Running Away

One summer at the age of thirteen I committed some infraction for which I was remanded to my room for the day. Though long forgotten, I’m sure it was deserved, and if not for this one then probably another one not discovered. Many of my transgressions in those days went unnoticed by my parents, and I often took solace in this, my backside welted by my father’s belt, when occasionally I had to pay the price for the carelessness of being found out. Whatever it was I had done this time. 

Still, I was indignant over having to stay in my room this day, as only a self centered adolescent can be. School was out, it was the languid beginning of summer, and my friend David and I had planned to fish the north end of a local lake, where pockets of lily pads were hiding monster bluegills. 

Bluegills, or bream, as my grandmother called them, grow to a good size in this part of Georgia, and once hooked, put up a tremendous fight. As my grandmother also said, if bream grew as large as bass you couldn’t get them into the boat. Fishing mostly from the bank, as David and I did, once a hooked bluegill got back into the lily pads, there was no getting them out again. They weaved among the stalks, then the line tangled and broke off, the fish sore mouthed but free. Avoiding disappointment here was one of my earliest lessons in the Zen of the fisherman. Moving on to the next fish, a new fish. Only to fish. 

That my confinement that day was just is not disputable. That my self righteous mind was not having any of it equally indisputable. I called my best friend David and told him to pack his camping gear and come bust me out. We were running away from home. Making our point. Boy would these adults be sorry when they realized their son was gone forever, off to a life of fortune and adulation. I loaded up my own pack and gear.

My bedroom was at the high end of the house on the second floor. Maybe twenty feet up. David whistled me to the window and tossed a rope. I let the pack down the rope, then tied it off and climbed over the sill myself. I’d seen it in the movies, how hard could it be?

As soon as all my weight was on the rope I realized why rope climbers wear gloves. My hands burned and slipped, I let go of the rope, and fell toward the ground. In the face of certain shock and broken bones, I landed in the middle of an oversize boxwood shrub. Like a Roadrunner cartoon I sprang up, David and I shouldered our packs, and we were off into the woods.

Our destination was an area we all called the Wilderness. It was a couple of miles away, a dangerous trek along a muddy creek and across a large pasture where more than once I had been chased over the fence by a large Angus bull. 

We had had some rain, and the creek was up, making wading debatable. On the sandy bank I reached for a stick to measure the water depth. As soon as I grabbed it it slithered from my hand and into the water, a water snake that had been stretched out in the sun. The top of my head flew off, I jumped out of my skin, and was back up the bank in an instant, heart pumping. We were definitely not crossing here, through this snaky water.

After using a downed tree to cross further upstream, we made it through the cattle pasture and a mile or so of mixed hardwoods to the Wilderness.

In our neighborhood the little kids spoke of the Wilderness in awe, a mythical place, some distant hinterland of headless riders and hobbits. David and I had been there though, a few times. It was in fact a vast acreage of sunblasted and eroded terrain of what had probably begun in a real estate developer’s mind until the economy changed, he had run out of money, or both. It had been clear cut many years before, and with no trees the wind and rain had carved it up into steep ravines and red clay hills. One turbid creek ran through the middle of it, which I had dreamed of fishing only to find frogs and salamanders. I would estimate it covered several hundred acres. To us, it might as well have been the Sahara desert, stretching across northern Africa.

David and I set up camp on top of a hill in a small grove of pines that had managed to take root in the red clay wasteland, with a good view toward any posse that might be in pursuit. In reality, my mother was probably in the kitchen at home, not yet even realizing I was gone. I thought about that and wondered what she might be cooking as David and I shared a can of Van Camp’s pork and beans. 

Summer days are long, and after our beans we lay down in the soft pine straw and took naps, a habit I retain to this day. Jim Harrison, the great American novelist and poet, said this about naps, “We live not only our own lives but, whether we know it or not, also the life of our time. I am not a fan of our time, thus sleep is an attractive alternative to consciousness.” 

We woke in the soft early dusk of the evening, mosquitoes beginning to swarm around our muggy heads. The search party had not appeared, but I had dreamed of my mother’s Salisbury steak, with mashed potatoes and brown gravy. Bullfrogs called from the swampy creek and I pondered a possible dinner of frog legs cooked over a bitter pine fire with no seasoning. Not even salt. I had not been able to access the kitchen before our getaway and now the culinary perils of our situation were becoming clear. As with naps, I also enjoy a good meal, and the prospects were bleak.

We called a meeting and debated the pros and cons. David had not especially wanted to run away in the first place. He lived a few blocks from me, in a house on a lake with skis and a boat. Summer, with all its possibilities, was only beginning. He had been swept away by my own indignant enthusiasm but was not actually complaining mind you. He was Sundance to my Butch Cassidy, and whatever we decided, he was in 100%. 

What we decided was to return toward home for more groceries, and take a peek at the panic and emotional devastation our leaving had caused. 

We ended up in the dark at the door of our classmate Holly.

I really liked Holly. She had a bohemian attitude, an irreverent sense of humor, wispy blond hair, and penetrating blue eyes. Holly’s mother was the coolest, a single mom who had been a hippie in San Francisco and treated her children like adults. She gave us a cigarette and offered to call our parents. Not to turn us in, she emphasized, but simply to let them know we were safe. My earlier anger over room confinement had subsided and it seemed the considerate thing to do. Plus eight hours on the lam had blunted our expectations of outlaw debauchery. 

My father picked us up. He was not angry, just bemused. And always sanguine, which was his nature. Besides, the last thing he had wanted was to be head of a search party, stumbling around in the dark, in woods that his son knew much better than him. He had been at a Rotary meeting and not even realized we were gone until Holly’s mother had called. 

“You boys smell like cigarettes,” Was all he said. 

“Holly’s mother smokes.”

“Uh hmm.”

We’d only been gone about ten hours, but when we dropped David off at his house, his parents also seemed happy to see him. Where we had both dreaded the return and subsequent repercussions, we now found only love. And where I had been so angry before, I now felt relief. And maybe appreciation. For all of it. The good and the bad, the perfect and imperfect, the Salisbury steak my mom had saved for me. And the beginning of summer which always seemed to last forever.