The "Great" Woods

Written 2006

 

     I was ten years old when I had my first kiss beneath a towering oak tree in the “Great Woods.” I had lovingly given that name to the acres and acres of woods just beyond my small, brick home when I was much younger. My papa took me exploring in their depths, taught me the names of trees, and helped me memorize all the secret pathways and hidden places tucked away within. We traversed the whole of these treasures: the steep hill that led to Mr. Robertson’s pond, the leaf-strewn path that crossed behind the houses on our street, and the destination of that path: an enormous, golden cornfield next to a very old graveyard, belonging to some long absent family. I used to pretend that ghosts from the tiniest of those gravestones would awaken on some crisp, autumn afternoons; in the stained glass light of sunset, I imagined, they would play among the tall stalks. Sometimes, without telling Papa, I would strain to see them, but I thought that they were more afraid of me than I was of them. From here, Papa and I would return the way we came, and follow the long dirt road from the edge of the woods back home.

     We went walking in the woods every weekend, except in winter, until I was nine. On the first Saturday of spring, a blue minivan turned down the dirt road, followed by a UHAUL. I was putting on my red windbreaker and my hiking boots when Papa yelled that we had new neighbors. We were unaware that anyone had even built a house on the dirt road, but then, we hadn’t visited our woods all winter. The Lawsons had built a house, just inside the Great Woods. Mr. and Mrs. Lawson home schooled their five children at their large, white house. My papa and I introduced ourselves in early spring. I stepped uneasily onto their wide front porch; the house didn’t belong there. Papa knocked firmly and the screen door rattled. It slowly opened moments later, and there before me was the cutest boy I’d ever seen. He blushed and yelled for his mother, who came up behind him, smiled sweetly, and invited us inside. Over sweet tea we welcomed them to the neighborhood; we told them what stores to go to, which people to avoid, and what the shortcuts to town were. Papa was about to tell them something about the Great Woods when I kicked his foot. Those were our secrets.

     After that I listened quietly to the adults’ conversation, feeling offended and crowded. I stared at my feet, or out the large bay window, and wondered if our journeys would ever be the same. When I realized I was about to cry, I turned my head away from everyone, only to have my heart skip a beat. Aaron, the Lawsons’ oldest son who had answered the door, was sitting at the bottom of the stairs, watching me. We blushed, and then we smiled at each other, and when it was time to leave, he was too shy to tell me goodbye. Papa grinned at me the whole way home, but I didn’t say anything to him about Aaron. I figured he already knew.

       It was summer before I saw Aaron again, and everything in my life had changed. My Papa died suddenly of lung cancer in late March. We didn’t even know he was sick until a week before his death. My grandmother followed him in early May, after a long bout with breast cancer. Mama was devastated, and with a hectic work schedule, she had little time to grieve properly, and little time to get much done around the house. In early June, she hired Aaron to do the yard work. We paid him every week to mow the grass, trim the weeds, water the flowers, and sometimes clean out the dog lot. I would peek sheepishly out the kitchen window and watch him mow the back yard; Mama made me take his checks out to him. He worked outside for us all summer, and when fall came, he began coming every other week. On the last Thursday in September, I turned ten. The next day, I took Aaron his check. He blushed and said thank you, as always, and I turned to leave when he stopped me. “You wanna go for a walk this afternoon?” he asked softly, staring at his feet.

     “Sure,” I answered, turning the color of a fresh, homegrown tomato.

     “Okay, I’ll meet you at the bottom of the dirt road at, um, 3:00?”

     “Okay.”

     With that, I went inside and practically came out of my skin. I couldn’t stop smiling. I told my mother what happened, and she just grinned. “I knew you liked him. I knew it.” She said. I went in the bathroom and brushed my hair, neatly pulling it up into a ponytail on top of my head. Then I put on a pair of old jeans a cute, but old tee shirt, and my hiking boots. At 2:45 I walked down the dirt road. Aaron was early too, and I smiled.

     We didn’t talk much at first, we just started walking toward the woods. I showed him the secret trails, and we strolled along the one behind the houses on my street. Many of the people living in them would put their old furniture and things they didn’t want anymore down in the woods along the path: an old mint green couch with white stripes, a coffee table with a cracked glass top, old brass lamps, and a number of other odds and ends that looked like they might date back to the sixties or seventies. We laughed at how ugly some of the stuff was, and we marveled over one tiny wooden rocking chair, with exquisitely carved flowers and vines. The path curved, the wooded flea market went out of sight, and we topped the large hill near the cornfield. The sun was beginning to set, and the field’s yellow glow shone brightly against the sky’s oranges and pinks. We made our way down the steep embankment, and stopped at the edge of the cornfield, where we gasped at its immense size. We walked around one side slowly, then Aaron took off running into the middle of the field. I chased after him, but I lost his shape in the countless stalks, and I couldn’t hear the crunch of his footsteps anymore. Then he came out of nowhere, and we ran all the way back to the edge of the field, where we collapsed beneath an old oak tree in a heap of laughter. I barely got a chance to catch my breath before I saw the way he was looking at me: studying my face and my hair; steadily, but slowly getting a little closer. I smiled and turned to face him, and he took my hand and lightly kissed my cheek, and then my lips. My heart fluttered, and I smiled again, and stared off dreamily into the cornfield, still straining to see the tiny spirits from the nearby graveyard.