The Boy Who Understood
by Biff Spork
Chapter 1
A Shot Across the Bow
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all beings are created equal, and have a right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of their Happiness.
(The Declaration of Animal Rights, Article 1)
Whump!
Where did that boy come from? Aaron had only looked away from the road for a second, squinting through a bit of windshield that was free of bird crap, and then bang — the kid was right in front of him. Aaron veered, then wrangled the pickup back onto the dirt road. He hadn't felt the tell-tale, solid bump that would have signaled he'd hit something dead-on, and a quick glance in the rear-view mirror showed the boy getting untangled from some roadside bushes.
So he must be okay.
If he wasn't, it had nothing to do with Aaron. A fat bike had no business to be hogging the road like that.
As the narrow road crept back and forth up the mountainside, its hairpin turns had prevented the boy from seeing far ahead, so he had heard the truck's engine before he saw it speeding around the next bend. A dark flock of birds flew closely around the red pickup as it hurtled toward him, and he lurched off the road to avoid being struck. When the pickup zoomed past, he caught a glimpse of the driver. Scarlet spots marked his fearful face. A gun rack in the truck's rear window carried a single rifle.
The rutted track, barely wide enough for a single vehicle, zigzagged up the side of Jana Mountain in a series of switchbacks. In the past, the road had climbed through a towering old-growth forest. A desolate clear-cut was all that remained, looking like a war zone. Massive stumps lay inert — mute testimony to the grandeur that was gone. Between them lay crushed undergrowth and the broken stems of saplings.
The boy spat some dry leaves, dragged his bicycle back onto the logging road and dusted it off, happy there was no visible damage his parents might question. It was his long-awaited thirteenth birthday e-bike. Earlier that week they had agreed to match his savings so he could buy it. After lecturing him on safety, they had given him permission to ride on the roads. With the power of the e-bike's motor, he could climb into the mountains that shaped the valley where he lived.
The boy wrestled his cycle back onto the road but stood beside it before mounting. The collision had shocked him, but what made him pause was the perception that the flock of birds had not simply been flying alongside the pickup; they had been chasing it.
Despite the devastation around him, the boy's youth and his joy in his new bicycle buoyed his spirits. He was riding toward a protected area, Jana Mountain State Park. He had not used the park's public entrance off the highway because he wanted to be alone. This logging road led to the higher, undeveloped part of the park. There, he hoped to enjoy the pristine forest unmarked by trails. Other people would not disturb him there.
As the boy neared the top of the logging road, he saw a bird struggling on the roadside. He leaned his bike on its kick-stand and bent to see if he could help. A starling shook and fluttered in the dust. He knelt, cradled the bird in his hands, and smoothed its feathers. As his fingers brushed over its breast, he felt a hard bump. A small, bloodied bullet fell into his palm. The starling lay quietly, and he felt its rapid heartbeat slow, then stop. He recalled the gun-rack in the red pickup truck and felt a surge of anger. He carried the limp body into the clear-cut until he found a shadowed spot beneath the broad, spring-green leaves of a cluster of maple seedlings. There he laid the starling, and for a moment he felt himself enveloped in silence, as if the green saplings, the starling's body, and he were all that existed. A minute afterward, he stood, and the rest of the world came back into focus. The crackling of grasshopper wings and the sharp clarity of nearby birdsong washed over him as he picked his way between the stumps back to the road.
The boy had looked forward to this excursion into the high parkland for months. He loved feeling he was on the edge of an adventure, something more exotic than getting sideswiped by a 4X4 pickup. He hungered to feel he was poised on the brink of the unknown. Usually he tried to generate this state of excited wonder by immersing himself in books about subjects he did not understand. He read, not to reach an understanding, but to delight in what he called 'the pursuit of ignorance.' He always tried to push himself beyond what he knew. He had tried to describe it to his mother once: "It's like you're out in space, flying along until you get to the end of the universe. There's nothing beyond that, just an empty blackness. Imagine what it would be like, Mom, standing there at the edge of everything that's known, then diving into the mystery."
"It sounds a bit gloomy to me," remarked his mother.
"It's not gloomy. It's freedom from all the stuff that everybody knows and thinks. It's the big adventure!"
A quarter-hour later, he wheeled his bicycle into tall evergreens that marked the border of the park and chained it to a tree out of sight from the road. The sharp aroma of pine filled his nostrils. The burbling of a nearby stream attracted him, and when he reached its shaded, mossy banks, he felt he was in the right place.
The boy had come to the forest seeking a spot where he could be himself; where he could drop all pretenses without fear. He could not go to the end of the universe, but in the ancient forest he felt he was at least at the edge of civilization. He began to remove his clothing, folding each item and placing it in his backpack.
He undressed as if performing a ritual, as a way of discarding his public persona. Clothed, he was David Alexander McAdam, son of Pete and Doreen McAdam. When he stood naked and barefoot on the spongy, humus-rich forest floor, he felt he was someone else, his true self. He filled his lungs with the pine-scented air, knelt at the stream's edge, and dashed some cold water on his face. Then he waded ankle-deep to the other side and wandered further into the woods.
As he passed a fallen log, an outburst of brilliant orange fungi caught his eye. He bent over, then lay down so they were at eye level. In the cool shadows, dew drops glistened on the fruiting bodies' unblemished umbrella-tops. Several of the mushrooms had rust-colored insects roaming over them. They ignored David as they scurried back and forth performing inscrutable tasks. At first, he tried to understand what they were doing. Then that part of his mind dropped away, and it satisfied him to watch them without seeking an explanation for their behavior.
He lay in that state until he became aware of twigs and pine needles pressing into his shoulder. He rolled then onto his back. The play of sunbeams that penetrated the leafy canopy was like a shimmering image of the happiness he felt.
One of the rusty insects landed on the tip of his nose and regarded him. He laughed, and the visitor spread his wings and flew away. Like an answer to David's laugh came the scolding "ch-ch-ch" of a red squirrel. He located the squirrel by homing in on the sound, and they exchanged a long glance before the squirrel raced away into the network of higher branches.
Several minutes later, David felt the subtle sensation of someone or something observing him. He didn't feel threatened, yet the sense of being watched was disquieting. It made him aware of his nakedness.
David shook his head to clear the odd sensation. It didn't disappear completely but remained as a feeling of acceptance, as if the forest was conscious of him and welcomed him. A brightness through the trees suggested there was a clearing ahead, and he strolled in that direction.
Suddenly, a burst of musical laughter mixed with the forest sounds. A treble voice cried, "No! No tickling!" Then the laughter bubbled forth again, starting in a high squeal and warbling down like the song of a bird.
David ducked behind a leafy bush. Then he crept forward, determined to see who else had come to enjoy this forest. He crawled on hands and knees from one shrub to another, ever closer to the clearing. At the edge of the glade, he parted the branches of a juneberry bush so he could spy unseen.
Deputy Pete McAdam drummed his fingers on the steering wheel of his cruiser. Traffic was light, and there had been no speeders since he parked behind the billboard. That was alright with him. He wasn't required to issue a quota of speeding tickets, nor was there much danger if drivers sped past even fifteen or twenty miles per hour above the limit. The valley highway's gentle curves ran through spring-green fields and parcels of woodland. Scattered farmhouses were generally situated at the ends of long driveways. There were no pedestrians.
Most days when he was on highway patrol, the deputy read a spy novel while he lurked in hiding. He admired the laconic, all-man action-hero in his current book. This day, he had forgotten his paperback, and his mind drifted into a meditation that was as persistent as it was unsettling.
His life seemed flat. He wasn't unhappy or depressed, but he worried that at forty, he hadn't lived up to his own ambitions. He'd dreamed of an existence rich with challenging adventures, yet he sometimes felt disappointed with the lack of excitement in his life. Except for an expanding waistline, he was fit, and he looked okay if he pulled his gut in. His eyesight and hearing were as good as when he was a boy.
He had a good home, and the house was almost paid for. He got along well with Doreen, his wife, but he worried about their boy, David. The kid wasn't bad, but he was weird — 'sensitive' was how Doreen described him. That was a nice way of saying David was overemotional. He was always on the verge of getting worked-up over some insect, or mouse, or other vermin.
Even other kids must have thought David was strange. He didn't seem to have any friends, at least none that ever came over to the house. When the boy was small, his weirdness was easier to ignore because he was a cute kid. Now that he was growing up, it was irritating.
Pete recalled taking David fishing when his son was nine years old. When he had planned the excursion, he had been happy, looking forward to a classic father-son bonding experience. After he rowed them out to the middle of Duck Lake, a popular nearby fishing spot, he showed his son how to bait a barbed fish hook with a wriggling worm. The demonstration horrified David. When the pierced worm continued to writhe in pain, the boy began to cry and begged to be taken home.
Pete had ignored David's tearful protests while he baited the other hook. He looked on it as a chance to share some of life's starker lessons with his boy. "The world is a tough place, son. It's not all teddy bears and toys." Pete insisted they fish for awhile so the boy could see the point of puncturing the worm with the fish hook.
Pete wanted his son to appreciate the fishing tackle he had bought for him especially for this trip. When Pete was a boy, he had yearned for such classy fishing gear, but David handled his new rod and reel with obvious distaste.
They fished without speaking for a half-hour, and the boy's sobs lessened. Then Pete's rod dipped. He jerked it to set the hook and reeled in a struggling three-pound trout. The fish thrashed in distress on the floor of the boat, its rainbow colors shimmering in the sun. David burst into tears again and implored him to unhook the fish and put it back in the lake. Pete explained that they were going to take it home and eat it.
"But he's hurting!" David had cried. "He's hurting so bad!" He knelt on the floor of the boat, grabbed the fish, and attempted to remove the hook. Pete pulled the slippery fish out of the boy's hands and pushed him away. David thumped onto the deck, stood up, then jumped into the lake and swam toward the shore. He was good swimmer, but his father dragged him back into the boat.
Pete was angry at how everything was being ruined. He had insisted they sit beside each other and watch the trout die. He whacked the fish several times with an oar, but it still jerked and flopped for long minutes and flung itself around in death agonies as it suffocated.
When the fish had stopped bouncing up and down, Pete picked it up and said, "See, it's dead now. We'll take it home and clean it and get your mom to cook it for supper. Mmm good!"
David sat in sullen silence for a long moment. Then he fixed his eyes on Pete and said, "That's a bad thing you did."
"Well," Pete said, "you'll learn. There's some things we have to do to survive. Get used to it. It's part of life."
"I'll never do that," said the boy, "and I won't ever get used to it. It's bad and wrong, and I wanna go home."
It would have been so much more satisfying to have a son who liked to go out into nature and hunt and fish. Instead, fate had saddled Pete with this weird worrywart.
Things were never the same between them after the fishing trip. Doreen said he should apologize to David. Pete couldn't imagine apologizing for catching a three-pound trout. That would be crazy. So he had a fight with Doreen, too. They had patched it up, but afterward something unsaid remained between them.
David had always been difficult at mealtimes, a picky eater, but after the fishing incident, he began to ask about the food they were eating, where it came from. One night at the supper table, he pushed his pork chop to the side of his plate and said he wasn't going to eat any animal from then on — no meat, chicken, eggs, fish, or dairy products.
Doreen, as usual, was ready to let the boy have his way. Pete felt insulted by David's rejection of their normal food. He had responded, "You should eat what we eat as long as you're living under my roof."
Pete told Doreen not to bother with any special dishes. "Just cook like normal and put it on the table — meat and potatoes, and a salad or some vegetables. Do like you been doing since we got married. You're a great cook. Or we can get pizza or KFC. If he eats like that he'll grow up fine and maybe forget these dumb ideas. If he doesn't want to eat like us, it's his look-out. I don't know where he gets these crazy ideas from."
Recalling those events, Pete briefly saw himself as a petty tyrant, but he shied away from that thought. Nobody obeyed him, so clearly he wasn't a tyrant. Doreen made two suppers every night, one for the kid and one for Pete. He noticed that she often ate what she had cooked for David instead of food she had prepared for Pete.
Only last week, the kid had found a spider in his bedroom. Any normal boy would have squashed it and thought no more about it, but David had captured it in a glass jar so he could take it outdoors and release it.
When David came back into the house carrying the empty jar, Pete remarked, "Yeah, great! I bet you killed about fifty ants tramping around in the yard to let that spider go."
He hadn't expected an answer. In the past, the kid let jibes like that go unacknowledged. This time, David looked up with a thoughtful expression, but when he spoke, it was like he was talking to himself.
"Yeah," he said, as he left the kitchen. "I'll have to think about that."
An hour later, David came down from his room and said, "What's important is the intention. I didn't intend to kill any ants. If I did, it was accidental."
Pete snorted. "Tell it to those poor dead ants and their wives, who are crying their little ant-eyes out."
"Ants don't have wives," said David.
"Yeah?" said Pete. "Well, they don't have tofu either, do they?"
The kid had no answer to that one.
It all seemed unfair. It wasn't right that he should have a son who disagreed with him about everything. He and David didn't argue much anymore, but they had drifted apart. They looked at each other like strangers.
Pete missed doing things with his son. He didn't believe it was his fault, but he wished he could think of how to make it better. It would be easier if the boy wasn't so stubborn. David had grown secretive and distant. He was defensive about ideas Pete dismissed as kooky.
A red pickup streaked past, thirty-six miles per hour above the speed limit. The deputy turned on the flashers and burped the siren as he accelerated in pursuit. The small truck slowed and parked on the shoulder.
Pete ran a quick check on the plates but found no outstanding warrants or unpaid tickets. He grabbed the citation pad and strolled to the driver's window. A beardless teenager sat there with an intense expression on his face. There were small wounds on his cheeks and hands. A few still bled bright blood.
"What happened to you?" asked the deputy. "You look like you fell into a blackberry patch."
"You wouldn't believe me." The boy's voice shook.
"Well, try me. License, registration, and insurance, please, then get on with your story. And while you're at it, you can tell me why you don't clean your windshield more often. It looks like you parked under a chicken-house."
"It was birds," the teenager said.
Pete scanned his documents. "Aaron Jameson. You're one of the Jameson brothers, aren't you?"
"Yeah."
Townsfolk knew the two older Jameson boys, twins Ricky and Nicky, as rowdies. They drank too much on weekends and were loud and obnoxious, but nothing violent or criminal. The deputy had had a few run-ins with them in the past, but he figured they were okay, just young animals with more energy than sense.
"You the youngest brother?" asked Pete.
"No, I've got a little brother, River. He's fifteen."
"Okay, tell me about the birds."
"They just come outta nowhere and attacked me, up on Jana Mountain."
"Birds attacked you?" Pete spoke in a neutral tone as he handed the documents back. "That's a pretty strange story, for sure. You been smoking something?"
"No, I wasn't smokin' nothing. I'm just tellin' you what happened."
"No need to get riled up, Aaron."
"I was up in the clear-cut, just mindin' my own business, and a whole goddam flock of birds started diving and pecking at me. So, I jumped in the truck and took off. They followed me down the mountain too, pecking at the windows and shitting on the windshield. Hundreds of them, black birds, sort of shiny. Crazy!"
"Crows?" Pete tried to visualize what the boy described.
"No, smaller, maybe the same size as a robin, but there was hundreds of them. That's why I was driving so fast — to get away. It was self-defense. They would've killed me if I'd stayed there! I never saw anything like it."
"Maybe blackbirds, or starlings," mused the deputy. "But they don't usually flock till September, October." He glanced at the 30-06 rifle racked against the back window. Another smaller rifle rested on the floor of the cab with its barrel leaning against the passenger seat. "What were you doing up there anyway? It's not hunting season, and the logging's finished."
"I wasn't hunting. I just went up there to do some target practice." Aaron gestured at the smaller gun. "I bought that little 22 last week, and I wanted to try it out."
"All you were doing was target practice?"
"Yep."
Pete pointed at the 22. "That gun loaded?"
"Yeah."
"Why don't you unload it and rack it with the other one? It's dangerous to have a loaded gun like that loose in the cab with you."
The young man did as the deputy had suggested. Then he looked up. "You know, I don't think I should get a ticket for self-defense. That's why I was goin' so fast. I mean, what was I supposed to do? Just hang around and get pecked to death?"
"You can try that on with the judge. It won't wash with me. I didn't see any birds chasing you when you zoomed past me at a hundred miles an hour." Pete completed writing the speeding ticket and handed it through the window.
"I clocked you at thirty-six miles an hour above the posted limit. I could ticket you for that dirty windshield, too, but it seems to me you already had enough trouble for one day. Get out and clean that crap off your window. Then get those peck marks tended to by a medic. They don't look serious, but there's a lot of them. Okay?"
"Okay," said the young man.
Through the branches of the juneberry bush, David saw a naked boy the same size as himself. He lay spreadeagled in the sun. Long, tangled hair so blond it was almost white curled around his tanned, laughing face.
A mule deer fawn straddled the boy's torso. The young deer was no more than a few days old, his gawky legs like sticks and his russet coat dappled with snowy tufts. The fawn bent his head over the boy's shoulder. He bumped and licked the boy's armpit, making him chuckle and squeal. Through peals of laughter, his victim shouted, "Enough!"
The fawn nudged the boy's cheek with his nose, then bounded away to join a doe at the edge of the clearing. She nuzzled the fawn, and they sauntered into the forest. The boy lay without speaking and glanced down at a red squirrel standing at his elbow. He stroked the squirrel's head and back. The bushy tail oscillated, and the squirrel trembled, enjoying the attention. The boy's hand caressed him. The squirrel lifted his head and pushed up against the boy's fingers, emitting a low churring, akin to a cat's purr.
David watched, mesmerized. The boy sat up, turned his head, and stared directly at the bush where David was hiding. Then he looked down and gave the squirrel a gentle pat. "Thank you, Chirko," he said. "I'm happy he's here. Do you think he's going to come out?"
As the boy finished speaking, a starling landed on his shoulder. He reached a hand up to preen the bird's back feathers. The starling moved over and pressed his head against the boy's cheek. With his eyebrows raised, the boy gazed at the clump of juneberry bushes that concealed David. The starling turned his head in that direction too, as did the squirrel.
Except for the frantic beating of his heart, fear paralyzed David. He knew they had discovered him. Again he sensed that other presence in his mind. What was happening? He felt shaky and afraid, and skittered away behind a tree. Then he ran to where he had crossed the stream, splashed to the other side, grabbed his pack, and sprinted to his bike. He stopped there to scramble into his clothes and sandals before continuing his flight.
While he wheeled down the road, a flock of starlings dropped from the sky. They didn't dive-bomb him like they had done with the red pickup; they accompanied him like an escort. He didn't feel threatened by them. They chirped and trilled as they flew, so close he could have reached out and touched them. Then they sped ahead of him, swooped up over the road in a compact mass, and headed back to the forest.
David stopped when he reached the junction of the logging road and the highway. He laid his bike down and sat on the road's grassy shoulder. He still felt nervous, but the sound of cars whizzing past calmed him. He pondered his panicked escape. A quarter hour elapsed before he got on his bike and pointed it toward his family's house on the outskirts of town.
Once David was home, he plugged his e-bike into its charger in the garage and ran upstairs. In his bedroom, he paused at the open window to gaze at Jana Mountain. A sharp "Caw!" made him look into the branches of an old oak near the house. A crow perched there. When he saw David looking at him, he cawed once more, then spread his wings and flew toward the mountain.
At supper with his parents, David described his ride up the Jana Mountain logging road and how well his new bicycle had performed.
"You weren't the only one went up that mountain today," Pete said. "I heard a strange story from one of the Jameson boys, Aaron. He said he got attacked by a bunch of birds up there. You see anything like that?"
"He drive a red pickup?" asked David.
"Yep, a little red 4X4 with a gun rack in the back window."
"He just about run me off the road. I don't know if he was attacked by birds or not, but there was a whole flock of starlings chasing his truck when I saw him. He was goin' about sixty miles an hour."
"Those birds really spooked him," said Pete. "He had some little peck marks on his face. Those starlings bother you?"
"Nope." David shook his head.
David didn't describe his experiences with the dead starling or the naked boy. There were too many private feelings in those events, emotions he'd not yet processed. One lesson he'd learned from Pete was to be wary of sharing anything that affected him deeply. His mother was more open to his ideas and feelings, but he was sure that what he had felt and seen on Jana Mountain was more than even she could accept.
In bed that night, David recalled the day's incidents, one by one, and tested his memories against his reason. He tried to find explanations that satisfied both.
Images of the boy filled his mind, and David wished he knew more about him. The fawn had licked the boy's armpit. Maybe it was salty. He remembered the boy's words, 'I'm happy he's here. Do you think he's going to come out?' Had the boy been talking about him?
David smiled as he considered an idea: perhaps wolves had raised the boy. He dismissed the thought. That kind of thing only happened in movies or cartoons.
He mulled over his memories of the day, trying to make sense of them and to decide what he should do next. The more he thought about the day's events, the more certain he became that they were all related to the forest boy. He knew then what he had to do, rolled onto his side, and slept.
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