Pine Needles by Juan at Inkitt

Pine Needles

Linus was climbing the lonely mesquite tree next to the wooden fence. He had scraped his palms and the insides of his thighs trying to push himself up higher. There was a small branch, more of a twig, he never took his eyes off as he climbed. He had never been able to reach it. But Micah had. Linus would never forget the day it happened. Micah was looking down at Linus from a bough that looked to be impossibly high. He was waving down at him with a huge smile on his face, brimming with pride. That memory was the only thing occupying his mind as he shambled farther along the branch.

Yet, from inside the house, Linus heard yelling. It was a deep, resonant boom that Linus knew had to have rattled the house. Then a sharp scream followed suit that pierced Linus’ ears. That was Micah’s voice. Linus’ heart began to pound. He perched himself on one of the mesquite’s leaning branches and watched the house.

Micah flew outside from the back door and through the yard. He was crying and each stride was fear-stricken. Behind him was a man with anger in his eyes. He was much larger and more powerful than Micah, but he was slower too. The young boy outran him, being pushed on by the thought of being caught and violently pulled back into the house by the man. He sprinted straight for the unpainted fence, to a spot just under one of the mesquite’s low branches, atop which his little brother watched.

Micah didn’t waste a second. He crouched in front of the fence, pushed a single loose plank to the side, and slid through the gap. He dove onto the dirt on the other side, turned, and looked at the raw wood of the fence shake as the man pounded against it. He could see the man’s silhouette through the gaps between each plank, large and looming and seething with rage. The shadow screamed at him to come back into the yard that instant or else.

Micah got onto his feet and backed away slowly as the fence shook with growing ferocity. Linus jumped from the mesquite and landed next to him. Together they looked on as the man cursed at them both and promised severe punishment.

“Fuck you!” Micah turned and ran into the woods behind him, his little brother following behind him, sticking his middle finger to the man. The further they delved, the more trees they passed, the quieter the screams became, and the more the echoes dulled until eventually they stopped in a clearing and heard nothing at all.

Silence and stillness had greeted the two.

They stood in the clearing amidst the pines and hardwood, brown clusters of dried pine needles under their feet. They spent a moment catching their breath until Linus spoke up.

“What happened?”

Micah was still panting and gasping for air in bursts. “I didn’t…do anything…I swear.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well…I might have dropped the plate of food Mom made for us. But it was an accident.”

“Why didn’t you just eat it? He wouldn’t have been mad if you just ate it.”

“But I hate meatloaf. I keep telling Mom that I hate meatloaf but she never listens. And he wouldn’t let me come outside until my plate was clear.”

“Why’d you do that? Now he’s just gonna be even madder when we have to go back.”

“Well…we don’t have to go back. We could just go find somewhere else to live.”

Linus looked around them. They were surrounded by trees, their branches rendered barren and skeletal and the loblolly pines stretching high and looking to scrape the very skies. The mess of undergrowth rose to their waists, the thicket having left their legs scratched and cut, and it looked to only grow denser deeper into the forest.

“But there’s nowhere to go. And it’ll get dark soon. We should go back.”

“No, it’s okay. I remember one time I went out a little farther than this and found an abandoned shack. We could live there.”

Linus stared blankly and thought for a moment. “When did you go out that far?”

“When I stayed home from school one day. I got bored.”

“How’d you found your way back home?”

“I left marks on trees.” Micah reached into his pocket and took out a rusty pocket knife. “With this.”

“Where’d you get that?”

“Found it out here. The marks should still be on the trees, but just in case.” He exposed the blade and, holding the knife in a reverse grip, etched an ‘x’ into the bark of a nearby tree. “Come on, I’m pretty sure it’s this way.” He walked on into the forest.

Linus, after a moment’s hesitation, followed suit.

The two ventured on, Micah turning his head and looking at the trees they passed for an etching similar to the one he made before. His little brother kept pace behind him, staring at his older brother’s back for the most part, trying not to think about how deep they were in the woods by that point.

“Are there bears out here?” Linus asked his brother.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen any.”

“Don’t they use their claws to scratch on trees like you did with your knife?”

Micah thought for a moment. “Yeah, I think Dad told me about that once.”

“Well, what if we see a tree with bear markings on it and think it’s from your knife and we see a bear.”

“That won’t happen,” Micah retorted confidently. “Bears can’t do an ‘x’ like I can since they have three claws on each paw.”

“Oh. Okay.” Linus hocked a lump of phlegm from the back of his throat onto the ground. “Well, how about coyotes? Don’t we hear those all the time?”

“Yeah. We do.” Micah went silent.

“Aren’t they meat eaters?”

Micah stopped walking and turned to face his brother. “Don’t worry Linus, they only come out at night. That and they don’t come near people.”

“Are you sure?”

“Dead sure. And if we do see any, I’ll use my knife to scare ’em off.”

Linus looked at his feet. “Okay.”

“Alright then, let’s get on.”

“Alright.”

They went on.

The high-pitched warbles and calls of a bird somewhere among the branches carried through the woods. Aside from that, only the sound of rustling leaves and the crunch of the detritus beneath their feet were with them. There were pine needles stuck in Linus’ shoe that were scratching at his foot.

It wasn’t long until they came upon a small ravine, at the bottom of which was a stream that flowed with torrential force down to their left. The two stared down the slope.

“It did rain real hard a couple of days ago.”

“I don’t think we can get across Micah.”

“Sure we can. I remember seeing this tree that had fell that we could use to get across.”

“Where at?”

“Um.” Micah looked to his left and then to his right. “This way.”

Linus watched as his older brother walked along the slope with the ease and blithe confidence that he knew his brother for. He then looked down at the rushing brown water. He knelt and picked up a nearby slab of stone and hefted it down into the water with nearly all his strength.

The impact caused a great splash that sent water flying into the air, some of which landed at Linus’ feet causing him to flinch and look away. When he looked back, the rock had vanished beneath the water, the stream having swallowed it completely and utterly.

“Come on Linus!” Micah called. Linus went along to catch up with him.

They found the fallen tree they intended to use as a bridge. It was a sycamore, although it was near impossible to tell from its current condition. All the bark had fallen off and the exposed wood was all but completely rotted through.

“I’ll bet the mites ain’t got to it yet,” Micah said hopefully.

“You think it’ll be able to hold us?”

“Oh yeah, for sure. We just gotta take it one at a time. I’ll go first since I’m heavier, then you can follow me.”

Linus watched his older brother clamber onto the log and find his footing before shimmying across. He held his arms spread out like a trapeze artist as he went along the wood. Linus swore to himself that he saw some bits of wood fall into the stream below, but he was afraid that if he warned his brother, it would just cause him to lose his focus and then his balance. So he was silent, the only sound being that of the chopping current beneath the dead sycamore.

When Micah reached the end, he leaped from the log and onto the dirt on the other side of the ravine. He turned to look at Linus on the other side of it. “Okay,” he yelled, “so you gotta watch out because the wood is real smooth and there ain’t a lot of grip to keep you from slipping. Also, there are some parts that are real soft. They’re easy to tell apart though, they got a bunch of holes in them and they look a lot rougher than the rest of the tree.”

Linus stood there staring down at the rushing water. Most of what his brother said to him didn’t register to him as language, only sounds. Linus slowly approached the base of the fallen tree. He placed his hand on the smooth raw wood and stayed like so for a moment. Then he took in a deep breath and hoisted himself up and onto the log.

From there he was struck by the sight before him. The dead sycamore was much thinner than he thought it’d be, and much longer. It was as if, at that moment, time had slowed to a halt and the only thing that moved was the unchanged violence of the stream and the only thing he could hear was the now deafening cries of that same distant bird.

“Micah!” Linus’ bottom lip quivered and curled as tears welled up in his eyes. “I don’t wanna do this!”

“No, Linus, you gotta focus. You can’t let it stop you.”

“I wanna go home, Micah.” Linus sobbed. “Please, I just wanna go home.”

“Linus, listen. It’s not that hard, you just gotta go straight. It’s a lot easier than climbing the tree in our backyard, and you can do that all day.”

Linus began to catch his breath. “You swear it?”

“Cross my heart. If I can do it, then you can do it no problem.”

Linus sniffled and wiped his face with his shirt. “Okay.” He proceeded to step wearily along the length of the fallen tree, minding each footfall and how the wood felt as he put his weight behind them. He eased slowly over the water as branches the size of his legs were being carried away by its forceful current as if they weighed nothing. He watched one in particular shoot past underneath him and into the distant vanishing point as he stepped and set foot on a rotted patch of wood.

His foot fell through the side of the tree and his body slammed into the log. Yet, before he tumbled into the water, his hand found a thin branch that jutted out from the other side and held onto it with a strength that surprised him for a fleeting moment.

“Linus! Don’t worry I’m coming!”

“No! Don’t!”

Linus’s warning stopped Micah dead in his tracks as he was climbing back onto the tree.

“Didn’t you say it wouldn’t carry both of us?”

Micah was silent as he looked at half of his brother’s body hanging over the water.

“It’s okay. I’m okay, Micah.”

Linus pulled at the branch he clung onto and tried to hoist himself up, but he felt something give as he pulled and the sound of splitting wood made the two brothers look at each other for a split second before the branch gave way and Linus plummeted downward.

“Fuck!” Micah slid down the slope and dove into the murky water. Both of the brothers were now being carried downstream in the rush of the current.

Linus was pulled underneath the surface of the water and gasped for air in those brief moments when he came up. He frantically reached his arms about him, either to manipulate his course or to grasp onto something that he could use to stop it entirely. Yet his hands only grasped at air and the current was too powerful to overcome.

For a moment he began to feel the fear wash away and in its place came a certain surrender, an acceptance of what his fate was surely becoming. He thought about his dad and where he must be. He knew that if anyone could have saved him, it could have been his dad.

Then, instead of air, his hand reached and felt another hand grip tightly on it and pull it. Micah pulled and clung onto Linus as they were being carried away together.

Together they struggled to stay afloat as they were subject to the torrent that enveloped them. Micah, however, had caught sight of another fallen log downstream and fast approaching, this one still somewhat attached to its base and laying against the cusp of the water’s surface. He took out his pocket knife and unfolded it with his teeth. Then, as it came closer, he stuck out the knife and used the propulsion of the current to jam the blade into the wood.

It stuck true.

Micah’s right hand clung to the knife’s handle as his left gripped Linus’ hand. With all his strength he pulled himself against the raging water and closer to solid ground. He kicked his feet as he came closer to the bank until he felt them catch onto the earth. He pulled Linus ahead of him and Linus climbed onto the bank and then onto solid ground. Then, after frantically searching and finding a stick he thought sturdy enough, he used it to pull his brother onto the slope with him.

Once out of the water, they climbed the slope of the ravine and collapsed onto the ground. As they lay there breathing heavily, Micah’s body shuddered and he gave into deep, regretful sobs.

“I’m so sorry, Linus.”

Linus sat up and looked at his older brother. He laid down next to him and held him. “It’s okay, Micah.”

“No, it’s not. It’s my fault you fell. You almost-”

Then he began to weep deeper and harder.

“But you saved me. If it weren’t for you, the stream would have took me for certain.”

But his words of comfort reached deaf ears. The two lay on the earth for some time, until Micah calmed himself and cleared his throat. He stood to his feet and tried to collect himself, wiping the snot from his nose and the tears from his eyes. Linus stood up behind him.

“Okay,” Micah began, “the stream is running to the left still, so we must be back on the side we were on before we went to cross that tree.”

“I wonder how far it took us.”

“There’s no telling.” Micah cleared his throat.

They both looked down the slope and at the tree below. The pocket knife was still sticking from its side.

“I guess the best course of action would be to just turn around and walk.”

Linus looked up. The sun stood at the edge of the sky, behind the tree line. “Doesn’t look like we got much daylight left.”

“Alright then,” Micah uttered in a voice drained of all confidence, “let’s go home.”

With that, they trekked on through the woods without true direction but focused nonetheless.

The caw of crows came from one direction, then the other. Linus looked around at the branches yet saw no sign of any of them. Then he looked ahead at his brother, whose head was head sunk low.

“Hey, Micah.”

“Yeah?” There was defeat in his voice.

“Maybe we don’t have to go home just yet.”

“What?”

“Maybe we could just make it to the fence and then just hang around it until Mom comes home.”

“…Yeah. We could do that.”

“I’m sorry Pete has been mean to you.”

“It’s okay. I hate him.”

“Yeah, me too. I miss Dad.”

“Me too, Linus. I miss him a lot.”

“I mean, at least we got each other.”

“Yeah. You’ll always have me, little brother.”