I pitched a quick look over my shoulder. I was almost at the tree line and the horses were still at the lower fence. Growing up around horses, I was not normally afraid of them, but when I walked through the pasture, I always had a feeling they would run toward me, trampling me in their haste. It was the wide open that made me feel this way. They were really very huge animals.
They paid me no mind and I kept walking. It wasn’t strange for an 11-year-old girl to be going to the woods to play, alone. Not in my small town, not in the 70’s. Nothing scary about it. Terror to me was the Saturday afternoon movie about the lady stored in pieces in the freezer, or the monkey people who ruled humans. Things that gave me nightmares, but that I knew were fake. I walked to the dump that bordered the pasture, but was still well within our property line. My imagination could be let loose there, especially when alone. I climbed through the meager fence that kept the horses away from the old furniture, wrecked toys, lumber. If only the horses knew how big they were, I thought, they would go right through all the fences, running away and wild.
I wasn’t always alone here, but my two best friends from the neighborhood were at their Grandma’s. I got bored with reading and cartoons, and said I was gonna walk in the pasture. My mother barely noticed. She had her own fears to deal with.
I knew to watch my footing. One of my friends got a rusty nail in the foot, and needed a trip to the emergency room and a shot. I shuddered, now that was real terror. I picked my way through, landmarks real and imagined coming into view. The piled planks that were my boat, the half- buried dresser, the shed that was my castle. I wandered slowly but aimlessly for a bit, arriving at a boulder that was perfectly out of place, and sat down. I felt melancholy, and wanted to prod that around for a bit, and pick it apart as I was so used to doing those days. Some children have an almost surgical way of dissecting their worries. Since losing my brother, I was one of those children.
After eating my travel pop-tart and thinking a bit, I looked up to see a girl making her way toward me. She looked a bit dusty, a little out of place in time. But she smiled up at me as she came forward. Children are universally accepting of other children until they are taught not to be. I smiled back.
We went through the usual conversation – Hi – my name is – where do you live – and the like. She looked about my age, maybe a little younger. Her name was Beth and she was 10. She said she was “new here” but gave no real address. Her clothes were dirty, slightly torn and frayed. Her face was dusty, but her smile was sweet. I was curious but not rude, so assumed she lived in one of the apartments that bordered the far east section of our 60 acres. Where the “poor people” lived. Not so very far to come play, I thought then. We goofed about a little – princesses lost at sea and so on, until it was time for me to go. From the sky I could tell it was late afternoon, and I would be expected home. At least I hoped my Mother would notice enough to expect me home, and maybe make some dinner. Beth looked sad but resigned, and asked would I play again the next day? Since it was summer vacation and no school, I agreed to come right after lunch.
The next day was blustery but warm, no rain in sight. I was alone again, and we played a bit longer. I wanted to go into a second shed in the wreckage, a newer looking one I thought would make a fine house, but she so adamantly warned me away, tears in her eyes, that I gave up without argument and we continued on our boat trip. The shed was soon forgotten with the sound of our laughter ringing off the surrounding trees. This time when I went home, she seemed less sad, more resigned to this new pattern. I would come back.
And so it went, summer passing with play and pretend. Sometimes I went to the woods alone, and Beth would be there, but I could only ever find her in the dump. For some reason when I went with a friend or two in tow, she stayed away. I figured her shy, unwilling to try new friends who might disappoint. I pictured her nearby, wanting to join but not able to make that leap. I was more right than I imagined.
When my mother did come up for air from her lake of grief, she would warn me about the danger of playing alone. Children go missing, and she didn’t want to lose another one. I went to the woods still, despite these warnings, and she seemed incapable or just too tired to muster up the effort to stop me. I played with Beth, or friends, until Sunday, August 29th. That day stands out in my mind even now, the date etched like a terrible holiday.
I went alone to the dump, checking over my shoulder as usual for the trampling of horses I was sure would come someday, and Beth was there. I was in a mood, and decided I wanted see that other shed, regardless of her tears or pleas. I think I was feeling just plain mean, and wanted to take it out on someone, rather than turning it inwards that time.
I turned back once, as I stepped carefully into the new shed, and it seemed Beth was fading. A trick of the light, I shrugged, and stepped in. The smell hit me first. Not strong, but an old, moldiness that tickles your throat and nose. An attic with a dead mouse left too long. Unpleasant but not terrible. Then I saw her. The same clothes, the slight frame. And I knew.
I ran all the way home, startling the horses and then my mother. Through halting sobbing breaths, I told her what I found. She seemed confused at first, but called the police nonetheless. I told them my story, the crying steadier but smaller now. I left out the parts about playing, spending my summer with a girl who wasn’t really there. They would have thought me crazy. I felt crazy. They searched the dump and recovered the body. Little Beth Mayne, missing since January from those poor people apartments I had assumed she was from. They suspected her father, long gone and to be found dead months later, an apparent suicide. They held a small, poorly attended memorial. I still have a newspaper article - her thin, exhausted mother holding a candle in the fading light.
I was in bed for days, fits of crying punctuated by thought filled moments and strangely peaceful dreams. It took me five days to conclude my resistance and then acceptance of what had happened. I wonder at it still. It now has the shine of a strangely beautiful old gift, put away but not totally forgotten.
I had learned much that summer. I had suffered a loss, and also felt a loss that wasn’t really mine to suffer. I learned to value dreams, and friends, and simply being alone sometimes. But I also knew what I had been given, and I appreciate it still. My mind opened, and once it felt that freedom, refused to close again. I was kinder to my mom, who in her grief had lost herself, and she eventually climbed out. I saw things with a different eye than before. I turned 12, but felt old. Not tired-old, but the old of knowing something that others don’t. I didn’t talk about my time with Beth, but I let it flow through me and change me.
Unlike the horses who obeyed their boundaries, I realized how big my mind was, and I trampled over the fences after that day. I could think anything I wanted, I could read anything I chose, I could be anyone and anywhere. My mind and thoughts could run wild and away. And so, they did.