A stand of trees runs along the edge of a farm field. The spring trees and dense undergrowth form a panoramic still-life of green foliage, a familiar yet primal scene. A fracturing cradle of birds in the light. Slight hidden movements and chatter. Leaves and branches swaying, insects swarming the song, and just the greening, trees, alive.
***
A new suburban front door opens and a young boy exits the house in jeans and a jacket. He hops down the front steps, crosses the driveway in front of the garage and rounds the corner, heading up the narrow alley of lawn that separates his house from the neighboring house.
Beyond the odd space between houses, he stands at the edge of his backyard and faces a farm field that stretches out beyond. He looks out across the field and at the green stand of trees on the far side.
Rows and rows of low spring corn lie between him and the forest. An old lone tree rises from the center of the field, like a grandfather.
The boy’s face.
Watching those trees, the fresh eyes of a seven-year-old boy. He looks over his shoulder at the houses and then he takes off. He sprints across the field, following a row of young corn toward the tree line. The brand new neighborhood of modest suburban homes sprawls along the edge of the field behind him.
***
Maple, black ash, honeysuckle, and dogwood. A typical Midwestern forest. The trees are quiet, full of space, and intermittent bird-song.
The boy moves slowly through the undergrowth, alert, listening, and exploring. He runs his hands along the patterns of bark as he makes his way among the trees.
Treetops soar above him, spanning a canopy of filtered, emerald light. A woodpecker’s tapping clarifies the cool air inside the woven cathedral.
The boy finds an enormous tree blown over in a windstorm. He stands before the massive root system, uprooted and exposed, marveling at the horrendous spectacle unearthed. He pulls himself up onto the horizontal trunk and eases along it as though traversing the keel of a capsized ship. He climbs through the branches of the toppled crown and emerges out of the top of the tree. Beyond it, he encounters a colony of wild grape vines. He holds on tight and in great running leaps, launches himself into Tarzan-swings across the forest floor. He takes up a fallen branch, as heavy as he can handle, to brandish like a broadsword. He swings it with all his might, smashing the branch against standing tree trunks, chunks and splinters sent flying through the undergrowth.
Deeper into the forest, the boy scrambles over marvelous collections of moss-covered boulders, rocky outcrops, and serpentine tree roots snarling over stones.
A small stream trickles into a gorge. Following it, he discovers a fantastic grotto many times his size. A thin glistening waterfall drops from a high ledge to a shallow pool on the cavern floor. He is a small figure, alone and entranced in this child’s primeval wonderland—a seven-year-old boy, far from home, far from time.
***
The boy descends the stream to a river. A broad river running through the trees. A row of milky, pealing sycamores on either side. Clear water flowing over polished stones and smooth, flat shale. High above the river, a colony of herons’ nests are hung in the sycamores, a prehistoric enclave against the high blue sky.
He wades in shallow pools, negotiating the current over river rocks and from the safety of the bank he watches schools of minnows in sunlight plying over the ripples. He looks up from the water and is startled to see someone watching him from the opposite bank. A strange figure standing there, another child his size, but nearly naked and completely covered in pale mud paint from head to toe.
They stare at each other from opposite sides of the river. The boy cautiously stands and waves hello. The other boy waves back… a twin mirror image of himself, but covered in ghostly aboriginal paint. Then the primitive stranger takes off, disappearing into the trees.
***
The boy sits at the kitchen table eating his breakfast alone, his spoon clanking on the bowl as he shovels down his cereal.
THE BOY
Can I go now?
MOM
Are you finished?
THE BOY
Yes.
MOM
All right, but you stick close by.
He flees the table, leaving his seat empty, his bowl and his spoon.
He explodes through the front door and follows his path toward the back of the house, sprinting down the alleyway between the two houses. He crosses the backyard and launches out across the cornfield.
The boy wastes no time returning to the stream. He moves steadily through the trees, sliding down a slope and descending to the water. When he gets to the river’s edge he scans the opposite bank, looking for any sign of his strange new friend.
He sits down on a rock to wait. He waits and he waits. He releases broad sycamore leaves into the sweep of the current and watches puffy white clouds move across the sky above the trees. But the changing light brings a chill to the air and he huddles up on his rock, shivering. He scans the opposite bank of the river one last time but there is no sign of anyone. He heads back up the slope and disappears into the forest.
The boy moves through the trees once more, retracing his steps, heading home.
Emerging from the valley at the top of the rise, he suddenly hears voices and stops in his tracks. Adult voices. He hides behind a tree. When he peeks out from behind the trunk he sees them: Two men carrying some gear and pushing through the undergrowth.
Sue is holding a can of spray paint and tagging trees with orange paint as he moves along. He’s running his mouth at Gunner, the man in front of him.
The boy watches them from behind his tree.
SUE
…we’ve got good jobs. We get to work outside, not in some sterile office. That’s who we are. We’re outside dogs. And I think it’s kind of exciting. We’re out here on the frontier, cutting trail. We’re drawing the map and I think that’s kind of neat—
Gunner stops abruptly and Sue crashes into him.
SUE
Whoa! Sorry…
Gunner holds up his hand to silence Sue.
SUE
What’s the matter?
GUNNER
Quiet.
SUE
(whispering)
What? What is it?
GUNNER
Do you hear something?
The boy retreats behind his tree, listening.
SUE
No.
GUNNER
Do you smell something?
SUE
Like what?
GUNNER
Some funny smell.
SUE
I don’t think so.
GUNNER
Well do you or don’t you?
SUE
Well, I don’t know! What kind of smell is it?
GUNNER
Something burning… It smells like something’s burning.
Gunner moves on and Sue follows on after him.
The boy waits until they’ve gone.
He steps out from behind his tree and is startled to see another man standing nearby, watching him. The boy freezes and the man watches him quietly, with a friendly expression. Another surveyor, but a younger man, Jonah holds a long surveyor’s rod in one hand like a futuristic forest staff. He takes a step forward, gently, but the boy retreats a step, scuffling in the leaves.
Jonah reaches a hand out, slowly, like he’s trying to befriend an animal. The boy watches him. Then Jonah’s radio suddenly squelches, obnoxiously shattering the quiet—and the boy takes off, disappearing into the trees.
***
The boy sits at the kitchen table again, eating breakfast alone. He clanks his spoon against the cereal bowl.
He stops eating and scratches at his ear. He shakes his head and scratches at it some more. He takes another mouthful of cereal and then digs his finger into his ear, leaning over to the side almost all the way out of his chair.
MOM
What’s going on here?
THE BOY
Something’s in my ear.
Her hands on his head, and the boy’s ear being examined by her fingers…
MOM
Hold still, let me see. Oh—darn it. Leave it alone. I’ll be right back. Don’t touch it.
His mother releases him and leaves him for a moment.
Just the boy’s ear.
MOM
All right, hold still now. Don’t move.
She steadies his head. Tweezers enter his ear and dig around inside his earlobe. He whines in a bit of pain.
MOM
Eeew. Okay. Got it.
And she extracts a tick from his ear: a small deer tick, and still alive, its 8 legs cranking helplessly in the grip of the tweezers.
***
The boy exits the house, closes the door, descends the steps, crosses the driveway, rounds the corner, and stops. Whatever he sees in the narrow passage between the two houses has stopped him in his tracks. He moves forward slowly, disappearing down the grass alleyway.
The boy stands in the grass at the end of his house, where the backyard would have led out into the field. Instead, there is a wall of beige vinyl siding, the back of another house.
He looks to his left and to his right. The field is gone. In its place is a long row of more houses. He looks up at the monolithic wall of vinyl siding towering above him where the view to another world used to be.
A lightly humming whir, air being moved through a ventilation system.