Last Summer Boys(44)

We are going farther than we’ve ever gone before.





Up north, Apple Creek twists like a python between high, rocky hills. The path gives out, and Pete has to find us a narrow deer trail along sharp outcroppings. We follow it for a mile until it gets slashed by a deep, dark gorge.

Pete leads us down into the gorge and then up the far side, but the walls are so steep we have to go hand over hand, grabbing hold of tree roots that poke through the pale clay until we reach the top, covered in mud and out of breath—only to see another deep gash waiting for us, and down we go again. The land is crossed with ravines, some with piles of dry, dead leaves in their bottoms and others with trickles of water gleaming in the dark.

It’s slow going for us. Butch loves it. He trots along the ravine bottoms, stirring up clouds of silt and the hair along his legs getting wet and bristly.

Once, Frankie slips and slides almost thirty feet on his backside all the way to the bottom. When he gets up, there’s streaks from the seat of his pants all the way up his back to his neck, so dark I know they ain’t ever coming out.

Pete and Will bust out laughing, and even though I try not to, I can’t help it.

“Why we going this way, anyway?” Frankie asks, red-faced. “Are all these rivers on your map?”

Will tells him that it was heavy rains collecting between the hills that cut these grooves.

“They change over time,” Will says. “But these canyons are a bad place to be when the heavy rains come.”

Looking about, I can see he’s right. I imagine torrents of water rushing down these dark ravines to join the creek. With all that extra water flowing into her, Apple Creek, normally so calm and gentle, becomes a raging monster.

“Isn’t there any faster way?” Frankie asks.

“No rush,” Pete tells him. “That wreck ain’t going nowhere.”

Pete may be right, but it ain’t the wreck’s going anywhere that worries me. It’s Pete’s going somewhere.

Days are ticking down till he turns eighteen, and Frankie and me ain’t got one story published yet.

I try wiping some of the mud off Frankie, but it’s no use and I tell him so.

“Forget it,” he says, and I do and we start to climb the next wall again.





When we leave those rocky ravines behind, we come to a forest of fir trees standing like sentries at the creek’s edge.

Pete calls a break and we set our packs down in a dusty clearing beside a piece of deadwood that’s been stripped of all its bark so that it gleams white as one of those old bones Butch likes to chew on. We sip metal-tasting water from our canteens and listen to the hum of summer around us: cicadas in the trees overhead and across the creek.

Will lays Dad’s map out over the bare trunk and he and Pete hunch over it, murmuring to each other in their way. Pete checks his compass.

Sweat trickles down the back of my neck, between my shoulder blades. It ain’t just hot; it’s humid, like heaven’s dropped a hot, wet towel over the world. I take another long sip from my canteen, becoming more and more aware of a fogginess inside my brain. A tingling.

Pete snaps his compass shut. The signal to rise.

With backpacks clinking, we take to the trail again.





Pete finds another trail—a narrow passage between the firs—and keeps a steady pace. Soon we fall into a rhythm, and I figure that we’re marching.

Left, right. Left, right.

Step, step, step.

Pete, Will, Frankie, me.

And Butch.

That goof trots easily alongside me, stopping every so often to cock a leg or lap creek water or bite at flies that float around his muzzle. He sniffs at the base of one of those dark trees, then bounds off to the top of the rise in front of us, scouting ahead.

The ground rises under us; Apple Creek is falling away. We are coming into rocky hills.

Midafternoon now. The day is hot, silent, still. The straps from my pack dig deep into my shoulders. The air feels thick and close, like there ain’t another soul for miles.

Butch waits for us at the top of the rise. There Pete suddenly stops.

“Son of a gun.”

Below in the creek stands a boy. The hem of his long cotton shirt trails in the current. He’s got a pole in one hand and a burlap sack slung over the opposite shoulder.

He wears a wide, floppy hat made of black felt, and it covers most of his face and shoulders.

Even so, I know who it is, and I begin to feel dizzy.

It’s Caleb Madliner.





He wades slowly through Apple Creek. Every few steps he tests the bottom with that pole, putting one end down, tapping, feeling, searching.

“What is he doing out here?” Will whispers.

Nobody answers. Nobody knows.

I feel like someone’s punched me in the gut. Caleb Madliner is here. The boy who wanted to kill my dog. I reach for Butch’s collar, hold him close.

Frankie squints. “What’s he doing with that stick? Is he looking for something?”

My heart jumps. All at once I know that’s exactly what he’s doing. He’s plumbing the streambed, feeling for anything metal. Caleb Madliner is looking for our fighter jet.

Looking to my brothers, I can tell by their faces they’ve had the same thought.

“So it’s a race,” Pete says quietly. A thin smile tugs at the corners of his mouth.