jonathan powers

Milton, who refused to participate in camp games, finally decided to join the other children after being bombarded with encouragement from three female counselors kneeling next to him. They patted him on the shoulder and explained how much fun he would have. There were several teams of giddy, running campers to support their case. His team ran out of the pavilion without looking back at him, they knew if they waited for him he would drag them into last place. He decided, after feeling the pressure of the staff to participate, to follow his team into the woods. The pity the counselors directed toward him attracted too much attention. Every additional set of eyes increased his urge to cry.

"Look, it'll be great!" They patted his shoulder, rubbed his head and nudged him toward the others.

Experience taught him enthusiasm was a waste of energy. The camp mascot, a Catahoula hound that crept into cabins at night to lick children's hands, hobbled away from him. Everyone knew Milton burst into tears when confronted. His sadness concerned the counselors at the beginning of the summer. As the weeks passed the number of counselors who worried about his sadness dropped. None of the male staff tolerated his pouting. Two of them watched him weep for an hour and a half after his flashlight batteries burnt out during the opening salvos of a flashlight war. As the war dragged on and his crying continued, his cabin mates became angry and tore the flashlight from his hands, "give it to someone who knows how to replace the batteries you stupid idiot."

Milton left the pavilion sullen, and plodded toward the excitement. He tacked from one patch of shadows to the other, lingered by tree trunks, and avoided sunlight.

One of the few boys at the camp who spoke to him paused at the edge of the forest to let him catch up. From somewhere ahead in the trees a girl shouted back, "Don't wait for Milton, he's not going to help anyway." She was right. Milton stumbled over roots and pine cones he could have easily avoided. He snagged his shoelace on a stick and fell. The boy who waited for him shook his head in disgust and jogged away to help the others.

Milton struggled with his shoelace, freed the stick and stood up to watch his teammate dash behind a bush. The number of trees increased, completely obscuring the sun. Milton walked in a straight line to the edge of the pine forest well behind his team. There was no way he could catch up to them without running, and he refused to let anyone think he was capable of it.

He sat down making sure his back was not visible from the pavilion. Once again he would sulk in the shadows until the end of the game when the counselors would ask him what was wrong then send him off to the infirmary. He backed up to the trunk of a dead pine wider than he was tall. Something blunt, cold and moist tapped on the bare skin above his shirt collar and made him scurry away from the tree. He did not know if he had inadvertently brushed against a slug, a mushroom or something more dreadful. As images of what it could have been became more vivid he shuddered and swatted wildly at the back of his shirt and the top of his head. He stopped twitching and turned to look at the base of the tree. Nothing moved in the bushes that surrounded the trunk.

A glance at the pine straw next to his right hand yielded a sturdy dry branch twice the length of his arm and half as thick. It was heavier than he thought it would be. The weight comforted him, it wouldn't shatter on the first swing. He prodded the surrounding foliage and waited for something to crawl or slither toward him. He lifted the branch over his head, ready to strike.

His arms fatigued after thirty seconds passed. Unable to keep the branch over his head any longer, he let it fall and swatted the shrubs girding the tree above where his head bowed when he first sat down. A cluster of dry azalea branches snapped off revealing an abandoned bird nest suspended on the vertical surface of the tree trunk. The nest teetered, but did not fall. Supporting the nest, protruding through bark of the tree trunk, camouflaged in a roof of dry pine straw was a glass door knob.

Milton dropped his club, rubbed his neck, checked his palm for moisture and crept toward it. He did not want to get too near; wasps, ants, or other venomous creatures could ambush him. He checked, nothing lurked in the bark around the knob and the branches above him. He rubbed his neck again and crawled toward the trunk without looking away from the bulge of glass. The tree, which had grown around the knob for years, lifting it higher from the forest floor each spring, was rotting. Milton scratched at the edges of the glass with his stick, sending crumbs of pine sap amber and decomposing bark to the ground. As more of the knob shed rotting wood and decomposing pine straw Milton's digging became more frenzied. Bark and bits of wood flew off of the trunk. Two fingers fit behind the knob. It wiggled. He carved until his stick splintered. Mosquitoes spiraled around his neck. They bit but he did not notice. He grabbed another branch and hacked at the trunk so vigorously chunks of wood flew up and stuck in his hair and rolled into the top of his shirt. After a few minutes enough of the knob was exposed for him to grasp it with both hands.

Milton braced his feet against the trunk and pulled as hard as he could. The knob slid forward and tore free and thudded to the ground attached to a block of amber six inches square. The key, still inside the lock, was welded in place by hardened pine sap clouded with ants, pine straw and bark.

The dead tree, free of its contents, crumbled into shards of wood and vanished into the hole where the knob sat. The forest became silent. Milton did not look up. He stared at the lock on the forest floor. He could not pull his eyes or his hands from it.

Even in the winter the forest produced ambient sound; a dead branch dropping to the ground, the rattle of desiccated leaves stirred by wind. Now, there was nothing. The silence was complete and abrupt. The children in the forest seemed to evaporate. Echoes reflected toward the pavilion before Milton placed his hand on the key, were ripped from the air.

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"Milton, you were doing so well, why did you stop hunting? You almost made it to the forest."

Milton walked past them and slammed the base of the lock against the polished cement floor of the pavilion, shattering the amber, exploding bits of crust across the pavilion. The knob did not break.

"Oh, good job, you're the first one to bring in something!" The counselors marked Milton's find on the scoreboard by adding a point to his team's total.

"Milton, where is the rest of your team?"

He sat down next to the lock and froze with his right hand on the knob and his left on the key.

"Milton, where is your team?"

"Milton your team captain needs to be with you if you want this to count. Where's your team? Did you hear what I said?"

A counselor stepped from underneath the pavilion towards the woods and shouted into the silence. "Come on kids, points are already on the board. Lets see some team spirit." None of the children, responded. They were all obscured by trees and brush.

The first counselor to notice the hush that fell on the camp did not realize he was trying to find the origin of silence. He only knew something was different about the camp. He looked toward the grounds keeper's house when the silence was finally shattered by a clacking air conditioner compressor fan clacking the side of its housing. The rattling seemed unusually loud, because there were no other sounds to compare it to. Both of the dogs inside the grounds keeper's yard stared at the pavilion. Their tails, perpetually wagging because camp was in session, were locked straight back. Simultaneously, they bowed their heads and cowered crawling backward until their faces barely poked from beneath the house. They did not turn away from the pavilion.

A girl stepped from behind a tree a few feet away from the dogs. They did not turn to her or sniff the air. They kept their gaze on the pavilion as she stumbled toward the counselors.

"Lindsey, hurry back the other kids haven't come in yet. Except for Milton." Lindsey continued toward them without looking up from her cupped hands.

"What did you find?" The counselors looked at her hands when she walked onto the cement.

She opened her hands and positioned an iron plate next to Milton's lock. It fit over the bolt. The engravings matched the vine shaped impressions at the base of the glass knob.