The Camping Trip

A ride home on a Friday afternoon from school on a school bus can be quite an experience. That means you have two days of freedom, until another Monday and five days of teacher dictatorship. Scott and I, both are teenagers just waiting to try for our drivers licenses. Drivers licenses means real freedom, no more having to ride the stupid school bus. Although we do have a lot of fun on the bus, like letting down the window so the wind will mess up the girls hair behind us. When it rains or it is freezing outside, our window goes down. The other kids scream and yell for us to put the windows back up! We pretend not to hear. Finally the driver tells us to put up the windows, and after being told eight or nine more times, we do. Sometimes the windows conveniently get stuck and the driver has to stop the bus and put up the windows. But that’s during the week, they never get stuck on Friday for the bus to have to stop on the way home. In the Summer on real hot days, we put the windows up without having to be told, even once. Scott does not like the bus because it is a Ford. He says he would rather push a Chevy than ride in a Ford.

This weekend Scott and I are going camping down to the falls. Of course this is nothing new, we go camping almost every week end, only the location changes. We start out by raiding both houses for a sixty days supply of food to feed at least ten people on. Moms ration us and take away most of the known food, and we have to make due with two back packs full. Moms also limit us to just an overnight camp out, instead of the Friday night, Saturday, Sunday plans we had. We promised to catch the school down the road by where the Falls are on Monday and every thing, but it was no use. Moms are like that you know.

We get all our stuff together, that never really gets unpacked anyway, we just add too. We lug all this stuff about three miles down the road, across the creek. Down the railroad tracks another half mile then up a path to the falls. The whole way we talk about how when we get our drivers license, this packing stuff days will be over. Scott says he will drive us there most of the way in his Chevy truck he will have. I tell him, I will drive us all the way in the 4x4 Ford that I plan to get. Scott goes on about how he wouldn't even let his stuff ride in a Ford. I know he full of it, if I get a Ford he'll fuss a while, but when I jump in to take off no one will have to ask him, he’ll be right there in the passenger seat.

The Falls is probably the best camp site around. Surrounded on three sides by fifty feet tall, straight up rock cliffs in a horse shoe shape. The open end of the horse shoe is blocked off by the tracks built up on a twenty feet tall mound. There is about five acres of swamp like land, thick pine trees and brush. The water falls from off the top of the back cliff, and has washed out an area about the size of a backyard swimming pool, then runs across to a small drainage tile under the tracks. Beside of the falls is an over hang of the cliff that keeps the rain off and is about fifteen feet higher than the surrounding ground so it is dry year round.

We always set up the radio first and turn it on, I don’t know why, we never listen to it. We get so occupied with talking about and making future plans, that most of the time it's not even turned on, or if it is, its just for music in the back ground and the volume is turned down low, so we can hear our big plans. Second, we'd have to lay out the food and plan in what order to eat what, in case we come on hard times, we wouldn't want to go hungry, though not a very likely event.

We'd roll out the sleeping bags, build a big fire and have enough fire wood to last for weeks. Anything that could be burned was fair game for the fire, even if it was all that the both of us could do is carry it, then it was fire wood. When we would become driving teenagers, we were going to bring a chain saw, cots, grill and everything. We never used half of what we brought now, in fact the back packs seemed to weigh twice as much on the way home after camping out, then they did on the way to camp out. This time I brought a 22 cal semi-auto rifle, because of a pack of dogs that are running around the area. There is a county landfill just a few miles away, people drop off unwanted dogs, mostly the mother dog and her pups. The dogs find food there at night because the people running the landfill don't cover it with dirt daily like they are required too, but not watched to see that they do. So about every six months fifty or sixty dogs over populate what the landfill will feed and they attack farm animals, wild game what ever they can find to eat. Thursday afternoon they tried to run down a couple kids riding bicycles on the road, luckily a farmer with a gun in his truck, saw what was going on and fired a few shots in the air and the dogs run off into the woods again.

I had a run in with a pack of dogs back in the fall, I’m in the woods a lot with my 22 and usually can hit a moving target well, but there is something about being charged by fifty hungry dogs, that think your dog food to throw off your aim a little. I didn't hit anything the first few shots, and didn't kill a single one, but I hit enough of them that their yelping turn the pack to circling me like Indians attacking a wagon train instead of a full frontal attack. I had a full seventeen rounds in the 22 and I was counting and trying to make each one count. I had fired sixteen and was looking for the closest climbable tree, when they retreated back into the woods. I wasn’t afraid to run into another pack, I was actually hoping for it. Scott was not a gun person, I don't think his father even had gun in the house. I was old enough to know and respect firearms, but too young to recognize the danger of getting caught in the woods again with a pack of dogs. Scott’s dad didn't know about the dogs and the kids on bicycles ,and we didn't tell him because he would not have let Scott gone camping if we or someone else would have told him.

Scott wouldn't dare admit it but the thought scared him as much as it thrilled me that we may be attacked by a wild hungry pack of K-9's.I was the daredevil of the two and Scott would do as I did, and be right there anyway. We both were Star trek fans and he saw himself as Mr. Spock and me as Captain Kirk, I would boldly go and make all the decisions, while he was the straight A student of school and was a very intelligent person. I think we were opposite in all the right ways to make us a perfect team. Teenagers are like that I think, you would often see a real pretty girl with a real ugly best friend. If you wanted to take the real pretty girl out you had to find a date for her friend too, that’s where Scott came in handy too.

Like most teenagers, you know more than adults and boost at every chance to prove it. You carry on conversations such as, "If all the gold is stored at Ft Knox! Why is the Army guarding it, instead of the Marines? I would at least have the Green Barrettes guarding it!" We would just wonder around talking and not paying attention to the fact we were pretty far from camp, and the riffle! We walked up onto the tracks talking and getting farther away by the moment until we heard a loud noise from behind a rock at the side of the tracks in front of us. It somewhat sounded like a wild cat but, with a human voice, a very old voice. Scott said its some of those punk kids trying to scare us. To Scott, any kid younger or shorter, was a punk kid. I said No, lets take and rock them. The tracks had very nice throwing stones, they were Limestone and about two inches around and fit in your hands just right and there were plenty of them, no chance of running out. So we started bouncing stones off that big rock and surrounding area like machine gun bullets. Large Horse weeds stems sheared off and small limbs off bushes fell to the ground, stones shattered and small fragments glanced off in every direction. Then we heard a whimpering voice cry out, "All right stop, its me, Nad...Nad Starks!" We yelled back, "Who". This old man of about seventy five or more, stood up. We knew Nad well, and was a neighbor. We told we didn’t know any Nad Starks and threw a few more stones at him anyway. He ran back behind the rock for safety, and we threw until our arms got tired. The whole time he was yelling about telling our fathers, calling the police and such things. We finally let him come out and we told him that’s what he got for trying to scare us. He said "Well I know better than to try and scare you boys anymore, I’ve scared all the rest of the kids around here and none of them tried to knock off my head with rocks, they just ran for home!"

Old Nad wanted to walk a ways with us. We asked him what he was doing way down here anyway? He said he was picking Dry land fish. We asked him what Dry land fish was that we had not ever heard of it? He opened up a polk he was carrying and inside was plants that looked like a cross between mushrooms and asparagus, he said they tasted just like fish, and offered us some. Pay back for throwing rocks at him no doubt. We refused in no uncertain terms.

When we came to the railroad bridge he stop and told us that when he was drafted into WWI, the train carrying him and thousands of others to sail across the big waters, came right down this track and across this bridge. But there was a flood and the water was over the tracks and as soon as the last train car crossed the bridge, it washed out because the only thing holding the bridge down was the weight of the train. He said about every twenty years everything around here flooded, and 1960 you seen peoples houses float by here wash off. He also said we was due a big flood any time now. We thought his story was boring, all the old men talked about these floods, and what all got washed off. It wasn’t like if a flood came we wouldn’t know to stay away from the low areas.

Nad finally went on his way home, and we figured as long as we were halfway to Grinch now that we might as well go the other half and see what was going on there. Grinch was a town, only because it had a U.S. Post office. There was no mayor, police office, traffic light or even a gas station. Grinch was only about forty houses close together along a forth of a mile winding road. But it did have a Post office, school, a church and some nice looking girls. There must have been something in the water because all the girls were cute blondes and all the guys homely looking red heads with freckle faces. Scott and I would brag that we could stamp the daylights out of every boy in town all at one time. Going to Grinch was a chance to flirt with the girl and kick around the boys if they come out. But usually nobody would come out and we’d walk up and down the road a few times making a lot of noise like "I hope none of those big bad Grinch boys comes out and beats us up for being on their turf". So we would sit on the school steps in plain sight for a while then get bored and walk back, no girls, no fights, just tired feet.

There was a tunnel where the track went threw a small hill, it was about five hundred feet all the way threw it, and very dark. When we came to it I said lets stop and tell a few ghost stories before we go threw it. Scott was uneasy about going threw the tunnel anyway and I wanted to play it up to the most. He came up with how stupid it would be and it would take too long and it would be dark before we got back if we stopped and told ghost stories. I said Scott sounds like your afraid, that’s all it took, then he was all for it. After a couple of scary tails of monsters living in the tunnel just waiting to get somebody and Scott was ready to leave. Then I put my idea into play, I said Scott to show how brave we are, lets go threw the tunnel one at a time. I offered to go first and light a match when I got to the other end. Scott said no because I would blow out the match and take off when he got halfway. I said OK you go first and light a match when you get to the other end. He again said no because I would just let him stand at the other end like an idiot. We couldn’t work out a plan so finally we just went together. It was very dark and I started thinking what if an escaped convict was hiding out from the law in here. There is a chance a bear could be asleep in here beside the tracks. I too now was a little fearful and walking faster, Scott thought I was just trying to run off and leave him. I just let him think it too. By the time we got to the other end we were at a full run. Once outside we stopped to catch our breath, we must have been holding it the whole way. It was kind of funny after we seen that nothing got us, but it would be a while before I and most certainly Scott would be ready to make a return trip threw the tunnel.

We dragged back to the falls and camp just as it started to sprinkle rain. The fire had died, nothing left but a red ash or two. We had plenty of wood in stock and it didn’t take long to have the fire back as big as it was when we left. It was raining a steady rain now and I noticed that we had gone off and left the riffle there. It was a good thing or we might have shot old Nad. Then again what if we would run into that pack of dogs, oh well we had it now and no harm done. The water coming over the falls now was turning to brown, the same color as coffee mixed with cream. Leaves too were mixed in the water and twigs floating on top of the water now. The rain kept getting harder and harder. Lightening flashing, thunder roaring. We turned on the radio and it was giving a 70% chance of rain tonight and........then nothing but static, we said yeah lightening must have hit the radio tower and probably killed the weather man for telling a big lie again.

After about thirty minutes of real hard rain ,logs were now coming over the falls and the water was rising around us, all around us. we were trapped by the water and the straight up cliff. we had just an island now. Scott said that old Nad has put a curse on us and if he drowns he was going to take a ball bat to his old head. I reminded Scott that ghost don’t carry ball bats. He said OK chains than, same thing he was taking it to his head. Scott , I think with all the logs floating out there it would be pretty hard to drown. All that brush must have stopped up the tile under the tracks. The worst is that it might get ten feet deep before it starts flowing over the tracks, but we are probably ten feet higher than the tracks, so we’re safe. Scott started calming down and making plans on building a raft in the morning. Later Scott said he should have used his logic on the situation and found a better reason than to blame an old man that can’t even scare people right. He also promised to not let he words come out before using his logical mind first.

Another hour went by and it had stopped raining and the stars were coming out slowly. The water wasn’t going down any, the tile must be plugged tight. We were relaxing on or backs looking up at the stars, drinking pop and eating chips, getting crumbs all in our sleeping bags. We were just starting to talk about what a good idea it would be to buy this land and make a pay lake out of it. Charge people to fish, set up a little stand to sell bait, pop, chips and just kick back and watch the money roll in. Then we seen a falling star, it was bright, the longest falling star we’ve ever seen, in fact the stupid thing seemed to be heading this way and it was. It slammed right into the side of the cliff about five hundred feet on the other side of the falls, and broke into a thousand little fire balls falling into the water and instantly going dark and black again.

I said, well that was exciting, but it didn’t last very long. Scott said, It lasted too long I almost crapped all over my dog gone self. That’s about as close as I’ve ever heard Scott come to cussing, he uses stupid and punk in place of where others use four letter words and that gets him more respect in school than you would think. Not as much as, if he didn’t use any.

Only the light from our camp fire remained, as we stood there looking in the direction where the bright fire ball had hit the cliff. Scott said lets not tell anyone about this, I read where museums pay big bucks for meteorites, small ones thousands and one as big as a basket ball went for a million bucks. I said your trying to pull my leg. Scott said no, he seen it on the news. So we started making plans, other people may have seen it too, only not as close and wouldn’t know where to look for it like we did. All the mess from the high water would help hide it. Maybe we were the only two people in the whole world to have seen it.

Maybe this meteorite was made of Gold, either way it could buy this land and make us rich. We heard some splashing noises coming from the water, it sounded like some one swimming. We both walked to the edge of the water, and we could make out a figure swimming this way. That didn’t set too well for us, because that means it must have been a plane that crashed. That ment no million bucks after all, but maybe we’d be heroes for helping the pilot. Scott waded out into the water calling out "Over here ." I threw some more wood on the fire for light and stepped over and picked up the riffle, just in case this was a Russian spy plain or something like that. Scott got a hold of their hand and helped them up, then he started screaming "Shoot it, shoot it, shoot, it, now, kill it!" I couldn’t see what it was because Scott was between me and what ever it was. I yelled get out of the way, get down! Scott dived off to the side then I could see this thing that looked like a grasshopper’s head on a human shaped body. Just like the sketches of aliens, this was an alien. It was not an airplane that had crashed, but an U.F.O.

I started blasting away at this thing’s face and body with rapid shots. I could hear the rounds bouncing off and it kept coming up on shore at me. Scott grabbed a stick of wood floating on the water and started hitting it over the back of it’s head. Nothing seemed to have any effect on it, not bullets or clubs. Then it did something we didn’t expect, it sat down on a rock by the fire and said "Do you mind if I share your fire?" It was English and the creature could talk! It looked dangerous, but sounded like a girls voice. Scott and I were speechless, we couldn’t make a sound. The creature said " What are you boys doing out here all alone in the woods?" This thing had come a million light years threw space to insult us and call us "Boys". That sparked an argument right off. Boys?, Look you bug eyed looking thing you, what ever you are, don’t start that, " Boy" stuff around us. Just be glad we don’t toss your ugly self back in the water. It said, You boys need to mind your manors in front of a lady. Scott said, Lady? Don’t you mean lady bug?

The creature said, Look I’ve had a bad day, lets not make it any worse, OK, "Boys". We wasn’t going to be bullied by some woman alien that acts like our mom, and try to tell us how to act. This was our camp and our planet, not this things place anyway. OK look you thing what are you and where do you come from? It said it was from the planet 029 in the F67 galaxy and it’s name was Bob. Scott said, Aliens are not named Bob, and certainly not girl aliens. Your name has to be Zion or something weird like that. It said, No just Bob. She said you boys are not very good host and I’m real hungry. Scott picked up his club and took a stand like a baseball player at home plate waiting on the pitch, I grabbed the riffle and pointed it at her. She just started laughing as hard as she could and got out the words ‘ Did you think I meant I was going to eat you, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.”!

When she got done laughing, we asked her what kind of foods did she eat? She said Apple pie, hot dogs, potato chips, boys alone camping in the woods, you know the usual alien diet. Scott said yeah very funny, you can have a can of vegetable soup that our moms made us take, we were going to throw it away any how. She said that would be great if Scott would fix it for her, because she thought he was kind of cute. Scott said don’t start making bug eyes at me, I don’t date insects. Just because I go out with some pretty ugly girls sometimes, doesn’t mean it encludes bugs too. So, Scott went on to open the can of soup and cut his finger on the metal lid of the can. It was a deep cut and Scott was bleeding alot and fast. He got blood all over the sleeping bags, all over me trying to wrap it, he even slung his hands around and had blood splatters on the cliff walls. We finally got a bandage on his finger and got it to stop bleeding. After things calmed down, Bob said I’m ready to eat again now, if you boys are not planning to try and hurt me any more I’ll take off my safety helmet so I can eat. Scott said Thats not your real face? Bob said of course not, its what you call a crash helmet, my F.O.R.D. did crash you know. Scott said Fords always crash, but you did not drive no stupid Ford threw space to get here. Bob said F.O.R.D. is not a Ford that you know its Federation-orbital-recognizance-device.

Scott said You should have left it on auto pilot, girls can’t drive anyway. Bob said Give me a break I just got my license today! Scott was rolling, he was laughing so hard he couldn’t catch his breath and just started making funny noises like an asthma attack, but Scott did this all the time, sometimes you’d just have to let him pass out before he would stop. I was very courious about the helmet, I asked if that was what saved her from the crash? Bob said No that was a real neat invention called a ejection seat and parachute, but it did save her from an idiot with a gun and another idiot with a club! She ment us of course. Bob said and you people wonder why we don’t want to make contact or sneak around in low populated areas at night. We don’t come to see people anyway, we can find out more than we want to know by your radio and television broadcast, you pollute space with, just like you pollute the land and water of your own planet where you live, So if you two will not become violent, I’ll take off the helmet now.

She pulled off the helmet and as she did, Scott and I tried to prepare ourselves for the worst of what we might expect to see, but what we didn’t expect to see was that she was a girl!, a beautiful, blond haired, blue eyed babe about our age and defiantly human. I think Scott and I were more shocked than when we first laid eyes on it, I mean her coming out of the water. We stood there with our mouths open looking at her, and looking at her. It wasn’t hard to just look at her, it was most pleasant. She smiled and started brushing her long blond hair. Scott and I realized what dopes we had been about the whole thing and told her, that we were sorry we almost killed her. She said yeah I’m glad the flight suits are not only flame proof, but bullet proof too. That is what kind of welcome response we expect to see from your people, and it happens to be that way every time. Thats another reason why we just come to study the animals of your planet before all of them are extinct, or wiped out I should say. Scott instantly fell in love with her as soon as she took off the helmet, and I think she had a crush on him from the start too, maybe not while he was trying to bash her head in with that club, but soon there after. Scott moved over and sat down on the rock beside of her and the two of them started talking and getting all mushy, I put another log on the fire and gave them room. Friends have to do that sometimes, take a back seat and just step aside for a while. After a while Scott came over and took me to the side and said he was going back with her to her planet and get married! I said Scott you can’t just run off and get married, you don’t know her, or what kind of mess your getting into. Scott said I know she’s the one for me and there is no time, her people are on the way here and if I don’t go now they won’t allow another contact, ever! I knew there was no chance of changing his mind, and I knew he was right, that logical mind of his had thought it out, it was now or never and he couldn’t be happy wondering what if? If he’d gone with them, would he have been better off? And it was a chance to do something few would ever get a chance to do, at least in our life time, visit another planet like the crew of the USS Enterprise. It was Scotts chance to boldly go where no man has gone before!

I think the biggest fear I had was saying goodbye to my best friend! It didn’t take long, and the rescue craft came for her and I was trying to act like a man and say goodbye for the last tine to Scott. You know as soon as they leave you will think of a million things you wished you would have thought to have said or talked about, but at the time all you can say is goodbye and good luck, how pitiful and dumb you feel later.

They stepped aboard and the door closed with Scott and Bobbie ( she finally admitted ) waving for the last time goodbye. I looked hard so I could catch the very last glimpse of him as the door closed. The craft slowly moved over to the crash site area and some funny lights cleaned up all traces of the crash and then moved over to where the tile under the tracks were and the same lights cleared away all the brush and stuff that plugged the tile, and the water level quickly started dropping. Then the craft started to rise and so did a large lump in my throat, as it left my sight into the dark sky and stars.

I think of Scott daily over these some twenty years past, and wish somehow he could come back. You see the blood on me, and on the sleeping bag, and the cliff. The fired riffle with traces of the burnt powder on my hands, was all they needed to prove murder. They concluded that we must have got into an argument and I shot Scott, then threw his body in the flooded steam and it was washed away, then made up this story which could not be proved or believed because there is not a scrap piece of evidence left to back it up or even a witness. So I look out the window of my cell at night and wonder, what if? why didn’t I for once follow his lead and would I really be better off?, or is he somehow worse off there than I am in here.