Keith Kippler moved into the woods the year we turned 12. It was a strange time: a flock of hippie families all moved into our area. They bought summer houses around the lake that weren’t made for the cold. They were seasonal houses, built for people who were on vacation.
When we got to be teenagers, Keith wore a long red scarf that dragged on the ground. The Vocational kids would pull at it from either side so that he would wipe out in the halls. But that was later.
The year we turned 12, when my best friend Justin and I still played with him, we would go up to a little cabin Keith’s family owned on the property behind his house. The cabin was the reason we hung out with him: we could play whatever we wanted without parents around. At night we could scare each other and stay up until dawn.
Keith was chubby. He had brown hair, and freckles, and wore old sweat pants that were too tight. He was not athletic or funny, but he was smart and kind.
Keith told us that his mother had died, but he didn’t say how. He lived with his dad who made chairs out of wood cane and his father’s girlfriend, Windy, who was young and had a lazy eye. Windy was pretty and round, but in a nice way, with big calves and breasts. She wore her long dirty blond hair in two braids down her back.
Windy was always nice, but made gross food like fish soup and peanut butter without any sugar. We began bringing jars of real peanut butter and jelly and leaving them up in the cabin for whenever we went over.
Sometimes when we would go over Keith’s house, Windy would tell us that Keith was already up at the cabin. When we got up there we would usually find him in the small bedroom, on one of the cots, reading.
When we asked him if he wanted to play, he would shake his head and shut the door to the bedroom. He always said we could stay and play if we wanted.
We would stay until nighttime, hanging around the big, main room. Sometimes we teased him. Once we threw a tennis ball at his door.
“Stop it!!!!” Keith yelled.
He opened the door and a ball hit him in the eyeglasses.
His face turned red and he walked out of the cabin. We watched out the window as he went back down to the house with its chimney and Windy inside knitting a sweater on a caftan she had woven, getting ready for the winter. We waited for him to come back, but he didn’t.
“How’s it going up at the commune?” my father would say every time I mentioned Keith. My mother thought it was funny at first, but then he said it too many times — he always ruined things like that — and she didn’t laugh at it anymore.
“Maybe you should have Keith over here sometime,” my mother said one dinner. “I feel badly that they are always having you.”
“That’s no problem to them, Pat,” my father said, smiling. “They’re trying to get him in their cult.”
“Really,” my mother said to me, looking into my eyes. My mother has black eyes, their irises so dark it is hard to tell where the pupil begins.
“He doesn’t like going to other people’s houses,” I told her.
In the fall of that year we began junior high. Keith didn’t start to knit the red scarf until later, but in the halls he was too tall for his age. He walked with his head down; his hair was always in his eyes. .
We teased him, but not horribly. There were worse kids to tease, and girls, and we also liked going to the cabin in the woods.
A few weeks after Halloween we invited ourselves over. For the first time, Keith had a friend too. His name was Grant and he was older.
We met them down at the house where Grant’s parents were sitting eating dinner with Keith’s dad and Windy in front of the fireplace. Windy turned and waved to us when we came in, introducing us to the new people, using their first names. The parents looked older and dirtier than Keith’s parents. Their son, Grant, sat on the couch. He didn’t look like a hippie child, the way Keith did. He looked like a normal guy in a plaid shirt tucked into jeans.
“Hey, s’up?” he asked, waving from the couch. His legs were open wide and he wore work boots. His hair was black and parted to the side, and he had the beginnings of a mustache.
“These are my friends,” Keith said, motioning towards us.
We all sat down on the couch while the parents ate. Windy brought over some dry granola in bowls for us to scoop out with our hands. I thanked her, and she smiled.
“So, what do you guys do up here?” Grant asked.
He was from another lake town, but his family was staying with Keith’s family for a while.
“I’m used to drinking some beer at night. I’m older than you guys, so….” Grant said.
We did not drink beer until a year later.
“Let’s go up to the cabin,” Justin said and we all agreed.
Grant bent down to pick up two metal crutches that I had not noticed before. He hooked his arms into each of the crutch holders and hoisted himself up.
“I know what you guys are thinking. I can go,” he said.
He began with one hip forward then twisted his other hip in front so that his leg followed. He did this, alternating hips, until we got to the door.
I wondered why he didn’t just use his arms and swing his legs forward. I opened the door and followed Keith and Grant outside.
Part Two
In the fall, in the lake towns, tourists come to see the leaves. My mother, who worked at The Village, (an old fake village place where people dress up like the old days and make candles and soap, like a museum, but it’s a town), had to wear an old-time outfit with a bonnet.
That fall, my dad lost his job and had to work at The Village too. He dressed up like an old time horseshoe maker and sat on a wood block, hammering the same horseshoe all day. He gave a speech about what it was that someone — someone dressed like he was — did a long time ago. He and my mother talked in their old time voice all day, but when they got home they were quiet, tired, sad.
Windy got a job there too. She sat at a weaving machine and actually wove stuff. She wasn’t a phony like everyone else. She didn’t give a speech, she just answered questions. Her lazy eye seemed to disappear as she sat at the loom, using her pedal and her hands, crossing the strings over each other, using the colors that they could make back then from vegetable dyes or blood or whatever.
Sometimes we’d visit and say hi to my mom and dad. I didn’t like to see my dad as much, pounding that same horseshoe, but we always stopped by anyway.
Afterwards we went to sit and watch Windy. When no one was around she liked to listen to the radio. She didn’t like music unless she was dancing to it, she said. So she listened to talk radio. When we came and no one was around she would turn it down, (it was usually just the weather, the traffic, the weather), and we would talk over it while she worked.
In the winter, the lake towns are good for sledding. There were certain hills we would always go down. The snow would be packed down from the kids who got there first, but this was better, because the hills would be slick, almost iced.
My mother didn’t like me to go sledding, but I did it anyway. When we were 10, a boy who was in our class hit a tree at the bottom of the hill. He knocked his head, and now he was slow. He went to another school. I once saw him at the supermarket holding his mother’s hand and drooling.
Behind The Village were the biggest hills. From the top of the mountain you could look down at all the little houses that were built back in the old days. Some of the buildings were newer, but made to look like they were old.
The lights in the houses at The Village were the kind that look like candles, with fake dripping wax, the “flame” just a clear Christmas light. Still, I liked to look down at the little lights in the houses when it got to be dusk and the lights shone brighter. When the light in the horseshoe building went off, I knew it was time to go home.
The fall we were 12, Windy was almost like a mother. She handed us a cloth filled with blueberries for us to bring up the hill with Grant.
Grant was slow, so Keith walked with him. I passed them, then looked behind: Grant had begun to swing his legs the way I had imagined he should. It helped and he went faster.
When we got to the top of the hill, we went inside the cabin. It was getting dark so Keith lit the gas lamps. I watched as Grant headed for the sofa, easing himself down. He moved his legs with his hands so they were far apart, just like they were when we were back at the house.
“It’s tough out here,” he said, taking a handkerchief from his shirt pocket and wiping his forehead. I was not sure what he was talking about: the town, Keith’s house, the hill, the cabin. None of us said anything.
I watched as Grant put the hankie back in his pocket, then pushed his knuckles into the couch so that he could sit up straighter.
Justin and I sat on the couch on either side of him, and Keith stood near the bedroom door. I could tell that he wanted to go into the bedroom and read, but he couldn’t when Grant was there.
“Watcha standin’ there for, Fatboy?” Grant said suddenly, looking at Keith.
Keith’s face turned red. No one said anything.
“Huh?” Grant said.
I looked down. I could hear the night outside: owls and crickets and rustling leaves.
“Shut up,” Keith said quietly.
“What?” Grant asked, “I can’t hear you.”
I picked up the tennis ball next to me and threw it to Keith who caught it. Keith threw it to Justin who threw it back. I bounced the ball high so it hit the ceiling. It flew over to Grant who caught it and passed it back.
“Do you guys want to play hide and go seek?” Grant asked suddenly.
We usually played out in the woods, listening for the leaves to crinkle from each other’s sneakers, to give us away.
“In here?” Justin asked.
“Sure,” Grant said. “We can just turn off the lights.”
There was hardly any place to hide: just the one big room and the other little room.
Keith turned off the gas lamps and I went outside and counted so that I didn’t take up any hiding space. I looked down at Keith’s house, and into the kitchen window. Windy was still at the table, her back facing the window. She had taken her braids out and her hair fell down her back in big wavy bunches.
I ducked down to try to see the other adults, but the hill was too steep.
There was a bark from somewhere and I realized I had stopped counting. I figured it was time, so I knocked on the door.
“I’m coming in,” I said, and went inside.
When I closed the door behind me, I couldn’t see anything. I tried to stand as still as I could, listening for breaths, but the wind sounded through the wood of the cabin and the sound paved over all the other sounds that might be there.
I felt the wall and walked around it, kicking something over.
“Shit,” I said, and heard laughter.
I walked toward where the laugh came from, still touching the wall. My foot hit the couch, and I fell onto it, pushing it backwards.
“Stop! Ow!! Stop!!” I heard Grant yell.
A flashlight shined in my face and I looked behind the couch. Grant was squashed there, not wearing any legs.
Someone lit the gas lamps and I pulled the couch out. Grant crawled forward on his hands, pulling his bottom half, his pants legs dragging. We could see where his legs ended in his pants when he dragged them: one ended right above the knee, the other one a bit higher. His fake legs lay on the couch with his white sports socks sticking out from his work boot, one crossed over the other, like they were relaxing.
“Help me up,” Grant demanded, once he got in front of the couch.
I helped boost him up — he was light — then watched as he seated himself and began strapping his legs on. He pulled his pant-legs up and we all starred at the strange way that his legs stopped and rounded at the bottom.
The ends of his legs were smooth, wrapped around like an elbow. His skin was not cut or stitched. He was just born that way.
Once his legs were back on, he pushed his jeans down so they didn’t show and sat the same way he had at the house, his legs wide apart, leaning back, puffing up his chest. His face was red and sweaty.
“Now what?” he said, crossing his arms behind his head. “Isn’t there anything to do around here?”
We all stared at him.
“Hey, Fatboy,” he said, looking over at Keith who was standing with his back against the far wall looking down. “What do we do now?”
Keith shrugged and looked at me and then Justin.
“We could go down to The Village and break in,” I said, then wished I hadn’t.
“The Village…” Grant said. “That fucking place…”
Part Three
Keith walked slowly behind us as Grant moved forward on his crutches, going down the rocky hill. Halfway down, I turned around and saw Grant sitting on the leaves. Keith was standing next to him, throwing rocks at the ground.
We stopped walking and turned around again to wait.
“What are you fuck-heads stopping for?” Grant yelled down. “I’m taking a rest. You think this is easy?”
We turned around and began walking.
We walked away from the lake and down to the valley. We didn’t turn around the rest of the time.
When we got close, we sat at the top of the hill that we sled on in winter and looked down at The Village. The bright safety lights were on and all the houses looked fake, even the ones that were really old.
We threw rocks that we dug up beside us, whispering to each other.
“That guy’s an asshole,” Justin said.
“I know,” I whispered back.
We heard Grant and Keith walking towards us, leaves rustling under Keith’s feet and Grant’s crutches.
“You guys dirtbike?” Grant asked when they reached us.
“No,” we told him.
“Damn, this would be wild to dirtbike. I used to have one but I had to give it up.”
“We sled here,” Keith said.
If the fence to The Village was gone, like it was when The Village was a real village and people lived here, you could sled right into the tiny town. Back then, people would invite you in and give you food — everyone depended on each other.
Back in the old days, there was one person for each thing you needed in each village. There was a butter maker than churned butter all day, and women who nursed each other’s children. People shared just to survive, and the Indians named the place Tantasqua. It meant the Land Between Two Brush Shaped Hills. It was also the name of our high school.
“You think we could break in there?” Grant asked.
“To The Village?” Keith said. “No.”
“You’re a fucking pussy,” Grant said.
“Shut up,” Keith said, quietly.
“What did you say?” Grant asked.
All of us were standing now and Grant was in Keith’s face. It looked like he might kiss him.
“Let’s walk down and see if we can get in,” Justin said. He began walking, then turned around.
“Come on you guys,” he said.
Grant followed him first, trying to move quickly downhill on his crutches.
“Yeah,” I could hear him say, “this would be awesome for to dirtbike.”
We walked behind Grant and Justin, and I looked over at Keith. I wondered why he was the kind of kid that gets made fun of. I wondered if it had to do with having a dead mother. Or a hippie father. Or a stepmother who only cooked with ghee.
Maybe it was all these things, and something that had nothing to do with any of them. Most of the time, it seemed like whatever it was that made him that way was also the reason he always wanted to be alone.
It was tempting to run down the hill, but we stayed behind. It was strange to see Grant from the back, his jeans loose, held up by a belt. If you didn’t know him, you might feel badly for him. If you saw him from behind, you would wonder what was wrong.
At the bottom of the hill, Justin led us around to the opening that his older brother had showed him, where the teenagers went. The fence was bent behind the stables and you could squeeze under and get in.
“I could totally get in there,” Grant said. He sat down and began hiking up his jeans.
We all watched as he undid the straps on his legs, pulling them off his stubs.
“I’ll go under, then you guys push my crutches through,” Grant said.
He did not wait for us to agree. He began to crawl himself over, then rolled under the fence.
“It’s easy,” he said, on the other side.
Part Four
A couple of weeks before, when we went to Keith’s house, Windy answered the door crying.
“We’ll come back later,” I said. But she opened the door to let us in.
Keith wasn’t there, she said. He was up at the cabin. She held her stomach, looking at us. The fire was low in the fireplace, and it was cold for the inside of a house.
“Are you OK?” I asked. I wondered where Keith’s dad was.
“I lost my baby,” she said, sitting down on the ratty couch. Her face was red and her eyes looked small. She looked up at us. I wanted to help her.
“What should we do?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said, “it’s over.”
I thought of her weaving at the Village, smiling at us and listening to her radio. Once I saw my mother cry, but she did not cry to me. When my mother cried she held her hands over her eyes and shook her head back and forth. Then she ran from the room so I could not see her.
“Where did you lose it?” Justin asked.
Windy smiled, then cried more.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, “It’s gone.”
“Should we get Keith?” I asked.
“No,” she said, “You guys should go play. I’m sorry.”
She walked into the kitchen and took out some cookies that she made. They looked like they would be good but we had tried them before and we knew they were made without sugar and eggs, which was why they tasted bad.
“Here you go,” she said, wrapping them in a cloth. “Take these.”
She opened the door for us and we walked up the hill.
“Was she pregnant?” Justin asked.
“I guess so,” I said, carrying the cookies carefully, making sure they didn’t crumble.
I pushed Grant’s crutches underneath the fence. We stood and watched again as he strapped them back on. He got up, propping himself against the back of the stable.
“Hey, watch this,” he said, turning around.
He let his crutches fall and leaned his head against the clapboard to stand, then he crossed his arms over each other in front of him so his hands grabbed both sides of his back. He moved his head back and forth, and moved his hands up and down so it looked like someone was making out with him.
“Oh, baby,” he said. “Yeah, baby.”
Justin laughed so I did too.
Grant turned himself around, laughing also, still leaning on the stable.
“Come on,” he said, his face suddenly serious, “get over here and get me my crutches.”
Keith slithered under, the wire catching his parka and ripping it.
“Shit!” Keith said.
We knew that Keith’s parka was cheap and that he didn’t have money to get another one. We knew that Windy would sew it up with the wrong color thread, and that there would be another reason for Keith to be teased.
On the other side, Keith stood and examined the rip. It was at his chest, one long, vertical scar.
“Get me my crutches,” Grant said, and Keith leaned down and got them for him.
Justin went under the gate first and I followed him. I made sure to hold my jacket tight so that it didn’t rip.
When we were on the other side, we walked around to the front of the stables where the snack shop is.
None of us spoke. I noticed that without us talking the night was quiet. We were away from the lake, in the valley. There was wind but no chill.
I watched as Keith began to walk away from where the lights were. Years later there would be a hired guard, and it would be harder to break in.
Keith disappeared into the shadows.
“Where is he going?” Grant asked.
No one answered him.
It was quiet enough to hear Keith’s footsteps so I broke away and followed the sound into the dark.
“Keith,” I whispered, because it felt important to keep things quiet.
Keith slowed down but didn’t answer, and we walked side by side on the dirt road that people rode buggies on in the old days, waving at the people they passed.
Keith veered off the road and went towards the house where Windy worked.
“Where are you going?” I asked, but he didn’t answer me.
Keith walked onto the porch and tried to open the door but it was locked. He looked in the window, his hands cupped around his eyes. I stood next to him, cupping my eyes too, trying to see what he was looking for.
“She’s almost done,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
Windy’s loom was strung with its usual reddish colors that were hard to see in the dark.
“With the blanket,” he said.
“Oh,” I said. Years later, when he began to wear the red scarf and everyone teased him I never said anything. But I didn’t tease him either.
“It was for the baby,” he said.
Keith turned away and I looked back to where Justin and Grant still stood. Keith walked off the porch and began to walk down the road again, farther away.
“Where are you going?” I called to him, but he didn’t answer.
Part Five
I stopped and looked up at one of the bright floodlights and blinked. A spot appeared in my eyes; it was purple and green. The spot blocked wherever I looked: the old kitchen, the visitor’s center, the place where my father worked.
I blinked my eyes, trying to lose my blind spot.
I listened for Keith, then I began to walk to the horseshoe shed.
Under the covering of the shed, my father’s horseshoe was in its wedge, ready to be hammered and hammered again. I looked at it closely, the lights bright enough for me to see all the tiny dents.
I took the hammer and whacked the horseshoe as hard as I could. The sound was loud in the night.
I looked for the mark that it made, but I couldn’t tell what was my father’s, and what was mine.
“Can I try?” I heard Keith.
He walked toward me and I held out the hammer. I moved to the side so he could take my place, and watched as he hit the horseshoe.
Keith hit hard, and I wondered if my father would be able to tell that someone had been using his tools. I figured he wouldn’t notice things like that. He would just hit the horseshoe, looking out of the shed’s open side and smiling at the people.
“Do you think they have another horseshoe?” Keith asked.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I wonder what would happen if we took it,” he said.
I wanted Keith to have the horseshoe. But it was my father’s. It was supposed to be mine.
I tried to pick the horseshoe from the bevel, but it was stuck.
“I can’t get it off,” I told him.
Keith tried after me, but it was glued on. I squatted down to look at it closely, and realized that it was welded onto the bevel. It would never go anywhere.
“Boy,” Keith said, looking at me, and I felt embarrassed but I wasn’t sure why. My father would hit the same horseshoe whether it was welded on or not, I figured, so what did it matter.
Still, it was strange. And both of us knew it.
Grant’s voice broke the sweet silence, and we heard him calling our names louder and louder.
“We should go back,” I said.
But I wanted to stay. In The Village you could watch a woman weave a blanket for a baby that was about to be born.
In The Village you could watch a man hit a horseshoe that he was fixing for his horse.
“I’m tired,” Keith said, and I knew it meant he wanted to go back and read in his room in his cold lake house, tons of blankets on top of him, the noise of the wind making sounds in the night.
I was tired too, but I did not know where to go. I dreaded my blue room with its old train patterned curtains.
Grant and Justin waited, and I wasn’t ready for them.
“Hey you fags,” Grant said when they got close enough. “What now?”
Grant stood on his crutches at the front of the shed, and we could only see the outline of him with the lights behind. It was a strange silhouette, his upper body like a real teenager’s, his lower one like a small boy.
“Hey Grant,” I said.
Keith was silent beside me.
“What now?” Grant asked again.
No one said anything. Justin stood next to Grant with his hands in his pockets and I felt badly for him.
“I’m going home,” I said, and walked out.
“Me too,” said Keith.
We walked past Justin and Grant, who we could hear behind us, towards the opening in the fence. We waited for Grant and his crutches to climb under and out, and we all walked up the sledding hill. We walked towards the lake and towards Keith’s house, and I watched as Keith and Grant went back inside.
I said goodbye to Justin, and began to walk towards my house. But then I turned around and walked back to Keith’s.
I looked in the front window. The lights were still on. Windy was in the kitchen washing dishes, drying them with a towel, and stacking them up on the kitchen table. Everyone else must have gone to bed — there was no one else around.
I could hear talking, though, and saw that the radio was on. Windy was listening to the weather.
Her hair down, her face flushed, I saw that she was not like a mother at all. She was young and warm despite the draft. She was happy to stay awake longer, clean the table, cook some porridge or baked apples for the next day’s breakfast.
When we got older, her age became more real to us, and we realized she was not that much older than us: she was not old enough to be any of our mothers. We would joke about her, about Keith, imagining things we wished would happen to us.
When we got to be teenagers, I only saw Keith in the hallways. I wondered about Windy, about his house. I still thought about Windy stacking dishes. I wondered if Grant still went up to the cabin.
I didn’t even nod at him in the halls by then. He was hard not to notice with his bright red scarf, but I ignored him and hated myself a little for it.
When I saw the Vocational kids pulling his scarf, I felt angry that he kept wearing it. It was too long, and he wore it all through the day.
I did not want to hurt him, though. I did not want to make him fall by pulling the scarf too hard. I just wanted to touch the red scarf, to feel the weave of it, to make sure it was tightly woven, and make sure it was warm.
