When Easton Carried Me Home

When our mothers would release us for the hour (or

for myself, the weekend), we would climb outside the win-

dows of his beat-up farmhouse, falling into an only slightly

thorny garden. He rented from a Lavender farmer, living on

an addition adjoined to their two-story home; you could hear

the walls whisper on particularly windy nights. Despite the

fragrant flowers across the field, his house always smelled

like soft cigarettes and sage. He, his brother, and his moth-

er shared a unit sectioned around to the back of the house,

making space for two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen,

and a living room–– I always thought his home would make

a perfect place for a couple to grow old, it made me sad that

one never did.

When we were those little boys, we were like silly

little primates, smacking about in the mud, surprised when

we made rain. We slapped rocks together as though we were

just about to take the next step on the evolutionary line, but

of course, before then we would fall apart and start giggling,

each laugh de-evolving me––Needless to say, I couldn’t think

of anything funnier than Homo Erectus. I imagined what

aliens would think if they saw me scrambling around the

rocks by the creek, shattering them with sharp crackles just

to make them skippable. When I flicked my wrist just right,

I could make the stones surf the shallow glass and float like

waterbugs. I’d watch Easton smash the rocks into each oth-

er––when their bodies would clash fractals would flake off

and fall into his hands; this led us to resign grinding the rocks

against each other rather than a hap-hazard smack (making

our hands muddy and fingernails caked with filth) because

fractal shapes made for quite horrible skipping stones.

We stole some of the things we saw his mother

smoking from her cupboards, stuffed it in pipes we carved

out of fruit with wooden tools, and smoked it just enough to

be woozy. I thought about falling into the creek by his house,

and how nice it would be to fall asleep at the bottom–– if

only I wouldn’t drown. C.S. Lewis said, “Nature has that in

her which compels us to invent giants: and only giants will

do”; sometimes I feel like I am less compelled to invent a

giant and more compelled to be one. I sunk into my body like

I was a mountain tall. Mountains other than me towered like

stacked pancakes in his backyard, green with trees on a warm

day and blue without them on a cold one.

Boys for the first time, we jumped from the waterfall,

only a step for the giants we weren’t, but enough for me to

try and urk Easton into the water. When he wouldn’t go in of

his own free will, I shoved him in the second freshest water

I’ve come to know (John Muir said “You should never go to

Alaska as a young man because you’ll never be satisfied with

any other place as long as you live” and I’ve found that to be

true) There was a broken baroque chair, legs all hauled to the

side like something not-so-fresh from a grandmother’s living

room that sat on the shore. The upholstery was just spongey

enough to float, separated into two fat ends capable of hold-

ing two novice boys as they used the broken legs to paddle

downstream. We wore paper hats, feet red and raw from the

running chill of the creek every time we had to unmoor from

a rocky ledge. Pirates of the sea, peculiar little things who

learned how to float.

“Look!” I said, as just across the way a woodpecker

thumped his bony nose into a willow tree.

“Ah!” Easton said, holding his fingers in circles

around his owl eyes, “That’s a ladybird! You can tell because

the stripe on her cheek is red. The boys have black ‘uns!”

I was faultlessly enamored with his knowledge.

When the water started to pick up, Easton suggested

we moor ourselves onto a tree’s roots, step off, and shake the

cold from our system, like dogs fresh in from the rain. We

climbed off of the broken baroque chair, thanked her for

carrying us this far on our voyage, and began to walk, this

time our feet flat on the grassy meadows that framed either

side of the water. Our toes were capped with stray grass, like

scribbles of hair someone drew on the world with a crayon.

The farther from home we got, the more we never

wanted to turn back. The sky hadn’t been blue for days, a

wildfire ocean, a sky made of our own smoke; it was very hot

for such a gray day. As we floated downstream, we stared in

unadulterated wonder, not yet used to the curse of growing

old.

“I do this all the time,” Easton said, chewing on his

tongue, “I’m a real wilderness explorer!” He spat into the

grass like my father used to spit his chewing tobacco in be-

tween rounds of chess.

When the Summer Sun began beating down on our

little bodies, we tried to crawl back into the water, the stones

at the bottom of the lake slippery with algae’s kiss. It was

refreshing to dip a toe in now and again, even though after a

while our skin would become obliviously frigid. Easton came t

o a full stop, and I traipsed right into his back as he lowered

himself in the creek waist-deep, with a finger over his lips.

“Shhhhh,” he said to me, extending his pointed hand,

“You see? In that fallen tree over there!”

I gazed intently at the pieces of whorled wet bark that

were half-submerged. Poking its head out from underneath

was the pointed nose of a turtle. “A box turtle!” he exclaimed,

wading his way over slowly so as not to scare the thing–– I

stayed behind, sitting on the shore to give my frozen toes a

break.

“Hey,” I said (and apparently a little too loudly, as he

promptly shushed me), “are you sure that’s safe?” He ignored

my heed, wading gently on with a hyper-focused eye.

“Whoa! Axel!” Easton said, the joy reeking off his

breath from across the creek. I gave him a befuddled look––

why shush me then, when your own mouth is so loud?

“Come look! He’s dead!”

By the time I made my way over, Easton’s hands were

full in the thing’s mouth, a pointed finger counting each one

of the spurs inside its pointed mouth.

“Damn! These box turtles are viscous, look at these

razors!” Easton exclaimed, “If I bring this home, think

Mama’ll mount ‘im on the wall?” He grabbed the thing from

under its slimy shoulders, wrapping his fingers around the

shell and holding the creature barely above the water.

“I thought snapping turtles were the ones that bit?”

“Aw, come on Axel! Nah, I’ve only ever seen box

turtles in these waters. Now do you think Ma’ll mount it?”

I didn’t want to tell him what I really thought–– it would’ve

felt evil to discourage him from being that proud, so instead I

suggested that we leave it behind until we’re on our way back;

no point carrying it when there was an adventure to be had!

In order to maintain this adventure, of course, we walked in

the water the rest of the way. Land was anywhere, but water

was new and here. The barest amounts of sun that could

find its way through the once-and-a-while tree that lined the

creek’s edge came through in rippling caustics, and we knew

how it felt for the first time to be fish.

And so we were quiet for a while–– too focused as

we slipped and slid, occasionally the water picking up and

pushing us forward over what, for two young uns, were quite

the ferocious rapids. When brambles and bushes extended

themselves in make-shift bridges across the creek we climbed

over them with careful consideration, even though we would

be coming home with a few scratches and bruises that we

certainly didn’t leave with.

The clouds were beginning to dissolve like god was

pulling apart cotton candy; slowly but surely sunbeams began

to crescendo on our skin, and of course, neither of us in our

flamboyant carelessness, designed to wear sunscreen. Our

mothers (but especially his mother) would be furious–– we

felt the laugh deep in our bellies, imagining her red face as

she grabbed a towel to snap at us with.

My stomach began to gurgle–– it had been a long

time since lunch, noon had come and gone right over our

heads. I didn’t want to remark on this, of course, because

Easton was having too much fun, even if he was wrong

about the turtle (but I wanted to believe he was right).

We waded further downstream, my legs raw and rigid

with chill, my torso flummoxed with the pale red of sun-

licked skin. There was another fallen tree–– or what looked

like a fallen tree from far away–– that bridged the water, only

this one larger than the brambles and bushes. It was only as

they floated along that I was the first to realize that some-

where out there, there was a beaver who really didn’t want us

to continue. And as much as I hate to say it, the snake in our

garden was quite the sculpture.

“It’s no problem,” Easton said, a solution for every-

thing waiting to fall out of his paper hat. “We can just go

around!” Climbing onto shore didn’t seem like as much of an

option this time. As we persisted down the creek, while there

hadn’t been any falls to speak of, the ground had formed two

walls around them that appeared far more difficult to scale.

“Around, or over?” I asked, suspecting the holes in

his plan. He was quiet, sticking his tongue out with his thumb

pressed into his forehead, eyes squinted tight in thought.

While he thought, my mind couldn’t care not to wander.

Easton was still thinking, and I knew if I interrupted him he

would have shushed me with unrelenting fervor. So I mean-

dered, sending ripples around my belly button.

“Hmm… we might have to go over…” he muttered

to himself.

“I don’t know East,” I said, shaking my head, “It

looks like there might be stuff in there.”

“Pssh,” He said, throwing his hand as though it were

nothing, “I haven’t seen anything in these waters as long as

I’ve been here!” I believed him.

The dam had all kinds of protruding branches, it

looked like the spine of a sleeping porcupine. There was

some foliage, mostly dead and wilting. Bark was peeling away

from the larger trunks splayed across the way. Amid all of the

tangled watery twigs, there was one that must have been from

a tree so unique–– I couldn’t help but approach it, a bright

orange, gnarled thing, twisted like a vine with a wet glare. It

must have been the wind that moved it so, like a slithering

corkscrew.

“Axel, I know what we should do!” Easton exclaimed

with a start. I turned back to look at him, and that is when it

happened. I don’t remember very much. He must have piggy-

backed me home with the strength of a boy two years older

than me. It feels obvious in hindsight, with the wisdom of

the rearview, when the slithering corkscrew, the bright orange

gnarled thing twisted like a vine with a wet glare sprouted

teeth and pounced into me, I should have noticed.

When I came back there were more bumps and bruis-

es than the ones I had already agreed to try and keep hidden

from my mother (I knew it was an accident, Easton just

forgets to be gentle sometimes), and one gargantuan lump on

my right hand with two points of puncture. I was lying on the

couch, Easton’s mom standing over me, a daring shade of red

that meant Easton was definitely going to get snapped with

the towel. Even though that fear sat with him, he was still at

my side, holding my left hand–– I didn’t believe it when I saw

that tears had painted a clean line through the dirt on his face.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. When his lips parted, he

made a spit-bubble for a fraction of a second. I laughed,

feeling tiny drops of it spurt on my face. “Oh! I’m sorry!”

he said again, louder this time and even his mom had to turn

away, her fingers pinching her lips together (without them,

she would have laughed harder than both of us).

It wasn’t until a few months ago that I found, in the

field guide for my favorite college class, that he was wrong…

about just about everything. When I called to tell him how

wrong we were, what relentless little things we had been; I

wanted to tell him that I’d do it all over again, too. I moved

both of my hands up to my ear–– one hand with my phone,

the other fondly stroking the scarred puncture wounds from

when the snake hooked its teeth into me, a forever memory

of the time Easton carried me home.