Dec 2, 201714 min read

20 The Woods – Henry and June (1985) by LV Gaudet

June looks out the window to the backyard. The snow is tramped down, ugly and mangled, from the many pairs of boots that have walked all over it again and again, fanning out through the woods. The fields beyond the woods look the same.

She can see movement through the naked branches of the trees. The searchers are out yet again, covering the same ground they have covered repeatedly.

She feels like screaming at them. “Why aren’t they looking for my boys? They already looked there. Look somewhere else, somewhere new. Stop wasting your damned time looking in the same places over and over again.”

How many times has she done the exact same thing? It doesn’t matter what she was looking for. When her mind came up blank, she’d resort to mindlessly searching the same places in the house again and again. It never did any good. It was always a waste of time and energy.

“Find my boys damn it, and stop playing these games. Looking where you already looked never finds anything.”

She feels filled to bursting with the anguish over her boys, and with the feeling of uselessness forced on her.

She turns away, unable to look anymore, stifling a sob. “They won’t even let me help look for them.”

It’s the worst torment a mother can have; to know your children are out there somewhere, alive and alone, and unable to know where they are. Unable to do anything about it. Unable to help them. Treated by those who are only trying to help as if you are a helpless child yourself.

The desperate need to save her children has torn a little piece of her soul out each of these mornings she woke without her boys.

The sound of voices from the living room is incessant. She wishes they would go away, all of them. “I want my house back, my life… my boys.”

The voices in the other room are too loud. Someone is laughing. They are not the solemn voices befitting the moment. It sounds like a party in there.

One of the women comes breezing into the kitchen, smiling. “How’s that coffee coming, June? Do you need help?” She glances at the kitchen table, set with dinner settings for four, and briskly stacks plates, glasses, and cutlery, pushing them off to the side.

June glances at the coffee pot percolating on the counter behind her, and back to the woman. The woman is a neighbour from across town, one she knows by face but doesn’t know.

“There, now we have some room to cut up those dainties.”

June watches her help herself to pans from the fridge, and those sitting on the counter, setting them on the kitchen table. Getting a knife from the drawer, she starts cutting them up and setting the pieces on the top dinner plate until it’s full, then moving it and filling a second plate.

She briskly walks out with the two plates, setting them on the coffee table and returning to fill the third.

The table bothers June, like an itch that needs to be scratched. She wants to fix it.

“Junie, you are being ridiculous,” she thinks. It’s not like they’ve been gone a few hours. They won’t expect the table to be set for supper.”

She turns to filling coffee cups and setting them on a tray. She follows the other woman out with the coffee. She sets the tray on the coffee table to the pleasure of the people congregating there, and returns to the kitchen for the milk and sugar.

With dainties and coffee served, June wanders down the hall to her bedroom, feeling lost and needing a moment to herself. She closes the door softly, leaning against it, and allows herself to have a mini meltdown. She can hear them out there, repeating her name. June. June. June. Looking for her. All she wants is to be left alone, to have some time to feel the sorrow and fear over her missing boys without having to always pretend to be okay.

“I’m not okay. Jessie and Kevin are missing and they are not okay. They’re in trouble and afraid. I can feel it.”

She pulls herself together, checks her face and hair, puts on a brave face, and leaves the bedroom.

June goes into the living room and notices the comic book missing from the floor. Her first thought is that someone must have picked it up.

She’s barely in the room and they are on her.

“June, here sit down.”

“Have some coffee.”

“Have some cake.”

“How are you holding up?”

It’s the ever-present gaggle of women who have made it their mission to hover over her during this time of crisis. The women change, but the gaggle never seems to give her a moment’s peace.

“I wish they’d stop treating me like some broken little bird, some mentally unbalanced injured little creature,” June thinks, putting up with them leading her to a chair, making her sit, and pushing coffee and dainties on her.

She looks down at the little teacup plate with dainties and her stomach lurches. The last thing she feels like is eating, and the thought of eating these sweet sugary bites is nauseating.

“I can’t believe it’s been three days since the boys disappeared,” someone says.

A few heads turn, glancing nervously at June as if afraid of her reaction. Someone makes a hush motion at the speaker who violated the unspoken rule of not talking about their reason for being there in front of the boys’ mother.

He looks down guiltily, silencing. The search command center has been moved to the local community club the day after the boys vanished in the woods. These are the people who are here to keep June company.

“My babysitters,” she thinks. “They’d be more use out there looking for my boys and leaving me alone.”

The talk awkwardly resumes, chattering about nothing significant. June bristles inwardly every time someone laughs.

“Kevin and Jessie are going through hell and they’re having a party in my living room,” June thinks. She looks around the room blandly, tuning them out, trying to keep a composed façade.

The comic book keeps eating at her.

“Where is it?” she thinks, now scanning the room for the missing book.

No one notices her fidget, the anxious little movements of growing distress. While the women gossip and fuss over their broken little bird, and the men talk around the forbidden topic of the cruelty of a world that allows two boys to vanish from their own back yard, June’s distress over the missing comic grows and everyone is oblivious to it.

“Where’s the comic?” June looks around the room.

No one noticed her speak.

June starts standing up and one of the women is on her before she makes it fully upright.

“Sit, June, sit.” She leads June back down to a sitting position. “Relax June, just sit.”

June looks around in disquiet, uncertain what to do against this well-meaning woman. “I don’t want to sit,” she thinks. “Why can’t I stand up? Why do I have to stay sitting all the time?”

Standing over her as if standing guard to make sure June remains seated, the woman’s attention is already off her and back to the conversation.

“I’m like a child to them,” June thinks. “In the room, mostly invisible, and they assume I’m oblivious to their conversations.”

She looks around the room again from her cushioned prison. Satisfied she’s staying obediently put, the woman moves away to be more involved in the conversation. She still doesn’t see the missing book. It’s digging at her nerves.

“Where is it? Where is Jessie’s comic?”

She looks at the other people anxiously, feeling the need for help. She has to find the comic. They are oblivious to her.

“Where’s the comic?” June asks again. They completely ignore her.

She asks again, louder. “Has anyone seen the comic?”

“They can’t hear me,” June thinks, looking around at the men and women eating and drinking coffee and laughing at a joke in her living room. It feels surreal. “Will I be flying next? Rushing to something or trying to escape? This feels like a dream, a God-awful bad dream. My boys are missing, scared and alone, and they sit here having a party like they don’t even know I’m here.”

She stands up, staring at them.

“Where’s the comic?” she asks more loudly.

Conversation stops and they all turn to her in stunned silence.

“Where’s the comic? Where is Jessie’s comic?”

They just look at her, confused. She stares back, looking for an answer.

A long moment passes before one of the women finally answers hesitantly.

“Uh, I saw Boyxx with it, Momxx’s boy. He was here with a couple of searchers who stopped in. I think he was reading it.”

June looks at them in stunned shock. Her face twists into a pained expression.

“He just took it? He came into my home and just took it?” Her mind has trouble wrapping around it, how this boy could come into her home and just steal Jesse’s comic.

Everyone is watching her with concern. The woman who spoke tries to defend the boy.

“I’m sure he wasn’t stealing it. He just borrowed it to read.”

June shakes her head in disbelief, her voice rising in pitch, getting very upset.

“It’s Jesse’s favourite comic, The Thing. He just bought it. Where is it? He didn’t just read it, he took it. He stole Jesse’s comic. At a time like this, Jesse and Kevin are out there, while you all sit here gossiping and stuffing your faces and drinking coffee instead of looking for him, and…and…and this kid comes into my home and steal’s Jesse’s comic.”

“June, calm down,” one of the other women tries, “it’s just a comic.”

June is stunned. It’s not just a comic. It’s Jesse’s. It’s his favourite; he was so excited about getting that comic. And it’s new. It’s Jesse’s. It’s Jesse’s and he’s going to come back any time for it. And now he’s going to come back and it’s gone. What if he doesn’t come back now? She says nothing, just looks at them.

People are talking to her, but she doesn’t hear them. She starts moving around the room, moving things, looking under and in things, her agitation growing. “Where is it? Where is Jesse’s comic? He’ll be looking for it, I have to find it.”

“June, calm down, it’s okay. We will find the comic.”

June keeps searching, ignoring them, muttering about the need to find the comic, inconsolable.

“Go get Henry,” one of the women whispers to one of the men. He hurries out and the rest sit there watching in stunned shock while June continues her search for the missing book in an agitated state they’ve never seen before. They make some attempts to get her to calm down, to sit down, and she just keeps on.

When Henry comes in, the man who went to fetch him following, he stops and looks at June with concern. Embarrassment flashes across his face and he glances quickly at the people sitting around watching June and doing nothing. His expression turns to anger.

“How could you let this happen, let her get like this?” he growls at them in a low voice.

Looking worried now, Henry hurries to June, taking her gently by the arms.

“June, Junie, it is okay. Tell me what’s wrong, we’ll fix it.”

“The Thing, It’s gone. Someone took it”

Henry is confused. “The thing? What thing? What can’t you find?”

“The Thing. The Thing. That boy, Momxx and Dadxx’s boy, Boyxx. He stole it.”

“June, what thing? I’m sure the boy didn’t steal it. Just tell me what it is and we’ll find it.”

June turns to him, frustrated and angry, in disbelief at how he just doesn’t understand.

“The Thing, Jesse’s comic book. He just bought it and now it’s gone.”

Now it clicks for Henry. “We’ll find it, Junie, okay? Calm down, come and sit. We’ll find it.”

She bristles at his attempt to get her to sit. “Sitting, I’m always sitting, stupid and useless, everyone expects me to just sit here and do nothing about finding my boys,” she thinks.

“I don’t want to sit,” she says.

“Okay, you don’t have to sit. What do you want, what do you want to do?”

“I want them to leave. I want to be left alone. I want Jesse and Kevin.”

Henry’s heart cracks, a physical pain ripping through his chest, and he looks at her. He puts his arms around her, leading her out of the living room to their bedroom.

“Come June,” he says softly. “Why don’t you get some things together and take a shower while I get rid of them. Then we’ll go out looking for our boys, you and me together.”

June nods, letting him lead her into the bedroom and leave her there. He closes the door on his way out and she leans against it, listening.

Henry returns to the living room, looking at them with a mix of apology and exhaustion.

“It’s time for you to all go home. June needs some time to herself.”

The men get up, grateful for the chance to escape the awkward situation. Two of the women look like trapped animals, giving him alarmed looks.

“She shouldn’t be alone at a time like this,” one of the women says.

“She’s not alone.” Henry says, ushering them out the door.

“That’s the problem, she’s never alone,” he thinks. “Never a moment to herself to grieve, to come to terms with what has happened.”

With the door closing, June finally ventures out of the bedroom. Henry turns to look at her in the hallway and she gives him a small thankful smile.

June has a hot shower, allowing herself the luxury for the first time, and dresses in slacks instead of the usual dress. After towel drying her hair and brushing it and tying it up, she finally comes out.

“Ready?” Henry asks.

“Ready.”

He helps her with her coat and they go out, searching for their boys.

June stops and looks around the back yard, expecting to see her boys and fighting off the grief and loss pressing in on her, trying to overwhelm her.

“Where do you want to look?” Henry asks.

“I don’t know. Where do they think they went?”

“They don’t know. The woods most likely. There were boot prints that fit the right size.”

“They don’t go very far. How far did the boot prints go?”

“Not far. To an old rotten stump. Then they lost them.”

“They just kind of quit,” he thinks, but doesn’t voice.

“We’ll search the woods then.” June looks through the trees, trying to spot that old stump.

June goes to the edge of the yard, pausing at the barrier where yard turns to woods, looking up at the bare branches of the trees.

The brooding woods are lifeless and quiet, dead looking leafless skeletal branches in an ugly tangle that look like they belong in a darker and more sinister world.

“The world of the dead.” June almost voices the words.

The clouds hang low in the sky, heavy, dark, and grey. June feels like they are suffocating this small piece of the world with a thick blanket of gloom. It was like this the day her boys vanished from the yard, and every day since.

“The woods have sucked all happiness from the world when they took my boys.”

“What was that June?” Henry asks. She said it too quietly for him to quite catch.

“I’m just wondering which way they went.”

Henry looks through the trees. “It’s impossible to tell now. They tramped in all down.”

Feeling like she is treading where she doesn’t belong, June takes that first step past that barrier. She imagines a dark feeling slithering over her as she does, filling her up on the other side, bearing down and pulling her down. She steels herself and takes another step and another, making her way through the trees; unknowingly taking the exact same path her boys did three days before.

Henry follows behind. He’s not there to look for the boys, only to help June feel like she is. He knows it’s pointless. They won’t find them because they aren’t here. Wherever they are, they are not in the woods. “They’ve been thoroughly searched,” he thinks. “We would have found something by now. Some sign they were here.”

June looks around at the ruined snow as she goes. It still lies heavy and wet here where it takes longer to melt away, crystalline flakes shrinking and melding into a dirty slush as the temperatures slowly warm. It’s warmer today than the past two, and the trampled snow is more slush than snow. Soon the snow will vanish and be replaced once again by the murky stagnant melt waters that will take a few months to dry up. She looks down at her feet, already feeling the wet soaking through her boots. “Should have worn rubber boots,” she thinks. Then she thinks about her boys. They don’t have their rubber boots. It makes her want to cry.

June pushes on, Henry following. She stops before the fallen tree. Something about it draws her.

“They were here.” She doesn’t know where the thought came from. “Mother’s instinct,” she tells herself. “I’ve heard of that before. I’ve never really believed in it.”

She looks up, wondering why the woods are so quiet. Where are the squirrels? The birds? There isn’t a single chirp or chirrup.

“It’s like they know something is wrong.”

She places her hands on the fallen tree to steady herself as she carefully steps over it. She feels the sponginess of the once sturdy tree. She sees a hollowed out place beneath the tree. “That would fit a boy lying under it,” she thinks. “Hiding?” There are digging marks on the ground and in the soft rotting wood of the tree. Some animal, she decides.

She moves on, deeper into the woods. Behind her, Henry steps over the fallen tree. “The boys would have had to almost climb over it,” he thinks.

June sees an old tree stump ahead. She walks to it, stopping to examine it.

It is the rotting remnant of a once proud older fallen tree that has long ago rotted to dirt and been consumed by the insects and plants of the woods. The stump remains, standing stubbornly and defiant beyond the other fallen tree now lying discarded and tangled in the woods.

The stump feels oddly threatening to her. Sharp splinters and points of shattered wood stick up as though waiting to impale any foolish boy who tries to climb it and falls. The image comes to her, uninvited, of a boy climbing the stump. She can’t tell who he is. He clambers up, standing on top of the stump to get a higher vantage point, surveying the woods around. His foot slips, he tries to correct and get purchase. It’s too late. He falls. He doesn’t cry out, but she can feel his surprised shock although she can’t see his face. He hits the stump awkwardly, his ribs catching on the two higher points sticking up jaggedly. His weight and the force of his fall pull him down. He slides down, those protruding pieces piercing him like a pig on a spit. Surprisingly little blood comes from the impalement. He coughs. He tries to catch his breath and coughs again, coughing out little spatters of blood. Crimson oozes down the stump like sap turned to blood.

June feels cold. She pulls her coat tighter, puts her hands to her mouth. Nausea washes up through her and she is sure she’s going to vomit. It doesn’t come.

“No,” she whimpers almost silently, “it’s not them. It’s not Jesse or Kevin. It’s not their clothes.”

She looks at the stump again. It feels strangely empty without the body that was never there. Its wood is soft and crumbly with rot, the sharp jagged edges incapable of impaling anything. If a boy did fall on it now, those points would be pushed down like a stiff sponge.

“The stump is impotent,” she thinks. She can’t shake the horrible chill of the image of the other boy, not her boy, but someone’s.

She is startled by a touch.

“June, are you alright?” Henry is looking at her, worried.

June looks at the sad impotent crumbling stump again, then at Henry.

“The stump,” she pauses, trying to sort out the image from what is real, “it’s the kind of thing that would draw boys, isn’t it? I think they would have wanted to, I don’t know, check it out? I think they were here.”

Still worried over June’s strange behaviour of late, Henry looks at the stump. He has to agree, it’s the kind of wicked looking thing that would have attracted his interest as a kid.

“June, I think you’re right. The boys would have come here.”

They both look around at the ground surrounding the stump. There are footprints in the snow, but there is no way of knowing. So many feet of all sizes have tromped through these woods looking for the boy, it’s impossible to know now if any belong to Kevin and Jesse.

June looks at Henry.

“I’m tired. I don’t think I can do this.”

Henry nods. “That’s okay. We can look again. Lots of people are out looking. We’ll find them June, we’ll find them.”

They return to the house, and just remove their coats and boots when the doorbell rings. They exchange looks that are a mix of fear and hope. Henry answers the door.

Momxx is at the door. She hesitates before taking that shy step in, looking guilty.

“I’m sorry Henry, June.” She holds out the comic book, The Thing, its cover all orange and green with The Thing battling a many armed green monster. The comic is a little rumpled, the corner bent. “He didn’t mean anything by it. Boyxx was just bored and it was just sitting there. He wasn’t stealing it or anything. He just meant to read it.” She hesitates, looking down, looking shamed. “I didn’t think it would hurt any if he just borrowed it. He was going to bring it back. I mean, it’s not like-.” She stops, realizing her mistake. It’s not like the boys need it or anything, since they’re missing and not around to miss it.

“I’m sorry.” She awkwardly thrusts the comic book out for Henry to take. He takes it and she turns quickly, scurrying out the door and away from the house.