: do not give in to evil but proceed ever more boldly against it :

Short Story: The Last Outing

The Last Outing
By Drex Davis
Copyright 2005

When you finally realize you won’t have any new memories of a person, all of the old ones come like a flood.

“You can’t even do a pushup!” I teased.

Carson strained and grunted, but his quivering arms scarcely lifted his scrawny chest off the ground.

“I can’t believe it! You are such a wimp!”

“You’re right,” he laughed. “I can’t believe it either. It’s hard to know why all the girls like me best!”

“You’re right, man. They do like you best. They’re crazy!” I said.

He jumped up and tackled me. I pinned him before he could blink and twisted his arm behind his back.

“Uncle!” he said laughing.

That was just the way he was. You had to like him even though he couldn’t do very many things well. So, of course, he would be in the middle of the pinecone war, getting his butt kicked.

This one happened in a perfect place – an area up a steep slope where two big mountains meet. Boulders had rolled down the mountains’ sides and collected in the seam between them. And a lot of pinecones were there. I mean, A LOT! All of those pine trees dropping all those cones, all those years, and they had nowhere to roll but into this pocket, where they all nestled and clung together. And it was perfect, except for one thing.

“I don’t know about this,” I muttered.

“What are you talking about?” Zack sneered. “You afraid of a little pinecone? Maybe one to the face, from me?” He punched me in the arm and ran off.

The slope was pretty steep, and the boulders had moss on them. “Those boulders look slippery,” I said, to no one in particular. “Someone could maybe get hurt.”

Our scout leader, Mr. Allison, patted me on the head, “Well, if you’re afraid you can wait here with the rest of the girl scouts.” The assistant scout leader, Larry, guffawed.

“Well, I have a charley horse in my leg from the hike. I’ll just sit this out,” I said.

“Suit your self,” Larry said, and then tacked on, “Sissy boy.”

I turned to Carson.

“Don’t worry about it, man,” he consoled, “If you’re a sissy, then there’s no hope for me.”

We laughed. He always made me laugh. But I didn’t feel much like laughing. I still felt uneasy. “I just don’t feel safe here.” I said. “I really can’t explain it. I want to leave.”

“I don’t like this stupid game anyway,” he said. “I always end up getting tagged in the face. I’ll just play a minute and then come sit with you.”

Then he ran off to join the war, already underway. Or course, a few minutes in, Carson slipped and hit his chin on a rock. Mr. Allison stopped the game.

“Carson, stay on that rock, all-time,” he barked. “You’re going to get hurt.”

“You can be all-time ‘Moss boy,’” Larry teased.

All the boys laughed. Carson shrugged and smiled.

He tried to sneak off the rock a few times, but Mr. Allison spied him and yelled, “Stay there! I’m not messing around. I don’t want to have to explain to your Mom why you cracked your head open.”

I was still on the shoulder of the mountain, holding a pinecone, biding my time. Carson saw me tossing it from hand to hand.

“I bet you can’t hit me!” he yelled. I thought about it. I bet he was right. He was only about thirty feet away, but those pinecones catch the wind right after you throw them and then take off to the right or left in a hurry. So even if you could get it that far, you could never get it to go straight. To hit someone, you had to throw from close range. It hurt like heck to get hit from that close, but that was the only way you could do it. And that’s why Mr. Allison had to chase Zack all the way round to the backside of a large boulder, the size of a Volkswagen bug, behind Carson – cornering Zack, to get a clean shot.

Mr. Allison perched on top of the boulder. A big tree had fallen in front of it, and Zack stood on the dead wood, hands over his head, futilely trying to shield himself from the inevitable sting. Mr. Allison reared his arm back to nail him. Suddenly, Zack stepped to the side and jumped off the log. Mr. Allison tried to adjust in mid-throw, but the grade was too steep, and he slipped off the side of the boulder, right on top of the log.

Snap. The log quivered, then gave. The boulder jostled. Mr. Allison, Zach and I all saw it move. But not Carson. He was lying on his stomach, in front of the boulder, facing away from it, looking at me.

“I bet you can’t hit me!” he yelled again.

For an eternal split-second the world seemed to stop on it’s axis, then the boulder turned. Before we could yell, “move,” it passed over him like a rolling pin, and then careened down the mountain, picking up speed. My ears heard it smash small trees and shatter rocks, but my eyes were on Carson.

And then I couldn’t breathe. I tried to scream, but I just sat there with my mouth open, chest heaving, silent. I looked away and closed my eyes. I looked back. He was still there.

We gathered to the side of him. No one touched him or tried to turn him over. We all knew there was nothing we could do. A little blood had pooled around his head, but not a lot. His head looked kind of flat on the back, and his neck looked scrunched up.

Larry kept gasping. He pulled out of his pocket an inhaler he carried for his asthma and took a big puff.

Mr. Allison told Larry with a quivering voice to “stay calm for the boys.” But his unsure voice just made me more afraid.

“What are we doing to do?” I asked.

But no one even looked at me. They either stared in unbelief or started crying. So I sat down against a tree and tried to stop myself from shaking and I sobbed like a baby.

I looked over at Zack. He was crying harder than anyone. I scooted over and I put my arm around him, but he pushed me away.

Mr. Allison sputtered, “Let’s have a prayer.” So we gathered around him.

I bowed my head.

“Dear God,” he started.

Then nothing came out for while. I finally opened my eyes, but I didn’t look at him. I stared at my shoes and thought about how dirty they looked.

Suddenly Mr. Allison sobbed, “his parents, please help his parents” and then he fell on the ground, shaking. It startled me. He put his head in his hands and wailed like a siren. Larry went over and put his arm around him, and they hugged each other.

I started crying again – hard, but no one was moving, so I just sat there on the ground, trying not to look at anyone.

I wished I could go back in time. I composed myself after a few minutes. And then I felt angry. “Why didn’t you listen to me?” I asked Mr. Allison in a quiet voice.

No reply. Anger boiling.

“I told you it wasn’t safe,” I screamed. Mr. Allison turned away and wiped his eyes.

Larry said softly, “Look, there’s nothing we can do about it now. What’s done is done. It was nobody’s fault. It was an accident.” I felt the heat in my face rise, but then I stopped myself and kept it all in.

He looked around at everyone, “Listen up. There’s no way to get a truck or a rescue helicopter up here. We’ve got to carry him out.”

It took a while. I tried not to look at his face. Mr. Allison took off his own shirt and wrapped it around Carson’s head. I think it was to try and help stop the blood from getting everywhere, but I was just really glad not to have to look at his face. Larry and Mr. Allison carried him most of the way. We moved slowly down the steep mountain. Larry threw up a few times, and Mr. Allison would suddenly start crying and we’d have to stop walking. A couple of times when Larry threw up, I had to help hold up Carson. Mr. Allison said we shouldn’t let him touch the ground, so I stood there and held him up until Larry felt well enough to go on. Carson felt really heavy. And he also felt really light. I couldn’t figure out which it was.

About a quarter of a mile before we got back to camp, Mr. Allison told me to run ahead and tell Zack’s dad what had happened and to get the cars ready. Zack’s dad had hurt his ankle that week and hadn’t felt well enough to go on the hike but had volunteered to be a driver. “Be careful,” was all he’d said.

I spotted Zack’s dad from a distance, about the same time as he saw me.

“What took you guys so long,” he bellowed.

When I got closer, I think he must’ve known something was wrong. Maybe he saw tear stains on my dirty cheeks.

“What happened,” he yelled, alarmed. “Is someone hurt?”

“No.” I cried, “It’s worse than that.”

And then I couldn’t tell him. I tried, but I only said again, “It’s worse than that.”

He took off running up the trail from where I had come. I collapsed against a tree. Sat there and tried not to think.

Ten minutes later, I heard Zack’s dad again. He was crying in long sobs. It reminded me of a wounded animal. When I looked up he was carrying Carson in his arms, cradling him, his face twisted in pain, awash with tears.

All I could think of was that this was going to happen again, and again, and again. Someone would have to tell someone else, and they would have to tell someone else, and someone was going to have to tell his parents. I wanted to throw up.

We wrapped Carson in a blanket and put him in the back of Mr. Allison’s SUV. Zack’s dad said that we needed to get on the road and that as soon as we had some cell phone coverage that he’d call his parents.

“Not yet,” I thought. “Don’t tell them yet, just let them think he’s alive for a few more hours. If he’s alive in their minds, then perhaps he’s not really dead.” That didn’t make sense, but then nothing about this made sense.

Then Zack’s dad said to Mr. Allison, “Now George, you take your time on the drive.
Larry, you go with him. I’ll take half the boys. That’s all I can fit. You take the other half. Keep your wits, and don’t speed. There’s no reason to speed home. There’s nothing that can be done.
You just keep your wits.”

Then we headed out.

At the funeral we had to wait in a long line to look at Carson in the casket and talk to his parents. I had a knot in the pit of my stomach when I got to Carson’s dad. He looked really bad. He hugged me and wouldn’t let go. I felt like running away, but I knew I should just let him hug me. I felt hot tears on my hair, and felt like crying myself. He finally let me go, and his wife handed him a handkerchief. He dabbed his red eyes.

“You were his friend,” he said to me. “He loved you.”

I looked past Carson’s dad, at the casket. “I loved him too,” I said.

Then Carson’s dad whispered something in my ear, and my dad led me away and held me while I cried.

After the line, we all went into the chapel. I didn’t’ see Mr. Allison there, probably because of the lawsuit and everything. I saw Larry come in the back. . He sat away from everyone.

As I sat in the chapel, I was still angry. I kept thinking about that day, and how I had felt bad about the place. I wished that Mr. Allison had listened to me. But people like Mr. Allison never listen to kids. They are kids themselves. But now that they’re old enough they can be bosses, and tell other people what to do, and make decisions that affect others. But soon the anger passed – it seemed to come and go regularly – and I just plain felt bad for him, bad about what he and his family were going through, bad about what they were about to go through, bad about the lawsuit.

I looked up to the front of the chapel as the services started and watched Carson’s parents sit down. I had a sad thought. They trusted Mr. Allison to take care of Carson and he failed them. Then I thought about what Carson’s dad had said to me as he hugged me: “If only they had listened to you, if only.” And I Knew he was right. And I was ashamed. I would never again trust anyone more than myself. And I would never let another friend die.

August 2, 2005 | Filed Under Short Stories 

comments

3 Responses to “Short Story: The Last Outing”

  1. Porter on August 3rd, 2005

    Another great story. Well done.

  2. Drex Davis on August 3rd, 2005

    Thanks P.

    Two more short stories should be up this month . . .

    One called “A Terminal Recovery” and another called “How the Camel got Two Humps”.

  3. Teju on August 4th, 2005

    Ditto. That story was very engaging.