In the Belly of the Earth Page 2

  “Another word from you and I’ll have you digging dung all afternoon.”

  Craig snickered, but nodded his head.

  “Okay then…” For the next several minutes, Mr. Howard explained a step-by-step strategy of climbing a straight-faced cliff side. He completed his instruction with a dexterous demonstration, reaching the top of the cliff in less than two minutes. All of the boys gawked upward, squinting into morning sunlight.

  “Who wants to go first?” he yelled down from the heights.

  No one volunteered.

  “Come on! Get some backbone, will ya? Someone speak up before I have to start picking.”

  To everyone’s collective relief, Craig finally raised his hand. “I’ll go.”

  For a millisecond Mr. Howard frowned in irritation at his first volunteer, but nodded all the same. “Okay then. Let’s get you roped up.” He rappelled back down to the troop.

  Once Craig was ready, Mr. Howard had hardly given the go ahead before the boy sprang onto the rock and sped up its face as quick and easy as a spider. He reached the top almost as fast as the grown man had. Everyone cheered and clapped and whistled. Craig waved like the king of the world, and then rappelled down in five sweeping leaps. When his feet hit the ground, he grinned in victorious pride and undid his harness.

  “No big deal,” he boasted.

  Emboldened, the rest of the boys clawed their way to the front of a line leading to Mr. Howard. He smiled at their sudden courage and attended to each one by one. No boy climbed as swift and smooth as Craig had, but all had immense amounts of fun traversing a vertical wall for the first time in their adolescent lives.

  All, that is, except for Fred.

  He hadn’t rushed to the front of the line when it formed, but had lingered on the fringes, hoping to avoid a turn. Yet as the line shrunk there seemed no way of escape. A stinging case of heartburn invaded his esophagus as cold sweat beaded his forehead.

  Finally he found himself alone, staring up at Mr. Howard.

  “Ready?” the man said, his eyebrows raised in expectation.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I’m not sure how safe this is. I’ve read some pretty nasty statistics about rock climbing injuries.”

  A smattering of laughter filled the air behind him. He felt all eyes upon his back.

  “Fred,” Mr. Howard smiled with a touch of exasperated condescension. “Do you actually think I would put you in deliberate danger?”

  “Not deliberate. Of course not. But you did mention the possibility of plummeting to our deaths.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Just a bit of exaggeration to keep you guys sober, that’s all. I promise, you’ll love it.”

  “Come on, Fred, go for it!” someone shouted.

  “It’s totally awesome,” another encouraged.

  “Is powder puff gonna chicken out?”

  Mr. Howard looked over Fred’s head and pointed. “Not another word, Craig, understand?”

  But the boys were laughing now. More and more by the moment.

  “I can’t do it,” Fred said, staring steady into Mr. Howard’s eyes.

  “You have to.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m afraid of heights. Of falling. Of hitting the ground and snapping my spine in two. Of living my life in a wheel chair and sucking food from a straw.”

  “Chicken!” Craig shouted. Mr. Howard looked up again, acid in his expression. By now the rest of the boys were chiming in.

  “If he doesn’t want to go, then give someone else another turn!”

  “Come on, Mr. Howard!”

  “Powder Puff needs his bwanket.”

  Their leader finally looked at his watch, shrugged, and consented not to force Fred into something he didn’t want to do.

  “You would have loved it,” he said as he packed up their things.

  “I doubt that very much,” Fred answered.

  * * *

  Lunch consisted of wonder bread bologna sandwiches, potato chips, and one fruit roll-up each, washed down with lukewarm Capri-Suns. Once they’d eaten and rested in their tents for a bit, Mr. Howard commanded all to don their swimsuits for a dip in the swimming hole.

  The Buffalo River ran cold and cloudy-green alongside the campground, overlooked by a four hundred foot wall of limestone. The troop ran screaming and laughing down the grassy hillside leading to the water, diving headfirst into the currents. Mr. Howard barked a series of typical warnings, but allowed the general chaos as the boys splashed and thrashed about. He set out a lawn chair on the pebbled shore and popped open a Mountain Dew before settling in as lifeguard. Several minutes passed before he noticed Fred sitting in the shade of an oak tree a rock’s throw upstream.

  “What are you doing?” he shouted over the din.

  Fred shrugged his cream white shoulders, and cradled a beach towel to his chest. “I’m not into swimming.”

  “Are you joking?” Mr. Howard asked, baffled even to hear such a thing. He knew that if the boy didn’t swim soon, the hounds would descend and rip him to shreds no matter how hard he tried to stop them. Still, maybe a little peer pressure would do the kid some good? If it got him in the water, what was the hurt of some friendly ridicule?

  Not surprisingly, it was Craig who took notice of Fred’s absence first.

  “What’s the matter, powder puff? Can’t swim?” He waded upstream until he stood ten feet from Fred. Others followed, ready to pounce as well.

  Fred looked at Mr. Howard for help, but the Scout leader just stared at something on the far side of the river as if he hadn’t noticed. He sipped his beverage. Craig seized the moment at once.

  “Look at him, guys,” he said. “He’s white and squishy as a marshmallow. And he doesn’t know how to swim.”

  “Yeah!” others chimed in lamely. “He’s like...white and stuff….like a marshmallow.”

  “Should we throw him in the water?” Craig asked.

  “Yeah!”

  “Let’s do it!”

  Fred glanced at his erstwhile adult savior, but Mr. Howard still sat there, seemingly aloof.

  Craig walked dripping out of the water until he loomed over Fred. Fred didn’t look up or say a word.

  “You’re a scared little powder puff marshmallow who doesn’t know how to swim,” Craig said.

  Other boys gathered behind him, sneering.

  “Grab him!” Craig commanded. “Throw him in the water!”

  Fred barely escaped their attempt, fleeing to where Mr. Howard sat.

  “Aren’t you going to do something?” Fred asked the man.

  Mr. Howard looked up. “They just want you to swim,” he said blandly. “If you got in on your own, this would die down instantly. Right, Craig?”

  Craig was so shocked to find himself suddenly in league with Mr. Howard that his jaw actually dropped. Recovering himself, he straightened up tall, as if instantly ten years older, and looked down his nose at Fred.

  “That’s right,” he said. “All of this would go away if powder puff here would swim.”

  But Fred was not about to be swayed, no matter who was against him. He set his feet firm, clenched his jaw, and told all within earshot his intentions. “I will personally bite anyone who touches me. That is a promise.”

  “Ooooohhhh!” Craig said, waving his hands in mock warning. “We’ve got a live one here, folks. He’s dangerous. The marshmallow has teeth. Be careful.”

  “I promise anyone who touches me....” Fred’s eyes were wide and flashing. “You will regret it.”

  Right as the mob began to move forward, Mr. Howard finally intervened, rising from his chair to stand between Fred and his persecutors. “That’s enough! It’s clear he doesn’t want to swim. Everyone back in the water.”

  They mumbled in disappointment, but obeyed, returning to their splashing and underwater games. All, save for Craig, who stood there, grinning.

  “Saved by the skin of
your teeth, powder puff. Lucky you.”

  “Get back in, Craig. Now.” Mr. Howard pointed to the water.

  With a dark chuckle the brute slowly turned around and did what he was told.

  Fred moved back to his spot under the tree and sat down, trying hard to keep it together. Tears threatened to break free, but he fought them tooth and nail. He’d already been labeled a coward. The last thing he needed now was to look like a blubbering fool.

  For the rest of the afternoon, the river remained a playground. Fred studied the other boys as they rollicked about, dunking one another beneath the currents, playing hide and seek amidst overhanging vines on the opposite shore. It was beyond him why Mr. Howard did nothing to thwart such foolish behavior. Didn’t they realize the concentration of spiders in such an area, not to mention snakes? What if one of them was bitten by a water moccasin? Or a black widow? Such carelessness was negligent at best, and downright idiotic at worst. Someone could die. Someone like Craig.

  Fred let his thoughts drift into a daydream. What would that bully look like poisoned? Shivering and pale and feverish with wide-eyed agony, no doubt. Fred felt a rush of curiosity, then a wave of guilt, forcing the fantasy from his mind.

  At half past five, Mr. Howard stood from his lawn chair and blew a whistle hanging from a shoelace around his neck.

  “Alright boys,” he said. “Time to get out and head back to camp. We’re having sloppy joes tonight and I gotta get to cooking that meat. Hurry up now!”

  At the mention of dinner, the troop erupted into hungry cheers and bounded from the water. Within seconds, the river was emptied of everything but fish and crawdads. Fred stood up and, not wanting to trail behind the mob, took a shortcut back to camp through a stand of cedar trees. He had just reached the edge of the clearing when he walked straight into an enormous spider web strung across the trail. So gargantuan was the web that it enveloped his entire head like a net. He stumbled forward, almost face-planting in the dirt, and pulled at the sticky fibers clinging to his face and hair. He felt something on his ear, and then his cheek, a flurry of spindly legs with a fat body hanging between them. With a bellow and a scream, he dashed forward, spinning about like a top and clawing at the creature on his face. Right into the center of camp he fled, crying and screaming and spinning. At some point the spider had fallen free, but Fred kept on flailing. Every last boy of the troop gathered round as if watching a sideshow. When Fred tripped and fell to the ground they clustered even closer to see what had happened.

  “Look everyone,” Craig said in his most insidious voice yet. “Powder puff is scared of his own shadow.”

  Raucous laughter.

  Fred lay there, gazing up at a dozen mocking faces. He imagined a horde of demons would have been milder by comparison. He clambered to his feet, face smeared with tear-moistened mud. They laughed all the harder at the pitiful sight of him.

  “Shut up!” he yelled as his face grew scarlet under the coating of mud. “Just shut up!”

  Fred shoved his way out of the circle and took off running. Laughter lingered in the summer air behind him. He fled, wishing with all his might that he could be somewhere, anywhere else than on this trip with these boys in these woods.

  3

  Leaves and branches slapped against his face as he ran. His tears were too thick now for him to see much of anything. It was just a trail leading up and away from the river, anyway. But onward he went, even as the sun caressed the western lip of the river’s canyon.

  Why had he even come on the stupid camping trip? He hated the Woodlanders, loathed the outdoors, and found the company of the first and being in the second as enjoyable as a case of poison ivy. His parents had coaxed him into joining and the only reason he’d said yes was to stifle their nagging once and for all.

  Suddenly the trail dead-ended at the foot of the cliff they’d climbed that morning. Fred stopped, leaned over with his hands on his knees and gasped for air. If only he could have run all the way home. At least there he wouldn’t have to listen to Craig’s mocking, or hear the derisive laughter of his campmates.

  Fred looked up in the waning light and studied the cliff. There were no ropes now. No hooks and harnesses to keep one tethered to stone, yet he felt a sudden and surprising urge to climb. With no one to watch him, there was no risk of being made fun of. No one could call him powder puff, or marshmallow, or any kind of nasty thing. He gritted his teeth and stepped to the base of the bluff, taking hold of the lowest knob of rock. He pulled himself upward, gained a foothold, and began to climb. He would prove that he could do it, that he could take the cliff without ropes all the way to the top. Even Craig wouldn’t risk such a thing. No one would.

  Thirty seconds and eight feet later he glanced downward and froze. Shutting his eyes tight, he hugged the rock face as if he were a hundred feet up. His hands began to sweat, his muscles to tremble. And then, like some wicked thing had yanked him backwards, he fell. The crash upon ground knocked the breath from his lungs.

  For five straight minutes, he lay there whimpering. Through a canopy of a thousand leaves the sky faded from orange to red. It would be dark soon, and his flashlight was back in the tent. He had no choice but to pull himself together, stand to his feet, and return to camp to face whatever ridicule awaited him there.

  I can’t do this, he thought, blinking tears from his eyes. Finally, he stood to his feet, brushed the dirt from his clothes and turned back toward camp. Minutes later, as he drew near to the tents and the fire, he heard the laughter of the boys, cut into by the occasional barking of Mr. Howard. He slowed his pace and waited in the shadows beyond the lantern light. The smell of cooking meat lingered in the air, instantly reminding him of his hunger. He licked his lips and stepped forward just in time to hear their leader declare his displeasure.

  “If that boy doesn’t come back in five minutes and I have to go searching for him while my dinner gets cold...I will be less than pleased. Has Powder….err, Fred come back yet?”

  After a scattered muttering of no’s, Fred retreated back into the darkness, stunned at such calloused neglect. Why didn’t the man stop cooking long enough to search for him? What if he’d broken his neck falling from that cliff? They’d have found his corpse the next morning, cold beneath a slick sheen of dew.

  Fred sighed and ambled up a trail to the north of camp, rounding the edge of the latrine. When he heard someone approaching, he slipped behind a tree to hide.

  It was almost dark now, but he could tell it was Craig. There was no mistaking his oversized frame or head of tight, curly hair. The bully was mumbling something to himself, obviously upset, even frantic. Fred could just make out some of his words as the other boy grabbed the shovel and began to dig a hole in the loosened dirt.

  “Please no….please no,” Craig begged the air. Once a hole was dug, the boy crouched low, struggling with something in the dark that Fred could not see. Then Craig started hissing a string of curse words and Fred’s mouth fell agape. He’d never heard such language outside of television before. Still mumbling and cursing to himself, Craig stood back up, wadded something up into a ball and dropped it in the hole. When he grabbed the shovel again to toss great heaps of soil into the hole he’d dug, Fred could see him glancing in the direction of camp. What was he doing? Why was he so nervous? Once finished, Craig patted down the dirt with the back of the shovel, wiped his hands on his shirt, and ambled away as if nothing had happened.

  Fred waited until he was gone, then moved to the newly-filled hole. He wasn’t positive what he would find. But he could guess. Before he had much time to think, he took the shovel and dug up what Craig had tried to hide. There in the last remnants of dusky light, he saw a flash of white, and grimaced as a sudden waft of odor met his nostrils. The smell was immediate and awful, but Fred found himself smiling.

  The mighty Craig had messed his pants.

  An idea formed inside his head. It would be an act of cruelty, to be sure, but one that might serve to repay all the ridicule he�
�d suffered on the trip. For a split second, he sensed a small voice in his head urging him to stop what he was doing that instant, but his resistance soon fell sway to his greater thirst for revenge.

  What would have happened if he’d just dropped the underwear right then and there and returned to camp? After undergoing some more ribbing and teasing for running away, would he have gone home the next day, sprinted into the arms of his parents, and gone on with normal life? Impossible to know. In the end, Fred made his irrevocable choice and marched straight back to camp with Craig’s soiled underwear waving like a flag in the breeze from the shovel’s metal point.

  “Everyone look!” he shouted as he walked into the full light of a blazing campfire. A dozen boys turned their heads, including Craig.

  “Guess who messed their pants and tried to hide the evidence?” Fred shouted.

  Instantly, the troop boys jumped to their feet and surrounded him, chuckling and pointing and holding their noses.

  “Who did the deed?” someone asked.

  “We’ll call him Brownie boy!” someone else said.

  Everyone exploded in laughter. Fred grinned. He’d never gotten such attention from other kids, at least without being victimized himself. Now he held the reins. It felt shockingly good. Beaming with delight, his eyes drifted toward the fire and the only one left behind sitting in its light.

  Craig.

  He was not laughing with the others, was only staring straight at Fred with wide, pleading eyes. Craig shook his head and mouthed the word please.

  But it was far too late for that. Far too late for begging and pleading. That door had shut forever. The others were already grabbing the handle of the shovel, wrenching it from Fred’s fingers. The underwear fell to the ground. Boys leapt out of the way.

  “Don’t touch it!” they cried.

  “You’ll get contaminated!”

  A brave soul, short with freckles and curly red hair, crept close enough to pull up the elastic waistband, revealing the name written in faded permanent ink upon the tag. His mouth fell open. He looked up at the others, then over at Craig, whose head was already buried in his hands.