The Woods are Lovely, Dark, and Deep.

Tuesday February 26th, 2002 @ 8:53 PM

Filed under: Everything, Tales Told Well

Walking around the bend in the road I looked back up the hill. Pink luminescence glowed through the thickness of forest. Sunset in an Arkansas summer is long and luxurious like a rich woman’s bath. I came upon a dirt side road disappearing into the long shadows of evening. A hummingbird whirred by my ear and vanished down the side road. A squirrel scolded me from an unseen perch and the first cricket of the evening beckoned me from the gloaming.

I hesitated, looking around to make sure I could find my way back. But the woods were lovely. I entered. I smelled the rot of bark mixed with wildflowers and moss. The sun brushed the treetops with strokes of brilliant gold and I found myself mesmerized by nature’s intimacies. I strolled further and further down the dirt road paying no mind to my steps until roots begin to present themselves and my way narrowed to a crooked path.

I was walking to ease my mind from years of troubles. I once had a wife, a family, a career–much promise, much hope. It was 1994 and I had nothing left but the blues. On my shoulders was a decade of guilt, remorse, and regret. Instead of using my sorrows to find illumination and strength, I wallowed in self-pity and self-incrimination. The loveliness of these woods was giving me solace.

The rays overhead gleamed intensely before the far horizon cut off the last vestiges of the sinking globe. I was surprised at how fast the forest darkened. I no longer heard the sounds of birds and squirrels. From far away came a chorus of frogs to replace them. Crickets answered in counterpoint and a firefly appeared, and then another. But even with the night creatures stirring to life, the woods seemed ominously silent.

My eyes adjusted quickly to the loss of light while a red glow still painted the space between the branches, though dull now, and benign. Still I wandered on, the path becoming no more than a deer trail. The woods were deep.

Suddenly I no longer felt alone. Something was in these woods. Had I heard an unnatural sound? I turned and looked back. Nothing. I studied the forest and listened. I continued on but slower. Do we have a sixth sense, I wondered? Can we detect brain waves from intelligent beings in some similar manner to radio waves? Was I detecting something-or someone? The feeling became very strong. I began to focus on whatever was out there and on nothing else.

Should I go back? Yes, definitely. How far had I come into these woods? I realized that I could barely make out the path anymore. Was I lost? If I went back, was whatever or whoever behind me? I stopped again and turned full around. I stared at each tree. Twilight was turning quickly to no light and there would be no moon until later. My eye seemed to catch movement. I stared intently at a large tree where I thought I’d seen it. Something was there. I realized that I was barely breathing. Fireflies danced. The silence of the forest had become large, like the trees had become larger with darkness.

Then I saw something that should not have been there. A great shiver swept through my body. Toes! I could see the toe ends of two shoes standing behind a tree about forty yards away. I was sure of it.

I did nothing. I just stood there and stared at the toes. I believed them to be some kind of running shoes. They did not move. What should I do? Somebody had been following me. Then it occurred to me that it was probably one of the guys in the band. Andy or Jason. It wouldn’t be Chuck– he didn’t like the woods. Andy was a woodsman-a fisherman and hunter, although it would be like Jason to play a joke on me. I decided to call out and let them know I was onto them. “O.K., Jason, or Andy, I know you’re there. Come on out.” My voice startled me given the previous quiet. I waited. Nothing.

I spoke again, only in anger this time, “Listen Andy, or Jason, I don’t think this is funny. Get out here or you’re going to make me mad.” My voice rang through the forest, being the only significant sound. Then I suddenly went cold. I realized that Jason and Andy wore Chuck Taylors and neither had a pair of shoes with the kinds of toes at which I was looking.

Could it just be a pair of shoes someone had left behind that tree? Maybe I was not seeing shoes. Maybe they were rocks or plants that seemed like shoes. The increasing darkness was obscuring the lines and I decided that I was getting paranoid. I couldn’t stay here all night. Still, I decided not to go back along the path by where I thought I had seen shoes. I turned and walked deeper into the trees. The woods were dark.

I walked very slowly feeling fear well up in my throat. I regretted having given up my view of the toes. I knew that if I turned around I would not see them again. Where was I going? Somehow I had to find a way out.

The urge to turn around and look became very strong. What if someone was behind me? How close was he now? How would I know unless I looked? I knew that I had to look. It was driving me crazy. When I turned this time I did it all of a sudden, and there in the path not thirty yards back was a clown.

I heard myself gasp. The clown had stopped when I turned. It stood there staring at me through eyes heavily painted with evil markings. This was not a clown for children. He was dressed in yellow and blue and wore a jester’s cap with three tassels. He was every bit as tall as my six-one and big-boned as well. He had no expression on his face, save the macabre paint. He said nothing. I said nothing. My heart was pounding like a sledge against my ribs. So focused was I on my problem that I could no longer smell anything or hear the sounds of the forest creatures. I could only stare.

Now undoubtedly you are reading this in the comfort and security of your home or office and if you are a self-respecting male, you may be scoffing at me right now as my heart pounds in the forest. Perhaps you are thinking that you’d have put a quick end to such nonsense if it happened to you. But consider this: the clown must have known something I did not. How else could he be so confident? And obviously, his intentions were not good, nor was he of a right mind. What did he know that I didn’t? Maybe that he had a gun, or a knife, or some other weapon. Maybe that he had done this before. Maybe that he was someone who could cover his deed by one means or another. Add it all up and I knew that trouble was on my trail like Robert Johnson’s Hellhound.

I turned and walked faster away from the clown. This time I could hear him behind me. He no longer needed stealth. I stopped and the sound stopped. I began to jog and bushes tore at my pants. I wondered if he were running. I wondered how close he was now. Again I stopped and turned. There he was, stopping when I stopped. Should I talk to him? But to do so may force him to an action. Maybe I could just outrun him. But then I realized I did not know this forest and he undoubtedly did.

“What do you want?” I asked. I tried to say it boldly and with no fear in my voice, but I detected a slight quavering and I’m sure he picked it up. He said nothing. He stood firmly planted in my path with no hint that he would retreat if threatened. I wanted very badly for him to speak. I could begin to form some judgements based on his voice and what he said. “What do you want?” I repeated. My voice sounding lonely under the tall trees.

It is easy, I imagine, to think of yourself as being brave and decisive as you read this story. However, standing alone in those woods with an evil clown, darkness falling all about me, I began to think of death. The clown hadn’t followed me as a lark, of that I was certain. I thought of being shot and incapacitated or paralyzed and then being buried alive. I thought of various tortures. I wondered if I would be sodomized or humiliated before I died. The clown was bold and confident and that meant he knew he could defeat me.

I fought panic. All of this was happening rapidly. Only seconds were passing while thoughts raced through my head. At such a time a man’s mind begins to prioritize the components of his life. Values come under a giant mental microscope. What he loves and whom he loves becomes starkly clear. So much else that seemed important becomes trivialized. A vision of values is presented and seared into ones soul. Courage often follows resolution.

All of a sudden I had become alert and aware of myself as a fighter and a strategist. I would make my move and take the offensive. Boldly I strode forward and marched straight at the clown with the imagined feel of his neck in my hands, savagery in my muscles, and intent to do unkind things to his evil face. I figured that he would either run or make a stand. He did neither. Casually he sidestepped off the path and walked slowly into the darkest part of the forest. When I reached the spot where he had stood, he was twenty yards or more into the deep and I could no longer define his outline. He seemed to glow yellow and blue faintly in the stygian dark of the thickets. Then for the first time he smiled a sardonic smirk and motioned with his head in a sidelong movement that meant: “come this way.”

I was mad now and ready for combat. He had not shot me or knifed me or clubbed me. Perhaps I should follow him and beat him bad and drag him out of the forest and turn him in to the police. Yet still I trembled with fear and he stood waiting. Once again he motioned, almost imperceptibly.

The game had taken a new twist. He was no longer standing between the road and me. He had given me an out. Now he was tempting me.

If he wanted me to follow him into the density of that forest he had evil intentions, then again he had running shoes. Would he run? I analyzed my future. There is more to such an episode than merely escape and survival. There is also who you have become in the process. Could I live with myself as a coward or as prey to the hunter? Would I have to live my life wondering what I was made of? Or worse yet, knowing I lacked faith in myself and in what I believed? I decided this was a test of who I was on this earth.

I stared into the black barely making out that painted face. The eyes of the clown somehow gleamed in the dark. They hadn’t gleamed before. I figured that maybe he had them open wider now to see without light-or maybe he was eager. I have always been competitive, an athlete, a combatant. As a boy I’d been Galihad in search of the Grail, Lancelot who feared no man, and Arthur himself who lived in an enchanted world of wizards and mystery and evil. Every manly instinct I possessed was urging me to overcome my fear and win this game. My pulse pounded like a bass drum in the quiet of this ghastly dusk.

I started toward him and he nodded. I stopped. I began to think about my children, my friends and loved ones, my unfulfilled life, my need to contribute something meaningful on this earth. Would I throw it all away on the gamble that this clown couldn’t back up his bravado?

I thought of the poem by Robert Frost. I loved the words and memorized them from the first and only time I ever read them back in High School: “The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep…”

“Promises to keep…”

“Promises to keep…”

“Promises to keep…”

There is a phrase we use: he or she “has so much promise.” Each of us is born with a certain amount of promise. Much of this promise is tacit and never written down or spoken, yet expected nonetheless. Our parents see promise in us as we play out our childhood dreams. Our spouses have great expectations when they lovingly say, “I do.” Our children believe us when we tell them we love them and will always be there for them. They look to our successes as pathways for their own. Our teachers hope that their efforts to instill in us the tools of tomorrow are not in vain. Our society turns its hard-earned money back into the system to seed the future with promise. However one defines his creator, it cannot be lost on that person the tremendous opportunity that is life, and the tragedy of squandering this most rare and precious gift. But most of all, we have promised ourselves, all our lives, that we would do that or become this or somehow live up to our perceived and believed potential.

The balance began to tip. On one hand I could defeat this clown or perhaps die alone in these woods having failed, or on the other hand, I could shake myself free from the guilt, lethargy, and self-incrimination that had brought me here this day, and walk back out to fulfill my promises. I had wasted a decade of life in doldrums and I had a lot of promise. I whispered to the clown, “I have miles to go before I sleep.”

I left the stare of the clown fading into the woods behind me. We played in Hot Springs, Arkansas that night in an upstairs room that roaring twenties gangsters once frequented called “The New Ohio Club.” I was very animated, because I knew what it meant to be alive and I savored every moment of it. The incident had shifted my focus from tortured retrospect to carpe diem and wondrous futureview.

I wish life were like the dŽnouement of a movie. That my illumination would have spawned rapturous change. That bells would ring and birds sing and beautiful ladies would make choreographed dives into fountains and Pegasus would fly above grazing unicorns. That Spring would burst out in a kaleidoscope of flowers. But alas, life demands that we travel the miles before we sleep. Change comes at the habit level. Attitudes are sunk deep into the recesses of the mind. Days come and go and they say nothing.

But what I had was a new direction. I had promises to keep. I had music to create. Stories to tell. Books to write. Philosophy to discover and hone. Poetry to ponder. People to love. A future wife to marry. Grandchildren to dote upon. And many more sunsets for which to give thanks. The courage and discipline to fulfill my promise would be profound in comparison to a blind burst of fury in the woods.

Yet still I wonder. What would have happened if I had followed his beckoning? Had I rationalized my leaving? My vanity sometimes wishes I had dragged that clown out of the woods and onto the front page of the newspaper. What would you have done? Before you answer, remember that conditions were not as you have them at your computer. That night the woods-were dark, and deep.

Carl

Epilogue

The question is of course, what was that clown doing in those woods? I have since concluded that this was a serious player of a grim and morbid game called “ghosting.” Or as some call it “ghousting”, rhyming with house. In some forms it is practiced by stealthily entering a home at night and walking around in the dark. The thrill or high comes from knowing there are people in the house who would be horrified if they detected your presence. It is a silent, but intense exhilaration. To some this benign thrill is no longer sufficient. They need a higher risk. They need your awareness of them. I think this is the status of my clown. I believe that because I was big and strong increased his risk and thus his exhilaration. He dressed as an evil clown because he knew it would terrify his victims.

I never heard anything of such a clown thereafter. The guys in the band tease me unmercifully and laugh whenever a clown appears on TV or in the movies. My nephew painted the Arkansas Clown on the side of our bus and I must say it looks very much like what I remember. If you own our CD, “More Trouble Than Worth,” you will find the story of the Arkansas Clown put to music.

Posted by Carl