Woods and Trees and Grandfathers

Well lookie, lookie what I found!

Kenny lay on his back looking up at the sky through the trees.

Well lookie, lookie what I found! That's what his grandfather was going to say when he came limping in out of nowhere, a big silly grin on his face.

Which was going to happen any moment now.

Silliest grin you ever saw in your life.

As dusk came Kenny zipped his jacket up to his neck. It was getting cold and he knew it would be even colder soon.

He began to gather leaves.

All through the day Kenny had waited right here in this patch of sun-light. “If you ever get lost in the woods—stop walking!”

His grandfather had told him that when he was about eight.

His grandfather was pretty smart about things like this.

Always carry a canteen, always carry a knife, always be listening.

Kenny had been waiting awhile now. Durring this whole time he had never for even a second stopped listening. He waited for that thin sliver of voice calling, "Kenny!" far off in the woods. He listened so hard he thought his ears might bleed from the effort.

He had heard birds, lots of them. He had heard chipmunks and squirrels and once something quite large sounding, somewhere off in the bushes. The sound brought Kenny to his feet for the first time in hours.

In that moment the woods had grown almost silent. Kenny held his breath as he listened to the wind. A few moments later the forest came alive again and the normal sounds returned.

He sat back down.

"Don't go too far away," his grandfather had said. It was the last true words Kenny had heard for a very long time now.

"Oh, okay," kenny had said inside himself.

He closed his eyes remembering.

As the sky grew darker the trees seemed to come in tighter around him. "No," Kenny said to himself. He wasn't crazy. He knew that trees might sway but their trunks didn't actually move.

“This is very strange,” Kenny said out loud just to finally hear something human again. Then he used a deep radio-announcer-voice--“All very strange indeed...”

He took a swig from his canteen and began working on a stick with his Swiss Army knife. The stick was for the trap he was going to make. He was never going to have time to finish it, but it was good to keep busy.

He thought of Mrs. Tooney and his fourth grade class. He would tell them how he had trapped a rabbit and eaten it raw. He began designing the story and he imagined himself telling it.

Raw! You ate a rabbit raw?

Melisa Moore's gonna puke at her desk all over her pink-laced blue tennis shoes.

When the stars came out Kenny lay in a blanket of leaves and pine needles. He was almost warm.

“Where is that old man?” he whispered to the purple/black sky full of stars.

He noticed the trees were different. They had formed a circle around him and seemed to be leaning over him as though to get a better look at his face.

The image made him smile with his eyes closed. The feeling of being watched quietly by curious trees was as comforting as the knowledge that his grandfather would find him in the morning.

“Well lookie, lookie what I found!” That's what he was going to say. Kenny just knew it.

Just knew it.

Just knew it.