I SNEAK INTO THE HOUSE. Women’s voices float through the kitchen from the living room, which means Mrs. Clancy is too absorbed in the TV to notice I’m soaking wet as usual. Or even to hear me come in.
I tiptoe to my room and close the door softly. After yanking off my wet clothes, I stuff them into the back of the closet and pull on jeans and a T-shirt. Hopefully I can add my slacks and shirt to the next load of laundry without her noticing.
Sitting cross-legged on my bed, I open the box. The medals are on top where Shea left them. I lay the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart reverently on my pillow and run my finger over the cold metal. The Green Man received these when he was young. When his whole life lay ahead of him. Before he went to live in the woods. Before he grew a bushy beard.
The medals waver as if they’re underwater, and I realize I have tears in my eyes. I wipe them away. I never cry. Never. But the tears fill my eyes again and I lie down, press my face into the pillow, and let myself cry for the Green Man and the tree and my mother—yes, my mother, who will never come back for me. I cry for her, too, the unknowable, the stranger I could pass in the street and not recognize.
When my tears finally stop, I blow my nose and look through the other stuff in the box. I find three of my drawings of the Green Man and a carving I made of him. I almost cry again.
I pick up a handful of foreign coins—Vietnamese, I guess. His expired driver’s license from 1981. His discharge papers, his birth certificate, and his high school diploma are in the box, rolled up, damp, stuck together, too mildewed for me to read more than a few words here and there.
I put everything back, close the lid, and shove it under my bed. Then I open my door, ready to face the wrath of Clancy.
When I appear in the living room, Mrs. Clancy jumps and almost drops her coffee. “Brendan,” she cries, “you nearly gave me a heart attack! How long have you been home?”
“You were watching TV, so I went to my room and I guess I fell asleep.” I yawn in what I hope is a convincing way.
“You should have poked your head in and let me know you were here.”
“I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“The funeral couldn’t have lasted all that time,” Mrs. Clancy says. “Where did you go afterward?”
I shrug. “Shea and I got sodas and we talked about the Green Man and then we went to her house for a while and her mother gave us lunch . . .” I let my voice trail off into an embarrassed silence. I really don’t like lying to her, but she’s never known about the tree house and how much time I’ve spent in the woods.
“What is this about the green man?” Mrs. Clancy asks. “Why do you keep calling poor old Mr. Calhoun that?”
“Well,” I say, “I call him the Green Man because he’s . . . he’s—well, he just is.”
“What are you talking about?” Mrs. Clancy shakes her head. “The only green men I ever heard of are Martians. Aliens flying around in spaceships. Surely you don’t believe that old man came from outer space?”
“No, of course not. The Green Man is the ancient spirit of the woods. He protects the trees and the forest creatures. And Mr. Calhoun, well, he’s like him, that’s all.” The expression on her face makes me stammer to a stop.
“Excuse my ignorance, Brendan, but you’ve lost me. Why would you think Mr. Calhoun is like an ancient spirit?”
“It’s hard to explain.” Now I’m embarrassed. Why did I think she’d understand? “He knows the forest. He can tell you the names of trees and birds and plants. He can even identify a bird by its song. And he moves through the trees without making a sound. You know how all of a sudden deer are there and then they’re gone and if you weren’t looking, you wouldn’t know they were there? That’s how he is.”
Mrs. Clancy nods as if she’s trying to figure this out. “Well, it sounds pretty far-fetched to me. It must be all those books you read and that imagination of yours. Me, all I see is what’s real.” She tapped the coffee table. “Solid. Nothing mystical about it. Just a table.”
She heaves herself up and heads for the kitchen. “Time to think about dinner.”
The next morning, I set out for summer school. Mrs. Clancy doesn’t drive me there any longer. She trusts me. It’s almost over now anyway. No reason not to finish and go on to middle school with Shea.
I cut through the park. A little out of the way, but it’s early and I have plenty of time. Near the fountain, I see George, Charlie, and Joe huddled together on a bench. Sean, Gene, and T.J. are flicking lit matches at them and laughing.
“We looked for you last night, but you weren’t here,” T.J. says to them. “Scared you might get beat up like your buddy?” He makes a fist as if he plans to hit George.
“You ought to be locked up for what you did to Ed,” he says in a low voice.
“Nobody saw us but you,” Sean says, “and who’s going to believe an old drunk?”
“Nobody cares what happens to bums like you.” Gene leans over George, his face inches away, almost nose-to-nose with him. “Your breath stinks like cheap wine.”
While this is going on, Charlie and Joe shrink into themselves. They don’t say a word in George’s defense. They don’t look at Sean. They sit there like scarecrows.
A cop walks toward us. Before he notices anything, Sean and his friends saunter away, laughing.
“Okay, boys, move on,” the cop tells the men on the bench. “I’ve told you before not to loiter in the park. You give the place a bad name.”
My heart pounds, but I step out of the shade and say, “Officer, those guys, the ones who just walked away, they were threatening these men.”
The cop stares at me. “I didn’t see them do anything.”
I come closer. I run my hand over the stubble on my head. “The same guys beat me really badly a few weeks ago.” My voice shakes and my knees tremble. “They cut my hair off with a knife. I had cuts and bruises all over me. You can still see the scabs.”
“Why didn’t you report it?”
“They said I’d be sorry if I told anyone.” I glance at the men on the bench. All three are watching the cop and me. “They beat Mr. Calhoun to death.”
The cop frowns and stares hard at me. “Wait a minute. Do you know that for a fact?”
“Ask George,” I say. “He saw the whole thing.”
George gets up, ready to run. “Oh, now, Brendan, don’t drag me into this. I didn’t see anything.”
The cop turns from me to George and grabs his arm to keep him from disappearing into the park. “Ed was your pal,” he says. “If you know something about his death, you owe it to him to tell me.”
“They’ll kill me, too,” George mutters.
The cop scowls. “Not if they’re in jail.”
So instead of going to summer school, I go to the police station with George, Charlie, and Joe. The cop turns us over to a team of detectives. Detective Gifford takes me to his office and calls Mrs. Clancy.
I cringe when he tells her he has me in the station and he needs her presence because I’m a juvenile. “No, Brendan’s not in trouble,” he says. “He’s here to report a beating.” A pause. “No, no, not another one. He’s finally ready to identify the boys who attacked him.”
While we wait for Mrs. Clancy, Detective Gifford treats me to a soda and asks me the usual questions about myself. Favorite subject in school—art. Favorite sport—none. He raises his eyebrows slightly. “What do you do when you’re not in school?” Read, draw. He asks what my favorite book is. I tell him The Lord of the Rings. He’s read that, so we talk about Middle-earth and hobbits and elves and wizards and magic. We discuss the movies and agree Gollum was amazingly well done, all pretty true to the book, and wouldn’t it be great to go to New Zealand and see where the movies were filmed.
Just as we’re about to exhaust the subject, Mrs. Clancy walks in, dressed for the occasion in her best slacks and a pale blue blouse.
“Why aren’t you in school?” is the first thing she says. “This is the last week, Brendan. Don’t let me down now.”
For a minute, I think the old Mrs. Clancy is back and she’s going to tell the detective what a lazy, unreliable, irresponsible boy I am.
“I cut through the park and the guys who beat me were harassing Mr. Calhoun’s friends and then a cop came along and I told him those guys—Sean and Gene and T.J.—beat me up and cut off my hair and I was pretty sure they beat Mr. Calhoun, too.”
Mrs. Clancy sits down. She clasps her big, shiny purse as if it’s a life preserver. “Brendan was badly beaten,” she tells Mr. Gifford, “but he never told me who did it. He said he didn’t know their names, they were strangers. He thought they didn’t like his hair or something. It was long then, past his shoulders, and I wanted him to get it cut, but oh, no, he wouldn’t go to the barber. Kids teased him about it all the time.”
She pauses, out of breath, I think. “He’s a good boy,” she adds. “Not a mean bone in his body. But he doesn’t have any sense and he’s stubborn as all get-out.”
I slide down in my chair. A good boy, I think. She’s never said that before. I steal a look at her and she actually smiles.
“Tell the detective exactly what happened,” she prompts me. “I want those monsters put in jail for what they did to you. And to that poor old man.”
So while Mrs. Clancy listens, I tell Detective Gifford I saw T.J. running away from the jewelry store in the mall the night it was robbed, and T.J. thought I told the police. He and his friends cut my hair off and beat me black and blue.
“Then Sean held a knife to my throat and said if I told anyone about what happened, I’d be sorry. The Green Man—Mr. Calhoun, I mean—told me they roughed him up when he tried to stop them from shooting squirrels, and George can tell you they beat Mr. Calhoun the night he was taken to the hospital.”
Leaning back in his chair, Detective Gifford looks at me, his face troubled. “I wish you’d reported this right away.”
“He wouldn’t even tell me,” Mrs. Clancy puts in.
“I was scared.”
Detective Gifford rubs his chin. “Yes, I know. I understand that.” He goes through some papers on his desk. “The boys have a record,” he says. “Theft, robbery, break-ins, drugs, simple assault. Unfortunately, we can’t use any of that against them when they go to court.”
“Why in the world not?” Mrs. Clancy is outraged. “The jury needs to know what kind of boys they’re dealing with.”
Detective Gifford spreads his hands as if to say he understands but he can’t do anything about it. “They’ve been charged and punished for their past offenses. Knowing their record would prejudice the jury.”
Mrs. Clancy shakes her head. “No wonder we have so many criminals walking the streets.”
“Don’t worry,” Detective Gifford tells her. “We have enough here to put them away for a while—simple assault, aggravated assault.”
Mrs. Clancy leans toward the detective and asks, “Are you going to put out an all-points bulletin to pick them up?”
Detective Gifford smiles as if he knows Mrs. Clancy watches cop shows on TV. “It’s already been done.”
I write a statement and sign it. Mrs. Clancy gives her consent for me to press charges against Sean, Gene, and T.J. Then we’re free to go.
Outside in the blinding summer sunlight, Mrs. Clancy says, “I wish you hadn’t missed school to do this, but it’s good you finally reported it.” She opens the car door and lets out a wave of trapped heat.
“I’ll never understand why the jury shouldn’t be prejudiced,” she says to herself as she starts the engine and turns on the air conditioner. “Those boys should be sent to jail for life.”