Jacob and me head on away from the house into the trees and we’re picking up sticks and bundling them in our arms and we’re walking a good distance away for more since we want this fire to roar and lick at that flat pancake creature with the needles in its mouth and our mouths are watering.
Jacob takes a long white green moss hanging from a tree and puts in on his chin and says “lookit me! I’m all old and gimme my cane! I can't walk too good!” so I fetch a long stick and Jacob is hobbling around with it now and complaining about his back and how he can't poop too good since he’s old and I’m grabbing moss too and make a whole beard from it and we look like old men of the woods.
We get to flopping our arms and now we’re chickens with beards and Jacob makes a good chicken sound and I’m crowing real good and we’re getting into it, so we pile up our sticks what we got so far on the ground so we can have our hands free and now we commence to pecking at the ground and strutting around and now I have a moss on the top of my head like what a rooster does but Jacob is getting bored with it now like he sometimes does and he tosses the moss away. I’m still a chicken and I lunge at him and make chicken sounds but he’s done with the game and I see that, so I stop and put down my moss too and it’s over too soon.
Jacob stops and is looking all around now and he says, “where that pile of sticks for the fire we got?” I look around too and shrug and I don’t see them no more but there’s plenty of sticks more to be got. Jacob frowns importantly. “We need to get some sticks back for making food and I’m in charge since you’re just little and don’t know nothing about direction” even though Jacob is only three years older than me, that’s three more years I ain’t lived yet so I say “which way boss?”
Jacob is turning all around and I guess we were walking pretty far when we was chickens and looking for more moss and all, and he looks hard at the sky and at the ground and at the trees and points, “thataway” and we go thataway only it don’t look right to me but Jacob is the big boss of the woods now. I fall in behind and we’re trudging through the underbrush and climbing over dead trees and I ain’t remember it taking this long to get out here but maybe Jacob knows a shortcut.
After a while, Jacob stops and looks around again and I’m tired and I want to eat something and be inside somewhere. Jacob says, “hush now” real quiet and he crouches down and I crouch down and I say “what we looking for” and he gives me a warning look and points in a direction and I listen and try to catch a glimpse of what he’s glimpsing.
We hear some cracking branches a distance off and a whoop! whoop! Like no bird or anything I ever heard and Jacob looks at me and says to hunker lower, so we get all the way down on the ground and I’m lying on a root and it’s poking my side. Jacob is picking up a big branch in case it’s a wild animal looking for something to eat on, and the sounds are getting closer and there’s great crashing close to the fallen tree we’re hunkered by.
I’m peeking even though we’s supposed to be hunkering and I see there’s three boys coming out of the woods and one is big and has a blue bandanna around his head and there’s a middle sized one what is carrying something across his arms and it looks like a gun but I don’t know which kind since I only seen a few on T.V. and there’s one smaller than the other two and he has a thick stick and is hitting on things as he passes them and whooping, so that was probably the whooping noise we heard.
“Shut up your whooping!” the big one says “you’re liable to scare everything off before we have a chance to kill it proper!” The little one hits a tree with his stick defiantly, but the big one gives him a glare and the little one stops now. They’re about to pass by, but I’m raising up higher so I can catch an even better look and I guess there was a stick under one of my elbows for it breaks now and makes a big snap and I duck down again real fast but the boys all stopped walking and were all in attention at the noise I made and Jacob is glaring at me and shaking his head.
Then there’s a ruckus noise of them all rushing over to where we’re hunkered and the middle one has his gun pointed and the little one has his stick raised to clobber whatever the noise was. The big one sees us first and shouts, “cover em! They’s trespassers! Trespassing!” and now we’re covered I guess but I don’t know what that means exactly and I picture them wrapping us up in a blanket but Jacob stands up holding his stick but the big one is already on him from behind and has him wrapped up with his forearm in Jacob’s mouth so he can't shout.
His arm looks dirty so the taste can't be too good.
“What you all doing on our lands! You sneaking around and trying to get our stuff probably!” and the middle one and small one look menacing and the middle one is pointing the gun at me and the big boy says “talk quick because Joe there has you covered. He done shot a squirrel once from at least 20 feet away and maybe he only wunged it and it fell off a treebranch and ran away, but you’s a lot bigger than a squirrel and that squirrel probably limps now and I expect Joe can put one right between your eyes if he wanted to!”
Joe is nodding “damn right! I shoot this all the time and I don’t hardly miss!” Jacob still has the big one’s arm in his mouth and he’s trying to bite but the arm is too big so he looks like he’s having a time of it and his cheeks are just puffing out. I blurt “We was being chickens and we was getting sticks to make a fire so we can eat something we found under the house!” the big one says “blast him Joe! He lyin’! Ain’t nothing to eat under houses!”
Joe takes aim and I hear a pop sound and I feel a sting on my neck and Joe is jumping all around “got him! Killed him dead!” and the big boy is laughing hard enough that Jacob is able to wiggle free, and his picks up the first stick he finds and it’s small but has some sharp branches sticking off it and he screams “you killed my brother!” and charges at Joe with the gun and starts slapping him around the head and shoulders and is yelling and springing back after every whack so as not to get hit back since he ain’t never hit no one before and ain’t quite sure how it goes.
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I’m holding my neck in case the blood is all going to come spraying out of me and it stings something awful and the little one and the big one are coming for Jacob while he’s hitting Joe with the stick and the boys is all laughing. I look at my palm and there’s no blood and the boys are surrounding Jacob and taking turns getting behind him and kicking at his legs and snatching for the stick and finally the big one gets it and tosses it aside.
“Haw haw! We got you good! Got you for trespassing we did! Hee Hee!” and he’s laughing hard but not trying to hit Jacob or nothing who’s now blubbering and mad as a bee. Gunboy Joe is wiping the side of his face and there’s a trickle of blood from a scratch from Jacob’s branch, and he holds up his hand and the big one looks and says “well, you done walloped him pretty good! Joe’s a pussy and can't fight for shit so maybe if he’s lucky they’ll be a cool scar at least. That was some good swingin’ you done boy!” and claps Jacob hard on the shoulder who wipes his eyes with his sleeve and ain’t in a talking mood and still wants to fight something.
I check my neck again for blood but the big boy says Joe only has a BB gun on account of how he’s too much of a retard to use a real one. “Don’t be a bitch, that’s only like a tiny BB and it ain’t even get through the skin, although it can if you pump it enough, ain’t that right, Joe?” And Joe shifts uncomfortable “that’s right! Got ol’ Joe right in the ankle last year and it went in about enough so we couldn’t dig it out even though we tried with a fish knife! Probably still in there right ol’ Joe?” and he gives a guffaw like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard and these boys sure have a funny idea about what’s funny.
He looks at me serious now and says we’re going to shake on it and he holds out his hand to me and I don’t take it because I’m afraid and he says “you shake now. Shake my fukkin’ hand because that’s how it’s done” so I reach out and grab his hand but he pulls away and says “not like that you fukkin’ pussy! You grab all the way up on the wrist, that way you can know if someone has a knife up they sleeve!”
I try again but I can't get my hand all the way around his wrist for its big and sinewy, but that’s enough and his hand is also on my wrist and it feels hot and grimy. Then he turns to Jacob and says “you shake now too” and Jacob sees how we’re supposed to shake in the woods so he does it all the way up to the wrist even though he’s looking away still mad. The boy has us all shake up to the wrist with each other and they shake with each other too, maybe for practice. He spits on the ground.
“Now we’s all friends and this didn’t happen no more and that’s how you fukkin’ tussle. Since you ain’t know how to act right, we done showed you. What’s your fukkin’ names.” Jacob mumbles his name but I ain’t in the mood to talk without crying so Jacob says I was Gabe but our Daddy calls me Scamp sometimes and the boy likes that and he gestures “that there is Joe what with the peashooter, that little runt with the ugly face is Sam and I’m Cole. We all had us a tussle just now but ain’t nothing come of it and Jacob there showed big ol’ balls by swangin’ that branch all around to high heaven, and Joe got a pretty good scratch from it and that’s good because Joe needs to look more like a man since his face looks like a girl haw haw!”
Joe don’t look too pleased by this but he doesn’t say nothin’. Cole says “where all you come from?” And we says we just come a little few days ago and we’s been in the woods lookin’ for firewood so we can cook up something we found under the house what looks like an alien. And also the brains out of a cat skull I found in a hole. Cole looks askance at us and said he never ate nothing like those things before and asks how we’re going to cook em up.
Sam and Joe are also interested and I say we reckon we’re going to stomp them all up in a pile and toss them in some flames and just chew them like you normally chew things. The boys are looking side eyed at each other and Cole shrugs and says that sounds about as good a food as any he guesses, and at least it’s something different than what they got to eat at their house.
Me and Jacob look at each other too and I ask where they come from and where their house is and they point in a direction and ask if we want to come see since they have some matches and a few firecrackers that we can shove in a pipe and maybe fire a rock out of it at their good for nothing dog.
We don’t know if they’s our friends and they was rowdy and played different from us, but they all take off walking and Jacob and me follow since we is pretty much lost anyway and Jacob ain’t about to pass up an opportunity to light some matches.
Along the way Joe is pumping up his BB gun and firing at pieces of bark on the ground and waving it all around.
Cole grabs up a fistful of dead pine needles and mashes it in Sam’s face and calls it a brownwash for his ugly mug and Sam is red faced and takes a swipe at Cole but Cole puts him in a headlock and makes him say he likes to lick turds straight from a dog’s butthole and Sam does and Jacob and I are nervous since this here is a touchy situation, but they ain’t tried anything else with us since the BB gun shot to the neck and the moves Cole put on Jacob, and they seem ok.
Joe picks up a stick in the shape of a gun and gives it to me so I can be armed too.
We trudge through the woods and come to a clearing in the trees deep in wild grass and Cole picks up a handful of it and heads toward Joe who’s flinching back “I ain’t want no greenwash!” but Cole just touches it to the cut on Joe’s face where Jacob scratched it with the tree branch and mutters “fukkin’ babies can't take care of nothing themselves” and he holds it there for a while and takes it away and there’s a little dab of blood on it and Cole balls up the grass and tosses it away.
Joe keeps walking and Cole stands there for a bit then follows after, shaking his head.
We was talking like how you do when you’re with new people and we tell about Daddy, and how we’re going to be woods people and we already found about a hundred good things and Daddy was in town now getting corn kurns so we can eat corn all the time pretty soon.
Sam interrupts and says “that’s one! Right Cole? That one good?” and points in the direction of a small tree weighed down by pink blossoms and Cole rubs his chin importantly “well, I don’t know, don’t know if that’ll do er’” and Sam says “oh, ok” and starts to trudging again. Cole says we might as well try though, just in case and I ain’t know what they’re on about but they’s all headed in that direction and pretty soon they’s all underneath.
“Get on over here!” Sam calls, and we ain’t move but then they’re all calling for us to come, so we do and they say to stand under the tree with them and it’s close quarters all right and we can smell the wild on them boys.
Sam shouts “timber!” and hits the trunk of the tree as hard as he can with his stick and all the blossoms on the tree comes down on us and we’re covered in petals like pink snow and now we’re sputtering them out of our mouths and trying to climb out at once, but we ain’t mind and we finally clear the tree and I shake my head to get them off and Cole tells me it’s a parade to welcome us to the woods.
We keep walking and me and Jacob are jostling around and trying to knock each other down in the tall grass and now I see there’s black smoke coming from above the trees up the crest of a hill, and that must be their house.
Cole tells us to just quiet down now because we ain’t want to rile Uncle who was in the war and don’t take too kindly to sudden loud noises, or people coming up on him from out of nowhere.