asks if I zipped my windbreaker, I don’t answer. I’ll be fourteen in two months; I’m not a baby.
Trying to be funny, Dad runs his new binoculars up and down Mom’s legs. “Ooga, ooga,” he jokes. Judy says he bought them with money he won at the horse track, but how does she know?
Dad walks ahead of us, kicking an empty can out of his way. It’s motor oil, probably for the motorcycles that tear through Crawford Woods all hours of the day and night. There’s an empty wine bottle in the bushes too, old yellowed newspaper, and dirty Dixie Cups.
“Litterbugs,” Lauren says, leaning into me. Messes make her nervous.
Mom and Dad stop where the trees begin to darken and blur and I stop too. “Wait a minute,” Dad says, turning around. He sniffs. “What’s that?” It’s his teasing voice. “Does anyone else smell it?”
Mom turns her flashlight beam on him. “Paul,” she warns.
He sniffs again. “Is that . . . carrion?”
“What’s carrion?” Laura asks.
“Come on, Paul. No ghost stories. You promised.”
“All right, all right.” He smiles, and taking Mom’s hand finally leads the way into Crawford Woods. When they slip out of view, my sister and I hurry up behind them. Every five steps, I stop and listen.
“Mom?” Lauren calls out. “Lily’s—”
“Use your flashlights if you need them,” she interrupts.
The dirt trail is soft and dusty, and except for the picnic basket bumping against Mom’s leg, Dad’s crinkly star charts, and Lauren’s heavy breathing (Mom says she needs her adenoids out), it’s a quiet walk through Crawford Woods.
Up ahead is the basalt quarry, the bombed-out crater, the hole all the way to China. Up ahead is the giant mouth of the pit and the meteor-filled sky.
The path narrows and widens, narrows and widens, like the giant walk-through lung at the science museum. Where the trees disappear, the woods become a wall of black. I want to be brave like the Indians on TV, to ride into battle screaming my head off and eat the hearts of my enemies. I want to stop walking and look into the shadows where the shark curtain lives but I’m afraid. I’m afraid of places like the blurry landscapes in Mom’s art book, where angry elves keep escaped circus bears as slaves, or gargoyles sit in the bushes watching me stumble by.
My fingers twitch as I “pretend type” a prayer on Frieda’s typewriter. God bless Aunt Jamie and Mrs. Wiggins and . . .
The trail gets narrower, pressing against us. “How much longer?” I ask.
“Not long,” Dad answers. He directs us to turn off our flashlights and “trust the stars, your eyes will adjust.” For three or four minutes (it could be longer; I don’t have my watch) Dad whistles the theme song to The Andy Griffith Show.
The woods smell like the sweet-and-sour soup they give you before the good stuff at Ming’s Chinese Garden. “Smell the musk?” Mom asks. “It’s nettles. Be careful, they’ll sting.”
I stop and sniff. The smell is strong and getting closer.
Nettles and soup, but more than that too. Something familiar that isn’t the raccoon poop in Mom’s flower bed; isn’t Dad’s wool army coat, dog chow, or the cold cement floor in the garage. Something else is in the air. A whole lot of something elses. I hurry a little and accidentally step on the heel of Lauren’s shoes.
“Dummy,” she mumbles.
Suddenly, a huge bird darts over our heads and Lauren gasps. “An owl!” Mom shouts and, pretending to be scared, hurries to Dad’s side. I read that owls are warnings, sometimes of death, sometimes of danger.
The others walk on, but I stop, then take three short breaths and inhale deeply. Exhale. Repeat. Three short breaths (for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; for Mom, Dad, and Lauren) and inhale deeply. Exhale. Repeat.
The scent is some combination of familiar and unfamiliar, but sticky sweet and wet too. I open my arms like crucified Jesus, stretching my fingers and bugging my eyes, and make myself into a smell antenna.
The scent is coming toward us: the closer it gets, the more it fills my lungs . . . The more it fills my lungs, the more the ground vibrates under my feet . . . The more the ground vibrates under my feet the more the smell vines up my legs like a pea plant until the stink and sound and vibration slip through my ears and nostrils, filling me up, inflating me like a rubber balloon, or Jiffy Pop. Will I explode before it gets here?
“Mommmm!” Lauren flips on her flashlight and walks back to me. “Lily’s being weird again.”
Listen, can’t you hear them . . . ? Dozens of snapping sounds and growls, panting breaths, high-pitched barks, and finally the smell—I recognize it—the warm dusty smell of dry soft dirt, a cloud of it pushed ahead of their thrumming, drumming feet.
How close? I fall to my knees and press my ear to the ground.
“Lily! For God’s sake, stand up.” It’s Mom. I see the toes of her dusty white deck shoes. They’ll be washed and sitting in the morning sun by the time I get up tomorrow. “Lily!” I feel her warm worried hands on my shoulders. “Paul!” she calls.
“I’m okay,” I say, or try to say. But dogs don’t talk.
I smell their hot sour breath and wet fur as we race through Crawford Woods together, their thick muscular bodies brushing mine as we run side by side, feeling the tendons in my legs stretch and contract as I run—only I’m big and slow and sick and I fall behind the pack . . . behind . . . slowing . . . slowing . . .
Then find a burst of energy and rejoin them. My face is wet with the saliva that flies off the tips of their long speckled tongues. Their fur brushes my face, their musk fills my nose. When the hair on my arms stands up, they recognize me. I’m one of them. In a blur of dust and dirt, claws and fur, we nip at each other, yip, and bark.
“Lily!” It’s Dad. “Can’t we do one simple family thing together without you . . .”
On my knees in the starlit woods I see what Mrs. Wiggins sees with her tired milky eyes; flying over stones and potholes, struggling to focus through the cloud of soft thundering dirt while dry prickly brush whips her face, she keeps going, putting on even more speed when she sees her family, us, up ahead on the trail.
The others will fly past us before she does, but somewhere up the trail the dogs will slow down. Then. Finally. Stop. They’re only pets, after all, out-of-shape purebreds and mutts, not feral dogs, wolves, coyotes, or (their distant cousins) bears; no T-Rexes or Thunderbirds. Finally, they’ll wander home (Mrs. Nelson is calling Offie right now), exhausted.
But proud they didn’t forget: they were wild once.
They’re nearing us! The heat of the pack, the yelping, the dust—
Suddenly Dad cries, “Off the path! Now!” And my family jumps, making startled complaining sounds when we land in the brush, seconds before the dusty snarling dogs race by.
I raise my head and watch Mrs.
