Chapter 5: The Jamboree

Salem Khalidi learned as a child that he would never be a woodsman. He had joined the Boy Scouts at his father’s command when he was 11, and had enjoyed the group well enough until the troop leaders insisted they take the meetings outside. Overnight. For several days. And nights. Days and nights on end.

They had called this outing a “Jamboree,” a word that sounded joyful, carefree. Khalidi had conjured up images of minstrels and circuses with dancing bears and cotton candy. But this Jamboree was not at all merry. It was just a bunch of Scouts, most of them older and stupider and meaner than he, seemingly competing to merit a badge proclaiming themselves stupidest and meanest of all. It had rained relentlessly all week, and the drab canvas tents dripped like the insides of a limestone cave. The stupid, mean boys tried to make campfires by holding the flame of a Bic lighter to the aerosol spray of a Lysol disinfectant can, creating do-it-yourself flamethrowers that seemed to young Salem like bombs waiting to explode in their hands. It was like Lord of the Flies. With pyrotechnics.

Khalidi secretly prayed that one of the cans would explode, that the sausage fingers a particularly stupid and mean boy named Stonewall Jackman had used to thump him on the back of the head would be charred in a fiery aerosol blast. Khalidi instantly regretted it, fearing the mere existence of his misguided prayer might inject evil into the universe. He closed his eyes to amend his previous divine wish, suggesting instead that any wounds Stonewall received would be instantly disinfected with Lysol backwash.  

Regrettably, neither prayer was granted. 

He had huddled shivering in his leaky tent for days. He vowed, on the third day of eating canned tuna and soggy crackers, that he would devote the rest of his life to scouting the great indoors. Yet here he was, heading into the woods, alone, but for the blinking fireflies, in the middle of the night.

Khalidi drove past the BooBu Patch, wishing again that he had the nerve to simply go inside, although he imagined the patrons as grown up versions of those pyroscouts, laughing and jeering and more than willing to burn it all down. He drove past the old strip mall, wondering briefly why the lights were still on at the Bedford Bee. He found the unmarked road – it was more like an overgrown path in the darkness – and eased as far as he dared. This time he did see, if not heed, the “No TrespIssing sign. It was something a kid like Stonewall Jackman would do, he thought, and rolled his eyes.

He stepped out of the car and was 11 years old again, immediately overtaken by sounds he did not understand and could not identify. He longed for the great indoors. Or his apartment, the mediocre indoors.

The woods, even in the dead of night, seemed to speak to him, at him. They chirped and cheeped and trilled and croaked and creaked. Khalidi realized he did not know the difference between a chirp and a cheep or a croak and a creak. He took a good long look at himself. Figuratively, anyway, because he could not even see his bare knees quaking in the darkness.

Perhaps he should have prepared a little better for this, he thought. He was in short pants, with expensive Italian loafers and a cashmere sweater his mother had sent him last winter. He was holding one of Rapier’s burner phones in his right hand, and in the left a $300 Shun Nakiri knife, his prized blade of choice for slicing and dicing vegetables, that he had grabbed in the kitchen on the way out. What he planned to do with that he did not know. But Shun had never let him down. At least not before his mother washed his Santuko in the dishwasher.

He clicked the flashlight app on and held the burner phone in front of him. Better than the darkness but no less scary now that he could see it.

“Quiet,” he told himself. “Quiet,” but every step sounded like an earthquake, or a bear call. He wished, for just a moment, that he had a Bic lighter and a Lysol can.

*****

Hubie Flynn had tied broken branches to both legs with honeysuckle vines, like splints. He had become quite adept with vines since he had landed on them. He could not walk, exactly, but he could shuffle for brief periods, like Frankenstein, if Frankenstein had branches tied to his legs. He heard the crunching before he saw the light.

“Stop! Who goes there?” he said, realizing too late how stupid that sounds in real life. “I mean, who’s out there?”

Khalidi did not know how to respond. He did not know who this man was, or why he was at the bottom of a ravine, or whether he had been struck by the falling cargo van that had plummeted from above. 

He was in some ways surprised – both relieved and frightened – that the man was still there at all. But he did not know if it was truly a good thing or not. The cheeping and chirping had stopped. It was dead quiet. He had heard the man talk, but could not tell where he was in the dark and the brambles. Khalidi called out tentatively.

“Hallo? Is somebody down here? Hallo?”

He clutched his Shun, which was ideal for dicing onions but untested on human flesh. He wondered what he had been thinking. What he was doing, and it dawned on him that the stranger might actually be glad he was here, might see him as a savior, as long as he didn’t realize that he was the one who dropped a vehicle on him, vomited and ran away like a coward.

But there was no way he could know that.

“Hallo?” Khalidi said again. “Are you hurt?”

The man in the brambles spoke. Khalidi almost jumped out of his skin.

“You’re the guy that puked on me,” the voice said.

“Damn,” Khalidi said under his breath.

“What? What do you mean? Puked on you? That… what … I don’t … that’s crazy talk,” he stumbled. “I, ah, I heard you calling for help.”

“You dropped a van on me, and then you puked on me. Like the van wasn’t enough,” Hubie Flynn said. 

“No. What?” Khalidi. “You’ve got the wrong guy. I was just happening by and … and heard you.”

“I wasn’t making any noise," Hubie said. “You’re the guy that barfed on me. I know it’s you.”

“What? No. You’ve got the wrong guy. I’m just trying to help.”

“You’re Barf Man,” I saw you,” Hubie said. “I was looking right up at you when you pushed that van over the edge. I called for help and you yacked all over me and then you ran away.

“I’ve been down here ever since, legs broken, covered in puke, fighting off barf-eating bugs, and now you come back. Why?”

“Me?” Khalidi said. “No, you must be …”

“Why are you holding that knife?” Hubie said. “You’re working for Hogg, aren’t you.”

It was a statement, not a question.

“Hog?” Khalidi said. “What hog?”

Khalidi was confused, but he could see Hubie now, stretched beside the crumpled van, legs held stiff by tree limbs wrapped with coils of honeysuckle vines. His pale face shone in the moonlight, almost peaceful. Or was it almost dead.

“Are you … are you OK?” he said.

“Are you going to kill me?” Hubie asked. “Or are you going to help me?”

Khalidi thought for a moment. It was not in him to harm this or any other human, with the possible exception of Stonewall Jackman. He certainly would not harm anyone with his precious kitchen knife. Khalidi got queasy slicing chicken breast with that knife, and not just because it was an improper use for a Nakiri. He’d never be able to raise it against this beleaguered young man.

“Or are you going to puke on me again?”

Maybe he could kill this guy, Khalidi considered. But no. He could not. He dropped the knife on the forest floor and ran to the young man.

“I didn’t know you were down here,” he said. “At least not until I, you know, vomited on you.”

What came next rolled out breathlessly, in no particular order.

“Who is Hogg? I didn’t know. I couldn’t sleep I was so worried. Did I break your legs? Sorry about the vomit. I really don’t know Hogg. How did you get here? Did this Hogg do it? Is it a real hog or person Hogg? What am I going to do?

“I think…” Hubie began. “You’re gonna help me.”

Khalidi took a breath. He looked at Hubie and nodded.

“Let’s get you out of here,” he said.