Danny
Filtered moonlight peeked through the dense cover of trees, coming down in soft shafts of light. The limbs of centuries-old maple, oak, and birch trees stopped most of the snow from falling to the frozen ground, but the flakes that did manage to get through floated slow and easy, creating an almost dreamlike setting.
Danny had given up running a few minutes ago. The jarring motion from the thudding of his boots on the hard ground was too much. Too painful.
His jaw hung open like a broken mailbox door—hurt too much to close it. And his tongue, thick and swollen now, filled his mouth like a bloated breakfast sausage. He felt a few teeth rattle around with each step he took. The wind still blew pretty hard in the woods, so his shoulders hunched forward as he plodded through the snow, frozen leaves and dried twigs snapping beneath his feet.
Finally he stopped walking altogether. It was all too much. His head pounded and felt as if someone were kicking it every few seconds with a steel-toed boot—Sokowski’s steel-toed boot. He couldn’t feel his fingers or toes, and he didn’t know where he was or where he was going. Everything was so dark around him, and Danny hated the darkness almost more than anything else.
Maybe it was his fault that Mindy was gone. Maybe if he had finished the bird carving in the morning like he planned, he would have gotten to her trailer earlier. Maybe he could have stopped the deputy and Carl from hurting her. Maybe she wouldn’t be dead.
Danny dropped to his knees, crunching the snow under him, and began to cry. His wide shoulders shook and built to a violent shudder as he let it all out. He cried for the ache he was feeling in his jaw. Cried for Mindy being gone forever. Cried for being slow and dumb and different from everybody else. He didn’t want to be here anymore. Not just here in Wyalusing but here in this world, where so many bad things happened. He wished he could be with his folks again. Up in heaven where it was supposed to be safe and happy, with all the other angels.
He lowered his head and let out a slow howl. Maybe he should talk to God, but he had never talked to him before and didn’t know what he should say or what he should ask of him. If God were looking down on him right now, sitting on his throne with his white beard and robe, maybe he would see that Danny was in a pinch and could use some help.
The snap of a dry twig echoed softly through the woods somewhere around him. Danny looked up, peered around at all the trees, but didn’t see anything. Another snap, followed by a rustling sound. He kept listening, and every few seconds there would be another soft crunch of snow.
“That you, Carl?”
The movement stopped at the sound of his voice.
Snow started to soak through Danny’s trousers at the knees, and the cold began to numb the skin. He tried to stand back up on his feet when a dark shape slipped across the forest floor in front of him. Slow and careful.
Danny’s cries hitched and caught in his chest as he watched the shadowy figure move behind a clump of brush.
Get up, Danny-Boy.
It was the voice again, but it sounded a little different now, and even though it seemed different, the voice itself was familiar.
Listen to me, Danny-Boy.
Danny’s papa used to call him Danny-Boy. Danny wiped the tears from his eyes so that he could get a better look at whatever was out there.
Come on, Danny.
Danny stood up, and his knees cracked a bit. “Pop?”
The shape moved a little deeper into the woods, away from Danny.
“I’m scared.”
No time for that.
The voice—it kinda did sound like his papa’s—made Danny cry again. Tears rolled down his cheeks and froze like tiny stones around the corners of his mouth.
“What am I supposed to do?” All this talking made his jaw feel even worse. A lot of his words were slurred and muffled, and this made him cry even harder.
Follow me.
The shape disappeared into a wall of darkness. Danny didn’t want it to go away, so he put his right boot forward, and the other one followed. It was slow going, but at least he was moving.
“I’m cold.”
“I want to see you.”
Soon. Soon.
“Is Mama with you?”
The voice didn’t answer. There were no more sounds of breaking twigs or crunching snow. The woods were quiet again except for the sound of wind rattling leaves on the tips of tree limbs. Danny forced himself to walk faster, hoping to catch up with whatever or whoever was leading him deeper into the forest.
He climbed over a fallen tree covered with a thick layer of ice and snow and kept walking. He squinted into the night air and tried real hard to hear any more sounds in the woods around him.
He started getting scared that he might be walking the wrong way—if there was a wrong way. He was tired. So tired. Just when he felt like stopping and lying down, he saw a flicker of movement ahead of him. Could have been a grouse or a clump of snow falling from the tree branches, but he kept moving.
Danny wasn’t sure how long he walked. It sure felt like a long time. His legs burned, and his muscles screamed out for rest, but he kept his feet moving at a steady pace. The snow was up past his knees now.
The wind intensified and started whipping against his face. It felt like it was turning into sleet. The soft snowflakes had become hard and small and stung his cheeks as they pelted against his skin.
“How much further?”
We’re almost there.
The voice didn’t really sound like his papa’s now. Truth be told, his papa had died so long ago that he couldn’t say for sure what his voice sounded like. Maybe it wasn’t his papa’s, but even if it wasn’t, Danny wanted to think it was somehow.
The wind started really howling, like someone had flipped a switch. His pants flapped hard against his legs, making his skin tingle a little. Danny stopped for a second to scoop up a handful of snow and pressed the clump of frozen crystals to his lips. He tried to lick at it, but it hurt his tongue too much. He leaned his head back and dropped in a few chunks of snow and let it melt down the back of his throat.
He started walking again, but his arms and legs were growing heavier, making it harder to trudge through the snow. He let his eyes flicker closed, and he walked blind. With his hands held out in front of him, he felt his way deeper into the woods. A low-hanging branch tore at his face, leaving a thin red welt on his cheek, but he kept walking, waiting for the voice to tell him what to do next.
Okay. We’re here, Danny. Time to rest.
Danny forced his eyes open but saw nothing except darkness and more trees.
“I don’t see nothing.”
The wind blew in response.
“All I see is the woods.”
The voice wasn’t there anymore. It must have left him again. He turned in a complete circle and searched all around him without knowing what he was looking for.
“Why am I stopping here?” His answer came to him when he leaned against a tree and felt something hard and smooth press into his lower back. He reached behind him and ran his hands over the trunk of the tree until they came into contact with a wooden plank nailed into the bark. A foot above it was another plank. He peered up at the tree and saw that the planks continued upward and disappeared into the darkness above him.
He gripped a plank at chest level and pulled himself up the tree. His fingertips reached up and found the next piece of wood, and he pulled himself up the side of the tree, plank by plank. One felt kinda loose, so he balanced himself as carefully as he could and continued on.
The boards were frozen solid and real slippery. Halfway up the tree, he glanced down but couldn’t see the ground through the darkness. He looked above him and saw darkness up there, too. He kept climbing the ladder and was glad it was nighttime, because he didn’t like high places. They scared him. He had always been afraid of heights and never climbed trees like all the other kids did.
When Danny reached up again, his knuckles knocked against a piece of wood that was too big to be a climbing plank. Working in the dark, he let his fingers feel around the edges of a wooden platform, soft with rot, which had been built on top of a few thick branches. He pulled himself onto the wooden stand, which couldn’t be more than a few feet wide and a few feet long. Danny thought for a second that maybe kids had built a tree fort way out here in the forest but then remembered that Uncle Brett used to climb trees to hunt for deer sometimes. Uncle Brett had built three or four deer stands out in the woods and would hide up in the branches and wait for a deer to pass under him before he shot it with a gun.
On his hands and knees now, Danny felt along the platform to check for the edges. Four pieces of two-by-four had been nailed to the tree limbs a few feet above the platform and served as a railing. He touched one of the two-by-fours, and the piece of wood jiggled with rot. He scooted himself to the middle of the planks and rested. Something rattled and flapped beside him. When he reached over, he felt a piece of plastic tarp whipping in the wind.
Danny squatted and pulled the small piece of plastic over him. It didn’t help much. He could still feel the wind and snow smacking against his makeshift blanket, but it would have to do.
After he put his head down on the rough wood, he gathered a clump of damp leaves for a pillow. He thought about his room above the laundromat and how warm it always was. The dryers always made it nice and cozy in the wintertime.
As his eyes flickered closed, he remembered that he hadn’t locked the laundromat up for the night. He hoped that Mr. Bennett wouldn’t be too sore with him. He was never supposed to leave it unlocked at night. Kids might come in and mess around with the washers and dryers. And Mr. Bennett didn’t like folks using the toilet. Said folks don’t treat public bathrooms as well as the ones in their homes.
Right before sleep took him away, Danny wished that he would get the chance to see Mr. and Mrs. Bennett again. They sure were nice to him.
