Chapter Twelve
I had really strange dreams. Dreams where voices spoke directly into my brain and told me things that I knew weren’t true. I tried to make them stop, block them out but how far can you get when the ideas are in your own head? The more you focused on not thinking about them, the more they dominated your mind. Eventually, I stopped trying and obeyed the voices. After that, it was easier, they left me alone and I could concentrate on the other sensations that coursed through me.
I dreamed about the forest and a family, about an older woman who was my grandmother, about my real father who hadn’t known I was born or alive. How my mother had run away from him and hidden me so he could not take me away? That he had died in a car accident before he could tell his mother about me.
She had hired a man called Chase to find me and bring me home. Home was the Washington D.C.-Maryland area where my grandmother lived on a farm in the country. Home was the comfortable big round room in the brick Victorian mansion with the cherry wood four-poster bed, big screen TV and white marble fireplace with brass fire dogs. White chintz curtains and polished hardwood floors. I sat on the small loveseat in front of the blazing fire and it all seemed familiar yet somehow false.
The butler entered after a discrete knock, in his hands a silver tray upon which rested a flaky croissant covered with chocolate sprinkles and a cup of expensive hand ground Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee with half and half.
“Good morning, Master Lake,” he greeted setting the tray down on the table. “Breakfast. Your pills. Your grandmother wishes you to attend her in the Sunroom when you are through eating and dressed.”
“What’s your name again?” I could see his face but his name eluded me.
“Charles, Mr. Lake.”
“What day is this?”
“Friday, Mr. Lake. October 24th, Friday. 6:30 a.m.” Then, he added something that made my bones cringe. “2015.”
“2015? But –.” I ran to the bathroom, flipped on the light and stared into the mirror. The face that stared back at me was mine but different. Longer, less rounded with sharp high cheekbones, curly dark blood-red hair brushed back into tousled curls, ice-blue eyes that looked haunted and much older. I remembered a child’s face and this was the face of a youngster verging on manhood.
“How old am I?” I whispered as Charles followed me into the granite counter bathroom.
“Nearly 14, Master Lake. Don’t you remember the birthday party Mrs. Hamilton gave you last spring?”
“But –,” my brain froze. Last time I’d looked at myself, I saw a twelve-year-old’s scared face staring back at me. “I don’t remember the last two years,” I said in dismay. I pushed past him and bolted for the door. Running through the hallways of polished maple floors, ornately chased scrolled walls and antiques that cost millions, down the back staircase to the foyer choosing that way because I liked the back-stair connotation of sneakiness. Heading for the old door out into the side yard that used to be the servant’s entrance to stand in the yard under a huge old maple whose leaves died gracefully around my ankles.
I was panting by then. Not because of exertion but in distress. All this, the house, the yard, all of it seemed so familiar yet so wrong.
I heard both Charles and my grandmother calling for me and the sound made me head for the distant tree line. Once in the woods, leaves enveloped me in their scent and sound like putting on an old familiar overcoat. My hands knew just where to find the pockets and what was inside them.
Automatically, my eyes sought out the sign of animal life. I saw a deer track and recognized one as a doe with her young fawns. Raccoon and possum spread their mark on the soft mud near a puddle along with deer mice and turkey.
Following, I found a game trail and kept on it delving deeper into the woods. The trees here were oak, maple, and gum. Some hickory and crêpe myrtles with their colorful flowers. Dogwood and Sassafras by their hand-shaped leaves. I knew the names but my senses told me I was more used to pine, hemlock, and spruce. Golden quaking aspens, all the signs and sounds and scents of the Western woods.
I could hear them stumbling through the woods behind me searching and I knew that there was no way for either of them to find me unless I let them. I knew I was better in the woods; I knew it with the same certainty as I knew my name. I felt like I was two different people but inside the same body and mind.
There was the boy, the twelve-year-old Lakan who was afraid and remembered wild forests with firs and aspens and there was the older, more sophisticated Lake who lived in the Southern brick mansion and ate with two forks, not one.
I ran until I couldn’t anymore. My legs were tired, my wind was gone and I was lost. But not truly. All I had to do was turn around to see the distinct marks of my passage through the brush. Broken branches, scuffed leaves, and footprints in the sandy loam left a trail that a blind man could track.
I checked the pockets of my black jeans and corduroy shirt. Found a slim wallet with an ID card, credit card, and two twenties. The credit card was an American Express and had my name on it. Lake Michael Strong. It should have read Lakan Strongbow but then, Lakan Strongbow would not have had an American Express card.
I circled, put my back on a twenty-year-old shagbark hickory and judged which direction was West. That was the route I was headed in with a certainty that I knew in my bones was correct.
I traveled for an hour, resting for 15 minute intervals every two hours. Crossed several small streams but knew better than to drink out of them. I did find some small springs and knew those were safe being constantly filtered as they seeped up from deep underground.
Even here deep in the woods, I found evidence of man’s occupation in discarded soda cans and beer bottles. Rinsed out, I carried spring water in the bottles capped with the remains of old plastic bags. I could tuck them into my back pockets and keep my hands free.
There wasn’t much brush in there, and the further west I walked, the higher I climbed where hemlock began to creep into the picture. Pines and firs followed as I entered the Shenandoah National Forest.
I knew I had when I passed the trees blazed yellow and the green and yellow sign posted on the border lines.
The further away I traveled from the brick mansion, the lighter I felt, the clearer the voices in my head. I had left a great weight behind and only realized the extent as I left it behind.
The thought of leaving my grandmother, her fancy house, butler and all the comforts of a wealthy existence did not deter me. The further I got, the dimmer those memories became. The problem was that the other memories became no clearer.
I stopped when the shadowy forest became too dim to clearly see the ground. A moonless night, it was pitch black in the deep where I halted.
I had no lights, no matches yet my muscle memory knew what to do. Unconsciously, I had picked a spot with water, wood, and rocks. The rocks yielded a striking stone and nearby, dry moss. In five minutes, I had a neat little fire going which illuminated the small clearing I had chosen. Surrounded by pines and a rocky outcrop that rose behind me, it formed a small cove that was sheltered from the wind and would conceal the fire from anywhere except ten feet in front of it. A small stream cut through the corner of the rocks on my left and to the left was due west.
Food was no problem either. I had seen animal tracks abounding under the hickory and beechnut trees. Finding some nuts that hadn’t been eaten by squirrels and birds was more difficult. It was too late in the season for berries but there were roots I could dig up.
I found where wild turkey roosted and it was no effort to knock one out of the tree, club it and cut its head off with a broken piece of a beer bottle. The feathers and skin peeled off in one piece. Gutting it was more difficult with blood on the glass shard; it was slippery to hold but I managed.
Green elm branches through the carcass hole front and back laid over stones made a rotisserie even if I had to roll it myself. I didn’t wait for it to cook completely, the smell made me so hungry I ripped into it as soon as the meat turned white. There wasn’t much white meat - wild turkey was mostly dark but it tasted better than any Butterball my memory dredged up.
I huddled against the rock outcrop, sitting on a bed of pine needles as I pulled my arms inside my sweatshirt, tucking my head under as well. Cocooned inside my clothes with the fire reflecting off the rocks, I drifted into an easy sleep. I dreamed. Dreamed of a ranch house in the mountains and of an old man who took care of me with gentle patience.
I knew he was my grandfather but no matter how hard I strained, I could not recall his face or name yet I knew he watched over me as I slept. In the morning, it was the chatter of scolding blue jays and irate squirrels that woke me. They were angrily protesting intruders in the woods. I heard dogs barking and hastily stood up.
In seconds, I kicked dirt over my smoldering ashes and roughed over my campsite so only a trained woodsman could tell someone had been there. I couldn’t do anything about the lingering odor of smoke. As for the dogs, all I could do was head for the stream and pray my scent would be drowned in the water. My shoes were sneakers, not the best thing on slippery wet rocks nor were wet feet yet I ran as hard and as quietly as I could.
I had no idea how anyone had found me; I thought I was deep in and far enough from casual searchers to have made finding me an impossible task.
I came upon a logging trail and rather than follow it, I ran parallel to it. The road fell downhill, twisting and turning to take advantage of the ridgeline’s contours. On both sides was a deep ravine where the creek lay and it was there I concentrated on laying my trail. I left a sign that I had crossed the road, doubled back and gone uphill. It wouldn’t fool the dogs but confuse the men.
I ran until the soles of my sneakers were in tatters; I did not stop as I passed old tarpaper shacks buried in the woods or the expensive hunting cabins built on flatbed trailers that had been driven in and dropped. I ran past state forest signs warning of unmapped trails and difficult terrain. When I reached the swamp, I stopped to rest, catch my breath and look for the deer trails through the muck. They would take me safely through and the swamp mud would bury my scent. I waded in with fresh determination.