Forest of My Dreams

I could sense something was wrong when Glen appeared on the dark autumn day that for-ever branded me. Glen was my street-smart friend, who had a knack for gathering information be-fore anyone else.

He grinned with all his charm, casually avoiding my mom’s radar. "Hi, Mrs. P. I just came by to see if Will could hang out.”

“Of course. Just be careful if you're going into the woods.” Mom always gave this warn-ing about the wild forest that loomed by our house.

We waved goodbye, and Glen led me straight towards the forest.

"What's up?" I asked.

"Tina Carver is missing,” he announced solemnly, his grave voice making the statement a fact.

Every boy knew Tina Carver as probably the prettiest woman in the world. I could picture her perfectly from the last time I had gawked at her in town. She didn’t so much walk by me as float by like an angel. And it wasn't just me. I saw many an older man stop what they were doing and stare whenever she was near. She was married to Brandon Carver, a firefighter on the city crew. There are some things you know as a kid. One was to stay away from Brandon Carver. An-other was that he sure didn't deserve Tina.

"How did you find out?" I asked.

"Old Lady Carver," Glen explained. "She pays me to do some weeding for her every week. I was working close enough to her open window to overhear part of a phone call with Brandon, who was panicking, saying something about Tina. I snuck in closer and heard her say clearly that he better call the police and tell them Tina had run away.”

Glen chose a narrow path that plunged into the forest, motioning me to keep up. “The old lady was scared. She gave me two bucks and shooed me away. I came right here. If Tina ran away into the forest, she could be in trouble.”

I shivered. All around us was a nearly impenetrable forest, ruled by swaying evergreen trees taller than the imagination. Few people knew these wild woods or could follow the faint trails through bendy Alder trees, thick ferns, and around treacherous swamps. This was a twilight world without sunshine, where paths diverged and reformed and where boggy ground sucked at the souls of shoes.

I felt the dark weight of the forest. "We know the truth. He did something to her. He’s no good.”

"Easy," said Glen. "There's a lot we don't know. What we do know is that the police will be helpless in these woods. They don't know them like we do.” He pointed ahead. “If Tina’s run-ning away, this would be the easiest path for her to follow. I bet we can cover the area from here to her house before the police even arrive.”

In my imagination, I could picture finding Tina, scared and lost, and seeing her grateful eyes and big smile. We would tell her we understood. We could get her away from Brandon. She could start a new life. From then on, every time she saw us, she would give us a big hug. I imag-ined her whispering, “You will always be my heroes.”

As we slogged in the shadows of the Evergreens, following the creek’s dark emerald wa-ters, I felt the excitement of the hunt and a sense of importance. Without Glen, I wouldn’t dare try this. I knew people in town often talked of how poor Glen’s family was and how they lived off welfare. Somehow, they never saw the kid who was a gifted athlete, but never played sports be-cause he worked every odd job he could find. I sensed his home was a hard place, but I never heard him complain. People would have been surprised that I wished I could be him.

By carefully planting his feet, searching for safe ground in this soggy land, Glen navigated through the tall ferns, stinging nettles, and skunk cabbage that clogged our way. We found no signs or tracks as we searched the shadows and crevices. Nothing stirred. Our eyes detected no movement, and my dreams of saving Tina were beginning to fade.

"Not much further," Glen said with his uncanny sense of direction. We were stained with mud and sweaty from the humidity when we arrived behind a clump of thick ferns that gave us a view of the rusty double-wide home where the Tina lived.

“It looks empty,” I whispered.

And then we saw Brandon. He stepped from the back door of the double-wide trailer, and for a moment, I thought he was walking straight to us. He was tall with broad shoulders and arms knotted with lean muscle, but what made him scary was the empty blackness of his eyes and the way that he moved like a panther, twitching and deadly. He looked all around as if on high alert. Then he walked to a wooden shed, which leaned askew on the edge of the property near us.

He tapped on the door and listened. We listened too. Did we hear a faint moan, or was it the wind? The rumble of a car approaching from around the bend interrupted the scene. The police had arrived.

Brandon froze, hesitated a moment, and then turned and walked swiftly back to the trailer.

“We need to look in that shed,” Glen whispered.

“Not now,” I responded, almost panicking. “The police are here. They’ll figure it out.”

“I hope so. We’ll see.”

It seemed like we waited forever, but sure enough, two police officers finally appeared with Brandon beside them. Even from a distance, I could see that his face looked different, smoother and kinder. I could see him pointing to the woods, shrugging his shoulders.

They came to the edge of the woods near us. What would the police do if they discovered us? I looked at Glen. He shook his head slightly as if to say, Wait.

"I know the rumors," Brandon was saying. "Everyone around here talks about our mar-riage trouble, and it’s true. Like any marriage, Tina and I don't always see eye to eye.”

“Oh, we understand,” said one of the officers. “You’re preaching to the choir.”

The men laughed, and Brandon shook his head sadly. “We had a lot of good times, but liv-ing out here was hard on her. You know how our jobs are. We give a hell of a lot more than peo-ple ever give us credit for. Maybe that was getting to her. She has been depressed lately.”

He led the policeman away from the shed, but we could still hear clearly. "It’s hard for me to admit, but I’m guessing she ran away back to her family in Oregon. I panicked when I couldn’t find her. I looked everywhere. Heck, I even checked the woods, even though she's probably the last person who would run into these woods. Way too scary and messy for her. No, she must have gotten a ride out of here. She didn’t leave a note, but her clothes and our suitcases are gone.” He hesitated as if considering whether to say more, then shook his head in resignation. “She even took the money I had stashed. I don’t care about that. I would have given it to her if she had asked.”

“We appreciate your honesty,” one of the officers said, “but I’m afraid there’s not a lot we can do for you unless you want to press charges.”

“Of course not. I want her to be safe. If I find her, I guess we'll have a lot to talk about, but the truth is, I think she’s never coming back.” He shook his head sadly. “She wasn't made for this life. I tried. We both tried. We really did.”

One of the police officers put a hand on Brandon's shoulder. "We've all been there.”

The other shook Brandon’s hand. “It’s not easy, brother, but be strong. We’ll fill out the paperwork and send out some alerts, but you may be right. She might not come back.”

They jotted down a few more notes and shook Brandon’s hand. We watched in disbelief as Brandon led them away, and they disappeared from our sight.

Glen didn’t hesitate. "I’m going to check the shed. Stay here.”

“What about Brandon?” I asked. “He’ll be back any second.”

He didn’t even hesitate. “We have to know if she’s in there.” He sprinted to the shed.

I crouched, petrified. Hurry, I thought. I watched him grab the door handle and tug at it, his muscles tense as he shook the door furiously.

Then I heard the harsh voice of Brandon Carver.

"What the hell are you doing?" Brandon hulked into the open, blocking any escape Glen had.

"I…I just got lost in the woods.”

Brandon shook his head and smiled cruelly. “Let's have a look at you."

"I'm sorry. Like I said, I just go lost," Glen repeated. He looked straight at Brandon, never letting his eyes shift toward me in my precarious hiding place.

"Hey, you're that Jackson brat, aren't you? Look just like your worthless brother. Didn't your momma tell you to keep away from other people's property?"

"I'm sorry," Glen said, subdued. "It was stupid of me."

"Damn right, it was stupid."

Glen was in trouble, but I had seen him get out of tricky situations before.

Not this time.

Would two teenage boys have had a chance against Brandon? I doubt it, but I never tried. Instead, I watched from the shadows, a coward and betrayer, as Brandon began beating and kick-ing Glen, who grunted, but never cried.

What saved Glen was not me, but the sound of the phone ringing from the trailer, its clang-ing bell accentuating how quiet, alone, and forbidden this place was.

I remember a wild, almost cunning look pass over Brandon's furious face. He looked around. Then he slung Glen’s ragged body to the ground and headed to the trailer to answer the phone, and that was my chance.

I ran back through the wilderness, back to safety. In terror, I ran through the nettles and skunk cabbage and the muddy bogs. I must have looked like a nightmare myself when I emerged from the woods, and my screams reached my parents.

The rest of the night was colored in the whirl of police lights, the sounds of sirens, and the strange appearances of neighbors hungry for gossip.

Once the police returned to Brandon's, they found the battered body of Glen, who had crawled back to the shed and was trying to open it despite his concussed and wounded body. Brandon was gone, but the ambulance took two barely alive bodies to the hospital.

The police tried to follow my story. We had heard that Tina Carver was missing. Brandon had caught Glen. I ran for help. It was all such a jumble of events.

Glen woke up in the hospital, badly beaten and covered with bandages. Tina Carver, who was in the room across from him, visited every day. He told Tina that I was the guy who saved us in the end. She nodded politely and turned her attention back to him. We all knew who the hero was.

He brought more luck, too. His older brother, Karl, arrived. Karl was eight years older than Glen and just as cool. He had returned home on leave from the Army only to find out his brother was in the hospital, where he met the battered but still beautiful Tina.

It didn't take long to figure out where this was going.

Later, I heard about Brandon being arrested and the predictions of a long prison sentence, and learned that Tina had already filed for divorce before he beat her up and threw her in the shed.

I still drive past the old forest occasionally, and as soon as I see dark trees rising high, I am haunted again by this moment in my life and can still picture the unearthly beauty of Tina and the big, broken-toothed smile of Glen.

And I wish I had been a hero.

The End