We still hadn’t made it out of the forest when night fell, and with no convenient abandoned cottages nearby, we were forced to camp out under a big tree. The Woodsman quickly chopped up a big pile of firewood, and was amazed when I showed him how a Bic lighter worked. (I don’t smoke, but carry a lighter regardless, because Peacoat Pete Zamora smokes, and somehow never seems to have any way to light a cigarette on his own.)
The resulting campfire was toasty and warm, and I sat down on a log beside it and shared the last of the meat pies with Toto. I was pretty concerned with what we would do the following morning for breakfast.
“If you wish,” said the Lion, “I will go into the forest and kill a deer for you. You can roast it by the fire, since your tastes are so peculiar that you prefer cooked food, and then you will have a very good breakfast.”
“Don’t!” the Tin Woodsman begged. “Please don’t. I should certainly weep if you killed a poor deer, and then my jaws would rust again.”
So the Lion went into the forest and found his own supper—we never asked him what it was, and he never volunteered it. Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out how I could revisit the subject with him discreetly and—more importantly—cook an entire deer over a campfire by morning without the Tin Woodsman finding out.
Meanwhile, the Scarecrow had found a tree full of nuts and was filling my basket with them. Granted, his stuffed hands were so clumsy and the nuts were so small that he dropped almost as many as he managed to get in the basket. But the Scarecrow didn’t mind how long his task took, since it kept him well away from the fire.
I nibbled on a nut that had rolled nearby, and found that it was actually quite tasty. They would certainly make an easier and less gruesome breakfast than fresh venison, and the whole basketful could potentially last me for days.
A short time later, when I was trying to build some kind of makeshift bed in a patch of dirt, the Scarecrow risked coming close to the fire to bring me a few big armfuls of dried leaves, covering me with them to keep me warm and snug. All of this lent credence to my theory that human hearts were vastly overrated.
It was surprisingly comfortable, and I slept like a rock until morning.
When daybreak came I found a brook to wash my face in, feasted on my bounty of tree nuts, and gathered the troops for the day’s march. Alas, boredom was not destined to be our biggest problem on that particular day. About an hour up the road we came to a long, wide ditch that divided the forest as far as we could see on either side. It was crazy deep, and littered with jagged rocks at the bottom. The sides were much too steep to climb down.
Damn it. This part was not in the movie at all. “Okay, what now?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” the Tin Woodsman said. The Lion just shook his shaggy mane.
“We cannot fly, that is certain,” the Scarecrow said. “Neither can we climb down into this great ditch. Therefore, if we cannot jump over it, we must stop where we are.”
Astute.
“I think I could jump over it,” the Cowardly Lion said, gazing thoughtfully from one side to the other and measuring the distance carefully in his mind.
“Then we are all right,” answered the Scarecrow, “for you can carry us all over on your back, one at a time.”
The Lion just gulped.
“I’ll go first,” declared the Scarecrow. “If you found that you could not jump over the gulf, Dorothy would be killed.” I had forgotten that he still thought my name was Dorothy. “Or the Tin Woodman badly dented on the rocks below,” he continued. “But if I am on your back it will not matter so much, for the fall would not hurt me.”
“I am terribly afraid of falling, myself,” the Cowardly Lion said. “But I suppose there’s nothing to do but try. Get on my back and we will make the attempt.” The Scarecrow climbed up on the Lion’s back, and the big palooka walked to the edge of the gulf and crouched down.
“Why don’t you run and jump?” the Scarecrow asked.
“Because that isn’t the way we Lions do these things.” Then, with a big spring, he bounded into the air and landed safely on the other side. It didn’t even look particularly hard. I took my turn next, gripping Toto in one arm, holding tightly to his mane with the other hand. For a quick second it felt like we were flying, and before I had time to even be freaked out, we were safe on the other side. The Lion went back a third time and got the Tin Woodsman, and then we all sat down for a minute to give him a chance to rest. He panted like a giant, goofy Labrador retriever.
The forest was, if anything, even thicker, darker, and gloomier on the other side. I was honestly beginning to worry that we’d never get out of the damn thing. To make it worse, we soon heard strange noises from the depths of the woods that made yesterday’s growls seem cute in comparison.
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The Lion dropped his voice to a whisper. “This is the part of the country where the Kalidahs live.”
“What the fuck are Kalidahs?”
“Monstrous beasts with bodies like bears and heads like tigers,” replied the Lion. “And with claws so long and sharp they could tear me in two as easily as I could kill Toto.” He gave me a glance that looked extra fearful, even for him. “I’m terribly afraid of the Kalidahs.”
“Jesus,” I said. “I feel like I am, too.”
The Lion was about to reply when suddenly we came to another gulf across the road. This one was way too broad and deep for him to leap across.
“Thoughts?” I asked.
The Scarecrow looked around and tapped his burlap chin with an ill-fitting glove. “There is a great tree, standing close to the ditch,” he said. “If the Tin Man can chop it down, so that it will fall to the other side, we can walk across it easily.”
“That is a first-rate idea,” the Lion said. “One would almost suspect you had brains in your head, instead of straw.”
I was definitely beginning to suspect that the moral of this whole thing was going to be that your brains or heart or Klonopin or whatever was inside you all along, because it did seem like a pretty smart plan. The Woodsman set to work at once—as quietly as possible, because holy fuck, Kalidahs—and chopped most of the way through the massive trunk in just minutes. Then the Lion put his front legs against the tree and pushed with all his might. Slowly the big tree tipped and fell with a crash across the ditch, with its top branches on the other side.
So much for quiet. We had just started to cross the makeshift bridge when a sharp growl made us all look up. To our shared horror, we saw running toward us two beasts with bodies like enormous grizzly bears and heads like jungle cats.
“Kalidahs!” said the Cowardly Lion, beginning to tremble.
“RUUUUUUUUUUN!”
The Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman, and I scrambled across the tree trunk as quickly as we could manage. The Lion, however, as terrified as he was, turned to face the Kalidahs, and gave a roar so loud that I almost screamed, and the Scarecrow fell over backward at the far side of the chasm.
Even the fierce beasts stopped short and looked at him in surprise. But they seemed to realize that they were significantly larger than him, and outnumbered him two to one. The Kalidahs again rushed forward, and the Lion hurried across the tree, his face twisted into a visage of pure terror. Without even slowing down, the big-ass bearcats leapt onto the bridge to follow.
“We are lost,” the Lion whimpered, “for they will surely tear us to pieces with their sharp claws.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “But stand close behind me, and I will fight them as long as I am alive.”
“Wait a minute!” I said. None of this was in the movie I was familiar with, but The Wizard of Oz was hardly the only thing I had ever seen on TV. “Chop it down! Woodsman, chop the tree down before they can get across!”
Fortunately the trunk was thinner near the top than it had been at the tree’s base, and the Woodsman managed to get through it just as the two Kalidahs were nearly across. The tree fell with a crash into the gulf, carrying the snarling beasts with it. Both were dashed to pieces on the sharp rocks at the bottom.
“Well,” said the Cowardly Lion as we took a moment to calm our nerves and catch our breath. “I see we are going to live a little while longer, and I am glad of it. Those creatures frightened me so badly that my heart is beating yet.”
“Ah,” said the Tin Woodsman sadly, “I wish I had a heart to beat.”
So emo, even with death staring him in the face. My own heart skipped a beat.
“Also,” he said, my name is ‘Tin Woodman.’”
“Huh? What did I say?”
“When you asked me to chop down the bridge you called me Woodsman. With an ‘s.’”
Tin Woodman. “Okay, that sounds like a porn star name. I’m not calling you that.”
He didn’t protest, which was good because I was far too exhausted to hear it. Now that I realized that riding on the Lion was an option, though, I did that for the rest of the afternoon. To our mutual delight, the trees finally began to thin as we progressed. By late afternoon we came upon a broad, swiftly flowing river, with the Yellow Brick Road continuing through green meadows, bright flowers, and luscious-looking fruit trees on the other side.
“That river looks kind of rough,” I said. “Can we all swim?”
“Not I,” replied the Scarecrow. “The Tin Woodman must build us a raft, so we can float to the other side.”
Indefatigable as ever, the Woodsman (with an ‘s’ in the middle, goddamnit) took his axe and began to chop down small trees. While he was busy, the Scarecrow found a tree full of fruit on our side of the riverbank, which was nice, since I hadn’t eaten anything but nuts all day. I had long since stopped worrying that the local foliage was all part of some elaborate trap.
It turned out the chopping part went much quicker than the actual raft-building part, and night came before he could finish. We found a cozy spot under the trees and I curled up against the Lion’s soft, warm, somewhat rank-smelling hide to sleep. The good old, reliable (still horrifyingly creepy-faced, but that was hardly his fault) Scarecrow kept watch over us, just in case any more Kalidahs came wandering all the way out to the forest’s edge.
I dreamed about Madeline, Peter Zamora, Astronaut Ice Cream for some reason, and my Mom.