If You Go Down to the Woods: The most powerful and emotional debut thriller of 2018!. Seth Adams C.

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      Before hitting the Connolly yard we stopped by my house to pick up Bandit. The aroma of fresh cookies wrapped about us like tantalizing fingers as soon as we walked inside. We stayed awhile, watching my mom in the kitchen pulling out trays lined with brown baked delights and scooping them onto the counter to cool. We wanted them hot and begged for them, and Mom gave us each a handful. A glass of cool lemonade that fogged the glasses just a bit accompanied this feast, and we ate slowly, enjoying every bite and swallow as if they might never come again.

      Mom noticed Fat Bobby’s shiner, but she didn’t say anything. She gave me a look and I gave her one back, and somewhere in that secret exchange she understood the message: Not now. I’ll tell you later. She nodded as if she’d actually heard this, told us to enjoy our cookies, and then was off somewhere else in the house.

      As we were putting our glasses in the sink, Sarah came down the stairs in a summer dress, and her hair and face were all done up like for some sort of pageant. Date, I said to myself, and had to smile. Apparently, her true love in California was forgotten. Out of sight and out of mind.

      She saw us in the kitchen, saw my blooming smile, and pointed at me threateningly.

      “Don’t say a word,” she said, and that was like an invitation.

      “I think you need more makeup,” I said. “We can still see your face.”

      There was something in her other hand, the one not pointing like a dagger at me, and she wound up her arm and threw it and, too late, I saw it was her sandals and one of them hit me in the chest. The heel was broad and thick and it hurt when it struck. I laughed, though, seeing my sister’s face had turned red with the jab.

      “You don’t want him to know you’re a mutant on the first date.”

      And here came the other sandal, fast, and I stepped aside at the last moment and it sailed by my head, striking the refrigerator with a thump. My sister stomped determinedly towards me, and that was when Mom stepped back into the kitchen from the living room and planted herself between us.

      “What on earth is going on in here?”

      “Oh, Joey!” my sister bawled. “Why do you have to be such a retard?!”

      She was away and back up the stairs as quick as she’d appeared, not even bothering to gather up her ballistic missile sandals. Upstairs a door slammed, the impact reverberating throughout the house. I imagined her in her room or in the bathroom, staring at herself, wiping her face clean and trying again with the makeup and lipstick and whatever other chemicals and goop girls used.

      That made me smile.

      That smile made my mom frown.

      It wasn’t one of her vaguely comical-puzzled frowns, either, that asked “How did this happen?” Rather, it was one of her dangerous and angry frowns that said: “What the hell is your problem?” and sometimes ended with her whapping me upside the head. In moments, under that reproachful gaze, my smile dwindled and then faded altogether.

      “Why are you and your sister so mean to each other?”

      I shrugged. Looked down and away from her disappointment.

      “You know someday it’ll just be you and her,” Mom said. “Your dad and I won’t be around forever.”

      “Yes, ma’am,” I murmured.

      “Someday you’ll need each other.”

      “Yes, ma’am,” I muttered, really thinking: Yeah, right, like I need a rash on my sack.

      “She’s growing up, Joey. Jokes like that aren’t so funny anymore. She needs to feel good about herself.”

      “Yes, ma’am,” I said, head still hung low.

      “You might not understand now, but someday you’ll meet a girl and want to say nice things to her. Then maybe you’ll think back to now and the things you said to your sister.”

      I thought of Tara. I thought of the things I wanted to say to her. I thought of her in her dress at the bookstore. The shape of her. How the lights caught in the swirls of her hair. Her smile and her skin like velvet.

      Suddenly, the things I’d said to my sister indeed didn’t seem so funny. But I wouldn’t—couldn’t—admit as much to my mom. So I settled with another “Yes, ma’am”, and then my mother was moving upstairs, trailing after my sister, and me and Fat Bobby were free and so we headed outside. Bandit trotted along beside us.

      “Why are you so mean to your sister?” Fat Bobby asked after we were across my yard and back on the dirt road.

      “Because she’s a dork,” I said, as if that explained it all.

      “She’s kind of pretty.”

      I looked at him like he said the sky was falling, and I saw his face was red. I remembered how I’d felt around Tara, and I thought to myself, horrified and wanting to laugh at the same time, Fat Bobby is sweet on Sarah!

      But rather than laugh at him I just kept walking, adding these words in response:

      “If by pretty you mean pretty stupid, then you got a point.”

      4.

      Back at the Connolly yard we slid through the large sliding gate again and picked our way through the rusted heaps of automobiles and parts and piles of parts. From a distance we saw Mr. Connolly and Jim lying on rolling boards slid under an old Chevy in the garage. A clang and scuffle of metal on metal from beneath the car preceded the emergence of father and son when they heard our approach. Oil and grease-stained, the duo waved at us instead of shaking hands. We pulled Jim aside and started to tell him the conclusions I’d come to and what we wanted to do. Pretty soon he was nodding along to our words and one of his flashy white smiles spread across his face.

      Although we stood grouped together in a corner of the garage and kept our voices low, Mr. Connolly lingered nearby wiping his hands on a towel. I knew he’d overheard some of what we were saying. He didn’t make any objections, but instead smiled one of his own bright smiles, as if he wished he were a boy again and could come along with us.

      “If you boys are going down to the woods, stick together. Have fun and be safe,” was the closest he came to any admonishment, and then: “I have some calls to make and other office work. Be home for dinner, Jim.”

      With that Jim’s dad opened a side door and disappeared into the room beyond. Jim walked to a small refrigerator humming along one wall, opened it, and fished out three bottles of water. Handing one each to me and Fat Bobby, he led the way out back, across the rear of the yard, and opened the small gate at the end of the walkway. Side by side, with Bandit doing his ghost impersonation padding along silently about us, we walked to the barricaded access road, stepped around the barrier and into the dense forest beyond.

      * * *

      Shadows and light passed upon us and the earth as the sun stabbed through the branches overhead in intermittent fashion. Green-heavy limbs and thick brown trunks rose all around us, so that walking the access road through these I felt as if I’d entered СКАЧАТЬ