.

“Come in.” He steps back, and we duck our heads to go through the doorway. He bends down and comes in behind us.

As my eyes get used to the dark, I see a mattress and blankets, an orange-crate table and an old office chair. Bits and pieces of metal sheets keep out the rain and snow.

In the light of a kerosene lantern, Shea examines everything, including the contents of an old wooden box. She rummages around and holds something up. “Are these yours?” she asks the Green Man.

He glances at what she's found—army medals on faded ribbons. “Ah, put those back where you found them.”

“Did you get them in Vietnam?” she asks. “Were you a hero?”

“Me a hero, that's a laugh. Put them away, Shea. That box is private.”

“This one's a Purple Heart,” she says, “and this one's a Bronze Star. You want to know how I know?”

“Well, I suppose you'll tell me whether I say yes or no.”

I'm watching all this anxiously. Is he mad at Shea? Is he about to kick us out? But he doesn't seem cross. Just resigned. Like me, he knows Shea pretty well now. She won't stop asking questions until she hears what she wants to hear.

“Well,” she says, “my real father was killed in Af-ghanistan and the army sent my mother a letter about how brave he was and she has two medals just like these—a Purple Heart because he was wounded in battle and a Bronze Star because he was very brave.”

Shea turns the medal over and reads the back: “‘For heroic or meritorious achievement.' And here's your name: Edward John Calhoun. And here's a
V
, which means you got this for doing something brave in battle, just like my daddy. He saved two men in a burning tank and then got shot. I think he should've gotten the Congressional Medal of Honor for that. I mean, how much braver can a person be?”

“Not much,” says the Green Man.

“What did you do to get yours?”

“Oh, Shea, can't we talk about something else?”

“Please tell me.”

“It was so long ago, another lifetime. I barely remember the war. Or what I did. Or how I survived.”

“Come on, Shea,” I say. “If he doesn't want to talk about it, it's okay. Just leave him alone.”

“Well, if I got a medal I'd want everybody to know why I got it and how brave I was.” She holds one up to her chest. “And I'd wear them every single day. I'd never hide them away in a box.”

“Everybody's not like you,” I say.

Shea puts the medals back in the box and closes the lid. “Okay,” she says, “but promise to tell me later.”

“Maybe,” the Green Man says.

“No maybes!”

“All right, all right. Someday I'll tell you all about it.”

“Is that a promise?”

“Yes, yes it is.” He's beginning to look a little vexed. “Now leave it be.” He laughs when he says this, but I worry that deep down he's sorry he brought us here.

“Can I ask one more question if it's about something different?” Shea asks.

The Green Man winks at me. “Ask away, my dear.”

“Do you sleep here every night?”

“If you go to the same place often enough, someone's bound to follow you. I sleep on a park bench in town when the weather's good. Sometimes I go to a shelter. Sometimes I spend the night under the bridge on Forty-Second Street. When it rains, I come here. And in the winter.”

He points at a rusty potbelly stove in the corner. “I rigged up a chimney for that, but I only use it when it's really cold. Somebody might notice the smoke if I light it too often.”

“Do you have enemies?” Shea asks.

I don't say anything, but I know he has three enemies, the same three I have.

The Green Man shrugs. “Well, for one thing, this is a national forest. People aren't allowed to live in it. The police would be delighted to dig me out of here and send me elsewhere.”

He pauses and glances at me. “And then there's the three louts who think my comrades and me are fair game.”

“What do you mean?” Shea asks. “What do they do?”

“Ah, they jeer at us in the park, throw stones at us, threaten us. After dark, of course, when no one's around to see them.”

“Sean,” Shea guesses. “And Gene and T.J. That's who you're talking about.”

He nods. “The same brutes that beat Brendan.”

“They wouldn't hurt
you
, though.” Shea chews on her thumbnail and frowns. “Not like they hurt Brendan.”

He glances at me, a warning to keep my mouth shut. “No, no, Shea, of course not. I might be old, but I'm as smart as a fox. Like a true Green Man, I can slip into the trees and disappear. Don't you worry about me.”

Shea leans over and hugs the Green Man. “If I had a grandfather,” she whispers, “he'd be just like you.”

“Good lord, I hope not—a grandfather living in the woods and drinking with his comrades in the park?” He laughs and then coughs, deep and rumbly.

“Maybe you could be our
adopted
grandfather,” Shea suggests. “You'd like that, wouldn't you, Brendan?”

“I've always wanted a grandfather,” I say.

“So will you please please please be our grandfather?” Shea asks. “Say yes!”

“Do I have to go to court and sign papers?” he asks, looking worried.

“No,” I say. “It's just between us.”

“Well, then I'll be pleased and honored to be your adopted grandfather.” He shakes our hands solemnly. “Now I'll take you back to your tree house. It's almost suppertime.”

We walk silently down the trail, which was made by deer, the Green Man says. At the tree house, he hugs us both. “This is a very happy day for me,” he tells us. “I gave up hope of being a grandfather many years ago.”

We watch him disappear into the shadows darkening the woods. He makes no noise. He leaves no trace of himself. Magic still clings to him.

Shea and I stand together silently. The trees tower over us. They were here before we were born, and they'll be here after we're gone, living their secret life, still and watchful.

“He's so mysterious,” Shea says in a low voice, almost as if she's afraid to say it out loud. “There's so much we don't know about him. Like who he was before he went to war. Where he lived. If he has a family.”

I'd never thought of the Green Man as having an ordinary life—I guess because I'd believed he was the true spirit of the forest, an ancient being whose existence went back to almost the beginning of the world.

“I think he likes being our adopted grandfather,” Shea says.

“I'm glad you asked him. I'd never have had the nerve. I'm always scared people will say no, so I don't ask.”

Shea shakes her head. “You're so silly, Brendan. You just have to take a chance sometimes.” She spins around on her toes like a ballerina, then darts ahead of me through the trees. If I didn't know better, I'd think she was an elf queen vanishing into the twilight.

“Wait!” I run after her. She laughs, but she doesn't let me catch her until we reach the train tracks.

A
LTHOUGH SHEA AND I GO
to the woods after school every day, we don't see the Green Man. We spend hours looking for his hideaway, but we can't find it even though we're sure we're on the right path.

On the way back, Shea says, “It's as if he magicked it away.”

I swat at the mosquitoes humming around my ears. Without my hair, it must be easier for them to get at my skin. “Let's go to the park. Maybe he's there.”

Shea nods. “And if he's not, maybe his comrades can tell us where he is.”

It's a long hot walk from the woods to the park, but Shea has babysitting money in her pocket and she promises to treat me to a soda. But not at the diner. We don't want to see that waitress again.

None of the Green Man's comrades are there. In fact, the park's deserted. Near the fountain, we see bright yellow tape circling an area. Two police cars with flashing blue lights are parked on the path.

“What do you think happened?” I ask Shea.

“Probably somebody snatched a purse or something.”

We watch the cops for a while, but they aren't doing anything more exciting than standing around and talking in low voices. We go on to McDonald's and get our sodas to go. The air conditioning gives me goose bumps. Shea shivers.

 

The next day, Mr. Hailey tells Shea and me he wants to talk to us after class. Shea gives me an
Uh-oh, what did we do?
look, and I shrug. Can't be anything too bad. We're both passing everything.

After the other kids leave, Mr. Hailey sits on the edge of his desk. His face is serious. “I'm really sorry to tell you this,” he says, “but Edward Calhoun, your Green Man, is in the hospital. He was attacked in the town park and badly beaten.”

Shea's face turns pale. Tears run down her cheeks. One leg jiggles like she's lost control of it.

I sit there like a lump. Paralyzed or something. If I open my mouth, no sound will come out. It's not true, not true, not true.

“Is he going to die?” Shea's fists clench.

“My wife checked on him. He's in stable condition—that's better than critical condition.”

“That's what the yellow tape was,” Shea whispers. “That's why the police were there. And we didn't know, we didn't know! We had no idea it was for him.”

“How could you know?” Mr. Hailey says.

“I should have known,” she says. “I should have felt something.”

Shea is sobbing now, and Mr. Hailey is trying to comfort her. I stand and watch the two of them. I feel cut off. Alone. Why don't I cry? What's wrong with me? Numb, that's what I am. Like my whole body just got a shot of Novocain.

“Has he said who did it?” I ask Mr. Hailey.

“According to today's paper, Mr. Calhoun was unconscious when the police found him. When he came to, he said he couldn't remember. It was dark, they jumped him from behind.”

“Cowards!” Shea wipes her eyes with her fists and says, “I hate them, I hate them. First they beat up Brendan, and now the Green Man.”

Mr. Hailey looks puzzled. “What are you saying, Shea?”

“Sean Barnes and his friends. They jumped Brendan on the train tracks, and the Green Man said they bug him all the time. Jeer at him. Make fun of him. Threaten him.” She takes a breath. “Who else could it have been?”