Charlie Smith - Ginny Gall

After a while the Rev Munch shambled off and stood by himself before the remains of his church, crying helpless tears. No one appeared to be seriously hurt, not physically.

Carrying his old single-shot.410 shotgun Onely swung the creaky screen door open, grinning as usual like he was the sly one when he wasn’t at all, and they walked up Constable street to where it became a path rising into laurel scrub. They climbed through Virginia pines and young oaks to the ridge and crossed over into the cove where Hoppy Butler had been shot in his underwear by sheriff’s deputies, a spot marked by a hickory slab upon which were burned with a hot nail the words SON O MAN, and climbed transversely along the far ridge and crossed the summit of Bald Face mountain and descended laterally, following a deer trail through a grassy meadow filled with blossoming Joe Pye weed, the pink shaggy flowers nodding in a cool breeze, and entered a flat area of hardwoods.

The trees in this place, mostly white oaks and tulip poplars and chestnuts, were the largest he had ever seen. Onely said they were the oldest leafy trees east of the Mississippi river, a fact passed on by his grandfather and confirmed, he said, in Collier’s Encyclopedia . They had brought chicken and gravy sandwiches and a chunk of hoop cheese wrapped in wax paper and an apple that Onely cut up into chunks with his single-blade Barlow knife. The flesh was mushy and hardly worth eating. They were hunting turkeys. Delvin thought he heard a gobbler as they entered these woods, but he was not sure. The trees, some of them, were ten feet through the base and soared up a hundred feet or more. The tulip poplars had bark that had whitened almost like the peeled places on a sycamore. The leaf tops were sparse in a way that made Delvin think of old wispy-haired men, white men. The oaks were more fulsome, fully decorated with leaves so dark green they were almost black, and the chestnuts had what he thought of as an aristocratic look. There was hardly any undergrowth. Only a carpet of fallen leaves on the rocky floor. It was a hushed place and even the wind was stately and mindful, striding in sockfeet high up through the insubstantial leaves.

When they finished eating, the boys made little beds for themselves among the big tree roots and took a nap.

When he waked, Onely was still sleeping, so Delvin walked off alone under the trees. Every step opened a fresh avenue, no need for paths. He had heard of these old trees before Onely told him. The wind in the tops made a rushing sound, steady and grave. Delvin pressed his palm against the creased bark of a tulip polar. On the ground were scattered a few orange and green tulip flowers. They had the same sweet smell he was familiar with, no codger odor, tree variety. He craned his neck looking upward until he almost fell over. As he watched, an orange and green flower twirled slowly down and came to rest at his feet. Gift from the sky, he thought. Lately he had been thinking about getting up high. Not tree high, not mountain high, but far up into the sky. He wasn’t thinking about flying in a plane either though that would be thrilling, he was thinking about something else. It was like a dream. He couldn’t quite put into words what he meant. But he wanted to be far up, riding right at the border between earth and space. Hang waist deep in the blue air and look up at the stars in the cold black sky.

From off beyond the trees came a faint striking, slapping sound. Maybe it was a bear nosing about. The woods had always been strange to him, he was uneasy in them, nervous. He shied behind a tree and stepped a few paces along a quartering line, taking care on the hard surface of black dirt and leaves, on the chunk granite and schist, not to fall. The sound didn’t come again. In several places there appeared to be regular paths. He followed one. Up ahead he could see sunlight and he hoped it was a meadow. Meadows, pastures, planted fields, these were fine; he preferred places of human habitation, some sign that people were busy with life or had been or might be again soon.

The path curved west under the trees. It made him nervous to follow but he thought he ought to, ought to brave it. A breeze made a whisking sound high up. The path sloped gently downhill. He could hear what sounded like voices. Also a clattering of metal. He ducked off the path and made his way across the leafy ground, drawing closer to the light. He could see an irregular ridgeline way across there, mottled dark and light green patches. Then he could clearly hear voices, white boys shouting. The voices made a high, looping sound, a sound as if they were imitating the sound of owls or wolves. He drew closer, crouched behind a bank of serviceberry bushes and looked out.

Two groups of boys on opposite sides of a narrow grassy field were running toward each other. They carried leather straps and lengths of rope and sticks and some even had long poles the bark had been stripped off of. They ran at each other swinging these — they were weapons. Boys about his age, fifteen, going at it.

Delvin dropped flat to the ground. His heart began to beat hard. The ground had no give at all, a rock floor. He raised himself and peered through the gray, starchy-smelling leaves of the closest bush.

Out in the field the boys ran hard, yelling. With a crunching, pranging sound they struck each other with the flexing weapons, clashing, unchecked and swinging. Those who didn’t fall or drop down or skeet off to the edges limping and hollering ran on to the other side of the grassy field. Only a few had hit the ground and most of these got quickly up. One or two rested on a knee. A boy licked blood off his wrist. Another lay on the ground wailing in a high, unlucky voice. One of the fallen got up, limped over to a fallen boy nearby and dragged him to his feet. The fallen boy had a long bleeding scrape on one arm. He grasped the arm above the elbow, like he was shy with it, and tried to lean his head against the other boy’s shoulder but the boy wouldn’t let him. All the boys were wearing hats, turn-brims, chocked out as if they were stuffed with something.

The boys gathered in separate groups on opposite sides of the pasture. They shouted at each other, insults and curses, none of which carried any heat. One boy waved his hat and strutted with his hand on his hip. Two sashayed arm in arm brandishing their sticks. Taunts, boasts. This was some kind of game.

From among the bushes Delvin watched them regroup and with a shout again run at each other. Shrieking, hollering, they swung straps and sections of yellow rope and peeled sticks and met with a clattery jumble of weapons and bodies. Blood spurted from the ear of one boy. Another cried out with a sound like a child. Two stood off to the side hitting at each other with the long white poles.

Delvin raised higher to see more clearly. Stalks of pokeweed and wild carrot standing up in the field like markers swayed in a quick little breeze. The boys shoved at each other, stumbling, falling and getting up, crouching, darting in with a swing of rope that looped and whistled in the bright air.

Gradually the two groups began to break apart, passing agitatedly from gathering to separation, the boys moving off with twitchy arms and trembling legs across the bent-down grass, leaving behind the three or four more damaged boys to drag along after.

Delvin didn’t see the white boy coming along the edge of the field, a small boy moving dispiritedly just inside the cover of the trees, fleeing the struggle. The boy came up on him. Suddenly they were looking into each other’s eyes. Neither said anything. The boy, who was skinny and wore a red bandana around his ropey neck, stared at him. He had eyes as blue as the blue-eyed grass. He stared at Delvin as if he was looking at something he had never seen before. In that moment Delvin saw all the way into him, all the way down the long hallway of his spirit right to the bottom where the boy lay curled up in terror. The boy knew he saw him and he saw Delvin too, saw fright mixed with wonder. In that way they were not brothers, even under the skin. There was variation, an offslant both experienced, a dizziness of estrangement.