Boys Life

robbed him.
    And so, on a sunny Friday afternoon, laden with knapsacks, sandwiches, canteens of water, mosquito repellent, snakebite kits, matches, flashlights, and county maps we’d gotten from the courthouse, Davy Ray, Ben, and I struck out from my house into the beckoning forest. All our good-byes had been said, our dogs locked up, our bicycles porched and chained. Davy carried his father’s compass, and he wore a camouflage-print hunting cap. We all wore long pants, to guard our shins against thorns and snake fangs, and our winter boots. We were in it for the long haul, and we set our faces against the sun like pioneers entering the forest primeval. Before we reached the woods, though, my mother the constant worrier called from the back porch, “Cory! Have you got enough toilet paper?”
    I said I did. Somehow, I couldn’t imagine Daniel Boone’s mother asking him that question.
    We climbed the hill and crossed the clearing from where we had flown on the first day of summer. Beyond it the serious woods began, a green domain that might’ve given Tarzan pause. I looked back at Zephyr lying below us, and Ben stopped and then so did Davy Ray. Everything seemed so orderly: the streets, the roofs, the mowed lawns, the sidewalks, the flowerbeds. What we were about to enter was a wild entanglement, a dangerous realm that offered neither comfort nor safety; in other words, in that one moment I realized exactly what I’d gotten myself into.
    “Well,” Davy Ray said at last, “I guess we’d better get movin’.”
    “Yeah,” Ben murmured. “Get movin’.”
    “Uh-huh,” I said.
    We stood there, the breeze on our faces and sweat on our necks. Behind us, the forest rustled. I thought of the hydra’s heads, swaying and hissing, in Jason and the Argonauts.
    “I’m goin’,” Davy Ray said, and he started off. I turned away from Zephyr and followed him, because he was the guy with the compass. Ben hitched his knapsack’s straps in a notch tighter, the tail of his shirt already beginning to wander out of his pants, and he said, “Hold up!” and came on as fast as he could.
    The forest, which had been waiting a hundred years for three boys just like us, let us in and then closed its limbs and leaves at our backs. Now we had set foot in the wilderness, and we were on our own.
    Pretty soon we were drenched with sweat. Going up and down wooded ridges in the heavy August heat was no easy task, and Ben started puffing and asking Davy Ray to slow down. “Snake hole!” Davy Ray shouted, pointing at an imaginary hole at Ben’s feet, and that got Ben moving lickety-split again. We traveled through a green kingdom of sun and shadow, and we found honeysuckle boiling in sweet profusion and blackberries growing wild and of course we had to stop for a while and take a taste. Then we were on the march again, following the compass and the sun, masters of our destinies. Atop a hill we found a huge boulder to sit on, and we discovered what appeared to be Indian symbols carved into the stone. Alas, though, we weren’t the first to make this find, because nearby was a Moon Pie wrapper and a broken 7-Up bottle. We went on, deeper into the forest, determined to find a place where no human foot had ever marked the dirt. We came to a dried-up streambed and followed it, the stones crunching under our boots. A dead possum, swarming with flies, snared our attention for a few minutes. Davy Ray threatened to pick up the possum’s carcass and throw it at Ben, but I talked him out of such a grisly display and Ben shuddered with relief. Farther ahead, at a place where the trees thinned and white rocks jutted from the earth like dinosaur ribs, Davy Ray stopped and bent down. He came up holding a black arrowhead, almost perfectly formed, which he put in his pocket for Johnny’s collection.
    The sun was falling. We were sweaty and dusty, and gnats spun around our heads and darted at our eyeballs. I have never understood the attraction of gnats to eyeballs, but I believe it’s the equivalent of moths to flames; in any case, we spent a lot of time digging the little dead things out of our watering orbs. But as the sun settled and the air cooled, the gnats went away. We began to wonder where we might find a place to spend the night, and it was right about then that the truth of the matter came clear.
    There were no mothers and fathers around to make our suppers. There were no televisions, no radios, no bathtubs, no beds, and no lights,