An Incidental Reckoning Read online

  Will had suggested Ravensburg State Park, located in the mountains of the central region of Pennsylvania, as this year’s meeting site. Jon had looked it up on the internet and agreed it had potential, with nearby bogs and state forests to explore. The park itself did not work hard to impress; just a strip of woods sandwiched between a cliff and slides of boulders and loose shale at the back, and a highway on the opposite side uncomfortably close to the campsites. A stream cut through the acreage before the road, but appeared too shallow for the trout fishing they always did on these trips. At one end of the narrow park was a small dam and a pavilion, and on the other the loop of packed dirt accessing the campground. Payment for camping was done using the honor system and the park had no dedicated rangers.

  So far, on this Friday evening in early May, only his tent broke up the monotony of the tall pines, their canopy of interlocking branches acting almost as a natural roof. Jon preferred solitude to a tent city populated with screaming children, barking dogs, and small tow-behind campers outfitted to haul civilization into the woods. He had never understood why those people came in the first place: building a fire in the backyard, roasting some weenies, and then sleeping in their own beds seemed easier.

  A blue jay screamed from somewhere above, and then a crow dropped down from the trees and flew through the campground, followed by two jays that easily kept pace and darted in to peck at the larger bird. The crow didn’t attempt to retaliate, only sought escape from the angry birds’ territory.

  If only it were that easy. But then, maybe if we had fought back…

  He heard the clip-clop of horse hooves and turned around, discerned a black shape moving on the road but screened by the trees. A sudden vision of an old-timey horse-drawn hearse came to mind, ghostly and driven by shrouded figures, and an involuntary shiver ran through him. Then through a larger gap between tree trunks, he saw an Amish buggy driven by a young boy maybe sixteen years old. He did not wear a beard, which Jon understood, from his limited store of Amish lore, that he hadn’t married. The boy had been looking into the campground and through the open space their eyes met. The traveller raised his hand in salute without adding a smile, and Jon did the same. Then he was gone.

  This trip marked the fifth time he and Will had reunited. Both of them would turn forty before January. They had kept in touch for a while after graduation, but it went as those things do: lives run in different directions, new people and places enter the mix, and at some point the lines mooring the present to the past are severed. And because of the pain they had suffered, he wondered if, consciously or not, both of them had intentionally cut them once their alliance had lost its necessity.

  But when Will had called six years ago, he found the bullied high school kid within responding to his friend; like a Matryoshka doll, the hollow wooden nesting dolls that held a smaller version within, and another within the next, and so on until reaching a tiny solid figure the size of a bean at its heart. That part of him, though buried deep under the years, a job and marriage, still lived in its own special purity. He had worked hard to smother it, but talking to Will proved how deep old pain could still run, and how good it felt to have someone who shared it. He knew now why combat veterans sought each other out after so many years; only those that had felt the bullets fly a hairs-breadth away from punching their ticket to the afterlife, and had witnessed their brothers falling all around them, could understand. Their tears needed no explanation except to the wives and children and grandchildren at the center of their lives suddenly thrust to the periphery. Maybe his and Will’s experience didn’t have the same intensity as surviving a firefight, but he thought it an apt enough comparison.

  Re-living those days, the pain stirred up into a sudden whirlwind by Will’s voice, nearly caused him to drop the phone. But in the end, they both realized a need to reconnect and allow the restless boys within expression; to look into the eyes of one who knew.

  The annual camping trip was born.

  They didn’t get sappy, didn’t hug and cry, but simply basked in the affirmation of that connection. They didn’t even talk about Stape much, because in a way he came too, sat by the campfire roasting hot dogs with them, and threw a third line into the cold mountain waters hoping for a sixteen-inch brook trout.

  Jon had discovered that Will had never told his wife about those years: with a laugh shrugging off her suggestion that he attend his twenty-year reunion, explaining he had no desire to see those people again, but inside cringing at stepping through the double doors and seeing his memories reflected on every face that turned to look at him. This didn’t surprise Jon. He had never told anyone either that didn't already know. And even if no one at the reunion said anything - the reunion that he had avoided as well - he too would have suspected their humiliation behind every bray of laughter that carried across the room.

  They had - after a discussion in a pizza shop after school following their second run-in with Stape and the certainty that he would not leave them be - come to a mutual agreement not to fight back. They decided to ride it out. Stape would graduate in two years, and between the classes he cut and the time spent in detention, they could often avoid him. But primarily, both boys were terrified of their aggressor. He had never struck either of them. That was the most galling thing. He simply enjoyed watching them fight so much that he arranged for it to happen again, off school grounds. And they did, while Brody carefully controlled who was invited and then charged admission. In future bouts, he even fixed the fights, telling them beforehand who would take a dive and when. He made sure they didn’t hurt each other too badly, and kept events spaced out so that blood and bruises wouldn’t attract the undue attention of Mr. Giles or any other authority figure. And other kids, even if inclined to do so, never told. The terror of Brody Stape taking a personal interest in them acted as a powerful deterrent.

  They should have taken a beating for their freedom, he now knew from a man's perspective and far removed from any threat. But they hadn’t. They had become Brody’s property, forced to hurt the only true friend either possessed. Jon did not have the strength or the resources, or the support from his father (his mother gone since his infancy), but he did have Will. Perhaps if he’d been alone, he might have lashed out from sheer desperation and an irrepressible accumulation of rage. But he bore no grudge or placed any blame on Will. They had been kids, and done the best they could, or at least the best they knew how. And it had drawn them together in a way that nothing else could have, even as it after had torn them apart, only recently gravitating back together after so long.

  Jon got up to stretch, and then stood listening to the rush of the fast but shallow stream fifty yards away, closed his eyes and smelled the earth and pine and odor of decaying leaves exhumed from their recent burial in the snow, allowed these present sensations to flood his being, forcing out the memories that had come on too thick for comfort.

  He heard the sound of a car slowing on the road and recognized Will through the driver's window as he passed by to the entrance. Jon smiled, glad that his friend had arrived, ready for a few days of nature, relative solitude, and welcome companionship. He waved as Will drove slowly down the dirt track that led to their campsite.

  “Do you ever think about him? Where he is now?”

  “Who?” Jon asked, but he knew.

  “Stape.”

  “No. Not really. Well, maybe I’ve thought about it, but really who cares?”

  Jon stared at his line during the exchange, avoiding Will’s eyes and the indication of something beyond idle curiosity. Since Jon had taken care of the tent and firewood, there hadn’t been much more set-up required, so they had driven down lonely dirt roads navigable only by the DeLorme’s atlas that Jon kept in his trunk, looking for a trout stream. They found it difficult to determine whether the waters discovered were legal for live bait or lures only, finally deciding to take their chances, doubtful that a Fish Commission officer would fight the boggy ground and thick rhododendrons to check up on th
em. Jon had detected pensiveness to Will after the initial greeting and slaps on the back. He had said little and stared at nothing as though weighing something of substance in his thoughts. Now, bringing up Stape in such a direct manner portended something Jon didn’t know if he wanted more information on.

  “He was just released from prison. Got ten years...and he did all ten.”

  “For what?”

  “Possession of heroin with intent to sell."”

  “Oh.”

  Jon hoped that it would end there, that a trout would derail the conversation by making a run at one of the redworms pierced through with their hooks.

  “Do you ever think about getting even?”

  “Not with anything approaching seriousness. Why are you asking about this, Will? Are you planning to do something?”

  “I already have.”

  Jon paused, waited for more, and then sighed and allowed himself to be drawn in further. He couldn't deny his curiosity or the trepidation that held its hand.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  “He doesn’t live that far from Tanville now. A house out in the sticks where his parents lived when we were in school. I went there last summer. Sorry I didn't stop by, but I had...business."

  "What did you do, Will?" Jon asked, but afraid of the answer. "Did you kill him?" The last part came out as a near whisper.

  "Kill him? No, I didn't kill him. Jeez, Jon. What do you think I am?"

  "Sorry."

  Jon turned back to his line that stretched over the water and disappeared through a small ring where it broke the surface. A dragonfly had landed on it, searching for prey, its wings catching the sun and shattering the light into the colorful parts of its whole. They had chosen a spot where the stream made a small turn and widened out, the main current rounding against the far bank to scoop away the gravel and create a deep hole. The creek bottom dropped sharply in front of his feet, disappearing into dark waters in which Jon imagined dwelt some trophy brook or brown trout. The trouble with trout, though, was that either they were biting or they weren't. No trouble if they were, but so far in twenty minutes his repeated casts to settle his worm near the far bank where a tangle of roots provided perfect cover had proved fruitless. He decided not to ask Will anything more. He would get to it, or he wouldn't.

  "I trashed his car. An old Mustang sitting in the driveway. I drove by a few times, looked like nobody was home, so I found some rocks and went back. Smashed the windshield, the back window, and dropped the biggest one on top of the hood. I hope it broke something inside, but I don't know. Then I got out of there."

  Jon absorbed this, couldn't deny a feeling of satisfaction at his friend's actions. And it wasn't murder. He figured Brody deserved at least what Will had done, probably still had more coming. But he had no desire to mete out punishment of his own. He still lived with the pain, but didn’t want to approach its source. Brody, a newly minted ex-con, surely hadn't learned anything, spending ten years in prison, a loser if there ever was one. But curiosity got the better of him and he asked, "So how did it feel? To strike back?"

  Will turned to him, and Jon saw a haunted man.

  "At first it felt great. I actually fibbed a bit before. I had intended to come to your place afterwards, figured we could have a small celebration. But by the time I got to Tanville, I just felt sick. Pathetic. It didn't change anything. Either that or it just wasn't enough. Maybe if I had walked up to the door and knocked, and then punched him in the face..."

  "Will, I don't think that's a good idea."

  "I know that. What gets me the most is that I don't even think I could do it. I'm too afraid. Almost forty years old, and I don't have the balls to stand up to him." Will's voice choked, and he turned away.

  "If it helps, I don't think I could either."

  "But why, Jon? How did it go on like that? How is it that no one saw what was happening to us, or if they did, why didn't they stop it? Do you think we were wrong? Not to fight back, or tell our parents or somebody?"

  Jon starting reeling his line in again, a purely mechanical action now, his heart far removed from the act of fishing.

  "I don't know. Stuff like that happens all of the time. Kids beaten or worse from their parents or some creepy uncle, and it just goes on. People don't want to know, sometimes, because then they have to do something about it. But we made it. And I don't see the use of questioning what can't be changed."

  "But are we cowards, Jon? I've never been in a situation since then that could tell me otherwise, never been in another fight after all of that. I didn't run from anything, and I didn't look for trouble…but either way I never had a chance to find out. I sometimes think I should just find a guy on the street and pick a fight. See what happens."

  Jon frowned. "What would it prove? We both have jobs, contribute something. You coach little league. And what did Brody do with his life? Sold drugs and spent ten years in prison. So he can beat people up. What does that amount to, in the end?"

  Will brought in his line and picked off the lifeless, pale worm that had given its all and re-baited his hook. For a few minutes they focused on the fishing again, and on their own thoughts.

  "You're right I guess. But it still bothers me. What if, for instance...someone came onto the field while we were practicing baseball? Threatened the kids. My son. What would I do? Could I stand up to the guy, or would I be too afraid?"

  "I'm sure you'd do the right thing, if the kids were in danger."

  "I wish I could say for sure. But what if I couldn't? What if it's some genetic thing? What else explains it? Why does one guy feel no fear, goes to war and comes home a hero, while another guy hides behind a rock, hoping that the bullet has anyone's name on it but his? What if I'm one of those guys? What if we both are?"

  Jon bristled at the implication, but he couldn't claim that he hadn't wondered the same thing. He had never given it too much thought, or at least allowed it to become such a pointed issue in his life as Will had, but could he? Would he try and take down the gunman that barged into his workplace to turn it into a hunting preserve, or hide behind his forklift and cover his ears to stop the screams and block out the gunshots that brought them to an abrupt end? But did anyone really know that answer, until they were there? Even the ones that hadn't been forced to fight their best friend in high school? And especially the ones absolutely certain they could?

  "I suppose we'll know if the time ever comes. All we can do is live the best we know how."

  "Sure." Will said, but he sounded disappointed, as though he had expected Jon to have all of this worked out.

  My father would have, Jon thought. His method of parenting consisted of spouting platitudes, placing unrealistic expectations on his son, and then stepping back and offering no support or encouragement when he failed to live up to them. But plenty of criticism. When he wasn't at the bar drinking.

  A trout finally roused itself and struck Jon's line, and the conversation was postponed as he reeled in a thirteen inch brown that gasped for oxygen as Jon carefully removed the hook.

  "Should we keep this one?"

  "Nah, it's getting late and that certainly isn't enough for both of us. Let's wait until we can cook a full supper. If we get that lucky."

  "All right. Should probably get going. I don't want to try and find our way back to the car in the dark."

  Jon stooped and put the trout back into the water. He released it, and it flailed its tail apathetically and then turned over and floated belly-up. He watched it, willing it to swim. Trout were such delicate fish, didn't take much to kill them. He hoped this one was only recovering from the shock of its abduction, and would soon revive and dart back into the cold darkness of its protected shelter. He suddenly felt terrible for luring it out for his own sport, a mild pleasure soon forgotten but a life and death game for the fish.

  Swim.

  Swim, swim, swim, swim...

  With a flash, its scales catching the last of the afternoon sun lighting t
he pool, the trout righted itself and disappeared into the deeper water. Jon breathed a sigh of relief, found himself close to tears, surprised by it. He had never given a second thought to catching a fish, wondered if in five years he'd be head of a local PETA chapter and chaining himself to tree trunks.

  "You okay, Jon? Ready to go?"

  He stood up and looked out into the water, wanting to make sure the fish didn't rise to the surface again; which, if it happened, would feel like an omen of some kind though he had never believed in that sort of thing, either. The surface of the water remained unbroken, and Jon collected his pole and creel, and without looking back followed Will down a faint fisherman's trail.

  Just as he made out the white roof of Will’s car through the dense vegetation, a thought occurred and he asked, "Will, are you sure Brody didn't see you?"

  "Yeah, I'm sure. Nobody was home. Hey, I brought some hot sausage we can cook up on the grill for dinner if you’re interested."