Embers of Alvin Woods
By Adam Michael Nicks
Newman stuffed a handful of lighters and candy bars from an empty checkout aisle into his pocket and sprinted for the automatic doors. I guess I had to follow.
We hopped onto our bikes, which we’d left unchained in the rack out front, and pedaled as fast as we could. Outside the parking lot, the threats and curses from employees chasing on foot faded. Undetected, cutting through backyards, riding over the well-manicured lawns and flowerbeds of Meadow Ridge, our quiet suburban hometown, we avoided main roads.
When we slowed, we were in our neighborhood pouring sweat from the smoldering summer heat wave that cracked down over the past two months. No one could remember when it last rained.
I didn’t shoplift anything, but I wished I used my allowance to buy a bottle of water. Newman was familiar with feeling the sticky graphic of a tattered black Metallica concert t-shirt clinging to his body. I was still learning.
“Let’s go to the Alvin Woods.” He darted in front of me and slammed on the brakes of his bike to try and make me fling headfirst over my handlebars. I swerved and planted a foot on the ground to keep balance.
“Come on, man.” My voice came out quaky and didn’t command an ounce of authority.
“Keep up, fatso.” He tried to lure me with a Twix under my nose as if I were an animal.
In the transition to middle school the year before, all of my friends got on the soccer team. I didn’t make it past tryouts. This meant they might as well have been in different schools in different districts in different cities in different counties in different states in different countries on different continents on different worlds of other galaxies.
On the first day, when it came time to pick partners in biology, I didn’t have anyone else, so somehow, I ended up with Newman. And then since I didn’t have anyone else anywhere else, somehow, I ended up with Newman everywhere. It was a combination only found in youth of boredom, insecurity, and desperation that led us into the Alvin Woods.
The Alvin Woods was just an unofficial title. It was just the who-knows-how-many acres behind Alvin Elementary School on Park Lane. It was where kids rode dirt bikes on rickety ramps, played paintball for hours, or shot BB guns while weaving between the oaks. High schoolers would go there at night to get to third base and drink booze they stole from their busy, working fathers’ liquor cabinets.
My older sister once told me about a gang living in a shack inside the Alvin Woods. They sacrificed a rabbit by stringing the corpse, sans fur, from the jungle gym, which was why the school got a brand-new playground when she was in third grade. But by the time I was in fifth grade, there was a different legend shared about a cannibalistic asylum escapee hiding underground near the outskirts, which was the most valid and logical reasoning for why the recess monitors didn’t let kids go near the woods. He was there just watching, waiting, choosing.
I always figured these were just stories. But I never took any chances.
“Can we hold on for a second?” Newman and I reached the grassy field in front of the school’s entrance, and I was out of breath.
I was used to a sedentary life of sleepovers, marathoning the Stars Wars saga with Andrew Davis, Zeke Cohn, and Jasminder Patil. We always started too late at night, got tired, and switched to finding those five seconds of clarity on the scrambled porn channels the cable didn’t carry. But Andrew, Zeke, and Jasminder had the soccer team for all that now. And I was stuck with Newman.
“Come on, fatso. Keep up.” Behind the brown brick gymnasium, Newman hopped off his bike and walked it over the dusty softball diamond. He unwrapped a candy bar he stole and shoved melting chocolate into his mouth, smearing stringy layers of sweets across his lips and fingers. “Did you hear about Bradley Donner?”
“Did they find him?” I asked.
“Nah,” he said with a mouthful of caramel. “His mom was on the news again.” Newman mocked her, letting out long, exaggerated, howling boo-hoos. “Anyway, she said there’s a big reward now for anyone that knows anything. Pretty sick, right?”
Bradley Donner had been missing for three weeks. Newman, who took the same bus as him, said the kid was “one of those pee-pants, bug collection freaks.” As I laughed along with him, I was relieved I got rid of my own entomologic hobby the year before and that Newman didn’t know me in first grade at Alvin Elementary when I missed the bus and wet myself.
I’d only ever seen Bradley Donner’s face on fliers stapled to telephone poles across town and on milk cartons, but I’d seen the news the night before. Both Mr. and Mrs. Donner made desperate pleas with wet mushy faces for their son to be returned home. Unharmed. My parents watched it while we ate dinner and interrogated me every commercial break about what I did all day after sleeping in past noon and staying up until dawn.
My answers were always the same: I did nothing. I don’t know.
I didn’t want to hear them tell me again how I should call Andrew and see what he’s doing or dance around me seeing that new action movie with Zeke. I didn’t care if they ran into Jasminder’s mom at the supermarket. Those guys were strangers.
“What do you think happened to Bradley?” I asked.
“Who knows?” Newman reached into a pocket and grabbed another candy bar. He tossed me one. Even though I wasn’t hungry, I stopped walking to concentrate on getting it open, careful not to make a mess like him. I always hated being sticky, getting my hands dirty.
“Maybe he, uh, what do you call it when somebody just, like, explodes?” Newman asked.
“Spontaneous combustion.” I bit into chocolate peanut butter and could already feel what little moisture was left in my mouth evaporate.
“Spontaneous combustion. Yeah. Is that real?”
“I think so.”
We stashed our bikes in tall grass and avoided the sporadic spread of poison oak and ivy at the opening of Alvin Woods. We should have turned around then. It was a challenge getting inside, but once we broke past the initial maze of narrowly spaced thorns it wasn’t so bad. Newman left a trail of plastic wrappers in his wake like Hansel and Gretel, but I know he wasn’t thinking about finding a way out.
When he discovered a thick stick on the ground, he picked it up and cracked it against the biggest tree trunks he could find for no other reason than to be heard. The aggressive echo hurled out into the open air and pinballed between branches trying to escape.
The woods were different than I’d imagined. They looked like every other patch of wildlife I’d ever seen. Squirrels and chipmunks scaled bumpy bark to get out of our way. Looking around, there weren’t any Satanists or deranged cannibals. It wasn’t scary. It was actually pretty peaceful.
“Could you imagine that, dude?” Newman hopped over the creek running down the sloping pathway and wielded the thick stick like a sword against an invisible opponent. “All of a sudden you’re just like, I don’t know, sitting in Taco Bell or something, and all of a sudden it’s like…” He arched back into a baseball swing. With enough force to knock one out of the park, he shattered the toy nature provided him to sawdust against a half-submerged boulder. “Bye-bye.”
Chirping birds’ wings fluttered to flee from the danger. Newman pitched the fragmented handle hard like a tomahawk into some weeds. “I wish I could do that during class. Mr. Hotchkiss calls on me and he’s like, ‘what’s the photosynthesis of the moon’s orbit?’ and then I’d go to say the answer and be like, ‘uh, well, Mr. Hotchkiss, I think it’s—ka-bloushhhhhh.” Spit flew from between his braces to make a cartoon explosion sound that morphed to flatulence.
Tinted globs of saliva tangled on his upper lip. He was already growing a mustache. I barely had hair under my arms.
“Yeah.” I pretended his noises were funny. “That’d be hilarious.”
“He’d never see it coming. You think it, like, explodes out your guts and organs and stuff? Like smashing a watermelon?” Newman bent, inspecting a long-legged spider crawling fast over moss on the other end of the boulder. He blew on it, and the tornado gust of his breath rolled the creature onto its back, and then up and onward like a trooper across a battlefield.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Never really thought about it. Maybe you fold in on yourself and don’t leave anything behind?”
“That’s no fun.” Newman chased down the spider and grabbed hold of a leg, dangling it in front of his face.
“What’re you doing?” I asked.
We were deep into the woods. Deeper than we should have been. We couldn’t see outside it anymore. It got darker. The sun couldn’t shine to those parts. I watched the spider thrash, trying hard to wriggle from Newman’s filthy thumb and index finger. If it bit Newman, he didn’t react. In the moment, it felt like I was the one at his mercy, pinched and powerless.
“Let it go,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because.”
The only time I ever saw Newman’s tender side was with his morbidly obese tabby cat, Nathan IV, who would sprawl out at the top of the driveway all night and day. Newman was strangely gentle with his touch and overzealous with treats. I even heard him use a baby voice to speak to Nathan IV once. A coyote ate Nathan III. When Newman found the blood-spackled furry aftermath on the side of his house, he skipped school for a week.
I didn’t have a reason I could say out loud for why I thought he shouldn’t do something horrible to the spider. He’d just tease me. Unless it was an alternate solution leading to more chaos, he didn’t care. Maybe he would’ve listened if I suggested we bred it and unleashed the swarming horde onto the soccer players during practice.
It was best, I learned, to just pretend I was cruel. When I tried to tell Newman why I couldn’t go into my mom’s purse to steal twenty bucks so we could buy fireworks, he looked at me blankly. When I tried to find a cool way to say why I hesitated sneaking into R-rated movies, or how nervous it made me to lie to a teacher to say I had to go to the bathroom when we’d really wander the halls and miss the entirety of history class, he told me to stop being such a baby. It was better to go along with whatever he wanted than to hear the name-calling or be That Kid Who Ate Lunch Alone.
In a desperate act of self-preservation, the spider snapped off its trapped leg and parachuted with a soft thread of web to the ground before Newman noticed. My heart skipped a beat. I rooted for it. I wanted it to do what I couldn’t.
The spider hid beneath a leaf, but Newman overturned it and snatched it back up. “Watch this,” he said. He took out a stolen lighter and held it beneath the frantically flailing arachnid.
Flicking to life with a spark above his bitten fingernail, a flame engulfed the spider. All seven legs bunched and curled toward its blackened abdomen. I swear I could hear it scream a distant, high-pitched death rattle. I could feel the temperature rising. Newman dropped it and crunched it underfoot like it was one of his cigarette butts. He grunted a laugh.
“What’re we even doing in here? Let’s go.” I searched for the spider’s body, but it was still on his Converse’s sole.
“What’s your deal? Are you scared or something?”
“No.”
“Then chill out.”
“I just want to know what we’re doing out here. It’s hot out. Too hot.”
“What else do you do in the Alvin Woods, man?” Newman turned around and kicked at gravel. He looked for me to finish his thought, but I didn’t know how. “You burn something.”
A sinking feeling slithered from my stomach halfway up my throat. I remembered how I hadn’t told my mom where I was going. How I’d slammed the door behind me in a huff, annoyed she’d even asked. She said she just wanted to make sure I didn’t go missing like Bradley Donner.
Newman built a little pile of brown dead leaves and lit the center. We saw the flame stack and spread outward. The glowing orange edges parsed to the perimeter before halting where the ground was bare. It erupted faster than I thought, likely due to the drought, and Newman made sure to stomp away at anything still shimmering before moving on. There were plenty of dry things to use for kindling, so he assembled another while I supervised with my hands in my pockets.
“All right, it’s your turn now.” He extended a red lighter, but I didn’t move. I felt like I might throw up if I did.
“Nah, that’s okay. You go ahead.”
“Come on, fatso,” he said with a whine. “You never do anything. It’s always just like, me doing everything and you watching.”
“I like to watch.” In my head, I could still reconcile that I wasn’t a bad kid because I personally never did anything. I just witnessed Newman do it. It was never me throwing rolls of toilet paper on the old guy’s house on the corner, it was Newman. I just tagged along. I just ran away when the old guy came out screaming, swinging his cane. All of the thrill, none of the guilt.
“It’s time to stop watching and do something.” Newman tossed the lighter at my chest.
It felt massive. I tested the spark wheel twice before I discovered I needed to hold the lever to keep fire going. A vague smell of smoke lingered from Newman’s charred heap. A faint gray ghost trail rose from the ashes. My thumb stung from the gruff metal tearing at it, the flame’s heat agitating it worse. Still, under the judgment of Newman’s expecting eyes, I tapped the center of the fresh dead leaf pile and watched the glow from the first trigger the rest.
Bile built as the miniature inferno grew waist height. “I’ve got to take a leak real quick,” I said.
“Come on, dude. You’re going to miss it.” Newman snatched another lighter from a buttoned pocket on the side of his shorts as I left. “I’m not going to wait to build another.”
“That’s fine.” I kept my composure as I walked away, stuffing the red lighter in my pants and swallowing gulps of air with every step. When I was far enough from him where he couldn’t see me, I ducked behind a tree and leaned against it to heave.
Nothing came out.
Breathing in deep, I fixed my posture straight and tall. I wondered what would happen if I left without another word.
Andrew, Zeke, and Jasminder were probably across town in a scrimmage practicing their footwork and ball control with their cool new friends, #6 Pete Trachner and #21 Tim Whitman. Coach Kash, who shook his balding, disappointed head at me during the tryout after I shot wide of the unmanned goal, was likely blasting his shrill whistle demanding they hustle, hustle, let’s go ladies, pick up the pace.
I closed my eyes and imagined passing the soccer ball to Zeke, who shot it to Andrew, over to Jasminder, then back to me for a perfect bicycle kick into the open corner the goalkeeper couldn’t possibly block with his mistimed dive. The crowd went wild. Zeke, Andrew, and Jasminder hoisted me onto their shoulders.
When I opened my eyes, there was a tree house.
It had been there before but was well concealed with a foliage shroud in the boughs above. There weren’t spare board steps nailed to the trunk like the one in Andrew’s backyard. The only way up was by scaling it until branches could help the climb. I possessed no upper body strength, so I backed up to try and see into the doorway. There was someone inside wearing muck-encrusted white Velcro tennis shoes.
“Hello?” I called out, but they didn’t move.
“What?” Newman’s voice pinged far away. He found me a few seconds later when I didn’t respond. “What’s going on?”
“Look.” I pointed to the hut. “I think there’s somebody in there.”
“Really?” Newman got excited and whipped a small rock skyward like a grenade. “Hey. Who’s up there? I know you’re in there. We can see you. Come out.”
“I don’t think they’re coming.” I turned to walk away, letting the back of my hand slide across my pimpled forehead. “Let’s get out of here. I need something to drink. It’s like two-hundred degrees.”
“No. Wait a second.” Newman held me back by my arm. “Hey, if you don’t come out, we’re coming up.”
“Newman, I can’t climb up the tree. I’m not Spider-Man.”
He punched my shoulder. “Shut up. They don’t know that.”
“They don’t know I’m not Spider-Man?”
After some rustling, a shaggy head popped out and said: “Go away.”
It wasn’t an escaped cannibalistic psych patient or a devil-worshipping cultist, just some other kid like us.
Newman’s eyes went wide. “That’s Bradley Donner.” He found another stone and hurled it high to hit the tree house wall. It plunked down and almost hit me on the head. “Hey Bradley, it’s me: Newman.”
“Newman?” he repeated. “Go away. I don’t want anyone to know I’m here.”
“We won’t tell. Just come down for a second.” Newman leaned in close. “Are you ready for that reward money? Just do what I say.”
I didn’t know what he meant. I didn’t want to know.
“Fine.” Bradley Donner came onto the ledge and unfurled a rope ladder. “But seriously, Newman. Don’t tell anybody I’m living up here.”
His light locks thatched in clumps with patches of mud. His clothes were scratched and cleaned with the runoff waters of the murky flowing creek nearby. Though his knees were scraped and his hands calloused from climbing, he seemed happy and healthy, aside from sunburn and mosquito bites.
Contrary to what everyone in Meadow Ridge thought about Bradley Donner, the missing boy wasn’t snatched by a sleazy predator in a white van; he didn’t run away from home to join the circus, nor was he beamed up by aliens, or eaten by alligators in the sewers when he chased a stray baseball down a drainpipe. He was just living in a tree house in the Alvin Woods.
“You know everybody’s looking for you, right?” Newman asked.
“Yeah, I know.”
“So, what’re you doing up there?” I asked.
“I don’t want to go back to school. I hate it there, and I never learn anything. It’s stupid.” He scanned me up and down but didn’t bother asking who I was. There was a tinge of shame in his voice. He dug in his heels. “They said I have to be held back.”
“Who cares?” Newman plunged into his pocket. “I’ve been held back a couple of times.” He found a candy bar. “You want this?” I couldn’t help but remember when he offered up a whole can of tuna to Nathan IV. The fat cat purred under his touch; completely unaware Newman was about to throw him into the bathtub where he’d be doused with flea shampoo.
“Yeah, thanks.” Bradley devoured the chocolate faster than I’d seen anyone eat anything. It gave his cheeks and fingertips a new shade of matted brown. “I’ve been pretty hungry.”
“What’ve you been eating?” I asked.
“I packed a lot of stuff, but I ran out. I think there’s like a daycare or something they run inside of Alvin Elementary now that it’s summer.” He lapped residual crumbs from the wrapper. “So, I’ve been digging through the dumpster at the back of the school at night for anything they threw out.”
“Gross,” I said.
“You guys have anything else?”
“That’s my last one.” Newman shrugged. “You know your parents are like, on the news every night and—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve seen the fliers and stuff. I’ve heard people talk about me out here, even saw a few people looking. But they don’t think to look up.” He smiled and pointed at his fortress. “I snuck out here and built it with some of my dad’s tools before I ran away. Nobody knows it’s here. Except you guys.”
“You made that?” I was surprised by how good it looked, considering the circumstances. But even at that age I knew it wasn’t as stable as it needed to be. He’d assembled it from chunks of fallen bark, clusters of sticks, and a hodgepodge of nails, screws, and planks. It looked like shelter for a deserted island. It was just a matter of time before it came down.
“My dad’s a carpenter. He lets me help him and shows me how to make stuff.” Bradley was proud. He had obvious talent. A real future in the family business.
“Grab his legs.” Newman rushed Bradley and put him into a side headlock. “Grab his legs, fatso. Come on.”
“What’re you doing?” Bradley cried, kicked, and let out strained gasps. “Let go of me. Let go of me, Newman.”
My feet felt suctioned to the ground. Nausea bubbled back.
Newman wrenched Bradley’s neck, forcing him into submission, staring at me with those same wide, waiting eyes he’d had over the leaves. “Come on, dude. Don’t just stand there.”
I didn’t think to question what Newman expected us to do once we captured Bradley. There was no way to drag him to town on our bikes. If he wanted to tie him up to keep him in one place, we’d need rope, unless he wanted to knock him out like they do in movies. Knowing Newman, he probably just hadn’t thought that far ahead.
It didn’t matter. I tried to help, but I just got in the way.
While wrangling Bradley’s bucking right leg, Newman stumbled over my clumsiness and sprawled to the ground, hooking my foot and sending me over on top of him. Freed, Bradley pulled himself up the wobbling ladder to safety before we were able to untangle and dust ourselves off.
“I hate you, Newman,” Bradley said. “I hate you.”
“Get down here now. Or I’m coming up there.” Spit flew from Newman’s mouth making him look rabid.
Bradley just picked up his dad’s hammer and made sure we saw.
Newman screeched in rage; his whole face turned the same bright red as the lighter in my pocket. He kicked at the tree trunk as if his toes were an axe blade that could hack the flecks of bark away until it brought Bradley to the ground.
“Come on,” I said. “We can tell his parents and they can get him.”
Newman took the rope ladder and for a split second seemed to weigh the likelihood of climbing up and disarming Bradley of his weapon before being bludgeoned. He must not have liked his odds because instead of trying anything, Newman grabbed the rope tight and wrapped it around his fists. He leaned back and pulled until the tethers nailed to the floorboards gave way to his strength.
“There,” Newman’s face returned to normal as he chucked the severed limp bridge to his feet. “Now if you want to stay in the tree, Bradley, you’ll stay in that tree.”
I tried to peek at whether or not Bradley was crying, but I couldn’t tell since he backed into a corner with his knees tight to his chest. “I don’t know about this,” I think I said.
Newman’s sadistic grin dissolved. He remembered something he’d forgotten. Without saying anything, he took off running.
I guess I had to follow.
We didn’t even need to make it back for the suffocating sting of fire to singe my nostrils. I felt like the marshmallow roasting at the end of a stick. The neat piles of leaves Newman heaped were each their own pyre, seeping into fallen canopies splayed on the earth and ascending up the dead, termite-ridden husks of old trees skyward. Even though we were outdoors, the thick, heavy smoke hung low and blackened our lungs. The only way to exhale was through chest-caving coughs.
“Oh god,” Newman screamed.
“We’ll never be able to put this out.” I pounded my heel against a nearby portion but had to give up when I saw my heel melted. When I turned to get orders from Newman, he was already over the creek and disappearing from view.
I guess I had to follow.
I was never as fast as him. I couldn’t keep up. Like a horror film, I tripped over a root as if it reached out to keep me in the Alvin Woods to pay penance for what we’d done. Newman was gone when I was up. I didn’t know if I was even going the right way. The ground didn’t have a trail of candy wrappers to follow, but I figured if I kept going straight, I’d reach some form of civilization eventually. My thighs scraped, the arches of my feet stabbed, and the sweat bit my eyes.
This sort of thing never would’ve happened if I’d made the soccer team with Andrew, Zeke, and Jasminder. I’d be running on the green grass of the field, surrounded by friends that would never abandon me.
The thorn barrier held me back from the rest of the world, but I didn’t bother to cautiously step through. Each point lashed across my skin, ripped at my camouflage shorts. Newman’s cool exterior dropped. He bounced back and forth with trembling fists as he looked into a different part of the woods.
“Newman,” I wheezed. I assumed he was worried about me, but he was gauging how far the fire had gotten, how much trouble he’d be in. He jogged over as I collapsed to inspect my wounds. The dark thundercloud of smoke marred the blue sky. Giant logs toppled, upturning their roots to shake the world. The Alvin Woods was burning down fast.
“What do we do?”
“I don’t know.” Newman coughed.
“Why didn’t you stomp it out before you left? This never would’ve happened if you’d been more careful.” I sounded like my dad.
“Shut up.” He went to his bike.
“You’re just going to leave? We have to tell somebody. Or we have to go back in there. I mean, what about Bradley?”
“Yeah. You go ahead and do that.” He swung a foot over to straddle the pedals. “I’m getting out of here, man. I do not want to be here when the cops show up.”
Inside the shadowed gaps of the Alvin Woods, I saw the same flickering light Newman monitored growing brighter. Like tendrils, the tips of the inferno tried to rekindle with the sun. I cried the whole way home, my clothes no longer reeking of summer stale body odor but of soot and sin. The shrill wailings of sirens and horns went the opposite direction several streets over.
In my pocket, the red lighter felt heavier than the world.
***
A few days later, after sifting through the ashes, they made an announcement on the news. My family sat around the television eating dinner, watching filmed footage of firefighters from seven neighboring cities battle to contain the blazing catastrophe. It looked the same way I’d imagined it in my nightmares from the rare minutes where I’d actually fallen asleep.
Authorities reported they found what they could now confirm to be the remains of the missing child, Bradley Donner. Though the investigation was still underway, the cause of the fire had been linked back to him. Mr. and Mrs. Donner couldn’t be reached for a comment.
I couldn’t bear to eat another bite of the barbecue chicken my father blackened over the grate of the grill.
Alvin Elementary hosted a candlelight vigil later that week. It was the first time I’d left my basement, the air-conditioning, to hang out with Newman again. I covered my cuts with layers of dark clothing.
Newman pretended like nothing happened. He made mocking faces while Andrew, Zeke, Jasminder, and the rest of the soccer team presented Mr. and Mrs. Donner with a sizable donation they’d raised in a fundraiser for The Bradley Donner Memorial Scholarship Fund.
I didn’t know how Newman could stand amongst the silent, sullen faces painted with the halos of their melting wax without feeling like he was tied to the stake. Or how he could look at the large, last-ever yearbook photo of Bradley’s uneven smile without wondering what his final moments were like.
Did Bradley try to jump down and escape, snapping his legs like twigs, or did he wait until the fire climbed up to get him? Did his tree house sanctuary come crashing down on top of him? Were his own cries for help the last thing he heard, or was it the sound of his father’s tools catching and crackling?
“Let’s get out of here,” Newman said. “This is lame.”
I wanted to ask him the thing I’d been haunted with every moment since: if he’d remembered to stamp out the pile I’d set or if it was one of the ones he’d lit after I walked away that grew out of control.
But it didn’t matter. I followed Newman.
Adam Michael Nicks is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer and a graduate of the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts program. His work has appeared in Typehouse-Ink, Crack the Spine, Five on the Fifth, Dual Coast Magazine, Defenestration, ReCap, Ink Stains Anthology, and Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy. His play, “Rendezvous Point,” was performed by convergence-continuum.