This Buxton lad named Benji proved to be a fine favourable fellow. Not only was he exceedingly clever, he also knew the woods as well as he knew the palm of his hand. And what most amazed me was, even though I’m sure he wasn’t aware of doing it, he was applying his knowledge in a manner that was purely scientific!

He wasn’t making his judgments based on being familiar with a particular section of the woods; he had what we scientists call a paradigm and applied it to each situation. As we walked deeper and deeper into the forest toward the promised swimming hole, he never let the conversation lag. He pointed out many things that my eyes had simply brushed over and thought nothing of.

Where I barely noticed a mishmash of tiny, bleached bones at the base of a huge oak, he looked up and pointed out the massive, hidden nest of a great horned owl. One, he said, judging by the bones, that had been living there for six years.

Where I saw grass, he saw a place where a doe had hidden its fawn a few hours before.

Where I saw stones and moss and lichen and twigs, he saw stories. Stories available only to those who knew the language, only decipherable by those who paid careful attention. If this little Buxton boy hadn’t been so confused and misled by his desire to be a reporter, he might even have made a halfway decent scientist. I was very impressed!

I was less impressed by his attempts to explain why being a reporter was so important. Besides leaning a tad too much toward braggadocio, he talked to me as if I was something of an idiot. Maybe in his eyes I was, maybe since a leaf was nothing but a leaf to me, he assumed I was dense in all areas.

“So,” he said, “there are two reasons that I’m more of a noticer than most people, most people our age especially. The first reason is –”

He stopped walking and pointed at a small group of saplings.

“Red, do you remember the fawn I told you about before?”

Of course I did; it had only been a minute or two earlier.

“The poor thing is dead.”

“Really?” I peered at the young trees he was pointing out. “How can you tell?”

“By the way that one sapling is leaned to the side. The doe put up a brave fight to save her fawn’s life, but in the end, she was no match for the coyote. Though all didn’t turn out well for the coyote either.”

He pointed at an area that to me simply looked like a growth of weeds where a few had been blown down.

“Just as the coyote settled in to eating the poor fawn, a rare North Woods alligator ambushed the coyote and ate both of them.”

This was too much! “An alligator in the forest?”

“I told you it was a rare alligator; not many people know about them.”

It was incredible! All I could see were some weeds and a small tree leaning as if it were trying to get the sun’s rays. Perhaps Benji’s eyes were keen far beyond mine, but while my heart wanted to believe him, my head wasn’t buying this story. I began to suspect he was as good a storyteller as he was a woodsman.

He continued, “The first reason I’m more of a noticer is exactly because I’m studying to be a newspaperman. I can’t think of anything, anything that’s more important than that. A reporter lets people know what is happening in the world, and what caused them to happen.”

Benji misinterpreted my look; he thought I didn’t believe him. It wasn’t that at all. I was still in thrall at his ability to read the woods, and I remembered what Father had told me, that many times a flaw in an argument is so obvious that we tend to look right past it, that it was so hard to see because it had been hidden in plain sight. And this alligator story had big flaws from first word to last.

“I’ve even got books that prove nothing’s more important than a newspaper,” Benji said. “One book says, ‘The press is at once the eye, the ear, the tongue of the people. It is the visible speech if not the voice of the democracy. It is the phonograph of the world.’ ”

He gave me a look.

“You do know what a phonograph is, don’t you?”

“Of course I do! Our Father Ted has two of them.”

He stopped walking.

I looked around to try to see if I could figure out what the next woods lesson was going to be.

I was certain I picked it out. There was a spot where a stone rested at an odd angle against the side of a tree. Several pinecones were arranged around the rock in a way that, once I studied them, didn’t appear random or haphazard.

I pointed at the spot with the strangely placed stone and pinecones.

“What do you suppose happened there?”

He glanced at the spot I pointed out and started walking again.

“Looks to me like a rock is leaning against a tree.”

The only time I was absolutely sure he wasn’t pulling my leg was when he talked about being a newspaperman. Unlike the forest tales, his eyes burned when he spoke of the press.

“Do you read the newspapers, Red?”

“Every morning, Father and I read the Chatham Times and the Toronto Globe.”

Benji scoffed. “Sorry to tell you, they’re not good papers.”

“Oh, really?”

“Really. I find them to be very dry. When I’m editor of my own paper, I won’t make the same mistakes they do. Those big-city papers don’t do anything to snatch the reader’s attention, to force you to read more.”

“I never noticed.”

“If you saw the way it’s supposed to be done, even someone like you would notice the difference.”

“What is the difference?”

“Another one of my books says, ‘Always remember, if you don’t sock a newspaper reader right between the eyes with your first sentence, don’t waste your time writing a second one.’ ”

“I don’t understand.”

Benji very patiently explained to me, as if he were talking to a four-year-old. A very dense four-year-old.

“Let me give you an example, and it’s not really fair because this is something I practice a lot every day.”

The air changed. It became heavier, and it wasn’t only the increasing darkness caused by the thickness of the woods. We were getting near water.

“I’m listening.”

“OK. What I practice is writing headlines, or what we newspapermen call leads, for everything that I see around me.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“For example, to show you how using the right words can make all the difference in the world, why don’t you pretend you’re writing a headline about you and me meeting this afternoon, then I’ll do the same, and we’ll see which is better.”

“But who shall be the impartial judge? What’s to stop you from saying yours is better and me from saying mine is?”

“Oh, don’t worry. Mine will be so much better that even you will have to admit it.”

I laughed and took the challenge.

“All right, let me see.”

Through the thick trees, I could see a pond maybe twenty yards away.

I thought for a moment, then said, “Here we go; my headline for today’s events would be ‘Two Lads Meet at Forensics Competition, Go for Cooling Swim.’ How’s that?”

Benji said, “Not bad. But don’t forget this competition isn’t fair, so I don’t want you to be crushed when I give my headline.”

The only thing that stopped him from being completely insufferable was that he always smiled when he made his questionable comments.

I said, “I promise not to be crushed.”

“Good. Here’s the real headline, and you tell me which story you’d rather read.”

Benji cleared his throat and punctuated each word by jabbing his finger in the air as if he were reading something there.

He said, “ ‘Overheated Chatham Boy Not Heard From in Weeks. Last Seen in Company of Stranger from Buxton. Has the Young Hatchet Cannibal Struck Again?’ ”

He tilted his head to the side, widened his eyes, and made chomping sounds with his teeth. His right hand was hidden behind his back as though he were carrying a …

For a moment, probably not even that long, I admit the same jolt of electricity that I’d experienced when I met the South Woods Lion Man ran through my veins. Grandmother O’Toole had told me if I wandered away from the church, I might be murdered and carved up by one of the people from Buxton, and now I realized I was totally lost in the woods and at the complete mercy of this terrifying growling and snarling Buxton boy.

It all stopped when Benji shouted, “Last one in has to marry his own grandmother,” and, pulling off his shirt, jumped from a rock and disturbed the calm waters of the beautiful swimming hole.

I was embarrassed that I’d had even a moment of fright, but I was almost nauseated from the thought of being trapped in wedlock with Grandmother O’Toole. I kicked off my shoes, folded my clothes, and threw myself in the water after Benji.

The coolness was shocking. All of the clamminess and closeness and heat of the day that clung to me so stubbornly was stripped away the moment I hit the water.

This is how a moulting snake must feel after it has shed its skin. I was so reinvigourated that it wouldn’t have surprised me if I saw my old, hot sticky skin walk out of the lake and disappear into the forest.

I knew Benji would be able to track it to the end of the earth.