Initiation

This story was one that I wrote a few years ago in one of my creative writing classes. It's kind of awful, but I thought I'd stick it up just the same. The story had to follow the style (but not the idea) of another story we read in class for a page or two, but then finish as our own. So when Someone spoke in the story, my characters had to speak. When there was a description, I had one too. It was an exercise that would help us ease writers block. I think I need to try one again, because I am in the thick of it. (= Here goes.

Initiation


On the morning of no particular day of his seventh year, Sammy met his brother Tom, beneath the gnarled old pine tree in their back yard. Tom held a slingshot, taut beneath the pressure, and looked at Sammy through one squinty eye. Sammy was no novice to this expression and knew that some amount of trouble was bound to follow, as it most usually did. Mother would soon have to come out of their rambling white house and rescue them or some poor unfortunate creature that found itself in their path. Sammy, being shorter than Tom because he hadn’t gone through a growth spurt, found himself staring at the dirt mustache his brother had given himself when he wiped his running nose.

“So, you’ve shot a slingshot.” Tom said, “I remember the first time you shot your first marble. You were a horrible shot.”
“So?” Sammy asked.
“So.” His brother answered, “You’ve had a few months to improve your aim. Let’s hope it worked. You’ll need it.”
He raised his rubber missile launcher to his eye and contemplated his target. The unlucky can teetered on the top of the white washed fence and threatened to jump to its death from the wind to save its metallic pride. Cock-eyed he looked at Sammy, his one eye twinkling.
“Come to the barn with me Sammy,” he said.

The barn was large and dusty. The wooden troughs reeking with the scent of dry hay and horse feed. Sammy remembered the first time father had taken him into the large building and allowed him to help tend the horses. Since then the barn had seemed like a strange and thriving metropolis, where man and animals mingled together in one, although separate, world.

“Maybe we should eat something,” Sammy’s brother said. “News like this shouldn’t be taken on an empty stomach.”
Sammy leaned against a rough post. Rusty nails one forth an inch thick poked out all over, like a porcupine, holding all sorts of tools and one worn saddle. Sammy could feel the broken wood rubbing against his bare arm, wood that had been warped by heavy rains, humid summers and bitter winters.
“Are you hungry?” His brother asked, “I reckon we can wait till after lunch if you would rather.”
“Stop trying to scare me,” Sammy said, shakily. “I’m waiting.”
“Sure are brave,” His brother said, exhaling heavily. “I cried like a baby when I found out.”
“Found out what?” Sammy said.

Tom didn’t answer. He brushed the dust off of one of the old blankets and watched an annoyed spider scurry across the work bench, into a dark hidden corner. “Sammy, when you became old enough, I knew it was time to let you in on a very dangerous secret I’ve been hiding. Brother to brother, it is time to introduce you to your whole new life, though it may kill you before you pass. I told them you’d keep it a secret from Mom. You’d best not tell.

Heaven help me, Sammy thought, stiffening against the splintery post, causing a few stray slivers to lodge themselves into his skinny mud streaked arm. He’d heard about boys his age disappearing in the woods, never to be seen again. Some kids whispered that they had been sent in to be eaten by wild animals as human sacrifices. The ones that survived sat in the back of the one roomed school quietly, and never learned their multiplication tables. Most likely because they were too traumatized by their near death experiences. The idea that his brother quite possibly was sending him out into that certain death struck terror into the very core of his seven year old heart. He knew Tom didn’t really care for him, but to send him as a human sacrifice? “Tell me,” he said, his voice crackling like a jumpy record.

His brother tall and sturdy and calm, stood in the doorway of the barn, seeming to be blocking the only clear exit for Sammy to escape through. Rays of sunlight shone in Sammy’s eyes through the square windows, making it more difficult to see his brother’s expression. “I didn’t want to be the one to do- tell you this,” he said, “but I feel that you might benefit from this experience,” He paused and then added for affect “even though it might be your last.”
“Out of my way!” yelled Sammy, his eyes darting to escape, though his feet were like lead, “I just won’t do it!”
“The only thing that stirred in the barn were the horses as they chomped, not enthusiastically, at their hay, their eyes rolling with each twist of the tongue. Time did not stand still, but raced through the mangers and lofts decorated with spider webs, finally settling on Tom’s lips. After ten long seconds he took a deep breath as though to clear the stale air and spoke. “We’ve decided to let you join the Fierce Forest Wolves Club.”

*********

Three days later Sammy’s ears were still ringing with the plans for his initiation. Tom laying in the shadows of the moon, tucked beneath quilts with patchwork’s of stars as intricate as the sky outside their window, told him of the rules the members of the club had to follow. His favorite pastime had become telling Sammy highly colored bedtime stories of the horrors that occurred while many men had endeavored to enlist. He had learned all the handshakes, the secret passwords and how to fool mother into believing he was playing baseball in the park, when really he was roaming around in the forest with the pack of the other neighborhood boys.

“Are you ready for tomorrow?” Tom yawned.
Sammy stared at the half moons the shadows from Tom’s eyelashes made under his drooping eyes. No, he said inwardly. But found himself croaking an overly enthusiastic yes.
That morning the kitchen seemed to be filled with a foreign malice. Sammy could barely eat the buckwheat pancakes his mother had arranged on a sky blue platter before him. He watched the pat of butter slowly slide off the pancakes resting on the plate like a miniature sun.

“Are you feeling ok, sweetheart?” His mother asked.
“He’s fine,” Tom said.
“Are you sure? You don’t look so good,” she asked again.
“Uh huh,” he muttered, trying to catch her eye to signal her desperately, but she had already turned and was buttering the pan for the second batch of pancakes.
“We’re going to go play baseball with some of the neighborhood kids. Is that ok Mom?” Tom asked innocently, his voice pure sugar.
“Sure,” she said. “Will you be back for lunch?”
“Yep,” Tom answered, then licked the maple syrup off his lip. Sammy cringed, it seemed to him that Tom was enjoying this moment, licking his lips in anticipation. “We’ll see you in a few hours,” he said, grabbing Sammy’s sticky hand and pulling him out the door.

At the edge of the woods they met them. A group of boys ranging from seven to thirteen, all holding slingshots and small felt bags filled with smooth round stones. He knew all of them, but in this situation they seemed menacing, not at all like he thought they had been. Suddenly these boys who cowered in front of the teacher and tried to impress the girls during lunch were his tyrants.

“It’s good to have you Sammy,” said Joe, a gangly twelve year old boy in pants too short for his quickly growing body. “We thought maybe you wouldn’t come.”
“Yeah,” said Bill, the oldest boy and leader of the pack. “Are you ready?”
“Ow!” Sammy said from the sharp elbow Tom had given him in the ribs. “I mean, yes.”
“You’re quest is to kill a rabbit with your slingshot. You only have five shots to do it with, so you’d better make sure you won’t waste any,” Bill said.

The sound of their chatter mingled with the wind as it rustled the leaves of a tree. All of them complaining that he had been given too easy a quest, they had had to do something that was ten times as hard. Sammy twisted the rubber band of the slingshot in his hand, nervously listening to the wild clattering of their tongues. “Its not fair,” some of them said, “I had to kill a whole bear, what would a measly rabbit do?” The littler boys listened in awe at the proclamations.

“Quiet!” Bill shouted. “Stop complaining ladies, you’re being too loud. How do you expect to find a rabbit if you all are yelling?”

Sammy wanted to tell them it was ok, they could talk as loud as they wanted. Maybe if he was lucky their voices would have scared off all the rabbits within ten miles of them and they would have to find something else for him to do. For the first two hours nothing came. They lay in the cool grass, smelling the dark scents of the damp earth. Some boys snored softly, the hats that covered their faces moving slightly with every blast of air from their mouths. Some of the boys played tricks on the younger slumbering ones, filling their pockets with grass, and putting crumpled leaves in their hats. Finally the moment arrived, a heavy brown rabbit emerged from the woods, seeking out the younger, more tender blades of grass.

He wished his sling shot would break, that his mother would find them, anything to be released from this horrible burden, but by now all the sleepers had been awakened and lay motionless, waiting for him to act. The boys eyes were unforgiving and in them he saw no mercy, no release.
“Go,” Tom whispered.

Sammy licked his dry lips and swallowed. His hand fumbled as he opened his sack for a stone. The rabbit by this time sat peacefully nibbling at the ends of the new shoots, its full belly resting on the ground. All eyes were on him and suddenly he felt his hand stretch the tight rubber, the first shot hit the tree just behind the rabbit. Its ears perked, noticing for the first time, the mingling smells of human and nature’s scents. Sammy realized that he could shoot all five shots and miss, and he wouldn’t have to kill the rabbit. The second shot he would just miss by a few inches so as to make it look like he wasn’t intentionally trying to miss. Confidently he stretched the band again, pulling it extra hard for effect. The stone flew in the air, just as the rabbit hopped forward, seeking newer greens. It hit the brown neck throwing it back into the earth with a sickening thud.

It screamed. It screamed like a terrified women, shrill and in agony. None of the boys who were originally so confident of the ingenuity of the stint had expected that, none of them had suspected he would even hit the rabbit. Their eyes widened as they realized the whole meaning of their action. None of them had ever actually killed something before, and suddenly a slingshot was not enough. It lay, contorting amid the long blades of grass, its cries making their stomachs hollow and minds impressioned. Sam did not stay long enough to see what the other boys did with the rabbit. The sound of its human like screams filled his ears as he ran home, his initiation complete.