A bundle of soggy yarn is how it started. I found it in the woods near my house. It was yellow, not too bright, and blended well with the leaves on the ground that hadn’t crumbled away.
A simple prank took shape in my mind. Joggers took to these trails often and carefully tiptoed through a muddy patch on a particular corner overlooking a ditch. Be pretty funny to make a tripwire with the yarn and watch someone eat mud.
I unwound the yarn and tied it round one tree to the next. Next, I climbed another tree to watch the prank unfold. It took longer than expected for a jogger to come by.
A thick-set guy built like a rugby player charged through the yarn, and it snapped easily. He only noticed and stopped because it got caught up in his shoe.
Breathing heavily, he plucked the yarn fiercely, holding it in his fist. Then he looked to the trees and understood the flimsy trap had been set intentionally.
He laughed. It didn’t take him long to find my vantage point above.
“You?” He held up the yarn.
I shook my head. “Nope.”
He stared. “You?” he asked again. I chuckled nervously. “I’m not mad, kid. Come down, I want to talk.”
His words were spoken oddly, like an old timey actor in the black and white movies my grandparents made me watch on Sunday afternoons. I think it’s because when he talked, he kept his teeth hidden behind thin lips.
I didn’t move. “We can talk like this.”
He put his hands to hips and smirked. “Sure. I’m the one to suspect,” he said sarcastically, “jogging through the woods while you lay traps and wait for carnage. But sure, yes, we can talk. Listen, I like your prank. I think it would’ve been funny, had it worked. I want you to try it again, in fact.”
I didn’t answer. He looked strong and tough. Plus, he could run. If I had to book it, the brush off the trail would be my only chance for a successful retreat.
“Did you hear me, kid?”
I just watched. Something wrong with this guy. I knew it right away. If only I’d tried to run, then everything would have been fine.
“I’ll pay you. How does twenty dollars sound?”
Twenty bucks sounded good. I could order a pizza with six pops when my parents were out at the neighbor’s Friday. They always took me to rent a movie first and left five dollars for a sub from the variety store on the corner. I’d spend that on candy.
He retrieved the cash from a tiny pocket sewn into his track pants. I didn’t understand how odd it was for a jogger to carry cash. Most joggers are local and do a loop from and to their home, there and back again. Not this guy. I don’t know where he lived or why he carried a stash inside his pants.
Nevertheless, I climbed down from the tree to receive the money. As I got closer, a wave of cheap cologne made me dizzy. The man wore too much. He was bigger than I thought. I felt like a toddler standing next to him.
“Listen,” he said, “tomorrow, you do it right. Got it?”
I took the money and backed away. “Sure.”
“You understand? You do it right. You make it so it’ll work. So a person doesn’t just plow through like it’s nothing.”
“Sure,” I repeated, fully intending to never return to this particular trail ever again.
The man clicked his tongue against his palette and smiled. “See you tomorrow, kid.” He took off, not even tiptoeing through the mud patch as expected.
When tomorrow came, another day of spring break, I stayed in my room, looking at the twenty, and eventually reading The Hobbit again. At supper, my dad said he and mom were going out and wouldn’t be back till probably pretty late.
“Where are you going?” I asked, suddenly apprehensive, though I wasn’t sure why. The jogger didn’t know where I lived. Nobody had seen me even leave the forest, had they?
“You okay?” my mom asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, “I’m kind of scared.”
“You’re almost a teenager,” my dad said. “I’ll leave the number.”
“Where are you going?”
“Just to the pub a block away,” mom said.
“You can practically see it from here.” I could see my dad getting impatient and annoyed.
They rarely went out during the week but had taken the break off, I thought, to spend more time with me. Guess I thought wrong because I was left to my own devices. My dad left the number on the fridge.
I went back upstairs to look at the twenty, thinking about pizza. That’s when I saw him outside the window, standing in the middle of the street, looking up at me through the bare magnolia branches.
“Oh,” I said, “shit.” I dropped below the sill and hoped my parents locked the door on their way out. I crawled to the hall and into the spare bedroom, where I risked a peek. Still there, and still staring at the house and my room in particular.
I ran down the stairs and checked the locks on the front and back doors. Then, I shut the deadbolt on the garage access. Still at an age where I believed in the impenetrability of the locked up homestead, I calmed down a little and thought of calling the pub.
My dad would ask if I was sure he wasn’t a neighbor simply taking a walk. He’d make me check to see if the jogger was still outside. So I had to look one more time. I crept to the front room window and couldn’t avoid detection this time. His eyes snapped onto me instantly. He looked pissed.
As I thought of returning his money, the man across the street, a young guy, Hong, who’d moved in with his wife a year ago, came out to talk to the jogger. Hong came out sternly and spoke loudly. I couldn’t make out the words, but the way he pointed at our house made it clear he wanted to know what the hell the jogger was up to.
The jogger turned his cold gaze on Hong. I’ve never seen a person break under an intense look before, not like that, and never again. All will and desire to discover the purpose of the stranger left Hong. Visibly, his body sagged, and he departed, confused and hopeless.
Left alone, the jogger resumed his examination, and it felt like one, as if his eyes surgically carved away my meager twelve-year-old defenses. His eyes accused and threatened. I had not followed through on our agreement. There would be consequences.
Despite every fear stiffening my body, I cranked open the porch window and shouted through the screen, “I’m sorry!”
“Tomorrow,” he said, “and you make sure you do it right.”
“I’ll give you back the twenty!” I replied. He’d already started walking.
He stopped, and without turning, said again, “You do it right.”
There seemed to be no reasoning with the jogger. “Okay,” I said quietly.
Going to my parents was the obvious solution. If I told them about the prank and the man, they’d surely go into protection mode and call the police or something.
And that’s just what they did when they got home. I didn’t understand the toll inebriation had on their reasoning and memory.
A police constable came, took my parents’ jumbled report, and left. He looked a little annoyed. I left out the part about the money and doing the prank again.
What did it matter? Hong had seen the weirdo too. He could confirm the incident.
From my window, I saw the constable drive away without bothering Hong. It was very late by that point, the wrong side of midnight as my grandfather used to say.
After an awful sleep, my dad made me go outside around noon the next day. He and my mom had slept in, but apparently not enough because they both went back to bed. The yellow yarn had been left on the porch.
You do it right.
That phrase had no meaning. Do it right? Do the prank right, so people fell into the mud? Why would the jogger or anyone be so intense about that?
With the soaked yarn in my lap, I thought it over. Boredom set in, so I went into the garage and saw the eternal mess of materials and tools on the workbench. I thought my dad would be pleased if I cleaned it up and had everything organized. He was not. A few minutes after starting, he popped his head in from the access door and suggested I go for a long walk.
“Okay,” I said, deflated. I hoped he noticed what was up. He did not and watched to ensure I had begun the suggested walk.
He didn’t notice or care about the materials I took from the workbench on my way out.
Angry, disappointed, I chose a route away from the woods. Yeah, the stuff I had taken with me accompanied a vague idea about self-defense, but I wasn’t so stupid to be motivated into seeing it through.
Most of the time, when something bad happened, like trouble at school or home, I lay low. Time and space put distance between me and the problem. Then it sort of went away, replaced probably by some new interest or concern. In retrospect, this is no way to live. Wish I could say what happened next cured me of this lazy philosophy.
He appeared at the edge of the park by the community center that never seemed to open. Where he’d come from, I couldn’t say. Where he was going was implied by the same tracksuit and sneakers he wore the day we met.
The park sat on a strip of land between the southern tip of the woods and the back fences of long backyards. Where he stood was the only non-forested exit from the area.
I had no choice.
Racing into the trees, I tossed the yellow yarn into the scrub, maybe where I’d found it even, and unfurled the galvanized wire I’d stolen from the garage.
When I got to the two trees and the mud patch, it started to rain lightly. Petrichor signaled an incoming thunderstorm. I pushed through the brush and juvenile maples to begin. I knelt down and immediately changed the plan.
You do it right
Oh, I’d do it right. What other choice did I have? He wanted a working prank? He was going to get one. I stood up and fixed the wire across the path higher than before, guessing his height and where his neck was approximately.
I had no idea.
It felt childish, this attempt. What was this guy’s deal? The chances of hurting him when he expected the prank were slim. A trap would only work if he didn’t know it was there.
Without knowing how much time I had, I frantically, shakily, devised and created the second trap: Me.
The strategy had two elements, a sharp stick and a heavy stone.
I hid in the ditch to the side of the path.
Hurried footsteps announced his arrival. The jogger stopped before the wire, as predicted, and looked to where I’d been hiding before in the tree. Next, he touched the wire and cut himself.
“Hey,” he said, “kid, this isn’t what I meant. This could hurt -“
If he found me before I had a chance to attack, I’d stand no chance. I threw the rock and got lucky. It hit the back of his head. He staggered to the left and fell into the ditch.
I stood over him with the stick.
The jogger held up his arm defensively. “No, you don’t understand.” I stuck the pointy end of the stick to his chest, hoping to get his heart. His ribcage kept the wound superficial. A softer entry point, maybe the neck, would be better.
As I readied the stick, I heard more footfalls along the path.
“No, Julie…” the jogger moaned.
Before I could grasp the situation, a woman came around the corner fast. She was the same height as her husband, tall. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she were shorter.
The wire didn’t fully decapitate her redhead from her shoulders. It dug into her throat, and she struggled to free herself as she choked on her blood. Faster than you can imagine, the strength in her arms leaked away. She fumbled clumsily at the wire until her knees buckled. Blood stained her t-shirt, a gruesome bib, and she died suspended slightly by the trap I had set.
“No, oh god, no,” the jogger began. His words turned to wild shrieking as he trudged from the ditch and frantically tried to free his wife. A lot happened in a short amount of time after that or seemed to. I sat down in a puddle and waited.
I’d like to report that I felt bad for the woman and her husband, the creepy jogger that I believe was truly responsible for this prank gone wrong. However, I only remember the shock and the fear that kept me uncomfortably rooted to the spot where everything in my life changed.
At some point, the jogger returned with some paramedics and the police too. I didn’t notice him leaving. My parents came too. There was a lot of yelling. I wanted to go home. It felt like a dream. One strange room to the next, a new stranger asking questions. This became my reality for years until I was allowed weekend visits home.
The Youth Criminal Justice Act kept my name out of newspapers. My record was sealed and, in another few years, would be gone forever. I went home for a few days but it wasn’t the same. The detention center is more familiar now.
My parents looked tired and didn’t speak to me beyond simple instructions.
“Dinner is ready.”
“Clean towels are in the closet.”
When the jogger finally showed up outside to stare, my reaction to his presence was very different.
I went outside, ready to fight. That intensity and misdirected confidence of his had somehow transferred to me. He wilted against my steady, unflinching gaze.
“You did it,” he said, “you did it right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been so upset about the twenty bucks. It was just supposed to be a funny prank on my wife. I don’t know what came over me. See you around.”
With his hands in his pockets, I watched him walk away with the last of my innocence.
“You do it right!” I shouted at his back.
He slowed down, and I saw his subtle nod.
Nothing would ever be like it was again. I wanted to cry, but that part was gone too.
The fear remained. It always will. No one wants to die. But it’s buried deeper under platitudes and blustering.
I wonder if he’ll use wire. Probably not.
Neither of us will find that yarn again.
That’s for sure.