HE WAS TWELVE the first time he ran away. It wasn’t a home – which carried an inference he couldn’t yet begin to fathom. It was a house – sitting atop a hill in a neighborhood, population 6,000, thereabouts. A wide dirt road, ripe with rocks and rubble, wound through the neighborhood. This was not the only road, but it was a main boulevard of sorts, inasmuch as it began, like a tributary, branching from the highway a few miles distant, bending and wending, connecting single-lane side streets, some with no discernable sign or name, until the dirt, and the rocks, and the rubble, ended suddenly at a house. It was from this house that Adrian ran. No one chased after, but there was something chasing him. The door, with a hydraulic hinge that slowly pumped the metal closed, always gave out the last foot causing the door to slam. Adrian grasped the frame before it could do so, easing the final few inches. That was as long as he dared to pause, but the precaution was necessary. Not all lessons were learned hard; just most of them. He raced down the steps and across the dirt drive, his small feet kicking up swirls of dry dust that eddied in the air behind his flight, and then settled back as though undisturbed for ages. His father’s van, a dusky tan Toyota, a large dent in the passenger side, rested equally unmoved, the wheels hot from the sun, but the engine long cold. Adrian felt like he could relate. It was past time to go; to act. His father, a man of middling years and piddling character, had finally fallen asleep. Passed out, a bottle of brown fastened in the crook of a fleshy arm. For all his soddenness, the man was strong, and Adrian had a spurious and wicked appreciation for the beating he had taken earlier, his backside still smarted fiercely, but would serve as fuel for his feet. He had no intention of sitting until he was far away. And maybe not even then. Forty-some miles away, a woman waited. She didn’t know she was waiting, at least not for him. His grandmother, who had lost her husband a couple years back due to his own ill-spent life, now lived alone. She had thrown Adrian’s father out shortly after the funeral, for “following a certain pair of footsteps,” as she had shouted, the only time Adrian could recall her raising her voice. His father had dared to lift a hand then, as though puerile enough to strike at his own mother, and when she neither looked away nor retreated, his arm fell limply back to his side. Far from defeated, however, his father had stalked the house like a villain, securing in one cradled arm whatever perceived prizes he could plunder, vice-grabbed Adrian’s shoulder with the other, and fled the house. Implorations fell on drunken-deaf ears, preached from the pulpit of her front porch, to leave the boy behind, but Adrian was crudely dragged along, little more than a trinket in the appropriated treasure trove in his father’s arms. That was then, indistinction of time. In the now, away from backroads, and dirt roads, and truck roads, his grandmother, whom Adrian had seen too infrequently these past years, lived simply and quietly, tending her tiny home like a garden. She kept her clogs positioned neatly on a straw mat by the front door, the gingham curtains tied back where she would stand each morning and look for the sun, and a handmade afghan folded neatly on the sofa where she now slept. As much as she could, on Adrian’s visits, she filled her kitchen with kindness, and the smell of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies. She would whisper words of reassurance to her grandson, encouraging him to remain steadfast. And she reproached his father, as she was able, when he stuck around long enough, her words, or his guilt, often shaming him in those moments into a retreat, these visits little more than an excuse to leave the son behind and abscond into his private darkness. No one stopped Adrian at the boulders, two chunks of immovable gray which stood as guardians on opposites sides of the drive. They had been there long before his father’s arrival and demarcated the knowable edge of the property. For certain, the land extended acres in the other direction, disappearing into the densely populated forest where no one lived between there and the Delaware. But this way, past these monolithic stone guardians, was the only way to come, or to leave. While Adrian’s destination was preeminent, he had managed little in the way of supplies. It wasn’t quite like one of those cartoons, with the stick and the handkerchief, and the tight wad of hastily assembled food-stuffs. But it was pretty damn close. Adrian had appropriated a few biscuits, hardened from sitting overnight on the counter, a block of half-eaten cheese, a rasher of bacon, and a gas station box of chocolate-covered raisins he had found in a desk drawer. Adrian did not like raisins. With nowhere to store extra apparel, Adrian hadn’t considering packing clothes. He couldn’t well drag a suitcase behind him, so settled for a nondescript, gray sweatshirt he had managed to grab on his way out, yanking the garment free from a peg near the door where he had pre-emptively filled and hung a canteen, tying the sleeves around his waist and draping the other about his neck. The weather wasn’t warm, the night he knew would be cool, but neither necessitated layering just yet. The goal wasn’t to grab everything; the goal was to get away. Get away quick, get away clean. After that, he reckoned, things had to get easier. A scamp, a stowaway, a scavenger – he would become what he needed to survive. A savage. There was no moment of pause, of postulation, Adrian breached the boulders; there was no nostalgia as he crossed the threshold of his father’s property into the neighborhood. He had come this way before, never with so much intent, but the route was familiar. And yet, he couldn’t help feel sorrow, there was something familiar, yet unrecognizable he was leaving behind. Many years later he would reflect on that moment, wisdom giving wings to the feeling of loss. It was youth. Three days. That was his estimate. His little legs were full of haste, desperation, fire. Forty miles on foot was serious ground to cover, but this was not a leisurely stroll. His plan was to follow the course of the interstate, but from a distance, far enough removed from the road so as not to be remarked, and close enough to follow its contour. From the highway, he knew which exit to take, and which two turns to wind onto his grandmother’s street. He would pause at sundown, taking refuge where he could. Adrian had spent enough time over too many nights in the wilderness, seeking shelter, sleeping under branch or bough. The coldness of the weather was an element he understood. The coldness in his father’s calloused hands was illogical. He could endure the time, the distance, the untrodden trail ahead; he would withstand evening fall, the dying light, the rise of shadows and specters. The unknown held no fright for him. It was the world he knew which was horrifying. The first hour was the easiest. Once he had cleared the neighborhood, dust and debris obfuscating his passage, it was onto the highway, which, this far north, was nothing more than a single lane in each direction. Somehow, going south felt like going downhill, so it made his step quicker, his burden lighter. There were homes here; not roadside, but set back into wide, sparse fields with long, curved driveways. There were 2 cars in some, a dog barking in the distance, and occasionally he could spot the blue-walled enclosure of an above-ground pool, hear shrieks of laughter. He should have felt comfort – the domestication, the knowing proximity of people should he require it, the alien sound of delight. But he had a sudden urge to shout at them, curse them, denounce their quaint and spurious homesteads. To live this close, the length of a country mile, and not one person had lifted a hand in his defense, not one raised outcry, not one retaliatory rebellion marching to his aid. They lived safe and secure, the highway like a wide, frothing river, isolating them, separating them from barbarians on the other side. Abruptly, his legs gave out, the encumbrance of his pack and the welts on his ass, nothing, compared to the weight of his despair and the wounds on his spirit. He eye-balled passing cars, almost eager for someone to stop, to take him back. He had been a fool to think of escape. In the distance, what Adrian recognized as a tan van, speeding in his direction, fomented such a surge of dismay, that he was tempted to lay down in the street. The van passed without slowing, and from his vantage Adrian could see no dent in the door, hear no distinct whine in the engine. Four passengers, he could tell, the vehicle accelerating away in the other direction, a father ignorant of the chaos almost caused, a family blissfully unaware of narrowly avoided roadkill carnage. Things remained calm and smooth for the remainder of the day. Adrian moved along steadily, nibbling at food as he went. Small morsels had become the mainstay of his diet. Leftovers were a feast. As the sun reached its zenith, the sky crystalline, but for a passing cloud across the sun, Adrian couldn’t help but think it looked like a fried egg. It only served to remind him of hunger. Adrian tried to look ahead, beyond the next bend, a horizon illuminated with possibility, but his memories were rancid, and his spirit flayed. He would have to look elsewhere for hope. He found salvation in Elvis. The walkman had been salvaged from the streetside dump in the neighborhood. The owner hadn’t even bothered to throw the cassette player in the trash, rather likely just hurled the broken equipment from the front porch in the direction of the road. It had landed close enough to the street to be considered fair game, and when Adrian scooped it up, other than a few dings and dents, he discovered the unit intact. His grandmother had once told him – over mixing a batch of dough – that she had gone to see Elvis when she was younger. The whirl of the beater stilled, as though only in silence could she tell her tale. She stood a little straighter, and tousled the gray ends of her hair with a finger. For a moment, his grandmother’s eyes blazed, and suddenly he too could see it – the swaying crowd and fervent fans, hear it even – the energy, electricity that was Elvis and his guitar, lighting up the stage like chain lightning. Then the oven timer beeped, the reverie broken, and there was no stage, and no music, and no Elvis – just his grandmother’s bent back as she leaned into the heat and withdrew a steely sheet-pan and the air smelled of chocolate chip cookies. As Adrian walked, the scents were of the earth, of tall grass, the peatiness of the ground, and in the distance, the remembered smell of stone and tar and pavement, the oily smirk of trucks on the interstate. He slid a tape into the player, snapping the lid shut, and with a finger-press, Elvis sprang to life again. Music provided a renewed vigor, helped hasten his journey on for a while, his smooth voice a reassurance. All Shook Up, turned into Hound Dog, into Don’t Be Cruel, the last to which Adrian sang along chummily, the base and beats turning the tune into a satire rather than a lament. The miles added up as the melodies waxed on, and Adrian’s heart felt lighter, even as dusk approached. He powered down the device. Neither Elvis nor he would last forever, and Adrian knew he needed to preserve both. He had brought nothing to make a fire. He had carried no bedroll or blanket, no lantern or light. And while a fire would surely provide warmth, intimidate nocturnal creatures, the effort to gather requisite materials would detract from time he needed for shelter. His goal was not to linger, but to spend as little time possible immobile. The crude shelter he intended to construct would still require a few hours, what little sun remained was precious. Adrian began by scouting for an area in which to bed. There were no rocky outcroppings, no particularly advantageous windbreaks. He was at liberty to edge closer to the roadway, where a quick search didn’t highlight any game trails. With ample debris on the ground, and enough cover provided overhead by think, interlocking branches, one place here was as good as another. Two straight sticks, roughly his own height, and a longer one by twice, were easy to find. He used the butt of one to carve a small hole in the ground, the soil was dry and dense, so at best he managed a notch. He repeated the process, the second shoulder-width apart. Then he set the two semi-identical sticks into each indentation, crossing the branches so that they intersected hip-high. With no lashings to hold the structure in place, Adrian removed the gray sweatshirt from his waist, using the sleeves as rope, and binding the branches together. The bulk of fabric hung down, covering the aperture and forming the perfect door. The longer limb, the ridge-pole, he had read somewhere, rested one end atop the X and the other stretched to the ground. With the rough frame complete, Adrian scanned and selected other sticks, the ribs, he would use to form walls on either side, touching the top of the ridge-pole and angled away. Boughs of pine, thick with sprigs and twigs and needles, were plentiful, and these Adrian laid across the ribs of the structure, like cross-pieces. And now the debris. Scooping and scraping, he collected what he could, leaves and pine needles, small branches, he gathered everything up in great bundles and hurled through the air, heaped it all atop his shelter. When he was done, sweating slightly, the sun set and the air cool, sending a rippling chill across his body. It wasn’t his best work, but the hour was late. The structure would stand, not against the test of time, but surely for a night. Piled leaves would provide bedding, and body heat would warm the interior. What it lacked in finesse, it would make up for in solace. The small clearing resembled an earthen mound, perfectly blending into the environment, indistinguishable in the moon-lit landscape. He drew aside the door-flap and crawled inside. Adrian disappeared from the world, becoming one with the natural surroundings. When he woke, pale light filtered through the rough roof of the enclosure, a sure sight that dawn had come, and he had overslept. Despite the conditions and the close confines of his quarters, Adrian felt rested. He retrieved his sweatshirt, packed his few things, and set off. The whoosh of vehicles from the roadway a small interruption in the sounds of whirring critters, the cawing cries of birds, even the whining howl of what Adrian interpreted as a fox. Life continues, he thought, no matter the passage of cars, of time, of himself just moving through. How transient, we humans, when the natural world seeks to settle into a cozy state of permanence, spectacular to behold, even participate for a time, but otherwise un-regarded. How he longed for a home. In that moment, more than memories, the sting of hard hands, even the despair of loneliness, what Adrian suffered from most was the melancholy of dissociation, that what he did and who he was didn’t matter. The strings on him had been cut and he was left to free-float into a world that was harsh and unjust and unforgiving. What he hated his father for the most, was not the drunkenness, the baseless beatings, the childhood abandonment. It was that he had taught Adrian how to hate. He pushed start on the cassette player, a brief pause, and then music sprang back to life, the blessed vocals of Elvis a welcome relief. Adrian settled his satchel, settled his feet, and set off. It wasn’t but a minute into the song, however, before his mood soured once again, the lyrics, Return to Sender, despite the upbeat melody, hitting home in a way that was too untimely, too cruel, too ominous. This morning, he was too sensitive by far, but the voice offered reassurance, a resonance, better than silence. After that, the day was uneventful. Periods of time would pass, nothing but nature to guide him, and at others, the nurturing sounds from his walkman. He ate from his dwindling food supply, refilled his canteen on a secret mission stealth run at a gas station water fountain, and even stopped at one point to give his weary legs a rest. After that, Adrian acquired a stout stick, slashing at underbrush as he went, imagination finding fiends in the weeds. He thought often of his grandmother, the grand reception she would provide. Granted, she was unaware of Adrian’s imminent arrival, but habitually he had heard her plead for guardianship. He would make his bed, an actual bed, and eat cookies after dinner. Or before lunch. He would play in a yard with toys, and local kids, where the danger was pretend and the heroes were real. There was a sidewalk in his grandmother’s neighborhood, and he thought learning to ride a bike would be a fine thing. Not that he had anything against walking, his feet had served him well all his life. But maybe he was starting to feel a little tired. He wondered if the characters in his books ever felt lonely. A series of large, fenced fields appeared, a relief from the foliage he had been cutting through. The route had never been hilly, but here, further south, the ground flattened out, the landscape dotted by small towns, clusters of main streets and developments, residential plots and commercial enterprise. Here, he could have been a boy from anywhere. A boy from somewhere. The fields he recognized, not for the dark red barn and matching silo, the green hulking tractor in the drive, or the sweeping pasture, filled with grazing cattle, which gently sloped from here toward the highway. And it wasn’t even the relative proximity which signified he was getting closer to his destination. It was the single large white oak, visible from his vantage, which had grown aside the road, now a single-lane track slowed to 35 as it wound through a series of sharp S-turns. He knew the tree by its purple-orange color, a variegated blend which matched exactly the bruise on his arm. He knew the tree, because that’s where they had crashed. It was late one evening, returning from a visit to his grandmother’s, and after imploring his father to stay, to at least spend the night, to sleep off his condition, he had belligerently insisted she stop meddling, incessantly nagging, quit being a buzzkill bitch. He shoved Adrian out the door in front of him, sagely preventing Adrian from being snatched from behind, and more leaning on the son than the son the father, ushered Adrian into the tan van. Part of her lawn at the bottom of the drive still bore tire treads from where the vehicle had peeled out, growing grass over two seasons doing little to obfuscate the scar. Adrian, too tired to navigate, too worn out to care, had climbed into the back, only premonition influenced him to seek safety on the floor. He could feel the automobile rocking, side to side, an ocean tide, and he as helpless in either current. His bodyweight shifted as the van drifted from one side of the road to the other, then corrected abruptly, jerking him back, a feeling of weightlessness overtook him. The sound of screeching wheels was eclipsed by the searing shred of metal. And then all was still. Hot tire and burnt rubber gagged his nostrils. And when he righted himself, the stench of whisky-vomit overpowered everything else. His father was slumped against the wheel, and for a sickening moment, Adrian thought the man was dead. It had been this tree they had crashed into, the stout trunk the only thing that had likely kept the van from rolling. Driving far too fast around the S-curves, his father had swerved, losing control of the vehicle, and they had slammed into the oak, fortunately not from the front, but on the side, where the passenger door was caved. Through some saving grace, Adrian had intuitively chosen not to ride in the front. That decision had likely saved him. But not from what he had to do next. Dragging, pulling, twisting – not unlike how his father had gotten that recliner up the porch stairs – Adrian moved his father from the driver seat to the back, unceremoniously dumping the unconscious body where he lay. When finished, he was caked in puke, the smell like swamp gas, bog vile. From there, and not for the last time, Adrian drove back to the house. Seeing that tree again now, he offered a brief prayer. He wasn’t sure who was listening. These days, it seemed, the answer was no one. Night was encroaching, and rather than rest, Adrian was overtaken by a fervent desire to reach his destination. Haunted by a remembrance of the near-death experience, drove him, a rancher desperately seeking the range. One more night, he reassured himself. He was crossing yet another field, this one barren, and far less sinister. Dark, fuzzy fingers from distant towering pines stretched across the ground, reaching out, overtaking the final vestige of day. In that spot, on that field, the grasping reach of the tree tops ended, a crude demarcation, where shadows met the sun. Adrian lay down, balling up the sweatshirt to use for a pillow. He was restless, exposed. There were no lights in the field, no looming structures to provide context of depth or dimension. The land, like the sky, faded to black, a sphere of infinite possibility. Adrian had an unnerving sensation that he was having an out-of-body experience, floating inside an orb, destined to drift forever. Desperately, he grasped for his cassette player, fumbling for the play button. Only then did he fall swiftly asleep, the soothing sounds of side 2 swaddling him like a lullaby. Gray dawn greeted him. Not kindly. The ground was damp, his clothes more so. He’d had no pile of leaves to lay atop, no generated body heat to keep him warm. He had slept where he lay, too defeated to continue, although he had, to his credit, pushed on past normal endurance. His back was achy, head as stuffed full of cotton as his sweatshirt, and food all but gone. It had been little enough to start with, and he had eaten sparingly, but the result left him weakened, depleted of physical energy and mental fortitude. He pushed on through perseverance. A rising mist emanated from the earth, an eerie and ephemeral shroud, through which gray ghosts materialized and mobilized. Adrian gave a quick sharp shout, as much to prove he was still among the living, as to startle whatever lurked in the fugue. The heads of the herds looked up, simply deer after all, and not sullen specters. No need to invent more monsters, he rebuked himself, when the world had already created plenty. It was simply a correlation of hours and miles at this point, and with no reason to linger, and hollow on silent prayers, Adrian began to walk. His shoes, which he had slept it, made soft sucking sounds as they pulled at the sludgy marsh of the field. Feet were already blistered from tens of thousands of steps. His back was clammy, the shirt tight and clingy, jeans were wet, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before he’d start chafing, especially where his backside was still raw. This morning, even his soul felt soggy. An hour later, the sun had crested, slow to start, but coming on with a fever. The fog evaporated, and clothes blissfully dried, when Adrian saw the exit sign. Suddenly he didn’t care who saw him, didn’t care about the satchel slapping his back, the broken blisters on his feet. He had, he could admit now, experienced poignant moments of insecurity. With naught but a starlit sky for a woven roof, he had imagined himself windswept into the atmosphere like the ashes of so many decomposing things, the prospect of endlessness looming before him, Adrian had even felt despair. Buoyed, stamina an impermanence he would address later under his grandmother’s tender ministrations, Adrian raced on, recklessly, expurgating doubt with each joyful bound. The exit sign was a jade green messiah, and Adrian was of a mind to kneel before it and weep. He knew which turns to make from here, the culmination of the journey nigh. He could almost taste the chocolate-chip infused saccharine of success. The sun rose before him as he came from the East. Shadows were still long on the ground, his own included, and he laughed as he sped on, attempting to catch them. He felt he could race the daylight if he must. The blacktop was broken in places, the small side street saw little in the way of traffic, but was otherwise paved and patched. And there, on a solitary side of the roadway, with grass growing thick between each concrete slab, a sidewalk. There was no debris along the curb, no trash out front. Wildflowers blossomed in the small span between the sidewalk and the street, and there were lawns – not gravel or dirt – but real lawns, with grass and manicured shrubs, where the stones were decorative hardscape and structured walls, not barriers to keep animals out, or blockades to keep small boys in. The neighborhood was quiet, most driveways empty. It was the end of summer, transitioning into fall, but it was a working day. Children Adrian’s age would be in camp, playing organized games with other kids, learning how to swim, making craft projects to bring home for moms, and eating sandwiches at picnic tables while teasing the girls. Adrian was slick with sweat, hands and feet and back sore. His hair, dark and thick, was a tangle, dirt grimed his face and concentrated like ooze under his fingernails. He had traveled further in the past three days than most others would in a lifetime. What matter then, the distance of a few more homes, after how far he had come. But he paused. Stopped still on the sidewalk, where the grass grew tall and the shadows lay long. And his eyes, blue-gray which could change with the weather, grew wide as saucers, and he stared, and waited, and wondered. Four doors down on the right, the driveway was not empty. It was quite full, actually, and while not a long strip of pavement, you couldn’t have fit even a kid’s bike in the gap between each vehicle. There were lights whirling and flashing, blue and red, which melted together into a purple haze. Parked behind the ambulance, bumper to bumper, the unmistakable tan van with the caved-in door. There was a feeling like thunder in his chest, but when he opened his mouth to scream, there was no noise, the percussion of its threnody left to break on the inside. There were, he understood in that exact moment, very few things which produced no sound – the sun going down, a broken promise, an unanswered prayer, the spirit of a 12-year old boy dying. The ride back to his father’s house was quiet. Without prompting, Adrian had climbed into the passenger side, the door wailing in protest as he pulled it shut after. He almost willed for a crash to happen. There had been no reason to go into her home. There was nothing for him – no cuddles, no cookies, no comforts. Her heart gave out, was what the officer told him. Funny, Adrian thought, how they were capable of seeing into his grandmother, through flesh and bone, able to determine the condition of her heart. Yet here he was before them – wild, grungy, bruised, beaten – and they were blind. They would laugh later, over a hot coffee, swapping stories about the backyard antics of boys. The white oak was coming, but the distance indeterminable. Everything moved in slow motion. Adrian slipped the headphones to the walkman over his ears and pressed the start button. Devil in Disguise began to play, the smooth voice of the vocals giving the song verve, reveling in the deception. Then the music hushed, fading to nothing, and the stop button clicked as the batteries died. Adrian kept the headphones on, listening until he could no longer hear Elvis. Only the redundant and rhythmic humming of the van tires rotating on the pavement. Adrian focused straight ahead, the highway like an arrow. The sun burned hot and hazy, a wide expanse of cloudless chalk. His eyes blurred as he stared, unblinking, at the horizon, through tears which formed but refused to fall. Gray and sky blending together, like leaky paint on a canvas, one long and lonely stretch of eternal blue. — PHILLIP DONCHEVICH
Phillip Donchevich has dedicated over 30 years to the craft of writing. He lives in Clinton Township, New Jersey, and is currently working with an editor on his debut novel, Faire Play, which follows a son navigating the unknown landscape of a Renaissance Faire while haunted by memories of his fractured relationship with his dying father.