Little Indians
ADAM MATSON
The only sound in the forest was the crunching of fresh snow beneath their boots.The sky was uniformly grey, the air warm for early March. Heavy branches loomed overhead. Smears of white snow crept up the trees like reverse shadows.
“How far is it?” Hannah asked. They were dressed for winter, thick coats, boots, hats and gloves, and she was starting to sweat.
“Not far,” Georgie replied.
It was a snow day, no school. Eight inches of fresh snow had swept in the night before. Hannah’s mother had dropped her off at the Yorricks’ house on her way to work. Georgie had greeted her arrival with an eager grin. “I want to show you something,” he said. “In the woods.”
Since their previous summer at Camp Rangeley, Hannah had noticed a change in her friend. He had returned from the Little Indian Hunt, an annual camp tradition, both terror-stricken and intrepid, as if he had seen the all world’s wonder, and its danger, in one afternoon, and wanted more of both. The Little Indian Hunt had changed her too. Georgie had told her about his experience. She had not shared hers with anyone.
There was no path through the woods, but Georgie knew the way. He had discovered the ruins of the fire engine the previous fall. It was secreted deep within the tangled wilderness behind his house in Jasper, Maine. How the fire engine had come to be stranded in such a remote location- and when- were mysteries to him, but it was these ghostly questions of origin that drew him to the relic. Standing alone in the forest staring at the giant, abandoned machine excited him to his primal, childish core, and aroused him in another way that had also borne itself when he turned twelve. For some reason he wanted to take Hannah to the fire engine and kiss her. It was a strange desire, but undeniable. Hannah was changing too, her body budding. He wanted to touch her, and fire engine seemed to be goading him on, a rusted red beast whispering things Georgie wanted to hear.
Hannah saw no reason why her mother had to leave her with the Yorricks on snow days. She was twelve and could handle herself perfectly well at home alone. Marissa, her older sister, had ruined everything when their parents caught her smoking cigarettes with Lacey Peters in the basement. Now Hannah was pawned off on Mrs. Yorrick, who did not work, and had been watching Hannah and Georgie since kindergarten.
Georgie’s mom was a strange woman, given to panic attacks. She watched television all day, and was afraid of everything. She constantly warned the children that the world was full of dangers: bullies and strangers and germs. Hannah and Georgie snuck out of the house through a bathroom window, stepping softly in the new snow as they trotted toward the woods.
Now Hannah glanced around nervously, mostly watching her own feet. Her feet, at least, were things she could control. The forest was sprawling and immense, filled with trees bent at nightmarish angles. She did not know where Georgie was leading her, and this unsettled her.
But her sweat did not turn cold until she saw the footprints.
He had walked right through them, staring determinedly and obliviously ahead. They both stopped, stared down at the deep human tracks in the snow.
“Hm,” Georgie said. He scanned the forest. It was quiet and still. The footprints meandered off into the trees. Hannah noticed what Georgie apparently did not, that the tracks were fresh. Had to be, since it had snowed last night.
“Should we go back?” she asked.
Georgie had turned into quite a self-assured little pipsqueak since last summer. Hannah did not like to be led toward his secret, like some child’s game. It seemed particularly frustrating that she was bigger than him now, had grown three inches since fall, and Georgie seemed to her like a precocious small boy. Now he stomped ahead, crunching the snow beneath his boots as if he enjoyed the sound of disturbing nature. She followed, frowning at the back of his stupid head.
The Little Indian Hunt was a camp-wide game of hide-and-seek, where the campers hid themselves on the vast, wooded Rangeley campground, and the counselors searched for them and corralled them back to the Meeting Circle like lost sheep. Or stray Indians. It followed the Big Indian Hunt, where the campers had to find the counselors. The game lasted about two hours, and any camper who stayed hidden the entire time nominally “won the game.” Almost nobody ever won. No matter where the Little Indians scattered and secreted themselves, the Big Indians always swept in and captured them, often with discouraging speed and efficiency.
Georgie was eleven the previous summer at camp, and he was determined to win the Little Indian Hunt. The past two years he had been captured both times. First he had hidden beneath his own cabin on the boys’ side of camp, a trick he thought was clever, until he was discovered a scant ten minutes into the hunt. The following year he held out for more than an hour, perched on the roof of the dining hall, until the camp director himself spotted him, and not only hauled him down, but scolded him for choosing such a dangerous place to hide.
This summer Georgie had a different plan. He would stay mobile, trudging deep into the woods to the perimeter of the camp, using distance and the camouflage of the trees to evade the counselors. It was important to him that he win the contest, not because there was any particular prize attached, but for his own pride. He would be canonized in Camp Rangeley lore forever.
He was slinking along the edge of camp when he encountered the abandoned kitchen, tripping over a rusted sink half-buried in the ground. Looking around, he saw other appliances, a stove, an ancient dishwasher, a table with three broken chairs, a refrigerator. His initial reaction was profound fear. He imagined that someone’s house had burned down on that very spot, and the phantom kitchen was all that remained. He expected three char-broiled ghosts to emerge from the trees- a mama, papa, and kid- and sit down at their old table, staring at him with singed black eyes.
He took a deep breath and looked around the forest, saw nothing but shiny green leaves flickering gold in the summer sun. Nearby he heard footsteps, hard and firm, and knew that a counselor was closing in. Georgie feared his bright red camp tee shirt would give him away if he didn’t find cover, and that’s when the idea came to him.
He pulled open the rusty door of the refrigerator, was hit by a pungent waft of mildew. All the shelves had been removed, and there was plenty of room for him to squeeze his small, wiry frame inside. His heart beat faster as he heard the footsteps approaching, and in his haste to avoid capture, he did not notice the latch on the door.
The inside of the refrigerator was pitch black, and smelled like something dead. The temperature felt like a thousand degrees. Georgie wanted out. He pushed the door, but it did not open. Panic seized him, and he kicked and pounded against the walls, sweat pouring from his face and under his arms. Tears choked up behind his nose and eyes. He squirmed and screamed and lunged forward, but the door did not budge.
The fire engine was an unrecognizable mound beneath the snow. Hannah stared at it, unimpressed. Georgie took off his hat and scratched his sweaty hair. Hannah felt sort of sorry for him that his big surprise turned out to be a dud.
“How do you think it got way out here?” she asked.
“That’s what I can’t figure out,” he said. “Maybe the road used to come out this way, and it broke down. Or someone just drove it out and junked it.”
He brushed a clump of snow off the mound, revealing a rusty orange fender. Hannah helped him, and together they uncovered most of the engine’s cartoonish grinning grill.
“It’s kinda creepy,” she said.
“Is there anything else around?” she asked. She scanned the forest, and for a moment thought she saw movement somewhere in the trees.
“I’ve looked all over,” Georgie said. “Sometimes I wonder if there’s like a whole ghost town out here, an old, dead Jasper that nobody knows about. Full of ghosts.”
She looked at him. He was grinning, a strange mischievous expression she had seen on a boy before, an older boy last summer. She did not like what the look meant. Suddenly she felt icicles tickling her spine. She wanted to go home.
“Don’t you kinda feel like someone’s watching us?” Georgie asked.
Hannah swallowed a lump in her throat.
“Someone is watching us,” she said, staring past him at the dark face of a man peeking out at them beyond the trees.
Hannah enjoyed the Little Indian Hunt at Camp Rangeley, but it was not her favorite event of the summer. She preferred the all-camp capture-the-flag game, which involved both strategy and bravery. Hannah liked games where she had to use her mind to out-think and defeat an opponent. Games like hide-and-seek or kick-the-can could be fun, but they were for little kids, exciting in a simple-minded way.
Each summer Hannah chose a half-assed hiding place, believing that the counselors would always find her no matter what. The campers’ red tee-shirts stuck out like beacons, and Hannah had figured out ahead of her peers that the Little Indian Hunt was just another way for the camp to pass time. And yet she couldn’t help trying to win. Georgie had raved all year at school about beating the Big Indians this summer, but he wouldn’t tell her what his plan was, or where he was going to hide. When the opening whistle blew and the campers scattered from the Meeting Circle, Hannah followed Georgie into the woods, but he turned and stopped her.
“You can’t come,” he said. “This place is mine.”
He almost did look sorry. She decided she would laugh at him later, when he was inevitably caught. While he disappeared into the woods, she stalked off to find her own hiding spot, somewhere that would be her own little secret.
The sleeping cabins were clustered and separated by sex. Girls were not allowed on the boys’ side of the camp, and vice versa. The boys’ side rose along the wooded hill behind the tennis courts, while the girls’ side protruded out on the peninsula by the lake. Her heart beat faster as she snuck along the path past the infirmary, slipping onto the boys’ side. The cabins were red clap-board squares with arched triangular roofs. Hannah spotted Sugarloaf cabin sitting on the top of the slope. Sugarloaf was one of the larger cabins, and she knew from sleeping in its counterparts on the girls’ side that there would be a loft at the back of the rear wall. Campers stored sleeping bags and other gear in the lofts, and Hannah thought she could hide behind them and probably not be found.
She trotted up the steps of Sugarloaf. Stopped. Listened. She could hear nothing but the rustle of the leaves in the forest, and the distant gleeful cries of excited kids running from their counselors. The cabin was dark as she eased open the screen door. It smelled of boys inside, their sweat and bathing suits and deodorant. She expected all the campers to be gone.
She did not expect a counselor to be staring at her.
Crouching in the snow, Georgie turned and followed Hannah’s frightened gaze. A man with dark hair and either a black or brown jacket stood about fifty yards away, peering at them from behind a tree. Somehow Georgie knew instinctively not to call out to the man, not to say hello, not to invite him over. He looked away quickly, thinking that perhaps the best thing to do was pretend he had not seen anything at all.
“Don’t look,” he whispered to Hannah. He now knew he was not going to kiss her, especially not with some weird man watching them. He felt alone in the strange woods next to the large, snow-covered mound. The powers of the fire engine had been white-washed away.
“Come on, let’s go back,” he said quietly, and he started off toward his house, retracing their tracks.
The man followed them at a shrinking distance. Every time Hannah turned to look for him he was there, and every time he seemed to be staring directly into her eyes. Her sweat ran cold now. She thought if they kept walking, plodding toward the goal of Georgie’s house, they would be safe. Movement was crucial. She knew they could not stop.
The nagging thought that kept recurring to her as she tromped through the thick snow was that this man, whoever he was, was not where he supposed to be. Georgie’s property was vast and spread across many acres. She and Georgie had explored it countless times over the years, and she knew the territory pretty well, knew also that Georgie did not have neighbors. So there was no reason for this man to be roaming around their woods. And why was he out after a storm? Shouldn’t he have a job that he should be at? Kids stayed home from school on snow days, but adults still went to work. Those were the rules. So why wasn’t this man at work?
They trudged on and the snow seemed to get thicker with each step. Her clothes weighed heavily with sweat and dampness from the warming air. The forest around them became foggy, almost sticky. Georgie said nothing and for once Hannah wished he would turn and give her his goofy grin, if only to reassure her that they were safe. Instead he bent his head and marched, and she walked almost right on his heels, an invisible hand prodding her forward.
Suddenly Georgie cried out and fell, and she stumbled into him, her knee striking the back of his head. She went down face-first in the snow, came up wet and coughing. Georgie clutched at his leg, buried up to his thigh in snow.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I fell in a hole,” Georgie grumbled. “Dammit.”
He had begun to swear lately. That was another one of his new things.
“I think I lost my boot,” he said. He scrunched his face and pulled at his leg, and sure enough his foot came free bare of boot and sock. He peered into the hole and began to dig.
Hannah got to her knees, looked up and froze. The man now stood over them, staring down at them with his hands on his hips. His lips were grinning in a feline way she had seen once before, but there was no joy or compassion in his lifeless eyes.
“Lost your boot,” he said in a slow, raspy voice.
Georgie looked up, startled. He stopped digging.
The man turned his attention to Hannah. “What are you doing out here?”
She did not like the way he looked at her.
“It’s a snow day,” Georgie said, as if the man would understand. Then he seemed to think of a better answer. “I live here.”
The man did not even look at Georgie. He glanced casually up at the tree beside him, as if he was just out for a stroll, taking in nature’s beauty. Then he reached up and viciously snapped a low-hanging branch off a tree.
Hannah bent to a crouch, the strategist in her recognizing the man’s actions as a move of some kind. But she knew he was not playing any game. She knew they should be home inside the house right now, that one of Mrs. Yorrick’s many imagined dangers was in fact coming true.
“What are you doing?” Georgie asked the man, still clutching his bare foot.
The man examined the length of branch, flexed it in his hands, then swung sharply and cracked Georgie over the head. Georgie released a startled grunt and fell forward into the snow. His hands dropped from his bare foot, which came to rest on the frozen ground.
“Georgie?” Hannah cried, but her friend did not respond.
“Come on back to that fire truck with me,” the man said to her. “I want to show you something.”
Hannah was more scared than she had ever been in her short life, but the strategist came screaming to her rescue. In capture-the-flag, when the rival team had you cornered in their territory, you retreated until you crossed the line back onto your own side. This was not a game, but the rules still applied. She turned and ran into the forest.
The door to the refrigerator swung open and suddenly Georgie was blinded by sunlight. He toppled out onto the leafy ground. For a moment he thought he had freed himself, and his heart fluttered with pride, until he saw Dan Beale, one of the counselors from Pleasant cabin, looming over him.
“You all right, Georgie?” Dan asked. “I heard you screaming.”
Georgie stared at his feet, embarrassed. “I’m okay,” he muttered.
“Hell of a hiding place,” Dan remarked, holding the refrigerator door. “You’re almost off the reservation though, chief. Almost broke the rules.”
Georgie said nothing. He had not considered his strategy cheating.
“Anyway, you’re caught,” the counselor said. “Go back to the Circle. You know the way?”
Georgie nodded, but Dan Beale was pointing anyway. Georgie trudged back to camp, wiping tears from his face and sucking his pride back into his throat like a gob of phlegm, spitting out his defeat on a tree. He had failed to beat the game again. But as he approached the camp he felt a peculiar excitement building inside him. He had discovered something unexpected and mysterious in the forest. The refrigerator had been like a black portal leading to a darker side of the world, a place that existed only on the fringe, and he had not been afraid to crawl into it. Only afraid to be trapped inside, but that he wouldn’t tell anyone.
When he returned to the Meeting Circle he saw that most of the Little Indians had already been captured. One or two of his friends looked at him curiously, wondering aloud how he had held out for so long. Hannah had been captured too, he noticed. She sat by the big rock at the fire pit, quietly hugging her knees. He told the other campers of his adventure, regaled them with his hero’s quest to beat the Hunt, his unexpected brush with suffocating death. The other campers grinned and offered him their hushed respects, except for Hannah, who stared off toward the lake, still hugging her knees.
When Georgie awoke in the cold snow, his foot was numb. His head throbbed, and the looming trees left him momentarily disoriented. But everything came rushing back to him. The strange man had attacked him, smacked him with a tree branch, which now lay harmlessly at his side.
Where was Hannah? Georgie turned a quick circle, saw footprints leading away into the forest. Two sets of tracks, one small with steps far apart, one larger, the tracks deep, methodical.
Hungrily Georgie clawed at the snow, yanking his boot free from its burial. He shoved his icy pale foot back in and stood up. The forest swam around him. He leaned against a tree, clutched his head. Took a deep breath. Hannah was in trouble, and he was the one who had led her out here. He would be blamed if something went horribly wrong.
He bent down and picked up the snapped tree branch, then charged into the woods after the fleeing footprints.
Her chest burned and hot tears poured down her face. Her breaths came in wheezing gasps. She did not know how long she had been running, but she knew she could not go much further. Hannah turned and looked for the man. Steamy fog rose up from the snow. He was not immediately visible, but she could hear him, plodding along. Every step she took needled her with the punishing certainty that she was leaving tracks. Any escape was futile. The snow would give her away even if she ran for a hundred miles.
She collapsed to her knees, sucked in more crying breaths. Georgie had crumpled like a doll, and she realized, with a pang of horror, that he might be dead, and nobody was going to help her. She was alone in the woods.
But not yet defeated. This was a strategy game, more complicated than hide-and-seek. During the Little Indian Hunt Georgie had found himself a clever place to hide, and might have beaten the game if he had stayed there and not panicked. She needed to think strategically. Where could she hide that the man would not reach her, even if her tracks led him to her?
Then she thought of the fog. It was foggy because of water. Because of the river. The river that cut through the back of Georgie’s land. She was near it. Beside it, in fact. She glimpsed the flat plain of snow where no trees grew, and knew the river lay frozen beneath that snow.
She heard footsteps approaching through the woods. Now the man was whistling, trying to smoke her out. She took a step out onto the river. Heard the faint crack of ice. It was March, and warm, and Mrs. Yorrick had always warned them never to walk out on the ice in March. But it was her only chance. She lowered herself to a crouch, held out her arms, and trotted deftly across the snowy surface. On the opposite bank she sank to her knees beside a tree. Turned to face the approaching man. He had to believe she had given up, so she started to cry, loudly, shivering against the tree. She cried until the man appeared. He stopped a short distance away. Grinned his feline grin.
Come closer, she thought. I know what you want but you won’t get it.
She had seen that look once before, during the Little Indian Hunt. She had crept into Sugarloaf cabin and stopped short when she saw one of the counselors- Roger, she thought his name was- lying on his bunk. For a moment they locked eyes, frozen in mutual surprise. Then Roger grinned, and Hannah realized with another shock that he was naked. Embarrassment hit her like a punch, and she dropped her eyes to the floor.
“Sorry,” she muttered, and she turned to go, fearing most of all that now she would be in some sort of serious trouble.
“Wait,” the counselor said. “Hold on.”
Hannah stopped, turned, glanced at him, immediately looked away. He was clutching himself, pale fingers grasping a thick purple head. She had never seen one like that before, but knew she should not be seeing it now.
“Come here a minute,” the counselor said, rising slightly from his bunk.
Hannah did not want to disobey him. She felt some dark, perverse magnet sucking her deeper into the cabin. But the strategist whispered in her ear. Just run. Somehow she knew he would not follow, not like that.
She pushed open the cabin door and ran.
The man seemed to relax seeing Hannah slumped against the tree in the snow. He too was out of breath. Now he stepped calmly toward her, squashing her tracks beneath his large boots as if he enjoyed obliterating the signs of her escape.
Then they both heard the crack. The man froze, stared down at his feet. A large chunk of snow-covered ice broke loose from the river a few yards away, opening a portal of rushing water. The man looked up at her, concerned and slightly angry.
She watched him closely, her tears gone. She rose slowly to a crouch.
Georgie’s voice startled her, and she stepped back against the tree, bumped her head. The man turned but did not dare move his feet. Georgie stood on the bank of the river, holding the severed tree branch that the man had used to club him over the head.
Georgie clutched the branch in his hand. His head still throbbed from the blow. He saw Hannah shivering on the opposite river bank, her face flushed and streaked with tears.
“Did he hurt you?” Georgie asked.
Hannah glanced at her feet, then looked up at him, fresh tears in her eyes. “Tried to,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.
The man glared at Hannah, then at Georgie. “You little shits shouldn’t be out here. You stay right where you are and don’t move.”
Georgie felt his chest fill with hot rage. He imagined the man hurting Hannah, grabbing her hair, holding her down, doing things he could only grasp with the dark fringes of his imagination. And for some reason he was also upset, angry with himself for letting the man beat him, jealous of the man for taking off into the woods with Hannah. Something might have happened between them while he was unconscious, something he only vaguely understood.
Georgie took the tree branch in both hands and swung it down hard against the fragile icy surface of the river.
The crack rippled across the snow like a small fissure opening in the earth’s crust. A shelf of ice broke away beneath the man’s left foot. He tottered, waving his arms, his eyes bulging with panic, then fell hard on his right leg, crashing into the swift grey water. He clawed at the ice, which crumbled like white graham crackers in his thick fingers.
Georgie and Hannah stared at the man struggling in the river, neither saying a word. With a sudden gurgle the man was sucked beneath the broken surface of the ice. They watched the hole where he had been a moment ago, then turned downstream to see if he would resurface.
Hannah looked up first. Georgie met her gaze with an expression of boyish concern. They glanced together at the river and silently understand the new dilemma. Hannah needed to cross the river, but she did not want to break through the ice and fall in.
They walked upstream in silence, each on either side of the snowy white line that divided them. Hannah did not want to think about the man, did not know if they should tell someone what happened, feared how much trouble they would be in if they told. She stared down at her feet and walked. Georgie had gotten her into this. If it weren’t for him and his stupid fire engine they would not be out here.
Georgie watched her imploringly from the other side of the river.
“You have to cross,” he said eventually. “It’s the only way back to the house.”
“I’ll only cross if I know it’s safe,” she replied. She stared at him. If he crossed over, she decided, and did not break through, then she would follow him back over. He had rescued her after all. Without him the man might have gotten her. Or not. And if not, his death would have been her lonely burden to bear. She had set the trap. Georgie had cracked the ice. If he crossed the river and came to her now she would go with him, maybe even kiss him. That was what he wanted, and she sort of wanted it too.
Georgie thought of the refrigerator in the middle of the woods, the rusty door that had swung open to reveal his deepest fears. The refrigerator had almost killed him, but he had been freed, and his adventure briefly became a Camp Rangeley legend.
What he wanted was Hannah, on the other side of the river. Carefully he stepped out onto the ice and walked across to where she was standing. She took his hand and together they walked home. The ice did not shatter or give way beneath them.
BIO: Adam is originally a native of Acton, MA, and now resides in Malibu, CA. He has previously had short stories published in The Berkeley Fiction Review, The Indiana Voice Journal, The Broadkill Review, Happy Magazine, and The Cynic Online Magazine, with forthcoming publications in Decades Review and The Bryant Literary Review. He has also published a collection of short stories called Sometimes Things Go Horribly Wrong (Outskirts Press).