Paper Trail

Voices in the Woods The fifteen-year-old boy crawled on his elbows, wedging himself tight inside the fallen hollow tree. His jeans were some protection but his flannel shirt was not, and as he inched forward, the wood scraped his belly. His goal was a window of light, a knothole, several inches ahead. The boy pushed the deep pocket of air out of his chest and collapsed his ribcage so that he breathed from only the top of his lungs. To narrow himself, he stretched his right arm up the crumbling insides of the log, then pulled his body after it. If he could make it to the knothole he would be able to see and breathe and, he was pretty sure, his boots would be far enough in to be hidden. Someone was calling his name. The boy stopped wriggling. His mother. No. She was supposed to be running in the other direction, decoying the Soldiers of God away from him. The boy's father was the one who was supposed to circle back, and he wouldn't do so unless the woods were clear. The boy edged up to the knothole. He blinked against the light. And the distinctive crack of a Sako TRG-21 sniper rifle shattered the glassy stillness of the April morning. He squeezed both eyes shut and sucked up a mouthful of grit as a second gunshot cracked the air. Or was the second shot only an echo? The boy was familiar with the games sound could play as it ricocheted off trees. He squeezed his eyes tighter. Dry, papery, trashy sounds came next, like someone wadding notebook paper up close to his ear. But the sounds weren't paper, the boy knew. The same sorts of sounds had come from under the boy's and his mother's and his father's feet when the three of them had been running away only moments ago. The sounds were the leaves, dead and drifting since autumn, breaking as something fell. Silence. Worse than the sounds. He should look. Surely, the boy thought, that was why God had placed the knothole just so. Was why, maybe twenty years ago, when the log was still a living giant in these eastern Oklahoma backwoods, a branch at the very spot where the boy's eye was now had rotted and fallen off, unplugging the hole. Was why, years later, a storm blew in and toppled the tree at just the right angle. All of it so that the boy, at this moment, could see. Could see that in spite of the crack of the rifle, in spite of the breaking leaves and the silence after, his mother was all right. Sometimes even Soldiers of God missed. Quick, he told himself. Before they came chasing after their bullet. Quick, before they found the boy, eyes closed and twitching behind the knothole. The boy released the gritty gulp of air and opened his eyes. Bits of crushed leaves stuck to her face. "Mom, Mom." Now the day is over, night is drawing nigh. "Remember the prayer at tuck-in time, Mom? Let me pray it for you now. For both of us." Shadows of the evening steal across the sky. "You cross-stitched the words on the hem of my pillowcase." Lord, give the weary calm and sweet repose. A thread of spit hung from her lip. And with Thy tenderest blessing, may our eyelids close. "Please, Mom, wipe it off. Mothers don't go around with threads of spit hanging like cobwebs. Wipe it off wipe it off WIPE IT OFF." But already a fat red ant was climbing the strand. The wound must be on the side away from the boy because he saw no blood or bullet hole. But he could see the angle of her head on her neck, and his chest began to rise and fall, pressing against the ragged insides of the log. Now he could barely whisper. "Oh." Snap. Like a mousetrap, but there were no mousetraps in the forest. Probably a high-topped army boot, stepping on a branch, coming for a boy in a log. "It's okay, Mom." The boy said his goodbyes softly between heaves. "Mom, don't worry. I'll be fine." To noGilbert, Barbara Snow is the author of 'Paper Trail' with ISBN 9780440229391 and ISBN 0440229391.